9.11.06

To put into words the feelings of 9/11 is an impossible task. Some have tried and this is one of those valiant efforts.

The former Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, delivered this poem on September 6, 2002 to a special joint session of Congress in New York.

The Names

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.
A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,
Then Baxter and Calabro,
Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
As droplets fell through the dark.
Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
Names slipping around a watery bend.
Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.
In the morning, I walked out barefoot
Among thousands of flowers
Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,
And each had a name -
Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.
Names written in the air
And stitched into the cloth of the day.
A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
Monogram on a torn shirt,
I see you spelled out on storefront windows
And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.
I say the syllables as I turn a corner -
Kelly and Lee,
Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.
When I peer into the woods,
I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden
As in a puzzle concocted for children.
Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.
Names written in the pale sky.
Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.
Names silent in stone
Or cried out behind a door.
Names blown over the earth and out to sea.
In the evening - weakening light, the last swallows.
A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,
And the names are outlined on the rose clouds -
Vanacore and Wallace,
(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)
Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.
Names etched on the head of a pin.
One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the skin.
Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.
Alphabet of names in a green field.
Names in the small tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat
Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.


Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press

Pastor Perks

I love pastor perks. Glenn scores tickets on a pretty regular basis. Today he was offered some 50 yard line seats at the CU v. CSU game. He couldn't take them, but he said his son would be willing to take them off his hands. I am hearing this on the phone and thinking happily. I will happily take them off his hands and take Kate to this monumental game for free. Plus, it is always nice to hear that your seats are going to be great.

Being a Cowboy negates me from outright rooting for CSU, but I hope the Rams are victorious.

I went on a cruise and this is what happened.

19 August - Day 1

The pampering on this ship is ridiculous. I truly am a mollycoddle. The buffet was the first meal for lunch today. We braved the crowds and loads of fat people for the food. The ship moves quickly and smoothly. We have caught and passed two other cruise ships since leaving Seattle. Our ship, the ms Oosterdam, was built in 2003 somewhere in Italy. Dad and I traded taking pictures of one another against the Seattle skyline in great gusts of air on deck ten. Later on we had some drinks, looked through the binoculars, and chatted about wedding expenses while we cruised up the Puget Sound.

In the last hour we have sat in the jacuzzi and watched the news. Dinners are at 8. John Karr is all over the news for admitting he killed JonBonet. I don't think he is guilty. The press ask him questions and he either takes way too much time to answer or he can't answer at all.

The majority of the people on this boat are either old, fat, from the South, war veterans, or a combination of the four. Cruising seems like it would be the ideal vacation for fat, lazy people. Everything is done for you, you don't have to move beyond your cabin if you don't want to, and the ship is a 24 hour a day all you can gorge buffet.

Later that evening...

The food at dinner was great. The company could have been better. There are three teachers and an artist at the table.

20 August - Day 2

We sat with more strangers for breakfast. I spent an hour in the gym. Dad is engrossed in Blue Like Jazz and I have brought along The Diary of Samuel Pepys. We saw our first wildlife today, no, it wasn't the UW Dance Team, just some whales off the starboard side. The weather was cold today. Partly cloudy. The only land we saw were the Queen Charlotte Islands.

After dinner we watched a couple perform some magic tricks on the main stage. Their trickery was good at times, but the angle we were watching at enabled us to see how the husband levitated his wife. The performers have been married six years. Wouldn't that repetitive show get boring? As an aspiring writer I can give myself a nightmare thinking about writing the same thing over and over again. I don't want my writing to become formulaic.

21 August - Day 3

Tracy's King Crab Shack was a highlight of the day in Juneau. We told Tracy some friends had recommended this spot to us and she remembered talking to them the week before. Dad took a picture of Tracy and her shack. I almost bought a shirt that said, "Tracy Gave Me Crabs." The boat was pretty empty when we got back. We each had a hot tub to ourselves on the stern while the Alaskan rains continued. Juneau gets 40 days of sunshine a year. Thomas the tour guide said earlier in the day that it snowed from February to April last winter. He also said the record low in Juneau is -15 F. This was much less snow and a much higher low than I would have predicted.

While sitting in the hot tub I contemplated the fragility of humankind. Life is a very small and precious thing. One life is so brief that it barely shows up on the timeline. While thinking about this I thought about the selfish desire of mine to have something I write outlive my time in this earthly vessel. A writer is truly blessed when the words outlast the breaths.

22 August - Day 4

For about two hours before lunch we watched the Hubbard Glacier and scanned the face of the glaciers for calving icebergs. The site was amazing. The pictures don't do it justice, but we took a lot anyway. We stood on the bow and drank hot chocolate in free Holland American Line mugs. We spent a lazy afternoon in the fog so we sacked out in the room. X3 was on TV and we watched that. Dinner was okay tonight. I find myself dreading the company a little more each night. One lady at the table is impossible to understand. Her skin has been pulled so tight that her face doesn't move when she talks. Come to think of it, I don't even know if she can close her mouth. Shocking it is, not to have her drooling all over the place. She must permanently have to tilt her hed back to keep the saliva in.

Divorce and many marriages seem to be the trend among our dinner guests.

23 August - Day 5

Sitka, starboard side, midship, window seat, and a curved couch is my location as I write this. Rainy sea kayaking was the main activity of the day. Sitka is beautiful, but again, not enough sun. Paddling with Dad was a little annoying because communication was poor because of the rain and noise. We did still have a great time and we didn't flip.

There is a huge difference between the tides here. Water laps at rocks that rise ten to four feet out of the water right now and then plateau. Pine trees come down to every ince of the coastline. At high tide the branches touch the water. I saw a jellyfish hanging from a branch. It had gotten snagged during high tide. It never feels like the rain stops. A blanket of water rests in the air, ready to drape you in the liquid sunshine at any moment. I haven't seen the sun since Saturday. Things stay mostly hidden in the fog here. The clouds smother the trees and stretch their fingers down to the shore, weaving in and out of the tree tops. You don't have to live here to know in a limited sense how things would be so much different than living in the lower 48.

24 August - Day 6

A lady at our dinner table tries to say everything in one breath. Her words rush out quickly and gather speed as her oxygen bank rapidly depletes. The pitch of her voice rises higher as she reaches the end of her story. Usually the stories are bad too. The big inward breath at the end of the story really is the climax for me. It is hilarious.

Today was pretty relaxing. Ketchikan is very touristy and generally a boring looking place. There are some good shops. Dad and I bought gifts at a store on Creek Street, the old red light district. A giant Bald Eagle was flying around the town and occasionally perched atop buildings. There were five ships scheduled to dock at Ketchikan today. That means 10,000 tourists were going to be spilled onto the streets of this small town to shop, sight see, eat, and explore some more or Alaska.

As we left there were many humpback whales in the area. To get a great picture of them I would need an SLR digital camera with a high powered lens. It would be nice to have one of those when I return to Alask sometime in the future.

Our servers every night were Pandhi and Andik. They were great. I enjoyed seeing all the Indonesians and Filipinos around the ship. They are approachable, friendly, and genuinely interested in your day. Freaking studs.

25 August - Day 7

The ms Oosterdam just plowed right out of a thick blanket of fog that had been covering the seas for the last three or four hours. We dock in Victoria tonight. I have never been to Canada. I wish we had a full day in Victoria. I anticipate the city to remind me a lot of England.

Even here on the ship my thoughts turn to the job searching that needs to be done when I get home. My least favorite feeling right now is the jealousy I have of others that have something to do. I love being happy for others, but it has been damn hard to see or hear of others in my position, being a recent college graduate, who are off on their next adventure with a new job, city, and people. I am envious of this experience.

26 August - Day 7

Victoria was the best port of call on the cruise. Our excursions in Alaska were great, but none of the cities we visited earlier on this trip can compete with Victoria. The downtown of Victoria is as aesthetically pleasing as any coastal city I have seen. The architecture of the Empress and Pariliament building is marvelous. There was busking (street performing) all over the streets. People dancing, magic tricks, drummers, and acoustic guitar artists fill the sidewalks. I walked through the streets wishing I could live here. There are many welcoming pubs filled to the brim on Friday nights with young people. The place is a dream and I am determined to come back here on a vacation with Kate. I could have spent the week here.

Now we are at the Seattle airport six hours early. After relaxing and eating lunch we still have over two hours before we leave to return to Denver. This was a fantastic week.

Five Years

A little reflection on 9/11. I didn't mean to sound like a pompous politician, but it sure came out that way. My apologies.

It will soon be the fifth anniversary of the September 11th attacks on our country. We live in an age now where innocence has been scared from our world and we are not on track to regain some of the dignity we had before the attacks.

The world will not be absent from such injustices as this nation experienced five years ago if selfishness endures. It is much to ask and much to sacrifice but we must not entangle strangers of this country in our conflicts. And we must not be entangled in our stranger’s conflicts.

However much we pray for a peaceful outcome there will be those who wish it not for their own personal reasons. People have many different wants but the similarities we find in each other need to bind us together. Our paths need not cross in violent ways but in peaceful ways so that we may not hinder others in their search for contentment.

The future holds the unknown. No matter what we choose to do the same judgment will come down upon us all. It will be swift and just. But who may be dealt with differently in this world is not the decision of the United States. We are pawns on a chessboard that is played by a much more powerful force.

The day the towers fell showed us what humans could do. I wish not to have another incident in which men and women need to sacrifice so much. However, I fear that the path we are on right now will inevitably lead to a similar attack on us or any of the nations that side with the policies of the United States.

The Great Divorce

I recently spoke to a friend. He has observed unhappiness in a friend of his. He told me a little bit about this person. What he was telling me sounded pretty familiar. I hung up and wrote this.

You see those hints of unhappiness; those are the ripples of a better man reaching out to his mannerisms. They are the visible consequences of denying the richer life that the man recognizes in his soul, but regularly denies. Underneath that toughened shell there is a man that wants to make things better. Somehow this man knows there is a higher calling, and yet he does not make the necessary changes in his life. He knows his life is a lot of fun. It probably is, but the high from this kind of life doesn’t last long. That self realization comes to the surface in many ways, but for him it has numbed the pleasure he once had been acquiring from this life.

So why doesn’t he change things? These feelings rot him from the inside out and eventually convince him that he is not strong enough to make those changes. He says things like, “There will always be a stronger and better men. I guess I am not one of those people.” As he says that to himself he feels the sting of the lie. He knows he could be that better version of himself in that parallel universe in his head. He knows that it is not really him saying, “I guess I am not one of those people.” That idea comes from the attachment of our superficial selves to this materialistic world that wants us to touch and try everything.

After this goes on for a while man starts to think about his future. He agrees that things are not as good for him today as they could be. The future is when he will change. This becomes his mantra. He will say this again and again over the years. By saying this he feels better about himself because he at least recognizes things could be better. This temporarily alleviates the effects of his poisonous lifestyle. After this medicine tapers off the man is back to thinking about what his life would be like had he made the right decision a year ago, a month ago, or yesterday. The things that originally brought him something disguised as happiness have convinced him that his life is lacking fun, spontaneity, and excitement. The man begins to indulge in things that he never thought he would indulge in. His new found pleasures induce in him even more guilt, but they also work to convince him that he will never be able to change.

Someone can come along into the man’s life and show him that achieving that higher calling is not as hard as it looks. The man becomes convinced this is doable. He also wisely observes that this better man is not without flaw like he once perceived him to be; this error in judgment contributed to his thinking that he could never be that man. He recognizes now that no life is without flaw. His dirty and scarred body is a welcome guest on that higher road. The higher road delights in taking on dirty subjects; it delights in cleaning them up.

The man is now at a critical stage in his life. He stands before a mirror and sees two selves. As always he reaches for the better man, but before he was coming up short. Now, he is able to grab a hold of that man he always wanted to be. It isn’t much, maybe he has got a hold of a shirt sleeve or hand, but it is a lot more than he has grasped before. He is brought to tears by the path he sees in front of him now, and he is humbled when he discovers the path was always there. His friend is happily anticipating the man to take the next step. His friend can only show him the door, the man has to walk through it. Before his friend can see the man take the first step he is called away. The man suddenly finds himself alone. He turns around and looks at where he came from. He returns to the new path. He is afraid to follow it because he doesn’t want to be alone. What he doesn’t realize is that thousands wait for him on the other side. They are ready to spring forth and celebrate with the man in his decision to take the higher road. This isn’t a trick played by those on the other side. It is free will.

The man hears people calling his name from behind him—old friends and old pleasures. Old is irrelevant when these friends and pleasures are easily acquired. These things take no work. The man is unemployed, but with a seemingly deep pool of resources in front of him. The man turns away from the new and walks toward the old. What the man doesn’t see until he returns to this life is that the pool only appears to be deep, but in fact it is shallow. When the man reaches the threshold again he will only cross to the other side by himself when he still remembers the shallow, but enticing pool, behind him. However, not all men make it back to the threshold for a second look around.

Thanks to C.S. Lewis for the title of this blog.

Don - The Fundamentalist

“One thing all these fundamentalisms have in common is that they are, ultimately, reactionary. They exploit identity not as a starting point to connect with the rest of humanity but an end point, from which the rest of humanity is excluded. Devoted to eternal and exclusive truths, they brook no dissent and tolerate no debate. What matters most to fundamentalists is not what you do but who you are. Regardless of how many good deeds you perform, a Christian fundamentalist will only recognize you as a fellow human being up to a certain point unless you too are a Christian fundamentalist – beyond that you are just one more sinner.

For fundamentalists insist that we privilege just one identity above all others all the time. Since this is not how most of us live our lives, we tend to ignore them. The price for breaching their codes, they warn us, is banishment; the prize for conforming to them is belonging. But since, under normal circumstances, they are not a part of a community to which most of us would want to belong and they have no power to deliver on their threats, they have nothing we want or fear.” – Gary Younge, “How to fight reactionaries” – The Guardian Weekly – August 25-31, 2006

Younge makes some excellent points here. Christian fundamentalists have a hard time realizing that the moral umbrella they are living under isn’t inclusive, and in fact it is not representative of anything taught to Christians in the New Testament. I am no fundamentalist, but I admit to having looked at someone before and labeling them as “just one more sinner”. This passage from Younge’s recent article is broad, but I am going with this in a political direction. If someone disagrees with fundamentalists they instantly condemn that person and scream at the top of their lungs, “Traitor!”

This sounds a lot like Donald Rumsfeld when someone suggests a troop withdrawal timeline for the war in Iraq. He often comes up with answers that skirt around the issue by relating the ongoing quagmire to an unprecedented event in the middle of the last century that is in no way related to the current quagmire, but Rumsfeld has said before, “I don’t do quagmires.” For Rumsfeld, a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq “would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis.” This poor illustration not only fails to bring to light the sense of urgency for a resolution in Iraq, but by saying this Rumsfeld has shattered a number of previous statements. Before those are brought in, let us try to categorize the last Rumsfeld quote for what it is: a prediction, a statement concerning foreign policy, diplomacy, and certainly the issue he is addressing is a predicament, therefore a quagmire.

How are we supposed to take this man seriously after we have heard all the following come out of his mouth? “I don’t do predictions.” “I don’t do foreign policy.” “I don’t do diplomacy.” And, “I don’t do quagmires.”

Asked in February of 2003, how long the conflict in Iraq would last, Rumsfeld made another prediction, “It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.”

It is clear that Rumsfeld hasn’t known the answers to many of the questions that have come his way in the last four years. He has been quoted as saying, “If I know the answer I’ll tell you the answer, and if I don’t, I’ll just respond, cleverly.” Answering cleverly would show skill and resourcefulness. The answer would also be marked by wit and ingenuity. Try again, Donald.


Here is another passage I highlighted from today's Guardian.

“A "bingo wing" is an unattractive wobbling underarm, seen on bingo players as they wave their arms around excitedly.” - Emine Saner, Thursday August 31, 2006.

Unemployed No Longer

I fooled you. I still don't have a job. However...

There has been new light shed upon the job search this week. Whether it is good or not, I do not know. Nonetheless, I have succumbed to the big, green coffee giant and have applied at one of their many Longmont locations. I have an interview with them on Friday. Although this is the first interview I have had all summer long it is hard to get terribly excited about it, but after months of looking around and a lot of advice I have discovered that experience is all that a company is looking for. Unfortunately they don’t need someone to analyze 18th century English literature, or the early American novel. The only place I can get hired to do that is at a university and I need two more degrees to make that a realistic option.

I walked into an employment agency today. Based on the appearance of the place, I almost turned around and walked right out but I was pleasantly surprised by the service I received. The place looked like a gutted saloon. Its hard wood floor covered with a thin layer of light brown carpet. The furniture was sparse and all of it an ugly wood finish like the baseboard and trim work of houses built in the 80s. The walls are covered in cheesy employment posters and a free calendar with loads of ads surrounding the field of dates with scribbled in appointments.

After some preliminary paperwork I was led to a back room filled with shabby cubicle walls. The agency wanted to see what I could do. Well, they must have a lot of brilliant people in there because first I had to alphabetize, sort numbers into the right range, spell some words, and perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. This all was depressing at times, but I took it casually for the most part and considered all these tests as little personal challenges. There was no difficulty in completing any of them, but there was fun to be had when I tried to see how quickly I could finish.

The real fun began when I had to take a typing, data entry, and Word proficiency test on a ten year old computer. This beast was still running Windows 97. You had to punch those keys for the computer to input the correct letter. I was able to plunk out 57 words per minute and almost 8000 keystrokes in an hour for data entry. I forgot to look at the proficiency printout and that was my one disappointment after leaving today.

Lastly, I watched a safety video in case I am hired for manual labor, although I told them I wasn’t interested in that work. The video addressed personal protection equipment, or PPE, electricity safety, cleaning of the worksite, and emergency procedures. There were a whole variety of people in the video. I was captivated by their feeble attempts at acting. Where do they get these people? Were they aspiring actors from the East coast who were making their way to Hollywood, but only had enough money to get as far as Oklahoma? Now they make a living off of safety videos and television infomercials by moving dumbly and expressionlessly throughout “hazardous” situations and “real” worksites.

Life's Best

Nine days since my last blog is long, too long. What I have been writing hasn't been complete enough, or public enough to put up on the blog. Here is an excerpt from my retelling of a great night last weekend. It was a Sunday, the rains came to Longmont, but it didn't put us indoors for one minute--another reason my friends are so great. That night ranks near the top in all the summer nights.

It was during this time (Sunday night) that it dawned on me again, what we have is so unique. We are not just friends, we are family. That sounds so terribly cliché, but it is true. When one of us has a problem WE fix it. We don’t leave people behind. The love is always there, and it will always be unconditional. We do what we want. We have our loving families. Sometimes things aren’t always perfect at home, but that has driven us more to make things right with our other family. Love, listening, thought, talking, and silence are the toppings on an already immense bond that we share, our love for and relationship with Jesus.

Whatever happens, wherever we go, however far we are from one another, we will always have one another. We will always have these summers. We will always have this time. The time that we had for each other, fellowship, love, memories, and life. As this summer comes to an end I know that it will be my last as I have known them. I will welcome change, and it is coming, but I have lived these most awesome months at home again and again wanting this fellowship to flourish, to expand to the far reaches of this country and this world. We know what has truly made our time together amazing, and we always need to share that love, and the love we have had for each other, with the next strangers we come into contact with.

London on my Mind

I miss reading the posters and advertisements in Tube stations, riding the tube during rush hour and touching twenty strangers at the same time, riding the W7 through North London suburbs, and the public transportation system. I loved people watching, not being in the United States, living in an inexhaustible city, casually strolling into an art gallery and seeing masterpieces for free, sunsets on the Thames, and the British accent. I want to stare at the ceiling in St. Paul’s Cathedral while listening to the organ on a Sunday evening. How about a stroll along Fleet Street sticking out in my college grunge getup? I loved feeling out of place on the Tube if I wasn’t reading something. There is something enchanting about that city. I felt smarter when I was there, or at least like I was getting smarter at a much quicker rate than I am now in the States.

Glimpses of streets, buses, and Tube stations ignite memories of the summer past. An unforgotten headline scrolls through my head: Terrorist attacks on the London transportation system kill 52. I step onto the train anyway. The terror is not forgotten, but it does not control. You like this about the Brits—just like the New Yorkers, they have moved on. You had to move on, that is why you still came to London after last summer’s attacks. Two weeks pass and you know moving on and flying across the pond was the best thing you have ever done with your life.

I miss going to Piccadilly Circus and not feeling like a tourist, observing the mannerisms of internationals gawking at this vast city, being full of pride after giving someone directions, knowing my way around, using a shortcut, and watching lost people; remembering I was overwhelmed by directions when I arrived here.

I want to get a hot chocolate and stroll through the city on a cold evening. I want to walk in one direction for miles knowing I will eventually find another Tube station; a portal right back to the familiar. I want to be caught gawking at shoppers on Oxford Street. A walk from the Tower to the Tate Modern would be nice. Cross Millennium Bridge to St. Paul's, take the Central Line to Holborn, switch to the Piccadilly Line, take the W7 from Finsbury Park, sit upstairs, halfway back in a window seat on the left, and count the pubs on the way to the bottom of Muswell Hill.

Occasionally a stroll through Leicester Square at night finds another movie premiere and a lot of celebrity idolizing. I take part for a while, if I enjoy that person’s work. If I don’t, I might hang around anyway, if I know it will be a good story. Hang around too late and I might find myself running through the West End to watch the Royal Shakespeare Company perform As You Like It at the Novello—from the dress circle.

I want to take the Eye to the top, but not pay for it, and take even more pictures of Parliament, St. Paul’s, Canary Wharf, and the Post Office Tower. Reading Saturday, by Ian McEwan, was even more enjoyable because I walked on the streets mentioned between the book’s covers. Depart for Russell Square on the Piccadilly Line, take the 150 steps to the top instead of waiting for the lift, walk out those tight legs and breath in the cold air as you follow the right side of the square for a block, take a right, take a quick left through a courtyard in front of the college for Oriental and African American studies, take a right at Malet Street, go into the University of London Union, and buy a Guardian for twenty-five pence at the discounted student rate.

Walk through the Portobello Market in Notting Hill and wonder what the fuss was about. Barter with someone for a jacket in Camden Town, but don’t end up buying it. Try to get it for a tenner before you walk away. Quickly walk away after the seller gets pissed off at you for asking. Act like the Tube is broken and walk for an hour in no specific direction. Order a warm pint of Broadside beer at a pub. For your birthday your co-workers will buy the pints after work in Clapham.

Ride the Tube to Zone 6 because you haven’t been there. Take in every last sight of London for life as you ride the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow—above ground this time. When you step off British soil promise yourself a return trip; maybe even a return stay.

Bearskin Rug Rudeness

The neighborhood garage sale was yesterday. Mom and I made $103.50. We split it 50/50, but in the time it took us to raise that money some interesting things went down on Allen Drive.

The bearskin rug was our hot item. The sale wasn’t supposed to start until 8 am. Mom kept turning people down because it wasn’t 8 yet. Finally, at 7:30 we were being swamped by customers. One of the first customers Chris turned away was a man who was interested in the bearskin rug we had marked for twenty bucks. We told him to come back later. We didn’t promise him any bearskin rug action. So, when Chris started allowing customers to buy up the products the first one to go was the rug. A man didn’t bat an eye at the now raised price of thirty dollars. We will never know how much that rug was really worth, but I said, after the fact, we should have marked it at fifty dollars.

The saga of the bearskin wasn’t over. The original shopper that came by for the rug returned at 8 am. He said, “Where’s the rug?”

“We sold it. Sorry,” Mom said.

“So much for character,” He said as he spun around.

My mom just blew him off by saying, “Yeah”.

She continued talking with a customer but I was watching this guy’s every movement. I was so stunned that he could be so rude to someone that hadn’t done anything to him. He walked back to his car and said, “At least I don’t lie.”

My ears were pretty perked up by now and I was intent on catching every last word this jackass was going to say before he got into his car.

“What a bitch,” the man said as he slipped behind the wheel.

Immediately after that I started walking toward him and he caught my gaze which was not going to leave until I saw him out of my sight. For a few seconds he had to look down to put the key in the ignition, but he frantically glanced up to see my approaching frame. I was getting more fired up with each step.

He pulled away quickly in his crappy car, but the best car a flea market stand owner could afford. And that was exactly what he was. He came to buy cheap goods and sell them at exorbitant prices to his dishonorable, silly, flea market-going-brethren.

I pointed to the direction he should go, that way, away from this house if he didn’t want to get punished. I gave a casual middle finger to his rearview mirror. I don’t think he ever saw it, but he was the most deserving of any middle finger that I have ever doled out.

Even now, more than twelve hours later, I am disappointed that was all I did. I should have yelled at him immediately when he slimed my mother with that derogatory term. He was a lucky man yesterday. That is all I can say.

The Ledger of Your Decisions

Sister has a wedding to attend in December. She is a bridesmaid. The only ticket she could get for her flight to Colorado was for December 20th. She will stay here until the 26th. Her husband will not fly out. They will not spend Christmas together. Why? Dad reports, “They don’t want to spend the money.”

Sister corrects Dad on the phone, “We can’t spend the money.”

Brother remembers Sister buying a $328 Coach purse two weeks ago. The Coach purse was meant to alleviate the pain of Sister not getting a house in California. The purse didn’t ease the pain. A roundtrip flight to Colorado can easily be purchased for $328.

Sister has traded a Coach purse for a Christmas with Husband. So, what does the ledger of your decisions look like?

The Left Side of My Desk

To the left is the HP printer that my parents gave me for Christmas in 2003. My computer at the time couldn’t even be used with it because it didn’t have USB 2.0 ports. Not to worry, my birthday present ended up being this nice Dell that I am using right now. The printer currently has an issue, it doesn’t print. I need to get that fixed, but I have no income. Having no income has put a hold on lots of purchases, necessary maintenance, or improvements. The paper tray is folded up. Two pieces of paper lay on top of the printer. Did you know the UK uses a different size of paper for their default? It is called A3.

A small frame holding a picture of Kate sits on top of the printer. It was taken last summer when we went to dinner at the Grand Lux Café on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. It is one of my favorite pictures of her. I look at it everyday and think, dang, she is hot and I am lucky.

Behind the picture is a piece of old artwork from airbrush class my senior year in high school. I used the airbrush to make a cone, circle, a folded piece of paper, and a square look three dimensional. Was I successful? The circle turned out wonderfully, but the others not so much. I don’t know why it is out really. Mom probably found it in one of the piles in this room or the basement.

A circular painting of Notre Dame rests in a black wood frame in front of the printer. The painting has a gold border that is accented nicely by the red background of the frame. The parents got me the painting in Paris. Mom even has a photo of the painter on the Seine.

To the right of the painting is my Franklin electronic dictionary. This thing is amazing. It houses thousands of words. Franklin provides entertaining games and a thesaurus on it as well. You can’t forget the trusty flip cover that protects the screen from scratches and the buttons from spillage I suppose.

Tucked under a corner of the dictionary is a coaster that says “Goose Island, Drink Local” on it. You may not know this, but I collect coasters. I must have extras of the Goose Island coaster, which is why I have been using it on my desk.

To the right of the coaster is a candle that I used a lot in Laramie. It is the Cotton Blossom scent from The White Barn Candle Co. Kate gave it to me. I am not going to lie; I really enjoy the scent of it. I don’t use it that much anymore. The house just doesn’t stink like an apartment with at least three college guys in it all the time.

Next you have your random Post-it note pad. Next to that are some used business cards that could probably be tossed. The businesses on them didn’t want me. I will file them away in one of these drawers thinking I will probably use them again, when in reality I won’t.

I now have an Oregon Coast, rubber coaster. The design has a lighthouse shining its rays out to the ocean against a dark night sky. Two black rocks lay next to it. Kate brought them from the Japanese Gardens in Portland.

A Central Presbyterian Church pen rests on top of my calendar which rests on top of the Daily Times-Call Classifieds from Monday, July 24, 2006. There was an advertisement in them for a Virtual Job Fair online. I visited the website and quickly realized that I don’t want to answer phone calls all day long, deliver milk for the Longmont Dairy, or drive forty-foot long public transportation buses. The paper is another discarded tool of the dead-end job search.

Below the paper is one of many Bibles I have. This is a pocket Bible; slim, made of bonded, red leather, and has a button clasp on it. Zondervan published this New International Version. This Bible has been with me since I really became serious about my faith in the high school days. I flip open the front page and read this note, written on the first page, from a youth pastor long removed from my everyday life, “Bryce: May God’s words always direct your life. Philippians 4:8 – 10/3/00.”

The Bling

The blog is a good place to load some photos of the ring. The photos don't do this ring justice. You don't get the bling bling factor, but for those of you that haven't seen the ring yet this is the best that I can do.

Engagement, Facebook, and a Drive By

I proposed to my girlfriend, Kate, on Friday. She said yes. Woo hoo.

My new favorite pastime is removing friends of mine on Facebook. The people I am removing are merely acquaintances. I think most Facebook users talk to less than half of their Facebook friends on a monthly basis. For me, there were/are a lot of Facebook "friends" that I will never talk to again in my life, or I have no interest in talking to them.

When I run at night, even in Longmont, I think every car that drives by me is going to mow me down. This is a direct result of watching violent movies and hearing about Compton. Darn.

A Baby Story and More

TLC was on the television and it was lunchtime at the Perica household. Megan was watching the television before Bryce came in from caulking the house. He sat down at the table, disappointed that Megan was watching A Baby Story on TLC. Lunch was a ham sandwich with a dill pickle. Dill pickles and ice cold milk is one of Bryce’s favorite food combinations.

With nothing to read and a boring program on the TV, that Megan was infatuated with, lunch was going to be interesting.

Bryce thinks shows like A Baby Story and A Wedding Story are some of the saddest shows cable television has to offer. The programs are clearly marketed to women. There is nothing wrong with this, Bryce thinks, but he still doesn't like watching them. He sat at the table waiting for Megan’s overemotional reaction to something seen time and time again on television, a baby.

Here it comes. Even though he has been averting his eyes for the last ten minutes he can hear the baby crying. Finally breaking down, he looks at the TV. The doctors reached into a woman and pulled her kid out. The baby was pissed, probably because he was covered in red goop and he smelled. The males at the table nearly gagged on their lunch and immediately averted their eyes once again.

Bryce sneaks a glimpse at Megan. There are tears in her eyes. A Baby Story made her cry. This is so unfathomable to Bryce. He draws his lips tightly together and his eyes grow to an enormous size. He looks back out the window. Yeah, he is a guy. Megan is a girl, but the difference between the two never ceases to amaze him.

Later on at lunch…

“Greeley Bee (Megan’s dog) is going to have such a good weekend,” Megan says.

“Oh yeah, why?” Dad inquires.

“She is going to her best friend’s house, and she is going to see her boyfriend.”

Bryce bats his eyes, dumbfounded.

“Is Greeley fixed?” Dad asks.

“Yes.”

“What was the problem?” Bryce asks.

This prompts a short chuckle from Dad.

Casual dog discussion continues and eventually Megan comments on how Greeley looks so much like her parents.

“Now, c’mon, a dog is a dog,” Dad says.

“Nah ah. Greeley has her mom’s legs and face, and her dad’s eyes,” Megan testifies.

Bryce thinks that things couldn’t have been weirder once A Baby Story made Megan cry. Bryce was wrong.

Coach Purse

Megan and Colton aren’t buying the house. California is just too damn expensive, but then again, so is a Coach purse. Megan needs to feel better. Megan shops to feel better. Megan buys another Coach purse to feel better about not being a homeowner. Megan spends $328 on a purse and tells Mom, “Oh, once you have one of these, Mom, all you will want are Coach purses.”

Megan and Mom get home from shopping. Bryce asks, “What’d you buy?”

Megan lifts the Coach out of the bag. The bag is in shades of brown and has the trademark ‘C’ all over the inner lining.

“How much was that?” Bryce asks.

Megan suppresses a giggle. There is a slight lean to her mouth and a raised eyebrow that tell Bryce she is not excited to tell him the price, but she still has pleasure in doing so.

“C’mon, how much, Megan?” Bryce inquires again.

“Three hundred and twenty-eight.”

Bryce is having a hard time being polite.

“Three hundred and twenty-eight dollars?”

A guilty smile and a small nod accompany Megan’s, “Mm hmm.”

Bryce doesn’t know where to start, so he doesn’t. There are so many reasons this is wrong, disgusting, and sad. All he can muster is, “That’s ridiculous.”

Bryce thinks of what this means. The words consumerism, materialism, greed, lust, and Californication come to mind. He thinks a little more and ‘therapy’ comes into his mind. Is this beyond ‘therapy’? There must be something that can reverse this, like the Rogaine for shoppers and spenders. Whatever it is, it needs to be more powerful than everyone in Megan’s immediate family telling her that the Coach purse is not going to make her feel better or solve anything.

Bryce realizes a Coach purse does solve something, the problem of being a homeowner; it just gets rid of that option.

Etheldene Randomness

Etheldene Avenue. This was my street for three months. This is where my host family lived in one of these five bedroom houses with one bathroom. The cars are always parked like this. There are no garages. Tight spaces call for tight parking. Many of the cars I had only seen on a video game until I walked up this sidewalk on January 13th. I was so lost. I was so new. I knew nothing about the place I was in, but everything I thought about for the next three months was part of an effort to become familiar with this vast city. I walked this street hundreds of times and each time I felt a little more like I owned my own section of the neighborhood. It was different over there. I don’t typically take pride in the street I live on, but I wanted to over there. It was my own little patch of London, and knowing it inside and out made me feel more like a local. The sidewalk across the street is where all my journeys began and ended. I usually left the house at 8 and froze while walking down this street without a coat. I looked inside any house that didn’t have their curtains drawn. Some were simple, others were packed full of stuff and furniture. A number of them had plasma televisions on the wall. I kept track of where certain cars were parked to see where certain cars lived. I memorized the names of them and any distinct features on the car. I wanted to see how the house I lived in differed from the others on the block. I think I ran by Chris Cooper not far from here one day. I took this picture walking up from Park Road where I caught the W7 to Finsbury Park. The bust stop is just a hundred yards behind the point at which I stood to take this picture. The W7 came down the hill from Muswell Hill Broadway every 3-7 minutes. It took me through Hackney, Crouch End, and on to Finsbury. I sat up top on the left side usually halfway back. I was early enough on the route that it wasn’t too difficult to get a window seat. After a few stops the bus filled up with business men and women. Everyone wears wool over there and I really stuck out on some days when I was wearing the orange Mountain Hard Wear shell. I watched the seats fill up in front of me. Someone sat with me on most of the morning trips. The silence of everyone on the bus got to me sometimes. You couldn’t tell if all of us were going to a funeral or our jobs. I was happy though. The bus unloaded us at the Finsbury Park station that is serviced by the Piccadilly and Victoria lines which are blue and light blue on your tube maps. Loads of business people funneled into a circular tunnel that banked slightly to the right as it moved underground. I really was the only student out in the boonies with all these rich, successful people, except of course any other students in the same program as me. I rode in carriages stuffed full with men and women in suits and business attire. I was the one grunged out person. My pants for the trip consisted of three pairs of Carhartts that I alternated for weeks at a time before they were cleaned. The Carhartts were great because they stayed clean and any top looked halfway decent with them. I fit in a little more once I put on a nice pair of leather shoes, a zip up, high-collar sweater, and my European carryall. The carryall I bought at Topman on Oxford Street. I haven’t worn it since then, but I miss it. Why can’t Americans dress nicely and get over men wearing purses? I love rocking the man purse.

A Visit

It will never be like it was before. The carefree freedom that comes with childhood has come and gone and I childishly half expect to return to those years on Monte Carlo Place every time I am with Trey. We have passed through the teenage wasteland, and it was beautiful. Now I am face to face with a man who I shared boyish dreams with, half expecting them to never come true, but they have. He has married (married before me), followed his dreams, been true to his heart, and has copied no one to become himself. There are only traces of the boy I left behind in 1999. There are only traces of that friendship that was forged while living next-door to each other for eight years. I am forced to wander around and pick up the pieces of my friendship with him and run with them. We don’t get as far as we used to with reminiscing. There is so much in the dark…too much. We can only grasp for the friendship we used to have that adulthood and responsibilities have now stolen from us. I can tell our hearts scream with desire for things to be like they were. We were so close. Neither one of us took our friendship and shattered it on the floor, but each day, week, month, and year that have passed beginning with the day I moved away from Fort Collins has slowly eroded away what had been building up for eight years. I wrote back in 1999 that a part of me died when we left Fort Collins. I used to think that was foolish thinking, but it wasn’t; I couldn’t have been more right. Trey and I were that close for a reason. God brought us together. I wonder if God’s purpose for our friendship has expired? Are we just wasting time trying to jumpstart this old car? Friendship is so delicate. We didn’t mean to alienate ourselves, but we did, and in the end the truth is this, the way it was before, that was the part of my heart that died the day I left Fort Collins. How sad. I can’t change it. I can only hope that things return to what they were, but after seeing Trey today, that stranger that I considered a brother so long ago, I realize that the past we have is only attainable through those sudden explosions of remembrance, bouts of laughter, long sighs, and smiles. What lies ahead of us is completely up to us, and entirely unknown because it will be wholly different than what lies behind us. That isn’t what we want, but it is what we are getting. And I feel we will make do and see what the purpose of this next friendship serves.

Drive-up Banking

I don't go to the bank that often because I don't have a paycheck, but every once in a while I get small amounts of the green stuff coming my way from odd jobs. Actually, this check was blue, not green. So, the drive-up teller at the bank is not a place I visit often, but I still know how to approach the three lanes ahead of me. It isn't hard. I choose the shortest line.

For example, today I drove up and there was already a car in the first lane. There was also a car stopped behind that car while the other two lanes were open. I was presented with two spots without anyone ahead of me. Easy, I chose lane two. This happens a lot. Are people blind? I just think it is one of those weird instances where people are afraid to take the initiative. Call me a fool. Make fun of my presumption all you want. I think I am right on this one. This even sounds absurd to me, but oh well. We are so used to being herded around like cattle and following one another that I think we are a little scared when we don't see a queue where there should be one. Yes, those two empty lanes are there to serve you. Don't be afraid. You aren't going to get shot if you decide to bypass the one or two cars ahead of you for a shot at being in the front of the line.

The bankers have thought this through. They realize that the drive-up is pretty popular. This led them to build three lanes, instead of the measly one. Get this, they also made room for three tellers to work the drive-up. How marvelous. You probably sit behind the car in line because you think there is only one teller, so what is the point in getting in the second line? The bank also pays attention to when it gets busy in the drive-up. When it does, like when all three lanes have cars in them, they send tellers back to take care of the rush. So, next time when you pull up to the drive-up teller choose the open lane. You have nothing to lose. You will be served immediately, or you will just have to wait for those ahead of you to finish their business with the bank. It is also likely that someone will come to your rescue and fill one of the open teller positions in that back window. You will save time. And, I won't have to marvel at your stupidity any longer.

Class isn't in Session Anymore

UNST 1000 - University Studies - Once a week I found myself in this class that lasted until noon. I was pressed for time to get some food in my body that I wasn't going to puke up before practice at 1:30. I couldn't eat that much, and plus, it was Washakie, therefore, really crappy food. What a bummer of a class to end the course series on. There is nothing here that is really all that memorable, just a sliver of what it was like to be a freshman, but that is something to hold on to. It seems like the only thing I know, or want now is to have another year of college. Naturally, it is weird to imagine a time in which I was a foreigner at that beatiful university in that beautiful state.

9/11 Morning

THEA 1000 - Introduction to Theatre - I find the first memory, of a class so long ago, interesting. Although I had a great professor for this course, enjoyed learning some theatre history, the class experience tends to be overshadowed by one morning.

I was a freshman at UW in the fall of 2001. It was September. I went to class on 9/11. I knew that four planes had gone astray; two flown into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and another crashing to a green Pennsylvania field, but I don't think I fully grasped the consequences, the ramifications of these events. Indeed, not one of us could see then how the world would change in the years to follow. If I had fully understood this calamitous event it is likely that I wouldn't have gone to the lecture late that morning. Maybe, somewhere in my sub-counscious, my walk across campus that morning was the earliest coping mechanism that I had--to get on with the familiar and to grasp for something understood. I had seen so much on TV that morning that was unspeakable, inexplainable, and completely foreign to my "world" that for an hour or two I wanted to run away from it all. I didn't get very far.

On the day of the attack no one knew exactly how many people had died. Many made educated guesses based on the number of people working in the buildings on a daily basis and so did my professor that morning. I remember him saying that there could be 30,000 dead in each tower. As we would all find out in the weeks to come that number was extremely inflated, but at the time it seemed completely reasonable; no one knew how many had evacuated the buildings, or how many were out of reach of the cascading rubble when the towers fell.

As you might expect, we didn't spend much time talking about Greek drama, Voltaire, or the Enlightenment that morning. The class was full of students, many probably trying to cope in the same way I had, having an open discussion about the days events and where the ripples of this tragedy might lead.

For me, a whole semester in this course is summed up by this memory. Although we did spend hours learning about the history of the theatre, and how actors perform certain actions on stage, it all seems to be overshadowed by the event of that semester. 9/11 seems to have this kind of effect on many of us. We will never forget the day that for some of us occupies a week, month, or even a years worth of memories.

Espanol - With squiggly thing over the 'n'.

SPAN 1010, 1020, and 2030 - Spanish 1-1, 1-2, and 2-1 - I am sort of cheating here, but these classes all blend together. I took all three of these courses in consecutive semesters, Monday through Thursday, and at 8 a.m. This was a painful thing to do because I was up at 5:30 for swimming or weights for the first three days of the week.

I hated Spanish. I am not going to lie. However, I am really glad for what little of the language I retained from these semesters. My limited knowledge of the language has been helpful in some circumstances.

I spent all this time in Spanish in high school thinking that I wouldn't have to take a foreign language in college. Wrong. To master my native tongue at UW I had to spend three semesters studying a foreign language. Sweet. It wasn't all that bad. I met some really cool people. I met some messed up people. My last Spanish professor really loved drinking. This is a presumption. She let me do a presentation in Spanish on my really tall, talking Treebeard doll. This one speech was the highlight of my Spanish career. Treebeard has four phrases in his memory and I converted every word into Spanish, except for the "hobbits".

Two more ebullient blogs on my coursework are coming soon.

The Rise of Christianity

SOC 3200 - Sociology of Religion - Here comes another book recommendation: The Rise of Christianity, by Rodney Stark. You might assume this book talks about the very beginnings of Christianity and how the faith spread, or did not spread through empires of the world, and also how it eventually came to be one of the Earth's major religions. Well, you assume correctly. It was a provocative read.

The professor of this course was a nice fellow. He had all these crazy stories about students at the Air Force Academy--he used to teach there. Unfortunately, I can't remember one of these stories right now, but I do remember having a recurring thought during the time he would share about his experience at the Academy. It would totally suck to be a student there, but I am glad there are people that do well in that setting and enjoy the strict rules, schedule, lack of freedom, and whatnot. It is just not for me.

Five courses left.

Chinese Society

SOC 3100 - Chinese Society - The Eastern trend continues. Biggest lesson learned in this class: I would consider living in China to be an unfortunate existence. Nothing in China is easy. Go ahead, assume I am spoiled, I am, but there are no excuses as to why people should be living the way they do in China. However, I did just say nothing in China is easy, that includes eradicating poverty and bringing some form of equality to this country. I am excited to read about so much growth in China, but I have some doubts about it because it seems that the elitists are simply getting richer and the percentage of people living at, or below the poverty level, is growing--this is no growth to be happy about.

An article in The New York Times a few months ago addressed the skyscraper sprawl in Shanghai. Apparently Shanghai will soon have more skyscrapers than Ney York City, but you won't be able to see that many of them through the smog. Industrial and commercial zoning is a disease in the new China that might one day suffocate all that makes China unique. They are already flying the flag of globalization. It is all good though, they are learning from the best.

The East

SOC 3050 - Japanese Society - I would say I am intrigued by the East, but one of the meanings of intrigue is having a clandestine love affair. Love is just too strong of a word, and I am not conducting this interest of mine in secrecy.

For my general education classes I needed to take some non-Western cultural courses. I alloted most of that coursework to the Eastern Hemisphere. Unfortunately, this coursework was not accompanied by a trip to the East. I haven't directly used this knowledge in my life too many times, but on occasion I am able to suprise myself with some material I have retained from lectures. This is doubly surprising. First, I remembered something that I learned in college. Second, I understood my professor's heavily Japanese-accented English. Awesome.

Silly that when I think of this course one specific memory comes to mind. When I saw The Last Samurai I recalled the story of Japan's creation that the narrator was telling. The islands of Japan are said to have sprung up when drops from a sword fell upon the Earth. I also knew on occasion when the movie got Japanese history right and wrong.

The Samurai's Garden is a book I chose to read for this class. I read it after a semester of Japanese studies, which is a drop in the bucket, but it still offered a perspective on Japanese culture and history that had not been provided through the curriculum of the class. Good stuff. Check it out sometime.*

*I feel so stuck up when I suggest movies to watch, or books to read to people for some reason. I guess I just have a hard time believing someone is going to come to this site, actually finish reading one of these blogs, and consider my recommendation at the bottom. I wouldn't be surprised if you wrote the title down on your stack of post-it notes by the side of the keyboard, but there is no effort involved in that compared to the effort involved in seeking this book out upon a friend, or stranger's recommendation, and reading it. I believe in that really small percentage of the population. That is why I say things like this.

The Random Religion Course

RELI 1000 - Religious Studies - This course is a little out of place. It is a freshman level course that I took in London this last Spring. The course was great though. We briefly studied Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism. Being in London provided us with the opportunity to visit a place of worship for each one of these religions. I enjoyed that aspect of the course the most.

I don't believe I am going to cover the other three courses I took in London. From the beginning, this series has been focused on my courses at UW and I am going to keep it that way, with this one exception. I only have eight more courses to cover. That is not too many, considering at this point I have blogged on 32 of them.

The entry on this course is short, pathetic, and uninteresting, but I had to write something about it. This is enough to jog my memory when years down the road I will want to write more about this course. Who knows?

Philosophy of Science

PHIL 3140 - Philosophy of Science - I got in way over my head in this course. This was my first philosophy course and I evaded the prerequisites somehow, which was at least one other philosophy course, preferably two. Was I the only English Major in the seats? No, but I was the only English Major that finished the course that semester. The other guy dropped it after a couple of weeks. I would have done the same if I wouldn't have dropped under 12 credits for the semester.

The first in-class exam was one of the ugliest in my college career. I had no clue what was going on. I think I left a third of the paper blank, and on the other two thirds I wrote some high class bullshit. I mean, this stuff could have won me the gold medal in the bullshit olympics. No problem. Piece of cake.

Problem: I couldn't get a D or an F in this class if I wanted to travel with the swim team, and also if I wanted to compete in the Spring, not to mention, I would have to live with getting an F in a class. Faced with this problem, I went in to talk to the professor. He was really understanding of my dilemma. He gave me some tips on how to complete the next take-home exam and how to study for the next test.

I put in the extra time and almost got a 90 on the next take-home. I don't know what I got on the final, but I was the first one done. I remember studying my arse off for this one exam. Once the test was handed to me I gripped my pencil as tight as ever and rapidly wrote down everything I knew about the philosophy of science. I was petrified of forgetting even the smallest amount of information before the time had arrived to write it down on the paper. I turned the test in with the greatest sense of pride, knowing that whatever I was going to get on that test it was more than enough to bring me from the depths of the grading scale. The great unknown, Philosophy of Science, had loomed over me all semester and I pointed a flashlight in its direction and it cowered before my intelligence. Laugh. Okay, so it didn't happen exactly like that, but my brain successfully rose to the occasion.

Included below is a segment of that second take-home exam. I just read it for the first time in a couple of years and it sounds like complete bs, but it isn't. This was a right answer. Believe it.

3. Why did John lose the tennis match?

“John” – why did John lose the tennis match, rather than Jill, lets say? If you believe Jill was a better tennis player than John, than this could work as being an explanatory term in favor of John losing the match. If it is believed John could have committed more errors than Jill, this is also an explanatory term in favor of John losing the match.

“lose” – why did John lose instead of win? The contrast classes above could also be used as answers to why John lost instead of won. Perhaps, if the game were longer, John would have won, but the length of the game was not long enough for John to prevail.

“tennis” – why did John play tennis, rather than basketball, or football? John could be said to be a better tennis player, so that could explain why tennis was chosen. Someone John could have been playing with, like Jill, could have been a much better tennis player than any other sport. Jill also could have chosen the sport they played, instead of John. This would explain why they might have played tennis.

Phys Ed and Idol

I have to admit that this is getting a little boring for me...this series on courses. When I am away from my computer, or even recently sitting at it I have found myself turned off by the idea of blogging because I know that I promised myself to finish this before I continue on in the direction I was going, whatever that was.

PEAC 1001 - Health - This was a worthless course. I don't see the value in having a P.E. course in gen. ed. at a university--nevertheless, it does exist. Having been an athlete, I was allowed to skip out on the required activity with a notice from the athletic department. If I wasn't allowed to skip out on it I was going to choose lap swimming. That would have been a joke. This course was a series of boring lectures that you had the option of testing out of in the first week. I tried. I performed miserably, as expected, and did very well in the rest of the course. This isn't saying anything at all, given everyone in the university has to take it, and it is freshman level.

PEAC 2010 - Varsity Swimming - Honestly, I don't even know what this is. Somewhere along the way I was given half of a credit for swimming on the UW team. This was not a course, the half-credit just came out of nowhere and appeared on my on-course report. However, there is a problem. If the university is going to award credit for this, why not tack on four credits? To give an athlete that half-credit is a slap in the face. They should award credits equivalent to one course, or nothing at all.

When I signed on to MSN tonight I saw an article on the American Idol winner. I didn't care; too many of us do.

I Don't Like Math

MATH 1400 - College Algebra - I believe it is important for a person to know a lot of things throughout life, but these are just two and they sort of contradict each other. One, you need to know what you aren't good at. Two, you can be good at anything. Both of these lessons are closely tied to my relationship with Math.

It is clear to me, and especially others at times, that I am no math whiz. I got a poor grade in College Algebra the first time around because the teacher spoke a combination of German and English to us, let us call it Germlish. I can honestly put 99% of the blame on him for my poor grade. I didn't have to take the class again, but I wanted to keep that grade from affecting my GPA. By the way, the second time around I got a B--really still not that impressive, but an improvement upon the first grade. I truly don't enjoy mathematics to a euphoric level like some of my great friends do and this is precisely why I am not the best at it. However, this is where the "Two" factor comes in from the previous paragraph. I believe so strongly that if I put forth maximum effort and time into becoming great at something there is no limit as to what that something could be. You may think I am an arrogant bastard now, but I don't see anything unhealthy about having this level of confidence in myself. If it was mathematics that I wanted to be a stud in, fine, I believe I could do it. If it was Scrabble, and I wanted to play in the world championship, then why the heck should I discount myself?

I believe you can be good at anything, but it is important not to forget that you can't be good at everything simultaneously. You have to find a few things that you really want to be great at and then fine tune those for the rest of your life.

Get This Lady A Walker

LANG 3115 - Trails of 3 Cities - I paid attention in this class. I received good marks on the tests and papers. However, I never figured out why this course had such a dumb name. We studied Japanese and Chinese culture over the fifteen week semester, but never once did we talk about three specific cities.

The professor was an old French lady. She despised the U.S. I expected her to fall over and croak everyday. She never did. Actually, she is still teaching. She can't see above her steering wheel but she drives a yellow Suzuki Sidekick anyway. I remember a few times I saw her walking across Prexy's Pasture and I had to stop. It was an amazing feat, how long she took to cross that grass. The time seemed to amount to a whole class period. So, for each class period she had to have devoted three hours of her time. One to get there, one to teach, and one to get back to where she started. Where she started was only the parking lot so I would tack on another twenty minutes both directions for driving--which in Laramie is an eternity. Plus, you have to factor in the stops she might have made in her office. Pretty soon the whole day is all gone, simply to teach a one hour class on how great the East is, and how the West has got it all wrong. You can't expect much different from a crabby, old French lady.

My One History Class

HIST 1251 - Wyoming History - I needed some sort of government class, so why not brush up on the Wyoming Constitution. I could never stay awake for the entire hour of this class. I was a freshman, it was in the morning, and I swam every morning before this class. When class began on Tuesday mornings at 8:15 I had already been up two hours and forty-five minutes. For an hour and a half of that time I was swimming. I can't blame myself for falling asleep, I blame swimming and the boring material. The professor knows way too much about Wyoming and he has the most wicked comb-over. He enlightened all of us when he told us that two of the dorms at UW used to be the tallest buildings in the state at 12 stories. And one hall, White Hall, is something like two feet taller than McIntyre Hall. Currently, the tallest building in Wyoming, according to the comb-over, is at the Jim Bridger power plant. I think he said it was fourteen stories tall.

Geology

Geology 1100 - Physical Geology - There could be nothing more boring for me to do with the rest of my life than to study rocks. For me there is no explanation necessary. I don't think I could form one if I tried. Equating rocks with boredom is a very simple comparison.

I got a B in this class. I wasn't too happy about that. My final grade was something like 89.5% The class was huge, something like 300 people. The professor has a nasty pony tail and sometimes I saw him at half acre gym. I just knew by looking at him that he didn't work out that much. The workout clothes he was sporting were the same ones he bought in the 70s--bright colored, layered sweat pants.

There is nothing exciting here. Who was I kidding? It is geology.

SS Part Deux

I thought I was going to devote more time to Senior Seminar, but I just don't know how to narrow that class down. Let me share this.

One of the final activities for the class was a meeting at the professor's house. Actually, it was a movie night with a pretty good meal. At the end of the meal we were all talking about what we want to do next with our lives. Shoot, I am not going to sit there and lie and say something like, "I want to work for a publishing company the rest of my life", or, "I am going to teach English to middle schoolers." I listed the three things that I want to do with my life, or at least try. They are dreams, but I really wanted to let the people sitting at the table know what I like and want to do. I told them, "I want to be an author, learn how to act and do that, or play basketball and get paid for it." Haha. It was great. The ladies pretty much all laughed, but I was being dead serious. I don't assume I am going to be all those things. In reality, you could really only be one I suppose, but hey, if I said anything otherwise I truly felt then that I would have been lying, and I still feel the same way.

SS Part One

Only one more English course left. I can't believe it. It seems like I have been writing about English courses since I started this series. Exciting it will be to be done with these courses and delve even deeper into my collegiate course history.

English 4990 - Senior Seminar - This class is designed to be the final and last hurdle for the English Major. It is very scary to encounter a class like this because just to get into it you have to be within a semester of graduation, but at the same time it still weeds people out. You just have to love that power. It weeded the one other guy that was in the class out. He left me with roughly 12 girl students with the same professor that I had for Middle English Literature--really smart, nerdy Stanford woman.

Just like in Middle English Literature, Senior Seminar had an intimidation factor to it. I had not only heard it was challenging because of the reading material, but also because of the assignments. On top of that the same professor was back, but this was two years on from Middle English and I had spent every second of those two years honing my literary analysis and writing skills. Ha, yeah right. No really, I had improved quite a bit though and I was happy to be put to work. To be cliche, I was happy to rise to the occasion, or challenge if you will.

I thought I was going to write all this out in one sitting. Bang, finish the blog on Senior Seminar just like that, but I was mistaken. I feel it deserves more than these four paragraphs so I will return. There is noise in this house that can't be ignored. My parents are entertaining guests and there are chips, guacamole, and drinks to be had downstairs. Well, see ya later.

Kiltastic

English 4360 - Early American Prose - I don't have any great story from this class. I remember talking to this Russian girl that was taking this course for part of her American Studies program at UW. She told me that UW has one of the best American Studies programs in the nation. I told her that was great and well, I hope she is having fun back in Russia. I hope she wasn't at that convention for pigeon lovers, in that building in Moscow, when the roof collapsed under the weight of snow. That happened sometime between January 12 and April 7 because I was in London when it happened.

Ahh. I remember. I can't recall the guy's name, but that isn't the point. The point is there is this guy at UW who wears kilts all the time. Got it. His name is Robyn. He was in this class for the first few weeks before he dropped it. I saw him a lot more after this course, but that was the first time I came across such an interesting look. He is a large man. His calves are the size of my quads and he wears kilts everyday. Robyn must have a ton of kilts. I have never spoken to him. I remember he wore kilts with cargo style pockets on them. They had UtiliKilts stitched into the side. Kilts are chill, but I just couldn't sport one up at UW. I don't like the idea of a -20 F breeze blowing all up in my kilt.

Bronzed, But Not In Heaven

English 4210 - 18th Century English Literature - I don't really know why I started these course blogs with the course number. The number doesn't mean anything to those that didn't go to UW, but since I started it this way I feel that I need to finish this series in the same manner.

Like most of the English Professors at UW, the professor for this course was no dummy. He knows his stuff. He went to Yale, Columbia, and Cornell for a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D respectively. He also is the head of cultural programs at UW. Apparently this program is one of the best in the country, but I have no arguments to back that up; a number of people have told me this though.

I would like to share two quotes I wrote down in the notebook I used for this class. First quote: "It is quite a relief to have a class where everybody can write, so at the end of the semester I am going to have you all bronzed." I might have shared this before in a blog a while back but it is important, especially when taking into consideration my feelings in Middle English Lit. This was only the semester right after that class and even though I was able to turn it around in that class I wasn't confident that I could write the stuff these upper level courses were looking for. Naturally, it was good to hear this from the professor. I didn't take it too seriously, but this guy is a serious fellow and if he throws "all" in there I knew that I was at least decent, or on the right track, and that was all I needed to keep on going.

The second quote was not as uplifting as the first. "I am not worried about the Rapture. I don't want to be in Heaven anyway. I want to be somewhere else where all the interesting people will be." This was toward the end of the semester and by then I had a tremendous amount of respect for this guy, so what he said was a bit hard to swallow. I actually spit it back up, spit on it some more, and then stomped on it pretty hard--I am pretty sure I killed it, but not before it ate away at me. These out of nowhere jabs at someone's beliefs really hurt. I want to rage when I hear things like this, but then it would be all too easy for these people to appear right. They are not right. A man can't hear much of the world if he spends all his time on it looking for affirmation of himself.

Swamped in Middle English

English 4180 - Middle English Literature - From the first day this class scared me. It was the fall semester of my third year in college, and also my first semester as an English Major. This class also happened to be my first upper division English course. I didn't know what to expect and to tell you the truth I was pretty scared to look at the syllabus the first day of class.

I immediately felt out of me league. The teacher graduated from high school early and went straight to Stanford where she proceeded to get her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. consecutively from the same university. She was intimidating and so was the reading list, nevermind the fact that Middle English is pretty much a different language.

The Seniors in the class were not intimidating. My impressions of them immediately gave me a bad taste in my mouth. They were way too pretentious for being only months away from their first degree. Now that I think about it, there is no right time in your life to be very pretentious. Anyway, they wouldn't give me the time of day when I would comment during class and disagree with them. Two of them in particular seemed like the biggest suck-ups in the world. One was a girl, and the other a guy, and they simply loved pointing out to everyone that they had already taken Senior Seminar (for English Majors) and that this entitled them to chime in with literary analysis courtesy of Freud, Lacan, and I can't remember who else. And how could I forget their flashy bindings and title pages of essays. Primping a paper like that has only ever said one thing to me, I'm a crappy writer, but look at my red binding, plastic covers, and my 72 font title page. That is great that they wanted to share what they had learned, but all through college if I had taken an advanced course in one department and then gone on to another course in the same department, but at a lower level, I would not use my knowledge from the advanced course to refute the argument of other students. First, that is rude. I am not the teacher. That is not my job. Third, I am not good at math. Fourth, the student who has not taken the advanced course most likely doesn't know what the hell I would be talking about. Fifth, I strongly believe that the student's journey through a swamp of academic fields should be directed by their professors (after five years at the University of Wyoming I feel I can leave this job solely up to the student and his/her professors). Sixth, after this class I never wanted to be like that guy and girl who spewed forth so much crap from their pedestals onto the university younglings that we either sat their quietly the rest of the semester, or even worse, completely ran away from our pursuit of an English Degree because we were afraid of those pretentious Seniors and didn't want to become one.

It turns out, I didn't run away. After a rough start in the class I pulled it together and even started getting some As on papers, but those weren't enough to lift me out of a B. A B was great though, it really was, and I knew after that class how I wanted to present myself to underclassmen once I was the graduating Senior.

Another English Film Course

English 4090 - Film and Religion - I had to find the notebook for this class this morning in the basement because I knew I had quoted the professor on something I wanted to share.

The class had just finished watching Saved. The professor was listing the characters off one by one. Some characters prompted debates on their values, intentions, actions, etc. For some reason though when the professor got to Hillary Faye, played by Mandy Moore, the class was silent.

First, a little history on the professor. He is head of the Religious Studies department. He is married. And I think I saw him driving in Laramie once with a bumper sticker on his car that read "George Bush is a Muggle". He is a very straight forward, reserved fellow that you know had his wild times in college, but when you look at him those times are impossible to imagine. Constantly sporting a straight-brimmed cowboy hat, jeans, a button up shirt, and a belt buckle made out of those old nickels with buffalos on them, he has the Wyoming get up down pat. He is a rare breed, the Scholar Cowboy.

Silence. Nothing about Mandy Moore anyone? The professor speaks, "Is she too good looking?"

More silence.

The professor replies to his own question, "I thought she had a nice ass".

This provoked some audible gasps, more silence, and eventually laughter from the whole class. I couldn't believe this guy, the religious studies nerd, the scholar, the Oxford Grad just said that. The class loved it. I loved it. You know why? He exposed his thoughts and reminded us that he was human.

Unfinished Business

Too much of my writing goes unfinished. I start out with an idea, but then something happens. I fall into a writing lapse. I trick myself into thinking that the idea was a poor one from the outset. When it boils down to it though, it is not a matter of good versus bad, it is a matter of getting something done--having a sense of accomplishment.

Having said this I am returning to my series on all the classes I have taken in college, all 40 of them. I don't know exactly how many are left, but I don't think I am even halfway done. I list the course title and with it give a short story or observation from my time in that course.

I pick up with.....

English 4070 - Film: Kubrick and Scorsese - First, don't let the film class under the English heading fool you. English majors did in this class what we have always done in literature classes, analyze the text (in this case film) for themes, arguments, objective or non-objective portraits of a person, event, place, or thing, etc.

For me, Scorsese is easy to like. He writes movies about criminals, NYC, and the Mafia. What is there not to like about this material? Some of his classics I had never seen. Mean Streets and Taxi Driver had never made it as far as my DVD player, let alone my consciousness before this class. However, I had heard Robert De Niro's famous line, "You talking to me?", when I was much younger, but until this fall I never knew that it is from Taxi Driver. Enough with those movies, really, I apologize to the devoted fans of either one of them.

I can't get over Goodfellas. This movie is a classic. To enjoy the movie I think you have to temporarily accept some of the things you are going to hear and see on screen--cheating, crude language, and explicit violence. You can't blame Scorsese. All these things were, and still are, part of the Mafia lifestyle and Scorsese wanted his audience to be confronted with reality. No one could present this life in a more brilliant way than Scorsese did. It is not too far into the movie that we find ourselves thinking, wow, that would be sort of a fun lifestyle, but just at this moment you see Pesci shoot down a teenager just for saying the wrong words, you see friends kill friends, and you see families fall to pieces because of lies. It is at this moment when Scorsese is at his best. He glorified the wiseguy lifestyle in Goodfellas so well that we are left to grapple with our secret desire to live as one of the mobsters--a worry free life with money, friends, connections, and security--but with little concern of the consequences, and when we see them it is far too late.

Busted, But Not Broken

This is where my grandparents came to a stop after an 18-wheeler cut them off the freeway at 80 mph near beautiful Barstow, California. Miraculously, they were not seriously injured. They returned home today and I am spending the night in Fort Collins in order to be here to take them to appointments in the morning. After the appointments I will return home and continue my pursuit of the present, rather than worrying about the future.