Mawwiage, that Bwessed Awwangement, that Dweam Wifin a Dweam

I hate weddings.

Theoretically, I mean. I don't even remember the last time I actually went to a wedding, but I'm sure it was over a decade ago. I've had the opportunity to attend two weddings in the past year, that I can remember, though I don't think I was officially invited to either. That's part of the reason I didn't attend; I was not distinguished from my parents for the sake of invitations. The primary reason I refused both opportunities, however, is that when I try to imagine myself at a wedding, I find it impossible to imagine enjoying myself.

Okay, so, apparently, I'm a selfish bastard. I can't just be happy for two people who are happy with each other. Instead, I take every marriage as a personal insult. "Hey, loser! Look at us; we're so good at relationships we're getting married! How successful was your last relationship? Oh, that's right, you haven't had any! Loser!"

Of course, that's a pretty preposterous way to view the whole institution, but it's enough to keep me home. Besides, what if I did go to a wedding? I'd spend the whole time either moping in a corner, or trying to hide my seething resentment. I can think of any number of ways I'd rather spend my time. Writing this blog, for instance. Or plucking my nose hairs.

Now, I can think of exceptions. I would certainly attend the wedding of a good friend--any of the four or so people who read this blog regularly, for example. I'd still probably have a miserable time, but I could at least be genuinely happy for the couple. The problem here, though--and I mean no offense, guys--but let's face it; that's not terribly likely to happen any time soon.

Besides all that, how can anyone be expected to take a wedding seriously anymore, anyway? I'm pretty sure the divorce rate went over %50 a few years ago. Knowing that most marriages are doomed, how am I supposed to believe that, as happy as these two are with each other now, they won't be at each others' throats in 5 years? It's just laughable.

Okay, so, what have we learned?

1) Forget you, weddings.

2) I'm a selfish bastard.

3) Quit getting married, you idiots! You're just going to get divorced.

All right, I'm done. For now.

Disconnect

Hey, look at that; a new blog post.

I just moved into my new apartment last week. I'm getting phone and internet service through Qwest, so, of course, I just got the phone lines working last night, and I won't have internet access until next Monday. So, don't expect to see me on AIM before then. In the mean time, I thought I'd write this up to let everyone know I'm still alive and well. Also, work is incredibly boring this morning.

As for my new apartment, things are pretty good. I got a place with no one above me, a garage below me, and no shared walls, so I can play DDR at 3:00 in the morning and hopefully not disturb anyone. Which is nice, because I picked up DDR Extreme 2 over the weekend, along with a 2nd Ignition 3.0 dance pad. Now I can try Double mode!

I also bought about $1500 worth of new furniture, including a reclining loveseat that is almost more comfortable to sleep on than my bed. So that's nice. I also have a fireplace with a mantle which is perfect for setting up all the little toys Justin brought me from Japan.

I think that's it for now. Check y'all later.

I am Returned. Actually, I Returned Like a Week Ago.

So, last weekend I visited my good friend Chris K. in San Jose, California. We had a great time. Also, I took many pictures.

I'm not going to write up a long post about the trip; most of what I have to say about it has been done so in the captions of the pictures. There are a couple of things about the trip that aren't addressed in the photos, though.

Firstly, we saw X-Men 3 on Friday night. It was pretty good, but it seemed a bit more focused on action than character development. Also, if you do go see it, make sure to stay through the credits.

Also, Chris has been looking for a good church to go to in the Bay Area. While we were at the In-N-Out restaurant, however, he pointed out the "secret messages" printed on the cups and burger packets. This got me to thinking, instead of church, he should just go to the In-N-Out every Sunday. Something to think about, anyway.

What else? Oh, yes, the weather. It seems odd to me that I should spend a weekend in California and have to wear a jacket the whole time, then return to Minnesota and be sweltering. Just doesn't seem right, but I'm not complaining.

Finally, Chris got to see what I think of as an ideally attractive woman while we were at the diner he frequents. I should have taken a picture. Damn. Maybe next time.

So, what did we learn from this trip?

1) Chris is no good for staying up late anymore.

2) X-Men 3 is okay, but make sure to stay after the credits.

3) Fast food = better than church.

4) If you're going to climb the Twin Peaks in San Francisco, make sure to do it on a clear day.

5) Seals are brown, lazy, and smelly.

Okay, that's it for now. Be sure to check out the photos! And pick your favorite pics and comments. Seacrest out!

Bizarre Dreams... or PROPHETIC VISIONS?! You be the Judge!

The other night I had a couple of particularly interesting dreams, and I feel like recording my memories of them. So, that's what I'm going to do. Much of this, of course, won't make much sense; thus is the nature of dreams. Still, you might find it interesting.

I don't remember how the first dream began, but at some point I suddenly found myself on a "jet ski" of some sort being dropped in the middle of the ocean. This jet ski looked like an upturned picnic table, with two wooden planks sticking up at the front; I guess they were the controls. I had with me a small packet of papers I was meant to deliver somewhere. Also aboard the jet ski picnic table were a girl who may have been my sister, and her dad (but somehow not my dad.) While I was trying to prevent my packet of papers from being blown into the ocean, suddenly the girl's dad fell off the jet ski, and instead of being in the middle of the ocean, we were now on some sort of small, murky pond outside of some sort of crypt or ruins. I tried to turn the jet ski table around to look for the girl's dad, but it was dark now, and I had to use some sort of search light to see into the water. Wherever I shone the light, the water was perfectly clear, and I noticed some old, rotten bones at the bottom of the pond. I shone the light in a different spot and saw another skeleton. I looked elsewhere, but wherever I looked, I found human skeletons. I soon realized that this whole pond was completely full of gruesome skeletons. At that point, I decided it was time to stop looking for the girl's father and just get the hell out of there. I pulled the jet ski table up to the entrance of the nearby crypt and went inside. We weren't in there long before we were attacked by some ghosts. I tried to fend the ghosts off with the force of my will, but after several failed attempts, I was forced to realize I don't actually have any psychic powers. So I fled from the ghosts and found a flight of stairs that led up into a temple. One of the ghosts followed me up the stairs, and I knocked a statue over to try and stop it; of course, the statue just fell straight through the ghost, but fortunately there was some sort of priestess nearby who was able to trap the ghost in the statue, and we were safe. I looked at the priestess for a bit, expecting her to say something, maybe ask who I was or what I was doing there, but she just looked at me like I was supposed to know what to say. Instead I just patted her on the shoulder, sort of a "nice job getting rid of that ghost" gesture. She seemed to lose interest then and wandered off. That's about when I woke up.

My memories of the next dream aren't quite so clear, but I feel like writing them anyway. Again, the details of where it began are lost to me, but I remember wandering around some sort of countryside, climbing hills and jumping around on old castle walls, avoiding monsters that were wandering around. Eventually I found myself in the substructure of this nearby castle, being chased by some sort of dinosaur. As always, I couldn't run fast enough to get away, so I tried to dodge around corners to evade it. This didn't do any good, because the walls were made of loose boards that the dinosaur easily smashed through. What happened next is kind of fuzzy; I'm not sure if I was the one who did it, or if someone else showed up and I took over their point of view, but whoever it was grabbed the dinosaur by the neck and threw it all around, smashing it through the walls and knocking it out.

I think about then I woke up in my bed and realized the power must have gone out; both the clock and my watch were flashing weird symbols, indicating they needed to be reset. I needed to turn on a light to reset them, but when I tried turning on the lamp next to my bed the bulb blew out. For some reason I was reluctant to actually get out of bed, but I had to in order to turn on the overhead lights, so I did. The switch on the wall didn't do anything, so I realized I had to use the pull chains on the light instead. The first chain I tried only turned on the fan, and when I tried the second chain, it only turned on one of the four lights at a time, which didn't provide enough light to reset my watch. I think it was about then that I actually woke up.

The last bit of that second dream reminds me of that movie Justin and I saw when we were at Chris' place in Kansas City. "The Waking Life," or something like that? I forget. Anyway, I just remember they talked about how you can't read things or affect lighting in dreams.

Also, I know that a lot of the imagery in these dreams was clearly inspired by Oblivion; the crypt and temple in the first dream looked just like locations in that game, and the priestess was clearly based on a dark elf; the countryside in the second dream also reminded me of some of the outdoor locations in Oblivion.

Anyway, that's my dream journal for today. Hopefully nothing like this will happen again for a while.

Until next time, may your jet ski/picnic table never break down, and may you always beat the crap out of any dinosaurs that try to eat you.

Candymancy

After looking over everyone's answers to the question I posed in the previous post, I think we can safely draw the following conclusions:

1) Chris K. has already given up on finding romance.

2) Justin equates paradise with survival.

3) Andrew thinks of women as entertaining bodyguards.

4) Chris MM is a hopeless romantic.

Now, perhaps, you're wondering where I stand on the issue. First, I think a little background is in order.

To make any sense of any answer I might give for this question, I think it's important to go over what brought me to consider the question in the first place. As you may have deduced if you've been keeping up with this blog, I can be a pretty miserable person when the mood strikes me. Since I seem to be struck by the mood rather often, I decided a little while ago to take stock of my life and see if I could figure out the source of this misery.

So here's what I came up with:

Pros:
- Close, loving family
- A few good friends I connect with on multiple levels
- Safe, comfortable home
- Decent job which pays well enough to cover all my expenses, plus a little bit
- Reliable, available entertainment

Cons:
- No female companionship

When I step back and think about it, it's true that I'm at my most miserable when that final point has been weighing on my mind. So, apparently, my unhappiness can be entirely traced back to this one matter. Considering this, I had to ask myself, how is it that, as good as my life is overall, I could get so hung up on the one thing that's missing from it that I don't consider myself a happy person in general?

So I came up with this question. Would you trade any shot at romance for guaranteed comfort? It's a question for other people, really; I'm already living in that situation. The real question I'm asking, then, is: Am I justified in my misery?

My guess--or perhaps simply what I'd like to imagine--is that most people would not give up romance for comfort. This would indicate that perhaps the reason I'm so dissatisfied with my life is that the one thing I lack is the one thing most people wouldn't give up for the world. I don't know, of course, if that's true, but, in a small way, it's comforting to think that it might be.

But, anyway, to answer the question itself, I'm going to have to turn it around. The question then is this: Would I give up the comforts of my life for a shot at romance?

In all honesty, I believe I would. But I'm not entirely convinced that I wouldn't regret it.

So what have we learned today:

1) David is unjustifiably miserable.

2) ... OR IS HE?!?

Or, hell, maybe we didn't really learn anything this time around. But at least we tried, and that's what counts... OR IS IT?!?

Okay, that's enough for now. Until next time, you know what to do.

I Agree with You, in Theory. IN THEORY, Communism Works. IN THEORY.

Today, for you, a hypothetical proposition.

Suppose for a moment that I had the power to offer you perfect comfort, absolutely guaranteed, for the rest of your life. You would never need to worry about food, shelter, security, or entertainment for as long as you live. No tricks, no caveats, just one stipulation.

In order to take advantage of this offer, you have to give up any possibility of ever having any sort of romantic relationship.

Would you accept the offer?

Feel free to post your answer in the comments.

And the Winner is...

Now it's time for:

David's Supercolossal Fantastic Answer Key!

Answer #1:
Here on Earth there'd be no life without the light it gives.
Score:
+20 pts. to Andrew and Chris K. for at least getting the right song.

Answer #2:
Door hinge.
Score:
No score this round; none of the contestants were able to successfully rhyme the word "orange."

Answer #3:
Alfred the Great, obviously.
Score:
+10 pts. to Andrew, Justin, and Chris K. for actually mentioning English monarchs.
-10 pts. to David for naming an American.

Answer #4:
Gummi.
Score:
+5 pts. to Justin and Chris K. for answering more-or-less accurately.
-5 pts. to David for lying.

Answer #5:
Must... eat... gummi...
Score:
+10 pts. to Chris K. and David for describing actual moods.
+500 pts. to David for eating way too much gummi that one time.

FINAL SCORE!!!
Andrew: 30
Justin: 15
Chris K.: 45
Chris M-M.: 0
David: 495

So! Tonight's Grand Booby Prize goes to... Chris M-M. for his phenomenal score of zero! Congratulations, Chris, you win a brand new carbon atom.

Tonight's Grand Booby Prize is sponsored by Carbon. Carbon: you can't go wrong with four valence electrons.

And now for the Grand Actual Prize Coronation Ceremony!



David wins!



So what have we learned today?

1) Andrew has that TMBG song stuck in his head.

2) What is up with Chris M-M.'s obesession with oranges?

3) Chris K. has aspirations for the British throne.

4) Justin is a man's man, no doubt.

5) David has seen too many shows with therapists in them lately.

Thanks for playing, better luck next time!