Severely not blogging

It's a real travesty when I get into a good grove re: blogging all the time and then, quite suddenly, life throws the kitchen sink at me. Apparently this phenomena runs in the family. Bullet points, perhaps?

• Moved into new house. It's great, except for the rat(s?) and broken dishwasher and dryer. Suddenly the advantages of living in an apartment complex begin to shine through. I am, however, loving the extra space and backyard and place to grill. If anyone knows how you get a landlord to do the things he says he's going to do on-time, please let me know.
  
• Started taking classes at Rice again. Diffy. Homework every night eats up my free time in the worst way.
  
• Still working too much. Building a blog/social networking experience for my employer. Basically the best summer job anyone has ever had, ever. And I really like how my current is turning into a career segue for some very hands-on, technology-minded marketing job down the road. I would be a lot happier if it didn't chew up my summer days.
• 2x 2 miles/day jogging regime around the new neighborhood. There's quite a lot to see around the Richmond/Montrose area.

Something ranty will follow soon, I promise.

Oh, the nerd shame!

This is just flat-out nerdy. I've been trying to come to terms with Linux ever since I took a job where 30% of my day is spent in a PuTTy session. I've always wanted to use Linux if for no other reason than to impress people by doing everything from the command line, LIKE MORPHEUS. Most of the people here at the office check their e-mail and edit code straight from the shell.

Anyways, today I found out about Lynx-- a text-based browser at my disposal-- and decided to give it a spin. It's awesome... I CAN THINK SO CLEARLY WITHOUT ALL THE VISUAL CLUTTER. Above is this site in Lynx. But yeah, okay friends, disown me or whatever.

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.

Big bites of summer, now devoured

Ah, let's see. I don't even know where to start.

I guess I'll start with what's fresh in my mind. I re-read Less Than Zero on the plane ride back from Orlando last night. It's not like it's my favorite book. I mean, it's very much non-plot driven and basically exists to shock the reader into understanding why contemporary society is bullshit, as is the case for most of Bret Easton Ellis's work. But like I've mentioned before, that book has an eerie connection to me. Every page seems to strike a chord with some facet of my life.

Like the idea that you can feel nothing for... weeks. That you can go days and days without giving a shit. Or that maybe you are feeling, it's just on a completely different level than anyone else can possibly understand. Ellis gets it. No one else gets it, but he pens it as I feel it. Or don't feel it, you know.

And then there's the whole hating your hometown thing. I've lived so many nights back in Panama City Beach just like Clay lives his nights back in LA. I've lived them fast, substance abound, staring out from the corner of a really nice house onto a hardwood floor teeming with people I swore I'd never speak to again. It's weird to think that there are people out there like me who sip their beer with complete contempt for everything, wanting nothing more than to be back at the college that welcomes them with open arms.

You might as well turn the clock from early 80's to 2007, rename Clay to Kyle, and move the story from LA to PCB. Seriously. So yeah, if you want a little insight into my internal dialog and what it's like for me on Christmas breaks, pick up a copy of Less Than Zero and give it a whirl.

I've been on two trips since we last spoke. I made a New England trip to see Allee and see all the sights and sounds of New York and Philly. Every time I go back up north, I'm reminded why I'm so lucky to be at Rice. The air is static and dry up north, with everyone you pass on-edge and waiting to pounce. Everyone is just dying to use that trademark New York/Philly vernacular to hit you with curse words you've never heard before. I'll take the down-home, blue-collar southern feel of Houston over that crap any day. But it was still a fun experience. Me and Allee hit up all the places in NYC worth hitting up, I got to ride a train, and I ate a big fat cheese steak at Gino's.

Then after a week or two of straight-up IT at Rice and finishing my summer math class, I traveled down to Orlando to see my brother and assist as best I could with his move-in. We hit up Magic Kingdom and just generally had a good time. I guess my biggest regret is not getting to spend any one-on-one time with him; we were a group of people the entire time. Hopefully he'll come visit me here in Houston now that I'm not living in the world's only multifunction nightclub slash cesspool slash warzone (you know, the WRC 90's). But I was actually pretty bummed when I left.

The next two weeks are guaranteed to be a little bit like hell on earth. I've got to start pulling overtime in order to amass the cash I need to make it through the year. And everyone's coming back to Houston, which means my able-bodied arms are going to be loaded down with bookcases and boxes and anything else that people need toted about.

I need to clean my apartment. I need to Swiffer and dust and I need to do dishes. I need to put things in their places. I need to start working out and I need to shave more often. I need to start taking things more seriously in my life and get in touch with reality.

Disappear here.

Finally

I've successfully started week five without a single load of laundry done. I mean, yeah, I'm wearing an atrocious Hawaiian shirt and shorts with no underwear. And yes, I'll admit that my bath towel is starting to show hints of cognition and intelligent thought. It's really a shame that my laundry didn't get finished before exams started-- God knows it's not going to happen now. At least I can end the year on the right note. You know, completely naked dancing around a pile of moldy shirts and a living towel with a higher grade in optics than me.

And as I sit here putting off studying for my 7 o'clock optics final, I can't help but jolly over the fact that my summer is ridiculously close. I took a little excursion on Friday to run some summer-crucial errands, namely finalizing some formalities with my job, summer school, and my apartment.

Oh, but Kyle! You haven't even talked about your summer plans yet! Do tell!

Glad you asked. Over the course of the past year I'd been hoping to get a military-esque internship just about anywhere, shooting my name to employers all over the country in hopes that my moderately extensive experience would land me somewhere interesting. Because honestly, that's all I want to do with my EE degree-- something cool. But when several employers decided to interview me, say they'd get back to me, then completely ignore me, I started looking towards my other options.

What I settled on is a good deal, I reckon. Rice offers summer school classes at affordable (to someone) prices. When I asked Louie what he was doing for the summer and if he was taking any classes, it turned out that we both needed the same linear algebra class. So now we're locked into that-- one month and three grueling hours a day of nonstop matrix manipulation and other wordy bullshit that carries no weight whatsoever.

The next logical point on the agenda was finding a place to live over the summer and next year. Having lived on Long Hall and the 90's over the course of the past two years, it's hard to convey to anyone how strongly I want to live in my own place starting ASAP. With no offense to my friends, of course. I mean, both those places were/are great, but they were/are also loud and lend little if any free time and space. What I needed was a place to myself that was in close proximity to the people I've come to love. Somewhere-- nice. Somewhere I could have nice things sitting around and not worry about it becoming a magnet for cigarette burns and bloodstains.

Enter the Esplanade. It's a traditional off-campus haven for our group o' friends. With this place in mind and remembering that my mom has been offering to help me pay for my own digs since I was like seven years old, I started to look at apartment prices with respect to my own finances. I won't say that I've done a very good job managing my spending money this year but considering I placed over three quarters of it in mutual funds, I'm doing okay on money. After I went to visit on Friday, I'm fairly sold on their efficiency suite and ready to move in as early as May 28.

But back to finances. I really can't afford to live my rock & roll lifestyle and pay for food without a job. Considering that I'd be on campus for most of the morning anyways, I started looking for on-campus work that would be interesting and pay me fairly well. Research would have been the bee's knees but, honestly, I'm about as selective as the Rice professors offering undergrad research opportunities. I wouldn't want to work for some pompous douchebag that would have me tuning a machine all day long. So that wasn't even an option. What I needed was a community-- a friendly place where everyone is moderately relaxed and loves to sit on their ass and read FARK.com and Digg all day long while juggling their daily tasks with ease.

Ah, Information Technology.

I found a sweet little number of a job listed on the Rice Jobs site and threw my name. Rather than an interview, my new boss instead showed me the ups and downs of the IT department and drove me around in a golf cart. I was at home. While it's no $5500 stipend and it's no Space Warfare Center in San Diego, I think I'm going to be more than happy with this job.

I have a lot to look forward to with the summer crawling up my back like a crawdad with pincers made of pure joy. I just have to get there first.

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.)

Small sausage

The lunch of champions. And by champions, I mean poor white trash with no other option.

I work hard for the money

People think I'm a katamari hell-bent on picking up every vice known to man and to some extent, they're right. It's just a matter of time until I'm on my knees in a crummy toilet stall clinching a belt between my teeth and shooting gerbil feces into my corrupted veins with a turkey baster because I've done everything else. But until that time comes I'll enjoy the newest little time-wasting vice that I've discovered: finances and investing.

Back as far as I can remember, which is a dwindling number due to the rotting of my brain, I've wanted to make my money work hard-- harder than sitting in a savings account gathering $.70 a month in interest. The idea that I can basically throw my money at a broker or a mutual fund and wait for them to hand me more money has always been alluring. I like to imagine myself as a Viking god in a Norse ship, beating a huge drum as dollar bills franticly push the oars and row me to paradise. That's was the dream at least.

So I started this summer on a mission: a mission to put away some of my hard-earned cash money into something safe yet fruitful. I read books by men millions of dollars older than me and scores of years wiser than me. I did research because that's what I get off on. I formulated a plan. I talked to people at work about what they do with their money. I wrote a lot of buzzwords on the back of my hand, like "diversification" and "diversify" and "diversity." The consensus was that I should break my investments into two categories.

• Big money in something steady and dependable, like a diverse mutual fund.
• Not so much money in something I'm familiar with

So I settled on Schwab Core Equity as my big boat and Raytheon as my small, rabid moneymaker. The idea is that the steady, dependable core equity will offset any losses that Raytheon might endure in the short run in order to keep me calm about my money. In reality, both investments are pretty dependable. If the equity fund ever gave out, well, that would mean that America fell under completely. If Raytheon ever gave out that would mean that America was done fighting wars. Hahahah, yeah, right. If it wasn't so complicated, I would totally invest in the Vice Fund, but Schwab has higher standards that to make that available to me.

So I dropped a sizable chunk (read: around half) of my monay into these investments, buying a lot more mutual fund than warmongering death company because I'm a giant pussy.

And how's it been going? Well, if you're actually man enough to click on those links up yonder, you'll see that everything's been on a downward slope SINCE I STARTED INVESTING. This has caused me much distress, since I've lost about $50 so far, but fuck, I can't let that get to me. I'm in this for the long haul. And when those babies start paying out dividends and Raytheon sends me a flying robot, I'll be the boss of the town.

Besides, it's something to do at work.