To Quote My Textbook

前田さん
日本は、 先週から毎日雨です。 ロンドンわどうですか。
今、 大学にイギリス人の学生が五人来ています。 今年からのプロゲラムで、
一年日本にいます。 日本からも来年からは毎年学生が行くんですよ。 イギリス
には前に行きましたけど、 一週間だけだったから、 このプロゲラムでまた行き
たいと思っています。 前田さんはロンドンに何年までいますか。 そちらで会い
たいですね。
。
。
。
では、 さようなら。

六月二十八日

今田みち子

I hope that shows up correctly. It probably won't.

~Paul

It's the end of the world! (as we know it)

Today, I had occasion to search through that song, get to the chorus, pull my headphones out of the stereo, and then blast it. It was a bit too subtle for my roommate, as he doesn't know me as well as you people persons, but I bet you two would have been giggling insanely.

You see, today I went on a date. This is a change from my previous policy, in case you haven't noticed. You can die laughing now, Emmett. (I assume, at least, that it will kill you, if you're still sick. Get better onegai shimasu!) This is a direct continuation of the "social debut" (as my roommie calls it...good phrase, good phrase) that you said would be interesting to watch, so you better be able to draw some sociological observation from this.

It was a group date thingy, crazy bowling methods and dinner and such and et cetera. Once I was semi-amenable to the idea, my roommate called up the girl he's trying to set me up with and the conversation went something like this:

"So, I have a question. Word on the street is that you broke up awhile ago. Is that true? Oh, is it? Well, word on the street is also that you want to go to the date tonight. Really. Word on the street also has it that you don't have a date yet. Is that right? Hang on for a minute."

At this point, he hands me the phone and says, "Do or die."

I would like to declare that it is VERY hard for two people to roll a single bowling ball with four hands and actually make it go straight. The results of bowling while blindfolded and lined up by your date are also interesting (especially for the people in the next lane over) but that's a different story (that, surprisingly, doesn't involve me in embarrassing situations, I might add).

One hilarious (to me) detail about group dates approaching a set of 'airlock' doors is that the guy in the foremost pair gets the door and stays there to hold it for everybody. The guy in the second couple runs ahead to get to the second set of doors before the girl in the first couple has to sully her fair hands with a door handle, and someone in the back shouts something like "Nice save!" Every single time. It cannot be done without commentary on how well-done the save was.

Overall, it went well. The girl I went with had fun and praised me for getting her chair for her, I had fun and had the blissful privilege of getting my date's chair for her. We both enjoyed the company, and tended to walk a bit ahead of the rest of the group so we could talk while in transit.

(by the way, huge campuses with everything you would bother to think of without needing to drive are awesome...heck, we can go see movies if we want to! We can go see Italian and German and Japanese movies if we want to! International Cinema ROXORZ!)

My roommate says he has a list of ideas for dates... so I think I'll probably be going on more of these. Unless something REALLY weird happens, I won't be soloing or trying to get a girlfriend at this point in life, but you know. Sometimes weird things happen, sometimes they don't.

Yeah, see y'all later, and have fun chortling about my latest predicament!

~Paul

*kaboom!*

There's a good chance you missed my previous post, "*cracks knuckles*," so go back and look at it first.

Anyway, this evening I managed to blow my status as a social nonentity. It all started when I was put in charge of a Sunday-evening meeting with the entire ward in attendance, which amounts to about 180 people. This is a recurring meeting, so people will have to look at me every other week. Now, the ramifications of this wouldn't be so large if I managed to be boring. People would, instead of not knowing that I exist, be aware that I'm some guy who gets up every other week and drones. No. I managed to be funny. I managed to make people laugh. A lot. My spies in the crowd reported that they heard things like "who is that guy?" and all manner of pleasantly surprised gunk. To make things worse, the pair who was set up to do roommate spotlight had to jack out, so I had to bring my rooommate up and we got to tell tell the audience about each other.

Now, Shane, my roommie, is quite possibly the studliest and most popular guy in the ward. And I had good dirt on him. No, they're not going to forget me.

I had two girls come up and give me hugs and congratulate me. People said this is the most they've ever heard me talk, even the people who already knew me, and that I'm hilarious.

Therefore, the ramifications of this are set up to be quite large, in that not only will people think, "Oh, Paul, I think I know who that is" or "Paul, isn't he Shane's roommate?" but "Oh, Paul, he's awesome!" or something to that effect. From now on, if I want to remain an absolute recluse, I will have to make an effort to avoid people. If I go to the other end and make an effort to be social, I might get a few more friends and a few activity invites. Either way, if I consistently do this meeting, and I will, I'll be shifting social niches in some way.

I suspect a conspiracy.

~Paul

*cracks knuckles*

Okay, so I wanted to write this up a long time ago, but, well, then I blew up. So, I'll do it now.

To start, I'd like to say that being a bodyguard is really fun.

You see, I was sitting in my room, likely with my headphones and singing along with whatever music was going (which can be disturbing if the soloist is a soprano, as y'all well know). Shane, my roommate, was on the phone with a girl we know. She was telling him about her ex-boyfriend who is, in my not so humble opinion, a total jerk, and pretty much everyone who saw them together for awhile agreed. He tolerated most of her friends, but would tell her not to bring this one girl along whenever there was a group going somewhere because "she's loud." He was frequently verbally abusive of his girlfriend, attacking her intelligence and ability to graduate, among other things. He had a great penchant for poking her, and not lightly or once, constantly and hard enough to inflict pain.

Oh yes, and there's the time he stole her computer.

Needless to say, it didn't last long.

Well, before Shane was talking to this girl, her ex-boyfriend called and wanted to meet with her, supposedly to give her some money for the computer he took and retained. Now, she was fairly scared of his guy, and didn't want to meet him alone. She was thinking of bringing two friends along. Shane offered to go with her, and when I asked what was up after he got off, I volunteered too. When we were getting in the elevator down, we saw another guy on the floor and he wanted to come too.

So, the plan was to go there ahead of the meeting, spread out, pick our spots and read something while surreptitiously making sure nothing got out of hand. Well, that's not quite how it worked out. The guy was already there and trying to lord over her and her two friends when we got there; fortunately, he couldn't do much besides be a jerk since she had her friends.

It was supremely satisfying to file in, go up to the girls, and warmly and heartily greet them while throwing not especially friendly glances at the ex. He shoved the money at her and got out of there immediately, because now he couldn't even be a jerk.

Now, he may have had some idea of restitution in mind when he called her, but I doubt it. First, he wasn't acting penitent when I showed up. He was pretty much taunting her with the money. Second, the amount he gave her was a complete rip off for any functioning computer, let alone the fairly nice one he stole. Third, if he wanted restitution, he should just give the computer back.

Anyway, the girls said we were awesome and invited us to lunch the next day, and I was able to discover the joys of minor strongarming. Booyah.

~Paul

A Coherent And Rational Explanation

There's another post I want to do. I had the coolest experience the other night. I will post concerning that. However, first I feel compelled to dispel the aura of inscrutable insanity around my last post and explain what was going through my head as I wrote it. You may shudder in fear at the prospects of such a cache of knowledge, an insight into my bizarreness, but I'm going to post it anyway, and later today I'll move onto more interesting things. Just bear with me here, nod and smile, and read the next post. It would also be good to open up my last post in another browser so I don't have to copy the entire text into this one.

The first eyebrow-raising comment comes in the second paragraph, when I begin talking to myself. I would like to point out that this instance of talking to myself was done not because I believed I would answer or some such, but I was at the time feeling a strong urge to speak in a twisted manner.

Second, there is a notable lack of real information on any of my classes. This stems from an obligation to say something about them coupled with an intense desire to not think about these classes at the time. The exception to this rule is creative writing, where the motivating cause behind the comment (which is a rather oblique dodge, I think) is that I did not and still do not know the state of Maren's English classes and didn't want to go ranting on about my creative writing class when her beloved English may still be in danger from all the idiot bureaucrats at Weber.

Concerning the next instance of talking to myself, it gives the passage a circular feel. I got into writing about my classes talking to myself, I'll get out of it talking to myself. When that topic has come full circle, or more likely, is going in circles, it's time to ditch it and move on.

The sidenote on the tiny green composition notebook was inspired by the tiny green composition notebook that sits on my shelf right next to my stuffed naked mole rat, my scripture marking pencils/pen, and the framed photo of Chris, his sisters, and myself standing next to a fire truck at Stadium of Fire in Provo. This tiny green composition notebook can, in fact, fit just about anywhere. I made that comment, however, to chide myself for not having done anything with this extremely useful and very blank tiny green composition notebook. It has, after all, been sitting there all through last semester and thus far this semester. It's begging to be used, yet I haven't come up with anything for it yet. Chide chide, Paul.

*headesk*: This is a fairly universal comment with me, inspired by the constant angst. By the way, go look up the actual meaning of angst. No, not in the dictionary. That will likely have the modern definition, "dread or anxiety" or something like that. Go look it up in the original context of existential angst. The reason this angst expresses itself as a *headesk*, though, is that it is usually near impossible or at least more trouble than it's worth to write a small essay explaining my feelings.

Concerning lucidity, I think it hardly need be said that my lucidity was already long gone. The first spelling error was an actual mistake, and it just flowed from there.

And then we come to the infamous penguin comment. The focus on penguins arose from a recent experience with a game. In this game, there is a spell called "Summon Creature I." Traditionally, this summons a dire badger to help the character. In this particular map I was playing, however, the spell had been modified so that using the spell summoned a penguin. After I nearly died laughing, I discovered that it was a rather good little attack penguin, and had a healing spell to boot. The comment on chihuahuas came from changing "penguin" to "chihuahua" out of a deep-seated desire for obfuscation, and the comment on whether or not I spelled ostrich correctly was inspired by the fact that I wasn't sure whether I had spelled chihuahua anywhere close to correctly.

The next (rather scary) paragraph came because I knew no one would find the slightest bit of sense in anything I'd said the entire post, although it all made sense to me. It bugs me when I know this to be the case. Yes, I do a lot of stuff that is weird. Yes, I do even purposely shroud a lot of what I write, especially poetry and insane rants, so that it's hard to understand. But when I try to make sense, people generally still think I'm just ranting insanely. I'm not.

The monkies flying comment. Remember when we were in the car, coming back from Chronicles of Narnia, and I said something about "this is where the monkey floats by on a flying island" or something and threw in a comment about black helicopters? Remember how Emmett asked if that me saying that disturbs anyone, and we determined that Maren at least is desensitized to my weirdness? Remember before we went to Chronicles of Narnia, we were at Dick's to use the ATM, and I made a comment that the music video to Feel Good INC, which was playing on the radio at the time, is really really weird? Remember how Feel Good INC was playing when I made the comment on the flying monkeys after Narnia? The music video to Feel Good INC has flying islands with windmills and monkeys/gorillas on said island singing and black helicopters chasing them. This is the sum of what I meant by the whole flying monkey thing. I meant to emphasize that Feel Good INC has a weird music video.

AND IT LEADS INTO A QUESTION ABOUT WHETHER PEOPLE ARE SCARED WHEN I OPEN MY MOUTH.

And the mind reading thing. In keeping with my desire for obfuscation and seclusion, the freakiest thing ever would be to be around people capable of invasive telepathy, aka mind reading. I'm not sure about being a mind reader, though, because it could go either way. On one hand, it would make dealing with people much more comfortable because I'll always know what they expect out of me and what their state of being is. It might also be horrible because people are often pretty twisted and I may not want to be privy to all the cacophany in everyone's minds.

And the logic/twisted logic comment: It was right. On some level, every human action can be chalked up to some sort of internal reasoning, conscious or begging further analysis to discover the genesis of the action. We do not act randomly. When someone seems to be acting randomly, it merely means that their original desires and line of reasoning differ greatly from our own, and possibly include a desire to act randomly or to hide one's mind from others. And the next comment, concerning whether I like it or not--it would be so much more simple if I really was acting randomly and without reasonable thought, because the required state of mind to act like this and have it be the most logical option is simply not found in healthy, sane people.

There. I've explicated previous post. I anticipate very little response to this post. People generally don't respond to me when I'm freaking out. They turn to the person next to me and ask if I've taken my meds.

~StraightJacket

As Maren So GRACIOUSLY pointed out...

Within four days from two days ago, I will have neglected this blog for a full month. I would like to point out that I posted a comment in response. And that Emmett went longer than I did without posting (Sorry Emmett, but I couldn't resist)(okay, I could've, but chose not too. Bad Paul. *slaps wrist*).
Also, we were all collected in one area! Back from college! We just talked face to face! And besides, when I was at home, the only computer I had available to me was my dad's, and I don't like using other people's computers for reading, long rants, and writing. It feels violently wrong.

So. I suppose I should talk about my new class schedule, shouldn't I? Yes, Paul, you should. Thank you, Paul, I think I shall.

Let this one point be forever known about Japanese: lab, as opposed to lecture, is really painful; getting up in the morning specifically for lab moreso. Lab is entirely in Japanese, and it is a participation-based class. It doesn't help that we have more labs than lectures, either. Eek.

Concerning Fundamentals of Literary Interpretation and Criticism, let me give you this quote from my teacher as near as I can remember it: "If you're a person with a PhD, you can do ANYTHING." This, by the way, was as she was dragging a stolen table in from the hallway to serve as her desk. She also complains that they don't give her a podium or something to hide behind. She says she can't appear intimidating without one.

American Heritage: Pulling Teeth. In a massive auditorium packed with students. The small lab classes are also pulling teeth, just with a smaller audience.

For Book of Mormon part 2, I made sure I got the same teacher I had last semester, because he's so awesome. Yay!

And the less said about Creative Writing, the worse.

Is that sufficient for you taste, Paul? Why yes, Paul, it is; thank you for asking. You can write about something else now.

As a quick sidenote, has anyone else noticed that tiny little green composition notebooks can fit almost anywhere?

*headesk*

While I'm still semi-lucid, I would like to declare that...oops, nevermind. THere wnet lucidiyt. Oh well. While I'm no longer lucid, I would like to declare that penguins make very good attack chihuahuas, regardless of whether or not I spelled ostrich correctly.

I would also like to say that it's annoying but unfortunately understandable that when I say something that could make sense but doesn't because I don't make sure everyone around me understands the context around the statement, people automatically assume I'm just being weird because it's me and I do that quite a bit. But I say things that could make sense if I had the linguistic ability to communicate it more fully just as often as I say things that make no sense under any context. You'd all understand what the monkeys flying by are all about if you were mind readers! Hurry up! Ooh, second thought, don't. Mind readers are scary to be around. *shudder* Unless I'm a mind reader. But that might be even worse. But much more desirable than having mind readers around. Even if it is worse. Which it might not be. Unless... Nevermind.

Human beings are beings of logic, you know. Even if it's usually twisted logic. But there's always some sort of logic behind what people do, whether they realize it or not.

Whether I like it or not. Erg.

Remember that attack penguin sentence? Even that would make sense if you understood the context and the logic.

Now, I'd better post this before midnight so I don't have to go change that two days ago four days from then statement to be three days ago four days from then or something.

~Paul

I'm Home

:)