Jesus I'm Arrogant.

I stepped into my new-moon room tonight to find my vision archerly. An acid now an alcohol has blurred me dreamward. Bound.

I fell the other night while walking home with some friends. I now have an inch deep hole in my right knee. Moving hurts, and at some point tonight my parents are going to talk to me about every slight thing I've done wrong over the past 3 months and how they relate to my numerous over-arching character flaws. Ai, me.

I have been thinking oddly today, and I think my thinking lends itself most easily to musing.
What to muse upon? Musing. Perhaps musing is simply the shotgun approach at inspiration; hence its etymology. Why, I think that's one musing accomplished already!

It actually kind of makes sense to me now why exclamatory and interrogative phrases have an introductory punctuation mark in Spanish. When one exclaims aloud, the entire vocal phrasing of the sentence is changed. When one finds the exclamation point at end of a sentence in English, it very suddenly changes the way your inner voice phrases the ultimate words. Perhaps with preparatory punctuation one's inner voice can more fluidly deliver the text being read.

I sometimes like to make wild hypotheses about why the Fibonacci's sequence (and thereby the Golden Ratios) is reflected in biology. (Note: Having just written that down, I think I understand why I am so often accused of "Living in my own little world.") Currently I'm thinking that in much the same way as the Incas used the yupana to design their rice fields in a way that would minimize the number of grains necessary for a surface area while maximizine surface area, the nautilus' shell evolved following natural universal forces towards the minimum energy condition by minimizing the number of cells required to maximize the size of the coil.

Lady Chatterley's Lover sounds so innapropriately Austen-esque. It is really good. This is the first book I've read in a while wherein a few pages of text could inspire many more pages of analysis. Not that I enjoy the concept of publishing one's take on a book. The process of critical publication seems to me at some level an attack on art; its very intent is to either pre-dispose or re-dispose (that word isn't real) the participant towards whatever specie or work of art they are participating in.

I watched a movie today. The main character dies alone, after finally finding himself. Maybe we all live in a constant state of epiphany, so that the You who dies will only have recently been born (the union of You that Were and Experience).

I think it is incredibly unjust when anyone reduces Love to synapse and protein. I hereby make a counter-argument. Light is undeniably real, even if we don't fully understand its properties. However, the perception of light in our brain is only very tangentially related to these particles bouncing about our environment. These photons only activate a protein that then gobbles up PIP2 and ends up causing a cascade of reactions in the photo-receptor cell that make its voltage change, and this all winds and grinds its way to a number of big computing regions to make some sort of sense out of the mess that surround us. All around us is maya, the minds illusion of sense, or at least predictive power among quantum chaos. Synapse and Protein. Perhaps just as photons exist and produce chemical reactions within us, Love exists with or without a human about to feel it. These immense sensations that perfuse and confuse us (that drive us to Arcadia and Troy) could be merely the simplest way our minds can describe what is there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_census_phenomenon

I'd heard about this before, but apparently Jedi Knights in Texas can legally marry people.
Which is awesome.

Things you should wikipedia: (The letter of the day is 'M'.)

Mark Twain (especially the racial relations bit)
Masamune
Muramasa
The actual letter M's history. (just look up the letter m. Literally, do it. It's cool. Stop reading this.)
(Start reading again after the end parentheses.) Mu opioid-receptors
MDMA
Magneto
magnetic fields
Magnamum.
(Haha, that was a trick.)
MC Escher (I hadn't seen the drawing hands before.)
Marcus Aurelius (The Heir to the Empire section is funny. Try to keep the names straight!)
(I'm checking if I can read Meditations on google book. I can.)

The summer wind, came blowin in - from across the sea
It lingered there, so warm and fair - to walk with me
All summer long, we sang a song - and strolled on golden sand
Two sweethearts, and the summer wind

Like painted kites, those days and nights - went flyin by
The world was new, beneath a blue - umbrella sky
Then softer than, a piper man - one day it called to you
And I lost you, to the summer wind

The autumn wind, and the winter wind - have come and gone
And still the days, those lonely days - go on and on
And guess who sighs his lullabies - through nights that never end
My fickle friend, the summer wind

Today I spent muchly paddling down a river with me bust beddy Nicklas. So, we saw an approach to godliness, when six rafts of approximately-our-agers had a few cases of beer and kept their rafts together floating down a river. Put a trash can with a keg and ice in the middle and hook the rafts together with NRS straps and you've got a hell of a time.
I think we should do this.

1. My sleep schedule is crazier than a beaver in a paper mill.
2. The only two people who I think read this are the only two people who I bother to read anymore.
3. I saw the ballsiest BAMF ever tonight. At 2:30 in the goddamn morning, he jumps into a fenced in area, sits down, and starts using his laptop stealing bandwidth from the local Staples wireless, outside a downtown ghetto.
4. GTA IV was made too challenging, by which I mean not even remotely difficult, but not granting that quick and constant sense of gratification one has come to expect from Rockstar* North. The packages (pigeons) are impossible to find, and upon chancing to see one of the only 200 pigeons populating the entire city of NY, the only way to get it is to shoot it. Which inevitably attracts police attention. Now maybe I'm the only one who was still bothering with the packages by San Andreas, but even I've given up on Rockstar's proclivity for incrementally more frustrating collection background side quests. Fuck the Nirnroot, and your flying rats too.

Also, while making more expensive and balanced weapons and charging higher prices for bail and medical care certainly makes keeping the bank account full, all it really amounts to is constant saving and loading from the safe house. Otherwise you lose half your money every time a mission demanding a few tries comes up. Part of the reason GTA III and the side chapters are great is the constant scoffing at the 100 dollar fines for causing $60 million of damage to public, private, military, and pimps property. In short, the little money indicator blinking a number reminiscent of DDR score after a round of Tsugaru.

While dilly-dallying through the annals of Wikipedia,  stumbled upon the SPR, the society for Psychical Research.

Go find this article, because my new life goal is to become its president. Not because I think there's really any value to whatever the fuck they're up to, but because being a neuroscientist doesn't get you pussy, and being a psychic does. Granted, overweight malodorous pussy tightly glad in black tarpaulin and pretension, but I'll take what comes to me.

It's been some time since I've bothered with a livejournal, much less a public(ally appropriate) post. I felt it only right that I should return to talk a bit about the love of my life. You guessed it, video games.

I've been ruthlessly establishing my dominion of my roommate's XBOX 360 for the past week, and I've reached some conclusions about video gaming in general, aided as I was by such impressive titles as Bioshock and Mass Effect.

I'll get the ball rolling with Bioshock, one of the most fun and satisfying gaming experiences I've had for quite some time. The game is fucking scary, which is beautiful. It isn't that sort of meat-tank-baddies-popping-out-of-corner-accompanied-by-eerie-violin-quartet scary, though it does employ that device from time to time with great effect. It isn't the sort of gory absurdity you'll find in most Rockstar titles either. It doesn't even bother being scary all the time, making the emotional experience of the game more varied and satisfactory. Why is it scary? Elementary, the only thing scarier than a zombie is a sentient one, and the only thing scarier than that is a genetically modified sentient zombies spouting Bjork-esque non-sequiters and bible camp ditties. I find myself using the crouch button almost as much as the guns.

That aside, the game has its problems, most of which can be attributed to any RPG or game in general. First on the list is loading screens.  Loading screens are an unfortunate necessity, because while hardware improvements over the last ten years have been drastic, polygon counts in games keep up pace-for-pace.  What no game has seemed to think of, however, is having something for the gamer to bloody DO other than read hints elucidating nuances of gameplay as intricate as 'Shoot people in the head to do more damage.' My idea? Put a mini-game in there. Hell, make it optional for the Down's syndrome demographic who need two minutes space-out time every time they enter a goddamn room. To be fair to Mass Effect, it did try to cut down on loading screens around large areas by pre-loading all the areas within a building while you ride the elevator. Brilliant in theory, but what you end up with is the longest most uncomfortable elevator ride since the film adaptation of Michael Crichton's Sphere.

It wouldn't even have to be part of the game itself. The new consoles have fully functional, user friendly OPERATING SYSTEMS. You know what you can do with an OS? More than one fucking thing at once. So, why can't I fucking minimize my game? While my RAM engorges itself on the countryside of Cyrodil, maybe I'd like to play a round of Frogger instead of sitting idly by unable to so much as make myself a hot ham and cheese for fear of a camp-whoring bandits and/or zombies (genetically modified or otherwise).

Another relic of ancient gaming that should die an auto-erotic asphyxiation caliber embarrassing death is the food system. In a game-world with beautifully crafted enemies, a competent physics engine, and immersive storyline such as Bioshock, I find myself wondering why wolfing down 18 packages of potato chips and a bottle of vodka doesn't send me into tachycardia rather than help me recover from multiple gunshot wounds. The only decently realistic nutrition system I've ever seen was in the Elder Scrolls series which has FECKING MAGIC IN IT.

Another problem I have with Bioshock as an RPG, and any shooter exempting the Resident Evil titles is the concept of maximum ammo. Let me tell you something, a makeshift double-barreled shotgun doesn't just cease to function whenever its wielder carries more than 48 rounds; in fact I've known a few to cheerfully call for bloodshed when you hit 52, but I digress. In any case, it's called an inventory screen, and they can be made intuitively and well with both spatial and weight requirements. Making a decent inventory function is somewhat tough, but can also make the game more challenging and strategic. And if I'd like 15 pounds of my weight limit to be a shotgun, 132 pounds of ammunition for said shotgun, and the last 3 to be low-fat chocolate wafers than by gum, that's my prerogative.

Another thing I found more than a little perplexing is the absence of a melee button. Faced with a Big Daddy (reminiscent of a Scooby Doo villain in any episode involving a submarine) I normally pull out my grenade launcher,but  it doesn't take long for the bastard to figure out that once he gets within 5 meters of me the tables turn harder than Elton John in the nineties. I now find myself in excellent position to bash him one in the face, and so I press the B button to do so. Except B doesn't stand for Bash-Him-One-in-the-face, it stands for instantly-use-entire-first-aid-kit-yes-including-the-allergy-medicines-and-little-cotton-swabs. If I want to actually hit him I'll need to cycle through my weapons until I get the wrench. A wrench. A bleeding wrench.

I'm wading through an underwater ruin filled entirely by enormous metal pipes, knives, and tetanus hazards of varying mass and hue and the first metal knick-knack I come across is the only thing my character will willingly swing about for the entire game.

I had more to say, but I'll get back to it. I have to go make a few litres of pure E. coli.

I read Deathly Hallows today. I'll hear nothing to the contrary, it's Rowling's finest bit of writing, and despite leading the reader by the nose through the plot (understandably necessary, given the breadth of her audience) it is the best ending to a fantasy series one could ever hope to encounter.

And frankly, I don't give a damn what Harry does for a living.

I've started a new blog, which I will not be providing the link for in this venue. I like it better. I'll come back to comment, and in general catch up on the lives of those we leave behind. But, for the most part, no more entries.

This ratty old thing has many things I've done, and few things I am. I'm gonna have to start writing soon, it's one of my majors, so I should get back in the habit. God knows that last bit needs a lot of polishing. Making notes about oneself is a good reference for authors.

I am an American. I am Brazilian. I am monogamous by nature. I am promiscuous by practice. I am laughable at sight, and insightful into laughter. I'm deeper than most know, and shallower than I would like to be. I am more ambitious than I ought to be. I am arrogant. I am of the belief that I am better than some people. I know I could be better than I am. I don't believe I could be as good as some I have been graced to meet. I don't think you can call just anything art because someone did it. I think some art is intrinsically better than other. I think Fitzgerald was a better writer than Hemingway, and that Steinbeck was indeed part of the modernist movement. I think ee cummings was a better poet than Harry Crosby, and that Crosby was a better man. I waste copious amounts of time poking about the internet looking for something meaningless that could be spent honing one of any number of skills I have, or attaining another. I smoke. I drink. I fuck. I have no desire to cease any of these things. I do things so I can have stories like my Dad. My father is one of my personal heroes. I admire him. I admire vegetarians. I revile vegetarianism. I don't listen to lyrics in songs unless they carry the melody. My greatest motivation in life is the admiration of those I admire in turn. This does not reflect upon my self-image, which is healthy. It is merely the stick by which I measure my own greatness. To be counted on by the kind, laughed with by the funny, intrigued by the intellectuals, and spoken with by people of many tongues are not ignoble goals. I think self-esteem should be correlated by the esteem of others most of the time. I have a drawer in my room containing all manner of artifice for sin. In fact, in homage to this drawer I will break paragraph to detail the effects contained.

1 issue of playboy
2 lighter fluid containers
1 butane bottle
1 zippo lighter (I am learning tricks with it, have mastered 4 today)
1 initialed hip flask (courtesy of my sister)
1 broken pipe (courtesy of Tim Turlep)
3 butane lighters
1 shot glass (courtesy of Lais, my latina lover)
150 rolling papers
1 cigarette case (courtesy of Lowren)
3 durex her pleasure condoms (ribbed, no numbing solution like trojan her pleasure. Much better.)
1 honey dipped cigar (courtesy of anna)
5x strength salvia divinorum
3 grams of chronic marijuana
1 grape cigarilla (courtesy of lowren)
2 packs Palheiro cigarettes (courtesy of my Brazilian uncle)
46 dollars in Brazilian currency
1 water bong
1 liter of high quality cachaca

Two years ago not one of these items stood much chance of falling into my possession. I make my mother laugh. I love my mother's laugh. I love my mother. I do not know if I believe in bisexuality. I don't know if I believe in monosexuality. I can think of no expedient and truly just way to legislate abortion. I do not believe in anything metaphysical, but I am not so arrogant as to presume its non-existence because I haven't seen any evidence. I am lucky. Amazingly lucky. My luck works in a conciliatory manner. For example, just today I lost my cell-phone charger. I need that thing. While looking for it, I realized I was out of deoderant. Within three seconds of noticing that, I looked under my bed for me charger and found a large Speed Stick I have no recollection of purchasing. I do not miss things until a long time after its gone. The best night of my life was July 4th 2006. The worst was December 23rd 2004. I place too much importance in romantic relationships. I regret things. I am ashamed of nothing. I cry publicly very little. The only thing that truly gets me angry is the mistreatment of women. Not in a political sense, I mean personally. I dream of being omnipotent, and yet rarely have lucid dreams. The one possession I desire most I could get for under one dollar, and yet I have procrastinated getting it for over a year. It would be a small journalist's notepad I could keep thoughts jotted in. I think I fear blank pages. Boring ones more yet. My greatest fears are mediocrity and loneliness. I want my body to be buried under a tree. A cherry tree maybe. I have trouble living in the moment, but when it happens I try to appreciate it to the fullest. I lived a few moments this past weekend. You're really living when you aren't intellectualizing. There is no ulterior motive or rationalization, there is only the moment about to be played out and how it affects you. I enjoy a meaningful handshake more than meaningless sex. I enjoy meaningless sex quite a bit. I can't imagine hating gay people. I hate cliche people. I admire lots of people, but none so much that I try to be them. No one is perfect. Everyone should strive to be. I admire Jessie, Whitney, Anna, my father, my mother, Scott Hinkley, my brother and sister, Albert Einstein, the guy who wrote Garfield, pope John Paul II,  Nick, Charles, John Steinbeck, my 1st and third host fathers (but not my second), my host brother Tui, my host mother's (once again, 1st and 3rd) and a particular holocaust survivor I know. I consider him a friend. I think it is good to have old friends.
This will get added too. It was written to make me tired.

For some time I've used journaling only when it become psychologically necessary. I have changed in Brasil, and I no longer need this outlet. Hence you see very few posts. The fact is, there are a lot of good and funny things in my life that I really should record, for posterity more than anything. I guess I finally need to learn to be a blogger. I'm gonna give it a shot.

I'll give a basic overview:

I got back, and had a pretty fantastic few days thereafter.
Then nothing started happening. Lots of nothing.
I went to the rotary retreat up in Michigan. Much sinning and fear and loathing etc. Met my host brother there. Cool guy.
Got back, tried to work. Landscaper guy is giving me the runaround. I can't seem to actually get mulching, and how I do love the smell of mulch in the morning.
Went to party up at Hobart. Did some things I regret, did some things others regret. Moonbounce. Retro-fitted cigarettes.
More nothing.
Going to Lowren's party tomorrow. Excited to see some familiar faces. No booze.
I like booze.
<( . . )>

(sad kirby)

I'm reading a new-age fantasy book called A Fist Full of Charms, by Kim Harrison. It is quite possibly the worst specimen of pulp-fiction I've encountered to date, and I've read the Wheel of Time series.

I spend the next 42 days of my brazilian life in another family. Graças a deus.

Expect a flurry of entries over the amazon soon. Once again, at Srta. Amand's behest.

I wonder what latinate language family's policy is on the switch from Srta. to Sra. in homosexual life-partner situations.

EDIT: Words of my recent days include sussurrus, alopecia, and sonolence. The reason english is beautiful is because of its many language families. There is a pretty way of saying anything, even baldness.

The title is a cognate joke. Not worth explaining, unless you take an unhealthy interest in Joyceish humour.

Anyhow, basically I have started actually doing shit. I need to start running, but that is something I may indefinitely delay. I hate running, you see. Biking, swimming, capoiera, all okay. Running irritates me, but is unfortunately what my body needs. I am doing push and sit ups. Feeling some smidegeon of muscular strength return. Very satisfying.

Also, I'm learning German. I'm learning it from a book, so my pronunciation is dreadful, but the German girl here is pretty cracked up by the speed at which I learn. German is an easy language to speak wrong. By that I mean, I could probably learn it insanely fast, go to Germany, and everyone would know what I'm saying. But, I would be pluralizing everything wrong, using articles badly, and putting nouns in the wrong declinations (verbs are easy, and I'm used to conjugation from portuguese). I would look like a cliché Russian refugee. I'll get it though.

Also getting some portuguese literature. There are a lot of words invented over the past five centuries in Portugal that never spread to South america. Basically, there are a lot of that no one around me knows the meaning of. I do, however, read at a college level, if slowly here.

Portguese is tiring to read in. I blame the verbs.

I got through about 90% of God of War somewhere around a month ago, before my game ran into a random and insurpassable glitch/freeze. So, I wanted to see if I could weasel a way around it today, and while I was failing at that a warm sensation rolled over my body. A few moments before it hit my conscious mind, I was in a euphoric blanket of nostalgia. It hit me, I brought Monster Rancher 2 to Brazil on accident.

A gleeful besocked run to my bedroom revealed my gorgeous PSX disc intact and inplace. Everlovingly I placed it in the tray, and the familiar whirr found my hands already trembling at the controller.

PLEASE INSERT PS OR PS2 FORMATTED DISK.

??

PLEASE INSERT PS OR PS2 FORMATTED DISK.

This is a PS formatted disk, if you'll just look at it a little closer...

PLEASE INSERT PS OR PS2 FORMATTED DISK.

It dawned on me that all of the games I had been playing up until this point where pirated. Somewhere in the process of making his PS2 pirate ready, it lost the ability to read Black disks. Basically, MS2 was such an enormous game with such a huge amount of data that for its time there was no one disk which could store it. There were, however, such things as Black disks, precursors to DVDs that held about 40% more data due to a different compression mechanism (or so it has been explained to me). They are wonderful, unless your little brother buys pirated goods that support South American drug cartels.

I have to join the FBI Narcotics Division.