Tales of Maggie Dodge 5

All Things Must Come To An End

2007-06-12T00:18:00.002-05:00

Well, it's time to hit the old dusty trail and leave this scrap of Internet behind me. Much though I might wish it were otherwise, the Tales of Maggie Dodge 5 have reached their end.

That is not to say that the tales of John Henry Adams have reached their end. (Indeed, I should hope not!) I'm opening a new blog at maeduselde.blogspot.com in which I intend to provide semi-regular (weekly, perhaps) updates on my life, once, indeed, it becomes interesting to anyone besides myself. It is also my intent to take this new blog in a more philosophical direction than this one has taken; expect to see more ramblings about my opinons in the future.

I hope that you have enjoyed reading this blog. Perhaps I shall see you again on the new one. If not, God bless you and keep you safe.

Adieu.

A Late Post

2007-05-30T17:25:00.000-05:00

It's been a long time since I updated last, so I figure I'll give you all a quick rundown of recent events. Also, I'll soon be closing up this blog. It was, after all, a blog whose mission statement was to chronicle the Tales of Maggie Dodge 5. Since I don't live there anymore, it's time for a new online home for those few people who still read this blog.

The Hike (from Hancock to Cumberland)
I've always found hiking to be a liberating experience. Your troubles temporarily go away since, although they're still there, there's not really much you can do about them while you're on the trail. This was doubly true about this particular hike since there was next to no cell phone reception. We were truly, magnificently cut off from the outside world.

There's certainly a different dynamic when you have six people on the trail than when you have just two. People break up into clusters semi-randomly, based on how fit everyone is feeling and what different people are doing. There was a lot of music and group singing, which was nice. On the other hand, we had to carry and make a lot more food, with amusing results at times. I say only two words: beef stroganoff.

One final note: Despite the fact that I was wearing practically brand new shoes and had not spent the last three months walking (as I had last year), I didn't blister at all, really, which leads me to wonder whether I'm somehow genetically designed for this sort of thing or something.

Christina LaVecchia's Graduation Party
It was good. And I got there, despite all theories to the contrary. For this, we can thank one David Marsich. If ever a man deserved gratitude, a knighthood and a small earldom, it was Mr. Marsich. He drove me up to Philadelphia from Savage, all with that typical, unassuming friendliness that is his trademark. Even now, I can almost hear him saying, "It's no problem." His tone almost lets you forget he's lying.

But at any rate, it was good. It was nice to see a few CMRSers, though I wish I could see some of the others. I like hanging out with Christina, Jason and Carolyn, but I wish Gwen, Ginny, Kit, Alicia, Susan or any of the others could have made it. Curse these distances and conflicting schedules!

The Present
Dr. Carmen Acuña, an old friend of the family's and a colleague of my father's, was kind enough to give me a gift certificate to Amazon.com as a graduation present. Today, I used that certificate to order Firefly, Hero and Stranger Than Fiction, three movies/TV series that I have long wanted to own. Soon they shall be in my possession... Bwahahahaha!

I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean III the other night. Much as it pains me to admit it, my brother Stephan was right – it was terrible. Some of the action was cool, Jack Sparrow was better (but not as good as he was in the first movie), Captain Barbossa was awesome and we had lots of explosions, but overall it was just plain bad. The plot(s) made little to no sense, a fair bit of the dialogue was predictable/bad, there were big plot holes and the main villain was boring. If the first movie was a masterful 7th Sea campaign, this was a poorly run D&D game with way too many characters. I'm sorry, but that's my final word.

The Future
Yes, well, that's a good question. I'm not precisely sure what's going to happen - I'm going to have to make a decision about grad school. The assistantship has been denied me, largely because I don't angst around with poetry but instead invent and describe characters in elaborate short stories. Ah well, I'm sure it'll go to someone better than me. (And I deny anyone the right to contradict my natural elitist optimism here, right though they may be.)

So the question is whether I want to go into debt and go to grad school this coming year or whether I want to give it another shot in the application process to see whether I can get a better offer. Maryland has a decent program, but I'm not sure I'll want to take out massive loans in order to go here. That, of course, raises the question of where I'll be next year. I might go to Germany for the year or I might try to get a job in the Baltimore/DC area. I'm tending more towards the latter at present; either way, I need to make up my mind soon.

To steal a phrase from the inestimable Sir Marsich, fair winds all.

As Graduation Approaches...

2007-05-10T09:00:00.000-05:00

I find myself surprisingly calm. I don't want the year to end by a long shot, but the idea that this is it has not really sunk in. (Personally, I doubt it truly will until June 1, when I see my brother Michael graduate from high school.) Partly this is because of how busy the next few weeks are going to be. I have to apply for the G.A., look for jobs in case that falls through, figure out whether moving to Baltimore with Mairead is a good idea, go on a hike for a week, meet up with my CMRS associates if possible, work out whether I can go to Stephanie Reiner's graduation party in June...

I'm quite happy with my time here at St. Mary's. Certainly things there are things I regret and other paths I could have gone, but it's been a good four years. I've learned a lot, both about the world and myself. My grades have been consistently good, I've made some excellent friends and I've managed to survive over half a year of dating. I've come a long way from the isolated, awkward high school student I once was.

The next couple of days are going to just fly by, mostly because they're going to be packed. Tonight is the Senior Gala, tomorrow I have a practice for the graduation ceremony and my family (presumably) shows up. Plus there's the inevitable graduation on Saturday followed by the long trek home as a graduate. The Tales of Maggie Dodge 5 draw to their close and their like shall never be seen again.

I Am Going To Grad School. Maybe.

2007-05-06T14:50:00.000-05:00

Big things are happening right now. Really big things. I got an email from Mom and Dad with an attached PDF of an acceptance letter from University of Maryland. Now comes the really tricky question - do I go or not?

On the one hand, I feel some not inconsiderable vindication at getting accepted. If I don't go, it's because of my decision and not because some bored bureaucrat decided he didn't like the way I write my address. The problem is, now I have to decide rather than having the decision made for me by the aforementioned bureaucrat.

First off, there's the eternal problem of money. General fees appear to be around $500, and for an out of state student, each of the 30 credits I have to earn to get my M.A. costs $701. (Why they slapped the extra dollar on there I will never know.) Granted, if I move "permanently" to Maryland – which I had been toying with anyhow – then it drops down to somewhere in the $300s, which is more manageable. That, however, brings up the ugly specter of housing, for the University of Maryland does not have enough housing to keep its senior undergraduate class on campus anymore, so I'd probably still have to find a place of my own within commuting distance.

I've been trying to find TAships and the like – UMD wasn't kind enough to provide me with anything - and I've found a "graduate assistantship" with application deadlines in mid-May where you basically work fulltime as a bureaucrat/mentor for a creative writing house. That might be interesting in its own right, though I'm dubious of my chances in getting it. (I have no teaching experience.) It doesn't pay terribly badly either, plus it gets you waivers on tuition, but again, I'm dubious about getting it. Application is always, however, an option, and perhaps God will preserve me once again.

The courses offered look decent, but the catalogue online is not exactly the most helpful thing in the world. Ideally, I should probably try to convince someone to take me down sometime this coming week and check things out first hand. In case it isn't obvious, I'm very much up in the air about this right now, but we'll see where the wind blows me. I'd like to go straight on to grad school and then take a year or two off after the Master's, but I've got to see whether that's feasible.

More updates will occur as more information appears.

SMP Presentation

2007-05-01T17:48:00.000-05:00

Well, it's done. Both of my SMP presentations have been done – one for the English department, one for German department – and I'll admit that the rest of the semester feels a bit superfluous after all that.

My charrming mother and goofy brother Christopher came down from Pennsylvania last night to witness my presentation and provide much-need moral support. There was the inevitable mix-up as to where I live, followed by the equally inevitable last-minute food preparation to sustain the weary travelers. I got updates on what all of my brothers are up to – apparently, Michael has decided to go to Bucknell University after all, which, if nothing else, will save us the incredible trip that both Stephan and I have put our parents through.

But more to matters at hand. I seem to have been one of the few SMP presenters who (a) did not use a Powerpoint presentation or (b) a written out speech. (After all, it is against the nature of medieval historians to have anything to do with computers.) I had a page of bullet points and then stepped up to the plate. As always in such circumstances, I relied on what I shall here (only somewhat sarcastically) term my natural charm and good sense of humor. I had a fair number of laughs during both the presentations, and I flatter myself that people were laughing with me rather than at me.

I'm also pleased to admit that I managed to stay within the time limit of fifteen minutes both times. At the German presentation, I was lucky enough to be the last presenter so my presentation sequed easily into the question and answer section, meaning that it was still fresh in everyone's minds. Some of the questions were pretty nifty – Dr. Rogachevsky asked about whether a Nazi victory in WWII would have meant Dietrich movies; I also got the interesting question of how I would propose to resuscitate Dietrich's legend today.

The English presentation similarly went well, though I'll admit I missed having the opportunity for questions and answers. Personally, I think the history department does it best by giving everyone twenty minutes or so to present and then immediately going into questions. But I'm not going to complain – it was pretty great anyway.

A Church Retreat and other adventures

2007-04-21T14:30:00.001-05:00

I spent most of the morning and some of the afternoon by going to my first Church retreat since Confirmation. It was pretty good; props go to Clare for organizing the whole thing. We learned an interesting meditation called a labyrinth which I unfortunately can't really describe very well; you need to see it. In the labyrinth, the path loops around and twists in on itself, but eventually it reaches a central point. You can walk it or follow it with your finger if it's drawn on paper; the act of following the path is supposed to be representative of life in some way.

I don't know if I've managed to communicate that very well, but it's very therapeutic to physically walk a labyrinth. (There's one in Historic St. Mary's City, apparently.) As usual, my thoughts started circling around the whole grad school question – still no word from University of Maryland – and after a while, I came to find some peace. Grad school is, after all, only another place. It's my actions that determine whether the next year proves worthwhile, wherever I happen to be at the time.

Cliché though my conclusion from the labyrinth meditation may appear, it was enough for me. Those of you who have had to deal with me when I'm under a lot of stress know that I deal with stress by getting an upset stomach. (I'll have ulcers by the time I'm forty, I know it.) This meditation helped my stomach settle a fair bit and let me be optimistic for the evening festivities.

Said evening festivities consisted of a picnic out behind the townhouses, accompanied by chain mail, silk painting and the obligatory Darkon fighting. I was pleasantly amused by the fact that my Stav training appears to be highly effective with a spear; Kyle Gordon, who wrecks havoc with his two-handed sword, was completely thrown off by it. We suspect this may be because he's used to fighting John Harvey, who fights left-handed with a spear while I fight right-handed. At any rate, the fight has demonstrated to me that spears are monstrously good weapons. The reach they give you is very, very useful.

Tonight we're going to finish things off with a bonfire down at the Point. After my return home, I should probably crack into more of Jane Austen; I need to have Volume II of Sense and Sensibility done so that John Harvey can read it before class. Perhaps I'll finally get my answer from Maryland on Monday; if not, I'll call them and get this over with.

Cake and Movie Trailers

2007-04-17T17:15:00.000-05:00

I baked two cakes and twelve muffins for my birthday party. Some people would think that this implies bad things about my friends, and maybe it does, but for my part I like baking. It gives me a feeling of accomplishing something and exerting my will over the shapeless mixture that will one day become a satisfying treat.

As his birthday present to me, Dan Blair completed editing the trailer for that epic piece of student cinema, Pirate Ninja, Ninja Pirate. As one of the two principal stars of the film, I guess I ought to be doing my best to get the word out, so here's a link for the trailer. Go watch it. And then, if you have any respect left for me, you should watch the actual movie. It was a lot of fun (and a lot of stress) to film, but I trust that if the trailer is any indication, it'll be well worth it. I am looking forward to it, and to the hour-long blooper reel that I helped generate.

Dave Marsich thoughtfully gave me a copy of the Book of the Dead, with the remark that you never know when the book might come in handy. This book brings the total of occult texts in my possession to five; I should keep collecting and reading up on the subject so that some day, I may be able to teach a class or write a book on the subject. The next field to expand into would probably be Kabbalah or maybe Hermeticism.

Inspired by the book and my birthday activities two years ago, Brenna, Alyssa and I watched the two Mummy movies back to back. There's nothing like those films, viewed late at night, to put you in a good mood. They're so deliciously bad, and so cartoony, that it's almost impossible to watch them and remain in a bad mood.

I Want To Be On The Trail Again

2007-04-13T12:16:00.000-05:00

It's a shame, but I'm starting to wear cracks into the soles of my shoes. This means that I shall have to buy a new pair before the second installment of the hike. This realization, as I was walking home last night, resulted in my singing, under my breath, "Oh I'm at my best when my boots wear thin,/ I'll see the world by the mile..." I've got the wanderlust again.

That explains why I've taken to wandering randomly through Historic St. Mary's City. I need to walk through the woods again, the canal at my side, a good staff in my hand and a heavy pack on my back. I want to see new trees and new paths. I do not want to walk down five miles of blistering highway with those mechanical monstrosities that some call "cars" forcing me to periodically stop and retreat to the edge of the road. I want to be back on the canal. Until I can be, Historic will have to do.

Below is a photograph of a magnificent sunset that happened last night.

It's That Time Again

2007-04-11T23:32:00.000-05:00

After a brief reprieve from the manic reading pace of Tom Jones, the reading for Bates' class has been stepped up again. I stayed up until almost 3 A.M. last night reading the first volume of Evelina. This epistolary novel was apparently among the favorites of Jane Austen, but I regret to admit that I do not find it particularly gripping. It succeeds admirably in depicting the reaction of an innocent sixteen-year-old girl to 18th century London, but unfortunately I am not particularly interested in innocent sixteen-year-old girls and their reactions to 18th century London. The most interesting characters in the book are not exactly the nicest people – in the entire volume, I found only three lines I felt were quotable, two of them by the rakish Sir Clement Willoughby and one by the brutish Captain Marvin.

Regardless, I shall press on. My birthday is this coming Saturday and I intend to celebrate it with plenty of German Haustorte; Jesse and I are going into town early tomorrow morning to procure ingredients. I'll bake the cakes Friday afternoon; Saturday afternoon, I'll be having coffee and cake for all who are interested. Other than that, I'll spend my Saturday as God intended - in seclusion, savoring St. Mary's campus on my own for a bit and then possibly resurfacing to spend some of the evening with my friends. Also as God intended, I shall not be doing any work of any sort on my birthday unless it is purely for pleasure. I have my principles, after all.

In closing, I heartily recommend everyone read A School For Scandal by Richard Sheridan. It is absolutely hilarious; I'd rate it as on par with Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, which is saying something. For maximum effect, you should read The Country Wife by William Wycherley first – it's frequently referenced and one-upped by the School for Scandal – but you don't have to; the play stands solidly on its own two feet.

Good Friday

2007-04-06T14:10:00.000-05:00

Before you all ask, there's still no word from grad schools. I check every day around noon (by which time, if the letter is coming that day, it will be in my mailbox). This has led to a rather amusing build-up of stress leading up until lunchtime which later subsides until the next day. In theory, the mail went out one week ago today, which means it'll be here in a day or two. If it isn't, I'll call to make sure. I assure you, if I get in, I'll let everybody know by diverse means, email being foremost and later on this blog, probably.

But that is not the reason for my posting. Today is Good Friday, the celebration of the death of God. All of my talk of burning heretics aside, I do not consider myself to be particularly religious. Nevertheless, for the past four years, assuming circumstances allow, I have spent the hours between noon and three o'clock on Good Friday without speaking in remembrance of the three hours of darkness that happened after Christ's death. I heard about this tradition eons ago when I was in Sunday School and though I'm not sure exactly where it comes from, I like it.

It's a bigger deal than you'd think, being quiet for three hours. You can't make idle chitchat, you can't comment aloud on things you've read or done and you can't seek conversation. For my part, at least, it results in me being much more reflective. I tend to think out loud while I'm alone; being silent makes my thoughts slow down as well. Even if I'm not thinking about Christ's sacrifice all that time - as I probably should be - the act of fulfilling the tradition reminds me of which religion I belong to, which is always something I find enjoyable.

Speaking of religion, this weekend is going to be unusually religious for me. I'm going to Mass on Sunday, but I'm also going to Easter Vigil tomorrow. One of my friends has done me the great honor of asking me to be her sponsor for confirmation. I'm not going to lie, I'm kind of excited. Up until now, I've always been on the receiving end of the sacraments, so to speak.

In closing, whether you believe in Him or not, God bless you.

Time Certainly Flies

2007-04-02T18:55:00.000-05:00

Well, ladies and gents, this is the week when I probably find out whether I go on to graduate school this year or have to wait another year beforehand. I'm not going to lie, the stress is starting to show on my stomach - indigestion, that sort of thing - but instead of dwelling on pre-graduation angst now, I intend to instead ramble on a bit about blogging.

To me, blogging has always been about staying in touch with people. I first got a blog last year when I decided to study abroad; I figured it was a quicker, more practical way of telling people what exciting stuff I'd done or seen without the bother of emailing everybody. I'm not sure how many people availed themselves of this service but I enjoyed doing it anyway.

As I might have predicted, the quantity of my blogging decreased sharply when I returned to St. Mary's. I suspect the main reason I keep it up is to help me keep in touch with those few people I met overseas who kept up with my old blog. I have no idea as to how well this objective is working since although I incessantly comments on the blog posts I read, this appears to be a rare species of blog reader.

Regardless of the contents of the dreaded and anticipated letter, I will continue to update my blog. Indeed, the need will become far more pressing than it has been this year, for no matter what the letter says, I will not be in the immediate St. Mary's area after this year and neither will the majority of my friends. My family too seems to be spreading across the world, with three of the brothers out of high school and one rapidly approaching the end as well. Regardless of how slow I may be about answering emails, staying in touch with people is important to me, be it by letter, email or blog post. I don't want to wake up some day and wonder what happened to all my college buddies; I'd rather know what's happened to them and have them know what happened to me.

In closing, if you read this post, odds are you're somebody important to me. (I can say this since to the best of my knowledge, only my relatives and friends have this blog address.) Let's keep in touch, shall we? Even if it's only by reading each other's blogs and occasionally commenting to reassure one another that yes, somebody's reading, it'll still be something.

2007-03-29T12:16:00.001-05:00

So, having completed the better version of Star Wars, I suppose it's time to tell you all something about my life at present. I've been very, very busy. I spent my day off on Tuesday (known to people who aren't graduating this semester as "advising day") reading like crazy. I've only got about 100 pages of Tom Jones to read, which frustrates me since Book XVI ended on a cliffhanger but I couldn't read more because I had to finish A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. On top of all that, I realized that I had to finish the second draft of my SMP by 3 o'clock - and it was noon.

Suffice it to say that all my work was completed. My SMP is done, in the eyes of my advisor, at least. I myself want to tweak it here and there a bit more – and I'll do that this weekend, hopefully – and I still have to write my presentation, but that's all due two weeks from now, so I can take a brief breather. Then, after class, on a beautiful, sunny day, I had to lock myself up in my room to finish a draft for a paper on Tennyson for King Arthur. As though that wasn't enough, I also had to study for a Geology exam. My break was a CMRS reunion. It was a good dinner/potluck thing; I've invented a sort of curried fried onion that isn't entirely bad for you, which I consider a plus. Afterwards, I returned home for nearly four hours of studying before I went to sleep around 2:30.

It wasn't all misery studying for Geology though. Jesse and I goofed off to Rhapsody, with the following hilarious consequences:

You can say what you want about the quality of their music, but at least they're refreshingly open about how nerdy they are.

And so we come to the triumphant conclusion

2007-03-26T08:20:00.001-05:00

Star Wars:
The Revenge of the Sith

Having become Supreme Chancellor, Palpatine rapidly begins to transform the Republic into the Empire - the Chancellor begins to get special dictatorial powers and so forth. While this helps the Republic in the war, it also horrifies the Jedi. They start to polarize into pro-Republic and pro-Separatist sides; those who support the Republic think that Palpatine's new powers are only temporary and will end with the war while Separatist Jedi view this as the final sign that the Republic is hopelessly corrupt.

Obi-Wan is one of the Jedi who retains hope for the Republic. Accompanied by the ghost of Qui-Gon Jinn, he is searching for General Grievous, a cyborg general for the Separatists. (This is Clone Wars Grievous, incidentally - no stupid coughing or similar garbage.) Grievous' lightsaber training at the hands of Darth Tyranis has allowed him to become quite a problem - he's killed several Jedi and is wrecking havoc on Republic forces as well.

Obi-Wan's quest for Grievous leaves him separated from Anakin, however, who is coming more and more under the influence of Ventris. The marriage with Amidala is in shambles, despite Amidala's current pregnancy. Anakin is deep enough in the Force now to recognize the Dark Side when he sees it but this aspect of Ventris excites him more than it worries him.

Concerned by the increasing polarization of the Jedi, the Jedi convene a council for the first time in living memory. Jedi Knights and Masters from all over the Galaxy come together to discuss the situation. Even the reclusive Master Yoda comes to participate. It is at this point that Darth Maul and his forces attack, strafing the council chamber first with starships and then coming in for the kill himself.

Dozens of Jedi die at Maul's hand before he is taken down. The revelation of a rogue Jedi like Maul confuses the Jedi and distracts them from the problem at hand, namely the war. They begin to debate whether the Sith are perhaps more than legend and if so, where the others might be. Yoda and a few other Jedi Masters flee to obscure places scattered throughout the Galaxy.

At this point, Palpatine openly reveals his Sith powers. All the Jedi immediately switch to the Separatist side. A group of Jedi Knights decides to go kill Palpatine. In the ensuing battle, Palpatine demonstrates the power of the Dark Side, killing the Jedi with Force lightning and telekinesis. Anakin and Ventris are present for this and Anakin is finally turned. Amidala upon finding out about all this flees. All Jedi are declared enemies of the Empire. Anakin and Ventris start slaughtering Jedi, hunting them down one by one. (Anakin, incidentally, is wearing a modified version of Darth Vader's armor, just no helmet.)

What is left of the Separatist movement and the Jedi decide to make their last stand on Naboo. The Separatist fleet in outer space is crushed by sheer weight of numbers. On the planet, the Naboo people and Jedi are similarly obliterated – Jedi are good, but against diving star fighters, nothing less than perfection is called for. The Gungans come out of hiding again for one last dramatic battle. This is the end of history for Naboo - it is practically uninhabital by the end.

It is at this point that Obi-Wan returns from defeating Grievous. After luring them away from the rest of their army, he faces Ventris and Anakin simultaneously in lightsaber combat. He kills Ventris and then turns on Anakin, whom he wounds repeatedly – slicing off one of his arms, among other things – before driving him backwards into a deep volcanic pit. Unable to sense him any longer, Obi-Wan assumes that Anakin is dead and leaves. (Anakin is, of course, not dead, and is rescued by Imperial troops long after Obi-Wan has left.)

Obi-Wan briefly considers attacking the Emperor but concludes that he won't be able to succeed and so instead decides to plan for the future. Qui-Gon has given him a prophecy about Skywalker's children and so he finds Amidala and helps her hide with Leia on Alderan. (Amidala eventually marries the king of Alderan, making her daughter the princess of that planet.) Obi-Wan himself goes out with Luke to Tatoinne, a planet so far on the Rim that nobody bothers with it. Anakin’s brother Owen is living there now, having fled from all the destruction of the war. He agrees to raise Luke while Obi-Wan sets about discreetly starting the beginnings of the Rebellion before settling down to wait for Episode IV.

Finis.

Episode II: The Clone Wars

2007-03-24T10:48:00.000-05:00

Star Wars:
The Clone Wars

The Trade Federation officials are tried exceedingly harshly. Unfortunately, this is being done for the wrong reasons – the Republic wants to crush the Federation for economic benefit. In reaction to this, the Separatist movement goes into full swing, led by the Federation. The predictability of the droids in combat eventually leads the Separatists to resort to cloning; so does the Republic.

We now meet the Sith, a triumvirate led by Darth Tyrannis, the schemer (and future Emperor). His two minions are Darth Maul and Asaj Ventris. Maul is an assassin and a killing machine but a disciplined one. He approaches things in a very direct manner; Ventris, on the other hand, is more liable to try to play mind games with her opponents. She is to be characterized as very seductive as well as being hardcore; if this can be done with her still being bald, make it so.

Amidala's term as Prime Minister of Naboo having expired, she has married Anakin now. They travel through the galaxy together, accompanying the two Jedi we met in the previous film. Amidala, it appears, has certain gifts with machines and serves as a mechanic on board Anakin's ship. Obi-Wan has begun training Anakin in the ways of the Force, despite Qui-Gon’s questioning of the matter. Qui-Gon doesn’t think Anakin can handle it – he’s too rash and impulsive, not being nearly as disciplined or introspective as Qui-Gon would like. Anakin views the Force almost like a new toy – it lets him do stuff he couldn’t do before. (As a side note, the Force use in combat has been toned down from the original series. You can sense things, do mind tricks and predict your opponent's actions in combat, but there's no Force-push stuff or anything like that.)

And speaking of the Jedi, the Jedi are not entirely sure how to react to the Clone Wars that are happening around them. Some of them feel that they should intervene (though on which side is questionable) and others think they should just try to minimize damage to the civilian population. The majority of the Jedi are staying out of the whole situation as best they can. Unfortunately, this isn't doing much for their public image – people are getting suspicious of them due to their vigilante nature.

This situation is further complicated by the activity of the Sith. Maul and Ventris are deliberately helping both sides sides in the argument, slaughtering villages and participating in raids. Everyone assumes they're Jedi – nobody else uses lightsabers – and weakens the Jedi position of neutrality. It is also making the violence increase as both sides accuse the other of war crimes. Anakin starts to encounter Ventris from time to time, who fascinates him through her knowledge of the Force and very direct manner. Amidala, largely because of her background, is being very political about the relationship and Anakin is getting frustrated by it. Ventris, far from being the Jedi warrior he thinks she is, is of course plotting to turn him to the Dark Side. Basically we have a good woman-bad woman dichotomy here between Amidala and Ventris.

Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan meanwhile go to confront Count Dooku, an aristocratic Jedi who is openly supporting the Separatists. They want him to stop, largely because his actions are highly detrimental to the Jedi cause. Dooku, meanwhile, has discovered the Sith involvement in (and corruption of) the Senate. He tries to convince the two Jedi of this but fails – the Sith are a legend, nothing more. Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon decide to take him in and place him under arrest. Dooku gets aggressive and draws a lightsaber. "If you're not with me, you're against me." After a long, protracted duel, he kills Qui-Gon. Obi-Wan avenges his fallen comrade.

Meanwhile, in the Galactic Senate, an unassuming Senator from Coruscant is elected Supreme Chancellor. The bureaucrats think that they'll be able to control him for their own interests. His name is Palpatine.

Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith will be up in a few days.

We've Fixed Star Wars

2007-03-21T21:55:00.000-05:00

Late last night, John Harvey, Jesse and myself sat down together and fixed George Lucas' woefully inadequate Star Wars sequel series. What you see below is the first third of those labors. With one exception (Darth Sidious is now Darth Tyrannis), we've left the names the same, even though the characters are sometimes different; this is in the interests of practicality.

Star Wars:
The Phantom Menace

It is a time of civil unrest in the Galaxy. The Galactic Republic, ruled by greedy bureaucrats and long since grown corrupt, clashes with the beginnings of a Separatist movement that threatens to tear it apart. The Trade Federation, seeking to expand its economic holdings, places pressure on the small planet of Naboo. Naboo's unwillingness to capitulate leads the Federation to institute a blockade with its droid army. Two Jedi Knights, Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi are sent to serve as mediators during the negotations. As Jedi, their neutrality and integrity cannot be questioned. Their pilot, Anakin Skywalker, is a hotshot twenty-year old veteran of border skirmishes. (The Republic has sought to expand its control over the outer Rim.) He is quickly attracted to Prime Minister Amidala, a beautiful, cunning politician.

The Federation is openly hostile and makes provocative gestures, including landing troops on the surface of Naboo. This leads Naboo generals to mobilize the army and prepare for war. Despite Amidala and the Jedi's best efforts to smooth things over, war breaks out. The Jedi move to protect the Naboo government as the Trade Federation attacks. The droids prove unusually effective against the Jedi, as they represent blind spots in the Force. (Jedi use the Force mostly for knowledge – enhanced senses, precognition, that sort of thing – and to enter a trance-like state during combat.) The Naboo forces are gradually driven back.

At this point, the Gungans intervene. They are the barbaric inhabitants of Naboo's watery core, looking far more like deep sea fish than the ducks that Lucas depicted them as. They have largely been shunned by the Naboo for their ugliness and exceedingly militaristic attitude towards life. This suited them fine since it meant they could fight one another in peace. The Federation threatens that isolation and so they assist the Naboo in their battle. The Federation forces are defeated and the Federation viceroy taken back to Coruscant for trial.

Episode II: The Clone Wars will follow shortly.

In The Blind Spot of History

2007-03-20T08:21:00.000-05:00

And so here we all are, back on campus, back at school. This was the last break I'll get from college; the next time I see Pennsylvania, I'll have a Bachelor's of Arts in comparative literature. The funny thing is, the only reason that really scares me at present is because I don't know what I'm doing afterwards yet. Grad school has not yet informed me whether it deems me smart enough to go this coming year; a source of no small anxiety. After all, I like to know what I'm going to do in the coming year...

That said, I'm going to enjoy the days here. I went into the archives the other day and found some old SMPs. So, yeah, Dave and Grindcore, I have read your SMPs. Nice job, both of you, if you're reading this. The one thing that worries me about them is the fact that both are stored digitally rather than physically, meaning that their life expectancy is somewhat in doubt. (The College is apparently unwilling at present to develop protocols to deal with the situation.)

I actually had a conversation I with the archivist and a biology professor who was down there about that very thing and the horror stories it will doubtlessly provide future historians with. Most correspondence is digital these days – and therefore not saved. Think of how much older historians used to study letters to get an idea of what was going on? On top of all that, most of the paper used in the 70s and 80s was very low quality, so it'll decay pretty badly pretty quickly. Essentially, we're living in a blind spot of history. Whether this is a good thing or not is for others to determine. I personally am taking this as a challenge to produce as many primary sources for future historians as possible. That way, not only am I providing a public service, but I'm also going to be posthumously famous.

It's Spring Break and I'm Home

2007-03-12T21:57:00.000-05:00

Yeah, the post title pretty much says it all. I don't really have all that much to say to you all and I figure it'll probably stay that way for a while. However, if you're checking the website, I guess I owe you all something to tide you over until my next vitriolic rant against a governmental system. Consequently, I'm going to take my esteemed brother Michael's advice and regale you all with a selection of quotations by various great thinkers and authors, the better to enlighten you all. No explanations will be given for any quotations; they are simply what they are.

"Instead of all that, what if it's one little room, like a bath house in the country, black and grimy and spiders in every corner, and that's all eternity is?"
~Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigaïlov

"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig."
~ Mark Twain

"Muffins! It's muffin time! And the frog ate the muffin by means of osmosis."
~ Daniel Blair

"Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making."
~ John Milton

"Sir, the prince is young and foolish and has a peanut for a brain."
~ Edmund Blackadder

"Wa! What kind of king is it in heaven, who kills off kings as great as me?"
~ Clothar I, last words

"Fork, n. An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth."
~ Ambrose Bierce

"Explosions are God's way of telling people they should be inside out."
~ John Harvey

"By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest."
~ Confucius

"My God. We must obtain raincoats by next Tuesday, or else they will destroy us all!"
~ Jesse Kirkpatrick

"Few men are born brave; many become so through training and force of discipline."
~ Vegetius

"It is useless indeed for us to attack exterior enemies, if we do not first conquer those of the interior. Let us first purge our souls of vices, then the lands from the barbarians."
~ Guigo, fifth prior of La Grande Chartreuse

"Yes, it may be pointless, but it's an awesome kind of pointless."
~ John Henry Adams

Why Anarchism Is A Bad Idea

2007-03-06T16:46:00.001-06:00

Rather than talking about my life – which, at present, consists largely of homework – I am going to talk instead about government. To be specific, I'm going to spend this post pointing out the reasons why, in my opinion, anarchism is an untenable system upon which to base a government. If this is not your cup of tea or brand of vodka, feel free to ignore the post and go about your life as usual.

In an anarchist state, there are no laws. Well, technically, that's not true – laws of physics still hold true, as do all universal constants. One of those universal constants is the Law of the Strong, which I shall define as follows: "In any conflict, the strongest party will inevitably triumph, by which strength is to be defined as any factor that contributes to somebody's success." Strength can mean superior physical strength, but it can also include superior knowledge of the terrain, better positioning, combat training, being correct (in a logical argument, this is invaluable), having strength of numbers and so forth.

Good actions do not contribute to a person's strength; indeed, they detract from it. Every action requires energy, with the exception of eating or sleeping (which restore energy). Actions undertaken on behalf of someone else have no reward in terms of energy for the person undertaking them. If John Harvey and myself cook for ourselves and Dan and Jesse, then we have spent the energy needed to cook for four people when we could have cooked only for two. We have lost energy because we have taken actions on the behalf of others.

Since evil people are less likely to waste their energy on others than good people are, they are likely to become stronger. The problem with this scenario is that they, being stronger, are capable of taking whatever they want from those weaker than themselves. To use the members of my townhouse as an example, let us say that Jesse, Dan and myself are all pacifist anarchists. We stay out of each other's business and are consequently quite happy, each doing whatever we want.

Along comes John Harvey. John is physically the strongest of any of us, he has combat experience and he has somewhere or other acquired a club. He comes into our happy area and decides he wants my food. He beats the snot out of me and I am quite possibly killed. At any rate, let us assume that my injuries keep me out of the next conflicts. Later on, John decides that he wants Jesse's computer. He beats the snot out of Jesse and takes his computer. Now he wants Dan's stuff and, again, beats him up to take it.

The Law of the Strong states that not only will John be able to triumph in his conflicts, but he will be able to continue to triumph since his conquests can serve to make him even stronger than before. None of us alone is capable of withstanding him. If, however, we all worked together, we could stop him. Jesse, Dan and myself all pick up clubs and engage John Harvey. We defeat him through force of numbers – our strength is now greater than his own.

The problem with this solution is that it defeats the purpose of anarchism. By working together to defeat a common threat, we have entered into a social contract with one another. This is the beginnings of law, which is antithetical to anarchism. In the long term, those groups who enter into such social contracts on a long term basis are the ones who will succeed. In other words, those people who form laws will triumph over those without them. The Law of the Strong supports this idea, since force of numbers is an easy way to increase one's strength. Modern government is based on the Law of the Strong – if you don't do as the government says, the government will exert its superior strength and put you in jail. End of story.

Ultimately, the problem with anarchism is its inveterate optimism about human nature. If everybody was a happy pacifist like Dan, Jesse and myself in the example described, the Law of the Strong would no longer apply. Unfortunately, not everybody is a happy pacifist and there is always someone with a selfish, evil nature who has access to superior strength to other people. The combined strength of society can keep such people in line, but not an anarchist state which, by its very nature, is opposed to the idea of combining the strength of many into one.

This concludes my rant about why anarchism is a bad idea. If you have something to add, for or against it, that's what the comment option on this website is for.

Graduation Fair and Angst

2007-03-02T03:57:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was not a happy day. It wasn't unhappy, strictly speaking, but it wasn't happy. The weather is partly to blame – very grey and overcast – but mostly, I think, this general feeling stems from the sense of there being too little in the morning and too much in the evening. To wit, before two there was almost nothing and then everything started.

I went to the library in hopes of finding the SMP archives at last. I have since been informed that they're not in the library but are tucked away in the school archives beneath Calvert. The catalog is poorly set up and, I suspect, inaccurate. You can't search by author, only by mentor, year completed, title, and department. I can find no traces of either Grindcore or Johanna's SMP, nor of Dave's. Someone has not been very thorough here... I'll try again on Monday when the woman responsible for the archives has returned from her conference.

Then came my King Arthur class and a discussion of Malory. That was pretty good, but then I had to go directly to the Grad Fair, where my wallet was threatened on numerous occasions and my sanity at other times. People routinely asked, "How're you?" as part of the niceties of conversation and my response was, "I'm at a Grad Fair. Other than that, I'm ok." It's not that I don't want to graduate, I do, but I'd feel a hell of a lot better about it with an acceptance letter (any acceptance letter) already in hand.

After that it was off to Geology, where glaciation and mass removal were at the order of the day. Afterwards, I discovered via Facebook that Christina LaVecchia has invited me – and everybody else on her friends list, I imagine – to her senior recital. It's the weekend after spring break and it's in Bethlehem. No, not Bethlehem, Israel but it's just as far out of my reach. Four hours and forty minutes of driving, Mapquest mercilessly informed me. Four hours and forty minutes puts it on the moon as far as I'm concerned. On a normal weekend? And me without a car of my own? The answer to whether I can go is there, I just don't want to say it out loud quite yet.

When last we left our intrepid hero...

2007-02-27T08:52:00.000-06:00

The weather around here has been very pretty lately – crisp and cold but not excessively so. Consequently, I went down to the Point on Friday and took photographs; on Saturday I wound up taking two since I went on one in the early afternoon and then on another one shortly thereafter when Dave Marsich came over to Maggie Dodge. Since I now have so many new pretty and vaguely artsy photographs of the campus, I figured I'd reward anyone faithful enough to still read this blog with a few of them. For some reason, black and white photography seems to look inherently better than color photography at this time of the year.

We're down to our last bread until after spring break. I've gotten a lot of use out of that breadmaker my grandmother gave me – we've gone through two bags of bread flour, one bag of whole wheat and two bags of gluten. I'm holding off on buying more flour since I've got five pounds of bread flour waiting for me at home that I forgot to bring to campus after winter break and so it seems a bit foolish to go buying new flour when I'll have more flour than I can possibly use in a matter of weeks. It's certainly nice to be able to make bread whenever I want, not to mention the fact that the whole house smells like bread when I'm done.

Finally, SMP work progresses well. I'll be done by spring break, my illness not withstanding. I've gotten all the cultural background stuff done, so now it's really just the compare and contrast, the thesis and a bit of cleaning up in the introduction left. After that, it's editing, polishing, a Powerpoint and two presentations, one for the International Languages and Cultures department and one for the English department. I'm so close to getting done, I can almost feel it.

Class Photos

2007-02-22T10:57:00.000-06:00

So early this morning - well, early by our standards - everybody got up, showered, got dressed up and then we walked down to the campus center to get our senior pictures taken. The price was $14, but it was worth it if only for the photographer. She was immensely entertaining. Basically, imagine the biggest stereotypical photographer mannerisms you can – "work it, yes, that is what I want," etc. That's pretty much what we had.

Her instructions and comments - mostly compliments - were hilarious, which meant that ultimately I stayed amused enough during the entire ordeal to (a) smile and (b) forget how silly and awkward the whole thing felt. I'm sorry, but if a photographer tells you to look as though you were full of longing or asks you to say, "Women adore me"; it's very hard to take the situation seriously. A cunning plan indeed; I take my hat off to her - she was certainly the most entertaining photographer I've ever seen.

I've decided to continue to wear my suit for the rest of the day. I'm quite pleased that (a) I got a suit back in high school when I needed it for a play and (b) that it still fits. As a result, I can clean up nice if I want to. To give you some context I'm talking about, I'm putting up pictures of me in the suit. The one to the left is from the winter dance freshman year. I've grown hoarier and grimmer since then, but the overall effect is much the same.

Dark Thoughts

2007-02-20T23:34:00.000-06:00

Well, I'm recovered. Work on my SMP didn't turn out as well or as long this week as I had planned, but I can handle that. Indeed, I'm strongly considering just scratching the Archetypes section – I just don't know enough - and salvaging what I wrote for it so I can use it to make my proposed Comparison/Contrast section even bigger. After that, it's really just a matter of writing out the Thesis section and tweaking before I'm done. Spring break will see me with a polished first draft, as planned.

As the SMP nears completion, my thoughts turn ever more and more towards graduation. The SMP is the only thing still holding me back, really. With it done, I could technically drop every class except Geology and still graduate. And while I'm technically ready to graduate, I don't want to yet. In a couple months, I hope that'll have changed. I'm comfortable here and leaving St. Mary's will mean not merely a shift in location and occupation, but a shift in lifestyle. You can't just go and visit people on a whim after college; more's the pity.

I still haven't heard anything from my grad schools, but I've got time. This is about the time of year when they start telling you why they've rejected you, qualified though you may be. I'm ready for it – I keep saying I'm going to get rejected, partially to keep from jinxing myself and partially to brace myself in case I do get rejected, which could very well happen. All I know is that once all the responses are in from my schools, there's going to be alcohol in my house.

There. Now it's time for me to go to sleep so I can get up early tomorrow and get my ashes. Huzzah for telling the world in no uncertain terms that you are a practicing Catholic!

Sick, sick, sick

2007-02-17T09:05:00.000-06:00

It would appear that Valentine's Day and I are anathema to one another. As my old xanga blog indicates, I was sick last Valentine's Day. This year, I'm in miserable shape as well, though a fair bit worse – since Wednesday (but after my post on Wednesday), I've been vomiting, aching and generally feeling miserable. That thing Dan got? Yeah, I picked it up, albeit in a slightly less vicious form.

This has thrown a huge kink into the works as far as my plans for this weekend went. Originally, this was going to be the weekend of awesome – I was going to Medieval Times on Friday and then going to see Dave on Saturday. Good clean nerdy fun. The only problem is that my stomach had other ideas. Specifically me vomiting up green bile and generally feeling like crap for most of Friday. Probably I could have forced myself out of the house to go see Dave, but the fact is that (a) it's a two hour drive to his new place of residence and (b) the mere idea of having to leave my room results in queasiness. So now John Harvey has had to drive off alone, certain to get lost without a navigator to read off the Mapquest instructions and equally certain to have a good time that I cannot take part in. Curses.

I note with certain irony that I seem to get sick on the weekends so that when Monday (and work) comes around, I'm fit as a fiddle whereas on the days when I should be able to kick back and relax, I've got nothing. As it stands, we'll have to see whether I can get any work on my SMP done this weekend; I have a bad feeling that's not in the cards either.

To everyone else, stay healthy. One sick person is more than enough.

It's late, I know. So sue me.

2007-02-14T02:04:00.000-06:00

Every Tuesday evening I go hang out with Gina Truitt and Courtney Jenkins to watch a movie. It's something that developed out of Robin Bates' American Film class, which all three of us were in. Last night it was Jaws.

Let me say one thing right up front. Independent of the movie, it's a very scary thought to imagine a big fish lurking under the water and eating people. That said, the movie was highly entertaining since we spent the entire time psychoanalysing it in terms of sexual anxiety. It's a classic example of men trying to reassert their dominance over the feminine element, as exemplified by the shark. If you ever wanted a textbook case of the vagina dentata, this movie is for you.

I'm not sure if all the stuff we said was to be found in the movie, but I'd say that a lot of it is. Plus it's an effective way to insulate yourself from the events unfolding on screen. Let's face it, watching a girl getting eaten in the water becomes a lot easier to handle if you view it as a warning parable of the dangers of lesbianism.

So I come home after that, cheerful and generally in a very good mood. I discover that Dan, my noble and handsome roommate is horrifically sick. We're talking five hours of stomach pains, vomiting, nausea, etc. We wound up calling an ambulance, which of course did wonders for my state of mind. I went to sleep quite late (around three) and kept getting woken up by phone calls from Dan's girlfriend Jess as she either updated me on what had happened to her (as I had asked her to) or asked me to let her and Dan back in early in the morning (around six).

Getting up around nine – it was very difficult – I went to my SMP meeting where my advisor informed me that, "Nothing can really go wrong at this point." That's a pretty awesome thing to hear. At present, I have 34 pages finished, with perhaps three more sections of 7+ pages left. At this rate, I'll either finish before spring break or during it. For those of you who will be on campus, I'll be presenting it twice – once for the Department of International Languages and Cultures and once for the English Department.

I then went to the Blackistone Room where we reenacted part of Pope's The Rape of the Lock. The part I am speaking of is the card game between Belinda, the rakish baron and Sir Anonyme. I wound up playing Sir Anonyme's hand, and I must say that the poor guy got shafted. He has pretty much no cards worth having.

Finally, since I'm posting a day late, I'll be gracious and give you all the link to my Valentine's Day post last year. For the record, my views have not undergone modification, despite my being in a relationship at present.

St. Scholastica's Day

2007-02-10T21:02:00.000-06:00

Today is St. Scholastica's Day, a day that I intend to celebrate henceforth (largely since it amuses me). Since this holiday has largely fallen out of practice (if, indeed, it was ever in practice), I intend to give you a brief summation of what happened on St. Scholastica's Day back in 1355.

You see, back in the fourteenth century, everybody carried knives with them. Largely this was a matter of practicality rather than a sign of hostile intent - as my grandfather will readily attest, knives are highly versatile, useful things to have on hand. At any rate, students often get into arguments, as do theologians (and a lot of these students were theologians). From time to time, somebody would decide to reinforce their arguments with cold hard steel. Death rates in Oxford at the time are said to rival those in Prohibition Chicago.

It is an ancient fact that townsfolk do not particularly like students, particularly those who use knives to enforce their opinions. Students are loud and rowdy, and they often think that they're better than the simple people they live around. So with tensions running high between the Oxford people and the Oxford students, a bunch of students went into a bar, the Swindlestock Tavern. For reasons that remain a mystery, the name was not a tip-off to the morals of the business establishment to them. The beer itself was, however - they demanded their money back on the grounds of their being cheated.

The bartender refused. Knives were drawn. Townspeople seized the opportunity to beat on the students. Students out in the street, hearing the struggle inside, rushed in to help their fellow scholars. Townspeople out on the street rushed in to help the townspeople. To cut a long story short, a massive bloodbath ensued that raged for three days until the king finally called a stop to it and obliged the townsfolk to pay an annual fine, which they did until the 19th century.

I learned this delightful story whilst I was studying in Oxford and I have decided to celebrate it with all manner of quaint rituals which I shall invent for the purpose. At present, those rituals consist of eating red jello (in memory of the blood spilled) and drinking some cider (in memory of the cider drunk). So, with no further ado, Happy St. Scholastica's Day!

SMP Talk

2007-02-07T22:06:00.000-06:00

My SMP is coming along smoothly. I'm doing it like an Oxford tutorial - writing about six or seven pages a week, going to see my advisor and then getting to work on the next essay. I like what I'm doing with it so far - I've adopted a tone that is highly academic and yet retains a sense of humor about both its subject and itself. I'm also bringing in a fair bit of my Oxford tutorials and seminars on the Middle Ages; generally speaking, I really feel like this is serving as a culmination of all my studies so far, which is, after all, what an SMP is intended to be.

The best part is how much fun working on it is. Lately, I've been in one of those academic hermit moods where all I really want to do is read and work. Social interaction is off the list of things to do; if you haven't been dead for several centuries, you're not really interesting to me. Nerdy though it may sound, I find it incredibly entertaining to sit at my computer for several hours writing about knights and slowly sipping from a cup of mead. (Which, incidentally, is probably the best beverage for steady work on a medieval subject. I mean, it's mead, for crying out loud.)

Working on this is helping squash any doubts I have about going on to grad school. This stuff makes me genuinely happy and I intend to keep on doing it, if not this next year then the year afterwards. And then, as though that wasn't enough, later on, when I'm old, grey and have received my doctorate, I'll be able to terrorize students with my essay assignments. Oh, how I'm waiting for that moment...

Filming with Dan

2007-02-04T20:02:00.001-06:00

So yesterday was another day of filming. Many is the time I have lamented the fact that at some point in the fall semester, I signed my life over to Dan by saying, "Yes, Dan, I'll be in your movie." In my defense, he claimed that it would only take two weekends. In his defense, a lot of things went wrong – people got sick, people got swamped with work and people sometimes just plain didn't show up.

The movie that I am in is a swashbuckling/kung fu epic entitled Pirate Ninja, Ninja Pirate. It deals with the tragedy and pathos encountered by two champions of truth and justice. One of them is a pirate ninja: a ninja with all the fighting abilities of a pirate. The other one is a ninja pirate: beneath his pirate exterior beats the heart of a stealthy, skillful ninja.

I myself have been cast in the role of the Ninja Pirate. It's a difficult role, but I endeavor to present it in a manner as closely matching Dan's creative vision as possible. In the process, I've spent many an hour filming, which is always a worthwhile experience but sometimes just a tad frustrating when one considers that it's a lot of time that cannot be spent on anything else. Still, if things continue to go as they did this weekend, I'll be done next week and then it's just a matter of waiting until Dan manages to finish editing.

That's all I have for you today. There'll be more nonsense from me on Tuesday.

Das Gesetz ist das Gesetz

2007-01-31T16:02:00.000-06:00

There is nothing that outrages me more than stupid people. Unfortunately, there are a lot of them out there and there a plethora of ways that they can interact with me, even when I least expect it. Working out, for example. Working out is, to my way of thinking, a very private sort of affair. You've got yourself and your lifting buddy and that's it. Be polite to other people, wait your turn for the equipment and nothing can go wrong, right?

Wrong! On Monday, we got kicked out of the weight room for wearing jeans. Apparently they're worried that this will damage the equipment. We were more amused than irritated and finished our exercises in the movement room. Later I checked and did find a rule against jeans posted, albeit in an out of the way place. No sweat, we'll just wear other pants. In fact, when we decided to go work out today, we both deliberately changed out of our jeans. I wound up wearing the sweatpants that I wear during Pirate Ninja, Ninja Pirate.

So now we get there and John is informed, this time at the door, that khakis are not permitted in the gym either. We beat a somewhat graceful retreat, John changes again and we get to work. Afterwards, I checked the rules again. Nowhere does it say anything whatsoever about khakis, as well it shouldn't - if anything is getting damaged during the workout, it'll be the khakis rather than the equipment. I've sent a polite email to ask that the online rules be updated. If they aren't in two weeks, I'm going in and working out in khakis. If they try and stop me, I'll cite the rules. If they persist in stopping me, I'll write an article for the Point News and maybe - depending on my rage - complain to a higher power. I have no problem following rules, provided those rules be clearly outlined. Das Gesetz ist das Gesetz, aber was nicht drin geschrieben steht ist nicht das Gesetz!

A Long Overdue Update

2007-01-28T17:49:00.000-06:00

I had somehow thought that I had updated since Tuesday and so I was woefully inattentive to this blog. This will change, I assure you. I'm figuring on trying a tri-weekly schedule, maybe updating every three days or so. If I can't come up with something about my life, I'll try putting up something funny instead. (Though my life can be pretty funny at times, like the time when Dan and I started hitting each other with popcorn boxes to distract the multitudes from the fact that the popcorn stand at Cole Cinema was temporarily out of popcorn.)

It sometimes feels as though work keeps descending from the skies with trumpets and fanfare. The time when I'm goofing off shrinks and yet the work I have to do doesn't. On top of that, I feel as though I've gotten definitively antisocial, rarely stirring from my house. Granted, if you consider who I used to visit all the time, you'll notice that the majority of them are either graduated or living in my house, but that's besides the point. I'm going to sacrifice some of my remaining free time to run one last D&D campaign before I graduate; perhaps I will post details of it later in another update. Suffice it to say that it's set in a sort of alternate Europe in the time of the Crusades.

Not that I'm goofing off all the time, mind. I'll be turning out around eight pages a week from now on for my SMP. If I find the time, I need to get the Drifters story arc back on its feet, though I doubt anybody but me is still interested in what's going on in there anymore. Assuming I sleep less, work more and write more (and donate plasma) I might be able to start trying to get that stuff published this summer.

And speaking of this summer, the epic C&O hike, installment two is going to happen. Dave and myself are definitely in; a few of our friends have also expressed interest. We'll see what happens. This will be the most wild part of the hike - we're marching from Hancock (already on the borders of civilization) past logging towns and through tunnels in the mountains. It's going to be great.

Here We Go Again

2007-01-23T08:19:00.000-06:00

We had snow on Sunday. I wouldn't normally mention this, particularly since it's pretty much all gone now, but it's kind of a big deal for me. This year has been woefully bereft of snow (and cold weather in general) so I take a perverse pleasure in the cold. Plus I've bought a new winter coat to replace the canary suit and found my hat, scarf and gloves in my closet, so I'm once again fully equipped to deal with the cold.

I spent most of Sunday filming Pirate Ninja, Ninja Pirate. The one flaw in this movie is that it requires the Ninja Pirate (i.e. me) to fight effectively. The Pirate Ninja - played by the skillful Zach Pajak - gets to be thoroughly, liberatingly silly. I, on the other hand, am supposed to look like I know what I'm doing. But filming went well and one of the extras and I worked out a decent fight pattern for me to follow. It won't win any national awards, but it wasn't bad for a college film. Plus we have the artsy effect of snow falling steadily down (and up) in the background.

Prince of Persia III is, unfortunately, an inferior game to the original. Fortunately, most of these flaws can be attributed to the fighting - the enemies are tougher, you have to pick up discarded weapons (which break) to be truly effective, and generally the Prince lacks the hardiness that so endeared him in the original game. The puzzles are fun as hell though - it's all about the puzzles with me. There's something about vaulting around on poles, bouncing off walls and activating inexplicable machinery that just makes me happy.

Classes are going as well as might be expected of the first week - there hasn't been enough stuff to cause me stress. As we all know, I'm good at generating work-related stress so never fear - I'll be my usual stressed out self within a week or so. SMP progress has been decent and I'm going to get another few pages done before my class at two. That said, I must betake myself off to the kitchen and get some breakfast.

Well, I'm back

2007-01-18T11:11:00.000-06:00

A new semester beckons, full of work and fun. (I'm pretty sure about the first one and rather hopeful about the second.) It's my last semester at college and strange though it is to say it, I think I'm ready to move on. I'll probably sing a different tune in May, but right now the only thing I need to feel completely secure about graduation is knowing what I'm going to do next. If I get into grad school, there will be much rejoicing and a party. If I don't, there will be much depression and sharing of misery with those of my associates who didn't get in either.

But enough of such dark thoughts. Graduation is far away and I have a blog update to make. I've tested both mixer and breadmaker with positive results - the bread was well-received as were my cookies. It's good to have kitchen technology... Communal dinners may prove to be rarer than they were last term since we have more evening classes.

Classes look as though they're going to be good this term. The King Arthur course looks good – I sincerely hope it brutally crushes the weak-willed saps who think Arthur is about chivalry and equality. Similarly, our Restoration class looks shiny; we're starting out with the Earl of Rochester (yeah, the winning chap from The Libertine). It was funny - last night, Dr. Bates showed us a movie about the Restoration (titled Restoration, simply enough) - and it felt like last term with only two people watching the movie. I also realized about a quarter of the way through that I've read the book the movie was based on, which is amusing to say the least. Finally, Geology, my final obligatory science class, is packed to the brim with seniors. I haven't seen some of these people since freshman year, so it's rather amusingly like high school in that sense.

I shall come up with an updating schedule over the course of the next few days. Until then, I bid you all a fond farewell.

Of Work and Play

2007-01-06T23:16:00.000-06:00

My mother has been kind enough to provide me with an excellent book lately and I felt compelled to recommend it further. The book in question is The Fencing Master by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. (Dave can vouch for its value; he recommended it last year.) I haven't finished it quite yet but it's excellent. It captures the feel of a good swashbuckler without sacrificing realism – the title figure is an aging fencing instructor who has been approached by a mysterious doña who wishes to learn a secret lunge he has perfected.

I have also finished playing Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. It is a truly excellent game. It lacks very little to make it perfect; indeed, I honestly have trouble thinking of a way to improve on it. It's a platformer with our heroic prince navigating a truly insane palace, swinging on poles, leaping across spaces, climbing pillars, running along walls and all whilst defeating myriad monsters and reversing time. This coming term, I hope to play the excellent sequel, The Two Thrones. (I am, of course, ignoring the existence of the miserable game between the two which will pass unnamed.)

Lest you think that all I have been doing lately is reading and videogaming, let me assure you that I have been hard at work. I've been shoveling gravel on our driveway, which was badly in need of a resurfacing; I've done about a third of so far, which amounts to over 1000 pounds of rock, assuming my math is correct. Today, my brother Stephan and I also placed our services at the disposal of our former boss, Nuwan, so that he might more easily move from his current apartment to slightly larger one.

Work has also progressed on the academic front, with me laying the groundwork for my SMP and getting all of my grad school stuff out on schedule. I am currently waiting for acceptances (or rejections, as the case may be) from Northwestern, Notre Dame and the University of Maryland. May God smile upon me in this undertaking; I would rather like to be in grad school a year from now.

Christmas Break Update 2

2007-01-03T08:40:00.000-06:00

Well, I'm back from Michigan. That trip invariably drains me - I like visiting relatives, but ten hours in the car is a lot to ask of a man. I was, however, fortunate enough on the return to sleep through the entire first half of the trip.

Whilst we were in Michigan, hobnobbing with the various characters who make up my family - because, make no mistake, none of my family members are boring - we also had the great fortune to go bowling. It was a highly successful event - everybody who went scored at least two strikes - and I have established once and for all that Stav is completely useless when applied to bowling. (I tried applying the As and Nod rune stances; after all, bowling is a game best played when you're being silly.)

I also cooked for the family. My curry was apparently a great success, but it brought home exactly how hard it is to cook for nine people at once. It gave me newfound respect for my grandmother, who had to cook for eleven on Christmas - my uncle Steve and his friend Caroline were only there on Christmas Day. Six seems to be the limit of how many people I can cook for without straining.

Speaking of cooking, I am now the proud owner of a secondhand mixer and a bread maker. I understand that most men wouldn't be happy about this, but it means that I now have theoretically unlimited access to cookies in the forthcoming semester, which is by no means something to be treated lightly. Cookies are the life-blood of a healthy mindset.

Other than that, there's not much to report. Next semester I'll probably come up with a new updating schedule to match my new class schedule. I'll keep you posted.

Dr. Mom

2006-12-23T13:30:00.000-06:00

My mother graduated yesterday. Henceforth there are two PhDs in my immediate family on this side of the ocean (I have to specify since I'm pretty sure that my uncle overseas has a doctorate); if my grad school apps are accepted the way I hope they are, I myself will be making that three PhDs in another six years or so.

I must say, it was pretty cool. I have a new reason to want a PhD - you wear pimp robes. The graduates get nice stuff, but the Deans of the schools and the students' advisors... It was like watching a Renaissance movie or something. Red, blue, gold, brown, purple... It was a riot of colors up there. Who said academia had to be drab? All I know is that now my passion for grad school has increased tenfold...

In all seriousness, it was pretty cool. There was a commencement speaker who, although he had appalling technique, made some good points about the changes that have occurred since his own graduation twenty-five years ago and speculated about what will happen twenty-five years from now. The best part was watching Mom, her colleague Sarah Melissa (a former St. Mary's graduate, incidentally) and my former boss Nuwan all finally get their doctorates. Not to sound cliché, but we're all very proud of all of them.

One final bit of randomness - several people were getting doctorates in Leisure Studies. I wonder whether I'd qualify - after all, I have devoted the last twenty-one years of my life to extensive research in that field.

Christmas Break Update

2006-12-17T21:19:00.000-06:00

After a lengthy conversation at the dinner table about the nature of blogs, I felt it was time to update my own. After all, there might be those among you would begin to think that after nearly ten days without an update, John Henry Adams must finally have met his maker. I suppose that is true in the sense that I am reunited with my mother and father, but I am very much alive, I assure you.

The big news right now is that the first grad school application has been sent off. Northwestern University at the very least knows I intend to go there. Notre Dame should follow soon, before I go to Michigan for the holidays, in fact. I'm figuring on spending a couple of hours tomorrow to see whether I should hedge my bets and add a couple more schools to the list. That'll mean bothering professors for letters again – something that I find distasteful, seeing how I pretty much promised them I was done with all that – but on the other hand I like the idea of having five possibilities to get accepted rather than merely three.

Recently, I've rediscovered that classic old radio show, The Shadow. For those of you who don't listen to radio shows that went off the air decades before you were born, the Shadow is a detective with "the hypnotic power to cloud men's minds so they cannot see him," though it should be noted that he seems capable of clouding animal's minds as well. At any rate, thanks to some scientific research and yogi training in India, he's managed to turn invisible. Early episodes made him capable of mind-reading as well, but that power got ditched after a while.

Now, I'm not saying that this is high literature. Quite the contrary, in fact. More often than not, I can pick out the villain just by the voice actor playing him. On some level, that silliness is what draws me to the show these days. It's sort of like playing a video game, except that you can go do other stuff while you're listening to the show. At some point, I should go try to find some CDs of Gunsmoke. Now there's a quality radio show...

But enough of my rambling. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I emerge from my cocoon

2006-12-08T22:40:00.000-06:00

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. I remain alive and reasonably well. The essays are finished, the majority of the headaches for grad school applications are vanishing Â though, like the Hydra's heads, new ones grow to replace the ones I have dealt with - and my work-crazed brain is starting to encounter that blissfuloccurrencee known as free time (and not quite knowing what to do with it).

People are throwing parties to celebrate the end of term. Some people (like JaniceChenn) are graduating a semester early and that thought saddens me. Partially because they won't be around anymore once they've graduated and partially because it brings home with the force of a sledge hammer that I myself don't have that much longer left. I think that's one reason why I've been shirking my grad school application duties and why when I forced myself to go through them yesterday my heart sank. I want to go to grad school, I really do, but going to grad school necessitates leaving college, something I am loath to do.

The real world scares me. I'm confident that everything will go well once I reach it – the past year abroad has taught me to rely on Providence like a 17th century Puritan – but that requires change. Like the dons of Oxford, I am very much opposed to the idea of change. It upsets things. Sure, sometimes (indeed, almost always) change means that things get better but it still means that things have gotten different.

Ah well. Enough pre-graduation angst. I'm going to go do something more productive, though I'm not sure what it will be yet. Expect another post some time later, but probably not before the end of term – I'm going home this Friday and I doubt I'll have time to update before then.

A pot of cheese

2006-11-28T13:56:00.000-06:00

We've been reading about the Stoics and Epicureans in philosophy lately and I must admit that I really like both of them. The Epicureans are, to be very vague and general, a sort of hedonistic ascetics. They idealize pleasure but simultaneously believe in strong self-discipline and simplifying your life. In other words, don't throw huge parties but seek pleasure instead in a pot of cheese. Epicurus did like his pot of cheese...

The Stoics, by contrast, are rationalists who also believe in self-control and discipline. They idealized rationality; you can have emotions but don't ever let them affect your actions. They were also big believers in the idea of fate and that people can become happy not because of events in their lives but by adjusting their attitude to accept what happens easily. You are responsible for your attitude towards things and it is your attitude that determines whether you're happy or not. Sounds like sound advice, if you ask me.

Despite all these ancient philosophers telling me to just take it easy and let things flow, I'm still stressed - though perhaps less stressed than I would be if I hadn't read them. Therefore, I think that updates on this blog will be sporadic at best for the next few weeks. Finals week approaches, not to mention the deadlines for grad school applications. I'm going to shoot for having everything on that front completed by this weekend. Ideally, it'd be in the mail by next Monday, but I don't live in an ideal world and so that probably won't be happening. Still, I intend to have all applications filled out at the very least.

That said, I hope everybody else does well while I hunker down and get my bloody work done. I both yearn for and dread Christmas vacation, for then all this nonsense will be done but I will be facing my last semester of college.

Thanksgiving Come & Gone

2006-11-24T22:49:00.000-06:00

Thanksgiving vacation is so unspeakably short. It's a paltry five days, something that hadn't really occurred to me when I was at St. Mary's and longing for vacation. Still, it's nice to be home again, goofing off with my brothers and chilling out. It somehow never occurs to me how bizarre my brothers and I can be. We're all reasonably normal on our own (at least I like to think we are), but when we're together, a sort of critical mass for spontaneous craziness is reached, often with hilarious results.

My mother has now officially handed in all her stuff for her doctorate and so we are now technically capable of referring to her as "Dr. Seidl-Adams" whenever we want her to pass the potatoes. She strongly disapproves of this, of course, and so I won't be doing it. At least, not very often.

At any rate, we celebrated Mom's completion of her degree at our traditional Thanksgiving dinner with one of my dad's colleagues, Carmen. We've been eating Thanksgiving dinner at her house since forever - seriously, if you check the records, you'll notice that before the Mayflower was even built, our ancestors were celebrating Thanksgiving with her ancestors - and this year was no exception. The food is good and the company isn't bad either - at least one of her two sons typically eats with us, both of whom are pretty cool guys.

I'm Ready To Give Thanks

2006-11-20T14:09:00.000-06:00

Well, Thanksgiving approaches. There is still too much food in the fridge - we have to empty it before we leave - but I'm making meatloaf tonight and stirfry tomorrow for whichever one of my parents shows up to take John Harvey and myself home. I'm more than ready to go home; I want to spend a week relaxing, working on my SMP and doing grad school applications without any further distractions or worries. I have no doubts that stuff will arise but at present I can just fantasize about how idyllic my time at home will be.

A funny thing happened this afternoon: So last night, Dan wanted to rouse us out of our post-game euphoria to carry the cardboard out to the recycling. We told him we'd do it today and Dan gave way. Today, I gather it all up into my arms and go outside. I turn to ask Dan whether I have to carry it all the way to the Waring Commons parking lot and he says yes. He also says, "You'll never make it all the way."
At this point, a pick-up truck pulls up behind me – it's the recycling people. "Is that all cardboard?"
"Yes."
"Throw it in the back of the truck."
I was laughing for over a minute at Dan - I walked at most eight feet with that cardboard. It's the little things that make life fun.

Last night Dave ran a one-shot in 2nd edition D&D. It was awesome. Dave is, in many ways, my idea of what the ideal GM should be - he's good at describing things, he's creative and above all, he doesn't make you feel like you're merely pawns in some great, incredibly depressing cosmic struggle between the forces of evil and astronomical evil. Plus I really like playing in 2nd edition - it feels like I'm using an antique, like I'm using a flintlock musket rather than a rifle.
We were a ragtag band of heroes (with a villain thrown in for good measure) in a magical medieval England. There was magic, but it was subtle magic rather than the usual flashy stuff that modern fantasy seems to abound with. Trouble was brewing - the king's son had vanished mysteriously and there was a plot afoot against Good King Henry. So, naturally, being heroes and such, we pitted our skills against the forces of darkness and saved the kingdom from a terrible fate. Hurrah for Dave and hurrah for Welsh paladins.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

A Day Off (Sort Of)

2006-11-16T11:20:00.000-06:00

Well, I have the day off. My philosophy professor is out of town and so I don't have class. This is a very odd feeling - technically, I should be very productive right now but on the other hand, vacation is so close I can almost touch it. There's a big part of me that just wants to put off everything until then, when (in turn) the urge to put things off until school resumes will be almost overpowering. Before you start throwing things at me, however, allow me to offer that I've done some reading for my SMP and I have a meeting with Glaser later in the evening for Creative Writing to talk about my midterm portfolio. Plus the day isn't even half over yet - though the overcast skies and general dimness of the atmosphere might lead one to disagree with that.

I saw an excellent movie the other day for my American Film class. It's called Limbo; it's a John Sayles movie about, well, it's hard to define. The movie keeps changing its genre (but not its feel) on you, so that in the beginning you're not sure if it's going to be a movie about capitalism (it's not, so don't worry), a romantic comedy or a survival movie. It somehow pulls all this off without losing a continuity of feel, which is very nice. It's superbly acted and I heartily recommend those of you who can watch this movie.

That's all of I've got for you right now. I'm going to go try to be more productive now - I've reached my quota for procrastination for the next few hours.

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul Ends

2006-11-14T14:25:00.000-06:00

Whenever I am sick, the notion of a time when I wasn't sick becomes increasingly hard to visualize. I know that there was a time when I was fully healthy, but it seems to belong to an ancient, arcane past or maybe to stories that old men tell around campfires. I become trapped in the now when I am sick, unable to imagine a time before or after the time I was sick. Parallels could be drawn between this state and the afterlife – while you're alive, it's hard to imagine a time before or after life even though such a time exists. At least, I hope it does.

This was not a good weekend for me. I spent most of it barely able to function, what with having a headache, a periodic fever and an inability to swallow without pain. The lymph nodes at the base of my throat are swollen, which is something that apparently happens quite often but I'd never felt so strongly before. I had difficulty sleeping and difficulty staying awake. Indeed, one might refer to this time as the long dark tea-time of my soul, to steal a line from Douglas Adams.

But that's all in the past now and I'm emerging from my illness, perhaps a little thinner than beforehand – I didn't have much of an appetite and so the most I was eating on some days were soup or warm milk - perhaps a little grimmer but still alive. I don't have any work left to catch up on - though the dishes in the sink have sorely missed my kindly ministrations - and so I can handle the coming week before vacation without too much fear. Incidentally, this marks the first college vacation that I'm genuinely looking forward to. Not that I don't like days off, but I generally don't look forward to going home. This Thanksgiving, though, I'm ready to go home and get some physical distance between myself and the place where I've been ill. Plus it'll be nice to see family again.

In closing, I've cleaned the rust off of two of my cast-iron cooking utensils. The big skillet was fine, but the little one and the big black pot were showing signs of rust. Why? I'm not sure, but I do know that the big skillet has seen a lot more grease and was consequently better seasoned (and thus more likely to resist rust) than the others. Here's a tip for those of you who have rusty cast-iron pots - equal portions salt and oil are great for scrubbing that stuff away.

Sick again

2006-11-09T09:23:00.000-06:00

At times, it feels as though I am merely existing from day to day. I'm not complaining – I have an annoying tendency to live either in the past or in the future but not in the present - but it makes me feel remarkably shortsighted if the farthest I can plan or think ahead is a day. I've also momentarily lost my sense of what day of the week it is – I woke up this morning and was uncertain whether it was Wednesday or Thursday for a split second.

I developed a killer migraine this afternoon when we went grocery shopping. At times like this, I hate my body with a violent passion. So much of my ability to adequately enjoy life and my surroundings depends on all or at least most of my body's parts working perfectly, and sometimes it feels as though something is broken all the time. At times like this, I wish I could just take my body into a garage or something and tell a mechanic to fix it. Alas, this happy event cannot occur. On the plus side, we have groceries and my body is slowly but surely fixing itself. Cars don't do that.

That's all I've got for you all today. Perhaps a more coherent post will occur next Tuesday.

Remember, remember, the 5th of November...

2006-11-07T18:00:00.000-06:00

The photograph that I have conveniently placed here for you to feast your eyes upon is from my hike with Dave Marsich; I'm putting the picture up in homage to the fact that I have finally completed and showed my slideshow of the hike, much to the delight of my friends and admirers. Therefore, I felt it would be nice to put up a picture of me in all my hiking glory, an intrepid adventurer of undaunted spirit. Sixty-some miles in five days; certainly not a bad way to spend a week. I'm doing the remaining 120 miles of the trail too, with the sixty miles from Hancock to Cumberland slated for this coming summer. Hearty people who are willing to march sixty miles through the woods without showering or a bed should sign up with their local Dave or John.

Sunday was Guy Fawkes' Day, the 5th of November. While there may be better ways to celebrate the 5th than by watching V for Vendetta, I think that this was most certainly an excellent way to do it. Seeing the movie brought back memories of Oxford - that's where I saw the movie for the first time - but somehow didn't depress me. Rewatching movies that I saw for the first time with Oxford people tends to make me nostalgic and then restless, as though through sufficient pacing I can turn time backwards and chill out in the JCR with my old cohorts again. I'm not sure whether to be pleased or irritated that this is the case, but at any rate it wasn't the case for V for Vendetta. At any rate, it's an excellent movie which you should watch even if it isn't the 5th of November.

That said, it's time for me to vanish into the darkness of my room to write several pages of highly intelligent essay on Dietrich von Bern and King Arthur. It's been almost a month since my last meeting with Professor LeBlans and clearly I need to get back into the groove and pile more work on myself. May your own workload be lighter than mine.

Ah, Fall. When the leaves turn colors and schools start killing more kids...

2006-11-03T16:17:00.000-06:00

It's strange how my workload, while still pressing, has become less of a novelty. I tend to blow fuses for the first week and then accept my lot with quiet grace and dignity. Mind, that doesn't mean that my workload has decreased significantly from what it was a week or so ago, but it does mean that I've gotten better at dealing with it. Boredom is a luxury I can enjoy again, albeit only every now and then in unpredictable bursts.

John Harvey and I went on a walk through our campus the other day, taking pictures of the trees. Fall has definitely arrived, with all the natural fireworks that that entails. This is the last time I will watch fall come to St. Mary's, and that is both a saddening and a strangely encouraging thought. On the one hand, it means college is drawing to a close. On the other hand, it also means that I'll be moving on soon, to bigger and better things.

The big news for today is that the Ussura sourcebook has arrived in the mail. (I had ordered it as a reward for my prowess on the GREs.) For those of you who don't know, I am a big fan of the role-playing system 7th Sea, a swashbuckling game set in an alternate form of 17th century Europe. The game's rules are flexible and the atmosphere of the games is great, but I think I'd like the game even if if it weren't for these elements. You see, the sourcebooks are awesome. I've read novels that weren't written as well as some of these rulebooks are.

Ussura is the equivalent of Russia, currently ruled by a czar who is a mixture of Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible. I'm not going to lie, I've never been particularly enthralled by Ussura. Sort of like real-life Russia, it's a freezing white wasteland without much civilization in it. Ussura wins its wars thanks to divine intervention – I'm not exaggerating, there's a goddess helping them out with horrific winters and the like. This sourcebook, while not the best in the collection, is really good. To give you a vague idea of how good it is, I took off one shoe to scratch my foot whilst reading it and subsequently walked around in only one shoe for about an hour. It's awesome.

Much has happened in the last few days

2006-10-31T13:16:00.000-06:00

Long time no update; I guess it's time to correct that. A lot of things have happened since the GRE and it's time to let people know what they are.

First off, filming on Sunday was awesome. Everyone we needed showed up, we got more stuff filmed than we had originally intended to, it was silly but not needlessly so and we were done within two hours. Amazing. If filming was like this every time, filming would be entirely in the fun category and not partially in the obligation one. As an unexpected bonus, I felt like a Final Fantasy character while I was carrying the tripod around - big weapon, earring, piratey clothes... Why oh why can't filming always be like this?

On top of all that, Tray has returned to our lives. I was eating lunch on Monday with Alyssa, Katie and some of the Shield Maidens and all of a sudden Clare freaks out. "What's wrong?" we ask. "It's Tray!" she replied, pointing at Katie's tray. Sure enough, there were the letters SM etched into the tray's rim. I promptly switched trays before Katie knew what had happened and then walked out of the Great Room with the tray tucked under my arm. I felt like a hardened criminal, half-expecting alarm bells to go off, but it was totally worth it. Tray has returned to Maggie Dodge. The kingdom of old shall be restored; ancient prophecies shall be fulfilled at last.

The Masquerade Dance was in DPC last night. Once run by the English Club, it was put on this year by Tolkien Society and the Jane Austen Society. The dance went on for hours, perhaps one hour too many - everyone was exhausted at the end. This marks the first dance that I've had a date to, so that's kind of nice. DPC is a strange building though - it seems soaked in nostalgia and old memories, not all of them mine, but all of them still palpable when you're not in motion.

I was the only one to show up to Stav today –– everyone else was too exhausted to come. Consequently it was a one-on-one session where she checked all my stances for errors and taught me secrets of the universe so powerful that if I were to fully apply them, Ragnarök would occur on a miniature scale in my immediate vicinity. Additionally, there was the Chili Cookoff today. To give you an impression of how powerful our chili (the Torch of Gondor) was, allow me to indicate that when I left the kitchen briefly to go talk to Robin Bates about my classes next semester, he could smell the chili on me. Fire was crystalized into pure flavor, herbs writhed in the boiling cauldron and ancient incantations were spoken.

We did not win, but only because of costume - we didn't realize that dressing up was something we would be rated on rather than merely something people were going to do for fun. Ah well. We won both spiritually and tastefully – everyone who tried our chili maintained it was the spiciest and the best.

Finally, Daniel Blair and I have resolved our long-standing debate over who is manlier through a fencing duel - we hired fencers to fight in our names. I called upon Clare (also known as "the Butcher") and Dan got "Killer Kyle." The fight was close but in the end, God chose to favor Dan's case. I have accepted defeat - trial by combat never lies.

Victory at last

2006-10-26T00:01:00.000-05:00

So today was the GRE, the test that all good undergrad students take in the hopes that they too will be able to go on to grad school. It looms up over us all like a dark cloud, ready to let loose its lightnings upon those who fail to meet its exacting requirements. And so there I was, having taken only a paltry few practice exams to prepare myself for its power.

I got Jesse out of his afternoon class so that we could get there in time. By two o'clock, we were on the road, our iPod our only companion on the long trek to College Park. Once there, we had to navigate the bizarre labyrinth that is the University of Maryland, in search of that mystical site, the GRE Testing Station in the Shoemaker Building. I got in, signed in, and was promptly set to work on the test.

For over three hours I toiled away at that computer, bereft of all forms of comfort. All of my possessions except for my passport had been taken from me and locked away in a small locker, out of my reach. (Knowing that they would do this, I had briefly toyed with the idea of tattooing all the important formulas and mathematical symbols onto my body. Had they asked, I would have maintained that I was a Pythagorean seeking to become one with the mathematics underlying the universe. This did not prove necessary.) It was a dismal, grim existence.

But I persevered and plugged through, finishing up around 7:30. I hit the buttons to see my test scores and felt a weight fall from my heart. Verbal: 620. Quantitative: 680. That's right, somehow I got a higher score on the mathematical portion than I did on the verbal. I'm not sure how or why; I anticipate much ribbing from my more mathematically inclined family members.

Suffice it to say that I was ecstatic. When Jesse finally showed up to pick me up around 8:30, there was much rejoicing and then we went to get dinner at a place called, suitably enough, Plato's Diner where we (a) ran into Dave eating with a friend and (b) had some of the most awesome buffalo wings ever.

Perhaps the best way to describe my current mood is to quote the old TV miniseries of the Odyssey:

"See, you gods of sea and sky - I conquered Troy! I, a man of flesh and blood! I do not need you now. I can do anything."

Blowing Fuses

2006-10-22T12:54:00.000-05:00

So my current state of mind is a far cry from the optimism that prompted me to post out of schedule on Tuesday. To put it succinctly, I have been blowing mental fuses since then. Before I go back to that happy business, I'm going to postpone the inevitable by updating my blog. When next you hear from me, it'll probably be Thursday and stuff will have settled down a fair bit.

You see, not only do I have the GRE hanging over my head like the Sword of Damocles, but I also have to write a paper on Plato's Republic as applied to St. Mary's (due on Monday) and a rough draft of an equally long essay about Star Wars and its historical context (also due on Monday). I also have to help Dan film a brilliant allegory of the proletariat and its struggle against the oppressing masses (Pirate Ninja, Ninja Pirate), and filming with Dan is always highly time consuming. On top of all that, I had a potluck dinner last night for which I cooked Tandoori chicken. Now, don't get me wrong, I wanted to do all of these things but they all just kept chipping away at my sanity.

So yeah, I'm busy, busy, busy. On the plus side, it'll all be over come Wednesday evening.

On Graduation

2006-10-17T15:35:00.000-05:00

Well, you guys are all going to hate me. I, John Henry Adams, have just gone through the credits I shall need to graduate on time. This is always a scary time in every senior's life, when he realizes that he has one, just one semester to take all the remaining classes he has to take to fulfill his major and general education requirements. I know people in their junior years who are already worried about this; there are plenty of people who have consistently been screwed over by requirements.

So now I imagine you're all saying, "Right, John, cut to the chase. What do you have to take to graduate?" Rest assured, I shall tell you, though the revelation may lead to disemboweling cutlasses being sharpened. My remaining requirements for gradutation are as follows:

1. Successful completion of my SMP.
2. A science with a lab. (In my case, Geology.)
3. Survival.

That's right, I have to do my SMP and take my final science requirement. Other than that, I'm completely done. The classes I'm taking next semester (and, for that matter, most of the ones I'm taking this semester) are really just for fun. Doing that extra semester in Oxford means that I've got more credits than I really have a right to have. In the words of Applecore in Lord of the Hats, I'm a super-senior with fries on the side.

Just felt I should gloat about that online for a while.

Recently, in John Henry Adams's life...

2006-10-16T12:38:00.000-05:00

Well, it's finally happened. I, John Henry Adams, have leaned back too far in a chair while reading. One moment, the chair was at a 135˚ angle, the next moment, it was lying on the ground and I was left floating somewhat foolishly in midair. Then, in accord with the First Law of Cartoon Thermodynamics – any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation - I came down hard on the chair. As a result, I've got a painful bruise on my lower back on the lefthand side.

In other news, I went berserk on Facebook this morning and started posting short messages and hellos on the boards of pretty much every CMRS person I know. I must admit that, for all its stalkerish nature, Facebook can be nifty if you're trying to stay in touch with people who are too far away to see face to face. I'm going to be careful and refrain from watching the slideshows - no point in lapsing into a fit of Oxford nostalgia.

Dave and I completed recording on the C&O trail slideshow the other day, so in theory we'll be able to present it to the anxious masses in a few weeks. I say a few weeks because three of the Shield Maidens won't be on campus next Saturday evening, the date we had originally planned on doing it. Perhaps the Friday before Halloween; it appears that two Saturdays from now is both the Masquerade Dance and Hallowgreens, the huge drunken party on the Greens. We'll see how that goes.

I'm hunkering down for the GREs right now. It's not going to be fun, I can already sense that, but with any luck I'll get a good set of grades and get into the schools I want to. I just figured I'd let you guys know why updates may be sporadic. In the meantime, enjoy the new headers I've put up.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories

2006-10-13T09:17:00.000-05:00

The only thing lately that I feel like mentioning is that I've gone to a play version of Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. The main character, Haroun, is the son of the great Rashid Khalifa, a famous storyteller. But when his mother runs away from home, his father enters into a depression in which his famous Gift of Gab vanishes away and he cancels his subscription to the Sea of Stories.

As Haroun learns, anyone can tell stories, but if you want to tell a really good one, then you need fuel. You drink water from the Sea of Stories - found on Earth's second moon, Kahani - and the steam fills you up with inspiration. In his attempts to get his father's subscription renewed, Haroun gets embroiled in a bitter war between the Guppees - talkative, cheerful people who live in perpetual sunlight - and the Chupwalas - silent, grim people who live in eternal night. It quickly becomes apparent that Khattam-Shud - the Prince of Silence, Foe of Speech, the Arch-enemy of Speech and language itself - is plotting to destroy not merely the Guppees but the Ocean of Stories itself. And into all of this comes one young boy in his pajamas.

All in all, the production was pretty good. Not great, mind, but pretty good. They incorporated a lot of Indian dance and hand gestures into the show, which was kind of cool, and they used narrators liberally throughout the whole thing. This all created the impression that it was all a story being told to the audience rather than something happening in front of them, in keeping with the whole theme of story-telling. They also had shadow puppets - gotta love shadow puppets - and reasonably nice costumes. It seems that everybody with the exception of Haroun and Rashid (neither of whom played other roles) had a single basic costume that they could change by adding things on top to indicate they were someone else. The only costume that really impressed me was the one of Butt the Hoopoe, which was essentially a coat and tails, with long streamers on the arms and a feathery shirt. Oh, and goggles. I want that costume.

To DC and Back: An Assclown Reunion

2006-10-09T17:37:00.000-05:00

Thank the good Lord that we have a long weekend. I'm not sure whether I could have handled this reunion and gone back to class on Monday morning. Thanks to Robin Bates however - thrice praised be his name - we students at St. Mary's get a four day Fall Break and so I can afford to do work tomorrow without having to panic because I spent Saturday and Sunday either asleep or in Washington and D.C. What a relief that I could thus enjoy my CMRS reunion to the fullest.

I went in sick - my cold came back with a vengeance on Friday afternoon (typical) - but lightened up under the influence of Christina's giggle, Carolyn's facial expressions and Jason's sarcasm. It appears my reputation has spread beyond the boundaries of St. Mary's campus - one of Carolyn's housemates, upon being introduced to me, said, "So you're John Henry Adams. I've heard a lot about you." The most I could get out of Carolyn was that stories have been circulating about me as "a German philosopher," whatever that means.

Christina and I stayed at Catholic University with Carolyn and Jason until Monday morning. In the process, we were part of a big birthday party for Carolyn during which I "pulled a Daniel" which is my current term for playing drinking games the way Dan Blair, my roommate, does. Basically, you play the game following all the rules, with one slight exception - your glass contains nothing but water. You go to the bathroom a lot and can be heartily amused by watching everybody else get wasted. Truly this is the best way to play a drinking game.

We additionally went to a really nice café in Georgetown called Sequoia's. It was expensive - I knew my wallet was going to bleed the minute I looked at the seats. I checked the menu and it was bad, but some of the stuff was in my price range. Sort of. So I order my food and promptly get a repeat of what happened to me in Bath - my food was late. Having checked with the waiter, we discover that the kitchen was completely out of the chicken cajun sandwich that I had decided to get. The hostess comes over. Myself, I'm in a good mood since I had been toying with another option anyway and I wasn't too hungry. (Now comes the best part.) As compensation for the whole mix-up with my order, I not only got something else rushed out to me within minutes but I also got it completely free of charge. Suddenly, lunch tasted twice as good.

We also discovered that the legal drinking age is not 21. It's 21 years and 24 hours; restaurants are apparently not allowed to serve you alcohol until the day after your birthday. A strange state of affairs, but one that doesn't bother me since (a) I'm already several months over 21 and (b) I prefer to drink water anyway. The only person it affected was Carolyn, who didn't really want something alcoholic that badly anyway. We discovered this truth at California Pizza Kitchen, a place that reminded me strongly of Pizza Express in Oxford except for thenoticeablee lack of Shakespearean wall paintings.

My conclusion - it was a good way to meet up with old friends again, particularly since I can (as mentioned previously) do my work tomorrow rather than freaking out. We really must do this again some other time.

I Win At Life

2006-10-05T11:44:00.000-05:00

Ah, a blog post that is not all about doom and destruction. Sure, there's some doom and destruction in here but not all that much of it and relatively little that is directed at me. If you were looking for an angsty post full of suffering and despair, I'm sorry, but first off I tend not to post that sort of thing anyway and secondly it's not really in my nature right now.

John and I went to Philosophy class and got our exams back. Taber wasn't there; he just left the tests there to be given to us. The class got toasted. I mean, one guy didn't even get a 50%. Me, I got lucky. I got a 97 on the test because I lost ten points on an essay. Pretty much everyone else seems to have suffered; fortunately, John Harvey pulled through with a pretty good grade. I was reminded of something Norlock apparently once said - "Taber likes to give out C's like they're candy." It was a hard philosophy test, make no mistake, and the fact that I had gotten up at 6 am to go to the first Stav lesson hadn't precisely helped.

Additionally, Fall break is coming up this weekend. Four days of peace... Sure, there'll be work to do but I can finally unwind. I didn't really get a chance to do that last weekend; I was always on the move or entertaining old CMRS friends. Plus there's the CMRS mini-reunion this Saturday to look forward to, and I can look forward to it since I'll have all of Monday and Tuesday to recharge from it.

The house is getting cleaned, which is also a pleasant change. Multiple pens have appeared from the mists (wow, that sounded like a computer RPG), the Darkon weapons are in order, and Dan is going to flip out when he sees how much neater it is. (Especially since he's been the one pushing for us to do it in the first place and he's spending pretty much the entire day out of the house doing work and such.)

Finally, I have a girlfriend now. That is all I have to say about that; I don't believe in gushing about such things to the Internet, but it's a fairly major event in my life and so I figured I should give you all a heads up.

Books and Orange Juice

2006-10-02T09:01:00.000-05:00

I am detecting a sort of karmic cycle here - every two updates on this blog, I get sick. Fortunately, my current ailment is nothing serious, only a matter of a stuffed nose, but that vicious and infamous disease, the Plague of Sniffles, is going through my townhouse. I'll beat this with science - I'm going to pump my system so full of orange juice that inobservant botanists will think I'm a large, deformed citrus fruit.

In further news, Amanda Machi's visit went well. I've heard an amusing story about me that even I didn't remember - apparently Abbey and a couple of her friends were watching Silence of the Lambs in the JCR late one night when the door from the kitchen flew open and I came striding into the room. Held aloft in my hand was a large knife. I nodded at them and continued through the door towards my room. This was an exceedingly creepy thing to have happen; fortunately, I know that there was a perfectly rational explanation for it. The only reason I would ever take a "large knife" to my room would be because I had some cake there and wanted to cut a slice. Mystery solved.

Yesterday I went to Baltimore for the Book Festival. It was very nice - perhaps a touch smaller than I had expected, but I got several books for very little money. (As though I don't have enough to read as it is.) We also went to the Constellation, a big old 19th century ship in the Baltimore harbor. It's not the Dove but she'll do. My return to campus was late and left little time for me to do much more than eat dinner, get my work done and go to sleep. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go get some more orange juice in my system.

The Cloak Workshop

2006-09-29T19:08:00.000-05:00

As threats have been made against my life by dashing Castillian swordsmen, it seems to me suitable that I should update this journal. I recognize the lateness of the update, for which I am profoundly sorry, but circumstances beyond my control have dictated that I should be somewhat lax in my duties as chronicler of Osgiliath.

So, what has been happening since last Tuesday? Well, for starters, I'm memorizing the younger futhark runes and subsequently their martial applications. Stav, at least at present, resembles a sort of strange Nordic tai chi. I stand facing north and east alternately, breathing deeply and making slow gestures all the while. I've been using it as stress relief, which is quite odd considering how it stems from a religion that predicts the death and destruction of all that is good and pure in this world.

I must admit that this past week has been more than usually stressful. Part of it may have been the philosophy exam that I took on Tuesday. Not that it was bad – I felt as though I had an answer for pretty much every question on the test – but after answering about a third of the questions, I just wanted to get out of that room. I had had it up to here with Parmenides, Zeno and all their ilk.

It took spending money to snap me out of the slump. I purchased about twelve yards of fabric for the Tolkien Society cloak workshop; thanks to Alyssa's skilled aid, I have made a shiny cloak that radiates awesome like a lantern scattering light. Naturally, I'll be wearing it to my Stav lesson, complete with runes on my staff, afterwards.

The cloak workshop tonight was a lot of fun. I like working with fabric. Granted, I wasn't permitted to go anywhere near the sewing machines, but I liked cutting the fabric and sewing clasps onto my cloak. Due to a few thoughtless comments by Amelia when I mentioned wanting to change (due to the low temperature), I spent most of the evening resplendent in classy pinstripe. My very air spoke of refinement and dignity. When we took a break halfway through to go to the Improv Show, I immediately raised the classiness of the performance by an astronomical figure.

Sick 'n' Stav

2006-09-26T07:21:00.000-05:00

To anybody who checked this blog in vain yesterday, my apologies. I've had a lot on my plate - and technically still do - what with having a philosophy exam later today, knowing that I wouldn't get much sleep tonight and getting ill. I've contracted one of those infamous diseases where you really have no symptoms except a feeling of being sick - I awoke yesterday to nausea, a stuffed nose and a sore throat. Nothing serious enough to make me miss class, but still bad enough to make enjoying the day difficult at best.

But today was all right, even though I had to get up at 6 am. I think a reason why it didn't hurt as bad as I expected was because I knew that it was coming. As I got into bed last night, I thought repeatedly as I went to sleep, "I must get up at 6 am tomorrow. I must get up at 6." As a result, getting up was ok. Still not happy, but ok.

Why did I have to get up so early, you may ask? Well, I've started taking a martial art on a provisional basis. Every Tuesday - assuming I keep doing it, of course - I'm going to have to get up early so I can be down at the gym from 6:45 until 7:30. All of my housemates and a couple of my other friends are involved; we make up about half the class. What martial art are we studying? Well, it's a Norwegian staff fighting style called "Stav" based heavily on different stances based on the various runes of the Younger Futhark. Today, we just started doing the stances, but suffice it to say that staffs are now on the shopping list for the week.

So, yeah. That's my update.

On The Nature Of College Time

2006-09-21T08:55:00.000-05:00

One of the weird things about college time is how it's both long and short at the same time. You can experience this phenomenon in other places besides college, but nowhere is it as pronounced as it is at college. Days speed by without any seeming passage of time. You turn your back for just a second and it's already evening and you wonder, "Where has the day gone?"

That, and deadlines have a tendency to be far away until suddenly, without warning, they come hurtling towards you, ready to crush you with impending gloom. (In my case, those deadlines are the self-imposed ones about when to look at grad schools; every time I do it, I feel as though I'm stabbing myself repeatedly in the stomach with a knife. I loathe doing applications.)

That said, time also moves slow as molasses, and I'm just talking about a boring class here. Stuff happens late one night and within less than 24 hours, it feels as though it happened a decade ago. A week ago is unfathomable, part of a lost history known only to the ancients. If you want stuff from a month ago, well, good luck. Maybe the library has a hand-written manuscript of it; in all probability, all knowledge of it has long since been destroyed by barbarian raiders.

The only things that can combat the tide of forgetfulness are things of incredible, shining brilliance. (Or incredible, shining stupidity.) An event of epic proportions stands out, a testament to the greatness of the old days, and casts some of its own glory onto the events immediately before and after it. I remember the first cardboard boat race, and because of it (and the fact that I know I wasn't wearing real shoes at the time), I remember having to run from the Campus Center to Suite 20 without shelter from the rain. My shoes were soaked for a week.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got things to do. Looks like time is about to speed up again.

The Advent of Philpott

2006-09-18T18:36:00.000-05:00

So I was sitting in my house this evening, expecting nothing out of the ordinary and preparing to make a truly epic pasta sauce. (Ground turkey, sliced pepperoni, onion and a little garlic with tomato sauce. It's incredible.) Then Jesse yelled, "John, there are people at the door!"

The "people" were Fred Gundry, a member of the college and Dr. Mark Philpott himself. I must say that it was a considerable shock to see him on Townhouse Greens. Worlds are colliding, my friends, but it's a good collision. I was, of course, aware he was in the States but uncertain as to where he would be before tomorrow at 4:15 when he will be giving a lecture on Oxford in Cole Cinema. The fact that I shall be there is not up for debate. As I informed him, it would take a horde of raging boars to keep me from going, and there is a distinct shortage of wild boars in St. Mary's County.

So of course I had to show off my townhouse to him, feeling pain all the way that it was not in the neatest of states. (We had had a hasty lunch and been forced to run off to class before the dishes could be washed. Luckily I had, in a flight of furious hunger, washed most of the dishes so I could cook dinner, so it wasn't too bad.) Several CMRSers came over once they had gotten wind of his (very brief) presence in my house. True to form, he remarked that it was reminiscent of Hitchcock's The Birds. Ah, the joys of Oxonian nostalgia...

So, yeah. Philpott's in town. Nefarious plots are underway to perhaps spirit him away to the Green Door, a local pub, after the lecture. In any case, I'll be able to enjoy another Philpott lecture tomorrow evening, and so shall my friends (since I'll be dragging them along).

The Citrus Revenge's Last Voyage

2006-09-17T08:14:00.000-05:00

Yes, I'm posting again. Why such reckless extravagance in one so young? Well, a lot of stuff happened yesterday and I felt duty-bound to inform people of it. What happened yesterday, you may ask? The Cardboard Boat Race.

This engaging little event has been going on at St. Mary's every family weekend for twelve years, excluding one year when there was a hurricane. It sometimes seems to me that they deliberately chose the worst weekend of the year for it, since in the two years I've done it - sophomore and senior years - there has always been terrible weather. The second weekend in September is the time when St. Mary's gets hit by the fringes of whatever tropical storm or hurricane happens to terrorizing the East coast at the time.

Sophomore year, we were la Armada Invencible and just like the real Armada, we were big, ponderous and indestructible until the elements conspired against us. (And by the elements I mean the powerful winds caused by Hurricane Ivan offshore.) After the tragic loss of the Santa Maria, my cardboard-boat-building went on a hiatus as I was studying medieval ship designs instead of building ships. I wanted to be ready, you see.

And so we come to yesterday, September 16, 2006. We reassembled the old team as best we could - Don Dave and Don Guillermo had sadly graduated - and added a few new members - Amelia Adams, Dan Blair and Jesse Kirkpatrick. Together, we formed Team Scurvy, an indomitable bandana-clad force of pirates ready to face any odds to triumph on the glorious field of battle.

Sadly, plans for a cannon had to be scrapped. Our materials were limited to eightteen long thing wooden planks (to be cut as we saw fit), three rolls of duct tape, a ball of twine, several sheets of cardboard and plastic to wrap around it all. The boat we constructed, christened The Citrus Revenge in a moving ceremony, was a sturdy kayak capable of resisting high waves and powerful winds. The only slight trouble with her was that she was missing a keel and thus may have tipped over almost instantly. I'm not saying it happened, but if it did - and note that we are speaking very theoretically here - then John Harvey (who was the one in it at the time) promptly tried to swim the race dragging the boat behind him. And (again staying fully in the realm of improbability) he naturally would have made it too had he not been stung by jellyfish en route and thus been forced to call it quits.

The weather shifted as ruthlessly and unpredictably as it had at Stonehenge my second trip - first sheets of solid rain, then blissful, warm calm and then to a cold drizzle before repeating the cycle. To keep our spirits up, Dan and I started a little song which I shall be sharing with you presently to finish off this post:

"Yo ho, yo ho, the college life's for me!
We're building a boat out of cardboard and wood,
Drink up me roomies yo ho!
The others may try but they aren't any good
Drink up me roomies yo ho!
Yo ho, yo ho, the college life's for me!

Amelia our captain is brave and true,
Drink up me roomies yo ho!
She'll yell and she'll shout 'til her face turns blue,
Drink up me roomies yo ho!
Yo ho, yo ho, the college life's for me!"

The Curse of the Cell

2006-09-15T00:02:00.000-05:00

When I returned to St. Mary's, I expected things to be different. I expected there to be new people, I expected the construction to have shifted location (but not ceased to exist) and I had even expected to see some different teachers. All of this I anticipated and it did indeed come to pass. But there was one thing that I did not expect, and that thing is the fact that cell phones now have pretty much full reception on campus.

Unlike some of my more modernist friends, I am not a fan of the cell phone. Partially, this is because, professional nostalgist that I am, I don't like technology, particularly not technology of this particular variety. I am inherently distrustful of anything that attempts to replace going to somebody and talking to them face to face. I also don't like spending money for something I don't really need - we get free phone service in our rooms, for crying out loud! All of these things make me view cell phones with immense suspicion.

That said, I recognize their usefulness. On the hike, it was certainly comforting to know that we had a cell phone and could therefore count on being able to call for help if we needed it. (Plus we could check in at home periodically to reassure people that we were still alive. As though there could have been any doubt...) It also makes for a handy way of storing phone numbers - because that extra scrap of paper always finds a way to disappear when you need it most - and this way you don't have to go searching for a phone if you have a desperate need to make a call.

Now, all this may be all fine and good but that certainly doesn't mean that you need to have a cell phone on you at all times. The reason I get worked up about this is because I have now at numerous times been distracted during class because somebody forgot to turn their cell phone off and now it's ringing with that typical annoyingly cheerful beeping rendition of Beethoven's Fifth. I'm sorry, but we're in class to learn and not to be bombarded with inane phone calls that we can't stop to answer anyway. Just turn your phone off. Trust me, the world will keep turning, your friends will not panic upon finding your phone off, and afterwards, thanks to the wonders of technology, you'll even be able to listen to a message on your answering machine. In all probability, it won't really be that important anyway.

What's been going on around here

2006-09-11T08:41:00.000-05:00

Well, it's Monday again. It looks as though the updating schedule for this thing will be Monday-Thursday, so if you check here on Tuesdays or Fridays you're pretty sure to get a post about something. Today's post will be about what has been happening in my life lately and what will happen in my life in the near future. That's right, nice mysterious boring stuff.

I've written one essay to date, last night in point of fact. I didn't remember I had to do it until the evening, but I had plenty of time and it was for Robin Bates, which means that it was supposed to be as much about me as about the film I was talking about. I've also been writing poetry for my creative writing course; I'm going to try to keep up a production level of one poem a day. So far I'm two poems behind, but with any luck I'll be able to either catch up or not fall much farther behind.

We seem to be doing potluck dinners on a fairly regular basis these days; the Shield Maidens came over for dinner on Saturday and Katie Toman was over on Thursday for pasta alfredo which (for the record) is almost ridiculously easy to make. I know I succeeded because she's already making plans to make this whole coming over for dinner thing a weekly event. We also watched I Married A Witch on Saturday, and I am pleased to report that the movies of my childhood, dated though they are, met with approval and enjoyment on the part of my friends.

Gaming has also started back up again, but that's really only of interest to myself and my confederates. Suffice it to say that massive political changes are about to unfold in Théah. Dave, the details are too explosive to reveal online. You need to come down and talk about them with me face to face.

As for the future, well, Dr. Philpott is coming to campus on Saturday for a few days; with any luck Christina LaVecchia may also come down. Sometime later on in September, Amanda Machi's coming down, but I have yet to get real details. So I've got that excitement to look forward to, not to mention that this Saturday is also when Team Scurvy will triumphantly sail into first place in the cardboard boat race. That's right, once more I shall be participating in the construction of a ship built entirely of wood, cardboard, duct tape and plastic. Victory shall be ours!

On returning to America after Europe

2006-09-04T13:02:00.000-05:00

As I reintegrate myself into the American college system after my year abroad, I find myself noticing small ideosyncracies both in the system itself and in myself. I felt that it might be a worthwhile exercise to list some of them online, thus providing my faithful readers (should they exist anywhere except in my head) with a bit more to read and (perhaps) some food for thought.

The biggest difference of all - perhaps excluding the fact that cafeteria food here is good - is that of timing. I'm no longer used to the idea that class happens every two days. I go into my American Film class with Robin Bates (great class, incidentally - plenty of CMRSers in there to chill with), I have a good class, and then I think to myself, "Excellent. I'll go away and come back next week." Nope. I'm expected to be back in there Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That blows my mind at times.

Similarly, the work load is ridiculous. Two essays in fifteen weeks? Three essays and ten 750 word journal entries? I'm sorry, does this seem at all small to anybody? Yet we find people complaining about the journal entries. My response to them is, "Deal with it. I used to write two 2000+ page essays every week. Surely you can write a piddling 750 words." And while I'm on the subject of essays, it's incredibly refreshing to be able to write about whatever I want without necessarily having to cite anything. The Oxford-trained historian in me reacts in shock at the idea; the St. Mary's student in me says, "Awesome."

The whole idea of talking about material before writing an essay on it also seems radical. You mean to say I don't have to learn it myself out of books before I write my essay? What kind of a crazy communist system are you guys running? Next thing you know, there'll be group discussions of the texts and rampant education all over the place.

Another crazy idea is that you can go buy things on Sundays. You have no idea how much this boggles my mind. My housemates will say, "We'll go grocery shopping tomorrow," and my response will be, "Ok. No, wait, tomorrow's Sunday. Nothing's open this Sunday. We'll have to go on Monday." Their response? "Welcome to the land of capitalism."

And the last thing I'm going to talk about before I go and do something important today is the urge I get at the end of every class. In Heidelberg, it is customary for the students to pound their fists on the table at the end of each lesson. If you have enough of them doing it in a confined space - i.e. the professor didn't annoy a lot of them into going away - it almost sounds like a bunch of soldiers banging their weapons on their shields, getting ready for a charge. I never realized how much I had gotten into it until the end of my first class; I started rapping my knuckles against the table, realized nobody else was doing it, and stopped again. Even though I've become consciously aware of it, I keep half-starting to do it after every class, though whether it's out of habit or stubborness I can't say.

Labor Day

2006-09-04T08:16:00.000-05:00

Ah, Labor Day. I've never been entirely certain about why we had this day off, but all that's going to change. Glaser wants us all to read up on the meaning of Labor Day and either write something about it or read a text about it. He has a point - the importance of the unions in American society has waned significantly in the last few decades. It's like the guilds of Europe - they're still there, but few people talk about them anymore.

I know I've been lax about updating. (Well, lax by my standards, at any rate.) For that handful of you who read this thing, I apologize. I'm going to try to work out a schedule by which I update - perhaps every four days or every Monday and Thursday - and then stick to it, but we'll see. This is one reason why I resisted getting a blog in the beginning - because I actually take it somewhat seriously and feel guilty if I don't update. Curse my Catholic upbringing and tendency to feel guilty about this sort of thing!

After mass, John Harvey and I went to the Point. There were a bunch of people there, but for once, they weren't drunks. They seemed to be camping out down there; more power to them. Sitting there, talking about our futures - John's doing an extra semester, I'm looking at grad schools - I was suddenly hit with an intense feeling of how much we've changed since we first came down to the Point freshman year. Granted, I can't put my finger on anything in particular, but it seems to me that we've really matured since then. Ah well. Such is life - you grow older and grow up. Mind, we still play our RPGs and I expect us to do that for many years to come.

Today, little brother, life is good

2006-08-30T00:13:00.000-05:00

Well, I took my first "Ancient and Medieval Philosophy" class today. I love philosophy classes; every time I take one, I wonder why I'm not taking more. This is especially true when you're dealing with fragmentary old philosophers like Thales of Miletus, who - as best we can make out - believed that everything in the universe was comprised of water. Personally, I like Anaximander, maybe just because in his universe, the earth is a squashed-looking cylinder that floats in the exact center of the cosmos largely because there's no reason for it fall in any particular direction. My main complaint about the class is that we're spending all our time on the Greek philosophers. I recognize the problems inherent in teaching any course with the ambitious title of "Ancient and Medieval Philosophy" - there simply isn't time for it all - but I'd still like a little Anselm and Suger in there with my Plato and Aristotle. Ah well. You can't win them all.

After philosophy, I went to the registrar and made sure that my Heidelberg transcript could go through. Apparently, I didn't translate enough of it - I needed to translate the departments in addition to the course types. Just as well I went in to check; it saved me a great deal of grief and irritation. Whilst I was there, I snagged a copy of my CMRS evaluations from the various teachers. I was honestly surprised at how fair Val Dodd and even that Old English teacher were. I had somehow expected horror stories from them. Philpott's evaluation for Chivalry radiated Philpott at a distance of a hundred yards. He observed that my research essay - Images of the Knight in Modern Fantasy was a "very interesting topic" and commented wryly that this was "slightly to my surprise." I wonder whether I can use some of these evaluations for grad schools...

Anyway, those evaluations really made my day. It's really hot and muggy out, but that didn't stop me from visiting Maggie Dodge 2 - ah, the joys of living practically next door to air conditioned friends - and later eating quesadillas at my place in a huge meeting with the girls from next door coming over as well. It was great. It's strange, but I feel like I've been here forever and not even four days have passed. Weird.

The Triumphant Return

2006-08-27T20:48:00.000-05:00

I have once more come back to St. Mary's, my ancestral home. Things are different around here now. The construction has changed locations, the grass looks half-dead in a lot of places (it's been a dry summer) and there are hordes of people I don't know. On some level I feel like a freshman again; it is not an exceedingly pleasant feeling. That said, I'm running into a lot of CMRS buddies and it's both cool and weird to see them in this different setting.

But have no fear - I'm enjoying myself here. My old friends have returned and regrouped, and Maggie Dodge 5 is awesome. Yes, we're facing the horror of massive grocery bills, but we're also facing the fact that we are seniors now. We're the cool ones now. We're the strange upperclassmen living in the great housing; we're the guys with the obscure knowledge of philosophers and history. Indeed, I am frequently reminded of Maggie Dodge 3 freshman year. On some level - largely due my year of absence and hence the small number of people I recognize - I seem to have slipped into the Grindcore role - intensely distrustful of anyone I don't know and thus rarely hesitant to dish out criticism, albeit out of ear shot. Then again, it might just be me wanting to be that cool senior. (Because yes, for some of us, Grindcore was the epitome of cool back then.)

We've moved mostly into Maggie Dodge 5. Dan and I set up the video game/TV/movie/RPG shelves in the common room the other day and I must say that it looks really good. ("Sexy" was the term Dan used, and I must admit that I agree.) Furthermore, we started hanging up our posters. The closet where the recycling bin will be now has a big D&D poster of giant spiders with the catchphrase: "You'll want light. You'll need boots." written on it. Additionally, in the entrance to our kitchen now hangs a big picture of a mushroom cloud; we intend to add a caption saying, "Welcome to the land of the giant mushrooms" beneath it.

Other than that, there's not much to report. We're moved in, our kitchen is furnished (and has developed the ability to consume uncooked food if you turn your back for too long), and there are plans in motion to watch the Western classic Stagecoach tonight. And so, I leave you now. Posts may be a bit infrequent in the near future as I get my Internet connection working; I'm using Dan's computer at the moment.

It's fourteen shillings on the drum...

2006-08-23T09:11:00.000-05:00

After a lengthy absence from the Internet, I've decided to post something new before my return to school. I apologize for not posting sooner, but that's partially due to the fact that we still use a modem at home and thus my Internet connection is of the type that discourages excessive shenanigans online.

As some of you are doubtlessly aware, my friend Dave Marsich and I resolved over a year ago that we were going to be real men this summer. We were going to trek through the woods for several days, starting in Harper's Ferry, Virginia, and marching north to Cumberland, Maryland. Equipped with little more than our wits and what we could carry on our backs, we planned on covering 120 miles in ten days. Truly a worthy goal.

We only did 66 miles, ending our trip in Hancock, Maryland, on the fifth day, but I maintain that this was not out of weakness. I know it sounds like I'm making excuses, but it really was that way. We were equally comfortable with the idea of turning back or continuing onwards. By day 5, our muscles had toughened, our feet were calloused and we were generally adjusted to staying out in the forest. (More on that later.) Partially, there was the fact that my mother was going to Germany for her father's 80th birthday and I liked the idea of seeing her a bit more beforehand. Partially, there's also the fact that after six days or so, you get saturated with natural beauty and you can't appreciate it fully anymore.

So, now that I've gotten the whole preface stuff out of the way, it's time to talk about what it was like hiking out there in the woods. ... It was great. Yes, there was the matter of not showering for five days or so. Yes, all of our food was dehydrated. Yes, we were covering in five days a distance that a car can go in a bit over an hour. But that stuff is just the trimmings. There was camaraderie, laughter, singing, and the satisfying sensation whenever we went to sleep that we had covered a respectable distance that night, and - more importantly - experienced it far more fully than anyone in a car was likely to.

Being in the woods changes you. When you get excited about something, you get louder than you normally would. On the other hand, whenever you meet someone on the trail, you're very polite. It sometimes feels like you have a fixed rationing of politeness for each day. You know, you may try hard to be polite, but unless you're naturally just a really friendly person, you start to slip up towards the end of the day. On the trail, you meet very few people and so it's as though you're trying to use up your politeness rations rather than ending the day with a surplus. Both of these things were really noticeable in Hancock - we got loud in anticipation of dinner as we were walking there, but once we were there, we were almost excessively polite, saying "please" and "thank you" after pretty much any sentence.

Also, let's face it - if you're going to spend 144 hours straight with somebody, you're going to run out of conversation every now and then. That's when spontaneous singing stepped in. Most of our songs, I'm pleased to report, were old marching songs. Here is a small taste of what I'm talking about:

"It's fourteen shillings on the drum,
For those who volunteer to come.
To 'list and fight the foe today
Over the hills and far away...

O'er the hills and o'er the plain,
To Flanders, Portugal and Spain.
King George commands and we obey,
Over the hills and far away."

When we weren't singing that sort of thing, it was folk songs like Captain Kidd or The Dublin Fusiliers - those two were repeated a lot on the detour from hell, an aspect of the trail that probably deserves its own post. I doubt we were singing well enough to make a musical career for ourselves, but it was fun stuff anyway. The songs grow on you more and more as you sing them, plus they really do make the miles fly by. It's like having a conversation in that sense, except you don't need to think of new things to say. I can certainly understand why the different regiments would sing while they marched - not only does it help time go by as you're on the move, but it also helps forge a sense of unity. You might have one guy do the main line: "Fought the Russians or was it the French?/ I really couldn't tell, sir./ All I know is they fought so well/ They sent us all to Hell, sir." And then the rest of the corps sings, "Poor old soldier/ Poor old soldier./ If I knew then what I know now/ I wouldn't have been so balmy." Nothing like some group singing about how much you hate being in the army to lighten your spirits.

Right. I think that's enough of that nonsense for now. In time, I expect I'll do another installment of reminiscing about the trail. For now, I'm going to go away and finish packing for college.

To all and sundry, greetings

2006-08-18T09:17:00.000-05:00

Well, this is the first post of my new blog. I'm doing so partially to preserve the integrity of my old travel blog - this way, it'll be about my studies abroad and not about my time at home or at school - and partially because I need a change of scenery. (Pause for irony.) Expect there to be changes made as I shape and mold this blog to suit my twisted desires.

Odds are, if you're reading this, you know who I am. But I shall assume for the sake of argument that some of you may have come here by accident, wayward castaways thrown onto the shores of my little blog by the storm-tossed waves of the Internet. Before you make the plunge back into the digital waters and try to get where you really want to be, I suppose I should do my best to help you get your bearings.

I am (currently) entering my senior year of college. I am a nerd, and pretty open about that. I like literature, medievalism, fantasy, philosophy, theology, history, gaming, late night walks on the beach, creative writing, (good) westerns, hiking, cooking and a whole slew of other things that I can't be bothered to write down right now. I'm of mixed German heritage, and I'm proud of this to an almost terrifying degree. My Germanness could be said to increase the farther I get from Germany; in theory, if I were to leave the planet of Earth, I would automatically explode and create a copy of Germany in outer space. My time in Heidelberg over the course of the last semester seems to have only aggravated this condition - I find myself thinking of things by their German names and then trying rather awkwardly to translate them into English, with hilarious results.

Additionally, I've studied abroad at Oxford, the city of dreaming spires, for two semesters. I've picked up a few idiosyncrasies there, including a refusal to speak of Cambridge except as "the other place" or "the inferior university by the river." It was very nice there - I've met quite a few cool people. (You know who you are...) Despite all this happy foreign adventures - detailed in the blog I mentioned above - I'm excited about returning to St. Mary's for one last gloriously epic year, some of which will be detailed on this blog. I'm especially interested in seeing how the Tolkien Society I helped found freshman year is doing without me at the helm; I'm quite pleased that it has new leadership and hence should be able to survive my graduation.

A final word of warning - I don't like reading angsty blog posts where people gripe about their emotional state or how depressed they are about being single or what have you. Consequently, if you're seeking insight into my tortured psyche, I'm afraid that you're going to be out of luck. First off, I don't really have a tortured psyche and second, I use my diary for that sort of thing. If, on the other hand, you want to read something fun and upbeat, you're at the right address.