So this weekend has been quite the shaft-ass. First, I will try for a quick summary of events:

Friday night I ended up going to bed around 5:30. I stayed up listening to music of varying quality with Brian, Jacqui, Matt, some random kids from Thompson, and Rafael. On Saturday, I went to Megha's house in Buffalo Grove, had Indian food, came back to Pierce, looked at a men's clothing catalog, observed Joe's drunkenness, witnessed some wrestling, observed Rafael's drunkenness, and went to Valois. Bedtime this morning was 8am. Today, I woke up because my mom called to chat. Then I did some NatSci with Willa, cleaned, did laundry, ate dinner, and did my Polish homework.

Now I will try to summarize that all in a dialog:

Me: REALLY?
Victor: Ice cream social?
Me: Fuck you!
Jacqui: What if Nestor came from out of the monopoly board?
Me: FUCK! ::angry screams and scared moaning::

Finally, I will summarize that dialog in one Goddamn word: REALLY? I mean, shit, a great deal of surreal ass shit has gone down within the last 48 hours. And I'm not sure if I should proclaim this weekend full of fail, as Brian has already, or if I should continue to cite this as the most hilarious weekend of my 19 year existence. I am so cornfused. In fact, this video will probably do for you what this weekend did for me:

Yesterday, my parents and I began a 5 day adventure into that most prolific example of the American Entertainment Monstrosity/Mecca, the Walt Disney World theme parks.  This is my impressions of the day:

5:00AM CST: We were supposed to leave for O'Hare about an hour ago.  My parents dad sucks at doing things and not getting there right on time.  Also, SLEEEEEEEEEP.
7:00AM CST: A flight that left O'Hare on time?  Someone put this shit on the endangered species list!
10:15 EST: Best. Flight. Evar.
11:15 EST: Wait, was that a combination Gift Shop/Waffle House?
11:20 EST: FUCK! That was a Gift Shop/Waffle House!  MUST PARTICIPATE. SO KITSCHY.
12:00 EST: Nick-::Looks at big hotel:: Is that where we're staying?
                     Mom-::Points down the street at the bigger one:: No, I think it's the next one.
                     Nick-DAAAMN.
12:10 EST: SHIT. It is hot as... as... as something really fucking hot out here.  This sucks.
12:20 EST: We go to Downtown Disney for food.  I hate children.
2:00 EST: The food was good. We end up at this seafood restaurant that wasn't too bad, if not a little generic. The Lego Store was good for bringing back memories of being little, but new Lego sets lick balls.  There is an exception to this rule, of course: Lego Millennium Falcon.  Price tag: $500.  The Lego Death Star was also pretty bad-ass.
3:30 EST: Muthafuckin' Nap Time!
7:30 EST: Is it can be foodz teim?  We walked through Pleasure Island and Downtown Disney's West Side(which mirrored neither that of Chicago or New York).  Pleasure Island was almost too cheesy, but it was cute cheesy rather than offensively cheesy.  However, this judgment was made from the outside, since Disney decided that 18-20 year olds can't be around alcohol without drinking it. Unless they're in a restaurant.  Or outside.  Or at a sporting event.  Whatevs.
8:00 EST: Virgin Megastore. This brings the count of chain...things over here to 8(McD's, Ghridelli, Lego, Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood, Rainforest Cafe, Wolfgang Puck's place, and a fucking AMC). DISAPPOINTING. However, they had the newer Au Revior Simone, so some is forgiven.
8:30 EST: Dad wants to go to Wolfgang Puck's Restaurant. It was okay.  A bit generic, but okay.
Conclusion: Downtown Disney tries really hard.  Which is cool.  But it was a bit too much like Navy Pier for me.

That glorious part of the quarter, where everyone, and I mean EVERYONE starts going nuts is almost over. That time is, of course, reading period. It's great because people start doing all sorts of crazy shit, and they finally have an excuse for it starting Thursday of 10th week.

( I'm trying as hard as I can. . .  )

Most people who know me know that I generally hate children. From maybe the age of 7 on up, kids are usually giant asstards. But really little kids, like 2-5 year olds, are amazing. I think it's mostly because they say some pretty fucked up stuff through parroting their parents and the media that they're exposed to. And that they generally don't give a fuck.
Example #1:

This little girl knows what the fuck is up: somebody steps to you with the intentions of fucking you up, and you have to hit first. Why does she feel okay saying that, and not seeking to use non-violence to resolve her conflict with the monster? Because she's fucking two, that's why.

Example #2:

Baby talk is normally pretty cute. But at about 0:28, this kid gets exasperated, and has a very adult reaction. Cute becomes amazing.

Example #3:

If I say anything about this video, it will ruin it. It should suffice to say that this little guy is my new hero, because he obviously doesn't give a shit about anything but rocking the fuck out.

Bonus:

This kid is working it better than probably 80% of the UofC. Shit.

So I'm hitting up Radio Free Chicago this morning to catch up on the music news that I missed from my media blackout last night, and low and behold the following little gem:

" After a long-delay, WHPK-FM (aka "The Pride of the South Side") has finally stepped into the '90s and launched their own live broadcast Webstream on The Internets!

All kidding aside, this is a long overdue development that will finally give music fans outside of Hyde Park a chance to hear arguably the city's best kept radio secret. Format-wise, the station very similar to WLUW (college rock, specialty shows, public affairs), only with more of a minimalist aesthetic ala WNUR. So if you find NUR too "difficult" and LUW too "needy," you now have a nice option somewhere in between on your Winamp player. Click below to start streaming:
http://www.whpk.org/stream"

I think that I have but one way to verbalize the way I feel right now: w0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000t!!!!!!111 oneoneoneleventy! WHPK is, as they said in their post, basiclly the best radio station in Chicago. The fact that I'll finally be able to listen to it at home makes me... pleased as fucking punch. No. bad turn of phrase. It makes me pleased as fucking Kool-Aid. That feels better.
Here's some Art Brut:

Good Weekend @ Pitchfork 2006

Here it is, 1 in the morning, and I should be doing work to soften the blow of the next few days. Yet here I am, with my mind in other places. I got an e-mail today offering an interview at the survey lab. I'm not exactly confident as to some of the details of the position, but my hope is that after Tuesday, I'll have good employment. So that's something to be happy about. Also, today was the last day of classes. Now I must endure the mental labyrinth that is Reading Period and Finals Week. Fortunately, I'm done on Tuesday. Also fortunately, Friday's Pilgramage should be a good time. I can't yet talk about that in any more detail, but I would assure all zero people that read this that I will talk about it afterward.

Now after that nice recap of 30 May 2007, one may be wondering, "what does any of that have to do with Facebook thoughts or some other such?" The correct answer is nothing. But I needed to be able to share that stuff. It felt good. The part that has to do with prior ruminations captured on Facebook is coming. . . NOW!

I've been thinking about a Facebook note that I wrote at the beginning of the month reflecting on this school year. I'm not by any means done creating some sort of an action plan, but I am approaching what I feel is the skeleton of a plan. It consists of 3 major components: Operation Deerhoof, Operation Yoko Ono, and Operation Hyper Ninja Strike.

Operation Deerhoof is right now sort of the backbones of my personal changes. It is my attempt at getting organized, and staying that way. I'm going to work on being a physically more tidy person. I'm also going to work on trying to better organize my time. This part will actually be essential to the other components attaining any level of success. I've noticed that I need to be getting more sleep than I do currently, as well as devoting more of my waking hours to completing my school work. I also need to use more of my free time for actual leisure activities. The second of those should be priority #1. I could be doing so much better in school than I am, and I'm thinking that as of now, it's mostly the lack of a true time commitment that is holding me down. Better use of my waking hours should allow me to sleep a bit more, which is overall good for my health, and consequently going to help me do better in school. The final component of this first prong in my Great Leap Forward will be the most difficult. I love my friends in Shorey, and I love playing video games and going to frat parties and dicking around as much as the next kid, but I'm not sure that I'm using my free time as efficiently as I could be. Diagnosing that problem is relatively easy: I'm already bored with dicking around and frat parties, and I feel like video games are more of a tool of procrastination now than they are a fun time activity. The hard part will be figuring out how I go about fixing this.

Operation Yoko Ono is a rather poorly named plan aimed at fixing the state of my love life: that is to say, to change it's status from non-existent to "at least he's trying." The other kids around me seem to be having a rather easy time with this, and it's bringing me down just a bit. Not to a cry-in-the-corner-while-eating-ice-cream-and-listening-to-MCR-and-Death-Cab level, but more of a it-would-be-cool-if-other-people-expressed-THAT-sort-of-interest-in-me-to-preserve-my-ego level. This will probably be the last thing that gets implimented, simply because the time commitment necessary to get this going needs to be woven into the stuff that I've figured out from the first part, not the other way around.

Finally, Operation Hyper Ninja Strike is the name of what I hope to be a regular re-evaluation of my priorities. I came to the conclusion that I don't know what my priorities in life are right now, and that made me a little afraid. I'm okay with not having a really specific, when I grow up I want to be a fireman/lawyer/hobo type direction. But the fact that I asked myself on my way to my Middle East class this morning what I valued the most in life was, and I struggled to find an answer was troubling. I think that this bit of introspection should be good for me, and help the other two work out better.

In other news, I still love apple drink. It's green.

The Good people over at Pitchfork announced the final lineup for Pitchfork Music Festival in July.  Obviously, I don't do music journalism (at least not yet), so you can click the link if you want to know all of the artists performing.  I'll hit what I feel will be the highlights.  Before I do that, thought, I should explain the event.  Pitchfork Music Festival is a 3 day outdoor hipster bash held in Chicago's Union Park.  This year, they plan to have 40 bands spanning from plain-jane indie rock to punk, dancey electronica, non-dancey electronica, and hip-hop.  Also included is a pretty good selection of hipster friendly food, a rather huge record fair, and a crafts show.  It's being held from Friday, 13 July to Sunday, 15 July this year.  Tickets are available for dirt cheap (the 3 day past put me back only $50!).  Now for my commentary.

DAY 1
The first day is a new experiment for Pitchfork.  They've invited Sonic Youth, the Gza, and Slint to perform all of one of their albums.  Slint is doing Spiderland (!), the Gza is doing Liquid Swords (!!) and Sonic Youth is doing all of Daydream Nation (!!!).  I can't possibly understate how high my expectations are for this.  All three of these artists doing arguably their best albums live and uncut?  Hells yeah.

DAY 2
My experience from last year tells me that I should expect basically everyone to blow me the fuck away, because the ladies and gents that pick the lineup for this thing are brilliant.  That being said, I'm looking forward to seeing Cat Power, Clipse, Mastodon, Grizzly Bear, Dan Deacon, and the headliner, Yoko Ono.  I feel like I shouldn't be okay with saying that.  I mean, she broke up The Beetles.  She made John Lennon a little weirder than he probably should have been.  But I'll be damned if she hasn't made some interesting and rather neat music over the years.  Also, Clipse.  I'm mostly excited to see how they react to the crowd(the festivals audience is rather monochromatic, catch my drift?), and how the crowd reacts to them(they're pretty ghetto).  Dan Deacon is already a solid performer, but I'm super psyched because he announced this morning that he wants to have a different choir performing with him in each city he stops in for the tour that he started today, comprised entirely of locals.  Will Pitchfork see the return of the Chicago choir, or maybe will we see a "special guest choir" come out for him? 

DAY 3
It seems like Day 2 was designed specifically to help me mentally recover from Day 1 so that Day 3 could hit me with full force.  Of the people performing on Sunday, I'm NOT immediately exited for a grand total of 5 of the performers.  And that's because I haven't heard of them before.  I feel like picking a favorite wouldn't be right, but local darlings The Ponys(Punk done Chicago) and The Cool Kids (If Lil Jon and Timberland made shit in the late 80's) stand out first, just because they're local.  Then there's The Field and Stephen Malkmus, and Klaxons(!) and Menomena(!!) and Of Montreal(!!!) and The New Pornographers(! * infinity) AND De La Soul(! * infinity + 1).  I really don't have words at this point for how great this will be.

So that's Pitchfork.  Now to search for people to come with me.  That would be double plus good.  Also, this should serve as a warning: don't ask me to do anything that weekend.  The answer will be no. 

Just in case you didn't read the title, der be angstin in des der hills.   Tonight (this morning?) I was sitting in the loft portion of the lounge, observing a quite spirited round of DBZ:BT2 and listening to a relationship retrospective of a friend of mine.  I was reminded, once again, of how agitated I am at myself.  I'm more or less mad at myself for multiple reasons, which I outlined in a note on Facebook.  But tonight, I was reminded of my frustration over a slight personality flaw of mine.

This flaw is that I generally am a giant puss when it comes to the lasses.  I mean, I'm told that I'm a pretty cool guy and that I'm reasonably attractive.  I've got charisma out the ass.  I just can't talk to girls.  At all.  It's rather sad.  Or rather, its sad that I've been afflicted with this particular social malady for the entirety of my life and have this need to both feel at least somehow tethered to normalcy and desire for someone besides my family to love me.  Not helping is the fact that I'm just introverted enough not to really feel alright with sharing this with too much of anyone (why I feel good about putting this on the webernets in a place that people that I am close to can find it escapes me).   At this point, I understand that I need to be proactive about changing my situation, but I really don't know how.  And manning up and asking someone out isn't going to work.  I've tried, and it has worked in 1 of 2 ways: A)I'm just not that into you, or B) I psyche myself out to believe that she won't be that into me and don't ask.  And I'm really not that motivated to put myself out there at this point in the school year, because there are only two weeks left.  I feel like that's not enough time to foster much of anything. 

Le Sigh.

Perhaps next school year will provide me with all sorts of new opportunities to not feel like a Post Secret.  Perhaps something (someone?) will magically fall out of the sky.  Perhaps I'll get to the point when I can stop obsessing over the few things in my life that aren't going as well as I might want them too, and instead I could appreciate the good stuff. 

Lets try that.

I have cool friends.  I'm going to be an O-Aid next year.  I lost the House council elections (good for me for not having to put up with what is essentially a resume pad with limited responsibility, but potentially bad for the House).  I have my health.  The school year is almost over, and I'm pretty sure that they aren't going to kick me out. I haven't run out of meal points.  Next year I will get to start taking real classes.  Most importantly, next year will be better.

First I should state that I've never understood how exactly one makes their first post.  It seems really awkward that at this stage in writing, you technically don't have any readers, or if you do, it's people that  you are close to or your parents or something else really lame.  I guess that typical ways to begin new things would usually include some sort of a bio, a statement of purpose, and a bit of an anecdote that sums up ones reasoning.

There's a bio feature, so I'm not compelled to do much of that.

As for a purpose, I decided, ironically enough considering the school that I attend, that I don't write enough.  I intend on using this space to rant about various things that catch my attention, probably my personal life, and possibly even as an outlet for the bad writing that everyone at one point in their sorry existence puts out.  I figure that I need to share more of the things that swirl around in my head, and this will be a good, semi-anonymous place to do it.  Even if it doesn't remain anonymous, that's good too.  It'll put my feet to the fire.

Why is this a good idea?  Well, despite the fact that I go to the UofC, one of the best schools in the world, and by all accounts live a rather comfortable life with friends and family who care very deeply for me, I find myself at the end of my first year of college quite unsatisfied with my life.  I feel as though I go through many of my days simply going through the motions.  I feel a bit lonely and under loved.  In short, I feel like the emo children that I so fervently despise.  I wasn't sure how I could come out of it, until I read something written by a high school friend of mine.  She told of how she needed to switch directions after having made some poor choices during her first year in college.  While I haven't made any choices that have compromised myself morally or physically (the traditional n00b in college stuff that she did), my bit of emoness has, I believe, directly resulted in a loosening of my academic standards.  I'm not proud of what my transcript will look like by the middle of June, when grades will have been computed.  Given that, and my friend's inspirational speech, I took to some reflection as well.  I noted that I could do some stuff different.  It started off simple and rather cosmetic seeming: get away from campus more, change my study habits, that sort of thing. 

Then I got to the crux of my issue: my own personal hangups.  I need to put myself first.  I let others needs dictate my actions far too much.  I need to find a way to get over my attachment issues.  My life seems to have a consistent pattern: I get close to people, we appreciate the closeness for a short time, and then one of us is physically relocated.  This has made me apprehensive to try to get really close to someone for fear that I'm going to have to say good-bye soon after.  Then there's my outright fear of rejection.  And that fear isn't just in relationships; I really don't do too many things that I'm not sure I can do.  The worst part of all of this is that I've never been quick to share my own personal feelings, so I'm pretty sure that there isn't any one person on this planet that knows all of these things about me other than myself.  Which sucks.

But that all changes now.  The quarter is almost over, but it's never too late to change course.  It's also never too soon.  If only the President would realize this. . .