1. A tribute to Buehner, Martinez, and Martinez: the most fearsome threesome to encounter in an opposing lineup while playing the famed Super Nintendo game, Ken Griffey, Jr.'s Major League Baseball.
Nevermind that the game was Ken Griffey's; the fact remains that Jay Buehner, Edgar Martinez, and Tino Martinez collectively made their stamp on the land of video game folklore by being true mashers with no apparent holes in their swings. The format of the truly arcade style video game played well to their greatest strength: speaking quietly and carrying extremely large, wooden bats.
In order to provide lineup protection for a player of Ken Griffey's ability, it was necessary to have not one, but three, superbly talented batters in order to force pitchers to even think about giving young Kenneth a proper pitch worth swinging the ol' lumber at. Buehner, Martinez, and Martinez used their privileged position atop the bully pulpit of major league lineups to preach the goodness and moral fiber inherent to swinging away (at a pixelated baseball whose movement is restricted to only two degrees of freedom).
2. A tribute to tubing: the laziest way to enjoy the great outdoors.
During my latest trip back to the cornfields of Indiana, Beth and I went tubing down Sugar Creek, courtesy of the Sugar Valley Canoe and Fun Company.
Despite having to make a number of textile, taciturn, talcum-powdered, tarrytown-ed, troubadour-faced, Tarkentonian maneuvers; the journey down the Sugar Creek (although I much prefer the Little Potato Creek, the creek of ill-repute) was generally a leisurely one due to the easy moving current, sunny skies, and sparse population of annoying, fellow travellers.
3. A tribute to Facebook: When my little brother Facebooked me, it made official the fact that he is going to be in college and that my parents will be all to their lonesome for most of the year.
My parents were married for several years before having my brother and I; and during those years, as the photographic evidence suggests, they travelled the country quite a bit and did fun things (such as visiting the Corn Palace and dressing up in some interesting 19th century fare). I guess those fun things had to come to an end since Scott and I are quite the handful. Maybe things will change for my parents now that we're both out of the house. To what end, I'm not very certain (maybe that garden will come to shape and the last vestiges of the house's 70's past and style will be completely banished to postmodern oblivion), but for once, I might be curious as to their goings-ons.
My suggestion: College Station has a ripe, open market for the opening of an egg roll shop.
4. A tribute to the Egg Roll House: Even when I was an REU student at the cyclotron facility at TAMU, this local establishment looked to be firmly in the throes of foreclosedness. This building looks so closed and so sad. It is enough to make a grown-man with the personality of a twelve year old to openly weep in despair.
Seeing this place for the first time was like finally finding Paradise, only to find that it had been shutdown due to the ineptness of new management or because of a hybrid-super-disaster (hurricanadonamiquakelcano). An Egg Roll House is my Dream House, whether it be that the walls are papered in egg roll wrapper or that there are running egg roll taps throughout the house (a service provided by the local lumpia utility, to be sure).
But perhaps, now my calling in life is clear.
5. A tribute to crazy dreams: Indiana seems to bring about the best in crazy dreams for me.
In two nights, my brother's music video (a love ballad featuring mostly head shots of Scott) debuted on MTV2, the Indians had an AMAZING laser light and firework show, I got re-aquainted with an old, highschool friend of mine, and Britney Spears chased me around her palatial estate (presumably trying to make-out with me, but I'm not sure).
Sleeping in Indiana seemingly challenges the shape of possible topological shapes in my dreamscape. For instance, I had a dream that I was telling my Physics Grad friend Matt that I had a dream where Britney Spears tried to make-out with me. Upon telling him this though, Matt excitedly told me that he had the exact same dream. Then the next night, I had a dream where i was having a conversation with Matt and his girlfriend, and I told them that I had a dream where I was having a conversation with Matt about how we both had the Britney Spears make-out dream.
If I have a similar dream tonight though, I would have to say that my dreamcenter's originality has been seriously compromised and is thoroughly exhausted.
Since I taped Scott's music video as it debuted, maybe I'll be able to watch it in a later dream.
6. A tribute to Ben Folds: I was sad that I missed the chance to see him this summer at Bonnaroo, which seems to be his only U.S. appearance for the year.
I haven't had any dreams of making out with him, but I would like to move down to Australia and be his next-door neighbor. That would be really strange to be able to go outside and say, "Hey Ben Folds, I'm going to put some shrimp on the barbie so come by this evening."
7. A tribute to old-timey toy stores in small-town Indiana: For the low, low price of $9.99, I could have been the proud owner of a Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man figurine.
To truly fire up the smoldering embers of my deep sense of sentimentality and mawkish attitude toward all things Ghostbuster, this particular establishment would have to proffer up the glow-in-the-dark stuffed version of my favorite marshmallow man.
So, instead, I opted for Major League Baseball by LCJ, the 1988 classic video game for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. That particular season's Cleveland Indian lineup featured unforgettable stars such as Cory Snyder, Joe Carter, and Greg Swindell. This team should have contended for a pennant, in my highly biased opinion, and now I have the ability to make this dream of a star-struck five year old a reality.
The fact that Beth owns and operates a Nintendo Entertainment System out of her apartment and that she is my girlfriend is no mere coincidence.
8. A tribute to my knee: I politiely decline to reveal why.
30 June 2006
22 June 2006
Photodissociation Fragments
Button (the storybook bear with buttons for eyes, not the person) wakes up startled to the sound of banging on his chamber door. Luckily for him, everyone lying in bed is still clothed, albeit now awake and confused.
As the words from the man on the other side of the door fluttered through the air into poor Button's ear, Button was forced to hastily reconstruct the previous night's events the best he could. All the while, his severely intoxicated head persisted in the unnerving task of assembling the steady stream of virulent noise into a coherent message.
In the colloquia of the times, the message was this: "Jon, is my daughter in there?"
Last night the Hindenberg crashed. Nevertheless, Button flew to the door to meet his inquisitor face to face.
If the narrator were a man of substance and aware that being impolite will never become passe, perhaps he would have made the following sardonic remark: "Well hello, Mr. Cook. What can I do for you on this fine Saturday afternoon."
In lieu of that heroic remark came a wide-eyed, open mouthed, "Hi."
"Well you don't look very bright-eyed and bushy-tailed."
"Yeah."
"Jon, do you mind telling me what happened here last night?"
"Well, why don't you ask your daughter? She is right here."
"We are both men. So let's talk man to man."
In my nineteenth year, I received my first lesson in manhood. Men have talks like this. And if you fail to understand, any explanation that I can proffer is useless to you.
"Mr. Cook, your daughter and I drank too much, got really sick, and then passed out."
"Is that all that happened, Jon?"
"Yes."
"Are you certain?"
"Yes."
Satisfied with me, he looked over at his daughter, clutching my comforter and terrified of what was to come. The following exchange forever remains a microcosm of my fatally frail condition and how the fates choose to toy with me in the worst of ways.
"Tonya, come on, you are coming home with me."
"No I'm not."
The sensitivity of my consciousness heightened a thousand fold in that brief amount of time, along with my undying desire to hide underneath a pile of old, winter coats for the remainder of this hunting season. I should have made my level of stress known by making audible the question that raged on the order of a hundred decibels within my head, "What do you mean you are not going home?" After all, I had just met this girl merely two weeks before. I was not ready to become this person -- not here anyway, not in this fraternity house, not in this bastion of male adolescence. No way.
And so, Mr. Cook began walking away but did not leave before making clear to me what I had already inferred. "Make sure she gets home, Jon."
I slumped in the hallway, the one with the atrocious wood panelling, with my head in my hands, wondering how I had allowed my life to veer in this surreal direction. My pledge brothers and friends surrounded me slowly, inquisitive as to the nature of this most recent spectacle; but I had no answers for them, and they had no answers for me either. Things had become Boltzmannian in scope.
As the words from the man on the other side of the door fluttered through the air into poor Button's ear, Button was forced to hastily reconstruct the previous night's events the best he could. All the while, his severely intoxicated head persisted in the unnerving task of assembling the steady stream of virulent noise into a coherent message.
In the colloquia of the times, the message was this: "Jon, is my daughter in there?"
Last night the Hindenberg crashed. Nevertheless, Button flew to the door to meet his inquisitor face to face.
If the narrator were a man of substance and aware that being impolite will never become passe, perhaps he would have made the following sardonic remark: "Well hello, Mr. Cook. What can I do for you on this fine Saturday afternoon."
In lieu of that heroic remark came a wide-eyed, open mouthed, "Hi."
"Well you don't look very bright-eyed and bushy-tailed."
"Yeah."
"Jon, do you mind telling me what happened here last night?"
"Well, why don't you ask your daughter? She is right here."
"We are both men. So let's talk man to man."
In my nineteenth year, I received my first lesson in manhood. Men have talks like this. And if you fail to understand, any explanation that I can proffer is useless to you.
"Mr. Cook, your daughter and I drank too much, got really sick, and then passed out."
"Is that all that happened, Jon?"
"Yes."
"Are you certain?"
"Yes."
Satisfied with me, he looked over at his daughter, clutching my comforter and terrified of what was to come. The following exchange forever remains a microcosm of my fatally frail condition and how the fates choose to toy with me in the worst of ways.
"Tonya, come on, you are coming home with me."
"No I'm not."
The sensitivity of my consciousness heightened a thousand fold in that brief amount of time, along with my undying desire to hide underneath a pile of old, winter coats for the remainder of this hunting season. I should have made my level of stress known by making audible the question that raged on the order of a hundred decibels within my head, "What do you mean you are not going home?" After all, I had just met this girl merely two weeks before. I was not ready to become this person -- not here anyway, not in this fraternity house, not in this bastion of male adolescence. No way.
And so, Mr. Cook began walking away but did not leave before making clear to me what I had already inferred. "Make sure she gets home, Jon."
I slumped in the hallway, the one with the atrocious wood panelling, with my head in my hands, wondering how I had allowed my life to veer in this surreal direction. My pledge brothers and friends surrounded me slowly, inquisitive as to the nature of this most recent spectacle; but I had no answers for them, and they had no answers for me either. Things had become Boltzmannian in scope.
21 June 2006
VIDEO!
This past weekend we had a birthday party at the duplex. One of the physics grads, Matt, dropped by with his girlfriend. At any rate, I thought I was taking a picture, but apparently I was not.
09 June 2006
White Square
The man hurriedly rushed throughout the kitchen looking for as many household poisons that he could find. He was sweating profusely with his brow pinched and furrowed in deep, detached, pensive concentration. His intolerable pince-nez beating against his chest with every step, the dull light managed to produce an irregular glaring and blurring at the top of his bald head. The veins and arteries were under great stress as the blood seemed to pulsate through his thick, muscled neck.
The doctor found some detergents and bleaches and paused momentarily to take a slight pleasure in the aesthetic topography of the plastic contained beauty. He rushed down to his bloodstained workshop and worried over his workbench, where he has labored for years developing and designing skillfully constructed prosthetics for the heart – his own pacemaker struggling to keep up with the doctor’s hurried and evil designs.
The doctor painstakingly went to work on his most recent project to blend these horrible, powerful agents into a purifying solution. Seemingly calling upon his own ritualistic past, the obscure, older gentleman finally knew the secret history of man’s sacrificial story.
The powerful cleaning agents aroused an awful feeling of nausea. The noxious fumes rose through the dark matter of the dimly lit room and through the membranes within his olfactory cavities. A lamp hung down from the ceiling as the only source of light for the room, and the table with its dark, black top, smeared with blood seemingly emanated from the darkness behind. As he continued to labor, his thoughts meaninglessly meandered from thought to thought, yet managed to return to the scene of his darkest desires.
He stood over his unconscious patient like he just woke up from a horrible dream. Unable to account for the past several minutes, he viewed the young, supple, pale white skin of the woman before him. Her tender, small breasts pointedly mocked the doctor’s shame of impotence and advanced age.
The doctor’s overbearing figure appeared as an awful contrast to the delicate instruments that he was constantly drawing and replacing from his small surgeon’s kit. He fell back into his awful trance as he continued through his work, only to wake up once more to a scene of blood soaked hands and mangled body parts.
We entered the Victorian mansion on Old Hickory Lane yesterday. We got the call to check in on this place after reports that a neighbor had heard violent screaming coming from the basement, continuously for the past three hours. After breaking down the door, I was overcome by the smell of chemicals; we proceeded down towards the basement, which was pitch black. My partner fumbled around in the dark to find a light switch. I immediately began vomiting. A young woman was spread across a table with flies occasionally swooping down to violate her corpse’s resting spot. The light also revealed a man in the corner of the room. He had shot his brains out.
*I wrote this about 2 yrs ago. The only thing I really like here is how dark it is. Whenever I write anything, it's normally all introspective and flowery.
The doctor found some detergents and bleaches and paused momentarily to take a slight pleasure in the aesthetic topography of the plastic contained beauty. He rushed down to his bloodstained workshop and worried over his workbench, where he has labored for years developing and designing skillfully constructed prosthetics for the heart – his own pacemaker struggling to keep up with the doctor’s hurried and evil designs.
The doctor painstakingly went to work on his most recent project to blend these horrible, powerful agents into a purifying solution. Seemingly calling upon his own ritualistic past, the obscure, older gentleman finally knew the secret history of man’s sacrificial story.
The powerful cleaning agents aroused an awful feeling of nausea. The noxious fumes rose through the dark matter of the dimly lit room and through the membranes within his olfactory cavities. A lamp hung down from the ceiling as the only source of light for the room, and the table with its dark, black top, smeared with blood seemingly emanated from the darkness behind. As he continued to labor, his thoughts meaninglessly meandered from thought to thought, yet managed to return to the scene of his darkest desires.
He stood over his unconscious patient like he just woke up from a horrible dream. Unable to account for the past several minutes, he viewed the young, supple, pale white skin of the woman before him. Her tender, small breasts pointedly mocked the doctor’s shame of impotence and advanced age.
The doctor’s overbearing figure appeared as an awful contrast to the delicate instruments that he was constantly drawing and replacing from his small surgeon’s kit. He fell back into his awful trance as he continued through his work, only to wake up once more to a scene of blood soaked hands and mangled body parts.
We entered the Victorian mansion on Old Hickory Lane yesterday. We got the call to check in on this place after reports that a neighbor had heard violent screaming coming from the basement, continuously for the past three hours. After breaking down the door, I was overcome by the smell of chemicals; we proceeded down towards the basement, which was pitch black. My partner fumbled around in the dark to find a light switch. I immediately began vomiting. A young woman was spread across a table with flies occasionally swooping down to violate her corpse’s resting spot. The light also revealed a man in the corner of the room. He had shot his brains out.
*I wrote this about 2 yrs ago. The only thing I really like here is how dark it is. Whenever I write anything, it's normally all introspective and flowery.
08 June 2006
Coulomb EXPLOSION!
1. Why is the Jolie-Pitt baby named after Neil Diamond's imaginary friend?
2.AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! BLITZKRIEG! BLITZKRIEG! BLITZKRIEG! BLITZKRIEG!
I miss the Ultimate Warrior. Why is it that what seemed awesome when I was little, seems ridiculously silly today?
3. In my lab we use a femtosecond laser. It produces a pulse of photons every 10^-12 seconds, so it deposits energy like Dhalsim from Street Figher II (in extremely fast, short bursts). In the experiments that we are running now, the laser interacts with a beam of hydrogen ions. In order to test the intensity of the laser before running an experiment, the professor intends on focusing the beam such that it turns a small spot of air in the room into a plasma which turns into a visible and audible spark.
I cannot wait for that.
4. The dead, creepy treen in my front lawn was cut down yesterday. I was extremely saddened to come home only to find the once friendly sight now strewn about the yard.
2.AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! BLITZKRIEG! BLITZKRIEG! BLITZKRIEG! BLITZKRIEG!
I miss the Ultimate Warrior. Why is it that what seemed awesome when I was little, seems ridiculously silly today?
3. In my lab we use a femtosecond laser. It produces a pulse of photons every 10^-12 seconds, so it deposits energy like Dhalsim from Street Figher II (in extremely fast, short bursts). In the experiments that we are running now, the laser interacts with a beam of hydrogen ions. In order to test the intensity of the laser before running an experiment, the professor intends on focusing the beam such that it turns a small spot of air in the room into a plasma which turns into a visible and audible spark.
I cannot wait for that.
4. The dead, creepy treen in my front lawn was cut down yesterday. I was extremely saddened to come home only to find the once friendly sight now strewn about the yard.
06 June 2006
Chariot Races
At my high school, we would have a Latin Day where these chariot races were the main attraction. The layout of the campus is unique. There are multiple buildings around a central mall area, resembling a miniature-sized college campus. The best feature is the six-story tower that overlooks the campus, built in a gothic German architectural style by German Jesuits in the late nineteenth century.
I found this video. It's alright, with the exception that it seems as though the person recording is a bit impaired. But you can at least get a flavor of how fun this day is. The students are gathered around to watch their peers race around the mall in their homemade chariots.
I found this video. It's alright, with the exception that it seems as though the person recording is a bit impaired. But you can at least get a flavor of how fun this day is. The students are gathered around to watch their peers race around the mall in their homemade chariots.
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