Monday, December 29, 2003

In an endeavor that has reflected the things that have occupied my time over the last two years (buying alcohol for those under age and assisting engaged couples) I purchased alcohol for an engaged couple today.

  Thursday, December 25, 2003

Lack of a home, website being down, and babysitting various nieces has not afforded me the opportunity to get online very readily, but I was still writing. I just posted five entries that date back over the course of the last week and a half. Most of them are the normal blather, but I go pretty deep on the one upon coming home, so check them out. This particular post, that you are reading right now, is for the sole purpose of putting me at the top of Tom's blogroll so that people know I've put up some new stuff recently. Enjoy and I hope all of you have a Merry Christmas, except for our short hairy Jewish friend.

  Monday, December 22, 2003

Been reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Just found Chapter 16 to be fairly interesting, if you read it, you'll gain some insight into why I think I wasn't a good college student. And if you read the whole thing, you might be interested to know that I almost went to Reed College.

Last night I was able to reacquaint myself with a what I believed was a wonderful thing. The Sunday Sports Showdown (second show on the page) is a Pittsburgh talk show where a bunch of sportstalk hosts and sport writers get together and discuss big news in the world of Pittsburgh sports. One of the topics last night was the recent Joe Horn incident. To summarize, Joe grabbed a cell phone after scoring a touchdown and used it in his celebration. He was fined thirty thousand dollars from the league, but this discussion on the show centered around whether that was adequate punishment or not.

Football speaking, Pittsburgh is a very conservative town, they don't like flare or attention, they just want to hard-nose grind-it-out players, so it was understandable how this incident could rub some of the local football-know-it-allers the wrong way. They started to suggest that instead of fines the officials should just let the players kick each others ass. That's a fair opinion, but not something I want to teach my kids, and ideally I don't want any official to influence the outcome of a game because a team deserved to have one unnecessary roughness penalty slide. When they started to elaborate on it, they started to sound like those worked up little league coaches that won't let the kids enjoy themselves.

During the discussion I start thinking about the desire of individuals to express themselves, and how when an authority says don't do something when it's unwarranted a common response is to do it more. Evidently this is a string of fined NFL endzone celebrations, and I would expect some players would feel that they will push the envelope until those who levy fines take it too far, just to prove a point. The point being that it's stupid to punish people for being themselves, unless of course a rule of the game was violated, in that case it should be a game penalty, not a fine by the league well afterward.

I've been thinking a lot about individuality lately, but back to the point, I wanted to write in to the people on the Showdown. They take e-mails, but evidently they don't have the email address on the website. It would have pretty much said:

You guys are buttholes for suggesting to my nieces and nephews that when someone does something you don't like while playing a game you should kick their ass.

Yeah! I gots opinions.

  Friday, December 19, 2003

After 78 days, 3900 miles, and $1100 I am home, and the instant I stepped into the house the fun level dropped exponentially. The adventure is over and so is my childhood I guess. People would ask me if this was some sort of quest to find myself. Hell no it wasn't, and I would tell them that; I just wanted to have a good time, but I guess I did discover a few interesting things.

First things first though, I must thank the following people, without whom my trip would not be possible: Brian Kiefer, Micah Hazelip, Aaron Baldauff, Dave Perenic, Kyle Smith, Dave Christensen, the active members of Pi Kappa Alpha, Mark Vyvoda, Tyler Hicks-Wright, Tim Stabrawa, Alex Lo, Aaron Blosser, Carolyn Schramm, Lia Nigro, Steve Jewell, Bill Pruss, and Ryan Willby. Those are just the special thanks, I'd be up all night typing if I mentioned every person who has made this trip so awesome, which it was, even if I did accidentally learn some things.

Sometime around Thanksgiving I started to think about 'clinical depression' the mental disorder. At first I thought it was crap, that suffering from depression was an excuse people used to justify being miserable and doctors to get money from medication. I mean who decides what chemical imbalances are treatable and which ones are normal. Isn't happiness caused by the same sort of chemical and electrical processes that cause depression. If so how come nobody suffers from 'clinical happiness.' Looking at myself further, I realized that if such a thing as 'clinical happiness' actually existed, then I would have it. At the time I was basically happy in any situation even when my livelihood was at stake. My happiness was getting in the way of me being a contributing member of society. If I did suffer from it though, I would see it as a blessing rather then a burden: if I somehow did find a legitimate job, whether by luck or whatever, then I would be happy doing it, who can ask for a better life.

A couple weeks later, on the verge of going home, everything clicked. Being happy and innocent was a very childish part of me, and responsibility was an adult thing. Adults can still be childish, but their number one priority is to be responsible and that is what separates them from children, at least that is my perception. All of this is hardly pertinent; knowing this doesn't really help anything. Most people don't consciously decide to become an adult, and so thinking about that change is pointless. In the hey day of my late high school and early college careers I was an excellent thinker of trivial subjects; hence me thinking like it's 1999. I was faced with a decision to end my trip with no money left, or use borrowed money to dilly daddle around for another week and a half. I decided to go home, and with that decision, I symbolically and effectively ended my childhood. I deal with this by consulting Weezer, which seemed to have pertinent things to say about the last mess I was in:

I don't like how you're living your life
Get yourself a wife
Get yourself a job
You're living a dream
Don't you be a slob

You'll never do
The things you want
If you don't move
And get a job

I am now a grown-up, and it's a brave new world.

  Monday, December 15, 2003

This weekend was Liawesome!

  Saturday, December 13, 2003

Watching Saturday morning cartoons today I learned that there is a new line of dolls out called Bratz: the look more like Bitchez to me. Just take a look at them, they're like skanks in the making. Why would anyone get these for a little girl, unless your trying solicit oral sex from the little girl; which I'm pretty sure is a more serious issue. I also just realized that mentioning 'oral sex' in my blog just got me an extra 400 hits this month.

  Friday, December 12, 2003

Tonight we're gonna think like it's 1999.

I'll explain what that means later.

  Wednesday, December 10, 2003

We all knew it would happen eventually; I'm a completely out of money. I'm not sure if this is going to end my adventure, but it certainly is hastening it. I could go home this weekend or stick it out until Christmas. I'm open to peoples opinions.

I found out I had no money this afternoon and have packed up things. I will leave Baltimore in a fashion that parallels the way the Colts did it in 1984: just high-tailing it one night, totally unannounced and while nobody pays attention. When Alex returns he will find that is place has a little less attitude, but maybe it won't be all that noticeable at all.

  Monday, December 08, 2003

Smell that in the air, that's the smell of oppurtunity my friends.

I just applied to my first job since getting donkey punched. Now that the first step has been taken, this immense journey seems a hell of a lot shorter.

  Tuesday, December 02, 2003

During the layover, some of the flight service ladies announced that they were overbooked, and anyone willing to take a later flight would receive free roundtrip tickets anywhere they wanted. I really wanted to do it, but I tried checking with Alex first to make sure that if he had to pick me up later it wouldn't inconvenience him. *smacks self over head with newspaper* Bad Rory! I must react quicker to opportunities when they present themselves. It's worth inconveniencing Alex to do something better. By the time I decided I didn't care how much trouble I may be putting Alex through and asked about the ticket it was too late. Blasted! What do we all learn from this? Everyone repeat after me: it's worth inconveniencing Alex to do something better... It's worth inconveniencing Alex to do something better... It's worth inconveniencing Alex to do something better...

I also noticed that some airports now have these special designated smoker areas. Watching them is like going to the zoo. All these smokers go in this room and their little smoking culture suddenly gets showcased inside plexiglass walls. I wanted to press my face up against the barriers, like a kid at a jungle exhibit, and stare at the smokers in their natural habitat. Just observing their body language amongst each other was unique to me, and you could see how there were different species of smokers too. There was the loud smoker and the quiet smoker; there was the smoker that seemed dead and there was another very protective smoker who was huddled over the ash tray apparatus as if it were something shiny he found that only he could touch. It was spooky really, but quite fascinating.

And I left my towel at Dave's. Shit!

Slap my ass and call me Sherman; I'm heading through Atlanta on my way to Baltimore.