I'll always be happy and never have trouble

Originally posted Sunday, October 12, 2008 at 7:11pm

So lately I've started taking some piano lessons, as well as rewarding myself by playing Tekken in the Adams game room after I've finished practicing each day. Those two plans are really helping keep me motivated, and if all goes according to plan, I will not only get really good at playing piano, I will also get really good at playing Tekken.
About a week ago maybe I was putting my dollar in the change machine to get some quarters out, but you know how there's that black box with a slot for your dollar to go into? I kind of missed that slot completely and somehow put my dollar into the crevice between the black box and the rest of the machine. It turns out the machine doesn't give you any quarters if you do that.
I ruined a paper clip trying to get my dollar back out, but to no avail. Now I kind of want to dismantle the machine to get my dollar out, plus any other dollars that should happen to be there, but I'm just worried that Housing and Food wouldn't take that in the best possible way.

I was thinking about how if you spilled a cheez-it on the floor and wasted it, you probably wouldn't feel sad. But if you spilled an entire box of cheez-its on the floor and wasted ALL of them, you'd probably feel at least a little bit sad. So I was wondering where my cheez-it threshold was. I think this would make for an interesting psychology experiment, but I'd feel bad about wasting all of those cheez-its. And I don't even like cheez-its that much.

I have had three classes since the beginning of my college career in which we have read a certain prose poem called "Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying" by a certain Adrienne Rich. The third time this happened, we were introduced to the distinguished authoress with the following words: "Adrienne Rich is a poet, essayist, feminist, and lesbian." Now, it's not terribly confusing to begin with, but the sad part is that that helps you understand the poem better.

It occurred to me recently that if you say, "What's the matter?" or "What's wrong?" to a friend, then that will probably be interpreted as a show of concern, but if you add the words "with you?" to the end of either of those questions, it suddenly sounds super rude. However, if you're talking to a second friend about our first friend, we'll call him Little Billy, who obviously has something wrong with him and needs our help, and say "What's the matter with Freddy?" or "What's wrong with Joey?" then it probably sounds concerned again, unless you say it in a nasty way. Your second friend might think it odd that you're calling Little Billy by all these different names when clearly his name is Little Billy, but who has time to worry about that? Little Billy's probably fallen down a well by now!

On Thursday night I played an awesome game with some friends of mine called Sardines. In case you've never heard of it, it's a super fun game where one person hides and everyone else looks for them. If you find them, you hide with them until only one person is left wandering around in the dark, miserable and alone. Let me tell you, what better way is there to get to know the people you're with than to look for them in the dark while they hide from you? I certainly can't think of one. So anyway, we set the boundaries way too big in the first game, and I was the unfortunate loser who searched for 45 minutes without success. In the second game I was hiding, and we shortened the boundaries considerably, but I somehow got confused and hid outside of them, which was not terribly conducive to being found. The change machine doesn't give you any quarters when you hide out-of-bounds. Now, the third game, my friend Amber hid on a staircase landing six feet off the ground hidden behind a bush, and I was once again the poor sap who found everyone last, although half the people that beat me only did so because they got helpful text messages directing them to the secret rendezvous spot. So you know, when I went and looked I didn't find nobody, and when I went and hid ain't nobody found me, so pretty much nobody's finding nobody when I play. On the plus side, I now know of a great spot for secret rendezvouses.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that Sardines is a GREAT game that should be played by EVERYONE.

There's a scene in "Batman: The Dark Knight" where a bunch of ordinary citizens, acting as vigilantes, dress up as Batmen in an attempt to fight crime. After the real Batman comes in and thwarts both the dastardly criminals and the foolhardy vigilantes, one of them asks, "Why do YOU get to fight crime if we can't?" Or whatever he says. I saw this movie like three months ago. And Batman replies, "I'm not wearing hockey pads." All of which is to say, I don't know, sometimes I feel like I've been wearing hockey pads my whole life.

Psalm 10:4

4 In his pride the wicked does not seek him;
in all his thoughts there is no room for God.