My Badass Memoir? If You've Got to Write, Write Cocky

 

And that is how you make your own pretentious book cover! I actually turned that in as the cover of a 40 page memoir piece that I wrote for my Extended Narrative class last spring. That piece was surprisingly received quite well and, more importantly than that, was one of the most exhilarating and enjoyable writing experiences of my life. I mean, come on. I'm writing about the most interesting person I know--Me!

Not only did I write that memoir piece along with this very precocious cover but I also got my start as a writer right here on my Blog. Clearly I just love writing about myself. It's where I have the most experience, the most material, and what interests me most. I guess the reason I most enjoy writing about myself is that I don't understand myself at all. I am the most interesting character to write about merely because I would like to get to know that character.

Due to this insatiable desire to write my own story I have set out upon an ambitious senior writing workshop project: a 200 page memoir that, in my loftiest dreams, I could begin the process of attempting to publish straight out of college. Now, 200 pages may sound a little excessive for one course in one undergraduate semester but, well, I've always cocky. Why stop now? Plus, I mapped it all out. I already have 40 pages (though they are in need of loving revision) and I just need to write 40 pages every 3 weeks and I'll have it done 2 weeks before the end of the semester, the last 2 weeks of which will be spent on revision and polish and saying "OH MY GOD I JUST WROTE A LOT!"

The thing I like about the senior writing workshop is that we're not really being taught anything. Basically we're being told, "we spent 3 and half years teaching you to write--now do it!" We barely talked all of the two hour class today, but I did write 4 pages!This is what I needed. Just a chance to write my own thing. I'm really excited about my results. Just think, you, my loyal reader (I'm sure someone is there, otherwise who am I talking to? Myself?) could someday say you were reading the writings of the famous Chris Clark before he was even famous!

First Day-Success!

Well, yesterday was my first day back at classes and it was pretty fantastic. It's even more fantastic after having experienced most of today. See, pretty much by accident I scheduled the perfect semester-A semester with classes only 2 days a week. On Tuesdays I have 4 classes and Thursdays I have 5. All the other 5 days of the week I have nothing to do but homework and...well, whatever I want! The one downside to putting all my classes on just two days out of the week is that those two days are exhausting. Yesterday I had class from 10 in the morning until 8 at night. But then today I had nothing, which was amazing! I had a relaxed morning and then spent the afternoon working on homework. Not just any homework though, homework that's not due until next week! If I keep this up I'll have a semester of work done early and relaxation 5 days a week. I really couldn't picture anything better.

Yesterday I started out at 10 with my Senior Seminar in Psychology. Dr. Young is the head of our Psychology department and one of the most amazing professors I have ever had the pleasure of learning from. Though the syllabus for the coming semester is intimidating it is also quite exciting.  As part of the senior sem we are required to fill out five job applications. The exciting part about this is that it means that Dr. Young will help me find a job! This lifts my spirits more than anything else.

At 1 I then had my Senior Writer's Workshop. I'm very excited for this because we get to propose our own final writing project, meaning it can be anything! After that my 3 o'clock class, Experimental Methods, was canceled due to my professor being ill. I didn't mind terribly though because it gave me time to go home and have a snack as well as contemplate what had been discussed in my two capstone courses. To finish off the night at 6 I had Child Psychopathology, and interesting course made even more interesting by the fact that my friend Aneka, a fellow psych major who is studying up in Buffalo for the semester, is taking the class through my computer via Skype.

I'm pretty psyched for my last semester.

Well, I bet you were hoping I would blog and say something more interesting than "my life rocks right now" but that's really all I have to say. Sorry to have bored you. Maybe I'll blog something more interesting tonight. Let's hope for some inspiration or something.

Hope Still Flies: Thoughts of a Kamikaze

Well, Happy Birthday to me. I’m very easily pleased at this point in my life and there wasn’t much I wanted this birthday. I did manage to get the one thing I had really been hoping for: The Last Interview and Other Conversations, a recently published collection of interviews with Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut is one of those writers who I very much wish I were. This particularly collection of interviews is, if I may say so, startlingly good. I would call it a must read for low-minded “hack” writers such as myself. We who sneeze at the artsy-fartsy and just want writing to be easy, fun, and profitable for everyone involved, both writers and readers. As Vonnegut so fantastically puts it: "I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak." This quote comes from the first interview of the book, Kurt Vonnegut, The Art of Fiction, which I devoured on my first flight today. I've always known I don't quite fit in with my fellow Writing majors, and even less with the English majors, but this article really validated me. I'm not sure I can fully formulate what I'm thinking at this point, but I really love Kurt Vonnegut.

Plus, the stewardess on my first flight was Vonnegut fan and asked me about the book. I told her it was fantastic.

What's that, flights? I've mentioned that twice now? Yeah, I should probably tell you about my day. This semester I managed to set it up so I have no classes Mondays, Wednesdays, or Fridays meaning that I could spend an extra night at home before having to return to school. So for my birthday I had two easy and relaxed domestic flights from Bangor to Laguardia, then Laguardia to Buffalo. So that explains (half) my post title. Besides just being excited about Five Iron Frenzy's new song and wanting an excuse to embed it I also was flying today while listening to this song.

They really were nice and easy flights. As we flew towards Laguardia we circled Manhattan and over the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. It was a fantastic view. Also, it truly is my birthday! Lo and behold I found the holy grail of airport gate seats! I had a seat next to an outlet! Between flights I could finish the House episode I had been watching. Of course there was no free wireless, but still, I’ll take what I can get.

And now maybe I should explain the other half of this post's title.

I've been waiting, in halfhearted sleep,
For a promise I half meant to keep.
Just for hoping that hope still flies,
Wipe the sleep out of our sleeping eyes.
And hope still flies...

It's a new year, a new semester, and a new beginning. I'm writing again and really trying to get some self-improvement going. This is good. I'm waking up and trying to keep my promises, to be a writer, and to have hope in my writing and myself. But how can I do this? What attitude or stance must I take?

I guess I have to be a Kamikaze.

The lyrics to this song, down to the last word, capture my feelings as I begin this semester. This semester I graduate, I get married, I face the vast unknown of the future. I just have to jump in. My favorite image in this song, and the one I'm adopting for myself, is that of the flaming arrow soaring in the wind. It's time for me to take a leap of faith. 3, 2, 1, I'm going in. Welcome to my last semester.

I'm going in (1, 2, 3, and go)
Like a kamikaze (like Geronimo)
A leap of faith (and i finally feel alive)
3, 2, 1, I'm going in

I don't know if it's just me
But it seems that things aren't changing
Every day is pretty much the same
With a little rearranging
If i do nothing i can't fail
No blistered hands, no broken nails
Killing time, I'm paralyzed
With faded dreams and hollow eyes
I've been waiting for a revelation
For a moment of clarity
Conflicts and convolutions
Ricochet inside of me
There comes a time for throwing caution to the wind

I feel the pulse again

I'm going in (1, 2, 3, and go)
Like a kamikaze (like Geronimo)

A leap of faith (and i finally feel alive)
3, 2, 1, i'm going in

(1, 2, 3, say when)
Like a flaming arrow (soaring in the wind)
A leap of faith (and i finally feel alive)
3, 2, 1, I'm going in
 

I am so slow to commit 

I have wasted years on fences
Is it really true the shoes don't fit?
Is it only my defenses?
What if i don't measure up,
Don't listen well, don't smile enough?
Alone and unknown up 'till now
Need to change direction somehow
I've been open to persuasion
Wanting someone to take the lead
It's alittle disconcerting
Signing up for eternity
There comes a time for throwing caution to the wind
And so my life begins

 Well, I don't have to blog too much tonight. I wrote a massive post yesterday, though I didn't publish it until this morning because I was too tired to put the finishing touches on it last night. I guess I'll just ramble a little. It's so weird, whenever I feel like doing things that are normal for my blogging style I feel like I have to finish with "...like I used to." It's so weird to come back after all these years to something that used to be such a huge part of my life. I'm enjoying it though. It's nice to have a place to ramble again, even if I do need to rebuild my confidence again.

Exciting news, this blogging is paying off! I got 17 views yesterday! I know that's nothing compared to what I once had, but for not having told anyone that I'm blogging again I guess that's a good sign.

You may have noticed that I changed my blog description. Last summer I decided I wanted to start blogging again. I updated my layout, I wrote new descriptions for everything, I even wrote one or two nice posts. Then Blogger had this ridiculous crash and everybody lost all their changes from the few days prior, i.e. all the days I had been back to blogging. They managed to restore my posts, but my new layout and excellent description were destroyed. It was a really good description. It made me feel great. And it was gone. I fixed my layout again and managed to restore everything but that description. I could not for the life of me remember what I had written that had made it just the right balance of unpretentious intelligence and wittiness. Believe it or not that one little thing ate at me and I gave up on blogging regularly. Thankfully I tried again this morning and I came up with a description that I feel I can be happy with. At least now I feel good about blogging again.

Jenny and I graduate in May and we need jobs. Do you have any? Would you like to give either of us one? We're both amazing in ways resumes can't describe. You'd like us. Well, until somebody contacts me with a job I guess I'll just have to keep searching.

Today Jenny visited Chicago with her friend Anya and I guess she liked it a lot, thus the embed of Sufjan Steven's wonderful song about Chicago. Jenny and I have a pretty serious problem right now--We like a lot of places a lot. In June we are getting married and we don't know where we're going, what we're doing, or how we'll do it. The problem is that we're willing to go anywhere, literally anywhere, on Earth. When you have the whole world to choose from how can you pick where to live? We've considered a lot of cool places (Buffalo, San Francisco, Seattle, and now maybe Chicago) but when all of them are good options how can we choose?

My mom does this thing where she posts links on FaceBook non-stop. I do it too, but I like to think that all my links are hip and make me look like a deep thinker. The other day my mom posted a link on my wall about three reasons to travel while you're young. It was a pretty good article, I suggest you check it out. My biggest problem with things like this though is that I have traveled. I lived in another country for four years and I first left American soil when I was seven and have been traveling ever since. I've spent the majority of my youth traveling the world. And the three reasons?

1. Traveling teaches you to live an adventure
2. Traveling helps you encounter compassion
3. Traveling allows you to get some culture

Traveling has already taught me to live an adventure.
Traveling, and more than that, living and breathing the Salvation Army for most of my life has forced me to encounter more compassion than many of my classmates ever will.
Traveling, and much more importantly, actually living in another culture has allowed me to get much more than some culture.

But maybe that's not the point. Maybe Jenny and I shouldn't travel the "world" (at least not yet), but maybe we need to spend some time just focusing on one country. Maybe we should travel America. Both Jenny and I feel relatively unattached and angsty in America, myself much the more so, and maybe we just haven't given America a real chance yet. It's a big place. Maybe America could teach me something about adventure; I've only ever learned about it in Europe. Maybe America really could help me encounter compassion, I do have so much difficulty mustering compassion for what I often callously perceive to be the fat, ignorant, and unintelligent of America. That's a place in myself that I know could use work. Finally, who would dare think that after all my experiences around the world that I could learn anything about culture from America? Maybe I could learn something. I don't know. America is a mishmash of rich cultures that I've never really given a chance before. It might be cool to at some point.

Jenny and I have a fairly easily surmountable level of debt compared to many of our classmates, no commitments except to each other, and we both love adventure and are extremely flexible. I guess that could be an option. I don't know how we'd make it work financially, but if anybody has any ideas please let me know. Maybe some sort of freelance writing job? I could travel happily with my new wife by day and write filled with satisfaction each night. Seriously though, send me job offers.

Wow, this post will be over 1000 words by the time I'm done. I didn't think it would be this long. Weird. This is the first time this year it hasn't felt forced to blog. The first time it really flowed. I think I'm getting it back! Awesome. Well, goodnight for now. And really, pay me to do something for you and Jenny and I will go live out our dreams and stuff.

Until next time.

Video Games, Writing, and Story

  If you're a fanatical fan of my blog and just so happen to have a perfect memory than you may remember that I once embarrassed myself by writing a post about how I was excited for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 to come out and continue the story. In that sense I was making myself look bad to both kinds of gamers. The butch, trigger happy patrons of franchises such as Modern Warfare look down on me because I actually played MW and MW2 just for the plot. The true geeks, those who support video games as art and watch Zero Punctuation religiously (I like to think I'm a true geek. I do watch Zero Punctuation a lot too, "Yahtzee" Croshaw rocks) frown at me, shake their heads and wonder how small a brain I must have to feel immersed and involved in the plot of the Modern Warfare games.

So, I recognize that my excitement in the face of the release of MW3 generally makes me a loser in the eyes of everyone, but that won't stop me from discussing it. I was quite excited to play through the campaign of MW3 and see where the story would go. I knew the plot had finally boiled over into world war 3 (It's not like they didn't advertise that a million times) and I just wanted to see how our protagonists would make it out alive and also bring a satisfactory and fulfilling close to the Modern Warfare franchise. My first complaint about the campaign for MW3 was that it was 5 hours. As Captain Price lit a cigar and the credits began rolling I just sat in shock, staring at my screen. The game ended so quickly, and with so little warning that I felt like I hadn't even played half a game. The fact that the entire end of the game was a series of quick-time events didn't help either. The end of the game just left me feeling empty and a little angry and ripped off. The first Modern Warfare had really drawn me in with its plot and had actually surprised me with plot twists. MW2 was exciting and made me care about the characters and even slightly stirred my emotions. MW3 made me realize I had just wasted 5 hours.

What was the difference between the first two games in the franchise and MW3? I recently stumbled onto a theory. Modern Warfare and MW2 were written by Jesse Stern, a television writer best known for writing NCIS. MW3 brought on a new writer, Paul Haggis, writer of several films including Crash and Casino Royale. When I first realized this I mulled it over for a while and then wrote my thoughts on my future brother in-law's wall. Jenny's brother, Jon, is going to school for video game design so I like talking video games with him. Here's what I wrote on his wall:

"I think the difference is that Jesse Stern, as a TV writer, wrote each level of MW and MW2 as a self-contained "episode" so that each little story arc could feel fulfilling in and of itself. Paul Haggis on the other hand tried to write a giant cinematic finale for the whole series and left us with a series of unsatisfying and schizophrenic levels wrapped up in an anticlimactic finale.

Moral of the story? Maybe video games should be structured more like TV shows than movies."

This got me thinking about some of the video games I've really enjoyed for their story, and how that story was structured. I am a huge fan of the games of BioWare because of their consistently fantastic writing, story telling, and overall pacing. Again, some might say this makes me a bad gamer, but I by far prefer BioWare games (Mass Effect, KOTOR) over Bethesda games (Elder Scrolls, Fallout 3) just because BioWare games are easier to swallow. The endless worlds of Bethesda games may be immersive and interesting, but I tend to lose the plot in them and forget why I'm even playing. Two of my favorite games from BioWare, and favorite games of all time, are Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect (I have yet to play ME2 so I can't speak for that yet). As far as story goes I would say that both of these games do espouse more of an episodic approach than a single movie approach. In both of these games the story is composed of a tremendous series of assignments or quests that generally each have fulfillment within themselves. For example, if I finish a quest in one of those two games I feel like I have accomplished something, when I finish a level in MW3 I just feel like I have to keep going so I can get somewhere. It makes sense that BioWare games are so similar in the quality of their writing because they're pretty much all written by the same guy--Drew Karpyshyn, Senior BioWare Writer.

I guess this leaves a sort of age old question: Does the story serve the gameplay or does the gameplay serve the story. Of course it's a mix and very open to individual preferences. This is also a chicken-egg sort of situation because without both you won't have a good game. If you have the best gameplay in the world but the story is so bad that it completely distracts you from the gameplay, or vice versa, then you've got yourself a bad game.

I think my personal preference is one of extremes. Maybe it's because I'm a writer, or maybe it's because I'm a "video games as art" hippy, but to me story is very important. In the games I generally choose to play I like either all strong story or no story at all, none of this MW3 middle ground. For example, I've been playing Combat Arms on and off for over two years now. Combat Arms is an MMOFPS and therefore has no story. I mean, each map has a description that can be loosely linked to the others, but other than that Combat Arms is nothing but gameplay. In the case of Combat Arms I'm there just for the gameplay. Another example is Hedone, another free-to-play MMOFPS that's still in closed beta. I just so happen to be awesome enough to be a member of that closed beta. Again, Hedone does have a cool premise that gives it a really great feel, but as far as actual story, there is none. But contrast that with games like Mass Effect and KOTOR where, though the gameplay was pretty good, the focus was on the story, at least for me. A lot of people complained about the annoying vehicle sections in Mass Effect. To be honest, I barely noticed them. I was being pulled along by the story and if I had to drive around a little to find out what would happen next I was willing to do that. So I guess give me story or give me death, by which of course I mean give me nothing but killing other players.

It can be difficult to discuss video games as art because so many people, including Roger Ebert, claim that "video games can never be art" (at least not yet, Ebert concedes). I think the biggest difficulty for the non-gamer is seeing how a game where you run around shooting people can have any meaning more than that. Please forgive me, as I am about to do something unbearable. Allow me to compare video games to Stanly Kubrick's film, Full Metal Jacket. Full Metal Jacket is about war and death, trauma and PTSD. Full Metal Jacket is very violent, with a whole lot of shooting. Anyone who has seen the film cannot forget "Gomer Pyle's" descent into insanity and terrifying end, nor can we forget the lethal sniper who turns out to be a young girl who nobody can feel good about killing. This film evokes powerful emotions and communicates these messages through the story telling. If it was not for the artful story telling this movie would just be some violent war movie. What then of Modern Warfare and MW2? These are probably some of the worst candidates for artful shooters that I could choose, but I haven't play any of the Half-Life games and Modern Warfare is what I've been talking about. Anybody who has played Modern warfare will vividly remember crawling out of a crashed helicopter after a nuclear explosion, just as anyone who has played MW2 will shiver when I say the phrase "Remember-no Russian." These games also conveyed powerful messages and emotions about the horrors of war and our fear of international terrorism. One of the greatest criticisms brought against MW3 is that it did not display war as a horrible thing, but as fun. The emotions and feelings that Full Metal Jacket conveys regarding war are very similar to those that the first two Modern Warfare games conveyed.

And shooters are possibly the least artistic of the games out there. Now, I own Bastion, Limbo, The Binding of Isaac, and Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I haven't played them yet, but I know they're artsier than the average game I play. The difficult with classifying video games as an art for is that so many video games, perhaps 75% of video games, are not art. They are not trying to be art, they do not want to be art, and they are not art. The majority games are just trying to be fun or, even worse, just trying to sell. Because gamers are a split bunch and will buy anything if it has a cool trailer. Probably more than 75% of the consumers of video games are not considering it an art form as they consume, which is why the industry caters to their taste and generally not to the taste of those looking for video games as art. But just because not all video games are art doesn't mean that some of them can't be. I mean, not all films are are aren't but that definitely doesn't mean they all aren't. Films have been recognized as an art for for years, but I remember taking Art and History of Film and they weren't always viewed as art. They had to fight for it too. Impressionism wouldn't exist if the impressionists had listened when the art community said they weren't art, rather than host independent exhibitions. Video games are still a growing and emerging art form, but I do believe that the art is here now.

I can't finish up without giving some more mention to Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, best known as a game critic at the Escapist Magazine with his "Zero Punctuation" videos. But, before doing that Croshaw actually had his own site where he released several games of his own making. Honestly, despite the graphics being made in MS Paint and Adobe PhotoShop, Croshaw's Chzo Mythos (A.K.A. John Defoe Quadrilogy) and 1213 trilogy were the games that really made me start thinking about games as art. I had played KOTOR at the point, and loved it, but I hadn't really begun thinking about what made it so amazing until I got a chance to play these simple, yet entirely artful, games. I would suggest anybody interested in video games as art, or just  good free games in general, check them out.

There, that's nearly 2000 words of me going back into my old rambling style, maybe that will make up for me skipping a day. I'm glad to be blogging again, and I feel really cool and smart having written all this intelligent sounding stuff about video games. I'm sure anybody who really knows what they're talking about is probably looking down on me right now, but this is just what I'm thinking. Anyway, I must be off now. Farewell!

P.S. The Supreme Court says video games are art, and the National Endowment for the Arts says so too.

I seem to have a vague memory of claiming to have a resolution...

Well, it's only January third and I already messed up a New Year's resolution. I didn't blog last night! I mean, I started to, but then I felt tired and went to bed instead. So, since I've messed up once that means that, just like with all things, I should give up, right? Here we go. Giving up blogging. This is the last sentence you will ever read on my blog.

Ha, got you. That right there was true deception. I'm like a ninja when it comes to things like that. Be impressed. So, anyway, now I will actually blog about the New Year's night on the town Jenny and I had.

For those of you who don't know Jenny is my super excellent fiance who I will be tying the knot with on June 9th this year. She's pretty fantastic, as well as just downright pretty. I like her a lot, as you can tell. Now, Jenny and I realized that until this year neither of us had ever actually gone out and celebrated New Year's. We had both always stayed in and watched the ball drop in Time's Square on TV or something.

But this year was different. This is the year we get married, after all! We started out at the University of Maine's Museum of Art. We love that art museum. It's well located (right by Bagel Central) and usually has pretty cool exhibits. The exhibit this time was no exception. The coolest thing there, in my opinion, was a collection of the photos taken by photojournalist Dominic Chavez in all sorts of cool countries. Most interesting to me were pictures taken in a Iraq. I personally just think photojournalism is really cool and I wish I had the skill to just capture a moment, all emotion intact, like this guy did. It was awesome. I was less impressed by some of the paintings by Carlo Pittore, particularly his nudes, about which the museum website says "Pittore’s depictions of nude subjects are unapologetically direct; the poses are candid and his models not idealized." Well, what I got out of it is that they looked kind of silly. Either way, that's art I guess. Jenny understands art way more than I do. The museum also had a "Get Blinged Out for New Year's Eve" event. The majority (as in all) of the people involved in this event were children, but...Jenny and I are radicals. We don't play by the rules. We're not ageist. Fight the power! Stick it to the man! Yeah, we made paper crowns by gluing on plastic jewels and beads and stuff. I had two gigantic feathers and stuff. We both looked pretty cool, despite being the only ones older than 12.

After leaving the museum we went up to the library to see what my family was up to. The library was having "Steampunk Night" to celebrate the New Year. Jenny and I find Steampunk to be generally pretty amusing so some good laughs were had a the many interesting costumes. Honestly, Steampunk kind of freaks me out. I mean, I wasn't even willing to play Bioshock because I don't want to try new things like Steampunk. But I got Bioshock during the Steam holiday sale so maybe once I've played that I'll fall in love with Steampunk. Who knows?

Sidetracked. Back to the library. Jenny and I browsed the cool events at the library, including guitar hero and dance dance revolution, and generally just scoped out the place. There wasn't much that interested until we realized that the art exhibit was showing a collection of World War II propaganda posters. Yeah, we're nerds. But this also proves we are right for each other. I mean seriously, who gets excited to look at a bunch of depressing WWII propaganda posters? We do, I guess. It was seriously pretty cool.

After that we decided to stop by the Union Street Brick Church, home of our favorite open mic from this summer, and see the Retro Rockerz, a local band. We only stay a few minutes. Not really our thing, I guess.

Next we decided we wanted to get something to eat and have a fancy date all at once. Two birds with one stone kind of thing. So we went over to Thai Siam (guess what kind of food they serve) and got a cozy little table for two by the window. We ordered an appetizer, appropriately named "The Silk of Love" (it was a cabbage-y thing with a tasty sauce and some chicken) and then followed it up with some coconut and mango ice cream. It was a wonderfully tasty little date.

After that we went to go see a comedian who was performing at the opera house and ran into Jenny's friends Kara and Cassie, who we hung out with for the rest of the night. I felt really bad for this comedian so I tried to laugh extra hard. The poor guy was on his second performance of the night and his crowd was a huge mishmash of mostly sober people. We had kids, old people, teens, college kids. How do you find jokes to make the whole crowd happy? He also had some people just straight up start walking out when he started telling jokes about his penis. Meh, poor guy.

Next was the much awaited ball drop at midnight. Seeing as how this is Bangor, Maine and not New York, New York the ball for us is actually a giant beach ball wrapped in Christmas lights thrown down into the crowd. I saw the video of it from last year and the beach ball dropped and the crowd bounced it around. Cool, right? Well, this year there was some confusion or something. First of all, the ball dropped at 12:02 (though I still kissed Jenny at REAL midnight through the magic of watching the time myself) and then when the ball was finally dropped it just kind of...dropped. No one bounced it. Honestly I'm surprised no one got hurt. It was almost like the people underneath where the ball dropped hadn't realized they were in a middle of a crowd who were all looking up waiting for something to fall from the sky. The ball just dropped to the ground. So, that was a little disappointing. So it goes.

So, that was my New Year's Eve! I hope you're glad I'm back to blogging. I'm still not sure if I like it, though I know it's good for me. It's like working out, it's embarrassing because I do it in public, I'm not that good at it, and it makes me sweaty and stinky and have achy muscles. Well, maybe it's not that much like working out.

Also, I turn 22 on the 9th. That's crazy old. That's not college kid age anymore, that means I'm "in my twenties." I'm so ancient! Ugh, I hope I don't become less cool or anything.

Merry New Happy Mas!

Or as the unfashionable say, happy holidays.

It's January 1st and that means three things: 1. It's a new year! 2. Resolutions, and 3. I'm overtired from being up late last night

Somewhere between watching Zero Punctuation that I never got around to and playing the dirt cheap games I got from the Steam holiday sale (Steam is my new love by the way, and I may just want to snuggle up with my Steam client and play my pile of new games for a while) I went to church this morning and gave some thought to New Year's Resolutions. What's that? I put thought into something that could lead to self improvement? Yes, I'm really losing it. Forgive me.

Back to the point though. I made a (unnecessarily lengthy) list of (doomed to failure) New Year's Resolutions and among those resolutions two in particular should matter to you, my devoted and adoring reader: 1. Blog daily, even it's as short as posting a comic and my thoughts, and 2. Write at least 1000 words a day. Oh, ouch, 1000 words? How is that possible? Well, if I was a real writer and would stop being such a wimp I would have been doing that much long ago anyway. But now I am resolving to do it! So now on this blog I will always have a new post and it may be up to 1000 words or more! I can just tell that the many people who have faithfully waited for another blog post from me are just squealing in excitement!

All sarcasm aside though, honestly, I'm just nervous. I haven't blogged consistently since going to college. That's three and a half years. I'm afraid three and a half years of writing education has ruined whatever writing talent I may have had back then. Really, I only felt I could return to blogging when I remembered that my posts don't get imported to FaceBook anymore so I don't have to worry about anybody reading them. Geeze, I never used to be this insecure. I guess writing publicly again will be good for me.

Anyway, the nice thing about returning to blogging as a 21 year old with a few years of writing education is that I've learned to pace myself. I know that I'm planning to blog every day, so I know I can save some things for tomorrow. I do have a lot to write about though. I mean, 2011 was awesome. I engaged in battle with a Statistics monster, I infiltrated the student senate, I became a top chef master, I began a hobby as a bumbling wedding planner, and I became an investigative journalist. Of course all those things will sound a lot less exciting when I actually write about them, but trust me, just pretend I really did fight a monster made out of pure, dark statistically horrifying academia and it will be awesome. So stay tuned, you've got a lot to look forward to. Tomorrow I will post about what Jenny, my nefarious female counterpart, and I did to celebrate the new year. Much epicness will be included.

Until next time, this is everyone's favorite blogger trying to get back into the swing of things,

Chris

I know it will take a special kind of nerd to appreciate this, but…

Well, I guess I just know a lot of special nerds. I don’t really know if I’ve ever blogged about Foam In the Liberal Arts (F.I.L.A.), the Nerf club at Houghton, or admitted that I’m such a big nerd, but I guess it’s about time. What is the reason for my sudden desire to discuss Nerf on my blog? Well, one unabashed reason. I’m prideful and I think, despite all cultural evidence to the contrary, that this makes me look cool. Also, Nerf is my time to unrestrainedly stroke my ego because of my toys. So, let the egomania commence!

I am proud to announce (brag) that I have invented my own custom Nerf mod: The Vigilante!

Since I’m ego stroking anyway I can give it whatever cocky name I want. This is an Alpha Trooper CS-18 blaster loaded with a Raider CS-35 clip and, here’s the kicker, with an attached Longshot CS-6 stock. My favorite part is that it’s held together with rubber bands. What’s cool about this modification is that, not only does the primary clip hold 36 shots, but the new stock holds the 18 round clip perfectly. What’s that? 54 shots with only one reload? Yes, yes that is what I’m bragging about. Also, because the Longshot stock is only connected to the Alpha Trooper through rubber bands the recoil vibrations of firing don’t transfer. No more sore shoulder! Oh, and of course the air restrictors have been removed as well, so the range is 30-40 feet depending on the dart and elevation. But most of all, it will just look cool!

Anyway, thank you for indulging my extreme nerdiness. I just feel pretty cocky and pretty happy about this. I’m looking forward to getting back to Houghton and really trying it out.

Am I Where I'm Supposed to Be?

Well, today I've been working on school stuff. NO!!! It's barely August and I'm working on school stuff? It's follow up to my internship. Don't worry, I haven't had a complete personality shift and become one of those people who reads their books for class the summer before or gets good grades or something. No, I'll always be a barely average slacker, no worries there.

Self-deprecation aside, I've been wondering if I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Not just today as I've been typing up patient histories and wishing I could play Mass Effect instead but other times too. When I started out at Houghton I had a religion major because I figured that, as far as God goes, you can't get in too much trouble majoring in Him. But within half a semester I desperately missed writing and I was getting very sick of boring facts about the Old Testament and I had failed/dropped Biblical Greek. So the study of religion was, by and large, out of my future and I went back to my first love: Writing.

Psychology had always interested me, plus I wanted an excuse to take Human Sexuality and Abnormal Psychology, so I decided to minor in it. Up until this past semester I was very satisfied with focusing on writing and having psychology as a hobby. But then I started counting credits. I had already taken the majority of writing classes that Houghton offered and more than enough for my major so I wasn't sure what I would do my senior year. Until I realized that I had just enough room to squeeze in a psychology major on the applied pre-therapy track. This was exciting not only because psychology is cool and really interesting to me, but because it meant that I might graduate with an actual hireable degree and keep me from living in a cardboard box after college.

Due to my psych major I spent a large portion of this summer as a psychology major at the Acadia Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Bangor that's about a 20 minute walk from my house. It was a really cool experience and when I first started I felt all fired up and was like "YES! This is what I'll do for the rest of my life. I'll be a psychotherapy super hero!" But by the middle of the summer, and definitely by the end, I was less sure. I don't know if I have the patience or endurance for a career in psychology. I think I would definitely burn out by either getting too impatient or getting too emotionally involved with my clients. Honestly, I think I might be too much of a softy for that kind of work. I don't know. Also, I think I may be too wimpy for the classwork. This coming semester I will be exclusively taking psychology classes. Honestly, they all look hard, and I'm only really interested in one.

So I feel kind of torn. My temptation is to drop the psych major, change all my hard, core psych classes for next semester to easy, fun, and random classes, and to spend the rest of my life as a starving artist living off my writing/becoming the next David Foster Wallace (not like, I'm not that good.) The only problem is that I'm getting married. If I wasn't getting married I would feel no responsibility to grow up, get a job, mature, or be responsible at all. But I do.

I guess I should just stick with my psych major. It's the practical thing to do. It's also really hard work and I would hate to fail a class. I mean, if I do then I have to drop the psych major.

Anyway, for the few people still reading this blog I guess you've figured out that I've got my angst back so I'm writing again. It's been a while since I wrote anything with zero conclusion, meaning, or decisiveness. But here I go. I think I'm enjoying getting back into it.

Old Orchard Beach and Life and Stuff

Well, as expected, my last blog post did come across as somewhat more incendiary than necessary. I really haven't figured out how to write, or talk, about politics well. I will someday. For now I hope that at least some people got something out of it. I remember when I was in Estonia and blogging much more consistently that some young Americans I knew back in America were forbidden to read my blog by their parents because of how offensive I come across. Oh well, you win some, you lose some, you irreversibly alienate and make enemies of some. So it goes, say Kurt Vonnegut and I.

Anyway, now that I've blogged once it's like some sort of writing Cocaine and I feel all-powerful and like I should just keep going. Also, like a Cocaine high it doesn't last very long so I need to keep doing MASSIVE amounts, like Scarface or something.

Anyway, here's what I've been up to lately. My internship is all done, which is great because it means I can focus on other things. So this past weekend I was down in Old Orchard Beach (OOB, which always seems slightly dirty...) for Salvation Army Camp Meetings. It was a really good time. Jenny got to be exposed to a million people in uniforms (again) and I got to see a bunch of people who have known me since I was a fetus and who, seeing as how I was so fetal, I don't remember at all. I always feel awkward in those situations...

Anyway, it was really great. I liked the main speaker, Oscar Roan, a lot. But even more than that I really enjoyed hearing from some really cool Salvationists, like Commissioner James Knaggs (who has a surprisingly big Wikipedia Article.) It was quite a good time. I also bought the new book by Knaggs and Major Stephen Court, who I knew in Vancouver. It's called One For All and it's really cool. I haven't really looked at it much, but it's really cool. It's like 3 books in one, and the first book is a collection of essays from a whole bunch of different Salvationists. This is one book I am very excited to read.

So, that's really all I had to write about...FOR NOW! But I would like to write about Psalm 103 (super great) and David Foster Wallace (My long haired writing idol) at some point. But right now I need to go see the Lego creations Jenny and Peter are building together.