i feel like this:

"But there's got to be an opening
Somewhere here in front of me
Through this maze of ugliness and greed"
— The Wallflowers, from One Headlight

the onion's horatian tribute to the tragedy.

I am a pheasant mother plucker.
I pluck mother pheasants.
I am the most pleasant mother pheasant plucker who ever plucked a mother pheasant.
— tongue twister circulated at Madrigal Dinner

four o'clock. my test is in an hour and a half. jester east first floor smells like toe fungus. the stairwell smells like a moldy sandwich. it doesn't help me enjoy the sandwich from jester city limits i bought to silence my nagging stomach.

i'm past the point where you have to read a sentence about seven times to understand it. now i just stare blankly at my page, hoping that the knowledge will decide to migrate into my brain.

it's going to be a long hour and a half.

a leaden weight falls upon me every time i try to think. but i must go on.

cramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcram
cramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcram
cramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcram
cramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcram
cramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcram
cramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcram
cramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcramcram

there is a tragic new penny arcade out.

here are some old favorites:
It's Not Too Late
The Problem
All Through The Hizouse
Rhymes With Tang
True Story!
Will She Complete The Training?
Advanced Gaming Studies (AGS)

*sigh*...... another day where my friend is suffering and i can't do a damn thing to help. why don't you ever let us in, vij? you place yourself behind a crystal wall, and i'm forced to watch you in pain without being able to help you at all. it's hurting me to to see you so.

"I'm on the outside
I'm looking in
I can see through you
See your true colors"
— Staind, from Outside

from joe's site.....that's joe bao, not my roommate........

Picture yourself near a stream. Birds are chirping in the crisp, cool mountain air. Nothing can bother you here. No one knows this secret place. You are in total seclusion from that place called the "world." The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a cascade of serenity... and the water is so clear that you can easily make out the face of the person whose head you are holding under the water.
There now.......feeling better?

tracy's site is very......happy. of interest: it features a page on albie the albino squirrel of ut.

RuroniKenshin83: bah
RuroniKenshin83: my muse went out for coffee and doughnuts
Raging Aardvark: can she bring me back some?
RuroniKenshin83: no
RuroniKenshin83: my muse is a selfish bitch

ten o'clock. i'm coming back from breakfast with robert. the heavy scent of joe's cologne tells me that he left recently.

sure, my heart goes out to those who suffered in the WTC tragedy, but it's still not as real to me as those immediately around me. hang in there, jano. there's light at the end of the tunnel.

thanks for the critique, rob.

"If I am another waste of everything you dreamed of, I will let you down."
— Nine Days, from If I Am

Raging Aardvark: phooey. now i can't blame it on you.
F0REVEROSE: *graciously accepts the blame*
F0REVEROSE: i'll take it anyways.

It is night. I am at the range. The targets and cages murmur a deep blue, as a moonbeam naps on the floor. I stand at the nine meter line, bow strung and quiver full. A cool wind fusses at my hair as I nock and draw.

Release.

I hear the ffft-thwak. I hit blue: five points. I try again. Nock. Draw. A cricket suggests I loosen my grip on the bow.

Release.

I hit blue: six points. Be still, says a sleepy pigeon. Silence your anger. See the target with a calm heart. I close my eyes and breathe in the crisp night air. Frustrations of the day begin to wander away. My head is fully turned to the right, slightly tilted. Nock. Draw. I open my eyes.

Release.

Yellow.

went to archery today and shot a 100 on my first set. that's out of a possible 300. that just plain sucks. we're supposed to be able to shoot 200. afterwards, though, i shot a 97 on an informal half set. not bad, i suppose, though i'm sure i could do better.

thanks robert for talking me down.

sachin got a blog! woohoo

i had brunner (breakfast + lunch + dinner) with kat and resa and jerry a few hours ago....had a lot of taco bell and laughed my ass off at various things. we tried to teach jerry to swing.... then resa showed me some cool swing moves....dips, the pretzel, and various other things. including this one move, where the girl shoots between the guy's legs, does a full spin, and shoots back out. it looked easy enough in slow motion, but then when we were done with the practicing, i wasn't ready for it, and i accidentally dropped resa! oops......sorry resa.........

anyway, so i'm sitting here with a bag of hershey's miniatures and bottle of sobe.....

Raging Aardvark: wow. i just realized that i went the entire last year without meaningful contact with the female gender.
Boggboy: feh, so did I. interesting.

change of topic: a set of general observations, unconnected with any incidences in reality:

when one willingly makes a committment, one follows through with it. one bears his load without thoughts of sloth. and one does it with enthusiasm, goddamnit! one does not shirk the responsibility he has taken upon himself through his own free will. if he doesn't care for the burdens that come with, one should not agree to them in the fucking first place, goddamnit!!!

completely unfuckingconnected with reality, i fucking assure you.

some people say i'm not focused enough at times. i'm really sorry. i'll try to conduct myself in a more businesslike fashion, since everyone wants to get the damn thing over with and get onto other productive things.

i visited the turtle pond at night with robert. it was serene...... the turtles were swimming about, a muted green on the dark water.

rob wrote something on the long white boards on speedway:
"Deities blink. Sometimes we have to look after each other."
— RQK

i like that a lot, and am quite envious of his apparent ability to come up with good quotations on the spot. mine sucked.

michael has been finally moved to write more humour. he just finished a story viciously mocking a character a friend created. about time you wrote again, you punk! you're letting all that literary genius rot while you play baulder's gate 2! a cryin' shame, i tell ya.

katrina and danny have started their own blogs, as well. let's see, so the current blogs i'm keeping track of are rose's, kevin's, angel with broken wings, debris, beganner, and salvation. i guess i got my reading material.

i was supposed to post this earlier on, around two-ish, but i accidently posted to a different blog......o_O

from robert's blog:
Note to self: I am definitely not a morning person.
A few minutes ago, I tried to brush my teeth with my bonsai tree.

i imagine that would hurt for both parties involved.

jen, you need to change your profile. i'm getting quite bored of your current one, and of course you know that the universe revolves around me.

ameeta's word of the unspecified time period:
sonorous (adj) - full or loud in sound, or imposing or impressive in effect or style

from arash's profile:
I enjoy long walks on the beach...sunsets...duct tape...gerbals...naps...duct tape...volunteering for community service...duct tape...and duct tape.

i have also written on the long white boards on speedway:
"Those who committed this atrocity should be brought to justice. I say this for love of my country and, more, for hatred of hatred."
— PDY

hmmm....i guess it wasn't as good as i thought it was when i wrote it......

noon. i just had a thirty minute shower. saunas are wonderful, wonderful things. they would be even better if it didn't get so hard to breathe after a while.

i've finished most of my red cross business and none of my homework. i really shouldn't do that.

i'm dreading the trip to jester cafeteria. they always turn out to be nothing short of torturous. i'd rather eat a dead frog. the legs, specifically, lightly breaded and seasoned, and then fried to perfection. wait, that doesn't sound very unappetizing at all.

i was about to go to go to sleep two hours ago, but then i was siezed by a sudden fit of curiosity about the state of my long-forgotten neopet. of course, this led to my exploration of the since-expanded neopets world, and the sampling of many many games. damn you, neopets! i need my sleep!

something i found on sachin's friend's site gauranteed to make you say, "what the fuck???"
"A small, isolated group in New Guinea believes that males are born sterile. Thus, all boys must acquire sperm if they are to father a child in the future. The culture invented a ritual to accomplish this goal. The preadolescent boys are brought to a clearing, away from the village, and the older men, playing flutes, dance around the young boys. From that time until they are late adolescents, the boys perform fellatio on older, unmarried adolescents in order to gain seed. When these young boys become sixteen or seventeen years old, this practice stops."
- Kagan, Three Seductive Ideas, Page 121

makes you wonder how the hell that disgusting, pedophilic ritual evolved.....

also, check out pass-for-white girl on his site as well.

well, i just set up a group blog for the red cross officers. took a considerable amount of time to finish, since i know about five tags' worth of html, and it's still really crappy. well, it'll be worth it, once we start using it to communicate.

here's something from odette's profile:
"Eskimo's have 49 words in their language to define snow because they have so much of it. In the english language, there are more then 50 ways to define a moron..."

kevin has started a blog as well! yayyy! you've started a trend, rose.

congrats to leo:
LeoJiang: YEA! I GOTS A 94 ON MY FIRST MIS TEST
LeoJiang: and the moral of the story: don't read the book

i had jester cafeteria to go tonight, and part of the meal was ranch dressing. now my room smells like ranch.....

i remember the only time i got "beaten up," even though it wasn't much of a beating. in fact, it was the only time i've ever gotten into any kind of physical tussle, except for sparring in pee-wee karate class.

this was back in middle school. in seventh and eighth grade, i attended st. john's school, a small private school in houston. everyone there knew everyone else at least as an acquaintance, but i was never very much considered part of the popular crowd. i was in the nerdy out-group. i didn't mind that much that i wasn't in with the cool kids, but it did bother me a lot that i didn't really fit in anywhere.

anyway, the incident in question took place in my seventh grade music class. i was talking to one of the rougher boys, gerald, and some conflict arose. i don't remember the subject of it, but it eventually led to his fist being slammed into my gut.

i couldn't catch my breath, but i wasn't about to let gerald know that. i managed to squeak out something along the lines of, "oh yeah...*gasp*.....like that....*cough*.....hurt," and stalked off in the most desperate nonchalant stride i've ever displayed.

sachin is featuring receptacle on his site! thanks, sachin!

by studying the source code on rose's blog, i have discovered how to make links open in a pop-up as opposed to opening in the same window. i've converted all the links on this page that should open in pop-ups. of course, i still don't have nearly as sophisticated a page as rose, but at least i'm learning html chunk by miniscule chunk.

i hear the sounds of crashing autos and screeching tires: joe and vijay are playing crazy taxi 2. joe even earned a bicycle taxi for the game. all of the background music they have on that game is by offspring, so i'm happy to listen to it. ^_^

my scroll came in the mail yesterday. of course, the jester mail center screwed it up, so i'm gonna have to wait till tomorrow to pick it up. i want it now! =(

my roommate, joe, just came back from houston, and he brought with him a sega and a sega saturn. that wouldn't be so bad, except for the other gaming consoles we already have in our suite. now we have eight consoles:

1) nintendo
2) super nintendo
3) nintendo 64
4) sega genesis
- 16 bit
- 32x
- sega cd
5) sega saturn
6) sega dreamcast
7) playstation
8) playstation 2

now, that's just sick.

he also brought a gaggle of y-adapters, too. so he went about daisy-chaining together all the a/v cables from the systems together to form one huge mass of wires that runs from the pile of consoles on the floor to the back of the vcr. and the bottom drawer of vijay's dresser has been completely overrun by game controllers. i tell ya, it somehow feels sordid to have that many consoles in one dorm room, to jack that many a/v cables into one poor vcr. i feel as if god will smite me down for doing something just....so.....unnatural.

what have we done......?

that session took an ass-long time to finish. at least the story was worth staying up for. michael is a brilliant storyteller.

i'm about to fall asleep.....