Discovery Earth

I discovered the absolute joy of Google Earth yesterday in the midst of a generally terrible day. It was my light in hard times. The program is seriously incredible - I can't believe I'd never actually downloaded it or at least heard some nerd talking about the wonder of its programming or something. You literally open it and immediately you've got your own globe in front of you, waiting to be zoomed in upon to 1,000,000,000x or so. For crying out loud, you can zoom in from tens of thousands of miles down to a thousand feet. The notion seems absurd, but with all of our technology it seems almost commonplace.

I found my old Houston schools and where we went on our summer Hawaii vacation, before searching Austin town, finding my dorm and my window in the 3D application that allows for the UT campus to stand up like a rotatable pop-up book. Additionally, by pinpointing the International School of Aberdeen, I located all of the points of interest I recall while living in Scotland. There's our roof. There's the ditch behind our house we'd play in when it snowed. There's the playground by the bus stop. Then of course, a little ways away, there's our school - the recess area, the little patch of trees where one day several of my friends took on a number of nasty wasp stings. Finally, I devoted some time to sight-seeing around the globe. It's quite an enjoyable program for anyone with a definite thirst for adventure without the resolve to actually leave the home.

The whole system makes me a bit fearful about issues of privacy though, with these superpowered satellites stationed around the globe. I don't see how we can have so many fugitives that we can't find when we can spot people from space, using FREE Internet software. Rest assured, government, I have nothing, and no one, to hide - in case you're just as closely monitoring the blogosphere (which would be pretty much useless) - but I'd like to think that I could escape to some haven if you guys ever wanted to have me killed. It really is incredible technology though. I'm constantly amazed at new scientific as well as Google innovations - I eagerly look forward to the release of Google Space sometime in the near future.

My Day...Strewn with Awkwardness

First of all, I should inform you that my new sleep schedule is that of a perpetual state of jet lag, but I'm quite fond of it. I fall asleep after all of my classes are over (either 2 or 4) and wake up sometime after midnight. I then wake up, read until my roommate goes to sleep, then I just listen to or read things on the interweb, and (starting this morning and hopefully but not likely continuing regularly) going out for a jog in the city. Now, the major problem of this is that my wardrobe is pretty much solely comprised of jeans, and when you're running in jeans at a time of night/morning when the safety of persons is questionable, you don't want to run at people - it'll generally arouse suspicion - something to the effect of he's running at me, or, possibly worse, he's running from someone...or something! I don't want to freak anybody out. When I return to the dorm, I'll shower, then go to breakfast, then read until class, go through the rigmarole of school, then sleep. This is the latest I've stayed up all week.

Awkward situations of the day (beginning after the jog, because there are just too many weird things to think about there):

I feel bad about this one, but I couldn't tell if the person who held the door open for me, from quite a distance so I was legitimately thankful, was a male or a female -luscious hair to be sure, but gender unknown. I was fairly certain it was an individual of the female variety (and I later verified this truth), but as she half-turned as I took hold of the door, I began to say Thank you ma'am, but came to a halt before the final word awkwardly. My head bobbed down in a thankful attitude just as i prepared her title, but as I halted the sentence abruptly, I kept my head down.

After my first class I went to our nearby market to get lunch, and just so happened to walk just behind and a little to the side of the same girl from the time I got out to the street near the building that contains my first class for about ten minutes until I reached the market, which she of course was headed to as well. I walked in just behind her, and she went in one door and I the one beside it so that she might not be completely fearing a stalker. However, I noticed with great dismay that she took from her side the same meal I was desiring, so I switched over to her side and grabbed the same meal item, then went to get a drink, and she took my drink as well. We checked out at the same time and then both set off in the direction of my building...Luckily she didn't go in and passed it by, or that could have made an awkward elevator ride, if I rode the elevator that is.

After my second class I went into our library for the first time with the intention of checking out a book. I had to go into the building briefly for a class once, so that they could give us a brief lecture about how to use the web-based materials, but I had never seen anything of the library beyond the entrance hallway and the computer basement. I wanted to get a book on the French Revolution, since I've learned about it in two classes this semester already, and neither course has taught me anything beyond what I was taught in sophomore year of high school (I haven't mentioned it, but I'm quite annoyed at both my sociology and history classes - they're pretty much useless as of yet). And then I want to reread The Screwtape Letters because my church is having a small group where they discuss it starting next week. Anyway, the building of our main library is massive. I had checked the book numbers and locations earlier to the books I wanted, but had pretty much forgotten them by now. I remembered "B" and "D" when I should have remembered "DC 148 S43" and "BR 125 L67," but unfortunately my memory is not that wonderfully talented. After my initial walk up a floor, turning around and walking down two floors, before deciding to actually go through the door to the floor two floors up, for which I'm sure I looked a fool, I found myself in a labyrinth of bookcases. And there was the "BD" section right in front of me! I was excited, but there were so so many shelves around me. I walked through one aisle absentmindedly and stopped in the middle. The first book I saw said something to the effect of The Coming of Thanatos. I shuddered, became intrigued, but then walked on. That place is amazing and I could spend hours in there if I had a mind to - there is practically no one in the mile long expanses of shelves, and there is absolute silence. However, after 10 minutes or so of perusing books and subjects, I was defeated and resolved to come back after my last class. I could have looked up the ID's of the books in a computer lab that was in the library, but there seemed a very mildly difficult way of signing in and I feared somehow screwing up and instead made a few calls to people in hopes that they'd look up my information for me. I'm an awful and lazy person I know. I didn't get any results.

On the way out of the library I ran into a number of breakings of the social code, as I know it. First, I found myself blocked in an aisle on Hinduism by an older student, who either did not notice my desire to pass or didn't notice the confined space between shelves that necessitate one-way, or no, traffic. I ended up giving up and walking back the way I had come and circling around in the adjacent aisleway. Just because of that, I'm never converting to Hinduism. Next, (and not really that bothersome) I found myself leaving the floor at the same time as a middle-aged oriental man. The stairwell was abuzz with people flowing upwards, but it seemed to be only myself and my comrade between Floors 3 and 2. Still, he took each step as if savoring it, and several times took out his cell phone and practically stopped to read whatever was on the screen. It was an ordeal traveling down that one floor's distance.

Lastly, on my way out, I planned first to go out the automated door, but reconsidered on seeing the sign reminding all to conserve energy and use the revolving doors. There were two people in the doors ahead of me when I entered, and both put a great deal of effort into the pushing of the doors so I decided I'd casually wait out the end to the rotation as there didn't seem to be anyone in any of the other doors. There seemed just enough energy in the door's motion to propel me out to open air, but it stopped just short. It was then that I noticed that a rather large Asian boy was behind me in MY part of the door. I panicked. The door had all but stopped moving and in order to provide sufficient force to make the door complete its half-rotation, I would need to lean heavily on the door, stepping back into the kid. I paused momentarily to contemplate the absurdity of this kid's decision to dissolve all social order and enter my already filled compartment, and then leaned awkwardly against the glass and pushed as hard as I could, giving the minimum force required to provide escape from the hellish situation. Ahh, fresh air and space. I'm using the automatic door forevermore.

After my last class, ran into another awkward problem I couldn't remedy in my head. I typically walk with a girl (whose name I can't remember...) for a few minutes before we part ways to go to our own dorms. This time however, I was going her direction to the library so I planned on walking with her. The problem was, that I was late to class and had a very different hairstyle from my recent haircut, and she I don't think knew I was there. After class I ended up right next to her for a good while without either of us saying anything, but I got off easy because she ran into someone she recognized and I fled quickly. In my defense, I don't think she knows my name either.

Walking to get an early dinner/snack I passed through our campus's area of greatest advertisement/awareness-mongering and passed in between curiously differing groups. On my right, awareness of third-world prostitutes and general call for charity-people standing together in "NOT FOR SALE" T-shirts. On my left, the U.T. water-ski team, complete with sunglassesed jocks, rockin' music, and a large motorboat.

When I left with my food, there was a group that just a little ways in front of me that provided for some awkwardness-driven comedy. The last to exit the building was one of the girls and she looked back at me as she held the door, then to the door, then back at me, and then walked out. I made it to the door shortly after and she apologized for not holding the door open (when by my analysis the distance was much too great between us), proclaiming that she was awful with awkwardness, but this sparked a brief debate between the three of them of the distance, and whether it is even necessary to hold a door open for a guy. The guy in their group concluded that there is an unwritten "Bro Code" that we can safely abide by, to which I responded with a simple thumbs up.

And the last awkward thing that has happened thusfar in the day occurred actually while I was contemplating this irregularly long list of happenings. I was within a hundred feet or so of my dorm building with another tenant a few steps behind me, and a bush with bees flying wildly just beside and in front of me. Now, I'm fairly clumsy (who isn't) and don't always take my steps too intentionally, so I tripped over nothing and ended up within a few centimeters of the hedge bush and my head knocked against one of the bees. Attempting to salvage some dignity in the eyes of the walker behind me, I kept at a straight line (bee-line haha) right next to the hedge, but after I had passed by the hedge completely, quite a number of the bees had remained with me. There were several flying beside me and two directly in front of my face. After a few steps, my old fear of bees cropped up too powerfully and I did a swift both-palms-up-to-block-my-face maneuver, accompanied by a 360 spin on my heel and then tried to walk into the building as if nothing had happened. It felt like one of those walk-through-a-spiderweb-moments, except that a swarm of bees is quite noticeable to the outside eye. I'm an accomplished bee-killer, so I may take out a can of raid one of these days and exact my revenge.

THE END (of another too long and time-wasting post)

My folktale teacher had a really funny joke today:

What did the Buddhist say to the hot dog vender?

Make me one with everything.

Still one of the funniest videos I've ever seen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os6raCCmAFk

Dear Random Campus Kiosk Workers:

Please stop offering me complimentary Valentines condoms. Thank you. That is all for now.

What I plan on reading for the next few months

1. At Swim Two Birds
2. Heart of Darkness
3. The Picture of Dorian Gray
4. American Pastoral
5. A Brief History of Nearly Everything
6. Underworld
7. Barrel Fever
8. Assassination Vacation
9. 1776
10. Confessions

A Pathetic and Possibly Humorous Account of How I Just Spent My Night-Morning:

I slept most of the day away and didn’t leave my bed until around 4 pm (the point at which I had to use the facilities, grab myself a poptart pack, etc.). I went to sleep around 5 am the previous morning and woke up around 3 pm on Sunday. I had set my alarm in case I felt moved to go to my church, but seeing as I don’t even recall the alarm going off…it was a grand failure. Next, about an hour after doing nothing (no, I did read some Euro-folktales for a while in there), I set about watching more of the first season of Heroes. I watched three episodes, ending in the epic Homecoming episode (poor Charlie-I like that actress a lot even though I’ve only seen her in a few episodes of Heroes and one of Pushing Daisies – she’s just so dreadfully quirkily charming).

Around 5 I was planning on going to either of three churches, but I found legitimate excuses for missing each. Don’t scold me yet – they really are fairly legitimate excuses. One church I don’t know the name or location of, and I am waiting to attend it with a friend of mine. With the second church, I was planning on going to the Catholic Center for church this morning (because I’m not terribly fond of “my” church’s current lesson plan: gleaning general life lessons from the book of Revelations) with a friend of mine, but seeing as I woke up too late for the first services of which I assume he went to one, and as I haven’t been to a mass since I was eight-years-old and feared an improper dress code rebuke or something of a similar nature, I decided not to go. The third church I considered going to is the Austin Stone Church, a greatly spirited place, but one so tremendously loud that I didn’t wish to aggravate my intense headache further (likely received from sitting with headphones not lifting my head for long periods of time). After all this mental argumentation, I resolved to watch that last Heroes episode and then take a shower.

Alright that was all useless background.

Sometime between 6 and 7 I talked with my friend Jonathan over Facebook and he told me he was sick, and suspiciously my headache began to take on the form of some sort of cold after we spoke…darn internet viruses. After that I began the journey of The Godfather on the wonderful AMC channel – thoroughly enjoyed of course, and now I can actually declare myself as a real movie-watcher. The only downside was that 30-40% of the four hour time period in which it played was commercials. Since The Godfather is for the most part a very quiet movie, the volume had to remain high, and commercials love to raise that volume bar to the maximum. Also, I don’t ever want to see an Enzyte, Extenze, Viagra, or any other of that sort of commercial again…ridiculous - they're so explicit. Finally, to announce the return of the movie at the end of each break, ear-shattering action music would play, from which I still don’t believe I have fully recovered. There was a second downside – tonight was open door night and as we’re in a distant back hallway and didn’t leave our rooms, we didn’t meet a tremendous amount of people. But it was Godfather night! Most people that came in felt as if they were intruding with Fenton in bed and myself staring intently at the screen even while talking occasionally. The few people that did brave conversation for any real length I’ve forgotten their names already. I was planning on getting one of them a Dark Knight poster but I forgot the name so that makes for some difficulty.

Alright still all fairly useless background...

As I had not fully recovered on sleep from the week, I set out to fall asleep immediately at the movie’s end at 11. Exhaustion laid heavy on me, but as the television went off, the lights came on! Fenton had to read for class. I made a few bold attempts at sleep, and somehow dozed for 45 minutes, but then I was wide awake with no hope of sleeping, as I still am. I got up to read my homework and got through nearly all of it for the week, excluding books I couldn’t find and all the pages missing in my Folklore packet. At around one, I started to feel bad about keeping Fenton awake by the lights so I went out to the Pedernales Lounge to read a boring book about the Vietnamese Revolution. There was only one kid in there with me, who I think was just playing a video game of some sort half the time. I read for an hour or so and then realized that I had forgotten to turn the lights out when I’d left our room, thereby ruining the purpose for leaving for the uncomfortable lounge chairs of Pedernales. I went back and left my books so as to force myself to return and not to consider a sleep attempt. I brought my laptop back with me and set out to read emails and updated blogs, happened upon Andrew’s and decided to myself make some sort of list to clear my head, or to fill it with something worthwhile, whichever came from it.

I opened a Word Document and typed out “Life Goals:” and then a few lines down “Goals for the immediate future:”. I wrote a few idiotic sentiments and desires, but I couldn’t really think of anything. I sat and pondered what in the past had once seemed so important to me for a time, but none of my old fancies really remain with me nowadays. And so, I stooped so low as to read the goals lists of strangers – most of which had half the items begin with “Have sex on/in/near/with/outside.” The only thing I really gathered from these were that I really want to go up in a hot air balloon someday. Or maybe become a aeronautic balloonist in my later years. I tried to take a few of the silly online quizzes that five-year-olds make, but usually ended up finding the questions so idiotic that I wouldn’t finish them. I did however learn in Norse Mythology I would be Baldr, “associated with light and beauty,” in Roman mythology I would be Venus…, and in Greek Mythology I would be Hades or Morpheus. I guess it’s hard to be accurate when you throw in questions like “Do you tend to have multiple lovers at the same time? (mostly true)” and “Do you like to spread your wings and fly?”

Needless to say, I came out with nothing of use, except that I’m apparently vain in Norse mythology, and from the results of Greek and Roman, I have a terribly dark and skewed view about love…


Unable to read anymore about Vietnam, I returned back to the room and noticed how terrible my entire body felt. In addition to the fledgling sickness, my body had sufficiently atrophied during the weekend at this point, having only really transported myself from bed to chair to bathroom for two days. I decided to stretch my body out and try to alleviate the intense tension that made my body feel like a stone and my head feel like an inferno. A few leg leans and windmills and other lessons I learned from Coach Pool in junior high P.E. later…nothing. Nothing in my body would crack and now my body was feeling much worse than before. “Time to bring out the big guns” I thought to myself, and forced my memory back to my gymnastics days. Not enough room to do a cartwheel without breaking, well everything. The splits are now impossible. Ah…I know just the thing: the backwards lean into half-back handspring! In case that wasn’t a clear enough description, all that is done is the flexible individual leans backward with arms outstretched behind them and palms upward so as to catch the floor, resulting in a sort of very tall crab position, or a bodily arch. Unfortunately, I severely overestimated the extent to which I have retained my gymnastics skills from second grade. I may be limbo champion, but taking it backwards another notch is a very different scenario, especially when your body lacks strength and flexibility. My body bent right and my left arm did not bend properly, so my body bridge result was one without a certain important limb, the left arm. A surprising amount of thoughts streamed through my head between the time my right arm hit the floor and my head flew back into the recycle bin. 1. “Well this isn’t going to work.” 2. “Maybe there won’t be anything in the way.” 3. “I think I might actually be able to recover this.” 4. “Woah! My head is moving extremely quickly towards that bin.”5. “This is going to be loud…” And it was. Fenton stirred and I just lay there on my back, legs crumpled beneath me, my head in a pile of bottles, hoping he wouldn’t come to investigate. That would be a hard one to explain. I've done weirder. After a minute or two, I gathered up dignity remnants sparsely scattered among the plastic bottles, and then trained with a few more beginner-level exercises before braving the stunt again. Trial 2 was a success, except for the further shattering of my Jack Skellington wristwatch.

I guess what I've come to realize in these misadventures is that...
1. I need to fix my sleep schedule. No good comes out of being awake this late, except that I'm almost guaranteed to make it to breakfast.
2. Gymnastics should be reserved to areas with sufficient space.
3. I need to reevaluate my priorities and contemplate my future through more grounded eyes - build castles in the sky and then construct the foundations.
4. I really hope my list of goals never turns into have sex here and there.
5. The Godfather is a good'un. I can't wait to see part II next weekend.
6. I still miss the first season of Heroes
7. I need to make an effort to remember a person's name when I meet them.
8. I need to start moving occasionally.
9. I need to start writing more than just mindless blather and barely clever observations about life, which will probably mean I'm done blogging for awhile.
10. I'll start posting again once I regain some perspective on life.

If it wasn't obvious...

Writing about the forsaking of my heroes was almost entirely an attempt at staying awake until breakfast. Does anyone have any (non-obvious) suggestions for fixing my hours, or possibly how to make better use of my late night time? I seem to be overcome with the urge to sleep at both five o'clocks everyday - both of which are a terrible idea. As it is now I just sleep from late afternoon into the night, then sit in my bed and read, or else out in the Pedernales Room lounge a hallway over, or just sit and think.

Goodbye Heroes

I've all but given up on this show. No, I'm giving up this show. First season was wonderful and second season wasn't terrible (though I can't remember much of it that I liked). As much as I've grown to hate characters in the show, it will still be tough to break with my relationship to the series. I've already resolved not to watch 24 this season for various reasons and so my Monday night will no doubt feel empty. The occasional Heroes episode might still slip through the cracks as my roommate's friend down a few halls apparently loves the show and no longer has a TV of his own. Still, his watching it in our room in no way binds me to watch what is left of Heroes and I plan on watching as little as possible.

In the beginning I had such optimism for this show. On the recommendation of a few friends, I watched the first season in about three days' time, and left ecstatic about the show's future, and championed Heroes to any fellow television viewer. While hating such vile, flat characters as Peter's girlfriend, Simone Deveaux, (and still hating) whatever Ali Larter's characters' names were (and are), I fell in love with Noah Bennett, Hiro Nakamura, and Gabriel Gray. Characters like Mohinder, the Haitian, Peter and Nathan had many high points as well. Each of the rest of the cast seemed for the most part to add a necessary component as well and I had very little other problems with characters (and I even remember liking, or at least contentedly tolerating, Claire at points - it's hard to imagine that far back now). After watching the season finale, there were a few loose ends and obvious room for development, but there was closure on the plot of "Save the cheerleader, Save the world" storyline.

I left first season tremendously pleased and couldn't wait for the next season to start, in which the teaser trailer promised background on our favorite heroes and associates. I remember at one point even thinking that Heroes was the show whose next season I looked forward to the most. Mind you, this was just after the gloriously confusing and exciting Lost 2nd season finale and The Office's Casino Night. I of course still yearned for these two shows, but Heroes seemed to stand alone in my mind. When the second season arrived and aired, I was disappointed, but Hiro's jokes, the awesomeness of Noah, Sylar, and Mohinder, and the relative "bearability" of the rest of the cast urged me forward. After all, with the writer's strike, the story came and went quickly.

With third season though, came ruin, for our relationship. The idea seemed interesting: making our heroes villains and vice versa, and one or two episodes I still greatly enjoyed, but the characters that emerged from the experience seem almost interchangeable now. What made the characters themselves has ceased to exist and too many of the cast members seem like stock characters or otherwise just extras along for the ride. By the end, I only looked forward to the deaths of my most hated characters.

As a memorial, I plan to watch first season again, but you've changed Heroes. I'm sorry. There's too much Claire. Character development is dead. At least Sylar is still killing people. Goodbye. I'll look for highlights in the future.

The Reasons for My Intelligence

I'm sorry, I can neither get this silly blog to print these as hyperlinks or as videos in this window.

The Epic Presidents Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vvy0wRLD5s8

Animaniacs On Hamlet (Yakko Contemplating Yorick):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07ej4zNlhpU

This forever will be one of the greatest cartoon shows to ever be made, even though after watching it for years I developed the unfortunate side-effect of thinking that anyone that has a John Lennon style of voice must be like Wakko, and therefore an idiot. Sorry John, it's psychological.

(I just watched Animaniacs videos for the last hour and a half in waiting for breakfast, which has finally come and gone.)

Memoirs of a Former Third Grade Intercontinental Movee:

Memories are always fading, and I decided that writing out stories of my memories of Scotland (as I remember them) may be a helpful exercise so that I might remember the important and insignificant events which occurred during my short stay overseas now more than a decade ago. Like I said, the writing will primarily benefit me, but I hope that it will prove in some ways enjoyable to you few.

My life began in the Woodlands, truly began in Dallas, and then became drastically altered when I was 8-years-old with the news that I would be moving to Scotland...or as drastically changed as the life of one that young can be. I'm sure the move was harder on my brother. I remember at the time having no idea of where Scotland was, and pompously thinking that it must be some place far far away and little known about since someone as intelligent in school as I was hadn't a clue of its geographic location. My dad brought us home a sort of Traveler's Guide to Scotland video that showed us wide green lands, castles, probably kilts, bagpipes, highland games, etc. Comfort did not reach me through this video. My life was changing and not in a foreseeable way, nor even one that allowed me to see into my future in any useful way - the future was now absolute mystery. We were flying across the ocean, somewhere, going rightward, towards England, but not exactly to England. I remember making a great histrionic scene among my closest friends at the lunch table on my last day in the cafeteria at Donald Elementary School. Still, the goodbyes weren't terribly sad and I don't recall any tears being involved, just the understanding that we would be parting ways. We had each come to terms with the move, or more accurately I had. My tight-knit group of friends would certainly manage fine without me. Being the shyest little boy in all existence, I did not look forward to the challenge of building up friendships once more among people who apparently even had a slightly different language than us, but after a few nights and days of sporadic tears, I readied myself in a small way.

I do not remember packing, nor the airport, but I know that my dad had left Texas slightly earlier than us to "set up" the house and get everything ready for us. I remember first seeing the house, 2 Springdale (Court?) and had no emotions about the interior except that I was excited at having a bunk bed, even if it was a room I had all to myself. Our house as I remember it was split into two halves. On the left, upon entering, one would find the living and dining rooms, along with the kitchen, and on the right was a short hallway with our bedrooms and a bathroom (which one day flooded our house via the tub - I cannot remember who was to blame but my gut feeling is my mother). I believe that my room was the last door on the left. It's funny to me that one can live in a house for a year and hardly remember the layout of the place, or even the types of rooms that were in the house. I believe I recall being in the dining room only once eating Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. I say this only because in this memory there is at least one guest who I do not recognize, and of course, turkey. I do not remember eating any other meals there, nor any late nights staying up or trying to sleep.

The memories I do have of simply living there in that house are sparse and strange. One of my most vivid memories was actually of one late night in which I finally started to trying to sleep later than usual, but could not. There was a high pitched and slightly frightening sound coming from a few rooms away from time to time. I knew not what it was, nor why it seemed to repeat itself often, and still fluctuate at other times. In the morning I inquired after the noise to my brother and discovered that he had unlocked the famed character, Ness, in the N64's Super Smash Brothers. Shouts of "PIKETANUS!" and other strange Ness noises had kept me awake the previous night. Most other memories are only trivial - of waking up often in the top bunk (my bed of choice), sitting up, and heading my head hard, of sitting down at my desk to do homework, of hurrying inside from the cold in 3-4 thick coats. In that house, I know that I was well looked after and cared for, but I have only the memory of this generalized feeling and no real, evidential proof. However, the short-lived home was in fact a home, even if seldom remembered.

Bring on the Breakfast

My sleep schedule has become more hectic than ever. I'm currently sitting in my bed waiting for breakfast to start in a few hours. Here are a couple of lists that I drew up in my boredom:

List of those I at least at some point called my best friends as I remember them chronologically:

Kindergarten: Ethan Something-Jonathan Foster
1st-2nd: Jake Something
3rd: Dylan Something (although he stole my third grade first crush Ashley Something)-Kendall Brown
4th and on: Scott Baumgarten-Trey Stanley (I believe my first two good friends upon my moving back to the states)
I still don't remember when I became friends with either: Jonathan Schindler-Andrew Roberts.

Many thanks to you all though I know for a fact that only one on this list will ever read this. You've all made my life much more enjoyable or bearable, depending on the situation.


Synesthesia (basically one sense evoking another) linking songs/artists and the stories I have come to identify them with usually just coincidentally):

1. Dreaming by Loudon Wainwright III - Life of Pi by Yann Martel
2. Greet Death by Explosions in the Sky - White Nights (short story by Dostoevsky)
3. Com(?) by Mono - Under Fire by Henri Barbusse
4. Pagan Poetry by Bjork - Dante's Inferno
5. Another Town by Regina Spektor (and really just all of Regina) - Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
6. Gates of Eden by Bob Dylan - Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

I find these connections I have in my brain infinitely interesting. The most firmly implanted one would be Life of Pi and Dreaming. Literally anytime I hear the first notes of the song, my mind immediately summons up an image of a young, emaciated boy, laying on his back within a small boat in the middle of the ocean. Of course, this was not the intention of the song and only vaguely relates, the two have become fused - all because I happened to get the album: So Damn Happy at the same time as Life of Pi. In the song now though, I have a specific example of one who simply wishes to be done with life and all its pains, but still holds on with his last. The song thus has changed into one of significant hope, and of a boy's imagination shutting out the horrors of reality.

The Mono and Explosions connections are only natural, as I listen to instrumental music when reading typically, but the nature of the songs matches scenes of the book and a close tie is still drawn.

With regard to Bjork, I decided to start listening to Vespertine to match the mood of Dante when we were assigned The Inferno and thus anything Bjorkish brings about scenes from the depths of Hell, most often the second circle, with the lovers cast about in a whirlwind forever. It was really just an attempt to add an eerie atmosphere to my reading. The Spektor-Frazier connection was also a conscious choice, and maybe not one completely fitting, but some songs certainly share the sentiments of the novel, as with Another Town. There's love, death, and melancholy all wrapped up in a nice package.

The Dylan connection I still have no idea how got settled in my brain. I know that when we read Frankenstein for class I was listening to a lot of Dylan in preparing to write my speech on the man for Decathlon, but in listening to the hundreds of songs left to me by my brother, this one stuck. The folk sound and the harmonica parts don't fit with any of my feelings on Frankenstein at all, but I suppose the chorus words describing the terrible world that exists outside the gates matched my feelings of sympathy towards the forlorn monster in some way.

The brain will always remain a strange and mysterious device in my mind. Does anyone else have any of these strange connections of memory and sense?