It Takes One

Someone once said to me, "You don't suffer fools and the world is full of fools." 

I knew a man a while ago from the cold north, he was older and widely known and respected. He seemed to know everyone in town and was surely known by almost everyone around. He was talking to me one day about an old friend of his who he'd been friends with for over twenty years. He didn't know this good friend of his's name, nor did he know the name of many of his other good friends. He explained that when they had first met they had told each other their names but he had forgotten his friends shortly after. He was embarrassed to ask his friend his name again after that, so he just always greeted his friend without naming him. Every time he saw his friend he would just say "Hey, how's it going?" without ever mentioning his name. He carried on year after year not remembering several of his friends names until the present day. It was a funny story and it was easy to see how the same thing could happen to just about anyone.

There is a guy that has his stand next to me in painting class. Everyday we stand next to each other and paint. A lot of times we are partners on assignments or set up still life scenes together. He always asks me everyday how I'm doing and calls me by name. I don't remember his name and it has been several weeks now of classes. He is a really cool guy and I like talking to him in class but I don't have the slightest idea of his name. I'm going to find out before the semester ends though, perhaps through intrigue, perhaps by hiring a private investigator. Of course I could always just ask him... nope, that'll never happen.

I tricked my roommate into going to a Harry Potter party tonight. I told him it was just a party. He left almost immediately. 

People come into our lives and make life better and more interesting. When they leave they take something of us with them. It's good to have friends, even if you don't know their names. 

Cold Front Coming In

It snowed yesterday. It was almost apocalyptic looking out the window at the flakes flying nearly horizontal, and whirling around in the winter wind. By the time I went to bed it had calmed down and there was a peaceful quiet to the evening air. There had been plows out clearing the main roads and parking lot, as well as people clearing the sidewalks leaving a clean path to the campus and our apartments. I went to bed dreading the morning coming, but for the reason that I had to get up early to get ready and make it to my 8 A.M. class, not because of the day's weather.

I woke up this morning dissatisfied with the 6 hours of sleep I had gotten. I snoozed my alarm for the precious 5 minutes I could squander laying in bed wishing I could somehow slow time to a crawl, but alas my alarm shrieked 5 minutes later sending me out of bed onto the cold floor. I hurried and got ready, putting in minimal effort to make myself as close to presentable as possible in as short a time. I decided as I was zipping up my "dead of winter" coat to grab my gloves, which resemble mittens before heading for the door.
I opened the door expecting the cold to slam into me like a tidal wave, but found myself standing motionless mouth wide open for a different reason instead. There was no longer the clean, clear path from my apartment to campus, but instead stood several feet of snow. A large drift had developed in front of the door, much like town homes near the beach, waiting to come collapsing through the front door. After my moment of hesitation, I stepped out into the drift of snow, and I didn't look back. I walked through the knee-deep snow all the way to class watching cars spinning out, girls falling down stairs, Eskimos running dog sled teams into town, and possibly the extinction of some large species of reptiles, all the while carrying my illustration board which had inscribed upon it my previous evenings work of hours of charcoal attempting to mimic Blackbeard the infamous buccaneer.

Arriving at sculpture class dripping wet, with an inch-thick coating of snow covering my backpack, I took a moment of silence for all those desperate souls surely lost in the morning's weather that would no doubt soon be forced to turn to cannibalism...

I made a wolf today in sculpture class. It somehow seemed fitting. It made me feel slightly better about being so terrible at crafting Abraham Lincoln's dignified face. I doubt I'll ever be able to look at a 5 dollar bill again. Pennies will likely be okay, they are so much less judgmental. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but Illustration class somehow got away from the teacher today and became story time. I heard about a man that shot his neighbor in the face pheasant hunting, apparently it can happen to more than Dick Cheney. Then there was the hillbilly kid and his bear stories, stories about growing up in Japan, stories about eavesdropping on other students for creative writing class, the list goes on. Needless to say I didn't need to bring my illustration board with my project that was due today to class. This was slightly irritating because I carried it all the way in the crazy snowstorm, kept it through sculpture class, and it was supposedly due. But it was worth it to hear that a grown man wet his pants after opening his kitchen cabinet that was rattling, and having two baby raccoons jump out at him. I feel a cold front coming in.

Dreaming Out Loud

I found out today that I have bronchitis. I also found out today that I don't like strawberry flavored hot chocolate, although one would think that would be obvious. I thought I would be adventurous and try something new, but as is sometimes the case my sense of adventure left me with a terrible taste in my mouth. Today I also realized what I've already known for quite some time, I'm starting to really get old. I believe the best defense against such feelings is pure unadulterated denial. This semester is really wearing on me more than any semester I can remember. I had to arrange my schedule in an unfortunate array of classes that would appear more like a sinisterly designed torture session than a final semester of classes. Wednesdays by far being the worst, with a morning beginning at 8 with an early morning sculpture class followed by illustration class from 11-2. Then I rush off to work from 2-5, at which point my evening class begins going from 5-7. Needless to say, I feel like an exceptional student at a first-rate university getting a fulfilling education, even if the truth is something completely different. This weekend I will be attempting the impossible, or rather improbable task of completing a sculpture of the magestic Abraham Lincoln, a value painting of a boring still life featuring cubes, a sphere, and single cylinder, and finally a graphite and then seperate charcoal drawing of the infamous Blackbeard the Buccaneer. If I can get all that figured out while coughing every other breath then I don't see how I can't conquer the world, one street corner at a time.

A Reluctant Student Body

It was an incredibly cold morning. The power went off at around 4 this morning to some great fanfare, as I had gone to bed without turning off my computer speakers and they were sizzling and crackling with the sounds of power cutting in and out until they finally went dead along with everything else connected by electricity in this town. Worse than being awakened by the strange otherworldly sounds being emitted from beneath my desk was to hear the sound of the furnace turning off, and knowing it would not be coming back on until someone, somewhere, somehow fixed the town's power crisis this frosty morning. Having been bedridden all of yesterday, I was reluctant to even try and attend 8 A.M. class this morning. That reluctance began long before the power outage and the following crusade of cold air that marked the morning's events. Fortunately for all involved, I was soon flooded with a flurry of irritating text messages, alerts, and phone calls all spawned from the same twisted source, the school. Now for the sake of journalistic integrity, I will just go ahead and admit that I for one have always been of the firm belief that whenever your school is trying to get a hold of you it is bad news, and you should avoid this at all costs. Perhaps this is the paradigm the school was working with when they decided a single text message was unlikely to reach students so they would instead send a flurry of messages, emails, calls, voicemails, and since I haven't checked today perhaps even postcards and letters all in the hopes of reaching a reluctant student body. The irritation I would normally have felt at someone "blowing up" my phone so early after a miserable night's sleep was greatly lessened with each new message. The first was an alert that not only was I without power, but the same fate befell the town and yes, even the school. The next message was an improvement, it went on to say that classes would be postponed until 10:15 as a result of the power outage. This was great news for me with an 8:00 class. I tossed the blanket over my head in an attempt to expel the colder air gathering around me and perhaps magically drift into a peaceful slumber. It was not to be, no sooner had I done so when another flurry of messages arrived. "Alert, students! If you are cold in your apartments come to campus  for shelter." Several robotic voiced voicemails later saying the same thing I became aware I could retreat to campus if I got too cold in my apartment. How walking out into the sub-zero temperatures and snow to find my way to a spacious building with no power or heating to stay warm would help me I was unable to understand. In the end the power returned before severe rioting broke out or any survivor colonies could firmly take root in any of the larger buildings on campus. It was a miracle of modern ingenuity and technology that anyone could appreciate, except perhaps for my 8:00 A.M. sculpture class instructor.

MIT Video - The World is Flat 3.0

MIT Video - The World is Flat 3.0

Stealing Thunder

Yesterday it was 70 degrees outside and sunny all day. Today there is nearly 8 inches of bright white snow covering everything in sight.

It's been a while since I've had to go and look for the snow shovel out in the garage. It took me back perhaps oddly to when I was younger and the many times Tom and I would be stuck shoveling snow. Not only our walk, but also all the walks of the widows and elderly around. We only had a couple of shovels so it was always best to get to the shovels first or you would be stuck with the undesirable one. There was a bent up, green, metal shovel that I despised, and a plastic orange shovel with a large scoop. I liked the orange one because it didn't make such a horrible noise as the metal one would as it scraped the concrete. Also it could scoop more snow than I could comfortably hold in a single scoop. It made quick work of most walks, but it couldn't get the ice and snow that would always be frozen and packed tight against the concrete. For that job the metal shovel was the best.

There's probably some life lessons learned in the midst of shoveling walks, helping elderly people, working alongside your brother, and even in the shovels themselves, but all I am thinking is there better be some hot chocolate left when I get in or this shovel is going to be soon entered into evidence.

Burning Down the Diner

It was too hard to sleep so I stayed up watching a documentary on the evolution of machine guns and listened to the sound of the furnace sending hot air through the house. I wonder if the images flashing on screen would be different if they were viewed by eyes that weren't bloodshot.