01/28/2004 - 12:42 p.m. | sapphire earrings in the one hand...

Hello! (Pretend this was said as Christopher Walken because that would be funnier). I really do hope I get that crossing guard job because it will at least provide some assurance that I am awake while in my first class. Sensory processes are all well and good, I swear to God, but if I've read about most of this in the book, and if the notes are already online, my interest wanes. I'm sorry. At least I had several hours afterward to wake up, clean myself, and various other tasks that norms go about with such unvarying degree.

Unfortunately, AbPsych is still more useless, and I am definitely required to go to it. Damn. Luckily, I can usually think of about one distraction everyday. Last time, I tried to make awkward celebrity comparisons to everyone in class. Paris Hilton + Bill Murray, for instance. Today, as I started to write down... something that certainly seemed important at the time, I noticed my pen was running low on ink. And so the race begins. Unfortunately, it was a pretty tenacious fucker, and I'm not about to draw out Pen Battle much longer than I already have, so there you go. One thing of interest was the guy who came in looking for volunteers to spend time with people who have mental illnesses. I'm sort of interested, but at the same time, a little concerned that I couldn't do the job. After all, my main goal would be to help these people form social skills, and I obviously don't even have my own down yet. So I'll think on it.

I don't know why everyone looks so miserable right now. I'm pretty sure I ride around with a dopey grin on my face. And I've come up with some sort of happy bike dance. Hard to explain, and I'm not sure if it's even noticeable. I really like the cold is all.

Spritz and I went tanning, and then since I was fortunatel enough to have found some unspent money in my pocket (as opposed to the spent money not in my pocket), we ate lunch. Dropped off my crossing guard application (cross fingers!) and came back here to settle in my rut. Unfortunately, I can't play UO because I don't have a tambourine, and it's a long ass way to get one, so I installed the game Yousaf wanted me to test to see if it could hold his attention span. "Silent Hill 3." It's amazing how real games can look nowadays. Of course, I've been sort of out of the loop, seeing how the last game I played was "Sky Kid" or some shit. Anyway, it's really creepy and atmospheric, so I turn off all the lights and tiptoe around. Fun :)

I gave up on that for a while at 6:30 when Dank IM'd to see if I wanted to come watch "American Idol." DOY, as Kyle might say. He hates that word. I keep telling myself I'm only going to watch the initial auditions, just so I can see the suck, but I feel myself weakening already. Oh, here's an important Nate Walsh factoid for you: If I am ever jinxed (you know, when you say something at the same time as someone, and they jinx you?), I will stick to the rules until released. I have my honor. At least occasionally.

After an episode of "Lingo" with the God damn big boob useless cohost lady ("What do you mean? I type in the first letter!" Fuck off), Yousaf and I went to rent a movie. This is a recipe for disaster because, between the two of us, we've seen almost every movie there, and we rarely like the other person's selection, although sometimes I think this may be out of spite. "Hey, do you want to see Legend with Tom Cruise and that chick from Ferris Bueller?" "No, do you want to see The Deer Hunter with Christopher Walken? He won an Oscar for it!" "No." Anyway, as often happens in this case, we end up deciding on something completely retarded. Or three somethings. Three somethings comprised of random images set to music. For four and a half hours.

I am speaking, of course, of the infamous "-qatsi" trilogy: Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, and Naqoyqatsi, each one a Hopi word meaning "life sucks" more or less. Yousaf found the first one in the series, and then I half-jokingly suggested we get the last one, and then we found out there was a second, and we were screwed. We kept giggling until we pretty much had to do it. We had no idea if we would have the willpower to sit through all 4.5 hours of images and music, so we stopped at Walgreens to fight about the right of SnoCaps and whatnot.

When we got home, everyone was pretty much disgusted with our choice of movies, but they all did stick around for the first one at least. Dank in particular was being pretty close-minded, and he watched the good one, so I guess it was ideal that he left. Actually, everyone besides Yousaf and myself left after the first, and we stuck it out. I really didn't think it was too hard to watch or anything; I was just secretly battling the crippling diarrhea at the same time. And who won, bitch?! YEAH!

Anyway, a brief review. Koyaanisqatsi, the first, was made in 1983 and was the best of the three. Actually, like most trilogies (Yousaf and I throw series back and forth during the lousy third installment), they get worse as you go along. Anyway, the first one pretty much kicked you in the face (repeatedly) with the message, "Nature good, technology EVIL!!! EVIL! Also, people are mindless zombies." So, I guess that was a little obnoxious, but the music was decent, and there quite a few good shots and techniques, especially considering when it was made. The second, Powaqqatsi, made five years later was less creative and mostly showed natives bumming around. The message? "Villagers good, society EVIL!" But it did have this twenty minute crazy vocalized chant that Yousaf apparently knew by heart and will teach me so that I can yodel it off the top floor of PT next year at sunset, signalling the prayer period. You bet. The third, Naqoyqatsi, made in 2002, was by far the suckiest. While the previous installments used actual filmed footage of things to get the point across, the third a) didn't really have a point and b) still managed to present it in the worst way possible. Let's see... Terrible, terrible CG of mountains and binary and fucking screensaver spirals and shit, this long series of wax figures of famous political figures, stock footage from ESPN, and worst of all, random images of animals but with the negative switch flipped on so the colors are all CRAZY!! Obviously, the guy was out of ideas and was just making blind stabs at what comes across as artful these days. "The sky, man! It's ORANGE! And the ground? It's BLUE! And the zebras? OK, they look fucking the same, but man! The meaning!!" Anyway, I think the message of this one was, "Trilogies EVIL!!" with some vague undercurrent of war or sports or maybe computers being bad, but fuck it. We're done.

I left at 2, finally beat the first part of "Silent Hill," and went to sleep. Apparently I pulled the old AM/PM switcheroo on my alarm clock, though, because I slept through class. Oopsies. Anyway, Spritz and I are leaving for an adventure (UPS!) shortly, so I have to gather supplies (Cheetos? Peach Tampico?) for the journey.