Need more mémoire magnétique

The knuckles of my greedy, nimble, download-hungry fingers are painfully scraping up against the Iron Curtain of available hard drive space.


After years of Torrenting discographies of obscure electro bands and blues legends for no-good-reason, my 160GB laptop hard drive is just about full. I've resorted to cramming senseless data in the nooks and crannies of my dedicated Windows partition. After all, deleting things is not an option.

My 60BG external laptop drive now waffles between 1BG and 0GB free depending on which disposable episode-of-the-night I've thrown onto it. I need a few more cobalt-alloy platters. The question is where they will live, and how I'll be utilizing them.

So just buy more, you say. I dread buying an external hard drive-- I really do. I begrudgingly bought an enclosure for my old 60GB laptop hard drive back when I upgraded to 160GB internal (because having 60GB of potential storage gathering dust is the dumber of two dumbs). Now it serves to hold all the obscure TV shows I downloaded once-upon-a-time and have no intention of watching again anytime soon along with ISO backups of my software, big movie project files, and some other critical backup shit. But even with my one external drive holding almost nothing of significance, I sometimes find myself on-campus or at-work wishing I had easy access to them.

See, I believe that humankind is too far along its technological renaissance to justify carrying around anything except a laptop with a network connection and a power cord. Some may argue that this isn't necessarily convenient if I don't have an Internet connection, but I can get a connection more often than I would ever want to carry around an external drive. Also, I break things.

What I want/need is remote storage. Rice affords me a measly gig of network storage and, honestly, I could do with another 499. But Rice's servers aren't, you know, a long-term solution for me. If I owned both a desktop and a laptop I could buy external drives and turn my desktop into a file host and do all of this myself but, unfortunately, I live in the one computer per Kyle third world. I don't need another computer: I need GIGZ.

Anyone out there have the perfect storage solution they want to tell me about? Or am I doomed to live in hard disk hell, constantly choosing between some 1980's-era Eric Clapton live album and a cliche freshman-year film to delete?

Hormones and latex for everyone!

I don't Drudge that often, simply because Matt Drudge is like Perez Hilton for people with jobs, brains, lives, whatever. When I do happen upon the Drudge report and its eye-piercing siren, though, it doesn't take long to find something incredibly stupid and sensationalist.

Consider this video linked on Drudge a few days ago: Nancy Pelosi insisting that birth control could help our economy in the long-term. Here's the exchange in question, which took place on one of those Sunday morning news shows that you don't watch because you're at church, somewhat ironically:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?

PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government."

Guys are supposed to heed clear of this issue. It's a touchy subject, no doubt. SHAME ON YOU FOR BRINGING IT UP STEPHANOPOULOS. But now that it's out there, I may as well continue blogging about it, for the lulz and the comments.

Let me be about as clear as I possibly can, using both boldface and italics: Children are a burden on society. Every child that attends school is a costly and risky investment in America's future. Every mouth-to-feed that puts an American family on Medicaid or Welfare is drawing from your pockets. Every kid who flunks out or fails to contribute to the workforce is a enormous loss for the American economy. Take your high school class' dropouts, multiply by about 20,000, and you'll start to understand the enormity of what I'm scratching at.

Back in high school, I begrudgingly read Bill O'Reilly's book-of-the-moment, Who's Looking Out For You?. It was an incredibly insensitive assessment of the American people, with lots of glaring racism and old-farty complaints about how these aren't the "good ol' days" anymore. But Bill actually got one point to stick in my head pretty hard: Unplanned, unwanted children are depleting government programs. Of course, his point was that unwanted black children born out of wedlock were depleting government programs for the entitled, working white man. Racism by any other name? Yes. Remember that there are many white Americans milking the system, too, and they know how to navigate the system better than anyone else.

Now to my point: If we didn't live in a culture that demonized birth control and family planning and underfunded programs to get it into the right hands, maybe our country wouldn't be in such a rut right now. Maybe if we funded programs to actively cut down on the number of deserving welfare recipients, we could put the net gain toward something proactive and useful. And maybe if we encouraged people to plan their families according to their income and their future, half of America wouldn't be degrading into a poor, awful slum.

Maybe if these huge families didn't need huge places to live, America wouldn't be seeing a record number of defaulting mortgages. After all, that's the most simple explanation as to what broke the credit market last year. Yes, yes, the current crisis is a much more complex situation, but who's to say that the entire thing would have been a hiccup rather than a depression if families had been small, succinct, and not drawing from the great American coffers.

You can blame popular religion and the far-right for that one. After all, trailer parks are chocked full of redneck couples feeding their 12 children with the money withheld from your paycheck, simply because they didn't use condoms, birth control, or get a non-surgical abortion early into the pregnancy. Selfish, right? It's actually the Christian thing to do: Bring children into this world that you can't support, because the government will help you. And ironically, the far-right are the same ones calling for a reduction in welfare and social security. Genius.

I really wish someone would explain why Republican senators and their constituents refused to fund the family planning programs in the stimulus package passed this week. Obviously, Americans are pretty bad at family planning without help-- the average American family stands at 3.14 members yet we have over 6 million families and 33 million individuals living below the poverty line. Obviously, people are going to keep screwing and accidentally getting pregnant, whether or not you chose to believe that simple fact. And obviously, this isn't going to stop without government intervention. Our country cannot wait five-hundred years for private interests and churches to fix the problem.

It's a downward spiral that elicits memories of Idiocracy. As families start too young and grow too large to support, the majority of our country becomes stupider and stupider. And to end on a wacky, popular literary allusion: Atlas will be crushed by the weight of the world long before he even has a chance to shrug.

[DRUDGE FLASH 2009: PELOSI SAYS BIRTH CONTROL WILL HELP ECONOMY]

Japanese-Brazilian Fusion. In Houston. I'm not kidding.

Every time I hear fusion food described in conjunction with the phrase "Next Big Thing," I sort of imagine rich, uncultured obese restaurant entrepreneurs throwing darts at a board of countries, trying to decide which two uncanny places to fuse to create the NEXT BIG THING.

Not that Brazil and Japan are all that incompatible, foodwise. I mean, both countries are traditionally known for their high-quality beef products (Kobe yum yum) and their... no, wait, that's basically it. Their native fruits&veges aren't exactly polar opposites; both cultures have explored both the sweet and the savory.

I guess I have a hard time imaginating exactly how the hell you blend the feel of traditional Japanese with the feel traditional Brazilian fare. And that's the problem I have with all these fusion restaurants popping up around Houston-- it seems like an attack on our perceived lack of cultural identity. It's as if we Houstonians are willing to call this ridiculous combination the NEXT BIG THING just because we don't have a solidified identity of our own in this city. Or because we're dumb, and we'll fall for anything.

I for one will probably succumb to our homogenized cultural overlords, who will be serving sushi churrascaria style and dashing table-to-table barefoot on a floor covered in edamame beans and plantain peels.

[Houston - Eating Our Words - Japanese-Brazilian Fusion the Next Big Thing?]

Where was I supposed to go? Detroit?

I have a very limited range of sympathy for the Big Three automakers here in America. These companies have pushed grossly inefficient, unnecessarily large, and ridiculously expensive vehicles down the throats of consumers for over a decade, with pride, joy, and images of American flags set to country music. And before that, they were wiping their asses with pink slips and delivering them to thousands of blue-collar Americans as the automakers exploited the merits of NAFTA for their own selfish benefit. NAFTA passed under the assumption that US industrial leaders would expand their businesses into Mexico and Canada, not move a majority of their manufacturing duties out of the country in order to turn bigger profit margins.

They've helped to enforce a worldwide stereotype of American greed and disregard for the environment.

And now they're paying. The Big Three used their greedy, teeth-lined suckers to draw all the money they could out of America's unhinging upper-middle class, and coffers once padded with dot-com era dividends are shrinking. Or at least shrinking enough to make people think about where they're putting their next paycheck. Suddenly, the UMC is asking themselves why it makes sense to drop a Benjamin every week just to get to work. Or even half a Benjamin. Suddenly, those machismo-inspiring F150's and those divider-hugging H2's don't seem like the best status symbols money can buy.

People aren't visiting their local Ford dealership and laying down a year's salary on a new gas-guzzler. But more importantly, they're not buying the cheaper, used SUV's and pickups that saturate the pre-owned vehicle market. Not only are the self-righteous automakers getting screwed, but they've also inadvertently screwed the entire auto sales industry by saturating the market with four-year-old sport utility riggers.

With this in mind, and without a shred of guilt about it, I find myself aligned with a good majority of Republicans who say it's high time that Detroit sank into bankruptcy. Congressional Democrats-- or at least a good number of them-- are pushing for a bailout of the American automobile industry. Justification ranges from "if this happens, we'll move from recession to depression," to "we have to do everything we can to prevent lost jobs in this economy."

I call bullshit.

Okay, not completely. We DO have to do something. Here's my ideal "something":

• Enforce our current bankruptcy rules on the auto industry with heightened scrutiny and a general sense of direction. After all, Chapter 11 exists FOR EXACTLY THIS SORT OF SITUATION. We don't need new rules-- we need to stick to the ones we've used for decades.
  
• Use that "bailout" money-- or part of it-- to fund the socialized programs that will help Detroit's blue-collar workers transition into the NEW American auto industry. THIS IS EXACTLY THE SORT OF SITUATION THAT WARRANTS AN UNEMPLOYMENT AGENCY AND WELFARE IN THE FIRST PLACE.
  
• Dump some more bailout money into academia and privately-funded ventures to develop short-term fuel efficiency solutions. WE FUND SCHOOLS SO THAT BRAIN POWER CAN PULL US OUT OF SITUATIONS LIKE THIS.
  
• Set auto efficiency goals that Ford, GM, and Chrysler must meet over specific timetables in order to receive SOME federal subsidization.
  

That doesn't sound too hard or overly complicated, but it seems like a majority of people in Washington (save for some Republicans and fewer Democrats) think that holding up a failing industry and not holding it accountable is a good idea.

It's also important to note that BANKRUPTCY HASN'T HAPPENED YET. The automakers feel "threatened," and so they're begging Congress for a handout. I'm a liberal but, really, I hate handouts. Especially speculative handouts to companies that exploit foreign labor, push grossly expensive products, and STILL can't turn a profit. Handouts to Iraqi war vets, the transitional unemployed, and socially unstable families looking for assistance? Maybe, but certainly not the auto industry.

Detroit: Get with the program and start moving toward hybrid-electric vehicles. Stop inundating American culture with the need for behemoth steel death machines. And take some responsibility for your current place in the world.

Whew.

Must... not... talk... about... politics!

...too late.

I have a question for John McCain supporters, and it goes something like this: How can you still respect your candidate after he chose Sarah "You Betcha You're Fired, Walt" Palin to be his running mate?

Seriously. I'm soliciting the body of people who read my blog posts to give me an answer to this question because, for the life of me, I can't come up with any particular reason that seems compelling. At least, not compelling enough to make me vote red come November.

Ignore, if you will for a moment, every stupid thing that John McCain has ever done. Ignore the whole "bomb, bomb Iran" thing, the Keating Five scandal, his messy divorce with his first wife, the fact that he married a wealthy girl to jump-start his political career, and every gaffe he's ever, ever committed. Try to imagine John McCain as an affable war veteran with a Purple Heart, a commendation for his military service, and tons of hands-on experience in politics.

What we have is a well-spoken, 72-year-old American running for President of the United States with the experience and leadership needed to revitalize both the country and his own faltering Party. Maybe you don't agree with every single one of his opinions, but he's at least moderate enough to re-unite the country.

Okay. Let's take SuperMcCain and say he has to make one decision-- choosing a running mate. Luckily, as a Republican, he has an breadth of smart, affable, educated politicians to pick from. He could pluck from the body of other Republicans who wanted to run for POTUS: Mitt Romney comes to mind immediately. Mitt is charming, charismatic, and would certainly bolster McCain's chances of election given the looming economic crisis. He could pick Mike Huckabee, the good Doctor RON PAUL, or even Rudy Giuliani. While those guys all have their pitfalls, they also bring to the table some trademark characteristic that could pull our buddy McCain ahead in the polls. And they're mostly respectable picks.

But our good friend, Senator John McCain, the hypothetical perfect war vet with leaps and bounds more experience than his opposition, decides instead to pick SARAH FUCKING PALIN to be his vice presidential nominee. He picks a first-term governor from ALASKA. He honestly looks at a list of PROMINENT REPUBLICAN WOMEN and picks a random name from the top.

Would you really still support this guy, even if he was perfect in every way that appealed to you? Wouldn't you feel a bit, I don't know, betrayed? Wouldn't you feel like he was putting politics above country? Wouldn't you feel like that other guy, even though he has "D-IL" appended to his name in, was at least more genuine?

I don't get it. I really don't understand any motivators that would compel you toward voting McCain after a stunt like that. Then we load Palin down with her inarticulate speaking skills and her whole Troopergate scandal and her radical Republican views and, well, I think you get the point. She's so far divorced from what this country needs right now-- a uniting leader both domestically and abroad-- that you've got to wonder whether McCain is thinking more about the country or getting four years in as president before he croaks.

If McCain truly is the person he purports himself to be, he would have picked an equally affable running mate.

So please, someone, tell me what's motivating your McCain vote at this point. I'll accept "I'm afraid of Barack Obama" as an answer, because some people are honestly too thick and too consumed by the idea that Democrats are immoral and tax-crazy to be swayed by reason. Maybe you really hate socialized health care enough to put Palin in line for the Presidency. Maybe you're voting McCain with a guilty conscience. If you are then please let me know, because that'll help expand my understanding at least a little bit.

And I'll also accept "I follow party politics because that's what I've always done and I'll fight you tooth and nail until the bitter end," because that's exactly how Bush became our President, let alone got re-elected. That and John Kerry was a turd sandwich.

Your coffee is better than my coffee (REDUX)

On April 25th, a team of suited-up somebodies tore the plastic wrap off of Rice's newest structural question mark. The Brochstein Pavilion is a huge glass box full of chairs and plasma TV's (sort of like the Situation Room) nestled between the RMC-- Rice's tiny little collection of shops and eateries-- and Fondren Library. I suppose the idea behind this huge glass box was to provide students a place to work and eat at the same time; something more formal than the RMC but less formal than the Library. But like any good idea that Rice's administration has ever squatted out of its brain-thorax, the Pavilion has conjured a huge and stupid mess of problems and bitchy, clever blog posts all over the Internets.

Problems? Enter Dirk's Coffee. It's not really Dirk's Coffee, though. Dirk was an Avant-Garde douchebag who sold all of his coffee to THE MAN a couple of years ago in order to fund his blossoming crank lab. Actually Dirk's Coffee is a rebranding of Dietrich's Coffee, which itself is a brand owned by Starbucks Coffee. Regardless of who actually owns the coffee, there is a circular kiosk that sells coffee inside the Pavilion which is, essentially, owned and operated by Starbucks. This would perhaps be the coolest and most indie thing ever, if...

• Starbucks was still indie, which it hasn't been since last Tuesday.
• Starbucks was still cool, which... eh. Whatever. I listen to Arcade Fire.
  
• They actually sold the good products that you like about Starbucks, like the Green Tea Frappuccino. But they don't, because they're branded as Dietrich's/Dirk's.
• WE DIDN'T ALREADY HAVE A COFFEEHOUSE.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's right! Rice already operates a full-time, student-run coffeehouse in the RMC. It's aptly called Rice Coffeehouse because it is the coffeehouse at Rice. While this concept of Rice Coffeehouse selling coffee to Rice students sounds pretty straightforward, apparently someone in the Administration's chain of command figured that this complex concept just didn't add up. So now we have two coffeehouses: Rice Coffeehouse and Dirk's Coffee. They operate within about 50 yards of one other.

I'm not going to point any fingers... no, fuck that, I am going to point some fingers. I guess the first finger is a sweeping one that slices through the entire student body, including myself. Why the fuck didn't we make a bigger ruckus when this was first reported? I know my reaction was something along the lines of "That's so stupid that it'll never happen." But I guess it's been proven time and time again that trusting administrative offices to conform to the rules of logic is sort of like leaving your kids with a babysitter named Josef Fritzl.

The next finger is for President Leebron. Don't get me started on how he "didn't have anything to do with the decision." He's the fucking president of the university. His office knows (or should damn well know) about every business that operates on this campus. While he may not have been sitting in a black robe waving his pale hands over a crystal ball trying to figure out how to cut more student jobs from the campus, the fact that the plan made it from start to finish without his intervention speaks to his priorities: Satan > University > Alumni Donations > His Wife Ping > Students > His Children.

Campus media, I'm going to half-raise a finger at you. There should have been a massive Save Coffeehouse campaign spearheaded via the Thresher and the Rice Standard. It seems that rather than taking a proactive stance on the issue, both publications sat back and waited for the stories to make themselves. Rather than affecting the issue, they cashed in on it, so to speak.

So what else is wrong with bringing Dirk's Starbucks Coffee to the big glass box? Oh, oh! I know! Let me enumerate the ways...

• Dirk's brings nothing new to the table. No 24-hour food solution, no hot meals, no student jobs, and basically nothing that students wanted to fill that Pavilion.
• It's not a Waffle House.
• Rice Coffeehouse has no way whatsoever to compete with Dirk's. In less than a year's time, corporate backing from Seattle will prove Dirk to be the winner in the coming price war between the two establishments. And besides, do you think Leebron + Co. are going to piss money into Coffeehouse or Dirk's?
  
• Popular opinion suggest that it's not that good.
• Did I mention that closing CH kills dozens of student jobs in favor of three full-time Dirk's employees that don't even go to Rice?
• The other non-Rice operated establishments on campus-- 13th Street Bakery and the Rice Bookstore (O&O by Barnes and Noble)-- are rackets that specialize in high prices and shit-poor service. I guess the University Copy Center is alright but, fuck, I'm sure I could find a complaint if I had a need for it.

If you're at all interested in supporting the effort to push Dirk out and move CH (or some other student-run business) into the Pavilion, see the link below.

I Refuse to Buy Coffee from the Brochstein Pavilion (Facebook)

I've gone introvert

It's been a over week, I know. I actually have four half-written posts sitting in the drafts purgatory. The funny this is that I get about halfway through writing something really funny for thought-provoking, then decide that the idea is stupid or that I'm not spending enough time crafting it into a feature worth reading. I've also tried twice to write a follow-up article for the Thresher only to discover that I'm not really mad about anything enough to warrant a 750-word feature. At least anything campus-wide.

I've hated parties lately. Why do I hate parties lately? Maybe it's the fact that I'm not running them. Maybe it's the certainty of knowing I'm going to be alone at the end of the night. Maybe it's not just being alone but watching everyone else be so damn happy while I'm not. It's all so tedious. You sit around for four hours grinding your teeth and making fake smiles into cameras, talking to the same six people over the course of the night and hoping that maybe someone put something pharmacological in the punch so you won't remember anything the next morning. Or maybe that's just me.

I've thought about NOD, and how I'm either skipping it altogether or... well, I don't know. Parties are starting to piss me off something awful. Parties are the dynamic I thrived on for two years at Rice and now I'm just about sick of them. NOD is the worst party for me in this sense. I can't dress up all naked like the rest of campus because I have the body of your decrepit old uncle, I'm not in the market to carry some drunk Asian girl back to my apartment at the end of the night, and the theme sucks this year. Plus a good number of my friends will be gone at Voodoo Music Fest. I might as well just sit at home and count the number of sharp objects I could use to go emo on my wrists.

No, no, Kyle. Don't talk about how parties make you mad. Parties make everyone else happy. Saying you hate parties is like personally insulting everyone who reads your blog for the off-chance that you'll connect with the one or two people in the world that might agree.

Fine. Bullet-points.

• Heroes sure is awesome.
• Weeds is getting a little weird for my taste.
• But I'll still watch it.
• My computer needs... I need a new computer.
• Fuck you.
• Fuck you.
• You're cool.
• Why am I in such a bad mood?

And isn't it ironic, dontchathink?

I think it's funny how I always expect the big days of my life to offset all the shitty little ones. Yesterday, Dis-O, was no exception. It's not like I necessarily had high hopes about the day or anything in particular, I just wanted to walk away from it with a better taste in my mouth than when I arrived. After all, I've been working hard these past few weeks. I deserved something to go my way.

No such luck.

It all started well enough, anyways. But by the time 11pm rolled around, I had been stood up by so many of my friends on so many different occasions that I was pretty much ready to break into the registrar's office, pull my file, cash in my tuition, and start a new life up in northern California. I felt so taken for granted. Not included. On the backburner.

I have this sense that the general feel of last night is going to play heavily into my attitude for the rest of the semester. I'm no longer excited about anything. I feel like school is just another form of work, complete with a spectrum of people surrounding you that range from funny and tolerable to evil and two-faced. Except school requires me to use my brain in place of my biceps.

I needed Dis-O to be fun, and it was for the first few hours. The new freshman class at Rice is promising as ever. But after none of your friends call you for six or seven hours and everyone else is running around high on hormones and Hennessey and you just need one person to come rescue you from yourself and it doesn't happen... well, you get the point.

Ah, let's see... I need to talk about something more positive so people don't get all "OMG R U OK" on me. I followed through with my Sunday lunchtime tradition today by driving down to Chipotle and having a barbacoa burrito with everything on it. I read the Houston Press and felt like I could easily walk into their office with a printed copy of my blog and get a job on the spot.

I think it's pretty absurd that the mainstream newspaper in Houston-- the Chronicle-- is actually a liberal paper while the the Press seems to be falling into a more and more conservative bias. I mean, it's fucking Houston. You'd figure that the Chron would be run by cowboy meth addicts who carry around six-shooters and lynch black people after church on Sunday. And you'd figure that the alternative press in Houston would be run by liberals so far out on acid that they were fired from their jobs as at the Austin Chronicle.

Nevertheless, it's my tradition to sit there and read the sardonic wit of Richard Connelly as he talks about such Houston mainstays as ferret owners and corroded sewer pipes that pump oil refinery waste into your bidet. And they have This Modern World and The City, which is cool.

It's important to have traditions that you can adhere to when the rest of the world is busy hitting on guys and girls and tripping on mushrooms, metaphorically of course. There's something about a huge, disgusting burrito, a cold Dr. Pepper, and an alternative press rag that can inspire even me to get out of bed in the morning.

The bounceback

I feel completely incapable of writing anything worth reading as of late. The problem is that everyone else (or at least those who I keep up with, blogs or otherwise) is doing something moderately interesting with their summer. I'm not spending my summer in Europe, bragging about my lavish life and pouting about how I don't have any moisturizer. I'm not road tripping with a fun group of close friends, nor am I working a particularly interesting inner-city job.

So to everyone doing something moderately interesting with their summer-- fuck you. You're ruining my blog. I can't write when I feel uninteresting. It comes out sounding all emo and shit, then people think I'm all shut-in and nuts and they stop inviting me to hang out.

Maybe I should start acting outlandish and neurotic. Talk about money and adapt a wacky political stance. Get a self-diagnosed social disorder. Hey, it works for the popular blogs on LiveJournal.

Lazy is my lifeblood

So I completely missed the boat on ACL tickets, just like I did for the 2005 show. Bye bye Muse, The Killers, Bloc Party, and the National.

Three-day passes are sold out and one-day passes will sell out on the 19th. Which sucks, because this year's show is probably the one that screams my name louder than any lineup possibly could. Four out of my statistically top-five bands are playing over the course of that fateful September weekend. I'm tempted to roll the dice and see if I can just show up for whichever day the National are playing. That would solve the complication of finding people to hang out with and a place to stay for three nights. And chances are that I'd get to see at least one of the other bands on my shortlist.

Or I could just not go.

Is ACL worth attending if just for one day? It's almost like masochism, teasing yourself with 12 hours of music when you could have seen 36 glorious hours worth of amazing performances and packed food lines. And of course, this all hinged on the the fact that you were too lazy to type in your credit card number and address on an easy-to-use website as soon as tickets came on sale.

Oh, well. Skipping a year will be fine, or going for one day and zero nights will be fine, too. We'll see in about a week.

Rice has more magazines than Nobel Laureates

I was perusing Facebook earlier today when I noticed that in the past few hours, over a hundred students have joined a group in support of Open - Rices first literary sex magazine (Facebook members only, sorry) . For those who can't read it, let me just post the group's description in its entirety...

Open will represent the multitudes of Rice student’s perspectives about sex in addition to featuring informative articles, opinion essays, poems, fiction, photography, art, polls and interviews. The title Open conveys our goal of encouraging healthy dialogue and open-minded discussions about a topic that is too important and relevant to leave societal influence to pop culture and media alone. Open will fill the void and encourage students to learn from each other while stimulating the intellectually open environment that college is all about.

Join the group if you support Open!

For those of you who live in Fairmont, Washington and have no idea why this is strange, let me give you a little context. Rice University has more media outlets than it needs, including...

• The Rice Thresher: a student-run newspaper with interesting news
• The Rice Standard: an independent student magazine for pompous rich kids with better tastes in music than me, apparently.
  
• Rice News: a faculty newspaper with boring academic hullabaloo
• The Rice Review (aka R2): an annual literary magazine that hits you like Don DeLillo's cricket bat
• Other semi-annual publications that no one cares about.

I hate to rain on everyone's parade-- I really do-- but this is getting a little fucking ridiculous. It seems like if there's a group of ten people with similar interests these days, they have their own magazine. Today, Open. Tomorrow? THE RICE BOWL, for Rice's stoner population. Or maybe RICE MONSTER TRUCK QUARTERLY. And if you're going to argue that everyone cares about sex, I could just as easily draft up an issue of The Rice Ice Cream Review, because everyone loves to jam on some Ben and Jerry's. Sometimes it's better than sex.

It's fairly obvious why this is happening: People want to circumvent the editorial process. Maybe it's because they feel like the editors of the Thresher are closed-minded. Maybe it's because they feel more important than the editorial process. Or maybe, JUST MAYBE, they crave attention.

Here's an idea for the founding members of Open-- save yourself a couple grand and weeks worth of hard work and instead collaborate. Write for the Standard if you want to talk about something that the Thresher won't touch. They'll publish it. They love publishing shit like that. Or get a blog. Winners seem to have blogs.

I remember when the Thresher had a sex columnist. The founders of Open wouldn't remember this because it was last year and they're all ego eager freshmen. It ran for like two issues before interest dwindled to nil. News flash: No one wants to read about the great sex you're having with your boyfriend. Unless it's in Hustler Fantasies, in which case you're not exactly talking about Rice students anymore. Nor does anyone at this university care about sex tips. Either you're not having it because it's a personal (and moderately respectable, though not holier-than-thou) choice, or you're having as much as you care to have and you aren't going to take tips from someone else.

I shudder to think of how they're going to fill this publication, too. Unless it's less of a magazine and more of a folded 14" by 11" piece of paper. I mean, I actually know how they're going to do it because it's a student publication and it's going to be like a niche version of the Standard. They're going to get two students who consider themselves artists to fill about two pages with sexually-themed, "liberating" artwork. Then they're going to have at least two fiction stories about sex, editorial columns about sex, and then they'll publish the worst letters to the editor to refute dissenting opinions and glorify themselves. Maybe there will be funny cartoons on the back.

I'm not threatened by a magazine about sex, though I have a feeling that most (if any) protest to this up-and-coming publication will be from Rice's Christian/right-wing (same thing) population. Which is dumb. Someone could print a 30-page glossy about bestiality for all I care.

What I do care about is a flagrant misrepresentation of this campus's interests and students. The undergraduate population isn't begging for an entire magazine about sex. The public is going to interpret this as gross and unnecessary and it's going to reflect poorly on everyone. And all because a few people decided they want to express the sexuality that they've doubtlessly known for a few years of their life.

Like I said-- if you have something worthwhile to say about sex, hand it to the editor of the Thresher or the Standard. Don't just circumvent the process of editorial review because you think you're more important.

If you have to say something that no one cares about, write about it on your website.

Why Donald Trump is an Idiot

I guess Donald Trump was a phenomenon past my time. Whereas he used to actually be successful with his real estate empire and his home made of infant bones and puppy souls (or so I'm told), today he scrapes by with shameless cries to be relevant. The guy hosts a reality show that pits community college dropouts against former crack addicts for a chance to WORK FOR HIM. He claws his way to the front page of supermarket tabloids by making swipes at Rosie O'Donnell forchristsakes. If I got 15 minutes of fame every time I made a joke about Rosie O'Donnell, I'd be a household name, too.

Hey Rosie, why don't you host some more Kid's Choice Awards, you big fat fatty!? Hah, score.

Anyways, good ol' Donald Trump also makes a little scratch by peddling self-help books to the kind of people who buy that sort of thing-- namely your black sheep uncle and used car salesmen. I was douching around the Internet a few days ago when I stumbled upon this gem of an article. Why anyone would spend a waking minute of their life reading Trump's hardback version of the Holocaust is beyond me. But the fact that someone actually spent a few minutes of their life typing out a summary for others to read?

There's only one way to bring balance back to the world. Karma must be restored and I'm just brazen enough to do it.

Ten Ways Donald Trump Got Rich and You Won't Because He's Making This Shit Up

1. Don’t take vacations.
Right, that's a great way to kick things off-- tell people if they want to be rich, they have to work non-stop until they get that billion-dollar promotion. Or until their liver gives out from taking little mini-vacations to Boone's Farm every night because their life sucks. His argument is that unless you have a job that engages you and makes you happy, you'll never work your hardest and thus won't succeed. I see the logic but... seriously? That's about as wishy-washy as it gets. In my experience, you can succeed just the same by hating your job, taking lots of vacations, and just stealing get-rich schemes from Chuck Palahniuk novels. [editor's note-- I spelled that name correctly the first time and almost popped a boner]

2. Sleep is for the weak.
So says the man that probably sat on a mountain of cocaine for most of the 80's and moved to crystal meth when it became the in-vogue thing to do. How about this-- if you don't get enough sleep for three days in a row you will sleep through your fourth day of work and get fired. Trumpy says that being at work all the time shows your bosses how dedicated you are. I have a better idea, though. How about you just do what you're told and buy your boss enough stupid shit from Brookstone on random holidays to garner a promotion?

3. Have a short attention span.
Right. That's why every two seconds, someone at a top-tier university pops an Adderall. Short attention spans worked out great for everyone I knew in high school with ADD. I mean, some of them are shift managers at 7-11 now! People with short attention spans are the reason that President Bush got re-elected, they're the target audience of most reality TV (which Trump must love), and I believe the general consensus is that they're ruining the world. There's no possible way to spin that phrase in a positive light.

4. Don’t depend on technology.

RAWR!! DINOSAUR TRUMP HATES PROGRESS!!!

5. Being underestimated is a good thing.
In these times, I reckon that being underestimated is about half a notch above being completely worthless. Can you actually remember the last time someone asked you to do something unreasonable? Here's the hierarchy, and it's very much a no-shades-of-gray. Either you're a lazy asshole who doesn't put an effort into life, you do average work and you live the same day over and over again until you retire, or you're a pretentious hard worker who gets sexual satisfaction out of success. Believe me-- being underestimated by anyone is never good.

6. You are a one-man army.
Let me be a total college kid for just a second and quote Tyler Durden on this one [editor's note-- too much Chuck Palahniuk] : "You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else..." The fact is that the most successful people in the world got there through groups of trusting connections or rich family members. You are not the one-man army. You're not even the one-man accounting department. You are the one man scumbag who needs to meet and use more important people in order to ascend to billionairity. Sure, you're on your own, but you're not going to get anywhere playing with yourself.

7. Success Leads to More Success.
Now this seems like an iron-clad, logical balloon that even my pin-headed cynicism can't pop. Sure, you ascend the ranks of society as you make money and raise your dick rating. I'll give Trump the kudos for summing Horatio Alger's works into a bullet point on a list in a self-help book. But Trump says that if you don't have success you should feign it. Good luck doing that without divorcing your wife and having the bank foreclose your house because you bought frivolous horseshit to impress your coworkers in marketing. Hard workers with charisma don't have to lie in order to be successful... they just have to sleep with their bosses. And believe me, when you sleep with your boss everyone knows you're a failure.

8. Ponder each decision carefully.
I love this guy! Point three was that you should have a short attention span. So "ponder" each decision carefully by focusing on it for about two seconds before spending the rest of your workday reading the Superficial. Point one was that if you aren't enjoying your job, you're in the wrong place. So follow your gut but only when it comes to where you're working, not how you're getting work done. Most jobs are so dead-end that the your decisions is usually between staying hired or being fired. No one's going to get a Scrooge McDuck vault full of gold coins if they sit around and pretend to be "pondering" an easy decision all day. And admit it-- when you're thinking things over, 99% of the time you're just stalling anyway.

9. Trust your family.
I wonder if these people would back him up on that...

10. Curiosity didn’t kill the cat.
BE CREATIVE! USE YOUR IMAGINATION! EXPLORE NEW WORLDS! THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX! I bet Trump's office is full of that Inspirations propaganda. Anyone who's ever worked in an office knows what I'm talking about.

I hope that now you understand why self-help books are a crock of shit and Donald Trump is a UN-recognized nation-state of shit. If you seriously can't find worthwhile advice anywhere in your life and you must resort to the Books-A-Million bestsellers list to fix your world, there's a book for you. It's called "HOW TO GET A NEW SET OF WORTHWHILE FRIENDS AFTER YOU MOVE THE FUCK OUT OF WHEREVER YOU'RE LIVING."

As a side note, writing "self-help book" more than twice in a week has reminded me how awful the movie Red Eye was. But Cillian Murphy can be the Irish cream in my coffee anytime.

Maybe if I'm lucky, the Trumpmeister will read my blog and cry a little on the inside before calling over Kathy Griffin and Todd Bridges and having a big C-List orgy to get his dopamine up.

(And Don, if your book was actually ghostwritten by Dr. Phil, make sure you punch him in the dick.)

Random notes to offset that nasty post below

A few thoughts that crossed my mind around 4:30 AM while I finished up a paper that, at this precise moment, I can't remember writing:

• Up until this year I didn't have enemies. Either you knew me and liked me, you met me and didn't talk to me again, or you hadn't met me. This year is the first year of my life when I can lay back in bed and wonder if someone-- mind you, someone I know or used to know very well-- is gleefully dreaming of my violent demise. It's a disturbing thought. I don't get any thrill out of the attention or satisfaction when people are mad at me. It keeps me up at night sometimes, especially when I remind myself that I'm hardly blameless.
  
• I'm fed up with throwing parties for people I don't know. The last straw came on Sunday afternoon when I discovered that someone had clogged both the sinks and the toilets in the lower 90's. Though the remedy was easy enough, it disgusts me to think that someone came into my suite, drank beer that my friends and I paid for, then proceeded to maliciously stuff toilet paper into every bathroom orifice. I guess it could be one of those people that hates me but-- honestly-- I don't know anyone past or present that would stoop that low.
• Perhaps a sign that I'm "improving," I've had a few remarkable moments this past week in which I honestly think about what I'm about to say, decide that it's either insensitive or dumb or going to provoke an hour-long argument, and I refrain from saying it. That used to never happen. People are going to start wondering where the funny and cynical Kyle went.
• Last week, Mikey and Melody were working on MECH homework-- something about sheer forces and all that mechanical engineering nonsense. Anyways, Melody goes to open a bag of oranges sitting on top of the fridge and says "how do you open this thing?" and I say...
  
  ...sheer force.
  
  Worst joke ever.

Class time. I want to talk to Tom Fontes sometime if he's still around.

They say your eyes are the windows to your soul

Instead of calling my mommy and explaining why I haven't spoken to her in over a week, I'm going to flex my prodigal muscles and spend the next hour writing about my spring break on the Internet. Thank God for the Internet-- a series of tubes where people with Facebook can be force-fed my blog and the ten child molesters other people that actually type "http://www.confusednation.com" into their address bar can get their rocks off to my stunning wit and charm.

That's the spring break crew to your left, minus Louie and Mikey.

By the way, I'm probably going to spill some ill-sentiment about people and their actions on the trip. Some of you people seriously pissed me off over the course of the week and I'm not one to be coy about it. If you can't put up with me calling you a dumbass on the Internet for doing shit like-- for example-- drunken, half-naked backflips in the middle of Horny Rapist, Mexico, then you should probably sell me back the title to our friendship. Besides, I'm a pale and overweight white kid on a goddamn blog. Come bitchslap me in real life and watch me cry and apologize.

Jesus Christ, I just re-read those last two paragraphs and I sound fucking bitter. Okay, Kyle, squeeze your balls between your thighs and try to write like a man and not an Internet Tough Guy.

Okay...

So I've been sitting here for twenty minutes trying to discern what I can and can't write about on the Internet concerning my trip. It's seriously like trying to separate the cheddar and the wheat bread on a piping hot grilled cheese sandwich. It's a moot exercise in masochism. Instead, I'm going to bullet point the big, fun things I did and explain some sentiments rather than write the most boring and watered-down expository ever excreted onto the world.

Fun things I did that you can tell my grandma:

• Had a bonfire on the beach in Port Aransas.
• Drank dollar Coronas and three dollar margaritas in Matamoros, Mexico.
• Visited the first Whataburger in Corpus Christi.
• Spent four days in a town that very oddly reminded me of downtown Panama City. It was like being home, kinda. And you could tell that the locals had the same disdain for me that I always have for spring breakers back home.
• Saw Explosions in the Sky again.
• Somehow managed to pull my savings account under the $2000 mark.

I think I understand the social dynamics of my little clique of friends a whole lot better after this trip, too. It's only when your friends start pissing you off and you can't escape to the solitude of your room that you realize certain things about people. You start to see how people break down under stress. You see their most selfish sides-- a lot. You see how relentless people can be. Conversely, you get to see good light in people that you might have dismissed in the past.

Basically, you get to see them out of their cage and in the wild. I know a lot of my more dark and brooding and anxiety-attack personality traits came out over this past week.

I guess my biggest qualm with the trip was watching people have fun at the expense of others. In Mexico, for example, it became the burden of anyone with less than three drinks in their stomach to take care of the people who had downed more than fifty. This involved taking their drunken complaints and insults in stride, carrying them more than ten blocks back to the US-Mexico border, seeing them through customs, etc etc etc. That kind of behavior is more than just reckless abandon-- it's downright disregard for the people they call friends.

But I don't know why I complain in a public forum. By this time, I'm sure they've rationalized their behavior in one way or another and everyone else has forgotten about it.

The sad fact is that most of the caretakers ended up being the drivers who had watched their alcohol intake the entire day. So you've got this group of six to eight super-drunk, hyper-belligerent and completely stubborn walking bags of cheap tequila and beer who are embarrassing themselves left and right in the middle of another country-- we're talking way outside the hedges here. And then you've got this small group of sober people who drove the four hours to Brownsville and are dreading the four hour drive back and instead of relaxing, they have to worry about corralling everyone back to the states and making sure no one gets kidnapped or raped. If nothing seems wrong to you about that situation, I'll go ahead and call the oncology department so you can have your tumor-riddled brain removed.

The Mexico situation and others like it that cropped up over the course of the break are probably best explained by the completely surreal sense of security that Rice provides its students. Getting drunk on campus is a luxury not afforded to the rest of the collegiate world. A bar in Houston, or Matamoros, or anywhere is not the same as Willy's Pub. If you act dumb enough anywhere, the skeezy guy in the corner WILL be there to flip you over his shoulder and throw you in his rape van and sell you to some human trafficking organization for $250.

I'm not saying that the responsible people on the trip found it particularly burdensome to watch out for their friends. What I am saying is that the complete and utter lack of respect for said responsible people doesn't go unnoticed, and I'm not the only person to feel this sentiment. I'm just the one dorky enough to write about it on a blog. We watch out for each other on campus all the time and it's a thankless job because it's an easy job. But when I'm pulling people by the arm back into a seedy bar to save them from the oogling stares of poor beggars (after driving for four hours and drinking very little), I expect a little goddamn thanks. I have yet to hear a sincere apology from anyone that fucked up in Mexico, though I guess a few margaritas and Coronas would do me just the same.

Oh yeah, and don't for a second think this is the pot calling the kettle black. I apologize for my selfish actions and try to do my best to make up for them. And most of them don't occur on vacation. The title of this post is a reference to the fact that I was so stressed out that, at one point, I popped a blood vessel in my eye. My entire eye was just blood red for two days. Instead of asking how they could help me calm the fuck down, most people just said "cool."

I did have a fun week, though. And I got my bitch rant out. Now it's time to call my mommy.

For Sale or Trade

Wanted: Approximately one person with the intestinal fortitude to kick the everliving fuck out of me every time I put off a project or paper until the last goddamn minute.

I am so mad at myself right now. I could be hitting hour six of a good, REM-filled sleep session but instead I'm up to my ass in Earnest Hemingway, multiplexers, and the need to fill my lungs with savory and cheap Pall Mall cigarettes. No, I don't mean smoking-- I mean littering stuffing an entire pack of twenty cotton-filtered sticks down my windpipe and hoping that my lungs figure out how to turn them into pure euphoria.

Instead of sleeping I'm reveling in awe at this awesomely bad paper about moral ambiguity in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" and wondering how I could possibly attach my name to it. I mean, the physical body of Kyle Barnhart sat and typed every word but the damn thing reads like the dissertation of a 13-year-old who huffs oven cleaner to get his rocks off. If I ever have to type out the title of that story again I'm going to shit pineapple grenades all over the floor of my suite and that's really going to make my roommates mad. And fuck Hemingway for writing a story with dialog that goes thirty lines without referencing who's actually speaking. Imagine this:

"I ate a dog today," said the man.
"Yeah," responded another man.
"It was good."
"Yeah."
"Yeah.
"Good."
"Okay."
"Yeah."
"Huh?"
"Oh, nevermind."
"I'm going to Cabo."
"I'm too old to go to Cabo."
"Let's change subjects."
"Horse dick."
"Leprechaun."
...

And it keeps going like that for twenty more lines, only referencing the speakers at the top of the page. Little things like that piss me off because they add nothing to the style; I reckon it's just Hemingway's morbid way of making me read his shitty dry dialog twenty times and making little notes about the speaking order on my course packet. Fucking pious bastard.

But wait, my day can only go uphill from here. I have so much to look forward to besides turning my paper in, like getting my moderately dismal results back from an oral exam I took last Thursday in my Waves and Photonics class. Talk about exciting! Then, for the rest of the afternoon up until midnight I get to finish a computer engineering project that was due last Friday! Let's hear it for ten percent of my grade! Oh, and then I have to do a three-hour take home exam for the same class. I'm going to stop using exclamation points to hint at sarcasm because, honestly, it's not funny.

I would rather be opening little, pink exotic drink umbrellas in my urethra right now but instead I have roughly twenty more hours of awake time to pile onto my tired and broken brain. The great thing is that even if I make it to Tuesday with all my work done it's going to be another trudging week where I pull more all-nighters and then on Friday my mom comes into town. Maybe she'll let me spend the entire weekend catatonic on the fold-out couch of the Hilton she's staying it. Maybe.

I used to employ Google Calendar to remind me when things were due but, honestly, I'm starting to realize that I'm more of an "obscene amounts of neon Post-it notes all over the computer screen" kind of guy. All I know is that if I don't get some sort of system down soon my brain is going to turn into sleep-deprived goo-- it's going to transform into the kind of generic Gak that you get at an arcade for 500 tickets. Seriously, I need people to ask me what I have due soon. I also need those same people to follow up with a swift tire iron to my gonads if I tell them I have anything due soon that I haven't started.

Judging by how hard it was to write all that down, I can safely assume that the next twenty hours are going to be fruitless and that, per the usual, I will barely skate by with a passing grade on everything I've done today. Well fuck me.

A late-night confession that didn't make it

I wrote this little piece on my phone last night, resting in the most uncomfortable position one can possibly contort themselves into on a loveseat.

I need a Funday

I'm posting this from my phone because my roommmate is doing un-Christian things to Lea in my room. I hate Thursday nights. I basically do work all night and get done around 2am to find that my entire suite is drunk, someone if not several people are mad at me, and it's too late to have any fun myself. If there was a day of the week I didn't have to consciously experience, it'd be Thursday.

And looking back without the glimmer of spite I had at the moment, it's still true. I really do hate Thursday nights. Admitting defeat after I get back from finishing work, I usually just want to hit the hay and wake up and it finally be Friday. But the fact is that God, or Satan, or some vengeful deity has it out for me in spades and turns the 90s into a giant rap-riddled brothel at 2:01am. A rap-riddled brothel is no place to get good, healthy sleep.

Then comes the barrage of questions about where I was all night. I can guarantee it wasn't a fun place, and they know where I was, but drunk people love to make idle conversation. Especially when all I want to do is be drunk and have as much fun as everyone else. Meh.

The other sad part about all this is that come Friday morning, no one really has to own up to anything they said or did because, as the classic retort goes, "they were drunk." Things you say while drunk may not phase other drunk people, but they do phase the sober. And the sober tend to remember things. I will continue to contend that if you're not emotionally stable enough to present yourself in a respectful manner when drunk, you should probably stay out of my life. Well, maybe not my life, but stay out of my face for the night.

Because I hate rude people.

I know I came across spiteful and pithy up there but, fuck, I'm in a very weird mood right now. I think it's a culmination of getting no sleep, the yo-yo effect of cutting down on my tobacco intake, and just generally feeling left out of my group of friends right now. You know I'm in a weird mood when I'm actually writing about these sort of things on the Internet.

Panama City Beach: A great place to live when I turn 28

I'm coming to realize that a town's worth depends heavily on its ability to provide me with every type of food, garment, man-made plastic object, and huffing aerosol I can conceive at all hours of any given day In Houston, for example, I might have the following conversation with my roommate, Louie:

Kyle: Hey, Louie, you wanna go get some Thai food, a codpiece, a few vintage Happy Meal Transformers, and some oven cleaner?
Louie: Well, it is only 3AM on Easter Sunday.
Kyle: Exactly.

I've been spoiled pretty good by Houston in this sense. Being home on break and sitting around until the asscrack of dawn on New Years Day with nothing to do but complain about the town in which I was raised, I also realize that Panama City is slowly growing into a town that I may--one day-- actually enjoy flying over.

New Attractions in PCB Since The Summer:

Target/Starbucks

This is the biggest thing to hit the beach since WCW Nitro visited back in 2001. Literally a mile from my house is a grand, brand-new Target outlet store with a nice little Starbucks nestled inside. Approximately half if not all of my graduating class is working there, as well as my brother's graduating class and the class between my brother's and mine. They've also got middle school kids scraping those quarter-sized black things off the sidewalk outside the store. Just another way to keep one step ahead of Wal-Mart, I guess.

Besides scooping up the youth of the city like some bizarre, red pied piper, Target also plays the role of "anchor business" for the developing retail outlet around it, known as Pier Park. I didn't come up with that phrase "anchor business,"by the way, but it's real real clever tagline for a bustling business in a coastal community. Apparently the Pier Park project is so ass-backwards and behind schedule, they're depending on a Target to attract businesses such as the Gap and Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville. Hah... it's kind of like a big target.

I guess there's not a whole lot of remarkable information about the new Target besides the fact that it gives credibility to this dink-hole of a town. The Starbucks is nice and it affords all the mascara-donning emotrash that run the local high school to feel better about themselves when they want to go somewhere trendy for their lunch break. Thanks a lot, brain, for letting me ramble for three paragraphs before you realize there's actually nothing to talk about.

---

Okay well... let's pretend I didn't write any of that, except for the jokes you laughed out loud at. I know you did, too, because my heart skips a beat anytime anyone in the world finds something moderately funny about what I write..