Escape Artists Never Die

There is a bridge near the county line that spans over the infamous Snake River, just between the forgettable town of Rigby (where the television was invented) and the strangely profitable Bear World resort. The bridge is hardly remarkable even with the vast river flowing beneath it, one could pass over the top of it without even realizing they had driven over a bridge much less a river named for its winding snake-like course. It was on a dark and unreasonably cold night that the forces of nature conspired against me to try and use this bridge to destroy me, my transportation, and Jessie's brand new guitar hero controllers. We had decided to be spontaneous and go somewhere fancy for dinner. Nothing says fancy like the Olive Garden so we headed out, even though neither one of us liked the Olive Garden at all. In fact I'd say no two people despised the place more than we did. Putting our preferences for fine dining to the wind we headed down to Idaho Falls to sit surrounded by the elite upper class of Eastern Idaho and stuffed our faces with breadsticks. Coming down to the city was no small affair so we had to stop in at Best Buy and see what kind of deals you can usually only find online. Jessie's love of guitar hero and making new friends by owning guitar hero convinced her that purchasing another controller was a genius move, although I wasn't so sure. We headed home at this point, leftover Olive Garden in our laps, guitar hero controller safely stowed away, and Funeral for a Friend CD in the player. It was a recipe for the perfect ride home, but dark forces were at work......

It had snowed a few days before but the roads were clear and the weather had been nice that day. There was still snow drifts off the sides of the road and in the median but there wasn't a flake to be seen on the roads themselves. We had just reached the bridge when all time seemed to slow to a crawl. There was some scientific miracle taking place that we were oblivious to until it was too late. The water under the bridge turned to condensation or something similar and caused the road above the bridge to be a pure sheet of black ice. We hit it and spun like a quarter on a lunchroom table. There was no time to do anything but prepare for the crash as it happened in front of our own eyes. We hit the guard rail and bounced into a ditch ripping the front and back of the car apart. The force of the impact shattered the rear view mirror into tiny shards and sent them flying directly into my face. The airbag exploded out just after the mirror and again smashed into my face. There was a thick, dark plume of smoke that erupted and a crunching thud. The sounds of "Escape Artists Never Die" blared over the car stereo as we sat in shock of what had just occurred. Fortunately neither of us was really hurt, and our wounds were easily tended to by the paramedics that came shortly after.

A few days ago I emailed my sculpture professor informing him that I had missed several sessions of his class due to a recent serious illness and that I had every intention of making up the work I had missed and also in attending the remainder of his class without fail. Today I was graced with his response. Unfortunately for me, he was unsympathetic to my plight and suggested I drop his course rather than give him the satisfaction of failing me for missing more than the allotted number of absences as clearly outlined in the carefully xeroxed syllabus provided each student on day one of the course. This news was even more unfortunate due to the giant red marking "REQUIRED TO GRADUATE" that appeared under the course title on my graduation plan. Needless to say it was a kick to the stomach to find myself in such a situation.

Today was a day of firsts. My roommate asked me to accompany him and several other friends to Buffalo Wild Wings (Which I'd never been to before) to see the UFC fight tonight. I'd never watched UFC and had no interest in it. I really don't understand the appeal, but then again I never understood the draw of watching a bunch of colorful cars drive around a circle for hours at a time either. After the internal injuries at the hands of my now-former sculpture teacher this morning, I felt like a night out on the town with the boys just might be the grandpa's cough syrup I needed. I followed another roommate down into town since I had no clue where this magical wing place was, and Dan said he would meet us there. We arrived and the place was packed, mostly with giant potato-shaped guys in MMA shirts and facial/neck hair. The wait was 30 minutes and I was immediately ready to throw in the towel. But rather than tap out like a wuss, I held strong and waited like a champ. (Yes I'm going to keep throwing out fighting terminology because I'm witty like that). Before we could be seated Dan texted and said he wasn't coming. I believe my blood literally boiled or at least simmered for a minute or two. Here I had come just because he asked me to, to a place I didn't care about, and to watch a fight I couldn't be less interested in, and it was now just I and a roommate I consider weird and disposable. Shortly after the fight started and the doors were closed. There was no more seating so we were basically out of luck. The manager took us aside and said "Hey, I got a spot for you. Follow me." We followed him down into the pit of drunken hooligans that call cage fighting a sport. There was a ramp that went down into the main eating area, and to the side of the ramp was a giant ledge. The manager pointed to the raised ledge and said "You can sit up there and watch the fight. I will send a waitress over to take your order." So we sat up on this ledge above the crowd. I'll admit it, it was awkward. But after the initial awkwardness wore off it was actually pretty awesome. All the staff seemed to love the peculiar arrangement, and everyone that walked by talked to us mostly remarking on how we had the best seats in the house. The guys immediately below us offered to toss us dirty dollar bills in exchange for a dance, which we of course graciously accepted. I stuffed my face with wings, watched grown men beat each other senseless, and had a great time. The final fight was between 2 women fighters, which I was surprised was even legally allowed to be broadcast. It was a great time, and a great fight too I must admit.

After the fight was over I headed out to Bowl-ero, which is one of the sketchiest bowling alleys I have had the good sense to walk into. The booming sounds of Bono and the boys laced with the sounds of ricocheting pins and rolling bowling balls is a sound that could heal the hearts of the broken masses. While waiting for my friend to bowl I was complaining about being stuck for another semester and the gall of my ever-aging sculpture assassin. My friend told me something I've heard again and again throughout my life. "Everything happens for a reason." Sitting on yet another ledge, at the Bowl-ero I recognized that I had spent a lot of time on ledges that day, but also that even when life comes crashing down around you, escape artists never die.

Disarmed With a Smile

It was going to be a long day. I knew that before it had ever even started. I went to bed the night before dreading the massive amount of "to do's" on my imagined list within my mind. It seems strange but my body must have somehow adapted to the few hours of sleep I manage to scrape from each night. I had only slept two hours when I woke from a strange dream. I couldn't go back to sleep so I just laid in bed irritated as the minutes until my alarm blared came closer and closer. I finally gave up waiting for my alarm to test my patience and just got up and ready for class. It was cold out which was no surprise, it's always disturbingly cold out here. I walked to class quickly but then stopped in the library. I was almost 20 minutes early so I decided to sit in one of the nice chairs they provide for people to gawk at others walking by.

There are only 2 kinds of people that walk by that early in the morning on their way to class. There are the dedicated, all-hands-on-deck students that would have a "Led Zepplin in a nice hotel on a Saturday night" style breakdown if they were late to class or missed an assignment... and then there are the stoic, zombie-faced kids that still can't define economics because they don't realize that's the name of their class they are attending so insanely early every morning. I don't like to categorize myself so I won't try to fit myself into either category, it would just be unfair.

It turns out that sculpture class is really quite boring when you don't have a sculpture to work on. I decided about midway through the class period to bail after filling approximately 3 pages worth of doodles. I made like the French hearing the sounds of conflict and ran out of there like a madman. After my retreat I headed to Illustration. I had only been in class a few minutes when my professor called me out and said... "I need to talk to you."

My heart sank. Captain, crew, ship, all of it.

He pulled me out into the hall to have a discussion. I tried to think of how many people I'd hit with my car lately or if I'd prank called anyone lately like in the 90's.... I couldn't think of any possible reason for this sidebar. Once in the hall he again said, " I've been meaning to talk to you." "Me?" I asked. He then asked, "You turned in the Dropkick Murphy's poster for your personal exploration assignment right?"
Oh yeah... I did do that. It was an assignment where we submitted illustrations we liked and were inspired by. I didn't think there was any problem with what I'd submitted, but then here I was.

It turns out my teacher used to be quite the fan of punk rock, and so he called me out into the hall to secretly discuss a former passion of his. We talked about different shows we'd been to and bands we liked, all while my fellow students were in class and having to read some random article. We talked for around 10 minutes before he decided it was probably time to really start class. I went from having a heart attack to having my heart warmed and finding a friend in my teacher who I would never had guessed had much of anything in common with me. Punk rock, bringing people together who can't stand other people.

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