Mood: Blah
Music: Save Me - Aimee Mann

Well, this has been an exceedingly "Blah" day. I woke up around 12:30 this afternoon and just kind of laid there watching some lame court show in horror before convincing myself to get up. I got my tax return from the government and was planning on cashing it, but instead I played XBox almost all day. The depressing thing being that I wasn't playing any games I actually enjoy. I rented Robotech and Dead to Rights last night. Robotech cuz the giant robots beating the hell out eachother thing sounded cool, Dead to Rights because I've played the hell out of Max Payne already...

Robotech is cool, albeit way too repetitive. And Dead to Rights is, well, pretty bad. It's more repetitive than Robotech, but has mind bogglingly bad control, and an increasingly frustrating camera system. Dead to Rights is really feaking lame, and yet I'm 3 hours into it. :\

I was going to go see The Life of David Gale today, but considering Ebert's review... I decided to pass. How discouraging.

In a few hours I'll be off to Alex's to record eps 210, and announce the final episode of Otaku no Radio. I keep waiting for that feeling of regret you feel before you go past the point of no return, and it's not coming and I suspect it's not going to come. I don't feel regret, only relief.
- posted by Brendan @ 6:37 PM 0 comments

 

Mood: Content
Music: Believe - Krayzie Bone feat. Mariah Carey

My mom is a second grade public school teacher. Today she came home with this. Which she, and I, found very disturbing.

Scholastic News is sort of like a.. newspaper for 8 year olds. General news stories, but nothing too heavy. More.. uh.. "gee whiz" than "oh my God, the world's fucked" stories - as you'd expect. This is the March issue - featuring a cover story on Iain Clark and his mother Laurel Clark - one of the astronauts on the Columbia shuttle that exploded a few weeks back.

The cover is so surreal. It's a haunting frozen moment of blind happiness. I don't know what to say about it. It's soul-shreading stuff.

And I'm not even going to comment about this slipping through to publication in light of Laurel Clark's ultimate fate.

Carpe diem.
- posted by Brendan @ 8:50 PM 0 comments

 

The Great Western Pilgrimage - Part 2: Or so I thought...



I didn't sleep particularly well that night. I didn't think of bringing a pillow, and although Marisa offered me hers with the disclaimer that she usually throws it off the bed sometime during the night anyway I said that I'd just wait for her to do that naturally (she never did). So instead I got rug burn on my forehead. I woke up long before the alarm, but I just laid there half trying to fall back asleep and half just thinking about things as one usually does as you teeter in and out of consciousness.

Then the alarm went off, which scared hell out of me. Marisa groggily walked over to the stereo to turn it off and then fell right back into bed leaving me to wonder if she was indeed going to get back up or if that was the end of things. A few minutes later I watched as she got up and looked out the window, after he eyes adjusted she stated quite certainly, "You're not going home today." --- I went over and looked out with her, sure enough - snow was *everywhere*. It was coming down in big frozen clumps, the roads were completely covered, cars were spinning around and bursting into flames and young children were being engulfed by small avalanches. Chaos. Shit.

So I made a few phone calls and updated arrangements back home and got set for another day at Western Illinois University in the fantabulous land of Macomb, Illinois.

And I'll be blunt - it was boooooring. Though, in a good way.. I guess. Marisa had actually been sick the last week and a half and seeing her on that Saturday I have to think that she only feigned being healthy for the day I was going to be there.. poor thing. She slept most of Saturday leaving me trapped in the room watching the gameshow network (which, to be fair, has some cool shows.. I loved Russian Roulette!) and the Cartoon Network.

I think now would be a good time to comment on the bathroom situation. You see, I was on a girl's floor which means there was only a girl's bathroom available for use. Moreover, the elevators only go to girl floors or only go to male floors. So I couldn't just take the elevator down one floor to use the men's bathroom because if I got on the elevator I only had access to girl's floors. Furthermore (!) I had to escorted at all times by a girl one the girl floors - as was made abundantly clear by the signs. So what does all this mean?

This means I was under extreme duress for 48 hours. I basically had to ask Marisa to escort me to the girl's bathroom and guard the door. I used the lobby bathroom as much as I could, but on Saturday I wasn't going through the lobby very often so the girl's bathroom was about all I had. Marisa was asleep and the thought of waking her up to ask her to take me to bathroom just seemed waaaaaay too weird, so I just sat there cursing all the iced tea I had been drinking. Then I spied one of the empty bottles and got an idea.. which I quickly ruled out. Instead I listened intently to the TV and tried to take my mind off the issue at hand. As soon as Marisa did wake up, around 3:30, I had to finally say, "Marisa? Will you take me to the bathroom?"... I felt like I was 3.

About that time I met another one of Marisa's friends, Stephanie, who came and hung out with us and watched Animaniacs with me on Cartoon Network (Marisa doesn't like them.. bah.. she took to reading her book). Stephanie and I talked about current affairs and the Animaniacs, movies - etc. Nice girl, though some of her comments about various television commercials struck me as unintentionally funny :P Still, it was nice to have a third person in the mix to add to conversation. Soon the night dragged on and Stephanie left and it was again just Marisa and I.

I'm not entirely sure what happened after that. I guess we just spend a lot of time talking about random things, watching the Anna Nicole Smith TV show, reading - just general hanging out. Enjoying each other's company. When she told me she was ready to go back to sleep, I made a face, and she told me I could keep the TV on or turn on a light to read or whatever I wanted, she didn't mind. So I was happy. I flipped by Showtime on what would turn out to be some cheap softcore porno flick, sure enough as soon as the big fake breasts appeared I heard Marisa yelp as she danced around saying she was going to tell everyone she caught me watching porn! Hey, the show was called "Paradise Inn" - how was I supposed to know? And it was a lot tamer than Y Tu Mama Tambien which we watched together before. So what's the deal? :-\

The next morning I awoke to the pleasant tune of the instrumental version of Come What May from Moulin Rouge, which Marisa knew I love. It was a peaceful awakening. I looked out and saw that the roads were mostly clear. The snow had stopped, and the chaos from a day ago had been replaced with an eerie sort of white calm. I looked over at Marisa in bed and asserted that today I would be going home.

I agreed to take her over to Walmart so she could pick up some nasal spray, and we stopped by McDonalds for breakfast. Then I took her back to her dorm. I gave her a hug, thanked her for a good time. And walked away, back to my car. I felt strange. It was sort of like the feeling one gets the Sunday of an anime convention. It's the end of an event that you've been looking forward to for a long time and something that ends up invariably being a lot different from what you expected it to be - for better or worse, or both.

I had a good time. Was it worth driving 7 hours round trip? At the time, I'd probably have said no. But tonight, I'd say yes. It was worth it to spend some time alone with her, to meet her friends, for the adventure of the road trip. For the stories to tell. So yeah - it was worth it. And I might even be tempted to do it again.
- posted by Brendan @ 2:23 PM 0 comments

 
The Great Western Pilgrimage - Part 1

Well, I made it there and I made it home. It was a very interesting weekend, no matter how you look at it. Interesting, fun, boring, revealing, disappointing, heartbreaking, exciting. You name it, I felt it during those 48hrs. I don't think anyone I know approved of this trek, but I must say that I do not regret making it. It was a learning experience. I enjoyed my time there, for the most part, and had fun. Can't ask for more than that, I suppose. Granted, the circumstances leading up to my visit weren't the best...

The bad weather I mentioned earlier had held off (though it would be back to bite me in the ass a day later), and I was able to begin the trip at 1:15 on Friday as I had always intended. I stopped at Jewel-Osco before hitting I-88, and picked up some last minute stuff, before hitting the highway. The drive was nice and very peaceful - albeit very lonely. My directions from Yahoo! were accurate, which made navigating by myself a lot easier to accomplish. I spent the time listening to my CD-Rs and talking to my camcorder. 2 hours into the drive I hit freezing rain. It wasn't too bad, but it did slow me down a good 10mph diminished visibility. The freezing rain would follow me all the way to Macomb, which would then be followed by snow - lots of it. I stopped for gas about 30 miles outside of Macomb and was shocked by just how cold - and wet - it was outside. Brutal man, brutal.

It took me about 3.5 hours to get to Western Uni, which was what I was expecting. I had hoped to make it there earlier, 3hrs or so, but the freezing rain pretty much stopped that. No big deal.

When I found the college, I pulled into an immense parking and promptly called Marisa. The campus was rather large, and I had no idea where I was supposed to go. Marisa said to look for two tall buildings next to eachother - except there were like 3 sets of tall dorm buildings. At any rate, I told her I had made it and was in some parking lot by two tall buldings and she said she could see me.. so I started waving at the buildings. Then I realized she was actually looking at someone else and I was waving at the wrong buildings. Her dorm was about 2 blocks down the road...

After figuring out some contradictory directions, I finally found the right building and met up with Marisa. Yay! Friday we ordered Chinese food and got caught up, made chit-chat and the like. Then I met a bunch of her friends. We had to walk a few blocks in the FREEZING cold and the FREEZING rain. It was cold. Her spanish club friends were pretty loud, yell at the movie type, people. Which is fine for them, but that type of personality is pretty at-odds with my own. Her sorority-fraternity friends were a lot more my speed, however. I spent most of the night making fun of Oscar (Marisa's boyfriend) with them. Seems no one likes Oscar. No one. I asked Marisa if she could think of anyone else besides her who liked him. Nope. Bleh. It was about at this point that the underlying tension between her and I began to boil over, because as we continued to pick at the issue she became visibly uncomfortable with the topic. Finally I asked point blank what he had that I didn't, to which she said I had a lot more.. but that she "loved" him while she "loved me like an older brother". Look at that, I'm the older brother guy.

Then the alcohol came. I was not in the mood to drink, but her friends wanted to "initiate" me and get me as fucked up as they could. I don't do that though. I haven't been "fucked up" since high school graduation and that was enough for a long time. They pressured me a good while to get in on their drinking game, but finally when I threatened to just leave them to their own devices and go sleep in my car, they backed off. I had one vodka tonic and spent the rest of our time there drinking straight tonic water. Yummy.

Around 2am Marisa suggested we leave them, and by that time I was thinking the same thing since all we were doing was watching them get drunk. When we got back to the dorm we started watching Fools Rush In with Matthew Perry, though we spent more time reading our own books than watching the movie. Then it was time to sleep. Well, she was tired and I didn't complain. I just laid there, flat on my back (no pillow) on the carpet in my little sleeping bag thinking about the day. Wondering if she wanted/expected me to make any advances, if I was going to make any advances, if I should make any advances. I thought about what she had said earlier about Oscar, and about me and found my answer. I took out my penlight and read more of "World War II - The Rest of the Story and How it Affects You Today", then fell asleep -- knowing I had to leave the next afternoon.

Or so I thought...
- posted by Brendan @ 6:28 PM 0 comments