I was watching MTV around 4am last night with Kip and saw Smile Empty Soul’s latest single during ‘All Things That Rock.’ Recognizing the lead singer and bassist really surprised me, especially since I thought they weren’t even at the after party Brian and I went to in Rochester, a point we debated later. Looks like Brian was right; Trapt was the only band not in attendance. At the party, I had figured the lead singer as a roadie or something because he looked so meek and awkward. The video and accompanying music were, of course, terrible. Their earlier single, the one with the chorus about “I did it for the druuu-uuuggss” is also shit.

I know I haven’t reported on the events of the last couple days of my trip to RIT, hold on. I’ll have them up by the end of the week. Promise.

General thoughts on Rochester, RIT and the East Coast:

People are uglier here. It’s a big ego boost and all, but damn. All the guys look like good ol’ boys from the South, with big guts and shaved heads, All the girls are plain (and sometimes overly made-up), and I’ve noticed a couple girls with faces like caricatures reminiscent of inbreeding. Despite the fact that my California upbringing has given me an unrealistic standard of human beauty, most people here are friendlier and everyone, especially the girls, are less standoffish. It’s still a bit scary for me, but that’s what beer is for.

When I get back home, if I hear one more person spout off about how ugly UCSD girls are, I’m going to slap them. They have no idea. UCSD girls are like an army of Barbies to me now: hot, trendy, plastic, unapproachable. I think that’s why guys get bitter, complain, and propagate the “Ugly UCSD” rumor. They’re bitter. Bitter and defeated.

The only people who dress emo/indie here are gay. Tight vintage t-shirt? Gay. Black rubber bracelets and a jaunty trucker hat? Gay. Me? Almost gay. I got stared at a lot at last night’s party because I was the only person not wearing all dark colors. I was a tan jacket in a sea of black wool coats.

I miss Kimiko.

Yesterday was quite action packed, and I’ve forgotten what I intended to write before that last post was cut short. Probably a bunch of stuff about how goddamn cold it was here and how I stopped being able to feel my gonads any time I was outdoors any longer than two minutes. Also, the campus food here makes UCSD cafeteria food look as if it were prepared by the hands of miraculous angels.

Onward!

Last night we ended up at an after party for Trapt, Smile Empty Soul and Finger Eleven. Before we go any further, yes, all three of those bands are utter shit. Trapt has a single on the radio right now (”Headstrong”), so they were too famous to show up to the party. Actually, come to think about it, only Finger Eleven came to the party. They are Canadian, and their website makes the bold claim that their latest album has been certified platinum within their frozen bastard of a nation. I spoke with James, the guitarist. He was a tool. Intuition tells me the rest of the band was the same. Be sure and check out James’ artwork on their website. It would appear that he got bored in class and decided to doodle, then upon joining a band decided that these scribbles were art and should be marketed. Ugh.

I’m being overly cynical here. The party was free; the bands paid for a keg of Coors and a keg of tasty (and Dutch) Heineken. Brian, Max, Jeremy and I very actively worked towards getting our fair share of the beer. Other party-goers were preoccupied with getting their fare share of coke. That sort of activity seemed to be limited to the musicians and their uglier-than-sin groupies, however.

Quote of the night, delivered at the tail end of a line and directed towards a drunk and rather plain girl: “Have you ever seen the back of a tour bus before?”

At some point in the party, some drug deal went bad and we ended up playing a game of “stay out of the room with the armed, angry drug dealers” after Jeremy tipped the rest of us off. I heard about the arguing and flashing of weapons second hand however, but it still made me rather nervous. Mom, if you still read this blog of mine, put down the phone. I’m fine.

After some freshman-cum-indentured slave came and picked us up from the party, we ended up in CSH waiting for a round of “Garbage Plates” from Mark’s III to arrive and fill our stomachs. A Garbage Plate is constructed thusly: take a paper plate, cover half of it in macaroni salad, half with French fries, then stack on top of it two ground beef patties, onions and mustard. Place a bun on top. I can’t even begin to describe what a bomb such as this does to your stomach, but I think it was crucial to my survival at that point that I be drunk. Thanks East Coast, but I think I’ll stick to delicious burritos from Cotixan for the same kind of sustenance. Come to think of it, a Garbage Plate is the East Coast equivalent of Carne Asada Fries. Winner: West Coast. Sorry guys.

We ended up walking home from CSH across a half mile of frozen tundra around 5:30am and I fell asleep as the sun came up around 6:00. Not bad for a Tuesday night.

I’m typing this in the car as we drive the hour from Rochester to Buffalo to pluck Mike/Mazer from the airport. I don’t know what we have planned for tonight, but I’m pretty sure it involves alcohol. There’s a chance we’ll go to Canada. There’s a chance we’ll play Edward Fortyhands. Only time will tell.

So here I am, done with finals yet I’m still on campus. Why do you ask? Because there are some things in life that just need to be done.

So back to done with my finals. I hate finals, that last one I took was horrific. I knew nothing. In the week between the last meeting of the class and the date of the final I studied too hard for every other final and hence pushed everything from that class out of my brain. If you happen to be reading this and you also happen to be the TA grading my final, please go easy on me.

My spring break has yet to bring me joy and intoxication, but that will soon change on Wednesday when I fly across the midwest and spend some time with my heros Andy and Brian. Until then I will try not to die from my painful debilitating disease.

Oh, yeah. I’m sick. Every time I take a deep breath or I bend the wrong way, my lungs hurt. So, if you are a doctor, well, why are you reading our website. No seriously, if you know what’s wrong with me please tell me so I can stop it before I infect the entire Rochester area.

My flight from Baltimore to Buffalo passed quickly, probably because I was halfway through Slaughter House Five and enjoying it immensely. When the captain announced we were making our decent, I was surprised to look out and see a barren plane of white below us. Even landing in Baltimore was a sunny, bright affair, although the airport looked like it had been designed by Satan himself - all black, matte finish, wide and squat. The kindly old lady sitting to my right was flying in to Buffalo to be with her daughter who had just given birth, and had left another daughter back in Baltimore who was in labor. She was overdosing on grandmother-hood, and as we were waiting to exit the plane, she got the news that the daughter in labor had popped out a nine-pound girl. She almost shat her pants.

After landing in Buffalo, Brian and RJ drove me to Rochester. The temperatures here are lower than I have experienced in years. During the hour drive from the airport to Brian’s place, we watched the trees gradually thin out and the sky slowly fade to a darker and darker shade of gray.

This will have to continue later….

Ah, the joy of toting around a notebook. It’s 9:20ish am, and I’m sitting, cramped, on a 737 bound for Baltimore. I was playing Yoshi’s Island earlier, but the goddamn gamepad I bought keep freaking out and began having a series of epileptic seizures. I’ll be in the middle of some crucial jump, or maybe swallowing a pesky enemy when the gamepad decides that it’s high time for me to pause the game, then open the load menu of the emulator and enter in around 50 or 60 blank spaces into the prompt. You can only play like that for so long before using the controller to knock a few teeth loose from your own head in a fit of frustration.

I am not a morning person. Waking at 4:00am up proved to be a challenge, especially since I fell asleep about two hours earlier. Oddly enough, at 6:00am, the airport was more crowded than I’ve ever seen it. The crowds, however, have adjusted to the ridiculous security measures and things move along much more swiftly than they did a year or two ago. Beer, at $3.00 per can, seems to be the most cost-effective alcohol on an airplane, so I’m contentedly nursing a Heineken as I type this. Of course, when a 21-year-old playing videogames on his notebook orders a beer at nine in the morning, the fat, high-school dropout flight attendants reserve the right to treat you like an asshole. Oh well, at least Heineken is decent out of a can.

I just finished reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggars. Decent book. At least now I can return it to Fonty and feel less guilty about still borrowing five or six books from her since mid-August. I was going to start Slaughterhouse Five (also borrowed from Fonty) immediately after I finished the last book (it only took me about three months to read it, how shameful), but I figured I could use a breather and decided to take the opportunity to symbolically jerk off onto the blog and extemporize at 20,000 feet. 30,000? How high are we?

I simultaneously loathe and love the airport. The people watching is prime, but it seems that every miserable cretin ever born enjoys congregating there, pushing about in a writhing mass of selfish, angry, herd-like animals.

I can see snow on the ground below, and the captain just announced that we’re 1400 miles away from Baltimore. I wonder which state we’re above right now.

Back to airports. Fuck them. I hate watching a family of five fat rednecks stand in line to board with their enormous rolling suitcases which they’ve realized they can call “carry on” because everyone is too polite to stand up to them. Hey fucker, I could fit in that little carry on bag you’ve got there. Thanks for doing your part to ruin everyone else’s day. I desperately want to see what crowds like these are like in Europe or Asia. Is it only Americans that so highly value their own interests above sensible standards of conduct?

I heard an Israeli helicopter used fucking missiles to assassinate the leader of a militant Palestinian force yesterday. Some people are saying that region is about to go apeshit. I’m curious to see what sort of lows we can achieve as a collective species.

Meh, I think I’ll end here. I’ll upload this tonight when I have an internet connection, but I plan on deceiving you, the gentle reader, by changing the timestamp to make it look as if I uploaded it right now. Hey, that’s the sort of miracle that billions of technology R&D can bring you. Be thankful.

Ahh, done with final exams.

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted, I know. You dweebs should be used to this by now. I wouldn’t want to go messing with the status quo, right?

It slipped my mind earlier to talk about the Crystal Method concert, which Troy took me to for my birthday. It was my first 21-and-up venue, wahoo. The music, of course, was awesome. The Crystal Method is a tremendous and prolific band, and I thoroughly enjoy their entire catalogue. It was loud too, so that’s a plus. Nothing quite like bass strong enough to shift and prod your loins. The group sitting in front of us was a bunch of VIP schmucks being shown a good time by their boss (as best we can figure). Troy and I were aghast at how much they must have spent on alcohol. It would have made Brian weep to see them make drinks with Coke and Crown Royal. They also polished off two or three bottles of Belvedere, a bottle of Vox and a bottle of Patron. The fuckers didn’t share either, so Troy and I just had to look on longingly while we nursed our Jack & Coke and Heineken, respectively. Also, I was not adequately prepared for the atmosphere and population of the 21-and-up crowd. Too much posturing, too many metrosexuals, and definitely too many hos. Sweet Jesus, my fertile, hormone-addled mind could not have imagined the skankiness that seemed to pervade the crowd. The world, it seems, is sluttier than I prayed it would be as a teenager, and I’m not exactly happy about it. Troy and I even had the pleasure of watching some half-bald fuck pound enough drinks to set the room spinning and make him think it was acceptable to maul some ugly fat chick with his tongue in front of goddamn everyone in the theater seating. He must have thought it was discreet to use his shirt collar as a blind so that he could make out with his trophy heifer in peace, but at least he heaved all over the dance floor within 30 minutes and was no where to be seen afterwards.

In more recent news, things are ridiculously stressful and I’m dour and cranky more often than not. If I thought I had enough with drama earlier in the school year, the shit that seeps into my life now days is fucking off the scale. This is worst type of whining to read in a person’s blog, however, so I’ll keep it short: fuck you, Human Life.

Since the Sunday before last (let’s see, that would be March 7), I’ve slept in my bed a total of three times. Usually I wake up atop the 40 pound pile of dirty clothes that cover my lovely queen-size after passing out on accident, perpendicular to the mattress, without setting an alarm. Sometimes I wake up at 8am on the couch after just lying down “to rest” at 3am. Sometimes it’s because I pull an all-nighter and don’t even sleep at all, even accidentally. I’m bitter about it, yes, but I’m also surprised that I seem to be waking up earlier and oversleeping less (redundant, but shhh) during this time when I haven’t been using my alarm. I’m thinking of just putting some cedar chips in a pile in one corner of my room and sleeping each night in a fitful little ball.

Hmm, what else?

I’m leaving for Rochester, New York on Monday at 7:35am. You should be able to figure my flight number out from that information, which creeps me out a bit. Please don’t drive my plane into a major public building like a super-sonic, aluminum javelin filled with gasoline. Mazer and I will be visiting Brian for spring break, and I’m pretty goddamn excited. A bit nervous, too, since the past week has seen Brian terrifyingly drunk, streaking across Frat/Sorority Row and playing Edward Fortyhands. He’s already assured me that we’ll be doing much of the same. Looks like I’ll be packing some pants with an elastic waistband so I can piss without use of my hands. Who knows how’ll I’ll get the pants back up with only my clumsy bottle-hands though. I can just imagine the incriminating photos now. We’ll also be visiting Canada at some point, and I’m excited to get some more Absinthe.

Now, however, it is time to go drink. A lot. Critics who cluck their tongues at college drinking can eat a dick. We earn this shit, and more people should be following our good example.

I recently received an email from and anonymous person claiming that I look like the actor Christian Bale. To those of you who think I resemble this beautiful man, I urge you, step forth, and confess your love to me.

It’s a gorgeous day today, but I’m having a hard time adjusting to 87 degree weather in March. It doesn’t even get that hot during the summer here, goddamn.

Winterfest was awesome, even though I only stayed for one act. Talib Kweli was so awesome my ass turned purple like a monkey’s. True story. His DJ forgot the instrumentals for a couple songs that Kweli was planning on performing, so they had a friend of mine in high places go download the necessary tracks from a secret web site and burn them to disc. In the same location, this friend of mine found the full version of the songs—songs not scheduled to be released for another three months. Totally fucking awesome, although I promised I wouldn’t share them. Still, I feel all cool for having part of an album that isn’t due until Summer.

I have a research paper due Thursday. Five to ten pages. Fuck.

Yesterday, as I met with Prof. Jenik for my Faculty Mentor Program, she said I looked like I’d lost weight. It came up over the subject of MQ production. Maybe we should publish a diet book with instructions on how to lock yourself in a room for three days straight and not eat anything but stale Dorritos.

I’m browsing through my usual web sites as I sit in class, and I’ve come to realize the Onion sucks. We’re talking the kind of Suck that you can’t recover from. I feel as if my favorite teacher has died. Fucking hell, some of the articles even sound as if they were written by a right-wing conservative. Completely unacceptable, goddamnit.

Yesterday was fun. It was an all-around nice birthday.

Kimiko threw me a surprise party at the MQ meeting, which was cute. I was most surprised that Brian was there, since I was expecting him to fly in today instead of yesterday. We all sat around and ate cake while we went over the latest issue, which turned out fairly well despite the hellish production that birthed it.

After Troy rushed me over to my polling place so I could vote, Brian, Kimiko, Fonty, Jessica, Troy, Dan, and I all went to CPK for dinner. The pasta I had was good; my opinion of CPK has improved markedly. We had drinks there, and the server who carded us noticed my birthday and later brought out a little ice cream sundae which I made the others eat. Troy, Dan and Brian broke off early to go buy beer at the Ralph’s next door, and I went later to pick up some Triple Black for Kimiko. We went home after that and started drinking to pass the time. Around 11, Troy, Reid, Dan and I left the house to go to a bar, and because Reid was driving, we ended up at some tiny dive bar near the airport called the Aero Club. Their mixed drinks were awful, but we settled in with plenty of beer and had a good time. Reid and Dan made a mess with some Irish Car Bombs, and the crazy drunk to our right kept trying to start conversations with us despite the fact that he could not pronounce any words other than ‘yes’ or ‘yeah.’ Oh, I think he said ‘restaurant’ five times in rapid succession when Troy tried to be polite and asked him what he did for a living. The bartender mentioned he sold roses by the side of the road or something, so apparently the souse was lying when he said, “restaurant restaurant restaurant restaurant restaurant.”

The four of us came home from the bar and found Brian and Kimiko drinking whenever someone on the TV said “the.” Needless to say, they were in high spirits. We joined them in drinking more, and we all passed out by 3am.

Good times.

Well, I’m 21. Yee haw.

Fonty bought me lunch and a beer at the pub, which was cool. When the bartender saw it was my birthday, he gave me another pint for free. Also cool. Walking around campus with two pints of Hef in my system are about all the birthday celebration I need.

We’re going to go bar hopping tonight after the MQ meeting. I’m sure I’ll have more to post on later.