A post-race mindset

I was a little choked up by the time I finally crossed the finish line on Saturday night.

To be fair, you would be, too. Apparently it doesn't matter if you've been hardened by years of love and loss, international politics, the monotony of day-to-day life and the soul-crushing process of watching your hairline recede. Disney has a way of getting to you. And so does running.

~~~

Last Saturday my brother and I ran the Disney Wine and Dine Half-Marathon. It’s was a 10,000+ runner shuffle through the Walt Disney World campus just outside of Orlando, starting at the Wide World of Sports complex and winding through both Animal Kingdom and Disney Hollywood Studios before finishing with a gigantic drunkfest at Epcot. I finished in 2:23.20.

The run itself was so masterfully executed that I couldn’t help but spend the entire jog in awe of, well, everything around me. The sidelines were littered with heart-tugging distractions. There were Disney characters in full regalia posing for photo-ops with runners. There were employees, families, volunteers, and drunk revelers all screaming and shouting your name as you nimbly leaned into each turn off the Oceola Parkway.

And while I was in awe, I didn’t really come to appreciate those perks until I was out of Animal Kingdom and entering the seventh mile of the race. It was during that lonely stretch (look between 6 and 7 on the map above) that the nature of my training-- its successes and shortfalls-- became apparent.

Fitness was not the issue. While Orlando itself is a flat sack of swamp not unlike Houston, the course was littered with overpasses and upward inclines through the artificially elevated sections of the parks. In this way I was actually lucky that I spend the past four months training on a treadmill with an incline setting rather than dashing through the sweltering, flat expanses of the Houston Heights. Coupled with the distance-building regiment I followed to reach my goal, I’d say the run itself was fairly painless.

I mean, it hurt. Oh god it hurt. But physically, I never doubted myself throughout the entire race. My lungs were tar-free and my heart was pushing ruby-red, oxygenated life force to my legs. Have you seen these legs?

I had to part ways with my brother around the fifth mile marker because cruel asthma was tightening its icy grip around his airways. That felt like a scene out of a war movie, with him belting out “go on! go on!” between breaths. And barely a mile after that heart-wrenching moment, I looked around at the costumed couples and the families on the sidelines and this place from my childhood and I felt very, very alone.

Crap.

~~~

Now, running and I have a long and somewhat complicated relationship going back decades. No kidding. It all started in kindergarten-- no, wait. It starts with me in a stroller, being pushed by my grandparents up and down paved sand dunes in coastal small town America. They were runners.

Then there I am, in kindergarten, a skinny and slightly blonder version of myself winning mile-long fun runs with my dad. He would coach me to the last 100 yards or so, then “go, Kyle, go!” and I would take off in a sprint to the finish. He was quite the runner, too.

I’ve got a cigar box back home full of blue ribbons from these events. Almost all of the Christmas Morning pictures from my childhood feature this small, blonder, but just-as-white image of young me donning a way-oversized commemorative T-shirt from some fun run that me and my dad ran together.

As I passed from elementary school into middle school, running became less of a thing for all of us. I was focused on computers and games and this new concept of homework and making friends. I became a little more thick and stout and my achievements all shifted toward academic performance. My dad began experiencing some tightness in his knee and after he tore his ACL coaching my 7th grade soccer team, that was about it for him and running.

Then he got cancer, and that was really, really it for running.

At the behest of a therapist and my mom a few months after he died, I tried running again as a way to help deal with it. Instead it only reminded me how out-of-shape I was, and how I had peaked physically in kindergarten and that, above all, I would never really get the chance to run with him again. I would do it from time to time, but usually as a way to placate my mom than for any self-motivated reasons.

During my senior year of high school I was able to start running for myself. Something about the prospect of leaving all of those bad memories behind coupled with fact that, no matter what, my time in Panama City Beach was almost over. I lost a little weight, felt free for the first time ever, started seeing a girl on the weekends, blogged and expressed myself like a madman, etc etc.

My first few years at Rice saw running as a personalized expression of the come-and-go college workout fad. Running definitely wasn’t a regular thing, but I did it from time to time, and I still wore it like it was a big part of my life. In reality it had been a big part of my life, but it wasn’t at the time.

Then in late 2008 I started running a lot. Like, a lot a lot. And I don’t really remember why. At one point my girlfriend at the time had to sit me down and have a serious talk with me about how running twice-a-day in Houston, in the middle of the summer, with little shade around the perimeter of Hermann Park was probably a bad idea.

So I calmed down a bit but ran religiously until the beginning of my senior year of college. It was the best shape I’d been in to date, I could eat whatever I wanted without remorse, and I felt almost as free and confident as the day I left for college.

Now, let’s fast-forward in our story to about a year ago. That’s when my brother completed the Wine and Dine Half-Marathon by himself. At a point in my life when I was feeling less than capable of doing the bare minimum, he had been able to balance his courseload at UCF and train for a half-marathon and finish it. It was exactly the inspiration I needed-- a reminder that there’s potential in my genes-- to get me off my ass and back to pounding pavement.

~~~

So, about that race.

Where was I? Right. I was talking about the shortcomings of my training. Running on a treadmill can only take you so far.

It’s one thing to watch three back-to-back episodes of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives while galloping in place three times a week. It’s one thing to do leg presses with an ear full of Stuff You Should Know. But this first half-marathon was over two hours spent inside my head, navigating a sea of sweaty strangers while facing down every doubt that popped into it.

That’s why I wasn’t prepared for that weird, lonely feeling that overcame me halfway through the race.

I was by myself. There was no one running alongside me to help me keep pace or compliment my form. There was no friend on the sidelines shouting, “go Kyle!” or “nice legs!” There was no girl to impress. No music or distraction to retreat into. I was alone.

And a short time later it hit me. I was doing a hard thing-- a good thing-- by myself, for myself. No distractions. No shortcuts. I was being selfish in the good way, where you do things for yourself because they’re good for you. Not the selfish I was used to, where you take things for yourself because they make you feel good.

As I mentioned earlier, I have felt truly free a few times in my life. Once was that stretch of time before college, when I was younger and felt the infinite possibilities before me. And another time was the last seven or so miles of my first half-marathon. I felt like my own person again, separated from the complex of validation I so often seek.

I kept moving. I smiled and appreciated the encouragement from the random people around me. I laughed at the characters and costumed runners around me. I cheered and pumped my hands up when random Disney songs would suddenly be blaring around me. I let loose.

In that last mile before the finish line, I couldn’t help but feel like the half-marathon was going to be a really cool turning point in my life. A point when I stop taking shortcuts and the means to getting where I want to be are just important as the end to which I’m trying to reach. A point when goals are real, and not just a consequence of a lifestyle I want to live. A point when I start living.

When I did finally cross the finish line, I laughed a little bit and thought to myself “so what’s next?”

We’ll see.

Think Small

It's weird how inspiration can come from the most random places. An inspirational link and a quick conversation with my brother and, quite suddenly, I'm ready to start writing on this thing once again.

It all started quite innocuously this morning: Get to the office, throw on a cup of coffee and check reddit for all the easy-to-digest liberal nerd rage I can bite off with my dulled political chops. Years of caring too much have turned me from a youthfully deaf, rabid Michael Moore wannabe into one of those more sage, jaded liberals who believes in the goodness of sharing and equality but is disheartened by the empty promise of politics in America.

I noticed one particular headline that suddenly cranked my fatigued morning brain into overdrive:

This is interesting: Julian Assange's old blog. (web.archive.org)

A blog written by an academic from 2006-2007 touching on some high-minded topics such as freedom of information, love, life and humor? Interspersed with random snippets of useful Ruby code? All on a very non-flashy, flat-style page? Totally fucking early 2000's nostalgia! Where do I sign up?

To me, Assange has never been the enigmatic, borderline Aspy with a serious case of US butthurt that many media outlets have attempted to mis-characterize. To me, he's a man who values the academic principle of openness more than the academic definition of journalism. And that pragmatic attitude garners a lot of respect from me.

Professors and pundits alike may argue all day about the proportions of journalism, recklessness, integrity, fairness and freedom that constitute the WikiLeaks initiative. At the end of the day, though, WikiLeaks itself (especially with this latest iteration of leaked cables) is not dismantling the institutions it highlights. At least, not on its own. They're dismantling the facade. They're exposing the way the world works in a very candid way, leaving the accountability in the hands of those who dare to lie, mislead or at the very least not educate the public at large.

I think that's cool, because history tends to favor openness and expression.

Anyways, back to that blog.

Breezing through the international pariah's random, somewhat intimate wisdom, I found myself awash in one big, awesome thought: He blogs for the same reason I have to blog. To put my ideas out there. To reflect and check myself in a public space. To share and clarify and sharpen my position instead of keeping it in my head. I feel like those higher goals are evident in Assange's blog as they are in this one.

Blogging for me has always been more than just an indulgent exercise in narcissism, though I'd be lying if I said that wasn't some significant part of it :-) It's a giant "you are here, and this is where you've been" map for life. I do re-read my shit on occasion. I bet you're not surprised.

Honestly, I know myself well enough to know that I have never been able to keep track of myself well in my head. I lose myself. I make myself crazy with the sort of deprecating, self-defeating nonsense that left me depressed and insular for the better part of this year. But when I unleash the stream of consciousness into a finite bitstream for public consumption, well, those self-defeating thoughts get pulverized like errant letters by a springy, loud, 80's style backspace button.

So thanks to Mr. Assange for helping me realize and see the importance of writing on my blog once again.

I also chatted a bit with my brother today and, together, we came to another conclusion: That each blog post doesn't have to be some big odyssey of a tome. It feels like everything I've written in the past year or so is some historical essay on the recent life I've been living up to that point. But that sort of defeats the purpose I was just talking about. What I ended up with this year was three or four giant characterizations of my life based on those pivotal moments when I was so emotional or worked-up that I just exploded with prose. But those aren't honest. They're moving, but they're not necessarily me on-the-whole.

The odyssey isn't each constituent post. The odyssey is the blog.

(oops, I ended up saying way more than I thought I would. oh well. I promise the next post will come soon, and be small. twss?)

Tap on Glass, Talk About Future

This Saturday, in front of friends and family spanning the strata of human experience, my old friend Phillip will be getting married to his college sweetheart, Alana, up in Spokane, Washington. I had the good fortune of spending a few cozy dinners with them while they were in Houston for various academic and job-related conferences. Of course I've known Phillip since I was in kindergarten, and I could tell that he was quite in love with her the first time I saw them together.

And against what I consider to be the insurmountable odds of my own construction, I will be standing up there, too, as one of Phillip's groomsmen. And when I say "insurmountable odds of my own construction," I'm not just trying to be wordy. I mean: I thought that between my rock-and-roll lifestyle, my complete emotional abandonment of Panama City Beach, and surrounding myself with people who are equally scared of commitment, I wouldn't be attending weddings in any serious capacity until I was 30.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't necessarily think it's weird for two people who are ready to make that sort of commitment to get married. I don't have anything against getting married. It's just a concept that is so completely removed from my own experiences and where I am in my own life that I have a hard time understanding the mindset that can lead to that sort of... I dunno, "leap."

And so it does beg the question: If I'm so unable to empathize with the married man's mind at 23, then where is my life taking me? Or, as they asked in all of my job interviews this summer: Where do you see yourself in five years?

I. Have. No. Idea. I've never been able to see five years down the road. Or two. Or even a few months. It's weird.

In fact, there's only been one future for me: The Distant Future. It was purchased for me by my mom and every person who ever told me "you'll make a great father one day" when I was depressed about my condition and needed a future to see. It's the American dream that Hunter S. Thompson was trying to warn me about. It's a two-story house filled with all the gadgets and accouterments and toys of a Family Man. And it's the only thing that has ever come to mind when people ask me about my future.

Seriously. When interviewers, counselors, whoever would ask me about my own thoughts on the future, I would conjure up what I believed to be my destiny and interpolate backwards. Where do I see myself in five years? Well, ten years away from being the father of a five year old living in Cypress, TX, or something. And rich, of course. The image of me pushing a lawnmower over a chemically green plot of suburbia while my kids try to kill each other with pool noodles is so incredibly (and admittedly) strange that, well, many of my friends are probably laughing their way through this very sentence.

I guess you could say there's a divorce between the future I've always envisioned and the reality I'm living right now.

In the past few months I've started a new job, marginally come to terms with the self-destruction of my most stable and enjoyable relationship to date, supported my family through some emotionally rough rigmarole, looked for a new place to live and, oh yeah, graduated. Any one of those events would be enough to get my gears spinning about my place in the world, but the wedding thing is really the icing on my introspective, hard-to-swallow Cake of the Future.

So now, in the wake of everything, I'm finally coming to terms with what may be the first hard truth about myself I've ever learned: I'm not going to be a family man. Or, at the very least, it's not going to come easy. I'm too damaged to commit. Too clingy to make hard decisions for the good of the family. Too invested in myself to pay dividends to anyone else. Too historically untrustworthy to be trusted anymore.

It's okay.

I know that I could become this person if I wanted. If I wanted to make that life a goal, I could drop every selfish habit of mine and work toward being an A-type Archetypal American Man. But it's certainly not going to just happen to me. More importantly, for the first time in my life, I'm coming to terms with the idea that it's okay-- and likely-- that I won't. For now I just need to work on my insecurities, my shortcomings, and try to maximize the different possible directions my life might take. Clarity will come.

But if the only vague future I've ever known is gone, then what am I working toward? A legacy? An empire? Fame? Importance? Being really clever? I don't care about those things like I used to.

For now, I guess I'm just working toward tomorrow.

The Selfish Accelerated Reader

It was noontime and I was 12 years old, and all I really cared about was living a few more months.

See, I had dreamed about my 13th birthday since before I turned 9. Not for the presents, of course— though I had heard through the colloquial grapevine that they're quite good when you turn 13. A neighbor of mine from back in Virginia received an iPhone for his 13th birthday. Engraved under the ubiquitous Apple logo were the words "To Our Young Man With Love."

Forget the phone, I remember thinking. I wanted those words. I wanted to be a teenager. I wanted to join the ranks of the non-childish and command more respect from my peers and my superiors and my parents after I crossed that all-important threshold. People would start to notice how mature I was for my age once I turned 13, or so I figured.

Instead it was noontime and I was 12 years old and in a few hours I would be definitively prevented from turning 13, due to death.

I looked down at my last meal. Great. There was not a single morsel of refined sugar or high-fructose corn syrup to be found in my unassuming red lunch pack. Nothing to take the edge off.

My loving mother would have certainly packed things differently if she'd known about her son's impending demise. Every death row inmate has a right to a Dublin Dr. Pepper, even if their scheduled execution happens to fall on a no-sodas-allowed weekday. And Gushers, too. And a fistfull of the Halloween candy my mom oh-so-wisely rations during the rest of the year.

That would be such a fitting culinary finale: Indulgent, childish and cheap. My achy, busting gut would lead me outside and to my final resting place in the dirt pit next to the swings on the playground. And when the body blows finally stopped, I would die with a half-pound of sugar numbing my frail, broken body.

How sad, I lamented as I jabbed my small, white straw through the foil cap at the top of my Big Kid's Juicy Juice.

No, no, wait. Mom is more than kind, I thought— she's smart. And she loves me. If I had told her about everything at the beginning of the week, she would have definitely hidden a few throwing stars between the slices of ham in my sandwich. I could even picture my quilted napkin stained with an encouraging note.

"I packed you something extra to get you through your fight with Tommy. XOXO, Mom."

But Mom didn't know, so she didn't pack me any weapons, keep me home from school or anything.

I paced my slow, methodical bites with every other tick of the giant black-and-white clock hanging above the lunchroom. I was sitting off by myself because I told my friends that I needed to be alone with my thoughts. They had conceded and dispersed with urgency as to imply that I needed as much time as possible to get my affairs in order. To plan an escape. To save my own ass.

1) There is no escape.
2) This is happening to me for a reason.

I vacillated between these two thoughts for an eternity before the 12:35 bell snapped me out of my melancholic stupor. Guilty and literally alone, I left the lunchroom feeling like I had wasted my only opportunity to solve this problem myself.

~~~

Close your eyes. Imagine for a moment that you've been standing in a 4-way intersection, blindfolded, for hours. Cars race by you indiscriminately. You can hear engines everywhere. You can feel them warping the air as they push toward their own respective destinations with no regard as to why there is a blindfolded child standing in the intersection. But you can't see them. And then suddenly, you feel something begin to press on your shoulder. You accept your fate and flinch and hope that the next blow is the conclusive coup de grace.

That's how I flinched when James tapped me on the shoulder after English class. The time was now seconds after 1:35. Less than two hours until my own personal Iwo Jima. My body was electrically tense.

"Whoa there," James rebounded. "Didn't mean to scare you."

I tried to casually turn my head and acknowledge my well-meaning friend, but instead my head bobbled and jerked like a crazy person. I was giving him the Sideways Stare by the time I finally made eye contact.

"He-ey," I said flatly, trudging along as James stepped alongside me.

"Dude, come on," he began immediately. James was about to try and cheer me up. "You know this isn't like, the end. All the guys I've talked to think you're being downright melodramatic about this fight with Tommy."

"James," I began, "while I appreciate what you're doing, there is no way for me to convey to you the isolation and hopelessness I'm feeling right now. If I could, you would understand why downplaying the situation certainly will not cheer me up."

"Hmmph." He motioned toward the goth kids clustered at the end of the corridor, playing some trading card game. "You think they know your pain?"

I grinned. God damn, he's good. There goes my veil of melancholy. It's a lot easier to deal with people when they think you're a sad pile. That, definitely, the goth kids would understand.

"You're retarded," I countered with age-appropriate instinct. We pushed through the heavy fire doors at the end of the hall. The change in lighting and scenery seemed like a good opportunity to also shift the conversation a little bit. "What made Tommy so violent, anyways?"

He looked at me like, duh, we all know what you did. He didn't have to say anything for me to get the point.

"No, no no," I continued. "Like, Tommy is a pure sociopath. He's the guy everyone warned me about when I moved here. What makes him so— "

"Fucking evil? A natural psychopath?" James energetically shrugged with a smile.

"Exactly."

James' smile turned to a glare and he didn't say anything but walked by my side as I approached my locker.

"Look, you need get one thing straight," he then started once I popped the locker open. "Your frustration with this situation that you caused is absolutely separate from Tommy's nature as a human being."

"That's absolutely not true," I retaliated, confused as to why my own friend would want to argue about such a seemingly cut-and-dry matter right now.

I mean, I'm about to die, I thought. If anything, I wanted him to lie to me, to tell me that Tommy's an animal-torturing nutjob living with an emotionally-abusive, alcoholic, ex-cop grandparent. I wanted to hear how said grandparent methodically recounted gruesome, violent crimes to his grandson every night before bed. Tell me that's why I'm about to die, I wished.

"You are being punished for committing a very popular crime of passion that has been met with similar consequences for centuries. Just think of Tommy as a very effective executor of said consequences."

"You're missing the point of my question entirely," I sigh with unfriendly exasperation as I slam my locker shut. "You wouldn't break every bone in my body if I'd done the same thing to you."

"If you did the same thing to me," James snapped back, "I would torture you. I would manipulate and ruin you in ways that lumbering, remedial, lonely jocks like Tommy simply cannot comprehend."

"Well, I guess that makes me the luckiest guy in the world."

"But you are," James continued coldly. Then, breathlessly and with animated hands shaking near my face, "Your so-called 'torment' will be over in a matter of hours. Every god damn student at this school will consider your punishment to be adequate and the lasting consequence of your reckless and irresponsible actions will be a slight tarnish on your reputation and you don't even care about your reputation or else we would be having a completely different conversation right now."

Bewildered, I asked him what that conversation we should be having.

"If and how you can really make things right with Tommy, instead of taking the easy way out."

There was no one standing around us— the bell had sounded in the midst of James' tirade. Frustrated by my confusion and with no grandiose points left to make, James hurled his heavy messenger bag over his shoulder and began to walk away.

"Well, can I?" I shouted as I inched backward toward my next class.

"I don't think it's in your nature," he shouted back.

~~~

Tommy stood over me like a giant, chiseled idol erected by fearful savages of an era passed. It was now or never. I'd spent the last hour reaching through layers of meta-cognition to find the words that would express my guilt and sorrow. And on the other hand, I knew I had to say what I meant and not what he wanted to hear to get out of the situation.

It was now or never.

"Look," I began with a hundred thousand eyes directed down on me. "I've had a lot of time to think about what I've done, and I understand that I must not only accept the retribution you're about to deliver, but that I must actually beg for it with open, upturned hands. I have wrecked whatever notion of love and trust and peace that you had in your life and replaced it with the same lonely, insecure feeling that haunts me on a daily basis and propels me toward my dumbest decisions. But I don't want to be an infectious agent of evil and mistrust in the world. I want to do good. And I'm not trying to convince you to change your mind about beating me up. I'm only trying to make things better. I'm trying to do my part to really, really affect some positive change in your life, so that whatever happens today makes tomorrow better for all of us."

The tears on my face were all that I could feel.

Tommy's patchy, adolescent mustache twitched as his determined sneer turned into a sort of neutral, unfeeling, blank expression. I had no idea what I'd done. Everyone within an earshot of my desperate soliloquy was silent, while those standing upon higher, more distant perches in the distances buzzed with all the confusion of a bloodthirsty, uninformed mob.

"You mean that?" He finally asked after an eternity of unblinking, exasperated fear. I nodded.

He beat me relentlessly, cursing and grunting the entire time.

After the fight was over and the murmur of the crowds faded into every different direction, I rolled over onto my back and just laid there. Everyone was gone. Everyone except James.

"Tuck and roll, man, tuck and roll," he said when he was facing me. He extended his hand and pulled me up.

"Ha ha," I coughed.

"So, how do you feel right now, on a scale from one to ten?" he asked.

"Thirteen," I groaned, and flinched as he patted me on the back.

---
I wrote that during my unemployment downtime, along with lots of unrelated bits and pieces I'll be finishing over the next few months. Stay tuned: I'm not done yet.

It's Christmastime

It's Christmas Eve in Truckee, California. My family decided to exchange gifts tonight; it's an unfamiliar but welcome departure from our usual crack-o'-dawn tradition. Instead, we're all planning to ride snowmobiles around Lake Tahoe tomorrow at 9 a.m. I can't think of a more unique and enjoyable way to spend Christmas Day.

I passed all of my fall semester classes. Actually, I excelled in my fall semester classes and completely surpassed my own expectations. All the time I spent flustered for the past weeks and months—worrying whether I would be allowed to graduate in May—seems to have been a complete waste of time. Perhaps not a waste but, you know, I could have been proactively positive rather than a negative Nancy the entire time. Straddling the edge, tripping over my responsibilities and worrying whether my next clumsy step will see me into another one of life's ditches... well, it's a recurring theme in my life.

My dad warned me a long time ago that he, too, spent too much of his youth worrying about things and not enough time actually doing the things that needed to be done. It must run in the family.

One of my winter projects is finished: All of the music, movies and pictures on my hard drive are now organized into nice, neat little folders. Shuffling old images reminded me how long I've been going at this whole college thing. Half a decade now. The amount of weirdness, badness and disappointment I'd blocked from my collective memory of freshman and sophomore year is startling and staggering. What else don't I remember? Would I be a better person now if I had remembered?

Would I be worrying so much about things I can control?
Would I worry more about the things I can't control?

What a decade.

I was 12 when Y2K happened. I stayed up late and watched one of Dick Clark's last New Years Eve broadcasts with my dad. I remember trading a weird, disappointed glance with him when the power didn't go out and planes didn't fall out of the sky at midnight. Barely two years later he died of esophageal cancer and his eighteen month battle with the disease is still very vivid and real in my mind. And nearly three years after that I received my acceptance letter from Rice. My good friend Phillip was there next to me when my mom came running at us from the mailbox, holding the letter and wearing the most proud smile a parent can ever hope to wear. Phillip's getting married this summer.

And what of the second half of the decade? I made do, I suppose. I had a lot of fun—both superficial fun and real, earnest, ear-to-ear smile fun—and had some great, priceless life experiences with great, priceless friends. I also did some stupid, selfish stuff that I'll never be able to undo or atone for completely. I did some bad things to people who either were my close friends or, miraculously, remain friends with me to this day. Five years of pushing the extremes for purposes that, in retrospect, boil down to selfishness, stupidity or entitlement.

But it wasn't all bad. I remember O-Week at Rice, meeting Andrew and Augusta and Louie. And even before O-Week, getting to know Sam and Allee and Leslie and all the clever nerds who were so earnestly excited to experience college. Sharing Southern sensibilities with people like Julie and Sarah who seemed like old, familiar friends the instant I met them. Austin City Limits Music Fest, both in 2006 and 2008. Road tripping across Texas to Port Aransas and Matamoros, Mexico, for spring break during my sophomore year. And to Shiner and Fredricksburg for spring break last year. Meeting a girl named Cristina who shared all my weird interests and made me feel comfortable and confident and happy while pushing me to be the better man. And those parties that saw me outside Baker College 'till 5 a.m. talking with Stef or Britt or Johan about life, love, movies, music &stuff.

Not bad for five years. Not at all. And, deep down, I know that the person ending this decade is the same person that started it: The one who is surprised when planes don't fall out of the sky.

I'm the last person awake here in the little vacation cottage my mom won for a week in a contest several months ago. Goodnight, blog.

Thanks for the trip I took

(Reporting from Atlanta. Can't blog from Houston anymore. I've decided that's the problem. My house is a void of pure evil that saps both the heat and the will to write out of my body.)

You know, I'm always surprised when I don't see more Rice students begrudgingly shuffling around the Atlanta airport the Sunday after Thanksgiving. It's a major hub, ya know. In my four or so years of making these trips to-and-from Panama City Beach and Houston, I think I've run into roughly five people I recognize and only one I knew well enough to sit down and talk to. The girl I sat next to from Panama City to Atlanta is in the same gate area as me right now right now, heading back to Houston, too. But her sweatshirt says she's an Aggie so, you know, whatever.

I had a good time in Panama City Beach this time around. Ran into Bob at Borders on Black Friday, had a few drinks with Roy at Fridays. Things seem to have calmed down a bit. There's not a lot of shuffling in the dark looking for personality or individuality. People are settling into their lives, completely outside of and separated from their youth. I'm not sure I exude the same sense of maturity. I am, after all, still a Kid.

I'll admit it: That's something I'm always scared of when I go home. It's the reason I don't go out of my way to see people while I'm in town. I don't always feel like I've lived up to being the Great White Hope that my family friends packed their dreams into before shipping me off to Rice. I'm not graduated and making that six-figure salary that defines "success" among the simple people who saw so much promise in the drive and work ethic of yesteryear.

(Interjection! There's definitely someone wearing a "Rice Athletics" shirt in the terminal now, but hell if I know who they are. And hell if they'd recognize me. Though I am famous.)

And yet, somehow, I once again feel a restored sense that everything is going to be alright. It only takes a few kind words from the people who know you best to reassure you that you haven't gotten any stupider, that you still are the Great White Hope and that you still boast the qualities that saw you out of Florida in the first place. I watched Up and welled up at the emotional parts and it felt good to know that there's still a mushy kid with true feelings hiding inside my sarcastic, selfish, insecure Houston persona. Somewhere.

I have lots to be thankful for.

How I didn't spend my summer vacation

If you've been in mourning for the past few weeks because you figured I was eaten by rats, fear not: I've not fallen prey to rats or fleas or vampires or anything in the complex ecosystem thriving under my floorboards. Instead I was swallowed up by the summer and a very fire-and-forget lifestyle.

For the past few months now-- summer, essentially-- I've been neglecting my blog and instead Tweeting my life away in 140-character blurbs. Every day I wake up, drive to work, and spend every moment of my downtime following Tweets about Houston restaurants, Billy Mays, fonts, social media, open education, and local drink specials.Then I throw my own two cents in to the mix. And since I'm the social media guy at work, I spend a good amount of my "uptime" perusing Twitter and Facebook. It's a job most guys would kill to have.

...except I can feel the toll it's starting to take on my personality (and my brain). I was built to do and reflect, not to do and forget. Twitter and other tools of the so-call social revolution put so much emphasis on the "now" that it's easy to forget to stop and smell the roses. Whereas I used to pause and carefully consider the implications of the respective past few days in my semi-regular blog posts, Twitter allows me only 140 characters to state the bare minimum before moving on to the next big event in my life. Or your life. So many lives, so much information.

If this blog has served any purpose in the past eight years, it's at least been a good place to sort the wheat from the chaff.

I have honestly reached the limit of how much data I can consume and regurgitate and sort in one day. I go to bed feeling like the 1997 New York Stock Exchange is trading Microsoft in my head. And for all this processing and grief, what do I have to show for it? Nothing. I retain little or nothing more than the ability to gloat about hearing news first, whatever that news may have been.

I've got to push something useless out of my head before classes start back up. Gotta make room for senior year in there, somewhere.

Why I love living contemporary

Okay, so let me get my bearings. This story needs orientation.

Front and center stage. To my left, some short, squat girl in a blue dress was grind-shaking her fists into my side, glancing up to me with some sort of drug-riddled excitement. To my right, some typical Bay Area darkwave kid a few years younger than me was popping his Commie-capped head back and forth to the rhythmic sirens and bass slaps. And in front of me, not twenty feet away, was the culmination of months of waiting. And it came in the form of a big, lighted cross.


There they are. Justice: The French band that took Christianity's symbol of redemption and salvation and twisted it into a beacon of their own design. They've crafted the fast-paced soundtrack of my life for the past year. I haven't been alone since.

This all happened at Treasure Island Music Fest 2008, a Bay Area indie wankfest that rivals Austin City Limits in terms of pretentious 20somethings oozing with cred. I flew out to San Francisco with my girlfriend, Cristina, to see Justice and the other top-billed Saturday acts that I've salivated over for a long time. TV on the Radio was there, performing tracks from their new album Dear Science. And those wacky Brits from Hot Chip were there, too, mixing things up for a spectacular live show.

The festival brought out your typical spectrum of San Francisco hipsters. Every group was represented, from the newest incarnation of goth shoegazers to the bright and flowing, handcrafted hippie culture. Instead of ridiculing them, though, I've lately been able to bottle and swallow my sardonic nature and instead just watch as they enjoy themselves in their own perticular way. Because anyone willing to endure the gauntlet of blinding wind and $7 glasses of Heinekin must have some common string with the rest of the concert-goers: We're all hypocrites, and we're all pretentious, and we all love music. And they all deserved to have fun.

Even if they're cannon fodder for really, really great jokes.

Pretentions aside, the festival crowd was aching by the time Justice took the stage. I was pressed up against the guard rail, grinding my teeth and trying my best to push back to keep my lungs open. Everyone was freezing despite the squeeze; coastal winds plus the semi-predictable nature of cool San Francisco nights equals zipped up black hoodies and frozen toes. I had to throw the concert T I'd picked up earlier over my white oxford. I looked incredibly out-of-place in a sea of pierced, gothed-out heads. A French reporter stuck a microphone in my face and started quizzing me on my thoughts about the band.

And when they did take the stage, hell broke out before a single beat let loose. Glow-sticks, water bottles, and concert schwag flew through the air onto the stage. A unified scream from behind me, then suddenly I felt like I'd been flattened against the guard rail. I yelled, too. My eyes bugged out and I saw them take to their throne.

Then,"Genesis."

I can't recount song-for-song how the entire night went, but they hit all my favorites. "DVNO," the Auto remix of "Stress," a souped-up mix of "Phantom," and a finisher of "One Minute Till Midnight," before an encore of "NY Excuse." Fucking incredible.

The night will be forever dog-eared in my mind. It was not only a spectacular musical experience, but it also possesses a certain personal duality. The concert was a culmination-- a culmination of months of waiting. I bought the tickets back in July and had been marking the days off my calendar like a little kid eager for his birthday to arrive. It was also a beginning of sorts. It was my first visit to the west coast and my first big trip with Cristina.

This past weekend was an awesome reminder that I still have a lot of world to see. And to write about.

A little sumthin-sumthin

There I was-- a mere two lanes of traffic across from my office when, suddenly, a green Navigator ran smack into the back of silver Mercedes, effectively blocking my only route to work. All hell broke loose, immediately. Every car behind the collision began to lay on their horns. A firefighter's SUV broke out of the pack of traffic and beelined to the crash, further blocking any effort on anyone's part to get where they needed to be.

I sighed, turned up Busy P - Rainbow Man, and sat with my blinker on for fifteen minutes and enjoyed the show. I watched both yuppies get out of their cars, feigning neck pain, violently texting the other's license plate number to their respective lawyers and shooting each other the coldest gazes you can imagine. I watched the firefighters give each other exasperated looks as they assessed the damage, which was minimal at 15mph and thanks to composite bumper materials. They took the crashers' vitals, called an ambulance to the scene, and began directing traffic onto the sidewalk.

I watched the firefighters-- now apparently in charge of the crash-- as they walked down the long line of traffic building behind the impact and cherry-picked a wrecker out of the clog. It bucked the ground as it searched for a place to lay down its wrecker ramp and chains and nonsense, eventually deciding that my office's parking lot was the best place for wreck wreckin'.

Throughout this whole ordeal-- which, by the way, is a little ridiculous when I consider that I actually waited for the crash to clear instead of just parking across the street or using the wreck as an excuse to skip work altogether-- I remained calm, placid, and cool. I waited patiently. I people-watched.

People are entertainingly predictable. They're fun to look at when you put your sense of urgency to the side and just watch.

Subtext and you

It was just another lazy Sunday afternoon spent in the midst of golf tournaments, washing machines and half-dazed conversations with other hungover twentysomethings until I received a knock at the door. I shuffled past the mound of laundry blocking the entryway to my apartment and peeked through door's eyepiece to see a frail, well-dressed old man complete with red bow tie and a giant leather bound book at his side.

"Mormons." I thought to myself as I hesitantly opened the door and put on my best deceptive smile.

"Allow me to introduce myself," the man said, slipping past me and into my apartment. Before I could think of a witty way to tell him to get the fuck out of my place he was already setting a perch at the kitchen counter, situated over his book and now sporting a very old-school pair of reading glasses. I locked the door and cautiously made my way to the opposite end of the countertop.

"You were wondering," he continued, "about the first time you ever put purpose into your words." He was running a frail finger over the tiny lines of his book, flipping entire reams worth of paper at a time as he scanned the volume for whatever he was looking for. "You were wondering about subtext. You were wondering when you first used subtext to get what you want. Well, I'm Doctor Allen Wentworth, your personal historian. I think I can answer that question."

I didn't really have to say anything after that. I mean, he'd already proven his credentials to me by reading my mind. You try telling your personal historian to scram. Besides, he was going to tell me something cool.

Or kill me and take everything I own. Whatever.

"It's classic Kyle to wonder about things like that, especially now," he said with a smirk as his eyes shot up toward me for a moment. "Especially now that you're nothing but a walking, talking allegory unto yourself." I gave him the glance equivalent of a "fuck you" as he relentlessly poured over the pages. He was already halfway through the book.

"But seriously, it's not really subtext with you anymore. It's more..." he trailed off as he leaned in closer to the book, then backed up and continued again. "It's more of an inability to do anything without incorporating your feelings, somehow. It's not sub enough to be subtext. You're just sort of, text." I was about to argue when he shot that cold, old gaze back up and me and said "I also have a Ph.D in English lit. I know what I'm talking about."

"Why are you just, some guy?" I asked.

He didn't look up to answer. "What, you figured an older version of yourself would come visit? That's ridiculous."

Then there was an awkward pause that lasted at least 30 seconds, which is like an eternity when your personal historian is extracting meaning from your life story. I tried to remember exactly what had brought all this on. When did I wish for the answer to such a strange question? And why is he answering this one when I have so many better questions to ask?

I mean, I wonder about a lot of stuff. I could just as easily wondered about my favorite kind of creole food, or the most mad I've ever been, or whether or not I'm wasting my time. When suddenly...

"Ah," the historian let loose in a sort of guttural squelch. "Here we go."

I replied sarcastically. "So which girl was it?"

"Girl?" He amusedly replied and let out an old, hollow chuckle. "What is it with you and girls? It's possible for men like you to be motivated by things besides women."

"I thought they loved the whole brooding, figuring out song lyrics sort of thing."

"Only the crazy ones," he grinned. "But yeah, it was back in middle school. It was... your away message on instant messenger."

"I guess that sort of figures. What did it say?" He pointed to the page and I gave it a quick glance-over. "Wow, that's like the Holocaust of metaphors."

"But hey, at least it original." The old historian stood up and pulled the book back under his arm. "And at least you've still got that," and he began toward the door.

"Wait," I implored. "I have another question."

"Oh, well," he stopped in the doorway. "I can only answer the questions you can't figure out for yourself."

I tried to think of a question before giving up and smiling. "Oh, ha, you're clever."

"Well," he said looking down at the book. "I do read a lot."

Houston, I love you but you're bringing me down

Taking the good with the bad-- it's the story of the 20something college student. Taking the city with the traffic. Taking the school with the grades. Taking the money with the work. Taking the friends with the dramatics. Taking the girls with the heartbreak. Taking the hookups with the awkwardness. Taking the drinks with the hangover. Ad infinitum.

Eventually you grow up and start ignoring the bad things, one way or another. Maybe you excuse them away with religion. Maybe you become self-absorbed and narcissistic and surround yourself with people who can ignore their problems in the same way. Maybe you just shell up and become so engrossed in work that you stop taking in either the good or the bad. I've worked with people like that.

There's the hard part about moving from adolescence into adulthood-- you experience all the good things yet haven't stopped noticing the drawbacks. You've still convinced yourself that you're hardCORE enough to take both at once, not realizing that the human brain was never meant to be bombarded with as much information as we're exposed to today. So much bad news.

Adolescence was just all the good with none of the bad. Here's a car and some beer, try not to get any girls pregnant between now and college! I probably should have exploited that more than I did.

Adolescence, of course. Not the girls.

Goddammit, there I go again with one of those lofty diatribes. Third in a week. NEED MOAR LIFE UPDATES.

So let's see. Oh, I shaved my face last night. That's kinda epic. I haven't been clean-shaven since the middle of last summer, and I haven't actually seen my cheeks since the winter. I could probably extrapolate some sort of meaning from the shave but, eh, sometimes you just need a change of scenery. Sometimes a shave is just a shave. Last time I shaved my face I was immediately washed in a caustic sense of regret; this time I backed up from the mirror, smiled a big smile and thought to myself "Wow, I look happier."

I guess we'll see.

General self-improvement rolls onward. I spent all of Sunday outside, even going so far as to walk from my apartment to Rice Village, which was probably... what? Two mile walk? I'm bad with distances, but it feels like fifteen miles when you're in sandals. I kept thinking the entire way to the Village that if I were back in Panama City, it would actually be a shorter walk from my old house to the Pier Park shopping center. Both have a Buffalo Wild Wings!

Where was I? Self improvement, right. Being outside isn't something I get to do regularly during the week. I mean, jogging around Hermann Park at 6PM is one thing, but finding yourself midway through the Rice Stadium parking lot at 2PM on a blazing hot Saturday is an outdoors experience I hadn't felt in quite some time. The thing is-- and I hate to say this-- but I actually like being outside. It's the ongoing body image issues coupled with allergies that fight to keep me indoors and inactive. But if I can overcome them one day, I can overcome them any day.

Ah, there it is. The positive summer mindset. The do-anything attitude that I seem to lose over the course of the school year. Rather than suppress and twist it into a tool for my own disillusion like I did last summer, I'd like to take that positivity and run with it. Be the better person.

But inside...

Curtains!

I dare you to go back and look at how many half-written and quarter-written blog posts I've got piled up behind the curtains of this blog. They're great if not completely worthless. But I look at the volume of posts and I wonder what in the world has been going on in my brain for the past couple of weeks.

One thing I'm starting to realize about the way my brain works-- not just in writing, but other facets of my self-expression-- is that I love a good lead-in. The first paragraph of an article, a book, or an essay is always an author's most creative and candid attempt to get your attention while setting up characters and plot lines. My problem is that the setup comes easy. The rest of the story doesn't.

And such is life. Books have first paragraphs, life has first impressions.

Think about the first person you ever tried to impress on any sort of serious level. Seriously. The first girl I ever had a huge crush on was named Hallie Johnston back in 4th grade. My class would venture next door to her classroom once a week in order to watch videos and presentations from the local DARE officer. Which is kind of funny, I think-- I first felt the relentless pangs of love through DARE and nowadays I do the opposite.

But I digress.

I haven't really changed since I was five years old, so I can say with a fair degree of certainty that I spent a lot of DARE class with my head propped up against my hand, wearing a goofy smile and staring listlessly off into the distance thinking about Hallie. One day I surmised that I would introduce myself just like they did in the movies by telling her she looked nice. After all, it's not like our parents are training us to be ladies men at age nine. This is Hey, Arnold sort of shit.

Predictably, I fucked it up. The whole thing is just a giant, shit-colored mess on the palate of my memory. I think I said she looked "good" instead of "nice," which is a semantic fuck-up unlike any other. I do remember her excusing the comment just as quick as she excused me. I guess another funny point about this story is that she wouldn't even remember any of this, nor would anyone else, but that it was such a pivotal moment in my own life. It was the first outright rejection based on maybe five seconds of talking.

This was just one story in a series of stories which explain why I was single and lonely until the middle of high school, though I haven't decided whether Dragonball Z was a cause or a symptom.

It's not like Hallie completely ruined me from day one, but soon enough I heard that she had started dating some other guy. It was at that point, coupled with all the businesslike advice my mom and dad ever gave me about the importance of making a good first impression, that I realized my people skills would need a serious improvement in order to ever wow anyone over. Because you'll never get where you want to be if you can't make the first step in building a relationship the biggest step.

Eventually (Arguably?) I did learn how to talk to people. I became the master of the firm handshake, the coy grin, and knowing which stories impress what kind of people. I feel like anyone else who goes to Rice learned their people skills in a similar fashion. People are a game; you realize this over years of recitals, job interviews, sucking up to teachers, college interviews, etc .

Just don't forget about substance. Because getting your foot in the door is one thing, but following through the door to the other side is just as important. Shy people are great once you get to know them. I'm like the opposite- I'm great once you get to meet me, so hold onto that first impression as hard as you can.

Blogging? It's more likely than you think.

Bust out the French horns and divide up the delegates: I'm back with a little beginning-of-the-summer brain dump.

Let's start by looking at how I've been spending most of my time lately.

I got a job, you say? Sure did. The lavish and decedent world of the IT consulting intern is one with rules and, as any good Palahniuk fan knows, the first rule about the IT sector is that you don't talk about the IT sector. The second rule is to put a new jug on the water cooler when it's empty, the fourth rule is to grow a beard and never stare the Taliban straight in the eye, etc, etc. Suffice it to say that I've had a lot of fun at my job so far and I'm hoping to keep a death hold on it throughout the coming months.

Ah. here's nothing quite like the satisfying feeling of a job well done at the end of the day. For once I feel like I'm approaching some facet of my life with a totally professional, "no second chances" sort of mindset. And that's something that I've been thinking about lately-- there are no real second chances. Not for me. Not anymore.

I hate what college has done to me. I love the people I've met, I love the experiences I've shared with those I've held closest, and I love everything I've learned at Rice. But it's also made me a selfish person: A person who constantly debases himself for attention and affection instead of gaining it with a shred of credibility. It's turned me into a person who needs second chances. I turn in homework late, straddle a less-than-optimal GPA, play spin-the-wheel to make decisions about my heart, toss people to the wayside when I get bored or frustrated, and live recklessly. Not to mention that my life has been nothing but stagnant self-loathing since I misplaced my brain sophomore year.

I can't really blame it on my lifestyle. I have friends who are effortlessly able to juggle the party life while still being admired as laid-back, honest, trustworthy people. Even the ones who slipped into this loser territory a year or two ago made the most out of their second chance and turned into the adults they wanted to be. I'm still dragging my feet. I'm on chance seven and it's not shaping up better than the others.

Some would argue that all this regret is unhealthy. I disagree. I think we all fuel the engine of change with different timber: Some people use an inherent self-determination, some people use a structured set of goals, some use greed and lust, and yet others change simply by taking life by the horns and running with it at full speed. But I'm throwing regret into the furnace, because it only takes one vivid, regretful memory to push you away from what you were faster than anything can pull you toward what you want to be.

But I'm starting to see that there's no set of lips or laughs that's going to pull me out of it. I am going to become self-sufficient. Keep control. Be happy with the person you are, and people will be just as happy with you. And don't ask for second chances. Don't need second chances. Build trust. Move on and make some good first impressions.

When the rest of you look toward the center of whatever orbit you're flying about, you won't find me there. I am not the center.

I bet this isn't the post you were looking for. Please hold.

I have a problem with recidivism

I've got a big boner for criminology. Yesterday, my contemporary ethics class began a weeklong straddling of the death penalty and the criminal justice system. I was actually enticed to look up from my computer and pay attention and recall everything I'd learned in my criminology class a year ago. All the old questions of crime and punishment, retributive justice versus deterrence, and which school of criminal justice I subscribe to came rushing back in a way I hadn't considered since...

...well, since the last time I found myself being punished. Because punishment is fun!

But I think punishment is much more interesting on the microscopic, everyday level. Nevermind these bigger questions of the death penalty and mandatory incarceration times and things like that. Look around you. How do your friends punish their enemies? How do you punish your enemies?

Hell, how do you punish your friends?

Because we do all of those things on a semi-daily basis. Say your roommate kicks you out of your own room for one evening. Maybe he's smoking meth or humping the girl of your dreams or something. How do you retaliate?

• You could do it the way we did it in the 90's, by being super passive-aggressive and complaining to one another about how much we hate so-and-so. We throw around that PA word a lot in contemporary society. It's one of those pseudo-psychological phrases you learn in middle school and use to sound smart, but it's much more nefarious than that. What you're doing is weakening a person's ability to make trusting bonds in their life. Weakening their friendships. De-constructing their social framework behind their back. Just, you know, realize that the end result of everyone being passive-aggressive is that no one trusts anyone.
• Direct confrontation. I'm pretty used to the passive-aggressive retaliation at this point in my life, but when someone actually comes up to me and asks me dead-on to explain myself, I often fall short of words. And that's part of the punishment: Looking like an idiot. I'd say that direct confrontation only happens on drunk Thursday nights at pub when you're still tired from the week and liable to start a fight.
• There's another, more evil form of direct confrontation that happens by proxy. Instead of telling you to your face that you're a douche, people have been known to get all of their friends to do it for them.
• Being emo. Today's self-pity society has learned to take advantage of other people's feeling by inflicting kamakaze punishment on others. Think passive-aggressive without actually talking to people about your problems. Just hole up, don't talk to anyone, be really sad when you do talk to people, and eventually the person you're trying to punish will feel so incredibly bad that they'll bear the bulk of the psychological burden.
• Being fucking insane. Just get all hopped up on drugs and stumble around campus, mumbling to yourself and requiring a three-man team to put you back to bed. Just like being emo, you will eventually get the attention you're seeking.
  
• Not being at all. The tricky people among us are actually unfazed by petty things like this example. They play the didgeridoo and probably enjoy the outdoors. In the end, they let their inaction and utter lack of hate propel them into a happiness that neither meth nor sex could ever help to achieve.
  
• Then there's the elaborate, movie-style retribution path that really only happens in movies.

The ultimate form of knowing one's self is knowing your retributive side. It's the side that we have to deny because, really, no one likes to admit that they are the same vengeful beast as the rest of us. But we are.

We're all human.

Happiness is a list of bullet points

I have every topic in the world to talk about. I could talk about how happy I've been lately. I could talk about how I've been jogging and cutting out smoking and getting good grades and going to class and fleshing out a plan for after college and all the other things that have been peachy lately but...

...I'm also feeling downright uninspired. For all good that's come to me I feel completely incapable of expressing it in words. I've gone through three completely separate drafts for Thresher columns and toiled over two different works of fiction in my spare time, with each literary endeavor failing to meet whatever strange expectations I've come to place upon myself.

Writing is funny like that.

I know I have a lot of things to say. But every little caustic thought is trapped up in my noggin, where I don't have to worry about burning anyone else. You know me-- I like spilling my guts. I was raised to believe it's therapeutic but, then again, I was also raised Protestant.

Life doesn't need to get easier. I can handle this. I can handle everything and I am happy, I'm not just saying that. But I do need something. I need reassurance. I need to know that all this hard work, all this electrical engineering, and all my life's current endeavors are going to lead me to a happy place. That I'm not wasting my time. It doesn't have to be the place I expect now and it doesn't have to be soon.

I sure do have some weird expectations.

I went into the city

Into the City

Like a lungfull of needles, and I love it

I woke up with the crisp fangs of winter chewing on my nose for the first time since I moved into the Esplanade. And I loved it. I love the things that remind me of the season.

I fucking love winter.

See, I think it all goes back to growing up in Panama City Beach with some of the most gorgeous people you'll ever meet, both guys and gals. It was a very superficial world centered around tanning beds, going to the beach to tan, and hitting the gym before going to work on that tan. Winter was the great equalizer, drastically so back home; no longer did the pudgy and the pale feel the sting of inadequacy because God thought it would be funny to make them ugly and fat.

Winter undoes God's cruel joke and shoots the sun out of the sky. It forces us to bundle up. With enough layers of wool everyone looks like a giant, walking Hershey Kiss.

Winter is the American burqa.

Then our personalities come out to play. Our true selves are revealed, not pressured by the world of self-involved, masturbatory obsession on looks. Winter means having to hold a conversation. Winter means knowing what to do with yourself when the sun's not shining.

I am happier during winter.



Thanksgiving break was amazing, albeit short as always. I feel like I connected with my friends a lot better this time around since most of them are finally at real people college. It was a good prelude to the upcoming winter break. Winter break is going to be amazing.

Most of the Christmas gifts from my mom were bought on Black Friday. Check my two favorite.



Sexy.

I have another Thresher article hitting the stands Thursday night. But what I'm really waiting for is public reaction, because I'm ready to grab some friends and shakedown anyone who dares to argue with me.

Dude, where's my turkey?

I had a lot of fun being divisive in high school. While many people remember me as "that smart guy who sported Hawaiian-print T-shirts that were way too big for his tiny, rounded shoulders," others may recall that I wrote some intense and politically-charged opinions that got circulated around the school and caused commotion. But those days are over and I'm not just talking about my wardrobe.

I'm too unsure of myself to be 100% argumentative these days. College does that to you, as does trying to be as open-minded as possible. And being a giant pussy-- I'm sure someone would have pointed that out if I hadn't written it myself. I sporadically toiled over my magical cauldron this past week, throwing participles and historically relevant jokes into the brew and hoping that a noteworthy opinion column for the Thresher would inch its way out. Something came out, all right, but when I hold it against my writings of old...

I don't know. It's a winner, this new column. I'm still going to publish it. But I miss the days when I could stand firm on top of a highly offensive, blatantly one-sided liberal wankfest and laugh, ears covered, going "lalalalala" at the conservative-minded denizens of Panama City Beach trying to argue with me.

And though I do miss those days, I dare not return to them now. This is Rice University and not a high school in the Bible Belt. The conservatives around here know how to rip you a new asshole on the "Letters to the Editor" page, relentlessly, even when they know they're wrong. What did Nick Naylor say in Thank You for Smoking? Something about how winning arguments means never being wrong. I don't remember, I was too busy watching him hump Katie Holmes and thinking about humping Katie Holmes for the next five days.

And that brings me to the fun part about being published in print. No, not all the sex with Katie Holmes. The fun part about writing to a print publication is that your entire argument has to be spelled out and every end tied up. You don't get a chance to debate every person who takes issue with your opinion, unlike the Internet which basically exists for that purpose.

So we will see how this next article is received by the masses. Those troubled masses yearning to be free from, uh, things. If I had to guess which quote they're going to pull to stylistically eat up page revenue, it would be...

"Rice activism and involvement begins and ends with the "Join Group" link next to your favorite cause on Facebook."

See you in the funny papers.

[Note: Before you criticize the grammar and punctuation in a list-form comment, I've noticed that NO ONE has been blogging lately. At least no one I like. I'm sort of drowning in the flames of my own personal Google Reader hell. So before you go tearing down my fake empire of literary supremacy, I suggest you try being prolific and entertaining so I can rip your world to shreds :-)]

[Actually, I take that back. I love comments. Give me attention in any form.]

It was the best of times, it was...

My first two years at Rice can be summed up as follows: take a diverse group of top-tier high school grads, throw them in a two-by-two box with a bunch of booze and a few digital cameras, and watch as they try to kill each other in the most roundabout, socially passive-aggressive ways possible. I mean, fuck, it's college. As such, Rice offers students many, many opportunities to see their peers at their worst. I don't necessarily mean that you get to watch them spewing vomit upwards like a geyser in the middle of your common room at 5AM on a Tuesday, though you do get to see plenty of that, too.

I'm talking about the shouting matches. The 3AM-and-I-must-be-lonely blues. The crying and the heartbreak and the depression. The idle punches at brick walls and the soccer balls kicked high into the sun-scorched branches of the trees, just to ruin some poor squirrel's day. The "you don't give a shit about anything but your fucking flag football game and your XBox," and the ensuing make-up sex that shakes the entire building. I've seen it all.

Except I haven't, and that's the point. I used to think that the real hipsters on campus were the ones that had their moments of brooding and heartache and even a tinge of anger. The ones that weren't happy all the time. Those were the kids everyone wanted to connect to, or so I thought. Not the real emo kids or the ones with the Invader Zim lunchboxes, but the ones with the pinstripe vintage suits and an ironic T-shirts.

But then I up and found out that it's all a lie. As time went on, the real harbingers of the social scene were the ones that never took a stand. It's easy to be liked when you don't show anything but your drunk face. The ones that never got depressed or never made a girl cry-- they are the real champions.

The startling conclusion I reached on this otherwise stupid train of thought was that I actually have friends who never get angry. Ever. Or at least they never show it. I have friends who never seem to be sad or depressed or upset or anything besides jovial. It's creepy, I know, but what's creepier is that I never actually considered them to be shallow people. Just happy people. I envied them from afar, not only because everyone thought they were cool but because they honestly seemed content.

And not a hateful envy, like when your neighbor gets an iPhone and you've still got a RAZR and all you want to do is pin Steve Jobs' corpse to their mantle with a nailgun. Nothing like that. I'm talking about the envy you feel when you see two brothers at Target playing cowboy in the toy aisle with plastic guns still wrapped in cardboard and you just wish you could have that simplicity in your life. You wish you could go back.

Of course, everyone at Rice gets mad. That was just a gross generalization from my twisted perspective. The ones who keep it together are the ones who reap the social harvest.

And from all this, we can learn. Or I can learn, and you can play along by reading my blog. Thinking about how people seemed content, whether they actually are or not, I realized that a good deal of my own self-inflicted agony torment depression problem-stuff stems from refusing to be content. You know-- always thinking that there's something better around the corner, and all I have to do is completely change my life-plan in order to make it work.

But I'm working on it. Feeling content, not changing my life-plan.

Bring me a latte and a healthy dose of cynicism

So I wrapped up a column for the Thresher, watched the National play live from ACL over the little AT&T webcast thingy, and had my traditional Chipotle brunch. I love how Sundays default to being the most productive days of my week. I mean, it's because I spend my Saturdays face-down in my jersey sheets just like every other party-thirsty, off-campus hipster at Rice.

Ah, the party-thirsty hipsters. My friends.

This is one of those really cryptic, strange and lofty sort of posts. The kind that will piss off the three people who get it and confuse the other two people who read my blog.

If you bitch about your friends on your blog, but no one reads it except your friends, does anyone but your girlfriend yell at you? A question for the ages indeed.

They built a house made of empty beer cans on a rounded foundation of keg shells and now it's falling down around them. I'm watching all of this from my single perched high above the museum district. I hold my hands folded behind my back, wincing as the bombs planted over two years ago explode in the faces of the people I hold nearer than anyone else on this Earth. And it hurts to know I'm not immune. The most apt people in this country-- the top one percent of the population-- are just as susceptible to life's dramatics as the stupidest one percent.

I've seen this before.

Not only are they just as susceptible but, honestly, they behave just the same. Because your conscious mind can only go so far in protecting you from all those other body parts that completely fuck your life up. You know, mainly the genitals and the heart, or some twisted combination of the two, or mistaking one for the other. We're all stupid and guilty, and that doesn't fix a thing.

"Never trust your party friends. Your party friends are the least loyal, most selfish people you'll ever meet."
-Allen

Now would be the time to grow some character instead of defining it through the obscurity of the music you listen to, or the size of your boobs, or how many shots you can down in less than ten minutes, or money, or anything. Character is just actions convolved with situations.

I guess that's all I really had to say. I'll leave you with this applicable stanza from my favorite non-war-related poem, with apologies to Elliot.

Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men