Weblog

Depression doesn't even begin to explain it.

Okay, that might be a bit over stating it. Still, it's a sad day for me… and a lot of people in Denver as well. The Rocky Mountain News just put out its final edition today. What's more is that this is happening to newspapers across the country. In some ways, it doesn't make sense why I feel so bad. Even though the newspaper industry is failing, the philosophy of news reporting and opinion isn't. That will still live on in other forms.¹ Still, it's just sad because…

…I kind of like holding paper.

1. So all of you saying that this means that democracy is dying can all just calm the hell down.

Why?

Why is it that just as I'm done with convincing myself that what has plagued me for years is finally gone to be replaced with potentially better things, the plague returns to infect my life once again only to fuel the obsession that is so characteristic of myself?

Did any of that make sense to you?

I do strange things when I'm alone. You do too, but you just don't tell anyone about them.

I made something pretty cool, but I'm afraid that if I used it on a permanent basis, it would give you motion sickness. Still, it looks too awesome to not at least show you.

On my website, there is a place in the upper-right corner where it tells you how old I am. It changes every year at the exact moment of my birth to reflect my current age. This year, for my birthday, I will be staying up until 2:37 AM to watch the age thing roll over by constantly reloading the page.

Okay, here's what my mind is currently pondering at the moment. A little over a week ago, I was accepted to graduate school at the University of North Dakota in its linguistics program. Needless to say, I'm happy about it, but there are a few things that are concerning me about this.

My areas of interest in linguistics lies in the area of historical linguistics or sociolinguistics. The problem is that North Dakota's linguistics program focuses in applied linguistics. Now, I've already made up my mind to go to NoDak for this semester. Quite possibly, I might transfer the credit to another university and finish up my degree there, but I'm wondering if that would be such a great idea.

Even if I did go to UND for the full master's program, I doubt that it would really be that bad. UND still offers an M. A. in linguistics, and that's what I'm essentially hoping to get. UND does offer courses in sociolinguistics and historical linguistics even if their focus isn't on those topics, and I can tailor my coursework around that. To add to that, I can focus my research in my thesis toward my interests. In addition, if I want to study this field further, I can still then direct my Ph. D. study toward my interests as well.

Despite this, I've still been considering other universities: Chicago, CU-Boulder, McGill… just to name a few. If the issue of what to focus in were my primary concern, I would have picked one of the other universities, but UND has one big advantage: it's cheap. Since paying off loans until I'm thirty doesn't seem to be a big priority, UND is starting to look really good.

I've been in both Christian and non-Christian schools. I consider myself a pretty devout Christian. However, I have never been to a Christian school that I liked, and I have never been to a non-Christian school that I didn't like.

At my Christian high school, I had to wear a tie every Monday because Monday was chapel day, and the powers that be at the school were convinced that God cared about how we looked more that how we acted. Anyway, after I got out of high school and no one made me wear a tie anymore, I now think that wearing a tie is pretty damned cool.

Often, in the shower, I take breaks from cleaning myself to play air guitar. It's not a good thing to do because I can play real guitar outside the shower, and, when I play air guitar in the shower, it wastes hot water, and that is bad.

Winter is my favourite season and that is because I have a scarf fetish. I think that if there were a numerical value of a woman's cuteness, that number would be considerably higher when she is wearing a scarf.

My true reason for wanting to be a rock star is so that I can wear high-heeled shoes and still be considered within a standard deviation of garden-variety.

So, I just decided to read some of my old posts here on my weblog. Can I just say that there are a few that I'm ashamed of? I'm kind of amazed at how much my attitudes toward a lot of things have changed. I'm wondering if I should not display some of those old posts that don't reflect the way that I think about things today.

Really though, this has me thinking how I'm going to be looking at things differently in the future.

Will I still like ABBA ten years from now?

Please tell me what the point in e-filing is if I have to mail a copy of the tax forms into the state department of revenue anyway?

I'm to the point where I just want to run away and drop off the radar. Right now, I've narrowed my options down to three options for getting away from it all. I could use some help in choosing the mode of where I end up, so I would appreciate some input in deciding which choice to finally pick.

• Running Away With Gypsies¹ — Let's see: living with nomads far from the eyes of the law while hanging around a people group that values jazz music and flamenco dancing… yeah.
• French Foreign Legion — New language, new name, new anything, new everything — if one's looking for new, the Legion has it. Plus, is there a better way to learn French? The downside to this is that joining a military organisation isn't the ideal career track for a pacifist. Still, there's nothing in the manual about being a pacifist that says that you can't blow shit up. Plus, it's France. France isn't the type of country that likes to do war.² Perhaps a less excessive option would be the Coast Guard, but I'm not the type to make that decision sober.
• Monastic Order — Yes, giving my otherwise comfortable life over for the benefit of conditioning the life around the spirit. Pretty much, it's a quiet, lazy livelihood, but if that's my reasoning for becoming a monastic, then I'm sure that I'd be doing it for the wrong reasons.³ Advantages: celibacy. Disadvantages: celibacy.

1. Technically, the term Gypsy is somewhat of an ethnic slur. The proper term to use these days is Roma, but half of you have no clue what that means and the other half of you probably don't care.
2. Or even do it well when it does. Still, there was that Napoleon guy that was pretty good…
3. Of course, I was seriously considering joining a monastery anyway… or a band of Gypsies or the French Foreign Legion for that matter.