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new year's eve Wednesday December 31
naomi: don't break any hearts tonight
mark: c'mon
mark: pleeeeease
mark: maybe just one?
naomi: ok just one
naomi: but she has to be cute
naomi: none of this ugly chick heart breaking
crafty Saturday December 27
monika told me when i got this job at foellinger that sometimes we have to be "crafty". that's the word she uses.
sometimes, i prefer "ghetto".
tonight, i had two male RCA cables that needed to go together but no adapter on hand, so i put on end on record and the other end on play of a tape recorder and pressed record-pause to make the tape player feed its input through the output.
mind you, this wasn't my job -- but i had to do it because someone else dropped the ball on theirs. odd, because i'm returning to the planet tonight for the very same reason.
home Wednesday December 24
the interesting thing about winter break is that it usually offers time for introspection and perspective. you think about where you were a year ago (due to the direct connection of memory from the last christmas), you think about the people you talked to, etc.
last night, out of nowhere, i got an instant message from a girl who i haven't talked to in a year. mind you, she's been on my buddy list for that entire year, but when you're in a relationship with someone else, you don't go making a habit out of sending messages to girls that are only on your buddy list because you were previously interested in them. well, i don't, at least. it's common courtesy.
well, after a little conversation, it comes about that she's recently single by her own doing. then, today, just before i wrote this post, i got another message from another girl i haven't talked to in about two months. her first question of me? when cara gets back from spain. and i told her, "well, she's back, but we're not dating anymore", to which she also tells me that she's recently single by her ex-boyfriend's doing.
now, i'm not trying to say that these women are messaging me solely because they are single now; rather, as i see it, the reason lies in what i mentioned at first: lots of free time and perspective offered by the holidays. people who i've previously had some interesting times with (as friends or otherwise) are left to take stock of themselves and their interpersonal relationships -- and then act on those decisions. it's rather refreshing.
i suppose that leaves the question: "mark, who are you going to catch up with that has been out of your life for awhile?" i can only think of one, but i don't think i'm ready to be the better person and i don't think he's ready to forgive. so we'll give it a rest.
i'm going to go get some chinese food (the real reason for anyone to go to roscoe).
fake comment posters Sunday December 21
the spammers are getting desperate. apparently, they have spamming robots now that browse all the blogs and post comments in various entries using bogus e-mail addresses, names, and fake quotations. of course, the URLs are linked to various spam-esque sites, the standard stuff: websites claiming they can enlarge your penis, get rid of your debt, so on so forth.
it's more annoying than anything; i just end up deleting them, of course, and i wonder why they even waste their time with blogs...most blogs don't get a high enough traffic flow to even make it worth their while. moreover, since when is my audience interested in penis enlargement?
gah, spammers are so dumb. dumber yet, the people that buy stuff from them and propogate such a phenomenon.
phone messages Thursday December 18
today when i got home there was a message from alissa scrawled on the notepad by the phone. it said, "mark da first message on da machine listen to it. it's radicool."
then i proceeded to listen to all of the messages on my phone and on my answering machine. and for some reason, i felt like the resulting combination was funny. i don't know if it actually is, and maybe i'm just tired, but it was funny enough to me that i pulled out a mic and recorded them onto the laptop. you may wish to right-click on these and download them as opposed to streaming from your browser window.
i suppose it's funny that the army's trying to recruit me with telemarketing-esque calls, that herschel, my landlord from last year who sounds crazy and old, still hasn't figured out i don't live at his place anymore, and that tom rybarczyk is not a good way to get back to roscoe. oh, and that i like single girls.
my mother's son & my roommate's roommate Tuesday December 16
tonight i got done with my japanese final. then i proceeded to come home, pull out the rags, comet, sponges, broom, and mop, and not quit until the bathroom and kitchen were cleaned inside and out. yes, mom, i even lifted up the stove top. for no real good reason, other than i like cleanliness...when i have time for it.
mom and todd would be proud.
songs for the dumped Saturday December 13
a lot of people around here are studying like mad for finals. this week, i actually had very little to do. i'm currently procrastinating the writing of a speech in japanese; i feel constricted by the assignment because i have to pull one of three index cards out of a hat tomorrow and give a fluent two-minute speech on either (a) the chief (b) women's role in the home or (c) cloning.
sadly, i am interested in (b) only, and i don't think i can properly express my thoughts on the subject in two minutes in english, let alone in japanese. i know where i stand on the chief, but i just really don't feel like giving a speech on it. in short, i'm just disappointed with our oral final exam, as i think it is asking too much of us to have three two-minute speeches prepared only to draw one at random. it is a waste of my time is disappointing that i will write two speeches that will never be given. i would much rather give a six-minute speech on a decided topic. but this isn't my decision.
at any rate, so that's all i have to do this week, and as a result, i have not been taking life too seriously. therefore, i took it upon myself to try to help out the people who are actually working hard: last night i made leslie dinner, and i made christina a cd to study to, as well as helping her on monday develop the plotline for her story.
while making that cd for christina, i browsed my collection looking for what i wanted to put on there. in the process, i found all of these good breakup songs that i never knew i had -- but then it occurred to me how much music is about girls and their subversive actions. i suppose my collection is biased, as it's full of old cake albums -- cake's old albums are chock full of that kind of rhetoric. at any rate. it made me think of high fidelity: "am i miserable because i listen to pop music, or do i listen to pop music because i'm miserable?" i wouldn't say that i'm miserable, though, i would just say that i had a fun time coming up with a top five list for the category.
thus, the top five songs about getting dumped (and i expect that you'll leave yours in the comments):
honorable mention: any dashboard confessional song
five: saves the day - as your ghost takes flight
four: blue october - breakfast after ten
three: cake - friend is a four letter word
two: reel big fish - all i want is more
one: ben folds five - song for the dumped
howard dean Sunday December 7
i just finished talking with zack rosen, a friend who lived in the dorm with me two years ago. zack came to my room frequently, and we were far better friends then than we are now. but that's not to say that i don't like him anymore, in fact, i often wonder why we stopped hanging out when we stopped cohabitating the same dorm floor. he's a good guy.
but he messaged me the other day to show off: he's taking this year off from school to work on howard dean's campaign, and while i don't think i maintain the political gusto necessary to leave school for an entire year to work politically, i must say that it is inassailably cool that his picture is on the front page of the new york times' website (on the bottom right, if it's still there). in fact, it was just enough to make me jealous.
so, when he messaged me today, i mentioned that i was doing PHP work as well in my free time. and SQL work. and that's what they use on the dean campaign. he asked if i would help. so, before i signed myself up for anything, because i don't even know who i want for vote for yet, just so long as they are not republican in the bush sense of the word, i looked at dean's stance on the issues. truly, he's got the same visionary statements as any other presidential hopeful about the environment and education, and i don't believe it's possible to do everything as president. the system needs some help, too. but, his policy on campaign finance reform is sexy, and the grassroots campaign is equally interesting.
now, back to me. i don't know anything about RSS. i know what it can do, but i don't know how to integrate RSS and XML into PHP. for those of you who don't program, just assume any three-letter combination of capital letters is another language of information exchange. thus, on a trial basis, i am going to design an RSS dashboard interface that will theoretically integrate all of the individual (not-so-good) RSS interfaces that the software on deanspace.org already has. this software will be used in the synchronization of the deanspace.org sites, which are sites that are "underneath" the dean campaign: iowa has a site, new hampshire has a site, and so on. it's not entirely based on states, but think of it as small support groups for a larger cause.
i'd say that last sentence is what was most interesting to me about the dean campaign. there was a rhetoric that the campaign is not solely about presidency, it is about the attempt to use new social networks (i.e., the internet) to help america rediscover its sense of community by introducing people who have similar interests. america has a dwindling, suffering public life. it would make me feel better to do anything i can in any attempt to counteract that tendency.
london et al Thursday December 4
i called nancy from monument station at the prescribed 10:30, but she said that she needed until half (past) eleven. thus, i left monument in search of the thames, walking south across a pedestrian bridge and continuing towards waterloo station along the river path that i walked along three years ago. i passed a park bench with the inscribed placard: "everybody needs a place to think". forty-five minutes later, i reached waterloo station and took the northern line up to angel to meet nancy.
people asked me why i was in england, and i usually said, "because i was supposed to go to spain, but then i didn't." vague at best, the inquistor usually did not press for details. those who did did not hear the story, just the circumstances. i knew before i left that this time abroad was not going to be about vacation, relaxation, or trying to bury the real reason i had purchased the tickets in the first place. london was, as i expected, not much more than a place to think.
after adjusting to jet lag and developing a daily routine, there were moments where i started to feel like i was living in london, and that i was not on vacation. during those times, one of which was during that walk along the thames, i thought of what cara felt like living in granada. surely, it couldn't be too much different than those pangs of independence i felt throughout the latter half of my time abroad. out of nowhere, i felt like i understood why she wanted to go it alone in terms of our relationship.
my initial emotional reaction to this was mixed, as the empathy i felt seemed to require me to agree with her actions. when you understand why you have been hurt, demonizing the other's actions or thoughts becomes difficult. circumstances become the demon, and circumstances have no agency on their own, thus we can do no more than accept them as what has become. this isn't to say i have agreed with her to every end, but i cannot disagree that we all need enough emotional and physical space to find ourselves in a life that gives us the privledge of consistent distraction from what's really important. in fact, it seems that we often don't stop to even question what is important.
so, it was good to get away from urbana. having so much free time and no way to spend it, i was forced to think about what i would fill my time with if i could choose over again, cutting out the things that are less important to me. and so i started thinking about my future after college. sure, i've led myself to a particular path based on my studies of japanese language and culture as well as my business in programming and web design. however, as long as i am in college, my place of residence, and thus my scope of opportunity, remains chosen for me. following graduation, i have to choose where i reside, and what i will do, and in that equation, my determination is the only limiting reagent.
how sexy.
but i have always been the fat kid at the buffet of life, and i've apparently gotten to the age where i have no choice but to order one entree off of the menu. such a choice requires the careful weighing of all involved advantages and detractions, and a decent amount of consideration about what my true motivations and goals are in my young life.
all right, i'm going to zoom in a little, as the abstraction of my situation may make for better reading, but it leads to no concrete conclusion. the requirements for graduation with a bachelor's degree in east asian languages and cultures are six semesters of one language, four advanced-level courses on any topic, and specific courses on asian history, literature, and society. on top of these requirements, i must meet the university's general education requirements, of which i have done all but two courses. in the end, i need six specific courses to graduate: just outside of the grasp of a single semester. i have also considered summer courses that would lead to an august 2004 graduation, but the problem is that i cannot take all six courses over those two semesters because some of them are not offered concurrently, and some are not offered at all during the summer sessions. i have yet to look into guided individual study, but as a procrastinator, it seems like a bad idea.
therefore, returning to school in the fall is most likely imminent. unless something better comes along, i'd like to do the JET program in japan to pay off those burdensome college debts soon after graduation as well as to be able to express myself in this goofy language i like to study in my free time. the problem i thought i had, though, was that the JET program is specifically crafted for recent college graduates: the program begins from september and lasts through the following year. i had a mental roadblock before that kept begging the question: well then, what would you do between january and september? and for awhile, that question stumped me, and the lack of an answer frightened me into not considering any option that created such a circumstance.
london gave me the right push here. who is to say that i cannot leave champaign-urbana in december of next year after graduation and go to japan to live and work? who is to say that i could not do the same for london? south africa? new zealand? thailand? it could even be new york city. am i bound for a city no matter what? probably not, but for someone who has little business so far away from "home", it's natural that the easiest work, friends, and lifestyle will come with a big city: it's full of people doing the exact same thing.
even though todd recommends against it if i want to avoid doing it indefinitely, i can also continue to do freelance web work from anywhere in the world that has an internet connection. i thought about that when i was working at the coffeeshop off of piccadilly circus this past week. piccadilly circus. the espresso in urbana. kanazawa. it doesn't matter where. if it's got an internet connection, it's a potential office for me. and that's actually quite liberating, not constraining as i had originally envisioned the business to be.
i can't quite say what i'd like to do after the JET program yet. signs point towards some graduate work, as i'd like to write academically, i think, but i have no way of knowing what kinds of opportunities or interests will develop in the coming two years. funny though, for over a year now i've been making plans in my head to study abroad in japan again, but when i clear my head a little, i realize that it's the country i want, not the school, and that i'm quite done with going to class. in fact, writing a paper should follow writing this text, if i get around to it on this leg of the trip...
i know i've gone in a lot of directions here, and covered a lot of ground. there may be more detail that you think is lacking, and you can ask me about it. but i didn't want to make this exclusively about my future, or about what i did in london, or how i feel about being single again, or anything in particular. take it as a more-or-less state of the union of my inner selves. odd, when i use that phrase. anyone remember my "state of the union" e-mails?
