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the beginning of a | recreation day
2003-08-01 10:56:03
It's weird when your life changes without warning to exactly what you didn't expect of it. In all of my short and bloodstained life I had always figured that I would live and die alone, moving by my own will for my own ends, until I smashed sharply to the end sometime before my twenty-sixth birthday. With no regrets for what I had done or who I had been. I was comfortable with nihilism, with being a destructive force in a world that was only winding down, but would not implode until I had burned away. Domesticity and settling down wasn't an option; it wasn't even possible.
But now it's all different. It's looking more and more every day like that's not going to be where my life's going to go. I'm going to settle down with someone I love, who loves me, raise a family, and grow old. And even though I'd be happy, I'm not sure that's exactly what I want. There are still mountains out there calling to be summited, roads calling to be fared down, and rivers and shores calling to be crossed. The wanderlust is calling me away again, away from the familiar and out into the wild.
It's not because I don't like my current life or its direction; everyone needs somewhere to come back to. But I need to strike out and change the scenery, do something new in new terrain. My feet are itching, and it's getting worse every day. New vistas, new challenges. I can't wait.
Well, at least I have three or four years to live unabhangig. And after that, road trip vacations! "Screw Disney World, we're going someplace real. South Dakota, because we haven't gone there yet. With luck, we'll some interesting stuff instead of just driving past cornfields for two weeks." Then riding the Trans-Canadian up to Alaska, a swing through the deep South, maybe later some explorations in Quebec and Atlantic Canada, definitely a run along the Pacific Coast Highway over its whole length, and sooner or later that drive down US 1 from Presque Isle or wherever it starts in Maine down to Key West. And then overseas...
At any rate, this is in the future. Possibly. It's equally possible that things'lll be different, and I really will die at or before 25, by violence and for a dumb reason. But I've already come to terms with that, and I'll probably sooner or later come to terms with living to a ripe old age and doing something productive for society as well.
Tonight: club. I have no idea what the hell Luna Varga is, so if the trains are late, I'll stop in, drop off my stuff, then head up to the Kid and try to make it back in time to order pizza. Shroom or Hawaiian, it's all good. Saturday I'm going to try for some more video work in the morning before other commitments take over, and then Sunday I'm booked all day.
Sometime or another I have to pencil in "sleep" for one of these calendar slots, or I'll be dead once I get out to school.
--Kai out
Offtopic:
go read this now: http://www.bmsc.washington.edu/people/merritt/books/Eye_of_Argon.html
Probably the flat worst SF/fantasy/pulp story ever written EVER, MSTed. Don't blame me if you piss yourself laughing.
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and hope for | sight
2003-07-31 11:50:17
No video progress last night or tonight, I was and will be busy. Maybe Friday if I get back early from club, but probably not.
I registered for classes yesterday (damn late, must remember not to do this in the future) and ended up with what I think is a full schedule -- 8 credits. I'm #2 on the waitlist for another class, which may push me up to 12. Regardless, if I get on the ball and register early in the future, I may be able to finish in 3 semesters instead of 4, which would save me about $20,000 between tuition, rent, and miscellaneous expenses. Of course, I'd have to not only do a 12-credit workload on my last semester, but immediately line up a job as when I get out I'm going to have to deal with ~$30-40,000 of debt and no health insurance. Hopefully we'll have a sane and capable president by then, so the economy may be a little less trashed and I'll actually have a chance.
Ideally, I'd like to start a band out there, go from playing Harpo's to the Silverdome in a year, transform the public perception of heavy metal, and sell 4 million records to pay off all my bills, but that just aint gonna happen.
--Kai out
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work all day
2003-07-30 11:41:08
Well, I was not able to defeat the Macrovision after all. I must need a more sophisticated video piracy setup. However I did get a bunch done on the video, so last night wasn't a total loss.
Current video: Gamma Ray, "Fire Below" to Peacock King. Progress check: 80%. Expected catalog number: #79. I ended up getting like four and a half minutes of the just-more-than ten that I ended up with out of that last fourteen-minute chunk. I also cleaned up the edited version of the song some, so I'm a little more enthusiastic about using it. The last solo and bridge in this song would just wreck the video as planned if they were left in.
I'll hopefully be able to do drafting sometime over the coming few days; I'm booked tonight, Friday, and Sunday, but there's an outside chance at sometime tomorrow or Saturday if the fatigue doesn't get me first. If not I've got a couple hours Monday before the game starts and Tuesday before Meg gets off work, but I'd much rather be using that time to work on #80. I want to get that done and hella good so I can show it to Meg before I leave...it's got a lot of potential and if it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be able to put up with listening to country long enough to make it.
Granted C.W. McCall is like the opposite of most radio country these days, but still....
--Kai out
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soul sacrifice
2003-07-29 10:30:42
Talked with Meg last night and she is now less mad at me than she was. Which is good. I don't blame her, though; we don't have much time left, and I didn't make it clear enough earlier that all I do when I get sick is sleep a lot. Just have to try and dupe the movie tonight so I can take it down with me tomorrow.
Heard some mixed reviews on the new Nevermore, but I'll have to hear it for myself to be sure. The new Maiden cover isn't much to look at, but it's not as bad as some have claimed. Maiden needs a CG-rendered cover like I need a lamprey shoved down my pants.
Current video: Gamma Ray, "Fire Below" to Peacock King. Progress check: 72%. Expected catalog number: #79. I've got about two and a half more minutes to cut through, which I should be able to take care of tonight, along with the timing chart. I added about three and a half minutes for 9:30 of the 11:00 that I need for 100% overage on the full song, so depending on how rich the last bit is, I may actually be able to go with the full version of the song. For competitive purposes I'd rather use the 3:30 version, but I may just release this direct to donut and compete with #80.
If I can get some drafting done tonight, I might be able to finish the video on the weekend -- if Meg doesn't need me Saturday that is. Sunday's already taken, and otherwise it'll wrap Tuesday on account of the Hall Of Fame Game Monday night. Football season's starting again, and the Pack are the first into action. I can't wait.
Offtopic:
Further evidence of the decline of western civilization:
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aFteJq2TUQoM&refer=us
People betting on real-world terrorist events and disturbances using real money. Sponsored by the good old USGOV. It's currently a million-to-one proposition that a violent anarchist will shoot up Harvard Square, but my 700 bucks says it'll happen -- as soon as Armalite sends me my AR-18. (j/k) Gotta love self-fulfilling prophecies.
--Kai out
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we're the pottawattomie county WEED patrol
2003-07-28 10:40:23
The hives are starting to go away and bruise up, so I will look as though someone worked me over with a two-by-four instead of like I was ineptly and messily slaugtering hogs. However that aint the worst of it.
I need to go out and buy a .17 HMR varmint gun and some superglue. I will superglue my remaining antibiotic capsules to a stump, and waste them one by one with the little HMR hornets, because the allergic reaction induced by these little fuckwits prevented me from seeing Meg on Sunday. Why not just a .22, which would be cheaper, or the hand crossbow I actually have? Mostly because a .17 is smaller and more of a challenge to hit with, and also because the 'M' (Magnum) component of the HMR means they'll blow up a little better due to higher velocity.
The rest of the weekend can't compensate for this, even though it included a lot of sleeping, going to club for the first time in a month, the YUA mini-specials, Slam Dunk #1, MB #7 (one more!), and a SD Gundam model, which I plan to assemble as soon as the swelling in my hands goes down enough that I don't mangle the pieces getting them out of the sprue.
I haven't been able to dupe Der Krieger und die Kaiserin yet, but I may be able to work around the Macrovision yet. I just have to get the VCR to recognize input coming from the RF modulator, or at least try with this trick; there'll be a degrade, but not so much as with full on Macroscrewing. Oh well. If all else fails, I can capture the DVD to MPEG2 (say around 5-6 Mbps, whatever'll fit the whole 2+ hours), then hook up the audio inputs from the DVD player and the video-out from the capture card, then synch up and mix them back together. Yay technology.
I hope to finish clipping on the current video tonight, and make it sometime when Meg's busy in the coming week. Video #80 is gonna be DAMN COOL, exactly as planned in the previous entry. Depending on exactly how good it turns out, I may gin up a MPEG1 version to try to get hosted on the site I got the music from. The original imaging of Lewis and Clark probably wasn't as cute as Natsumi and Miyuki, but there's a decided shortage of modern C.W. McCall fan goods out there.
And you never know, there might be a huge market out there of novelty-country fans, just waiting to cross over and add to our 4.3 billion-dollar industry.
Offtopic:
More dumb stats:
percentage of AMVs that use anime in the top 30: 67.18%.
percentage of AMVs that use music in the top 30: 22.06%
Linkin Park is used in about 4% of AMVs. Dragonball properties are used in at least 16.36% of all AMVs.
Conclusion: people who complain about overuse of artists are barking up the wrong tree. The problem is that n00bs all work from the same source shows, people.
--Kai out
JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)
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