bitches love me 'cause they know that I can ROCK!

flyingharmonica @ 2007-11-20T18:16:00

2007-11-21T02:16:15Z

A lot of people are for some reason shocked that I'm taking a women's studies class this term. They always ask "Why?" as if it's horribly unusual for a guy to care about women enough to give a shit about their rights and roles in society. The sad fact is, it IS horribly unusual.

It shouldn't be TOO surprising though that a guy raised by a single mother would see a problem with the state of how women are often treated in the western world. Without going into the complex social workings of ants, bees and spiders, there is no such thing as a matriarchal culture where you find women harassing, abusing, and raping men. Obviously, I don't blame every male in existence for these atrocities, but the sad fact remains that we are not a safe or fair civilization for women by any stretch of the imagination. The rough estimate is that one in four women experience completed or attempted rape in their college years. It's a scary fact to face, both for men and for women. We try to find ways to blame the victim's irresponsibility, because we're downright terrified to admit the possibility that this could ever touch our lives personally. Logically, we should know this is ridiculous; a rich man in a business suit walking late at night won't get mugged unless there's a mugger, and a naked woman passed out in a frat house won't get raped unless there's a rapist present. We KNOW that the responsibility is entirely in the hands of the perpetrator, but we'd rather believe the victim can be responsible to prevent it from happening. The truth is terrifying, that it's our sisters and daughters and friends and significant others that could face assault and lose no matter where they are and what they do.

What further blurs the issue is the vast gray area of consent, and mixed signals. But that's a non-sequitur for me at this point; I can't advocate for women about throwing blame cards and speaking up to men, but I CAN advocate for men about being responsible and respectful.

What some of you may or may not know is that I got into the study of criminal justice with women's rights being my primary motivation. I can only watch bad things happen to decent people so many times before I just can't take it anymore. Misogynist disrespect toward femininity has to be stopped, and I'll do whatever I can about it.

So for this class I am required to do a project called a "liberating act." Being one of two men in the class, and the only straight one, I was a little worried that it would be difficult to find something I could personally do on campus to "liberate" the feminist movement. Fortunately for me, the scope of the project simply involved liberation from gender norms and stereotypes.

Taking note of that, I decided to work on something very personal for me. You see, for as long as I can remember, I've had an insatiable alpha-male instinct. That is, to clarify, that I seek to be dominant in my "pack" of other males. On the playground of elementary school, I brawled my way to the top. As life progressed, my methods became more sophisticated. I'd use humor, wit, argumentation, or whatever else to take apart the people that challenged my stature (granted, some have been more aggressive than me in various ways). Other boys and men weren't really FRIENDS the way most people think of them, but rather COMRADES who supported me. And if I wasn't dominant, I kept very close to the person who was. My brother demonstrated to me very early on that submission was physically and emotionally painful; in some cases, potentially lethal.

So my act of liberation, as I've defined it, is to disregard the part of me that seeks to dominate men, and to see my fellow males as what they are: People, like me but unlike me. I listen to them now, really listen when they come to me with a problem, rather than simply offering them a solution and letting them get on with it. And what's more, I talk to them about my feelings in a constructive way. The more I put this into practice, the more I find that it enriches my friendships. In a movie I recently saw, someone said that the beauty of humanity is that we don't simply survive, but we discover, we create. This concept should apply to our social lives too.

When the subject of male activists against sexual assault came up in class today, I paid a little more attention than usual to the discussion. It was mentioned that 85% of polled male college students said they would intervene and stop a rape that they knew was occurring. That statistic was put on fliers and posted around campus, most likely to promote the thought process in young men's minds: Would I really? It seems much easier to say you would when a vast majority of your fellow men are in agreement. It's a paths of least resistance principle.

I wouldn't REALLY expect 85% of the men I know to intervene if they saw misogyny of any kind happening before their eyes. Why not? Because the almost universal fear for humanity is confrontation with another human being. In World War II, they found that maybe one in every nineteen American soldiers even fired their rifles at the enemy. In the American Civil War, they found dead soldiers with several musket balls loaded into their rifles, jammed right on top of each other. The poor bastards were too scared to shoot, but they just kept loading because that's what they trained to do. To confront, to fight, to kill a person is just about the most terrifying thing a human being can face, but military science in the last century has revealed how this effect can be reduced. Squad-operated weapons, such as cannons and heavy machine guns are effective not for the amount of damage per-second they can cause, but because the man at the trigger ACTUALLY FIRES. The way he sees it, he's just pointing the gun, and the guy who's loading it is just as responsible for the killing as he is. They're in it together. As a team, they overcome this ultimate fear.

An even more powerful factor in combating the fear of combat is the concept of leadership, and it's here that I found the true meat of what was going through my head in class discussion today. A team effort will work both ways, and if one man freaks out, it's all the more likely that his partner will too. Put an officer behind them though, have him order them, DEMAND that they keep firing, I'll bet you dollars to donuts they'll hold together. It takes the courage of a charismatic, authoritative, dominant superior to ultimately tip the balance in a squad of stressed individuals to help them overcome their fear. If it works for killing enemy soldiers, it can work for confronting misogyny.

"But, wait, Owen. Aren't you trying to REJECT the part of you that seeks to be dominant?" You're right, but there is an enormous difference here. I'm suddenly aware of a truth that I seem to have been overlooking until now: the difference between being a leader and being an alpha male. You see, the alpha takes power as a matter of survival. A leader comes to power when his actions inspire those around him. In particular, a GOOD leader steps up to become an example of courage on behalf of what he knows is right (not simply what he's been told is right, but what he's reasoned and come to understand on his own terms). That's what I have to will become. What kind of man would I be if I settled for anything less?

I'd like to hear anyone else's thoughts on the subject, if they have any.

flyingharmonica @ 2007-07-18T20:25:00

2007-07-19T03:26:12Z

On the bus back to Eugene yesterday, I watched a pick-up artist in action. The guy was a regular (name deleted). First, he hit on the girl sitting in front of me relentlessly. She got off the bus before it got dark though. So his next mark was the fat girl sitting across the aisle from me, who moved up to the previous girl's seat to have a closer conversation with him. Within a half hour, they were making out. Honestly, of all places.

I have to say, that if that kind of superficial charm is what passes for charisma these days, I have to say that I'm glad not to have much of it.

I was reading On Combat, and thinking about the things I read in it. Two stories were told that really reached out to me. One told of a rookie cop who, during the briefing for his first day on the force met the role model that everyone else in the department looked up to. The guy was 6'3", 230 lbs. of pure muscle, one of the most seasoned, tough, and intelligent cops around. Everyone felt honored to be around when he told his stories of situations he'd been in. Whenever a rookie would ask him if he had any tips for them, he'd respond with, "So you want to be a hero? Do what you do, but you're never a real cop until you know what they taste like." All of the rookies had bets on "what they taste like" was referring to. About a year went by before one of them walked up to him and mentioned his record of hundreds of arrests, plenty of fights, and said that he'd proven himself out on the streets well enough that he thought he deserved to know what the saying meant. The older cop responded that if he didn't know, he still wasn't a real cop.

So the next day, the rookie was out on his shift, and with fifteen minutes left before he had to go home, he thought he saw his daughter standing on a porch. He backed up to check again, and it definitely wasn't his daughter. But he still felt it was strange that a young girl (about seven) would be standing on a porch alone at 11:45 pm. He walked up to talk to her, and asked her what she was doing out there. On his approach, the little girl looked at him like he was her knight in shining armor. She said that her parents had gotten in a fight, and now her mother wouldn't wake up. The rookie moved around the house and approached a window to see a man standing over an unconscious woman, blood all over his hands. He kicked in the door, and pushed past the man to try and resuscitate the woman, but it was too late. She was dead. The man said he didn't know what happened, they were just fighting over his drinking, and he pushed her and she hit her head. The officer called for EMS and back-up, and on his way out, he had the father in handcuffs. He now knew that he had gone from being the little girl's hero to a monster, who had now appeared to take both of her parents away from her. He tried to approach her to say something, he didn't know what, and she turned away and ran back into the house.

Later, the rookie sat in the locker room, running over the whole situation, wishing he would have been there sooner, wishing there were something he could have done differently, and he began to weep for the little girl. A big hand settled on his shoulder, and he heard the veteran's voice say "Now you know what they taste like." The rookie realized that the veteran's saying referred to tears. "Sometimes, you can do everything right and the outcome doesn't change. You may not be the hero you thought you'd be, but now you're a real cop."

It was a story told to illustrate the difference between the sheepdog and the wolf. They are both blessed with the gift of aggression, but the sheepdog loves his flock and weeps for their every moment of pain.

The other story wasn't quite so dark, nor so long. A police officer was out with his wife shopping at a grocery store. He knew that if anything should happen while she was with him, she would react by grabbing his arm, so he always made sure she was on his left so that his right arm would be free to draw his gun. Wherever they went, he was ALWAYS on the right. This day as they were shopping, a young man came around a corner and drew a gun on them. The young man was someone the officer had put in prison, and wasn't happy about it. Everything happened so fast, not a moment's hesitation to even have to THINK about what they were going to do. The wife grabbed the officer's left arm, and he pulled her behind him while drawing his weapon, and he dropped the assailant before they could get hurt.

This senior officer bought himself and his wife twenty more years to live that day, by being prepared. If he'd drawn one second slower, their grandchildren would have never known them. But he knew that being a police officer was to train and prepare, and to always be alert, always be aware for that one day when something would go terribly wrong, and he would have to take a kill shot. He didn't stop to think about having to kill another human being, and he suffered no adverse psychological effects afterwards, since he had made the decision in advance. He didn't deny that when it came down to it, he could only rely on himself to save his wife's life, and his own, and since he never had any delusions that it could never happen, since he knew his profession meant gambling with his very life, he wasn't inhibited by fear in any way. As I said, there is no safety in denial. The worst will probably not happen, but it can, and I know there's no way I could live with myself if it happened and I neglected to be prepared for it.

I'm not sure why I'm telling you all this, you're probably getting more skeptical about me by the minute. Maybe because I want you to understand some things about me better. It's not that I don't know how to take care of myself. I'm not planning to die, and when my time comes, heaven knows I won't go down easily. But I am prepared for the very real possibility that I may die a young death; there is no safety in denial. And maybe one little thing I do makes someone happy just for a moment, or gives them hope when they need it most, or buys them twenty more years of their life. Is that not a cause worth living for? It may sound like some adolescent fantasy, but I guarantee you, it's not. If there's one thing I'm good at, it's maintaining a sense of logical reality. There is nothing morally superior about what I am, or what I choose to be. I simply could not be anything else.

--excerpt from letters to Aubrey, 7/18/2007

He lives?

2007-06-26T05:36:53Z

Well then. I think I'm going to start using this again, just for the hell of it. It's summer, what better things do I have to do?

An update on the life of Owen, since you've all been missing for awhile:

I'm still going to SOU and doing just dandily there (especially now that I've passed CORE and don't have to sit through another term of it). The more I've studied the legal systems, the more I've decided that I would rather go into the public sector than just be a private investigator. For one thing, the benefits are better, as is the pay. But it's not just a materialist thing. I have a lot of principles invested in the work that the police do, and a lot of my physiology and psychology seems hard-wired to do just that work. So now I'm looking into becoming a police detective. Probably. If that doesn't pan out, I may try to get a position with a K-9 unit.

In the more personal aspects of my life, I met a girl named Aubrey in the early fall, and we developed a very strong, healthy relationship together. I never realized just how close two people can be, but nearly every aspect of our lives was intertwined together to create something more intimate than any relationship I've ever been in before. All of the others, the most often we'd see each other was maybe a couple times per week. Whether it was a lack of personal compatibility or anything else, those previous relationships all had such an enormous distance in the middle, steadily driving them apart. I'm glad that I made sure to spend plenty of time being single in the middle there before I got back into dating again, because living a very neglected life for eighteen years made me entirely too eager to latch onto people, and I needed to stop and figure out exactly what I wanted.

But I did what I always do, I was stupid. About halfway through the relationship, I turned 21, and what previously classified as a drinking problem for me became a drinking dependency. People who know me well enough know that ever since I was nineteen years old, if alcohol was available, I was drinking it. For better or for worse, I wouldn't stop until the booze ran out or until my brain started to shut down. I had black-outs. More severe as time went on. Early in our relationship, drinking caused me to do something that greatly hurt Aubrey's feelings, and we determined that I should try to be more careful when I drank.

But a couple months of drinking responsibly went by, and I started to get careless again. One night, she found the switch to hit when I was entirely over the edge that'd demonstrate how truly manic depressive I can be. She found out more about my psychological disorders, and became even more afraid of me. I decided that I would make sure from that point on to be careful about not drinking too much. And once again, it was only a matter of time before I would lose focus and become irresponsible again.

I love to drink. I very truly LOVE it. I love the taste of a good bourbon, a beer that's brewed with the right kind of love, even some wines can really hit the spot and complement a good meal. I love many, many cocktails. When I reach a healthy buzz, I come to a very happy place. You see, I hate other people. I have my reasons. I loathe all of them, as well as myself. When I reach that good buzz though, the feeling reverses. Every person I meet, I feel like they're my best friend in the world. If I already DID like someone a bit before, they were even better than best friends. In a world that, from my perspective is very hostile, alcohol was one thing that permitted me to simply live. To laugh and grin and be content in the company of others.

But for me, a drink is like a potato chip: I can't just have one. I'll feel my brain starting to shut down, and I'll still ask the barmaid for a double-shot of jaeger with a pint of beer to chase. I will absolutely gorge myself on it, as much as I can, until it kills me. I am a glutton for alcohol. And I'm sad to say that it had to go to the point where I lost the best relationship of my life, where I'd down eighteen glasses of wine before class and be drunk by noon, before I realized what all of these things made me.

"My name is Owen, and I'm an alcoholic." It felt really weird to say that the first time. I'm starting to get more comfortable at the meetings, though. I need to quit drinking, and this time, it has to be for real. I have to go beyond whatever I tried before, because none of those other things worked. I love drinking, but I love Aubrey a hell of a lot more. I hate having black-outs, I hate not being able to remember what I did the night before, if I did something that would hurt her. Or something that would hurt myself, or anybody else. I'm going to attend AA over the summer, and if all goes the way it ought to, I should be able to make right of my situation with Aubrey. There are couples with worse problems and incompatibilities than anything we have, and I know that this is something worth salvaging.

This does not, however, mean that other people have to be weird about drinking around me. Quite the opposite. I love you guys, and I know that's what you love to do. I'll be right there, laughing with you, helping you with whatever it is you've temporarily lost the coordination for (as long as it doesn't involve holding your dick while you pee). One of the first things I plan to do when I get back is get my driver's license, so I can be the DD for you clowns when you go out to bars or just get tanked at a friend's place. Don't worry about me getting uncomfortable or wanting to leave just because you guys are having more fun than I am; I'm not drinking anymore, but I'm not an asshole either.

In other news, I've discovered one thing that's very wrong with my writing. It may seem obvious, or stupid, or whatever, but I was reading Tucker Max, and it suddenly clicked as to why I had so much trouble with writer's block. See, Tucker can write fantastically about his own ridiculous experiences. But when he tried writing fiction, he failed. Why? Because it's easier to write something that actually happened to you. For whatever reason, I've been experiencing the story the way my character sees it, and describing that. What I should have been doing was RECALLING these events as memories from the character's mind. Those don't even require me to translate it to words, the character does that themselves. It's so fucking simple, but it means the big difference between the pure, genuine writing that pours out of Tucker, and the stiff crap that I can barely even wring out.

Anyway, I'm sure there's more to be said, but this entry is long enough. I'm writing letters to Aubrey daily, so if anything said seems to be pertinent enough to go here, I'll probably copy/paste it over. But, it feels good to be putting my thoughts down again, as random and silly as they may be.

poop

2007-06-26T04:43:25Z

poop

flyingharmonica @ 2006-10-03T18:52:00

2006-10-04T01:55:02Z

I re-wrote it. Fatties.

Antarctica, June 30th, 2771 C.E.

In the pitch-black gloom of his tiny apartment, the outlaw kicked himself back to his senses, fumbling under the moldy old pillow for his knife. He just barely clutched the handle into his fingers before spastically falling from his cot to the icy concrete floor. Picking up a sign of movement, the projection clock shot the time onto the ceiling, granting just enough light to scan the room.

Terror sizzled in the outlaw’s consciousness, still fresh from the infernal oven of a nightmare. He slashed the blade he held at nothing, blinking and squinting his smoke-dried eyes harder each time. Every time he opened them the air felt like sandpaper; but every time he closed them the horrific images bombarded him again and again until he choked and coughed and tried to swallow enough air to scream. But as he curled up and wept in desperation, the cold air penetrated him ‘til he shivered harder and harder and finally welcomed himself back to the safety of reality.

Now clearly visible under the dim light of the projection clock was the emptiness of his room. Everything was the way he left it, his gun resting fully-loaded with the safety off on his bedside table. A chair with an empty whiskey bottle pressed behind the back rest sat pushed up against the only door into the windowless room. If someone had slid the door open, he knew the bottle would have fallen and shattered, waking him instantly. He could even just barely make out the strand of his own hair he’d spit-glued to the door’s opening point. No way in hell could anyone have come in here without him knowing.

Satisfied, the young man clapped, and the power came on in the room. The overhead lighting panels illuminated slowly to avoid blinding him, and the time display shifted to the wall above his bed. From the looks of it, he’d slept four hours. Too long, he thought. Oversleeping was a luxury the outlaw couldn’t afford anymore; there wasn’t a man in the known universe who didn’t want him dead, after all, and if the wrong people found him there was no telling what kind of sick games they’d play with him before they even bothered lending an ear to his pleading for the coup de grace.

Now he was sorrier than anyone for what he’d done, of course, the young man knew he had a debt to settle with God when he eventually bought the farm. Unfortunately that just wasn’t enough to satisfy his enemies. When the time came for his end (and he figured it sooner than later) there would be nothing he could do to escape the wrath of God. But for now he had to trust that he was still alive for a reason, and until he figured it out he’d gun down every self-righteous son of a bitch who came to claim the price on his head. It wasn’t any way to live, but it was all he had. If his enemies came for him it didn’t matter if they were cops or feds or bounty hunters or even the corporate espionage branches he used to work for; he’d show them no hesitation and no mercy. He’d shoot at them until they didn’t even look human any more, he’d slice them open from pelvis to sternum and strangle them with their own guts.

He stood in the mirror and told himself all of this, over and over again until the tears no longer welled in his eyes and he stood up straight, his spine steeled and his heart colder than the frigid air of his barely-heated room. I ain’t no statistic of interstellar crime. I ain’t nobody’s instrument of murder no more. I’m Nikolaus Archer, and I will not be made an example of on this day or any other. He gripped the pendant of Solomon’s Seal around his neck, and prayed. Forgive me, o’ Lord, for what I done and what I am. Amen.

flyingharmonica @ 2006-09-24T23:48:00

2006-09-25T06:52:38Z

"Bond saw luck as a woman, to be softly wooed or brutally ravaged, never pandered to or pursued. But he was honest enough to admit that he had never yet been made to suffer by cards or by women. One day, and he accepted the fact, he would be brought to his knees by love or by luck. When that happened he knew that he too would be branded with the deadly question-mark he recognized so often in others, the promise to pay before you have lost: the acceptance of fallibility."

Ian Fleming is the fucking man.

flyingharmonica @ 2006-09-13T10:44:00

2006-09-13T18:02:17Z

Last week, I started the practice of running/bike riding/anything to keep my heart rate up for half an hour, every morning. This is immediately followed by a typical routine of crunches, push-ups, and pull-ups. I'm not entirely sure why I started doing this. Sometimes it just feels good to completely burn yourself out on physical activity when you're stressed. When you get so mad over something so stupid that it's all you can think about, and you just want to throw a fist into everybody you see. You'll start with the utmost intensity, and push yourself until your legs won't carry you anymore, until you can't get yourself over the bar, until your chest gives out and you could almost swear you're going into cardiac arrest. And you take a second or two to breathe, then do it again.

I expected to be exhausted when I got to work after I began doing this. I wasn't. Instead, I had even more energy than usual for the day, and I slept better at night. I guess my new stress release has all kinds of benefits. I used to smoke to cool myself down, but lately, it's stopped working. So I really have no reason to do it anymore, but I still do when I drink. For now.

But this is only temporary. I know I've said it before, and I know I've tossed the idea to the garbage several times, but when I turn 22, I realy am going to give up drinking and smoking for good. I'm not a good guy when I drink. I have fun, sometimes, sure. But for the most part, it's just an unnecessary crutch, and a highly unhealthy one to boot. I'm only staying on the stuff for another year because it occurred to me how ridiculous it is to give up drinking before you're even allowed to legally. So, here it is, the final countdown; it'll all be straightedge from there on out. If my lungs or my heart kill me, it won't be the cancer, or some drug I don't need constricting my arteries so hard I get a stroke. It'll be because I pushed myself harder than I ever could have when I was on that stuff.

flyingharmonica @ 2006-09-08T15:20:00

2006-09-08T22:22:48Z

Alright, so it's been awhile since my last update.

I still don't have anything useful to say.

Neither do you.

FIN

flyingharmonica @ 2006-07-09T10:37:00

2006-07-09T17:39:36Z

I've come to the conclusion that I like Wicked. It's a fun little show. Intensely overrated, and far from being anything genius, and I won't pay buttloads of money to watch it in Portland, but it's a fun little show. Even if most of the music is the same basic template with a slightly different melody over it, and almost ALL of the lyrics are plain and uninspiring.

Urinetown beats the shit out of Wicked any day.

I have had a revelation

2006-06-18T10:23:51Z

I, Owen Douglas Keali'inuimahi Lee, am not an asshole. Not by any stretch of the imagination. If you fail to see this, pull your head outta your ass and try to recall the last time I ever truly did anything malicious to anybody.

Back in Black

2006-06-14T23:04:51Z

So, guess who's done with finals and back in the Eugs? Not a lot's changed here since I left. For some reason though, Junes seem to always be a time when I receive a phone call from a long lost friend who arbitrarily decides to contact me at the exact moment I return from being away for awhile. This time, it was my first girlfriend, Ari. Which is really weird, and kind of awkward. Bear in mind that in four months of a relationship, we said about two words to each other. What's more, we haven't so much as breathed one another's name in two years. Something's not right about this. I don't trust it.

I smell a duck.

flyingharmonica @ 2006-06-06T21:47:00

2006-06-07T04:47:38Z

Red? Or purple? You decide.

Oh, I see how it is.

2006-05-31T18:34:16Z

Any of my normal entries, people barely glance. I post a dumb meme that verbally handjobs you, suddenly everybody shows up to comment. Fatties.

I roll 20's

2006-05-29T11:09:59Z

Leave your name and:
1. I'll respond with something random about you
2. I'll challenge you to try something
3. I'll pick a color that I associate with you
4. I'll tell you something I like about you
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of
7. I'll ask you something I've always wanted to ask you
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on yours

Liquid Owen?

2006-05-25T10:06:18Z

BROTHER, BROTHER, BROTHER!!!

</nerd>

Antics of a dumb college boy

2006-05-12T02:11:13Z

There is a young man, some of you may have heard of him, named Tim. Tim is rather short, and a wee bit of a sociopath, and has a horrible short guy complex (Martial Arts, etc). He has this tendency to get obscenely drunk (even worse than me) and brag of his exploits (which is usually about little more than him being very very drunk and stoned).

On the eve of Easter Sunday, I decided that I was only going to sleep about six hours, so I may as well leave my door open, in case someone needs to wake me up for something. In no more than an hour, I am awoken by the following:

"HEY OWEN!! HAVE YOU EVER TRIED MOVVINGFH FURNITOOR AROUND WHEN YOUR RLY DRUNK AND ST0N'D???"

For a moment or two, all I could do was blink.

"Uh, no, Tim, I can't say that I have."

"WELL DUDE, THERE'S THIS COUCH IN MY ROOM, AND I HAVE NO IDEA HOW IT GOT THERE!!"

I decided this was something that required visual confirmation, so I got up, and walked to his room. Sure enough, there is a couch. Those of you who have seen how narrow the halls and doorways are at the SOU dorms, will understand exactly how puzzling it should be that he would manage to get that damn thing through the door even when he's SOBER. I don't even WANT to begin wondering where it came from. But, to be honest, I really didn't care.

"Congratulations, Tim." I went back to my room, and returned to sleeping. In my sleep, I dreamed of standing atop a war elephant and firing arrows down on the armies of those who would forbid Sriracha Hot Sauce. After maybe another hour,

"HEY OWEN!!! CHECK OUT THIS FIRE EXTINGUISHER I FOUND!!!!" *BSSSHHHHHHHHHH* There stands Tim, with one of the dorm fire extinguishers, blasting it across the hall into the laundry room.

"Neat, Tim." Back to my elephant. About an hour later,

*BSSSSSSHHHHHHH* A bunch of white CO2 mist starts pouring into my room. I reached over and shoved the door to close. My elephant ran away.

We found out the next morning, that he had stolen the fire extinguisher from the Glacier hall (which is on the exact opposite end of the housing complex, past the cafeteria and two security cameras). The Janitor had apparently found him passed out in the lounge, with the entire room (including himself) coated in extinguisher ice. At this point, Tim got up and ran, and hid in someone else's room until sober. He was also smart enough to hide the stolen extinguisher in the least incriminating place he could find: The bushes right outside his window. He spent the rest of Easter Sunday trying to dry out everything in his room that got soaked, and later that week moved over into Glacier, out of our hall. We had bets going on whether or not he'd get expelled (tampering with a fire extinguisher is a federal offense). However, it seems that the surveillance recording system is horribly set up, and reviewing the tapes would be more work than anyone on SOU security felt like doing. Smooth work, Tim. You beat the rap.

Not long before Timothy's firefighting experience, we had a new member move into the first room of our hall. He was apparently from some sort of military faction, though we didn't really care which one. He used to have a white board on his door, on which would be awkward messages that made no sense to us. Among these messages were the following:

"Shut the FUCK up!!!" We couldn't quite tell if this was directed toward us or not. We don't really tend to be that loud, but if we are, he could always just, you know, ask us to tone it down. We paid no mind to it, and the message was later removed, to be replaced with:

"One shot,
One kill,
Ready to die
Never will"

I can't tell if this is a military thing, or a penis compensation thing.

But, in spite of the awkward messages on his door, we've all been quite hospitable. We didn't hot-glue his lock when he used my shower stall, or anything like that. In the cafeteria, we would invite him to come sit with us, but he refused. I mean, come on. We let the guy live in our hall, we're making friendly gestures, and he totally blows us off. He has to this day never so much as introduced himself, leaving us with no choice but to call him Arms (short for "army guy").

One night, we were hanging out in the hallway, and Garret whacked his door, as he usually does. It was maybe 10pm. So, Arms comes out of his room without a shirt on (research has led us to the information that he used to be fat, so he now appears without a shirt whenever possible to show how lanky the military has made him), and says, "Hey! You guys wanna be a little more fucking quiet? Maybe stop pounding on shit?" Then ducks back into his room and slams the door. So, a couple minutes later, when this stoner guy that none of us like named Luke comes down and asks us for a cigarette, we cannot resist. "Well, none of us smoke, but the guy at the end of the hall does. You should go knock on his door."

At the sound of the first knock, we all disappeared behind locked doors with the lights out. This was the only thing mildly resembling a prank that we pulled. I mean, come on, do you mean to tell me that a guy can join the military, and NOT deal with any pranking comrades? This is kid shit compared to what I'd do if I were a Marine. Or, hell, what I'd do if I were in any state of not liking him.

So, a week or two pass after this incident, and, about a week ago, we're all sitting in our rooms with our doors open, as we usually do, and we hear this clown come into the hall (apparently just coming back from class). What we hear, is as follows:

"There'd better not be anyone in my fuckin' room! Fucking assholes! I'm going in HERE now, into the non-virgin area! OVER THERE BEING THE VIRGIN AREA!" We were under the impression that he was indicating the rest of the hall with his final statement. This had us partially in hysterics, and partially confused (because we know for a fact that he has seen almost every one of us entering and leaving our rooms with girlfriends). We came to the conclusion that his statement didn't make any sense whatsoever, but was still totally awesome. So, later that night, Garrett got a wonderful idea.

You must understand that on a friday night, in Ashland, there is little to do. So, we broke out the Photoshop, and used it to create and post a proper warning on his door, as well as another one on the adjacent wall. After all, if such areas as he indicated truly existed, it was only fair to alert the public of this hazard.

The next morning, we discovered that he had left both signs up, but moved the one on his door down a couple of inches so that it was no longer blocking his peephole. I think we've finally reached an understanding.

Some of you may know who OATC (pronounced, "Oatsie") is, but some of you may not. He is a large, disgusting, smelly, neckbearded warhammer player, who is consequently the only student occupying the hall across the laundry room from ours. He is so socially awkward, and so disgusting to be around, that even the warhammer players from the Diamond hall will not be seen with him these days. He often sits in the Hawthorne lounge, playing Super Smash Bros.: Melee for hours on end (It was once recorded that he was there before 6pm, and stayed past 2am), and in the process of doing so, makes the entire lounge smell so vile that no other can enter without holding their breath. It has been established that he does not need to do this in the lounge, since he has a TV in his room, but for some reason he does it anyway. We have logically deduced that he cannot possibly be trying to show off, because in spite of how much he plays, he is still an atrocious failure at gaming (I have once personally witnessed him losing to a lvl 5 computer player).

OATC takes his name from his trademark garment of choice: A ratty green One-Armed Trench Coat. Historians have disputed the true story behind it to no end, but it is universally agreed and evidentially undeniable that the sleeve was ripped off, and rather than sew it back on, or throw the disgusting thing away (he has NEVER washed it), he continued to wear it around.

SIDENOTE: The following are hypothetical theories on how OATC became the OATC.

There was once a hot and popular DJ in the Greater Toronto Area, who worked day and night to give the patrons of a local dance club the greatest remixes ever. One fateful night, he was wearing his favorite black trench coat, a trend at the time due to the Matrix influence. Suddenly, as he was rockin' the turntables, his right sleeve caught on the needle, and was ripped clean off. The music immediately stopped, and everyone turned to watch in horror as a neckbeard instantaneously sprouted from his chin. His body began to swell with humiliation at what he'd done, and he began to emit a smell so putrid, it turned his jacket green. He fled the area, never to be seen again. Until now.

Amidst the rough-and-tumble highschool life of Beverly Hills, there was one young boy who was constantly pushed around by the other students for his attempt to grow moss on his trench coat for a science project. One day, he decided to stand up against the mob. The enemy gang's leader, Phillip, challenged him to a fight, and with all the pressure behind him, the young man could not back down. As they stepped into the center ring of the playground, the young warrior tried to roll up his sleeves for the coming fight. His right one, however, would not roll up. Something was stopping it. In sheer frustration, he ripped the sleeve off. Seeing the opportunity, Phillip grabbed the sleeve and bolted into the sunset. The young man in the trenchcoat was never the same again.

In any case, this garment was recently replaced, by something new: A shiny silver hooded cape. The price of this new treasure has been discovered to have been 150 dollars or more, but the powers it carries can only be speculated upon. Many believe that it is an invisibility cloak, and the only reason we can see him is that he's wearing it inside out, so he can't see anybody. He doesn't know that he's wearing it inside out though, he just thinks everybody left.

Anyway, as a number of students were gathering in the Hawthorne lounge last night, one of them moved some of the furniture around to better set the mood. After passing through, OATC was reported to have said in a huff to another student at the vending machine his distaste for people moving the furniture. He later called the RA, who didn't care, and was pissed off that OATC wasted his time on that.

Stool pidgeons are not something that is smiled upon in our hall. This will not stand. We are now discovering various information that may aid in our retaliation. For one thing, the end lightswitch in the lounge shuts off the power outlet that he plugs his gamecube into. For another, he never locks his door.

Anybody who has any good ideas for what is to be done, please notify us immediately.

flyingharmonica @ 2006-04-30T04:27:00

2006-04-30T11:27:32Z

If I cut a rectangle in half, could I make a square?

flyingharmonica @ 2006-04-30T04:27:00

2006-04-30T11:26:57Z

Emily: I can write one-liners too.

flyingharmonica @ 2006-04-22T22:24:00

2006-04-23T05:45:07Z

General Patton once said that men go to war with each other because every man is at war with himself. And it's true. We're all made up of a hundred different conflicting sides, different perspectives we have of things, and they are constantly battling over which one is right. One side may believe that vengeance is justice, while another believes that everyone, regardless of their sins, deserves a fair shot at life. One side may feel that God has forsaken them, while the other simply finds that it's all a part of his master plan, or his unwillingness to interfere with free will. What your moral and philosophical stance is at any given point in time is entirely dependent on which side is winning the war within your mind and heart. And, like real wars, no one stays on top forever. The advantage in these grand battles depends heavily on resources and reinforcement from the environment around you. At some point, I can't help but worry: By surrounding myself with this pretentious irresponsible college kid atmosphere, have I or will I become a pretentious irresponsible college kid myself?

On an unrelated note, I awoke early thursday morning to the gentle sounds of some kid phoning in to a radio talk show. I don't know Ashland stations, so I haven't bothered re-tuning my alarm since I got here. See, I was about to face my first exam of College life. Unlike what I had expected, the exam was online. This was a plus. What was a minus, was that I have not bought any textbooks yet this term, and thus didn't have anything to study. I came to this realization at around 11pm the night before, and my choices were obvious: Either I fail miserably and ultimately become to the PI world what Kenan Thompson is to the acting world, or I facebook someone who has the same class, snag their AIM name, and get the information I need out of them. After about an hour or so of going over the dilemma of whether or not this would be crossing the thin line between innovative and creepy psychotic, I finally buckled and did what I had to. It paid off.

So, this brings us back to 8:30 am. I spent the next three and a half hours drifting between reading crucial chapters and nodding back into a dream that involved a bondage experience with Carrie Williamson and a roll of shrink-wrap (Tangent: This adds yet another chapter to nonsensical dreams about girls whom I've never been attracted to in that way before). When noontime hit, and the test was posted, I went to work. I got a 72 out of 100.

However, my level of being pleased with myself quickly dissipated when I looked to my clock and discovered that I had half an hour to shower and get my ass to US History. What did I do? I figured fuck it. Ella's in the class, she can update me on what I missed. This was a time to reward myself for a job well done. And, I almost wish that I hadn't skipped that class, because the end result was me being very, very bored. I sat in my boxers for some time, bored of tv, of videogames, of the internets, and in a moment of scratching my armpits, my eyes fell across my Gilette Fusion, and I got an amusing idea.

Yes, boys and girls, after much effort, my armpits are now hairless. I have to say that I kind of like it. The deoderant goes on much smoother now, though it certainly didn't do anything to sate the sting of razorburn.

Kids, next time your teachers try to tell you that college is HARD, and that you need to study harder than you do in highschool for it, don't buy into their shit. It's really quite boring.

On that note, I'm off to fap at a close-up of John Travolta's chin, using anti-bacterial hand sanitizer as lube.

flyingharmonica @ 2006-04-03T11:45:00

2006-04-03T18:44:57Z

Smells like vagina in here!

flyingharmonica @ 2006-03-30T13:56:00

2006-03-30T21:56:13Z

http://youtube.com/watch?v=jB89-9X6YS0

Amazing.

flyingharmonica @ 2006-03-27T00:21:00

2006-03-27T08:21:59Z

Next person to take a shit on my friends page with their fairy quiz results, gets a pen in the eye.

flyingharmonica @ 2006-03-24T06:03:00

2006-03-24T14:06:10Z

Archer kept a wary eye out as the steel door to the tavern slid open. He could taste something different in the air today, as if there was something out of place that broke the every day peace and quiet he’d come to depend on about Antarctica. He stepped inside and let the door whoosh shut behind him before scanning the place.

When his eyes landed on the table in the far corner, he could feel the color drain from his face. Devlan! Here? It felt impossible, but his eyes wouldn’t let him deny the truth. There sat the old man, surrounded by a cloud of his own smoke. It seemed he’d already ordered Nick’s usual bottle of whiskey, and had an empty glass waiting for him across the table. The whole place seemed to go quiet for a moment, while the two men stared each other down. The outlaw heaved a sigh, and grudgingly approached the table to slump down into his seat.

“Ain’t you gonna say ‘hi’ to me, kid? After eight months, I thought you’d be a little happier to see me,” Devlan grunted at him.

“I ain’t a kid no more, old man,” Archer shot back. “And you know that I know you, and I know you don’t never drop in on me just to catch up over a cup of coffee.” The young man poured himself a glass, and downed it immediately. Devlan was his oldest acquaintance in the world, but that didn’t mean he was his favorite. His thick head of hair was already drowning in grays, and he had it perfectly combed back. His steel-blue eyes felt like they were piercing right through him, and for a moment, he forgot which one of them was made of glass. The old man’s bushy mustache was neatly waxed and upturned at the ends, giving him the appearance of a constant Cheshire cat smile, in spite of the apparent shiner he wore on his left cheek.

“Nicky, buddy, come on! How can you say that after all these years? You know you’re the best man I got; I could spare a hundred of anybody else before I could give up one of you. Don’t forget who’s been taking care of you ever since you left the Marines.”

“Yeah, yeah, alright! Whatever, so I’m your lucky rabbit’s foot. So you trying to tell me you’re here on pleasure instead of business?”

The old man’s smile widened. “My business is my pleasure. But, yeah, I got work for you to do.” He reached down into the briefcase at his side, and brought out a small digital notepad, which he then slid across the table.

Nick slid it right back. “Keep it. I’m retired.”

“Not anymore, you ain’t,” he raised his voice to a growl. “Look,” he said, calming himself and taking another drag of his cigarette, “what I got to say concerns you too, so you may as well hear me out, alright?”

Archer thought, for a moment, of reaching for his gun. Instead, he reached for the bottle and poured himself another drink. Then he picked up the notepad, and turned it on.

“Does that tattoo look familiar?”

He found himself staring at an image of a man lying on the ground, double his weight in lead, with a sleeve rolled up. Wrapped around his forearm, was the image of a snake. “This is the trademark insignia of the Bounty Officers’ Association. What the hell happened?”

“That guy, two other men with the same ink job, and about twenty other clowns tried to kill me in my own home earlier this week.”

Archer looked at him in disbelief. “Twenty three guys from BOA raided your castle in Wales?”

“No, three, I said. And not just grunts either. We identified them – click through the next couple pages on that thing – and these guys are straight from the top. The other twenty, they was there under a different name.”

The next few images were mug shots and information on three of BOA’s seven leading officers. The page after, brought up a corporate logo. “Aurora Incorporated?”

“That’s where we traced them to, after I killed them all.”

“No prisoners, eh, old man?”

“Only one person’s allowed to shoot at me in my own home, Nick.”

Nikolaus scoffed. “So let me guess. You want me to find out who from Aurora wants you taken out, and why? You could’ve gotten Jimmy to do that.”

“No, I’ve actually already gotten that taken care of. But, there’s a lot more to this than that, Nicky-boy.” His tone turned serious. “I checked out this company, and they’re the ones who’ve been buying the majority of our shares for the past several months, under the names of various other corporations they own. Further, Jim Tuna’s three weeks dead.”

“Whoa, what?” James Tunitsky was second in his trade only to Nikolaus.

“You heard me. And he’s not the first, either. I gotta be frank with ya, kid, most of our guys are dead, or MIA,” said Devlan as he put out his cigarette in the ashtray. “I ain’t never been so sure of nothin’ as I am that Aurora’s behind it all.”

Archer felt his blood being to boil as he came to realize what that meant. “So why did you come here? You just led them right to me! I was perfectly safe until you showed up!”

“No, you weren’t. Click to the next page, Nick. They were carrying a copy of that picture.”

Nikolaus clicked to the next page…and completely froze over, suddenly too scared to move. “This ain’t right…this is me. Me, here.”

“You don’t get it, do you? You know what Aurora does, Nicky-boy? Weapons development and distribution. Are you seeing the conflict of interest yet? Two-and-two, kid, put em’ together! They start getting government funding, our guys start disappearing and dying in unfortunate accidents. Their business is our business, but they’re better at it, and they don’t want the Exterior Arms Exchange around it no more!”

“But why come after me, Devlan? I ain’t hurting nobody! I been stuck here at the bottom of the world for months!”

“I don’t know, buddy, I don’t know. They think we know something we don’t. We play our cards right, and that could work to our advantage. Listen, I’ve got an insider. An executive high up in Aurora who don’t approve of their methods as of late. He’s agreed to meet with me at a privately disclosed location tomorrow. He sent me a little care package with some inside-information, to let me know I could trust him.”

“And you buy that? How old are you getting?”

“We don’t have any choice. Do you wanna get out of this alive, or not?”

Nick wasn’t sure if he cared one way or another, but he found himself nodding. “So what do you want me to do?”

“Alright. Apparently, there’s some big, top-secret project Aurora’s working on out in the exterior systems. A super weapon not even the Mars Council would like to see around. If we get our hands on it, or even some proof it’s out there, we got em’ by the balls; Trouble is, we don’t know where exactly the damn thing is being built. But there’s a key component they just finished producing right here on Earth. Come Friday, they’ll be loading it up on a passenger cruiser, that’s gonna leave from the Hawaiian Islands, and head for Mars. From Mars, it’s going straight to the work site. While it’s on a public vessel, is going to be your chance to get to it, and plant a transmitter, so we can track where it goes.”

Nick chuckled to himself. “This ain’t the Hawaiian Islands old man, how do I get onboard that cruiser?”

Devlan didn’t seem to find it funny. “You’ll intercept it with your own ship, wise-ass. I guess you don’t so much read the headlines no more, but the Ariella’s missing from the impound. The MCFBI doesn’t know where the hell it is. But I do.”

Nick wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about having his old ship back. “Am I supposed to thank you?” he said.

“Save it for when we get outta this thing in one piece, kid,” he said, standing up and starting to put on his coat. “The transmitter, and everything else you need is waiting for you in the Ariella. Information and junk is all in the ship’s computer. So, go get em’, tiger. Get in before they activate the radar, get out before they make the jump to antispace. I’ll see you in Lunar City.”

It's oh so nice to go travelin', but it's so much nicer, yes it's so much nicer to come home

2006-03-09T15:58:54Z

Canada's actually beefed up border security since last I crossed over. I'm not sure why, maybe they just felt it would be in good posture. I'm not sure that anyone takes them seriously enough to want to commit a terrorist act on their soil, but I could be wrong.

Toronto is...boring. It's like a lame ripoff of every American city there is. At the time I left, I was almost wishing I'd saved myself 150 bucks and gotten the US only pass. There ain't nothing they have there that we don't have over here, aside from weird money and a lower drinking age (the latter of which I was happy to exploit). Of course, it could be that I didn't see all of it, but the parts that I DID see in my wandering were enough to get a general feel for the place.

I had previously been told, though, that I should make sure I come back across the Canadian Rockies. Now, I'm really not a scenery guy. Up-close, I can see beauty in an area. But, I honestly don't give a tuppenny fuck about staring at a mountain from fifty miles away. However, I felt I should humor my former coworkers, so that was the route I took back.

It only occurred to me after boarding the train that it was a three day ride to Vancouver, and I only had a wad of coins in canadian money, and no food with me. That bistro car at the back of the train can run pretty expensive. And, as it turns out, on the Canadian lines, their selection is absolutely pathetic. What have they got? Canned sodas for a buck seventy five. Candy bars, short stacks of pringles, and cup o' noodles for a buck fifty. I pondered for a moment about hopping off when we reached a service stop and pull some cash from a machine. But, for some reason, I just had to say to myself, "No, Owen, you've given enough money to this filthy country already."

I haven't felt that kind of hunger since Ordeal. For those of you who have never been in the Scouts, or who just never got very high up in it, Ordeal is what you go through to earn your way into the Order of the Arrow. This is, of course, after being voted to be elligible by the members of your troop. They send you out into the woods, with some major project to do, with about four other guys. Breakfast is a piece of bread with half a fried egg on it. Lunch is a piece of bread with a dab of peanut butter. For one day, that's all you eat. Further, you are not allowed to speak the entire time. My project was laying bark dust on a trail. It doesn't sound so bad, but on that little to eat, you get tired pretty quickly of shoveling saw dust into a wheelbarrow, wheeling it out further and further each time, trying not to let the roots that are popping out of the ground tip the damn thing over, then wheeling it back uphill, once again, farther and farther each time. A similar situation I may have mentioned was philmont. Breakfast is a single packet of oatmeal, lunch is a stick of jerky, and dinner is a scoop of hamburger helper. But, after ten days, we got used to Philmont.

That kind of hunger can really overpower you. Suddenly, all you can think about is what you're going to eat when next you can. What you want to eat even though you can't. What you have to make sure you get your hands on once you're back in civilization. After that...you'll never take food for granted again.

When the train reached Winnipeg, we had an hour and a half to putz around. There was a mini-marketplace right next to the station, but I wasn't interested in spending anymore foreign bills, so I instead explored the immediate area. It was snowing there like I've never seen it snow before. I loved it. There were paths, rivers that were iced over that people were skating on, there was an enormous amphitheater that was desserted and covered in snow. It made me wish I hadn't left my camera on the train. While walking back, I noticed a family ice-skating down the sidewalk. Puzzled, thinking that was bad for the sidewalk and worse for their skates, I dug down into the snow with my boot, trying to clear some of it off to check what kind of pavement they had.

Do you know what kind of pavement they had?

Fucking ice.

Apparently, they freeze over a bunch of the walkways and bike paths in the winter so that people can ice skate around. I ain't never seen anything like that before, but it's fucking awesome. When the snow falls on it, those of us wearing normal shoes can walk on it without even noticing. Maybe I should've stayed in Winnipeg instead of Toronto.

On the fourth morning, I awoke to find that the passing snowbanks beside the track were no longer there. They had now been replaced by familiar looking evergreens and a steady rainfall. Welcome back to the northwest. Dear God, I missed this place. By that night, I was back in Portland, happily showered and out for drinks with my sister and her friends. I haven't been that smashed since New Year's. I was then treated to a nice relaxing day of holding down the fort while she and her room mate were at work, before enjoying a nice, smooth ride back into Eugene Station.

Now, I have business to attend to in the south. Off to Ashland I go to register for classes. I'll be back this evening, and I expect a fucking welcome party.

Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!

2006-02-26T07:19:32Z

So, I'm on the train from Chicago to NYC, and it's maybe 3AM, and suddenly, everybody is awoken by this loud-ass screaming coming from some woman in the bathroom. I mean, it sounds like there's a fucking anal rape going on in there. So, I go back, tap the door a bit, and say, "Are you okay in there?"

"NO I'M NOT OKAY!!! MY CHILD HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED BY THE FORD MOTOR COMPANY!!!!"

At that moment, I decided that whatever was on the other side of that door, should stay there. One thing my pappy taught me about survival, is to never go near that shit with a ten-foot pole. Angry screaming women can be as dangerous as fucking grizzlies. But if it's just noise, I'm fine sleeping through it.

So today, I get to the big city. I have to say, it's fucking sweet here. Mindblowing, but I like it. I can go out at 2AM, and it's just as busy as it was at 10PM. You want falafel? You get falafel. You want zombie comics? You get zombie comics. This is true no matter what hour of the day it is.

I met this slick cat Mani, who's from around here, and was glad to show me the ropes. Rule one, traffic lights lie. They're suggestions for the drivers who are trying to kill you. Rule two, be cool, even if you don't know what the fuck. If you look like a tourist, you get panhandled. Watching this guy navigate Manhattan is like watching Dundee navigate the outback. I mean, he knows this place like his own backyard. He tried getting lost here before, just for something to do, but couldn't.

This is a culture that I definitely love, though I'm skeptical about whether or not I could live in it for good. Still, possibly a good place to get some work experience under my belt as a cop. The locals say, if you can be a cop in NYC, you can be a cop anywhere.

I'm thinking of running for Lane County Sheriff.

Two days is not enough here. I have to come back. Mani also happens to know which cafes here are owned by foreigners who serve alcoholic beverages without carding, which is always handy. I swear, he's the coolest gay jew I've ever hung out with. Always has something to say about something. But, I guess that's how it is here.

Tomorrow, I need to get a new charger for my phone, since I forgot it in Chicago. That's some attrition damage I hadn't counted on. Fortunately, they have Circuit Cities and Radio Shacks here, among other recogniseable names. Did you know that Chicago has never heard of Safeway and Albertson's?

Remind me when I get to Toronto, to see if they really do sell fries at the Costco. I made a promise to some co-workers.