It's All Gone

Do you know how good I had it? It wasn't more than two months ago, everything was fine. I had two parents who supported me, a loving girlfriend, and a plethora of brothers, both Alpha Chi Sigma and Hampden-Sydney, that enjoyed my company. I even had a great, competitive resume to gain a foothold of my future.

I've graduated. It hit me as I kissed the girl for one of the last times. It hit like a ton of bricks. The place that I've spent four glorious years is now behind me. I don't have a refuge anymore. All those guys I've made friends with are now scattered over the country. 

My parents are leaving each other. That's a whole other ordeal. The awkwardness, the tension, it's unbearable. Home is no longer a haven; it's a warzone. 

I didn't get into graduate school. Somehow, I didn't get into one. Even though I've worked at the two schools I applied to, I was rejected outright. Somehow, foreign nationals can get into graduate schools, but good, hardworking Americans can't. This I can't believe. 

My girlfriend is six hours away. She used to be a few hills west, just about an hour's drive from where I went to school. Now it's a journey, a long stretch of highway from western North Carolina to northern Virginia. 

All the comforts are gone. I'm just a turtle without its shell: exposed to the world and weak. It's the complete opposite of where I was four years ago, from hopeful to doomed. It's a Greek tragedy. There's a spectrum of emotion that I'm rediscovering through the last two months. Emotions like rage, hate, and despair.

Now I've got to rebuild my life. I must find where I fit in the world. New friends. New home. New future. 

I'm going crazy

Please help me, God. I need guidance.

Or else, I will smite my roommate for being a dick.

And yell at each one of my professors.

And suffocate the kid I work with with a dirty, B&G pillow.

Earth Day!

Here are a few ways you can piss off your local hippies and/or activists:

1) Those with a garden can do marvelous things to screw with the environment! Use plenty of fertilizers and pesticides on your plants--it's been proven that, while the use of DDT in Africa has been detrimental to the environment, it has also restricted the amount of cases of malaria spread!
2) Plowing against the elevation (i.e., plow from the top to the bottom of the hill) helps send sediment and soil deposits to the river basins. This clogs up the river with dirt and leaves bare hills where you live! Thus you have less plants to take care of!
3) Get an old beat-up piece of shit car, preferably a domestic model with a V-8 engine. The bigger, the better. And start living in town, too, so you can go around in stop-and-go traffic.
4) The world is covered in water. You should be able to waste as much as you want! Gonna brush your teeth? Gotta wait for the shower to get warm? Leave them on!
5) Recycled paper is flawed. Plus, you don't know what the former owner used it for. By brand new paper!
6) Leave your lights on at night. Fool burglers and other riffraff by thinking you stay up at night waiting for them to pillage.
7) Burn your leaves. No one wants to deal with your leaves. You rake them, you put them on the curb. Someone comes picks them up and shreds them. Someone else picks up the shreads and burns them or places them in a compost heap. If you burn them, you only pick them up once, rather than 3 times!
8) Use paper plates and napkins and plastic utensils. Who wants to clean them?
9) Dump your unwanted chemicals in the sewer drainage. Most of the time, the local government doesn't even know where those sewers go.

So there you have it, nine things to do this Earth Day! Go out and make a difference!

Facebook is a Retard Dumpster.

Facebook pisses me off. People on Facebook pisses me off. I found this laying limp across my screen, and it just pissed me off:

"That was the most freakin [sic] awesome worship ever! Can't wait for the 1030 service! Jesus actually came back to life after 3 days! Amazing!!!"

Who describes worship as 'freakin awesome?' The Holy Eucharist is a sacred event, especially during Easter. Don't proclaim that it has some 'freakish' nature to it. Have some dignity and give some respect towards the Eucharist.

And you can't wait until 10:30 for the next Eucharist? You should be exhausted from the first service. And you're going back for seconds? What are you, a preacher? You're in college. You should be sinning your ass off.

That's okay, because I have enough sin to pass around for all of you.

And you're amazed that the Lord was resurrected in three days? Hell, if someone is resurrected in a week or a year that is a profound event. But seriously, don't be amazed over the basis of Christian theology. If you do that, you might as well say you have a chubby for small children. And that makes you sick.

It's Easter. Give some damn respect. 

Fates Unknown

This time four years ago, I was confronted with choices for four different colleges that I could attend: University of North Carolina, North Carolina State University, Colorado School of Mines, and Hampden-Sydney College. The one dream school I wanted to, the United States Air Force Academy, rejected me outright. But four choices were still good.

The one I picked couldn't have been any better. Best decision of my life.

Presently, I'm caught in a different dilemma. After applying to the two schools that I committed entire summers of research--UNC and NC State University--I've received null results. UNC waitlisted me, while NCSU rejected me outright. The cat's out of the bag.

So what's my backup now? Where do I go?

I've got some choices. Right now, a good option would be obtaining a commission for the Air Force. Kinda backward, I know. The perks are all good. Some commitment. And I'd be serving my country.

I could teach too. More flexibility.

But I don't know where I'm going. Then again, I was never a person who knew where I was going until the last minute. The girlfriend said she's follow me whereever I go, which is also good. I love her. She deserves alot. And I mean alot.

Realities on a cold, snowy day

So over the last few weeks, I've come to realize quite a number of things:

-Life is scary. It's okay, we all go through the same thing.
-Research sucks. If I had to do it for a job, I would do it. But not for a degree.
-Ocean Avenue is Yellowcard's only good album. Suck it if you think otherwise.
-Facebook is the best way to get information fast. Okay, next to Wikipedia.
-Nothing ends a good day like a 6-pack of beer. Not Natty Light, not Natty Ice. Glass-bottled beer is delicious.
-The fraternity has been the best thing for me next to scouts.
-All the good bands either suck with new material, disbanded, or are on hiatus. The only exception to this are MSI, Gogol, MCS, and The Faint.
-Those bands listed above are always in Europe.
-Harry Turtledove, author of The Great War series and How Few Remain, is full of win. Willa Cather isn't. Best, and only, recreational read in college for me.
-Graduate schools can suck it. Please tell me if I got in or not so I can continue scheming what I'm doing with my life here.
-I never see enough of my folks. I spent four years complaining about my hometown, and as soon as I'm bat outta hell I wish I could see more of them.
-Mexican food gets worse and sparse as you travel up north.
-It doesn't matter how old you are, Transformers are fun to play with.
-Pandora has a great 80s dance party channel. Like, fraternity-party grade music.
-I never get to see snow enough.

And the girlfriend? I'm very fortunate to be with her now.

Things to do soon

I've got a list of things to do for this February. First, I'm going skiing with the lovely girlfriend Sunday at Winterplace on the country roads of West Virginia. That should be fun, but I'll need to dig out some old clothes I hadn't used in a while: knitted cap, sweatpants, and ski jacket, mainly. And the fun won't be the skiing alone, either. Her family is coming down at the same time my old Boy Scout troop--which is something of a family to me--is coming up. Ackleys meeting Parrises. Who knows what'll happen. If it's epic and noteworthy, I'll let you all know about it.

It's also the girlfriend's birthday coming up next Monday. So I'm planning on getting her something, even though she's being selfless and only wanting dinner and a movie--especially to a movie that I suggested, Taken. And the next weekend is St. Valentine's Day. I'll be honest; it kind of blows when you have your girlfriend's birthday right next to St. V's day because then I feel obligated to get her another gift. I can always be cheap and make her a romantic dinner, with the table candles and spaghetti and whatnot. Because spaghetti is the easiest thing to make in the world, even after grilled cheese. You just drop in noodles in boiling water, heat up the Ragu and *bam* dinner. Nothing to burn, nothing to forget.

I also have this driving ticket I have to go to court for soon. So apparently driving without anyone around at 73 mph in a 60 is bad. Honestly, I was going 70, but the sherriff--something resembling Farva of Super Troopers--disagreed. So, I bought a copy of my driving record, and soon I'll need to get my speedometer checked. Pushing thirty years old, my car probably has never been checked for speed. But also, knowing a bit about cars, I wonder if there is a way to tweek the speedometer or the cable to produce a reading that's severely over. Like right now, I'm reading 3 over, but if I get it reading, say, 7 or 8 over, that'd be a one-way ticket for "Malfunctioning Equipment," a non-moving violation, and thus no change to my insurance.

But then again, if anyone looked at my car, they'd say that the whole entire thing is 'malfuctioning equipment.'

Either way, it would be severely illegal. One of the many things I do in my life that is.