Lucky numbers 8, 9, 10, 31, 32, 33

*Spoiler Alert: The following post has no sense of continuity whatsoever.

I live in Pinehurst, NC, and my dad just got a job in Connecticut. He's leaving this coming Monday to start working up there, and my family and I will follow at the end of the school year. Seeing as I spend most of my time up in Winston-Salem, and I will likely not be home on the weekends that my dad comes back to visit, we decided that it would be good to spend some time together today.

Wednesday's are always light days as far as my class schedule goes; in fact, I only have one hour in which I am required to be somewhere. So, today at 3:30 in the afternoon, my dad came and picked me up at school. We went to Barnes & Noble for a little while, drove around a bit, spent some time at REI pretending that we are outdoors kind of people, and ate dinner at the fabulous P.F. Chang's Chinese Bistro. It was delicious. Thanks for asking.

For the first time in, well, a long time, my dad and I got along quite well. We didn't get into a single argument, and I think we actually laughed on more than one occasion. By the time dinner was over it was about 9:00, and all that was left to do was open our fortune cookies and get back to NCSA.

My dad's fortune cookie was something stupid. I think it was along the lines of:

Spicy food tastes good.

That's right. I'm not kidding. Mine, although not quite as useless, proved just as funny:

Enjoy life! It is better to be happy than wise.

Hmm. It all makes sense now! Stupid people have it all figured out! Be a dip shit...it doesn't matter! As long as you're happy, who cares?! Live life to the fullest, and don't worry if you can't speak or write legibly.

Oh. A tidbit for all of you who don't want to be happy morons--Chuan means "ship" in Chinese.

Something serial this way comes

I've always enjoyed writing, and on numerous occasions, have attempted to write either short stories or books. Needless to say, those kinds of projects have failed miserably, usually because I lose interest in a story after 1500 words or so. Because of this, and due to the fact that I really want to start and finish either a short story or a small book, I am going to try something interesting. Every Tuesday, instead of posting some strange thought here, I am going to post an installment in a sort of serial novel.

Now, this could work out wonderfully or fail miserably, but I really want to try it. I have no idea where the story is going to go, nor what it is going to be about, and I am most definitely not going to sit around and think about what to write for the next week. (Oh, and it won't have a title yet either.) Instead, I am just going to sit down for about thirty minutes every Tuesday (or Wednesday, depending on the week) and write a portion of a story. So, without any more procrastinating on my part, here is the first installment in my serial novel.

Serial Novel, Part I, 1/30/07

The room in which he found himself was not normal by any standard of measurement. Of first note, the ceiling looked similar to the waves of corrugated cardboard, and seemed as if, at any moment, it would allow the pounding rain outside to come crashing through. The walls, painted an awful shade of mustard, didn't come together in any pattern at all. Corners could be found every few feet and, instead of the customary four, this room consisted of at least fifteen or twenty of these intersections. Tables and chairs were scattered around the floor with no apparent regularity, and judging by the amount of dust making its home on their flatter surfaces, no one had set foot inside the room for years.

Having expected a much more lively scene than the one he now found himself a part of, Tom took a moment to collect his thoughts. Looking around the oddly designed room, he trained his eyes on a small end table cluttered with various dust-covered photographs, and began to slowly make his way towards it. With every step, a newly formed dust cloud grew larger until, half-way to the table, Tom had to pause and take a deep breath from his inhaler. His newly diagnosed asthma was minor, but proved a nuisance on several occasions.

After regaining his normal breathing pattern, Tom continued to the table and began to brush off the photographs. Careful not to inhale too much, he waited for the dust to again settle before taking a closer look at the, now he counted, eleven pictures. The first two didn't tell him anything, but the third was astounding enough to produce a sudden gasp in the man.

In the picture Tom now held in his slightly trembling hands, there was a little girl of no more than ten years old smiling. She sat on a tire swing while a man stood behind her in the shadow of an enormous oak tree. There were piles of leaves in the background, and the visible branch of the oak tree was completely bare. The very beginning of winter.

A tear formed in Tom's eye as he folded up, and placed into his overcoat pocket, the picture of his daughter.

We don't get too many of your kind here

Everyone who has gone to high school has no doubt read Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. What you may not know is that this fabulous book's author is an extremely reclusive woman in her mid-eighties living in Alabama. Once a year, a contest is held statewide, and one lucky Alabama high school student has the chance to meet with Ms. Lee in a one-on-one setting.

Yesterday on the way back up to NCSA from the cultural black hole that is Pinehurst, I was listening to NPR when a piece concerning the Alabama "To Kill a Mockingbird Essay Contest" was aired. The meat of this report was an interview with last year's winner, a seventeen year old girl who had the unmistakable accent of an entire life living in the deep South. Her winning essay was about an experience she had as a Sophomore whilst playing the role of Scout in a two-school production of To Kill a Mockingbird. The production, which was a joint effort between the winner's (nearly) all-white high school and another (entirely) all-black high school, was so successful that even the hermit-like Harper Lee came out in public--surrounded by security guards--to watch the performance.

The interview on NPR was centered around the essay contest winner, Regan, and her co-star Roman, who portrayed Tom Robinson in the production. During this interview, a very interesting statement was made, almost in unison, by both Regan and Roman. Regan, who attends a white high school and Roman, who attends a (much poorer) black high school both stated that until their production of To Kill a Mockingbird, neither had spoken to, much less seen a person of each other's race.

This, needless to say, completely blew me away. The idea that a white seventeen year old had never seen or spoken to a black person until her junior year in high school is staggering. The existence of two high schools, both attended by single-race student bodies and mere miles apart, is something that simply should not occur today.

I drove in the car, aghast, for a few more minutes, until I came to a somewhat heartbreaking realization. Even I, a middle-class white eighteen year old from a multi-religious, multi-cultural household, remember a time when I had never come in contact with an African American. In fact, I distinctly recall not having a single black student in any of my classes until sixth grade! Of course, now-a-days, I am completely tolerant to people of all races, religions, etc., but I think that this is a lucky thing. No wonder there is so much race related hate in this world. There is still a huge divide between all races, but especially between the black and white communities in this country. And, now that I think about it, in my hometown of Pinehurst, I can't remember a single time where I have seen an African American on the streets of the Village of Pinehurst. Not one. Only in downtown Southern Pines, a much poorer town next door to Pinehurst, does one run into a multi-racial group.

I sincerely hope that by the time I have children, it will be an odd thing for a young child not to have interaction with children of different racial backgrounds. Now though, finding out that there are still high schools of completely singular-race student bodies, I am not too optimistic.

Oh the people you'll meet

Ever since I was old enough to express anger at the stupidity of others, I have been told it takes all kinds to make the world to go 'round. If someone cuts in front of you in line at McDonald's, it is not an appropriate response to punch them on the shoulder and yell, "Hey, ass hole! Look around! I was here first!" When dealing with someone working at Wal-Mart, you must be patient with their blatant lack of IQ points. Ordering from a catalog customer service representative, must be done in a clear voice with beautiful enunciation. You must do this without question or comment. After all, their stupidity is what makes the Earth not fall out of orbit. If we didn't have all the ignorant and inconsiderate people living amongst us, life as we know it may just cease to exist!

What a load of bull shit. There's no empirical proof that if all these sorts of people who make it their missions in life to cut you off on the road and make your every-day shopping experience a living hell were to simply disappear or, better yet, spontaneously vaporize, anything bad would happen. No. I'm on to you Mom! I think the next time someone decides to go twenty-three in a forty-five mph zone, I'm going to tap their bumper slightly. I highly doubt the Earth will stop spinning on the spot. I guess if it does though, you'll know to whom it's necessary to bitch.

It's never too early to spread the word

This morning I went to pick up some cream cheese at Harris Teeter, and one of the most incredible things happened to me--in the sense that the word "incredible" means "funny". As I was walking from my car (that I had to park eight miles away, since eight o'clock on Saturday morning is apparently prime time for grocery shopping), I saw one of those tables set up out front that Girls Scouts usually use to sell their boxes of orgasm-inducers. At this table, though, there were no prepubescent girls clad in beige. This table was surrounded by a gaggle of post-sixty year old women wearing their Sunday best a day early. From where I was parked, I couldn't quite make out what they were saying, but every once in a while, a sort of yelp would emerge from one of the women.

As I got closer to the table, it became clear what this was all about. The yelps I heard from further away were actually some of the women asking loudly, "Have you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior?" On the table were what looked like little Jesus dolls wrapped in plastic, and behind the whole mess was a big sign for one of the Christ Churches (First, Second, Fourteenth?). I, a person who has no intention of ever accepting a dead man as his "savior", was thinking of the best way to tell this group of bible-toters that, in fact, Jesus has already come back, but I thought he was just some hobo when he knocked on my door (no doubt looking for some water to turn in to wine), so I hit him over the head with a statue of Buddha and now he's in the freezer in my garage, when I noticed something that threw me completely off.

The Jesus dolls on the table were actually the Jesus equivalent of chocolate bunnies! Now I had an entirely new mission...I wanted some free chocolate! I walked over to the largest person behind the table, knowing that she must be the one in charge, and told her that I was having some trouble with my faith lately, and that maybe a chocolate Jesus would help. The problem, I continued to explain, was that I only had enough money to buy some bread for my starving brother and sister (I had messed up my hair on the way over to the table as a convincer), and I simply couldn't afford the $5 price tag that came with the Jesus chocolate. This nice and fooled woman handed me, out of the goodness of her heart--not, she said, for another get-into-heaven-free pass--a free chocolate Jesus.

I said thank you, and walked towards the wonderfully secular sliding door of Harris Teeter, and opened up my new treat. Immediately biting off the head (where else does one begin?), I became disappointed and confused. (Oh, and strangely, I stubbed my toe at that same moment...must not have been paying attention to where I was walking!) The Jesus was hollow damn it! Who skimps on a chocolate image of Jesus?! Of course bunnies would be hollow--bunnies are stupid! Jesus though? He's supposed to be the damned son (maybe not the best choice of words) of God! At least have the decency to make him out of solid chocolate!

Mark my words. That is the last time I ever accept food from a group of people promoting Jesus. If there is going to be no effort put into making a quality chocolate idol of the "Lord and Savior", I shouldn't be expected to even consider accepting the dead version of that chocolate man as anything but a dead guy.

Oh, and just and case any of you were worried...I did get the cream cheese. Its expiration date doesn't arrive for another whole week! Be afraid English muffins. Be very afraid.

The first in a series of musings...

Hi. So, I'm guessing that the first thought that crossed your mind when you got here is, "What the hell does the title mean?" I'll tell you, but you have to promise not to laugh. Promise? OK. Well, last summer, I had a Ravitch Procedure performed on me to fix my rather deformed chest wall. Basically, the nice doctors removed all the cartilage and some of the bone from ten of my ribs so that my chest didn't stick out anymore. Although I still don't have all my ribs back (seven months later!), they will eventually-within the year, they say-be back to normal. No...I'm not telling you this for pity points. I just wanted to shed some light onto the relatively obscure title of my blog.

Ok. Now that I have gotten that off my chest (gah!), I'll explain to all of you faithful readers-ok, the what I assume to be future faithful readers-what exactly this blog will be about. I have managed to avoid both MySpace and FaceBook with much pride, as I think they are both extraordinarily stupid methods of communication. However, I really enjoy to write, and usually have tons of thoughts on my mind. So, I figured that getting myself a blog wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. This blog will most likely have no discernible theme at all, and I'll be posting with no predetermined frequency. I do know that I will be most often posting directly after something pisses me off. It should at least be a bit funny to read the rantings of an uber-nerd.

Anyway, this is all for now. I am currently in the process of learning German on my own so that I don't act the completely stupid American when I get to Switzerland in September, so I am going to go ahead and do a lesson now in hopes that I will be done before my roommate gets back to the room and starts playing music.