Waffling in THREE dimensions.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Coming of Age


I'm currently using this book as a coaster for my Mountain Dew

I am doing quite well currently, excluding this awful business and that I had to break into an emergency cache of jerky. You see, you can't have too much jerky. Well, you can, but I'm not terribly concerned that I'll build up a fatal amount of ammonia; I have to urinate far too often for that, courtesy of Mountain Dew.

One reason for my current bliss is this and also this, though to a lesser extent than the former. I find that I can only play in a sandbox for so long before it starts exfoliating my ear canals, among other regions.

In any case, it is summer and I'm feeling great. Over the course of my many, many anecdotes (I'd dictate them here, but the flamboyant gestures I make are essential to the telling) I've noticed a common thread: there are years of my life where I did absolutely nothing. I realize that can't actually be true, but subjectively, it is. I've established before that my memory is, at best, fractional. I wouldn't mind having an eidetic memory, but I think life would be so much less mysterious with one. That's not to say I wouldn't mind knowing where I had put my jerky (I suspect theft, but can't be certain). However, it seems in all my anecdotes I am either 4, 6, 8, 10, or 15 years old, depending on the content and connotation of the story I've caught myself on a few occasions embellishing a story with one of these false ages when I can clearly recall that I must have been a particular age based off whatever inkling. But why these ages and what do they illustrate?

We'll start with the age I didn't include, thirteen. I'm never thirteen in my accounts because I was a wholly uninteresting teenager at this age. I did nothing interesting, had very few friends, and was generally timid and greasy. You can see how little has changed. Example of a story from when I was thirteen:
I was sitting at a computer in the library, where I spent the second half of every period, looking up Lego Mindstorms in all their pre-Y2k majesty when I girl I fancied began to walk over. It was one whom I had briefly attended elementary school with and I remembered her being intelligent and had filled out quite nicely. I realize now that as an angsty middle schooler with no social life my minimum requires for shagging (intelligence and grace) were unreasonably high, but it was safe to say that I fancied this girl. Although I understood little of the fairer sex at the time, when she saw my moniter---I was looking at goddamn Legos!---the almost reflexive "Oh," saturated in a disapointed inflection I could imitate even now, made it clear that any feelings I might have had would forever remain unrequited.
That is my middle school experience distilled. You can see why I tell everyone about it.

The other ages are fairly easy to figure out. As I can't reliably remember what I did yesterday, a disconcerting thought at times, it seems absurd to believe that I might remember anything that happened to me before age four. Hell, I had an issue with object permanence the other day while playing Team Fortress 2, which is also a hilarious anecdote for another time perhaps. Age six perhaps connotes a predominance of childhood whimsy that I have yet to abandon. Ten connotes some, perhaps a burgeoning, degree of intelligence, although I'm pretty certain I was a huge dick then as well. And age fifteen seems removed enough from those incredibly awkward middle school years to represent the slightly less awkward high school years.

But most of my childhood stories take place when I am eight. The quanitity of stories would suggest that this was the most exciting year of my life, and it's possible, but it is just as likely that I am conflating events. In fact, I am certain I am. I like to think of myself as an anomaly in my family, but my brother's erratic behavior implies that I could not have been so vibrant so young. I would contend that he may be the anomalous one, but I hold no desire to be compared to any of my relations, immediate or otherwise. Anyways, I think I picked age eight, as opposed to seven or nine, because in mormon culture it is a rite of passage to reach the age of accountability and be baptised. For the record, I see no evidence of ethics in my brother at all; however, in my anecdotes I think I wish to connote a semblance of morality or I would have picked another age. Although it could be that it simply sounds a lot better to say "when I was eight" than the adjacent alternatives, and that does sound like all the reason I'd need to do something. I'm incredibly capricious.

Also, jerky is delicious.

Upgraded

Something horrible happened to me. I lost all my bookmarks. Thankfully, it happened just after I finished my finals. I've been too busy to worry about or address it but it's still frustrating. The bright side is that it cleaned out all the favorites I never bothered to revisit. The downside is that I have no idea what those favorites were.

Another unfortunate thing is that with the release of Firefox 3.0 many of my add-ons aren't compatible with the new version. Fortunately, ScribeFire isn't one of those. Don't let me give you the wrong impression, I'm very excited to break in my new browser, if not to reset all my feeds. What else is new?

I'll tell you later.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Change of Integrity

I've squandered my evening playing with these subscription things. I also took the opportunity to try WordPress. It has some very nice features, but it wasn't what I was looking for at the moment. I wanted to cross-pollinate this web log with my moblog without compromising their individual integrity, but it has been a fruitless endeavor thus far. I know a way to do it and I may later. In the interim, you can see my latest mobile update at the bottom of the page and conversely there.

Test failed. Post Homunculi was imported because it was created before the transfer was complete. Try rerouting the feed?

The transition appears smooth, but it wouldn't be a proper test if it wasn't repeatable.

Homunculi

Please disregard this post. I am using it as a litmus. Curiouser and curiouser...

An Exciting New Direction

Poor, but honest. Sad, but true!

Between bouts of cleaning, existentialism, and reading my new favorite wikipedia article, I added FeedBurner to my blog(s). What does this mean to you, the reader?

I'm not sure yet. But it's exciting nonetheless.

Certain questions arise, such as, "Do I need to resubscribe to your web feed of now?" and "What is the proper use of a semicolon?"

Again, I'm not sure yet. If it makes any difference, and I doubt that it does, I picked the RSS feed option when adding it opposed to the Atom option, perhaps out of a fondness for acronyms or dislike of chemistry. I abandoned IE before web 2.0 hit and I've never used Safari, so I can't tell you if they are as amazing on those browsers as they are in Firefox. I remember when I had to manually check my favorite websites for updates and how frustrating it was to find that some internet humorist hadn't updated. Gosh, that feels like so long ago.

Basically, I added affirmation that I have no audience and if you want to know when I post new things, click the orange square in the right side of the address bar or at the bottom you can click a hyperlink for the same results. It will say:

Subscribe to Wafflecone

Saturday, June 07, 2008

How Do I

So I got bored again. I did a little homework, but not enough; it couldn't hold my attention. Also, I was worried about sounding jingoistic in a question comparing Venezuela and the United States economic systems. I'm not sure any comparison would be valid given the vast differences in resources, population, cultures, histories, my apathy...

So I started trolling Yahoo Answers again. Trolling in the wrong word, I've only asked one question as of this writing. I've found a few Answers I've really liked including this one and this one. And this made me...well, I'll just tell you the question and you can guess the answers given.
Does anyone else get turned on by the Avatar's?
I initially thought it might be regarding this or even this. But no, it wasn't. I checked the obvious rhetorical lyrics first, including "Can anybody find me somebody to love?" and "Is this the real life?" The latter question was posed some sixty times and I sought something more obscure. I found this gem on another site. And then I got an idea, but it was taken too! But it was totally worth it for this copy editor's dissection of the song.

In the mean time, I've grown a little tired of trying to be creative and will probably do something else for a while now. Although I still have a few ideas I might try later.

Friday, June 06, 2008

The Internet is for porn (and trolls)

I made a big huff about my mom disconnecting the Internets and how negatively it would affect my education this morning, only to go to the campus to use the WiFi and do nothing productive. I played around with writing some metafiction, but I think it was largely a bust. However, I found listening to Rick Emerson discuss his ADHD diagnostic test on air very enjoyable. If I had planned better, I would have packed myself some food, but I was in a tizzy of sorts. That would fall under "low frustration tolerance" for those of you playing at home.

On a related note, there have been these commercials on recently for what appears to be an internet health forum support group. It's a nice enough idea, certainly better than this one. It's not something that's going to be featured on Weekend Web anytime soon (do they still do Weekend Web?). Whenever I see one of their commercials, I get the temptation to create an account for the exclusive purpose of trolling the forums.

I won't.Probably.

And speaking of trolling, Yahoo Answers is always choice. I may spend some of my procrastination time this weekend looking up other John Mayer songs with rhetorical questions to ask.

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Avenue Q in P-town

While I don't really miss my old school, I occasionally miss the roommates I had. Not all of them, of course, but I certainly miss Rick and the opportunities I wasted with him. Such as lifting the soundtracks to The Producers and Avenue Q from his iPod. However, I have recently learned that the later will be coming to Portland later this month. I'm excited. The timing is a little precarious as I'm scheduled to start work the next day, but I'll walk it off. I'm just a little concerned I won't be able to find anyone willing to go with me, but really, how can you hate this?


Tickets here.

Monday, June 02, 2008

Pick a relationship and stick with it

The subject.

I'm still working on this essay. It's late and I doubt the professor will even accept it, but I'm writing it more for myself than anything else at this point. I'm a big fan of creative nonfiction so I'm taking a segmented, nonlinear approach to it (think The Prestige or Pulp Fiction). I've divided it into fifteen sections, one of which it tentatively titled "Horrible Wingman." I found this page on the topic so helpful, I was compelled to link you to it.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

What has been seen cannot be unseen

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