My Current State of Affairs

Hello all!  It has been a while since I have last written about almost anything, so I guess now is as good a time as ever to just write about what is going on in my life.  The calendar just turned over to November, and it's becoming that very special time in the college student's life where they start to not care as much about their classes as they probably should.  I can only speculate as to the reasons why I feel like this, one of the reasons is probably the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday (which I have already weighed in my opinions on before), but it can also be due to the fact that most students have been at school for around 10 weeks already this semester, and that is a fair amount of time to be burnt out.  In my case this year, it may be due to the dangerous ailment known as senioritis.

I still love Hand Turkeys!

My senioritis is lying itself on especially thick because this is my last semester of college, in a little more than a month I will be a college graduate, and just like every other grown-up out there.  It is actually a little scary in general, I enjoy being a child and I don't feel like a lot of the things I do on a daily basis work very well with the working adult schedule.  But instead of just regurgitating what has been said before, I will just link to my buddy Toninho's article where he basically covers all that needs to be said.  More importantly than my whiny little tangent there is that I have yet to know what I am going to do once I become a so-called adult.  I have never really had a lot of ambitions growing up, and I've rarely had an answer when people asked me what
I wanted to be when I grew up.  In general, I made math my college major because I felt that I wasn't old enough to decide what I wanted to do with my life, and since I was talented at math I would just do that and it is an open enough subject that I would probably be able to jump into anything with it.  Well, four years later I nearly have my math degree, and I was mistaken when I thought that companies would be excited to find someone with a math background, they mostly think that I know how to program.  Having said that I have found myself stumbling upon what seems to be a very exciting path in life, at the career fair at school I happened to talk to a consulting firm that was very interested in hiring math majors and other problem solvers!  It was very exciting and I even had an interview with them last week!  Hopefully I will hear back from them soon and it will be a positive response, but if not I think I'll manage to come out okay.

Aww shit!  I could have just learned math from this picture!

While waiting to hear back about the job I've found that I have come across two new addictions (well, one is just a renewed addiction.)  The first is that I have found myself watching a lot of Spongebob Squarepants again, I love cartoons and some cartoons just transcend age and continue to be funny and entertaining no matter how old you are, among the ranks of these cartoons are Spongebob, Doug (obviously on those two), Hey Arnold, and Rocko's Modern Life, while the middle two are still good because they spread positive messages in fairly well-told stories to children, the latter two are the finest examples I have ever seen of a show for all ages.  Both shows are capable of hiding little pieces of adult humor seamlessly into their episodes and you wouldn't even know the difference as a child.  Take for example, the episode "Karate Choppers" from the first season of Spongebob.  When I watched it a month or two ago I remembered it as being exactly what it seems to be at face value, a story about Spongebob and Sandy doing karate with each other.  But now that I am more mature, I watched the episode and was surprised to find that the entire episode is a slightly veiled euphemism for sex, I won't go into how it is, you can watch the episode yourself.  But for now you can help yourself to seeing how much subtlety Rocko's Modern Life lacked.

As for my other new addiction, it comes to me directly from Toninho.  For a long while he has been urging me to play Batman: Arkham Asylum, and I have never found the time or a copy to play with, but recently I was able to borrow it from another friend of mine, and it is almost life changing.  Up until this point as far as comic book characters go, I have primarily been a Spider-man fan, and have had a moderate respect for the Batman, particularly from his movies (especially the one from the 60s!).  But I have found that not only is Batman: Arkham Asylum (and it's sequel Batman: Arkham City) a great game, but it also does a great job of giving in-depth descriptions of nearly all of Batman's most powerful villains.  I think that is my favorite part of the game, finding all of the information on the villains of Gotham City and being able to learn about the true story of the Batman.  Playing through the game, I have found that although the Joker is the most popular villain and probably is the most interesting, my favorite one is the Scarecrow.  It is likely that my taste for him comes from the parts he is featured in in Arkham
 


Another big thing that has happened in my life was that my second oldest brother (I have two older brothers) just recently bought a house with his girlfriend and they moved in and bought a puppy!  I am very happy for him, but it does do something to point out a lot how much I am different from my brothers.  They have both stayed around the area where we grew up, for school, for work, and now for living, but as I was getting to earlier, I have no idea where in the world I am going to be in a couple months, it is really weird.  They have also both been in long term relationships (one is married) and then you look at me, its not that I am unbearable to look at (on the other hand, maybe it is) but I haven't had a whole lot of luck with women in recent days.  It is probably been for lack of trying, it has been some time since I have really shown an interest in anybody in particular, and I don't know if its my problem or that of everyone else, so I'm gonna go ahead and blame it on everybody else.  All I have to do is continue to be the great catch that I am and someone will come fishing for it.  Well, I figure that is about enough to talk about for today, hopefully I will be able to blog again more often and maybe even come up with some more good ideas.  So I'll catch you all later.

Get off my property you damn kids!

Thoughts on Thanksgiving

Another year is passing by once again, and as all the major holidays are either passing by or coming up I would like to take some time to note how my opinion of Thanksgiving has changed over the years.

That is exactly what it was like.

There was a time when I was younger when all Thanksgiving was was just a whole bunch of Pilgrims and Indians (Native Americans for those who care for such things) eating turkey and living peacefully.  Thanksgiving was just another day of the year where I would have to be a little kid and not be able to play with my favorite toys or video games for the day because my whole family was coming over.  I used to hate those days because I never liked to talk to grown ups, I just wanted to play and eat and sleep and just be a little kid.  Those days eventually ended and then a new dawn came.  I then got to the ages where I was in and around High School.  These Thanksgivings were different because I could no longer care less about Pilgrims or Indians or any of the savageries done by one to the other after the famous day of the turkey.  During these Thanksgiving days I would watch football, both the local high school game live, and then later whatever games the NFL would allow us to see.  These games usually involved me not caring as the Lions lost and rooting against the Cowboys as they inevitably won.  These days also became one of the few days my parents wouldn't care and allow me to sit with the family and enjoy a couple beers throughout the day.  But no matter what, during these time periods, I never looked forward to Thanksgiving much, and it was really just another reason to get a few days off of school.

<3 Hand Turkeys <3

But since my years of college have started, Thanksgiving has become something completely different to me and has slowly been working it's way up the list of my favorite holidays.  So since this is where I currently am in life, this is how I currently feel about Thanksgiving.  It is now not only a day off of school but something I completely look forward to as the calendar flips over into November.  The extended break from school (although it is still less than a week) is a much needed breather in the crowded life of a college student, and not only gives a few days reprieve from the seemingly never-ending workload that begins to become your life as you grow older, but it also allows a reason to get a monstrous home-cooked meal when you are used to mediocre dining hall food.  Since I enjoy food as much as the next guy, and I enjoy rest as much as the next guy, Thanksgiving is starting to become a true mix of the things in this world that I truly love.  Since these are probably common thoughts about Thanksgiving I will note that no matter how old I get I find that the allure of a Hand Turkey grows even larger than the days when I was a child and somehow believed that that is what turkeys actually looked like.  Let me leave you with some ideas for songs to help you enjoy and appreciate the spirit of thanksgiving.  Run to the Hills by Iron Maiden definitely captures the spirit quite well in my opinion, but if songs that recollect the way our American forefathers settled this great land in a masterpiece of heavy metal, then maybe this song will be much more suited to your fancy.  Ladies and Gentlemen please allow me to introduce you to the Tommy Seebach Band and their breathtaking video for the song Apache!