Would morality exist without humans? Or Consciousness? I wonder.

My train of throat sometimes does not make it to the station. (My voice cracks)

Vodka. Karate. Vodkarate.

Hello everyone, I am here. Allow me to review what has been going on of late if possible. Last I checked, the most exciting thing that has happened recently is my Halloween weekend. It was really fun. Clay and his super best friend Matthew Moser elected to come to Texas for the "holiday" weekend, making for an excellent excuse to go home and eat excellent food. Actually, they came here to College Station first to taste the forbidden fruit of college life. The idea was that they'd be here so we could go to Karen's party at her church thing that she had assisted in setting up and decorating. And, lo and behold, the decorations were really good. Before we could actually get there, however, we had to wait an obnoxiously long time waiting for some certain females to get their costumes together. My costume, on the other hand, came together very quickly: all I had to do was throw on a sombrero, colorful poncho, a snazzy white bandana, and add some black grease paint to my already amazing mustache and soul patch. I really had to make my facial hair pop for my costume. Matt's costume actually took a little while to come together along with the certain females, since he needed to apply some letters to his amazing red kissing booth box. Clay and Natalie's costumes took the longest though, since we perused the dollar store for what must have been 45 minutes or something for some blingin' accessories for Clay, along with engaging in the making of silly some videos within the store. Clay had me make two videos about Tussin that were both pretty underwhelming. Natalie, on the other hand, was consumed indefinitely with various make-up related catastrophes. She said she was having some problems with the adhesive she was using to apply some fake eyelashes or some such, details to which elude me. From there we finally made it to the party, the quality of which teetered between super fun good times and very dull. Our complimentary DJ was, unsurprisingly, not the greatest to be found in the world. Some of the songs didn't strike me as the catchiest tunes in the world, which is my fault and not the DJ's (right?) but there were times when songs that were entertaining lost their kick after about two minutes. After those two minutes of enjoyment were up, the song would probably run for about another minute or more. That said, the pacing between tracks was really bad, and it wouldn't have hurt to have some tracks run short. Anyway, typical party activities: dancing, talking, sweating, Matt getting kissed by random people. Poor sucker wore a kissing booth costume after all. I couldn't help but feel bad for Matt considering how bored he looked the whole time. He doesn't like dancing much, he's pretty reserved, but for the heaping lack of fun he exhibited, he's a really good sport. Among the kisses he received, one was particularly notable: the bishop's wife (some random wife of some random bishop) kissed Matt. Scandalous!

Once the Halloween party was over we collected ourselves and made our way back to Spring for the remainder of the weekend. Clay and I went in Gail's van together while Karen, Jocelyn, and Matt rode together in a separate car. Clay and I took advantage of each other's company and had a nice talk about school, career stuff and whatever else came to mind while I endlessly stuffed my face with available candies. The drive from College Station usually takes about an hour and a half, leaving me in a tight spot. I really needed to urinate, but we were compelled to stay behind Karen for the sake of following her. With this conundrum in mind I came up with a solution by doing something completely new to me: urinating in a bottle. Once I had completed the awkward operation of urinating in a bottle I considered the possibility of doing something else that was new and exciting: Urophagia! It's supposed to be pretty popular in China. That and one's own urine is, according to Clay, sterile. I've also read that urine is like 97 percent water. So I partook. It wasn't all bad at first since I had the rush of novelty and laughter, and it tasted of residual Gatorade. A few moments passed and then I remembered that I had in fact consumed my own urine. Granted, I wasn't completely disgusted or repulsed, it was just no longer appealing. Eventually we returned home and ran around town trying to get some delicious Mexican food, but none was to be found. We finally settled on some Jack in the Box. We stayed up late but managed to get rest for the exciting upcoming day.

The next morning we were met with the proposition of driving to San Antonio in the name of sight seeing and more Halloween related partying. The car trip there was pretty boring, but I attempted to make the most of it by reading out of my United States history textbook, but I wasn't very successful since I decided to read it again later when I got back to school. Most of my distraction came in the form of movies being played on Clay's phone. At least I was able to passively watch the latest Star Trek movie. I don't know much about Star Trek, so I was annoyed by the introduction of time travel shenanigans in the movie, since that kind of crap has a tendency to serve as thinly veiled plot device or as a hard to believe deus ex machina. I guess I'm glad I never paid for the experience. They also watched the beginning of the live action GI Joe movie, which was memorable for one thing in particular: "Attennnntion!" Except imagine the "shun" at the end is extremely weak. CUT! PRINT IT! Way to go guys great job awesome day on the set, don't need to change that at all. On the way to San Antonio we stopped at some store called Buckee's which is supposed to be somewhat famous I guess? They have a pretty charming mascot for their t-shirts. Clay made a fun little video in front of Buckee's saying... I don't know I haven't watched it.

So yeah we made it to San Antonio to party with the Cook family. Hell yeah. We stopped at their house momentarily and then decided to run off to the downtown to see the Alamo and get something delicious to eat. The Alamo was what one would expect: the same front of the mission and then the wall of the barracks. According to my history teacher it's the most underwhelming historical site since the mission and barrack wall is just the corner of the original Alamo and the walls that stood were destroyed or taken down, I can't remember. Disappointment aside, we took some nice photographs in front of it. There was a married couple embraced face to face being photographed so Matt and I mirrored their position and took our own photograph with them in the same pose behind us. It was a beautiful moment. Yet another heaping lack of fun (and possible embarrassment) for Matt. He got over it and we went to a restaurant after walking around indecisively for quite a while. At least we encountered something funny while walking aimlessly. There was this girl texting on her phone while walking near the edge of the river walk, who observed out loud that it wasn't exactly the best idea. I can't remember what she said exactly but it was hilarious. So the restaurant we visited was called the Republic of Texas. Fun fact: Texas existed as its own country for nine years and entered the Union under a treaty rather than as a territory turned state. So the Halloween party at the Cooks' was another typical Halloween party fraught with unentertaining music. Unentertaining because I was met with the same problem as before, being that I wasn't a big fan of the music. This time, however, the DJ was really good, so that was nice. But still, it was kind of boring, forcing me to fake enjoyment until I made it. I also took a little break, walking around the block in the cold to talk on the phone with Guy. That was pretty much my Halloween. I ate great food, I partied, I had fun, and I didn't get a damn bit of homework done.

My school week wasn't at all memorable, since nothing about it is coming to mind. Well, except Karen's computer crapping out completely. Karen's computer gave us the motivation to go back home again for the weekend since we needed to have an external DVD drive to install a proper operating system onto her computer. During the week we attempted to wipe her hard drive clean since it was riddled with viruses and then reinstall Windows. While we were successful in the clean wipe and reinstall, the product of reinstallation wasn't a particularly intuitive. Pretty much it didn't work. The experience proved to be very stressful and frustrating. With that in mind, going home for the weekend and reinstalling the version of Windows that Guy gave us proved to be the exact opposite: It worked great with little or no effort one our part. As trivial and first-world-problems as this seems, it was highly gratifying for Karen and I. Once again I didn't do very well in terms of getting homework done. Big surprise. The next memorable weekend was a three excursion to Texas A&M where I undertook the adventure of trying to find a sculpture for my Art History class. I could have looked up information about it online, but I was in the mood for adventure. Since I found out the campus was huge upon arriving wandered into a building and asked some of the people in the counseling office if they had a clue. Well, they looked up information for me online and gave me a map, but I was still determined to hunt the sculpture down myself since I was already out there. That and we didn't happen upon the additional information I needed for the assignment. I couldn't help but be impressed by how nice the people in the office were and how helpful they turned out to be. The counselor I talked to even came outside after I left to give me a print out with information about all of the sculptures found on Texas A&M campus.

That's about it for now. Oh, I gave a speech last week and did righteously excellent I hope. As usual. It wasn't as good as my previous efforts but, for the most part, far and away better than my peers.

Clark all I can say is that this whole experience elicits the most nonplussed "omg" I can muster.

omg

The battle continues: since my roommates left I have inherited a variety of items. Most of what was left by my former roommates was a collection of food related wares; plates, cups, pots, pans, silverware, etc. That and a sizable amount of food has been left, along with other random odds and ends like pens, tools and toys. So that's my battle, to organize all of it in a coherent fashion in my kitchen and identify what is just so stupid that I should throw it away. Currently I have the intention of continuing with this project, but there are some pots and pans on the floor next to where I want them to go. I haven't put them in yet since where they are laying I have no good reason to walk through, and I haven't put them in the drawers on account of laziness. Plus it'd require the removal of more food items in the drawer and then organization of the pots and pans into the cabinet. It has been two weeks yet I still haven't completed this. I like to tell myself that I am super busy with school. The reality is that I am pretty busy with school, however when I'm not doing school specific activities I have a tendency to want to kick back and participate in some recreation.

However my situation of being alone and having personal home projects may soon come to an end. Sooner than I thought since I was expecting I'd possibly have new roommates by the time the next semester rolled around. Three guys showed up at my door the other day to asked me if I was okay with them possibly moving in. Apparently they had talked to the apartment employees and found out that I was living in a four bedroom all by myself. They had the courtesy to ask if I was okay with them considering moving in. That kind of courtesy, of course, is the sort that makes me willing to extend my hand in refuge (as if I'm doing them a favor.) I sort of doubt I really have a choice as to whether or not people move into the rooms into my apartment, since I don't exactly pay for each and every one of them myself. There's a good chance that my being compelled to accept new roommates appears in my contract but I'm not in the mood to actually read it. I will instead relent to the preconceived notion that it does. I just wonder when I can expect to see them again.

At my school there is a computer lab where Microsoft Word won't open the files I create at home, whereas in my classroom computer lab the computers actually will read my files. So the day of a speech for class I was acting like I was in a hurry to print my speech outline to turn in when really I had plenty of time to get it printed. So I walk into my class's lab while a different class was in session because, apparently, I don't think clearly when I'm in a hurry. The character I ran into couldn't be any worse for this episode. He was old, crotchety and seemed like he was already in the process of yelling at his students. After making a total ass of myself by asking about printing I apologized and left. Everything about that guy was the total opposite of what I've experienced previously in that room. My current instructor in that lab is just so nice, sweet, youthful, and possibly homosexual (pretty cute too.) Actually, most all of my teachers are really nice. I had nearly forgotten that crotchety, high strung people existed until I brushed up with this guy. The experience was really punctuated by being the target of the malice. I can't decide if I should feel bad for this guy or if I should be inspired to annoy him. Considering I had made a total boob of myself and the current state of mind our friend the crotchety instructor I haven't taken it personally and I've tried to laugh it off.

Oh, after that whole thing I later had my speech outline printed out some where else. Then I went on to totally kick ass at my speech. Our teacher talked about all the speeches that had been given that day and said that, as a whole, we had exceeded expectations. But I knew who she was talking about. I exceeded expectations. Hell yeah. I was really proud of my presentation since I packed in a copious amount of information and had several pages printed out as visual aids that were a smash hit. One of which featured a picture I had drawn in Photoshop to illustrate a pair of twins, and when one experienced time dilation, I drew the other twin in a new picture with the same face but twenty-five years older. I was glad I was easily able to utilize what I've learned in my digital art class and make some nice visual aids in Illustrator while also using my new super cool drawing tablet in Photoshop for the twins. I'm pretty surprised by what it takes to really prepare for a good speech. Gathering information and organizing it coherently hasn't been difficult so far, since I've known about the subjects, but delivery has taken a lot of time. Hopefully this figure isn't an exaggeration, but I'm pretty certain that for my latest speech I had to repeat the speech for about three hours before I felt completely confident that I had gotten it down. Most of the initial strain is just getting the wording and memorization together fluid enough to actually not go over the alloted time. A six minute speech starts at about twelve minutes, which then gets whittled down from there.

On Monday as part of an extra credit activity for my United States History class I attended a speech by historian Robert Bernstein. He gave a wonderful lecture about John Adams in the context of his latest work-in-progress book, "The Education of John Adams." I stuck around after his lecture for a question-and-answer session and was really impressed by his extensive knowledge of the subject. Since it's somewhat of a special interest subject of mine, I couldn't help but ask him about how secular/anti-religious John Adams was. Interesting to me since Christians in America have it out to paint a picture of the founding fathers as founding this as a Christian nation. Whereas on the other side you have someone like Christopher Hitchens (who Robert Bernstein mentioned specifically) who wants to make Thomas Jefferson out to be a secret atheist. It just isn't true, though, since the founding fathers were, like other educated people of the time, mostly deists. Some of them teetering on the edge of flat out anti-religious sentiment and on the other hand entertaining a belief in a super natural power. It really irks me that Christopher Hitchens has such an axe to grind that he fails to assume the moral high ground by presenting an accurate picture of history in the face of the religious opposition painting a different picture of the founding fathers. If I remember correctly John Adams was a Unitarian that believed in the Resurrection, but that was pretty much where his religious sentiment ended.

My new thing to get exercise is doing laps in my apartment's pool. I have shunned lifting weights since the apartment weight room conspicuously lacks any free weights, and instead has some machines and treadmills. The machines wouldn't be too bad to use, but I've been enjoying swimming enough to not really care. I was pretty surprised the other day by the result of doing laps when I saw my chest in the mirror, it was kind of pumped up. Granted, it isn't like that at all times, just immediately after getting out of the pool. Maybe I'll live up to my status as an Eagle Scout and acquire the strength and acclimation to swim a mile. If any pimply teenage scout is expected to be able to make it a mile, then it can't be all that tough, right?

Greetings unnamed reader! Because of a recent turn of events I now live alone in a four bedroom apartment. That being the case, the internal dialogue that goes on in my brain consumes a greater portion of my cognitive time than it did when I actually had people I lived with for interaction. So in an effort to make my existence less like dwelling in a cave I've turned to writing. Living in a cave, as you might know, can lead to Muhammad-like delusions and revelation. Writing this is an attempt to not allow that sort of thing to happen since I personally consider that kind of experience to be a bad thing.

So, given those conditions, I'd like to continue on with a online diary of my life. Since it has been nearly four years I will attempt to quickly gloss over what has happened in that time to bring us up to a more thorough story of what has happened in the last month. Looks like last time I wrote I was visiting home for Christmas and transparently begging for sex. Awesome. Since that Christmas I returned to New York City where I continued working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until I left for Texas in May 2007. Between Christmas and leaving for home I probably played World of Warcraft oh so shamelessly while maintaining a lady friend who I'd entertain on a weekly basis and see daily at work. Not too bad. I applied to several art schools at one point and was very well received by the Fashion Institute of Technology when I went to a portfolio day at their school. So I believed my acceptance to FIT was sealed, but something was wrong with my online application, though I didn't believe that to be the case. At some point at the end of summer they sent me a letter telling me about my application which I decided was too bad and I would just work another year at the museum and re-apply next year so I could make more money and take a longer break from school. Unfortunately it did not work out that way when the next year I applied the application came back with the same problem long after I had applied and I was never invited for a portfolio day. Working for a while and being robbed kind of broke my spirit, causing me to not really put a lot of effort into fighting their decision to get into school. That and I didn't put as much effort into my artwork since I felt like the sketchbook and projects I had already were sufficient catalysts for entry into school. My work ethic waned and for long stretches I stopped drawing. It was really unfortunate that it came out that way and I wish I would have fought the initial rejection and gotten into FIT that first year. C'est la vie.

If I thought I was pretty inactive when I was in New York, then I was definitely inactive when I came back to live in Texas with my padres. I returned on the condition set forth by my mother that I could live at home as long as I attended weekly therapy sessions. In between sessions most of my time was spent, surprise surprise, playing Warcraft during nearly every waking moment. I didn't have a job, I didn't work on art, and I was highly resistant to my therapy. In an effort to make me take the therapy more seriously my parents decided that I should dip into my own personal bank account to pay for therapy, which pretty much nearly drained all my money before I just stopped going. I didn't stop because of money, I wasn't even watching my account, it just happened to go that way. Eventually I weaned off of World of Warcraft, trying to quit twice and then returning as an on-again-off-again player. I still play but no longer play my own account, causing me to care less about the game and play less. Definitely a good thing since the diminishing returns on the enjoyment I derived from playing constantly were becoming harder and harder to bare.

At some points during my time at home I took some vacations. One was a vacation to California with Clay and Guy until we got in a car and drove to Zion's National Park in Utah for a weekend to do some repelling/hiking. You know, the kind of crap that good Eagle Scouts like ourselves are destined to do. On the second day I was emasculated (or perhaps de-feminized?) when my long hair was caught in a belay device, leaving me immobile ten feet above the ground. Most everyone was already at the bottom so they rallied together to free me from my ropey prison. Guy had to have a member of our party stand on his shoulders to reach high enough to cut me free. The second was another with Clay, this time to Moab, Utah where we rented some super professional mountain bikes and took to the rough trails Moab's mountains have to offer. I began my vacation in California and left again to Moab in the truck of one of Clay's friends. The drive was pretty memorable since we got out at some stupid town at midnight to try to buy something to chug recklessly while taking pictures. Luckily there is nothing traumatic or unpleasant to report regarding this trip. My third vacation was to Chicago to meet up with Clark and see him in the stage production of Mary Poppins. It was a wonderful show and the city was great. I'd say more about it but I've waxed long already, so I'll move onto my final vacation to Minnesota. We got my whole family together in addition to quite a few relatives on Gary's side. My days were spent going out in the forest with Guy shooting, going to a Watercross event, water skiing, swimming, eating good food and enjoying good company. I had an especially good time hanging out with Guy and Stuart. Hell yeah.

So, after those two years at home being useless and vacationing when I had the chance, I decided that I should go back to school and not be such a bum. There were a couple of times where I wasn't a bum when I'd mow the lawn or do stupid projects like typing every song in every piano songbook that Gail owns into an excel document, that or a lengthy project I did was for my parents' sake but also for a super special Christmas present when I decided to scan nearly every family photo there was to be had in the house. Plus I started exercising at a gym to lose weight since my inactivity made me kind of fat.

Like I've already said, I've waxed long so I think it's a good time to end this post and continue with a new one. That should cover the last three/four years.