well i've successfully found the most inane website i've ever seen. thanks to guy kelly, i've been exposed to the makeout club. i've never seen a larger assortment of fat straightedge vegan girls. this is not what one would call a "good thing." guy is correct, though; there are a few cute girls on this site. but they all ruin it by coming up with completely retarded names like "endeavor" and "covenant" and surrounding them with giant Xs.

my profile that almost happened on the makeout club:
interests: drinking beer, eating chicken, and copious amounts of anal sex.
dislikes: everything else.

i don't think anyone would get the joke.

i didn't do much of anything tonight. this anti-social thing is kinda starting to get old. i was accused of making a "rare public appearance" last night when i was at the record store. people act like i'm fucking j.d. salinger or something. but maybe that's the way i'm acting lately…

i skipped my friend chad's birthday party thing tonight. there was gonna be lots of rock music and lots of beer. chad turned 30, and i'm happy he's made it this far. but i just wasn't up to being around a ton of people tonight. i'm supposed to be going bed early for work tomorrow, but we see how successful i am at that, huh?

it looks like i'm one of the rare few that actually decided to update their weblogs regularly over the weekend. aside from paul, but he hung out with me all weekend while matt was gone, so he has a good excuse to be bored and updating. but much thanks to the puffin for putting up with my shit and hanging out the whole time.

in less than a week i will be in cold chicago. the windy city. the place that occupies my mind more often than the bathroom. watching bands and snuggling up with someone who matters.

adieu.

Popularity: 2% [?]

well a week from now i'll be up in freezing cold chicago seeing hey mercedes and faraquet play. i'm pretty stoked about this. i haven't seen faraquet in about a year and a half…maybe more, and their new album rocks like there's no tomorrow. so i will combat the bitter cold with rock, and all will be good.

it's looking like i'm starting to convert one of my little cousins over to the ol' indie rock. he was quite taken with faraquet (geez…i can't stop talking about these guys!) when i played him the new cd on thanksgiving. i gave him the url for transmission3000, so hopefully he's out there expanding his horizons. and he's a really good guitar player, too….so selfish intentions are taking over…

matt will be home sometime this afternoon or evening. this is a good thing. i'm looking forward to seeing our little matty.

it looks like paul beat me to updating this morning. how the puffin keeps coming out on top, i'll never know. he's a tenacious bastard, if anything. but i'll be calling him in a bit to go get some grub, anyway… we drank last night, so it's a saturday ritual for paul and i to go out and forage for food.

mmmm…grub.

Popularity: 1% [?]

i'm sitting at work on what is widely regarded as the busiest shopping day of the year. thanksgiving has come to a wrap, and now the holidays truly begin. i ended up deciding to go spend some time with my family for the turkey day. i guess it wasn't too bad. the overall experience was made easier by the fact that i decided to have a couple of whiskey sours before i even put any food in my stomach. the coolest part of the day being the point where i was sitting on the couch, sipping on mixed drinks with my grandmother. after i actually got some food in me, my alcohol stupor quickly faded away, leaving me searching for a good reason to hit the road. that reason came in the form of the family firing up the ol' pictionary. as my cousin steve put it: "they might as well put a gun on the table, spin it…whoever it's pointing at has to draw. if no one guesses it, they have to take a shot." so that was our cue to exit.

i ended up at steve's for a round of beers and a few matches of tekken tag on the big screen. nothing beats 60 inches of playstation2 in dts surround. wow.

i got home in the early evening to take care of my "real" family shit, including calling paul to have him come over for some timesplitters action.

and that new movie, unbreakable? worst ending ever.

Popularity: 1% [?]

well, thanksgiving went off without a hitch. my parents did their normal thing of having several families over for breakfast in the morning, so i got to see all those people that i only see once a year. and no sooner had i gotten out of the shower and dressed, than i realized that i was almost completely uncomfortable around most of them. these are the people that i grew up around, and i'm so different from the person i was back then. i mainly just filled my plate with all that good food, sat down in the livingroom away from all the people, and just quietly stuffed my face. i don't even really feel bad about it, 'cause i didn't come home to see them. i came home to be with my family, all this extra thanksgiving bullshit is just an excuse and a couple extra days off work to make it possible.

it has been amazingly calm around here today though. i was worried that my dad & I would get into a big argument over politics, but he hasn't even really said anything to me about it. in fact, i've had more discussions with my mom and little brother about it than with my dad. maybe he's just biding his time.

i am planning to post–for your reading pleasure–the emails i sent my dad about my political feelings. hopefully i'll be able to get those formatted and uploaded tomorrow (er… today…)

i was also very happy to talk to my sister, who called from france. she's planning on coming home for christmas, so i'll get to see her then.

well, i've been up since 8:00, my brain & body are about to shut down from the food overload.

good to hear the puffin had a decent day as well.

Popularity: 2% [?]

well, i'm at home now. thankfully i had enough foresight to find out the 800 number for my ISP before leaving the 'ville, so i can post for all you lovely people to read.

enjoyed the ride down immensely, what with the new MP3 CD player I got and all. it's a little quirky, but it does well enough i suppose. earlier today i scoured through my mp3s on my computer at work and pulled out just enough to fill a cd, which i think came out to about 165 songs. slammed them all into the root directory of the disk, deleted the track numbers from their filenames, and pretty much wrote them to the cd in alphabetical order. the funny part was that, with the player set on random, the first hour was pretty much Billy Idol, Liz Phair, Chris Isaac, Beastie Boys, NIN, & Bloodloss, then when i see the first signs for Princeton, it suddenly becomes Kid A time. three songs from Kid A–almost consecutively–played me in on the last leg from the parkway to my parent's house. i was excited and amused by how appropriately the mood was set. another funny observation i made was that, despite the number of Mudhoney tracks on the disc, i don't recall any getting played. apparently hour four would have been Mudhoney hour if the trip had lasted that long.

walked into the house, gave my mom and my little bro a hug, then pretty much just submitted myself to my brother's always animated discussions. i see a lot of myself in him, and then there are other things that he's not managed to avoid like i did when i was his age. i walk back into his bedroom (which used to be mine, ages ago.) and hear Hank Williams, Jr. playing on his stereo. i informed him that i was going to take him to Wal-Mart (the only thing that passes for a record store in these parts–that i'm aware of) and buy him a cd or two. i've decided that Kid A is at the top of my list. (paul will love to hear this.)

after somewhat settling in, we set up the laptop, logged on, chatted with brian (& paul, very briefly) for a bit, started doing some remote setup of the new x:13 server (soon, soon), and had what was basically a warm-up round of political discussions with my little bro… a mini version of the large discussion/argument i'm likely to have with my father tomorrow night after all the guests leave. thankfully, my brother's only 13, and still has quite a few years to figure things out.

happy smallpox and genocide day to all you turkey (& mock turkey) eaters out there.

g'night.

Popularity: 2% [?]

paul bought the x-men dvd tonight. being the x-men freak that he is, this was really only a matter of time. i ended up buying gladiator. i opted for that one due mostly to the fact that i've seen x-men six times and i only got a chance to see gladiator once. and the fact that gladiator has two discs and multiple hours of extra features….i think i made a good choice.

so here we are at thanksgiving. tomorrow begins the madness that is the holiday season. america goes crazy trying to buy whatever is "in" this year, and everyone forgets to kick back and relax. spend time with the family. i guess this is kind of ironic that i brought that up, because i'm wondering if i'll even spend tomorrow with the family at all. i'll probably sit around the apartment watching dvds and playing video games. i'm sure i'll actually do something for christmas, i just don't know what, exactly.

and if anyone is looking for something to get me for christmas…i've found it for you.

i think i'm gonna go watch gladiator now.

Popularity: 1% [?]

so that redesign that we were supposed to have done over the weekend? we're still working on it. we have a bunch of ideas sitting around, and a couple of them are so good that we're having a tough time making a decision. you'll probably end up seeing a combination of all the ideas in the end, but you wouldn't know that without me telling you.

which brings me to a little anecdote. bipolar was originally started as a little showcase for the web design outfit that matt and i started (x:13 design, you're there now). we were gonna use it to post about the progress of sites we were working on, our observations on designing websites for a living, etc. well…matt and i got a little caught up in our daily grind and personal lives. x:13 is something that is on the back burner for now. but i'm glad that bipolar has grown to be a bigger part of my life.

but life is more than a stupid weblog.

Popularity: 1% [?]

i was talking to an aquaintence yesterday. i approached the conversation as i would most others, give a friendly greeting, etc. well after my greeting i got a response that's never expected: "my brother died this morning." this kinda put me on my heels. what do you say to that? but as i expressed my feelings of sympathy for his situation, i realized how much the people that i have around mean to me. i've lost a lot of people over my 24 years. two big ones stand out: my father when i was 5 years old, and a really close friend almost exactly five years ago. these were big life defining events.

my father was a person that i never got to know as well as i wish i had. i'd give anything to be 4 again, going out with my dad to pizza hut for my birthday, just me and him. playing with my spider-man toys together. him taking me for rides on his motorcycle. these are memories that still stand out in my head brighter than ones from yesterday. he died on a warm evening in 1981 on his motorcycle. he had had a few beers and wanted to ride home from a friend's house to get some tools. it was just starting to get dark and he was probably going faster than he should have. he hit a dog that happened to stray out into the road. this is not what you'd call a "good thing" when you're on a motorcycle. the day after all of this happened is probably the last time i ever prayed to god. i know that i looked at my ceiling, and i assured "god" that he was a bad, bad person, and that you should never take a boy's daddy away. maybe that's where my insurmountable slide into bad luck began…

my most recent brush with death occured almost five years ago, exactly. my friend richard was straight-edge and vegan. he was a noble motherfucker. he had more values and integrity in his thumb than most people encounter in their whole life. and one late winter night, he was killed by a drunk driver that thought it would be a great idea to run a red light. at 70 miles an hour. the muddle of feelings i still have regarding this whole event is quite a tangle, and i don't know if i'll ever straighten them out.

these aren't the only people i've lost over the years, but they meant the most to me. if there's one thing i could say to them, it'd be that i love them both, and i miss them dearly.

and in the spirit of the holiday, i give thanks for the people i have in my life. they are my world, and i would be lost without them. guy, scott, matt, and paul are the most amazing guys on the planet. friends like them you could never dream of.

and there's some sort of small animal either living on my roof or in the ceiling. it's starting to drive me nuts…

Popularity: 1% [?]

well…things seem to be back to normal around here. it seems like we've capped off a weekend of ridiculous server problems with what is now being dubbed "The Great Bipolar Lobotomization of 2000" (notice the rare use of capitalization!) if you tried to look at bipolar last night, you probably got this page. if you missed it, you should check it out.

we also got quite an outpouring of grief over matt's rumored demise. matt is not, however, dead. he's alive and kicking and he's here to stay. i think his actual words were "back the fuck off."

i'd say we've really learned from the past few days worth of bullshit. our plan to redesign bipolar has been escalated, and there's even a few more drastic changes in the works. you should be seeing the results of at least some of this by week's end. keep your eyes a-peeled.

and blogger now works. this is what is called "a very good thing."

shit. i need to go out and buy the x-men dvd…

Popularity: 1% [?]

there's something about the woods in winter. i'm not really sure exactly what it is that i like so much about them. i mean, i love the woods in summer too, the full trees, the waving green leaves, the birdsong filling the air, the feeling of closeness and solitude–connection with nature. but in the winter. hmmm. the cool air. the open sky. the trees bare, revealing their underlying structure. the silence of the woods, broken only by the occasional chatter of the last squirrels hoarding for the winter, the seemingly distant calls of the few birds that tough out the cold months, the crunch of dry leaves under your feet.

during the spring and summer months, i never really think about camping all that much, but as soon as fall and winter roll around, especially winter, i really get the urge to just run off into the woods and stay there for days. i would love to just take a weekend, hike deep into the woods away from civilization, spend my days wandering around, reading a book by a stream somewhere, writing whatever thoughts enter my head, building a fire and cooking up big pots of beef stew and strong coffee, staring up at the clear night sky counting the stars, watching the smoke and embers rise and disappear while one side of my body freezes and the other cooks. i wanna wake up and see the morning fog drifting through the trees as the birds sing to me.

the only thing i can imagine that would be better than this, would be having someone there to share it with. someone to sit close to, more to be near each other than to share warmth. someone to point out the little things that give me wonder, someone with whom to share my joy.

Popularity: 2% [?]