well, i've been back from France for about four days now, but i've been so busy trying to play catch-up in my "real" life and my "work" life that i've not had time to write a new post. i've finally gotten a moment to breathe tonight, though, so here we are.

France was awesome. i think i've said this like 200 times in the last four days. i loved it, thoroughly, but, i'm not going to get into it too much right now, because my ultimate plan is to transcribe my journal entries here for you guys to read/ignore.

i also took 11 rolls of film with me, and finished off every one of them. hopefully, i'll be getting the pictures back this weekend or early next week, and i'll work them up using my handy-dandy developed-for-lucifigousprick.com photo gallery scripts.

there's also a plan in the works to collaborate with jason (who i met in deauville) on a site just to commemorate my sister's wedding.

needless to say, when i was leaving Paris on the last day of my trip, the only thing that i could think of was that i didn't want to leave. i am so enamored with Paris that i want to get back there as soon as i can. hell, i've even entertained the possibility of moving there, which for me is a huge/strange thing. i also love louisville, and, until seeing Paris, i couldn't have imagined any place i'd rather live than here. but, with the slight scent of change on the winds the way it's been in the past few months, it seems that this thought of moving isn't as absurd as it would've seemed even a year ago. (i know i've just opened myself up to about 6 months of "so, when're you moving up here" from nathan, but that can't be helped.)

there's also this feeling in my life right now… that i'm on the verge of something, awaiting something. i can't quite pinpoint it, but the feeling is there… something is happening, or will happen. hopefully, it'll all be good, whatever it is. but it's put me in this state where i'm just thinking that i have *got* to get my shit together. maybe i'm just headed into one of my manic cycles, i dunno.

expect journal entries shortly. like, maybe as soon as tomorrow, if you're lucky.

well, ive finally managed to find my way to a "workable" internet connection here on the Rue de la Pompe in Paris. unfortunately, this keyboard is all sorts of funky, so i'm having an extraordinarily difficult time typing anything.

it's been an entertaining 4 days so far in Paris, though i've fallen into typical Matt patterns where i'm sleeping too late in the day and end up not getting as much wandering time as i'd want. now i've got a dinner with the folks tonight at 7:30, so i really don't have time to go out to Montmartre like i'd planned. Perhaps i'll just postpone it 'til after dinner.

ok, this is taking way too long to type, and i'd like to go out to a cafe for a little bit before dinner. so, unless something extraordinary happens, i'll probably be incommunicado until i return. suffice it to say, i'm having a good time.

this is the sound of excitment building up within me until i literally explode.

i finally managed to score some tickets to the City of Light, so i'll be taking my vacation there IN EIGHT DAYS. !!!! gaaaahhhh !!!!

now i've got to think of all the things i need for the trip. camera, film, pens, paper, oh, uh… clothes, money. yeah. that should do it.

pick-up-lines, i need pick-up lines. if any of you know any good french pick-up lines, leave 'em in the comments. oh, and put an english translation, so i'll know you're not trying to get me to tell some little french hottie that "there's something foul about your body." or some such thing.

oh, and i need to start exercising. now. now. now. now. get at least 10 pounds off (yeah, in a week) before i go.
damn. damn. damn.

too. much. excitement… can't. handle… head. caving. in….

woohoo!

man, last night was fun. as paul already explained, the 25 cent rock'n'roll spectacularrrrr went really well.

Old Man had a great set to kick off the night, and everybody seemed to be digging it. It was good to finally get to see them onstage again, after walking in and out on them during practices at the house. besides, when they're playing in the house, i don't get to enjoy their sarcastically witty (or wittily sarcastic) stage banter.

Green Formica Table took the stage and proceeded to blow the doors off. i can't say enough about these guys. i just love 'em. Now, some people i know don't really like them because of some of the atonal chord/note structures and progressions, but i love it. love it love it. some of the stuff they were doing onstage was just making me giggle with glee.

then there was us–the prick, or, as the LEO misspelled it, Lucisigious Prick. "the band of many misspellings", as Paul so eloquently put it. i think leading up to the show (before we took the stage) i was more nervous this time than at our last show. in fact, by the time we started, i was literally just feeling weak and exhausted. it was all alright though, i didn't fall over or have my knee give out on me or anything like that. and, once we got started playing and got through the first song, i was perfectly at ease and enjoying myself. i had a blast. it was also great to get such a good reaction to our new songs (the only ones we've played publicly without first soliciting our friends' opinions).

all in all, it was a great night. good turnout, good audience participation, excellent performances from the bands, and everybody was having fun.

there was the whole thing with the bartender "threatening" to shut down the bar because they weren't making enough money, but the audience really came through when the call was made–"buy more drinks!"

i can't wait 'til next time.

damn. looks like ol' Spidey's going gangbusters. I had hoped it would be good, and i figured there would be a good big reaction, but i have to admit that i never saw this happening. $114.8M in three days (final numbers). craziness. that's what it is.

well anyway, so, now i've seen it three times. hehe.

i've hesitated to make a new post because the comments on the last post have been fairly active (compared to the normal comment volume anyway), but i've used that as an excuse long enough.

since the Lucifigous Prick show is now listed on the Louisville Music Index, i took a couple hours to throw together a quick site. and i finally registered the domain name. so now, i don't have to post links to our MP3s here, and instead can do this: http://www.lucifigousprick.com/.

and aside from Spidey, band stuff, work, and hanging out with Nate (who's out of school and in town for a few days), not much has been going on.

exciting (& geeky, as usual) things happening today:
1. will be picking up the Star Trek: The Next Generation Season Two DVD box set
2. i get to pick up the comics (hopefully) that didn't get delivered to the store last week, plus this weeks comics
3. back-to-back new episodes of Enterprise

am i happy? do you have to ask?

i didn't think so.

spider-man.

well, really, i guess that's one word with the hyphen thing there, but technically, it's two, so… nyah.

about the Spider-Man movie let me just say this:

I was the first mother-fucker in line for spider-man in this entire city!

ok, sure, perhaps i wasn't the first person in line in the nation… i certainly wasn't the first person to get to see it since the big premiere was Tuesday night (and certainly a select few others had gotten to see it before that), but i claim bragging rights to being the first person in line for the first showing in my city. i think that says something about me.

what that is… i'm not exactly sure.

could be:
A. I'm an extraordinarily huge geek
B. I've got so much time on my hands that i can throw it away waiting in line for an hour & a half
C. I give too much importance to insignificant facts

people, the Spider-Man movie rocks. go see it.

to compare it to the reigning champion superhero movie, X-Men, i'd have to say that there are certainly some things spidey did better. and as i've explained to others, i think the reason the X-Men movie still ranks #1 with me is probably because it was a much darker movie. spidey's plot was much more subtle than the X-Men's Magneto plot. basically, it's a different type of movie.
which is not to say that spider-man wasn't action packed, in fact, i'd say spidey had more action than the X-Men movie as well as really well-done fight sequences (though it's hard to compete with Wolvie & Mystique mano y mano).
one really positive thing was that of all of those things that i was terribly afraid they'd mangle or mishandle, they really didn't do any of it. they handled everything really well, even the many changes they made to the "classic" spider-man origin, powers, and history.

in fact, here's a list:

things i didn't like:
  dialogue was a bit too melodramatic at points
    (GG's dialogue doesn't count, as paul pointed out)
  kirsten dunst as mary jane watson
    she did really well in the role… gave an excellent performance, but she's just not mary jane

things i didn't like but grew to accept before the movie was over:
  Green Goblin's outfit (mainly the mask)

things i liked:
  every other aspect of the movie

gad. it's not showing tonight, is it? no? … damn.

my BIOS chip arrived! amazing how little it takes for me to get excited lately. i now have BOTH computers up and running again, though most likely, this will not in any way effect the amount of posting i do. it will make me a little happier though, i hope. now i just gotta pay my bills, get my new guitar, then i'll be set for… a little while. a former co-worker emphatically suggested i start saving money… "just in case." which really is always good advice.

wow. a whole year. yep, as brian pointed out, and as the more observant of you might have already noticed (yesterday), bipolar is now officially a year old. and i think i'll take a cue from brian on this one, and talk briefly about how the year has played itself out. i already did the self-referential link scavenger hunt back in january, so if you want links the easy way, go check that out.

how have things changed for me since my first entry on bipolar?

well, i guess the biggest thing would have to be my employment situation. when bipolar accepted its first visitor, i was unemployed and had been for a few months. i would have to say that was a pretty down time for me, emotionally, but i did enjoy the fact that i didn't have to do anything at all during the day if i didn't want to. i got a crappy job at Kinko's, because it was easy to get and i needed money pretty desperately. a month after getting that job, during the week i was in the training class, i got the job offer for my current job at corvus. so now, a year later i'm still happily employed, doing what i love to do and making decent money doing it. my professional life has never been better.

i'm just now (next week) preparing to move out of the apartment i've lived in for over two years, to go share an apartment with paul and current roommate brax. the three of us have lived together (well, obviously brax and i have) before on several different occasions, and we get along famously, so i'm really looking forward to the move. not to mention the fact that i'll finally (after over a year) have my own room again. when i first moved into my current apartment, i was living with my then-girlfriend–the often-mentioned, evil her. of course, i was completely in love with her, and everything was fine for a few months until she did her heart-stomping and friendship/fishhook thing on me. after she finally moved out, i had our room to myself for a few months until brax moved in (the first time). since brax couldn't share a room with Jess (since she's, y'know, a girl) he and i took the upstairs bedroom and shared that for a few months until his girlfriend got her meathooks back into him and dragged him back out into an apartment with her. then i had the whole upstairs to myself for… about a month, until brian's roommate situation fell through and he needed a place to stay "until he got on his feet and got his own place." a year later brian's still here, still sleeping on my couch. soon enough, though, he'll have the room to himself, and i'll have my own room to myself. as brian said, he thinks i'm the only person he could have shared such close quarters with for so long. i'd have to agree with him. i think i'm the only person on the planet who could live with him this long without going to the pawn shop to buy a gun, or checking myself into a mental institution.

i wrote my first post something like three months after the breakup of a very brief but intense relationship, and thankfully, by the time we started bipolar i'd pretty much gotten over it. so, i haven't yet had the pleasure of writing any serious relationship posts, since i've not had the pleasure of being involved in any relationships for the past year. i like to think that i'm just being picky and waiting for the right girl to come along, but i suppose i'm really just fucking shy as hell.

i'm probably about 20 pounds heavier than i was a year ago, but i've recently started trying to work out on a semi-regular basis to try and get back down to a more ideal weight. most of my friends say they can't or can only barely tell. of course, they're my friends, what else are they gonna say?

so, with all that's happened, it's been an interesting year. it's strange to realize that i have a record of quite a bit of that time. i've attempted to keep diaries in the past, but never been very successful (thus, my seeming inability to post on a daily basis). you are all witness to my longest running continuous diary. don't you feel special.

well, here's to another year and all the fun and excitement that it might bring. for those of you who've been here since early on, i hope you've enjoyed participating in our lives, and to you newcomers, thanks for reading… stick with us, the party's just begun.

well, i'm back now from my short weekend visiting my folks and my little bro, and i'd have to say i had an enjoyable time. seems like a whole lot happened in a 30+ hour period. saturday afternoon i spent pretty much all my money getting my oil and other various fluids replenished, so i ended up having to ask the 'rents for money (for the first time in a thankfully longish time) to get me through until payday. if my roommates would stop giving all their money to their stupid evil girlfriends, or spending it on guitars, i could probably actually do more than just pay bills with my money. (to set the record straight, brian has actually been the most consistent and responsive rent/bill payer for a while now, so the guitar comment is more of a friendly jab than an actual complaint).
i seem to inevitably end up in the "godfather" role, where i'm the one handling all the bills and my roommates end up owing me large sums of money. i don't anticipate having these problems when we move in with paul, even though the roommate i'm taking with me is the one who owes the most money. but, i've pretty much decided that if he doesn't catch up soon, i'm going to have to open up the proverbial can labeled "whup-ass"–either on him, or on that evil bitch of a girlfriend (who owes him probably a couple thousand dollars and keeps asking for more despite the fact that they both make about the same amount of money and she's living with her parents).

anyway, enough about that. my mom cooked her usual excruciatingly good meals while i was home, and i, of course, brought little samples back with me to help me survive 'til payday. today it's leftover country ham… mmm good.

my brother's been getting more and more interested in computers in the past year or so, so quite a bit of our conversations this weekend centered around that (he wants to buy a new computer, and m&p have agreed to front the money if he stops acting like a holy terror for a while.) so we discussed his options, and we've pretty much decided we'll build him a system like the one i'm planning to build, and probably come in under the parent's budget constraints. he wanted to buy an iMac, but it was about $500 outside of his range, so we're talking a PC. it's cheaper, and there's tons of free software (hehe). i also helped him out a little this weekend by acting as his computer merit badge counselor for Boy Scouts. basically i just asked him a bunch of questions, he gave me a bunch of answers, did a few little things on the computer, and everybody was happy. and, this may sound like neandarthalic chest-thumping, but i surprised myself with some of the stuff that i knew about computers and computer history.

sunday was fun, we were in the kitchen standing in the patio door with an air rifle (BB gun) trying to see who could shoot the ears of corn in the squirrel feeder (no animals were harmed in the making of this blog). then we ended up talking about my prowess as an archer from my own Boy Scout days (me insisting i was good, my dad insisting i was… well, maybe not that good). dad ended up busting out my old little kid bow and an arrow (probably the only one left intact from my days of shooting trees, stumps, the ground, and the garage). after my bro hung a soda can from a tree limb, i tried to shoot it with the bow and arrow. took me four tries, but i nailed it. after that, of course, for like an hour the three of us were standing out on the patio trying to shoot the can with dad's different bows. i think i was the only one who got a good solid hit on it several times, dad and javan each either hit around it, nicked it, or "bumped" it with the shaft of the arrow. so, i guess i was pretty proud of myself for proving to my dad that, hey, i really WAS good at it.

so, all in all it was a good weekend, a little of mom's home cooking, some family bonding time, and some good driving (amazingly enough, there wasn't a single spot of construction on the entire Western Kentucky (aka. William H. Natcher) parkway).

but i'm back at work now, bored as hell. half our servers are down because the AC went out in the server farm area and they overheated. hehe. ain't technology great.

oh, and be sure to check out my sister's posts about underwear (Mon., Apr. 9) and French radio and music (Thurs., Apr. 12). very entertaining stuff.

and also, sharon–continuing her sometimes theme of posting "forwarded emails" with commentary– has a nice post (Fri., Apr. 13) with some guidelines for interacting with and/or understanding the opposite sex.

alright, now that the internet's working, our servers are up, and i've gotten some free time, i'll finally write the post-Amiga-convention update you've all been waiting for.

of course, paul pretty much covered the majority of it already, but i suppose i have a few things to add.

the drive up was thankfully uneventful, though we did have to stop a few times for strong coffee. as we came into St. Louis, we started following the directions we'd gotten from mapquest.com. We pulled off I-270, and saw in front and off to the right of our exit ramp, the hotel that i was pretty sure was the one in which we'd be staying. despite the hotel's location, the driving directions said to turn left. we followed it left, right, up a big hill, and to the right again, where we came to the literal end-of-the-line. a big metal guard-rail was spanning the abrupt end of the road we were on, looking out over I-270. we cracked a few jokes about mapquest trying to heighten the sense of adventure for travelers, and i suggested that it was possible, if he built up enough speed, we might be able to make it over 6 lanes of divided expressway and the banks on either side to land in the parking lot that sittingly off in the hazy distance. he decided not to put alice (his car) up to that test, as she'd just had a hard day of driving and needed a rest.

at the convention, we found the typical assortment of rather large, mustache wearing, long stringy-haired people… the types of people you'd expect to find at a star trek convention. in fact, these people and their fanaticism are partly why i've never bothered to go to a meeting of the local Amiga user group. i had my fill of those types during my tenure as president of the star trek fan club in Murray. (ooh, there's a good bit of history for ya.) now, looking around on the web after the convention, i'd managed to locate a few images of the people there who were "out-there" enough for paul & i to actually give them names. unfortunately, amiga.org has been overwhelmed by visitors searching for show news and have been shut down by their hosting company for exceeding their transfer limits. after more searching, i was finally able to find a pic or two of capeboy. as soon as amiga.org comes back, i'll introduce you to funnypants guy and amiga grrl, and maybe the amiga girl we actually thought was fairly attractive, but who, of course, neither one of us talked to.

also, as paul stated, we spent the majority of saturday drinking the free beer, walking around the exhibit hall floor making fun of 85% of the people there. oh, and of course, there were the several hours i spent drunkenly struggling over whether or not to purchase that almost $300 worth of equipment, or to save my money and be able to eat this week. well, i ended up stalling long enough to not have to make that decision, so i purchased almost $100 worth of software as a consolation — not like i could go to an Amiga convention and come back empty handed!

so, day one saw paul & i drunk for the majority of the day, and one the free beer ran out, we went to the bar next door to "top off."

day two was a little more laid back, considering paul's difficulty recovering from the previous day's sleep-deprived drunkenness, and the return of his cold. we decided (for paul's sake) not to stay for the entire day of the conference, partly because he wasn't feeling well, partly because he wanted to get home to watch x-files, and partly because we'd already seen everything in the exhibit hall at least 20 times the day before. i went to a couple more seminars, and stalled my purchase until around 2:30 or 3, then we took off for home.

ok, well, this has gone on too long. suffice it to say, i had an enjoyable weekend, and i really appreciate puffin offering his services as chauffer and body-guard for the trip.

and finally, in reference to the whole spider-girl thing, marvel announced today that spider-girl will NOT be canceled. so, if you guys actually wrote in at my prompting, i'd just like to say thanks, you've helped save one of my favorite books.