HEY, GUYS! Do you know what time it is? That's right! It's time for the GUESS THE SUSPECT'S ETHNICITY BASED ON THE HEADLINE game! Today's entry is Mom charged with baby's microwave death. Can you guess the suspect's ethnicity? Winner gets a prize!
Oh, man. Thanksgiving break was just a terrible idea because right now I have no motivation to do absolutely anything with my life. I seriously want to drop out and move back to Erie. I don't want to do anything. At all. I haven't felt this unmotivated since senior year; I must be having a regression.
I figured out today that "still to do" is abbreviated "STD." That said, STD:
Thanksgiving break was fun, though. It started out slow since all my friends had school until Thanksgiving day. I took Anna out on a date on Wednesday; A first for me, because formal "dates" aren't really my thing. In fact, the idea terrifies me. See, my generation doesn't "date." We "hook up" with each other until eventually we realize we "like" each other, at which point one of two things can happen: Either "we're talking," "it's complicated," or both. Often, both. Once the kinks are worked out, or once the two parties involved finish talking, the relationship reaches "official" status. It is then registered with the Bureau of Adolescent Relationships and marked with a stamp of approval. If the peers of either party do not, in fact, approve, the relationship will still be marked approved, except everyone will whine about it, until everything falls apart two or three weeks later. Often, things fall apart anyway, and the cycle begins anew at the next party after the breakup.
Nonetheless, I took Anna to China Garden, a restaurant that I adore and she's never been to because she's a huge dork. We saw Borat. A fun time was had by all. On Friday, I sat in a church parking lot drinking a bottle of whiskey until some friends showed up, at which point I drank a bunch of beer and went with Ian to this girl Ariel's house. Anna was there -=] The rest of the weekend was inconsequential, though on Saturday I had a good time hanging out with my best friends from Erie; It's nice to get back to the people who really mean something to you.
In closing, I'd like to mock the idiocy of others. On that note, meet the Nintendo Superfan.
Today I ate a shitload of turkey and I woke up with a tryptophan hangover.
I was driving down Peach Street today and looked at Best Buy. There was a huge fucking line outside of people waiting to get in and take advantage of those Black Friday sales. Later, my friend Ian and I rolled into the Best Buy parking lot to see how big the line was - it stretched around the entire parking lot. Someone else must have thought it was funny too, because someone pulled into a parking spot near ours, took a picture of the line, laughed, and drove off.
Never one to let an opportunity like this go to waste, I told Ian that we should find other retail outlets such as this and see what the fuck is wrong with these people. Our journey took us to Circuit City, where I learned once again that I hate people.
Ian and I decided to tell people that we're with the Daily Collegian, Penn State's student newspaper. We interviewed three groups of people.
1: Back of the line. Those people had just gotten there, at like, 1. I had no respect for them, but their story probably wasn't as funny as those of the people at the front of the line. I did learn that the assholes at the back of the line (who were dressed like they were ready to go huntin' bucks) thought the people at the front were losers for waiting so long.
2: Front of the line. If you've ever worked retail, you hate Canadians. They come down to Erie for our tax-free shopping and incredible sale prices. The couple at the front of the line was one such couple. They had dragged their kids down (the kids were in the car, probably praying that they're adopted) to Erie to buy a fucking laptop from Circuit City. They seemed like nice folks, like their hearts were in the right place but their heads were up their asses. The gentleman we spoke with told us that "it's good the weather is nice." Okay, rad, it's not snowing out. It is thirty degrees out, and you're going to spend a total of 12 hours standing outside of a Circuit City so you can save $100 on a laptop. Kill yourself. I asked him, "Totally worth the wait though, right?" He replied, "Oh, absolutely."
3: Middle of the line. The coup de grace was a group of 5-7 people that I immediately pegged as "the kind of people who might as well be here because if it wasn't black friday, they'd probably be doing something even less productive," a meritorious feat, considering that staying home and beating off is probably more productive than waiting in line for 8 hours. Mixed gender group, each of them probably weighed more than me and Ian combined. This was going to be fun.
I told them that I was with the Daily Collegian. They told me that not only do they go to the Penn State campus here, but that one of them actually works with the fucking Behrend Beacon. He begins asking me shit about people that work at the Collegian and I tell him I don't know anyone because I'm a freshman and 40,000 people live at main campus so how the fuck would I know anyone. He seems to buy this.
This group gave me three nuggets of comedy gold. Number one: "Did this interfere with your Thanksgiving plans at all?" "No, none of us really had any." Number two: "Pumped for the Nintendo Wii? Trying to pick one up?" "OH MAN I REALLY WANT ONE holy shit though they changed its name from the revolution to the wii [God forbid] and (points to one of the girls) she's still kind of getting over that." She expresses her displeasure at this fact very loudly. Number three: I mention something about how students at Penn State University Park have to pay to print things in the lab. One of the girls there says, "OH MAN THAT SUCKS! We totally go to the computer lab and print out hundreds of pages of D&D manuals for free all the time!" "Oh. That's ... fucking ... That's rad, man." "OH I KNOW"
If you shop at the mall on black friday, everyone who has ever worked retail kindly asks you to go fuck yourself. Also, get a hobby.
I'm leaving for Thanksgiving on Monday.
I have been obsessed with the following albums recently: Boys and Girls in America is the third studio album from The Hold Steady. It's very classic rock, musically, though there's a very slight punk influence there. There has to be; I don't typically like classic rock, but I adore this album. Lyrically, it's really similar to their older albums, though Craig Finn's singing style is much more singing than speaking as in the other two CDs. This is fabulous music for getting fantastically retarded to. The album is a series of character profiles and songs about sex, drugs, and rock & roll, the national pasttime of boys and girls in America. MySpace, check out Stuck Between Stations.
Cute is What We Aim For - The Same Old Blood Rush With A New Touch is by a band whose sound can be summed up from their name. Nothing really revolutionary; They sound a lot like your Cartel, your Fall Out Boy, whatever. It's fun, though, and catchy as hell; The lyrics are self-indulgent and contrived as all hell, but this is the kind of CD that you only enjoy if you aren't actually listening to it. I think if I was in the mood to listen to these guys, I'd probably listen to Cartel instead, but the variety is nice. Also, the only people I ever see wearing CIWWAF merch are fat girls. Just FYI. Myspace, listen to There's a Class for This.
Brother, Sister by mewithoutYou is exactly what Blood Rush isn't; It's rough around the edges, it's lyrically deep, and it doesn't remind me of those massive summer nights conquering my hometown. mewithoutYou's latest shows how the band is progressing past their aggressive, post-hardcore roots; It's a move towards a more experimental, post-rock sound. The spoken-word vocals are still present, though, and the sound culminates into something very haunting. Myspace, "Glass Can Only Spill What It Contains" is good.
These albums are equally as good but I don't have the patience to say anything about them right now:
I need a nap.
Housing at Penn State is divided into five regions: North, East, Pollack, South, and West. Each housing area has a number of buildings; East alone has fourteen buildings, but it's located out on the ass-end of campus and the area would be completely pointless if not for the sheer volume of Freshmen living there. Pollack and South are directly adjacent to one another, and directly between the center of campus and downtown. Those two areas combined contain - I believe - twenty buildings. West Halls are between the library and the student union, and right next to the Rec center. I don't live in any of those places.
I live in North. North is 26,421 miles (42,521 km) away from South and Pollack, where the majority of people who don't suck live. The only place farther away from civilization is East, but East is big enough to be self-contained. Hence, nobody ever wants to come up here and I never want to go anywhere. North is on the opposite end of the campus from downtown, too. In short, the location fuckin' blows.
North is home to a staggering three buildings, one of which is going to be closed for renovation all of next semester, so for the latter part of this year, it's home to two. There are three SLOs ("clubs" of people who are put in certain floors together, so that business majors live on the same floor, etc) in North halls. Holmes is home to two of them: BASH and Earth House.
BASH is the SLO for business students. BASH occupies the 1st and 2nd floor of Holmes. Earth House, on the 3rd and 4th floors, is for Agriculture Science students, all of whom are uncultured hicks to at least some degree. The majority of them don't drink. Often, they have poor hygiene. None of them are attractive. They're always sleeping while it's still ridiculously early. They never leave their fucking rooms. They have no sense of humor. Honest to god, I was walking around the third floor and ran into two guys; One had a cowboy hat and matching boots, the other had a belt buckle with his name on it. In other words, they're boring. One of my friends says to someone here, "Yeah, I'm moving. I can't stand it here." The person replies, "You'll hate it more in Pollack! Everyone there is loud and they're always drunk."
I live on the 4th floor. With Earth House. Somehow, the people in my room and the people in 403 got stuck up here, on opposite ends of the building from one another, as far away from the rest of BASH as possible, even though we're ALL BUSINESS STUDENTS. The people that live next to us? One of them plays tuba and practices all the goddamn time.
Why do I put up with it, then? Because my room kicks ass. Our suite (Diagram says Leete, but Leete and Holmes are exactly the same) is home to four people. It has a common room and its own bathroom. My room is the absolute shit. And sure, I'm not getting the full "freshman dorm" experience, something that I kind of regret, but whatever. If someone in here gets so drunk they throw up, the toilet's like, four seconds away and private. A luxury that several people have put to use.
So, that's what ResLife is like for me. Which reminds me, people (especially people who have been to college themselves) need to stop asking me "HURR what's college like!" because college is exactly what it sounds like: It's like living at school, except with more drinking and less motivation.
I got some mail today. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my order had shipped; Five hundred cardboard boxes. Now, having had the couch removed from my room, I was suffering withdrawal. I took these boxes and did the only thing that was appropriate: I made a new couch. I'm pumped about it.
New photos under photo100u3.
The ADD is up. New photos under uncat and Photo 100, Unit 2. Enjoy.
I bought a Nerf Maverick. Best, most annoying $8 I ever spent.
