Monthly Archives
Already : Hatachi Monthly Archives
chotto matte Saturday September 28
bear with me, folks -- it's a busy weekend. tomorrow i have a paper to write, so you can bet that this site will see an update long before that paper is written. you'll hear stories #1 and #3, who essentially tied for first place.
oh, and while you're waiting, check out todd's script from friday on his new web site, which he just finished relaunching. it is, above anything else, one of those times i wish i had been there to see the look on her face.
my next post Tuesday September 24
so, i know that i'm going to post something in the next few days that's not so much on the life-happenings end of things and more on the philosophical level. however, since you, the loyal reader, has to put up with such posts, i felt it was only fair to allow you to vote on which first sentence i should use:
productivity Monday September 23
i had a very productive weekend. not only did my dogs come to town and chill, but i shampooed carpets in my house, and i even finished monday's homework well before classtime. my to-do list was so long, however, that many items remain, it's just that i would have had to work myself into a frenzy to get them all done: something i did not feel like doing on a weekend.
at any rate, i am going to attack the rest of this list today and tomorrow, and hopefully after my ece 210 exam on thursday i'll be more willing to post. i promised my mother that i would put the pictures of the dogs online, and mom, yes, i will soon enough: but i have class until at least 2:45pm, so you'll just have to wait.
going into the weekend Friday September 20
listening to: cake - it's coming down
reading: fear and loathing: the strange and terrible saga of hunter s. thompson
feeling: i love autumn rain. i know that fall only officially starts tomorrow, but it's a feel, you know.
rain is coming down reasonably hard outside, i noticed it as i woke up this morning to a phone call from my stepfather: he will be down at about 4:30 this afternoon to drop off my dogs. yeah. you heard it right. chance and otto, coming here. i am sure there will be a melee of pictures by the end of the weekend.
i have absolutely no plans this weekend, and i am going to keep it that way. todd and i are nerding out tonight, he has to work tomorrow morning, and i have to be up early for planetgate, so there's no point in going out anywhere. tomorrow, i will clean the house all day, and then sunday i think i'll reserve for next week's homework. and it's going to feel great.
i had a japanese dinner at my house last night, but two of my "international buddies" couldn't make it, so it was just eri, stephanie, and myself. i made curry rice, and eri made two things, misoshimi (also known as miso soup), and shouga yaki, which is essentially pan-fried pork marinated in ginger. the name means "ginger fry".
i learned the ways of the miso soup, so you can bet that you'll end up eating it one time or another if you come over and are hungry. i plan on having another one of these dinners soon, it was a lot of fun.
a life caret Wednesday September 18
when we proofread, often times we place a caret where we want to insert a sentence, phrase, or modifier. this week, it's as if i'm reading an excessively long section of careted text in the margin. i didn't expect it to be there, and reading the rest of this particular "life sentence" is on hold while i investigate the insertion.
atlanta was a very positive experience for me. todd and i both had amazing summers, and even though 705 has been great for us, we needed a solid, grounding experience to get our minds out of the whiny "this isn't summer fun anymore" path and onto the "make this semester great" path. atlanta was just that. who would have thought that approximately 24 hours in an oversized phoozemobile would do such a thing? i don't need to detail what happened there; it's really only your standard college road trip, complete with a breakfast visit to waffle house.
i now feel like this semester has begun, off on the proper foot (to say the 'right foot' would go against my left-handed nature, those damn right-handed commies think they own everything -- including the idiomatic english language. also, a search on google for "right handed commie" pulled this up), and as for the caret, i feel it might as well just be a carrot: one that is hanging in front of me from a string that is still out of my reach.
and, yes, i meant to be vague. that kind of reminds me of that scene from swingers, though, where he looks at the woman at the bar, and then she becomes a bunny in the next shot. but in that case, he's not the carrot at all, and she's only a bunny. in fact, there's no mention of carrots in that scene.
hrmm. all right, nevermind then.
site updates
i'm going to start making a concerted effort to keep the pictures in "random recent pictures" updated on a regular basis. moreover, i'm going to only try to keep ten or so in there at a time. i have just updated it, take a look, and you'll find something else. there's also this little movie.
i'm off to atlanta for the weekend to see guster play live. w0ot. it's the collegiate road trip, and you'll hear and see all about it when i get back on sunday. until then, just bid up my ebay auction.
humor Thursday September 12
two of the coolest things i have seen in a long time:
- the guy who decided to find out, once and for all, whether or not it's soda or coke. nate, if you do it, remember that cherry hill's zip code is 08003.
- today's posting on so anyway..., where i read about soda vs. coke, as well as how to communicate with floridians.
september 11th 2002 Tuesday September 10
all day tomorrow, i am going to do my best to keep my senses away from any media source, and no, i don't care that it will all be commercial-free. i don't want to see the "special tribute report". with the exception of class, frisbee, and espresso (todd is working tomorrow night), i will probably not even leave the house. the university sent out a massmail informing students of panel discussions, forums, memorials, and presentations. i'm keeping myself away from all of that, too.
mark, why? are you insensitive to the thousands of lives lost, the way you live your life changed? can't you just think about someone else besides yourself? is your day-to-day life too important? can you stop asking rhetorical questions and make a point?
i don't want to remember, grieve, or memorialize anything tomorrow. i have been to the trade center site in new york city three times in the past year; i have been on more airline flights than ever before; i have had plenty of opportunities to think about the events of september 11th, and here's what i've determined:
we live in chaos. we are comforted by illusions of order, government, law, politics. i pay my taxes so the pothole down the street from me will be patched soon. i work for dollars and paychecks and then i go out and spend them again in the Great American Economy. i go to college so i can have a sufficient income later so i can work longer for dollars and paychecks and then go out and spend them again in the Great American Economy.
it seems rather orderly. but i feel chaos on the inside, and i would bet my Great American Economy dollars that others do too. some people want me dead to make a statement to a government -- which is a thing. it cannot feel the way people feel, and it cannot have pain. it cannot have a soul, it cannot fall in love, nor can it reproduce sexually. a government is a non-living thing. we are humans, we are alive. we love, feel. it cannot.
surely, someone doesn't want me dead because i am mark, they want me dead because of a body count -- they just want the power to affect. and when you boil down all of the politics, fighting, power, misunderstanding, love, hate, pain, suffering, joy, melancholy, regret, fear, celebration, and anger, all you have left is people. and their thoughts and emotions. we, as human minds, are all the same. but the categorical mind steps in and starts creating divisions and borders.
it may seem like i don't care about tomorrow's "anniversary" of america's tradegy, but what i mean is that i don't need to set aside one day to reflect on how i feel -- which is the pain of watching the world hate itself -- when we all share this little spherical ball of mass in the middle of a huge, empty universe. we're all alone, and we're killing each other to sort out our differences.
is this civilization?
ebay, baby Monday September 9
i love ebay.
and for some reason, i feel like i really could use a little cash to pay off debt. what better way to do this, i ask, than to liquidate assets your parents gave to you for free? man, i am a rotten stink sometimes. anyway, so that's that. tell your friends. oh, and mom, if i happen sell it, i'll try to send you a (reasonable) cut. this auction also proves that i have way too much fun with the digital camera, even if it's only for an ebay listing.
right. Sunday September 8
i am not usually a fan of anything too fragrant, but i must say that clinique's happy is one of the best ever.
a rematch: me versus the bicycles Saturday September 7
this morning was the university parking's annual bike auction. essentially, all the bikes that they find/cut off/recover from being stolen they sell auction-style. it was very crowded, and i could have gotten a much nicer bike if i had decided to wait around and view the entire inventory. but i didn't feel like it.
i'm now the proud new owner of a random 18-speed that's big enough for me. that's all i was looking for, and i only paid $55. how ominous that i paid $55 (in japanese equivalency) for my last bicycle, which broke on me when i needed it the most. this one needs a new back tire, but other than that it appears to be in rideable shape. i'll post pictures after i clean it up.
after only two weeks? Wednesday September 4
we knew that becca and guido getting together after we signed our lease was a bad idea. it got worse last night as they are no longer a couple. i'm sure it will be fine in the end, and i don't want to come across as cold to either of them, but this is something i have no desire to be in the middle of.
guster bootleg: finally Tuesday September 3
after months of having an unrecoverable minidisc of my last guster show, i finally retrieved the data, processed it, made it all sound "nice", encoded it, and released it. you may download the following freely, and please let me know what you think. moreover, i think i know some of the "unknown" song titles (they said at the show), but i'll wait for the new album before i draw conclusions for certain. it was a short show, but that's probably because flickerstick, the opener, took way too long.
setlist:
[Ed note: Setlist removed because songs have been removed from the server.]
so there it is, and since i am currently unlimited on bandwidth, feel free to share the links with anyone.
back in the swing of it
week two of classes begins tomorrow, so i am finally settling down into the student lifestyle that i enjoy so much. while walking to espresso to study tonight, however, i had a burning desire to go to chomp at ISR. the realization of must-cook-for-self-all-the-time set in, and i realized that some of my favorite foods i just don't feel like making. whatever, it's probably better for me this way; my diet consists of baked beans (fiber), cabbage salads (veggies), rice (grain), and fried eggs (protein).
however, there is a japanese girl that stephanie is going to introduce me to, and she lives at ISR. she wants to cook, but there is no kitchen there. way i see it, i'll use her ID to get into chomp, and then i'll cook japanese food with her in my kitchen. both ways i win. i'm already getting mocked for trying to meet japanese people here, but i am sure that as soon as i do it will be rather rewarding.
the todo-list is never-ending, and when i tried to be handy and do things like fix the phone lines in the house today, i end up just shocking myself forty volts at a time and eventually making our second line completely non-functional. i'll continue work as a telephone line man tomorrow. it'll be a good way to wake up if i get mid-afternoon sleepy, those 40 volt jolts.
there's no real point or direction to this post, i just felt that days later it was time for a better update than the cake show. i met with calef tonight to talk about the planet website that i will be the webmaster of shortly, and it looks like all of my pitchpipe practice from this summer will come through and help me out a bit.
anyway, nathan and ashley are playing cards in my attic right now, meeting her was amusing. i wasn't aware that she was "the" ashley when i met her, so reva felt the need to pull me aside and tell me this. i think it would have been funnier to just watch and see how long it would have taken me to catch on by myself.
while home this weekend i stopped by a number of places and tried to catch up with old friends. chatted with the hutchesons for awhile, as well as andy skupien. tried to link up with selene for the hell of it, but all i found was sheena. she is thinking about coming to uiuc next year, and i will probably end up showing her around. and, no, not like that, you gutter-minded fool. she's only eighteen. and in high school.
