There has been a lot of news coverage over these executions as of late and it's rather disheartening. I don't like that we're playing up the fact that the United States Judicial System has ruled for nearly 1,000 people to be killed. It's made me think about the death penalty quite a bit and I've come to the conclusion I don't agree with it, no matter what. I say this not having been in the position of having a family member, or dear friend killed by somebody, but I do hope if I were put into the situation I would keep my current ethical stance. My reasoning is that I think there are much more effective ways of dealing with those kinds of crime. There are a lot of aspects to look at with coming to this conclusion, one is how many people on death row are actually guilty. Minor possibly, but I've heard several stories of wrongfully accused criminals. In the event it was not a wrongful prosecution, it was still a terrible mistake, intentional or not. Killing someone is terrible, and the person who is responsible ought to face consequences, but not by death. If anything life-long sentences would be better; I'd say to make the person responsible understand what they did and live with a life on their hands. I also believe people can change; after serving an sentence I think the killer could right their wrongs and learn a new way of life, very much for the better. Most people would say they'd just go out and kill, but I think that's because they give up on the people. Not like we need to religiously "save" them, but teach them, help them to change and it could be better. The death penalty is a cop-out.

In other news it's dead week and I'm as lazy and relaxed as always. Too bad for the sucka's who be frettin' I got all my ish done before-hand and will now coast through the next five days until my fall term is over. I'm happy, content, would like to be home or have B come here, but a week isn't too long to wait. Life is good.

It's 3:30 am and I'm finishing my paper for Architecture. It's my fault completely, but I am still going to complain. I'm tired. I don't want to do this. I wish I had, for once in my life, been a good student worked diligently. It's an 8 page paper, and now I have to revise it. This is going to take a bit of time and I want to sleep now. I am very excited to come home tomorrow. It'll be really nice to see Jeff since I haven't in some time. I think I'm actually going to spend most of this weekend with the family, for a change. Thing is, in a week and a half after this weekend I'll be home again, but this time for a month, so I'll get to visit a lot. I'm going to do neat things, or so I hope. For now I'll just finish my paper.

The night of nights

I'm sitting here at 10:30 pacific time, looking out through the thinning leaves of the tree situated outside of my window and I see the thick fog covering the air with bright lights adding a whimsical touch to the evening. But these lights are not just from the Student Rec Center's field, they also come from the blaring red and blue blinkers of the Lane County Ambulance parked outside of my dorm room. They're here because a girl from my hall, Kiki something has poisoned herself with alcohol. A few minutes ago I watched as it took three EMT's to hoist her limp torso onto the stretcher, and then next her legs, which at first would not sit right. They then wrapped her in the wool emergency blankets and walked her to the Ambulance.

Not more than twenty minutes before this escapade came a shattering noise from the hallway, just outside my door. I went outside to investigate and saw glass laying at the foot of my doorway and looked up to see a gaping hole where there once stood a window. Apparently a hack-e-sack had sailed through the air, accidentally of course, in fact as far as our RA is concerned from a clumsy pass from one player to another. In all actually Ben chucked it across the hallway trying to hit someone, except they moved. So perhaps $150 later we will have a brand new pane of glass to gaze through.

But this isn't the end of the evening. Because of all of this commotion, DPS, the Department of Public Safety, has come to investigate and is now on the first floor searching rooms. Of course first floor is the worst as far as drinking is concerned and DPS is sure to find the carelessly placed alcohol containers in several of the kid’s rooms.
This is College. As Jessie said, "I don't think I'm liking college," but despite these things, I can't say I completely agree with her. It's certainly an experience; you honestly don't know what will happen next. I can say that such events make me remember the innocent days of high school, only five months ago, where I had never seen anyone consume alcohol, or run into a drunk. Nor had I ever witnessed an acquaintance lifted onto a stretcher and taken away to the hospital. In fact I can't even recall a time when I had been in earshot of a recently broken window. I suppose I led a fairly sheltered life back in Hillsboro and I don’t find that to be a problem. Ignorance may be bliss, but knowledge truly is powerful.

I’m actually really curious as to why, through-out these eight weeks of college, I haven’t been affected by the happenings. I’ve learned a lot about otherwise unexplored horizons, but it hasn’t changed me. I am glad because I like who I am, and could only see those changes becoming negative ones, but what is it in me? Why don’t I have the urge to drink? How did I turn out like I did? I’m no pimp, what would have made that happen? I can only go back to my upbringing and thank my parents for what they have given to me; the proper respect for woman, the compassion I am attributed with, and the courage to uphold my beliefs despite all of the opposition.

What a dork, this writing sounds weird, not at all the colloquial writing I ought to have. It's not even good writing either, not like great authors, it's just a bad attempt at sounding smarter than I am. But honestly, the writing style kind of just came, I didn't put effort into it, I just thought it'd convey the evening’s picturesque qualities. Interesting thought: in Anthropology we discussed the differences in language among the genders and came up with broad assumptions for the sexes, rather a poll conducted in 1980 did.

Women:
1. Ask more questions
2. Attempt more verbal exchange
3. Provide more minimal encouragement ("yes," nodding, and "I understand" to name a few)
4. Silent protest
5. Use "you" and "we" more often (men use "I")
6. Use hedge words ("just," "perhaps," "wondering if," etc)
7. Less assertive

Men:
1. Interrupt more
2. Put up more challenges, ("Why is that?" "I thought otherwise.")
3. Ignore others comments more often
4. Control top of conversation more often
5. Declare facts more often/ give more opinions.

I have to say I somewhat disagree with the list. I don't think I ignore others comments, nor do I particularly control the topic of conversation, or give more opinions for that matter. And I think I do provide nominal encouragement quite often, and ask a lot of questions. I just used a hedge-word in the paragraph before that list, which actually made me think of it in the first place. I could certainly be seen as incredible unassertive, in fact I hate pressuring anybody for anything. It’s also been shown that I have somewhat of a girly trend in thoughts, that is, I took a test (What Gender Is Your Brain?) and it said I had a 73.33% female brain. I don’t think that’s too terrible, of course it’s a huge crush to my masculinity, which is important, but I think based on its explanation of what that percentage meant, I simply care more than other people. Not more than other people, but more than the average man? Actually this is its explanation: "Your brain leans female
You think with your heart, not your head
Sweet and considerate, you are a giver
But you're tough enough not to let anyone take advantage of you!" It means I’m sensitive ladies, so keep that in mind! HA! ‘Cept I aint lookin' no mo! I's got me miss fantastical, so don’t be frontin’. Enough of that, it also means I don’t want to get into your pants when I first meet you, at least I’ll say it means that because it’s true, and I might as well add as many boost points as I can at the moment.

loads of fun

This weekend was even more fantastic than I'd imagined it to be. I got home on Thursday evening and spent most of the night with my family and cousin. My cousin is awesome, let me tell you; neatest, coolest, little nine year old I know. So that was good.

I woke up the next day much earlier than I would have had I been at school, all for the purpose of making pancakes for people. I got up, picked Becky up, and then we went to my house and made pancakes for my sister and cousin. They were pretty good too, not that it's hard to make, but I made them with shapes. Little bitty-ones, race cars, J's, S's, and other odd shapes. It's a lot more difficult than I'd anticipated, I thought I could shape it really well, just pour a bit onto the pan and make a shape, but that stuff is runny, and clumpy, and you can't work it like chocolate syrup, as one might assume. I'm good with Chocolate syrup; I draw all sorts of cool stuff on my Peanut Butter Sandwiches with it. But breakfast was really good, and then we watched Sesame Street and learned sign language, or partly. They had cookie monster on, and I heard he didn't eat cookies anymore, and that they substituted his poor eating habits with good ones, but he still talked about cookies. "C is for cookies," so maybe it was an older episode.

Then I went over to my grandparent’s house and had a Tuna melt with my mom, and we chatted until her appointment, and I left.

Then I got a haircut, and now it's much shorter than it was, nearly back to when I had shaved it down considerably, except the top is a bit longer. It looks alright, far different, and it sort of makes me think of a military cut, and I'm not especially fond of those, but whatever, everyone says it's okay, so it's okay.

It was a few activities later that we left to the Broken Social Scene concert in Portland. We actually ended up leaving around 6 I believe, or possibly a bit later, to be honest most of this weekend blended together, time was not really an issue, the experiences were what I wanted to remember anyways. But either way, we got into Portland and couldn't find the Paris Theater, where Tom Bradley, Cameron Dewhitt, and some other kids band Broken Glory was playing. We decided we'd eat first, then figure it out, so after navigating our way through the streets of Portland we landed on 23rd street, but had no idea where the Mexican restaurant Natalie and Alysse recommended was. As it turns out, we got onto 23rd and not more than three seconds later we saw it on our left, and found a parking lot opposite of it, wherein a front row space was available. If you ask me it was absolutely perfect, we couldn't have asked for a better play of events. So after eating in this nice little Mexican restaurant that continually reminded me of my trip to Playa del Carmen, and made me want to be there on the beach with her, we took off in search of Paris Theater. Now on this excursion, instead of following the directions printed for us, we used the final destination and street numbers for our route. We ended up getting there quite easily and found a parking lot opposite of the theater. Paris Theater is this little theater with a giant stage about three or four feet up, but only maybe 400 square feet. It was really small, and hardly anyone was in it, maybe like 35 people, but hey it was cool. Unfortunately they didn’t play until 10:30 so we didn’t get to see them, by then we had left for Broken Social Scene, actually we left for that just a bit after 9’oclock. The Roseland Theater is about three blocks down from the Paris, and that was convenient yet again. The Roseland was really nice, I liked it a lot. They had a little balcony with seating, but that was for the 21-and-over people who wanted to pay to sit there. If I were able to I would’ve it was a good spot, and then maybe Becky would be able to see clearly. Poor Becky, everyone crowded in front of us, and were mostly taller, so she had a hard time seeing, mostly having to look through windows made by people’s shoulders. I on the other hand was able to see, and it was amazing! I had such a good time, I absolutely loved it. Fiest opened for them, and she has such a good voice, it makes me sad that she isn’t in Broken Social Scene anymore. It was rad, way way rad. That bad boy lasted for three plus hours, and I didn’t get home until 1-ish, and soon after that fell asleep, actually it was like three seconds after I put my head on my pillow.

That night I slept in a considerable amount more, until 11:30 I believe, and went to visit my mom at my grandparent’s house in Orenco. We had tuna melts and chatted for a bit about life until her appointment. It was pretty interesting, it felt like one of those growing up experiences, where you go and have a normal conversation with adults, talk about stuff, and then go on your way.

Then it was over to the B-dizzle's hizouse and we folded clothes. Oh, I am good at folding clothes for those of you who didn't know. I don't know when the change occurred but I have begun to somewhat enjoy folding clothes, not like I'll actively pursue doing it, but it definitely no longer bothers me. At least folding shirts, I like the preciseness of it, I fold the right side up towards the center, up to just shy of the collar, and then do the same with the left, and then from there I fold into thirds from the bottom until I get a small little package of shirt. It's like someone used a cardboard sheet to do it too, it's always flat and compact. That is far too much about folding and now I feel dumb, so on to the rest of the evening...well folding was fun, the warm clothes, the company, it made it a good time, and I like having good times. Being comfortable is amazing, and one of my favorite things in the world, probably priority numero uno. Then after having a nice little salmon patty and fruit and green beans we headed over to Corn town to watch, “Zathura,” which was really good. I liked it a lot.

And now I’m tired of talking about the events of the weekend. Sunday was marvelous, B and I made French toast and hung out most all of the day. It was fantastic. This whole past weekend was great, and I can’t really say exactly what it is, but it just felt good, being home with people I care about and all.

I will also be coming home this weekend for Paulina’s play, and that is good news because I’ll also get to see Anneliese, and Becky of course, so pretty much a great deal. The only deal is I’ll be missing the civil war, but in all actuality I could care less about football. Some might say I’m not having the college experience by going home so often, but whatever, I am, and a good experience at that. I’m happy.

I realize this was probably quite boring to read, mostly descriptions of events rather than emotions and thoughts and feelings and such, but to be honest I can't quite describe the feelings. Bliss, Serenity, Ideal, Fantastic, and so on, it was great.

I accidentally slept through fencing today, and nearly missed my Architecture class, wherein I learned my professor is a trespasser. He saw this house by some famous Architect and fell in love with it, so he decided he'd go and take pictures of it. The thing is, the place is on an island to the southeast of Spain. He flies there, not knowing exactly where the house is and starts driving around and looking for it. After looking for a long time he finally finds it and knocks on the door, but no one answers, so he goes to get something to eat. He comes back a bit later and knocks again, but again, no one answers, so he decides to just go in and take the pictures. He walks around the back, it faces a bluff so it's very private and I'm pretty sure designed to be left alone, and walks right up to the house. Because of it's location it is extremely open and he goes in the house, like it isn't anything. Like, he has pictures from the inside, not just the surrounding area which is bad enough, but actually the inside of the house, and the views you get from them. So basically my professor is the most ridiculous person in the world. I did like the house though, it was really nice and I'd like to live in it. It looks at the Mediterranean Sea, who wouldn't want that; perfect climate, gorgeous house, and by that time I'd have a wonderful wife. Life would be good.

Please, please me like you want to

At this point I have to say I am really glad I didn't offer the reward I was thinking of for someone who could find me a bodily excretion that isn't unattractive, because Megan found one. Now it can be unattractive if it's all the time and if it's annoying, but for the most part she's right, crying isn't unattractive. Congratulations Megan, and too bad for you, but very good for me, I didn't include an offer of a million dollars.

I don't like writing when I'm not attached to the work, or at least the prompt. In fact, the only writing I like is free-write, where I write about whatever I want. I am not good at doing anything I'm forced into doing, which is why school is so hard. I can't do it. It's impossible when nearly everything else in the world that I could be doing seems more enjoyable than it.

Over the weekend I started playing my guitar again, and have decided I'd like an acoustic and not have to deal with the hassles of an electric. I'd like this one,

but that isn't going to happen, someday perhaps, but for now I'll stick with a guitar under a G. It was really nice though, and I know once I learn theory I'll have even more. I want to write songs really badly, and even more so I want to be able to sing to them. That won't ever happen though, not unless I steal someone's voice with my super-gamma-three-thousand voice stealing machine. But that's just too costly and I'd feel bad for a few minutes which is enough to turn me off of doing it. Ben Gibbard is a lucky man, as is Chris Martin, Damien Rice, Jack Johnson, and the list goes on...continuing in alphabetic order no doubt.

I think that's just a natural way of mine to listing things, alphabetically, I don't do it on purpose, most of the time.

I wrote a shitty paper tonight, and it makes me wish I had written more essays in High School, and been taught more than I was. It also makes me wish I had more critical thinking skills. Maybe I’ll get hit by a meteorite and either gain a whole bunch of knowledge from this alien substance, or, get killed. I’d much rather have the former than the latter if someone is planning on sending one in for me. Otherwise maybe something will click one of these days, and I’ll straighten out my grossly un-proportional priorities. 3 more days, then I’m back home. That right there is a problem, if I’m yearning for home every week how could I ever accomplish anything? It’s a matter of maturity I think. When I become mature, I’ll know what to do, but until then, I’ll wait for someone to tell me what to do. What a sad thing, wanting people to tell me what I should do. Maybe if I weren’t such a lazy kid I’d spend time figuring out what I should do on my own. But I’m lazy, and I know it, and so far haven’t changed it. How undesirable.

I walked around downtown Eugene today and it was great. I can't even tell you how nice it was to get out of this freaking dorm. I walked into an extremely neat little church that made me happy. I probably could have sat there and just chilled, listened to my iPod perhaps, and wasted the day. I'm good at wasting time, especially when I have something to get done. I have three things to do before Thursday. Three more, there were four before, but I half-assed an essay that I'll turn in, get a failing grade and continue in my average/below average college lifestyle. Those other three are: a physics assignment, a physics test, and a large Art history project. On top of that I have a flag football game tomorrow night at 8 followed directly by a finals match for soccer. I think we can get the championship in soccer, that'd be neat; I'd be part of a winning group for once. I lie, I’ve been part of one before, but all the times never contributing much. At least in soccer I actually do something.

oh! About a week ago marked a year of complainging on the web for me, and a year that I've continually done one thing.

stupid

I don't want to go far into it now because I'm really tired, but I don't like drunk kids, or their being drunk. I don't like kids who act drunk, even when they are capable of composing themselves. Three girls were destroyed tonight and it wasn't fun to deal with. They ought to know their limits; no one ought to fainting, and all three of them were puking. It's disgusting and stupid. Why can't some people be mature? Alcohol isn't worth it.

There is no central theme

It's been a week, and while the time feels as though it flew by, there is also a feeling of time not moving fast enough.

This week hasn't been especially fantastic, and I can really only blame myself for that one. I took a little check on my progress as a college student and came to some disheartening conclusions:
-I'm a C student now. In High School I could not try and get by with A's and B's, but now I'm going to have to actually work to get those grades, like I should I suppose. This isn't a valid complaint, more just of a realization. Something I ought to strive for.
-I have no direction in life at this moment. It's hard to figure out what you want to do, and right now all I can think of as far as future is going home next weekend for an amazing concert. Other than that I can't really figure anything else out. I don't like my classes, so I don't want to go into something involving them. I shouldn't say that, I don't like anthropology, I find the ideas behind Art History interesting but I don't like having to memorize crap, Physics is weird and doesn't make much sense because you have to think about hundreds of things, but Architecture is good. Oh Fencing is boring, I've decided I’ll never need the skills and therefore it's a waste of time, I don't like violence. I do understand protection, and it being a good thing to know how to handle yourself if you're thrown in a bad situation, but fencing won't do anything for me, maybe I'll do Jujutsu, that'd be handy.

Through the "cloudy," that’s what I'll call it now, time of not feeling adequate, or anything I began to get upset with myself. That is really what ruined this week, but now the "clouds" have broken and it's making sense again. They just lifted, and everything is clearer; that is pretty neat.

New Topic: There are a lot of weird things that have to do with the human body. Think about every bodily excretion; sweat, spit, bathroom stuff, etc. It's all gross. I would challenge you to find me one bodily excretion that is attractive. I wish you didn't have to do any of them for survival. Then there is the habit of eating. Eating can't ever be elegant, or done gracefully. How can it be when you're stuffing things into your mouth. Sure you can nibble, and cover your mouth and such, but that’s still a little weird. Don't get me wrong, I love eating, or rather tasting and digesting food. I also have the occasional need for chewing, but still weird thing. Walking is pretty freakish, some people have a nice walk which is alright to look at, but others have weird ones, but it's very necessary. Kissing is interesting, think about it, we've labeled it as a way of showing affection. What if it wasn't chosen, what if shaking hands was like kissing. I guess certain things need to come into consideration, like sexual feelings involved with kissing vs. shaking hands; I'd assume most people don't get excited about shaking hands. But is that because of our biological setup, or because we've decided it's a big deal? I'm sure some scientists have facts about it and it has something to do with chemicals. But just go with it for a second, what are the levels of affection: hugging (squeezing someone), kissing (depending on the level, peck- touching faces, making out- eating someone’s face), then sex (playing puzzle). Its weird stuff, but you can't discount the fact it's nice. Hugging someone is far more satisfying than shaking their hands, and kissing is far more satisfying than hugging, and so on. And the more you go up the weirder it is. But, maybe it's not weird and I just spend way too much time thinking about stupid things. So those are weird bodily things.

As strange as I think the body is, I have to say, it's pretty incredible. We're machines, doing all these things simultaneously at incredible speeds. I like eyes a lot; they're pretty neat, and they look nice. Actually faces in general. It's crazy how little changes in features change a person completely. Look at teeth for example. Someone who has good teeth is far more attractive than someone with poor or missing teeth. Personally. This is all based upon personal belief, I doubt everyone agrees. Then noses; they have to be the right proportion, or compliment the overall face, or it doesn't look right. Ears are cute. Eyebrows matter. Everything matters, in the long run. The great thing is everyone looks for something different. Someone I don't find attractive for whatever reason can be the most beautiful person to another, and vice versa. There are actually a lot of "hot" girls I don't find attractive at all. I shouldn't say that, it's more they're not in any way desirable.

Candles are pretty wonderful things. I love my colonial at home scented candles. "Pear" and "Cranberry Apple Tea" are two very solid scents. It's undeniable that having them lit for as little as hour makes my room smell infinitely better than the rest of the hall. Everyone says it, they walk in, "wow your room smells great," it's all the candles. Plus they're nice to look at when the lights are down.

There are so many ideal settings to be placed in. Like this, how about instead of being here in my dorm room, at my tiny little desk, I'm in Paris, it's late and a soft breeze blows leaves off of the trees in the little park I stroll through, hand in hand with my significant other. Seeing as how it's a bit chilly we have our coats buttoned up tight. We walk a bit further and end up at the Eiffel Tower and go to the top and outlook all of Paris. You can see the entire city lit by the moonlight. How about that instead eh? It'd be better than where I am now. There’d be accordion music going as well. Have you seen “De-Lovely?” Because it’d be like that.

Earlier tonight I saw the end of a show called "Nip Tuck." I don't know what the story line is or anything, but at the end this man walks into his bedroom, and his girlfriend is in it asleep. He walks up to her, sits by her and smiles. She opens her eyes and he says, "Marry Me." She says that they've already talked about this, but he said he knows but sometimes people have to do whatever to make them feel whole; I assume he didn't want to get married before. Anyways, she says yes, then "Lover's Spit," by Broken Social Scene starts playing, and it was probably one of the best songs they could have played in that situation. The main part of the story is that song, because I'm going to go see them next friday, and that's going to be amazing, but I didn't know they were that mainstream to be on a big tv show. Either way, it was a good scene and a good song, good job creators of "Nip Tuck."