apparently staying up late kills my ability to articulate my point

I've always been interested in limits. Like something is what it is until some point, then you change one tiny thing about it and it's no longer the same. If you push a pen into your arm, you can tolerate the pain to a point, but at some point the tiniest bit of pressure is going to make you pull it away. If you go to buy something, you'll purchase it for a certain price but at some point, one more penny onto the price is going to make you walk out of the store with nothing. If someone asks you what time it is, you'll most likely round it off to something like 2:30. In your mind there is some threshold that as soon as the time crosses it, you'll say 2:45 instead of 2:30. It's these psychological kind of limits that you never really think about but determine every snap decision you make that just kind of fascinate me. There is a point where you'll speed through the yellow light, and one where you'll stop. There's a point where you'll wait for someone who's is late, and one where you'll leave. You'll remember something you were told all the way up to the exact point in time when you forget it. There was a point tonight where I was actually going try to get to bed, but once it hit a certain time, I didn't care how late I stayed up. The thing that I find most interesting about these is the exact point at which the mind switches from Plan A to Plan B. Maybe you don't exactly understand what I'm talking about, or maybe you do and don't find it interesting, I don't know. Odds are you'll remember this blog next time you go flying through a yellow light, though.

-alex

the one with all the money

The University of Arizona sent me a letter yesterday offering me a certain amount of money because I was named a National Merit Semifinalist, which is just based off of a PSAT test. Now I'm not complaining about it by any means, but there's part of me that feels like I don't necessarily deserve it. It bothers me that I am getting money just for being me, while others aren't because they are them. I haven't worked particularly hard in high school, I skip a lot of homework, I'm not always focused or dedicated in class. I know people who put in tons of effort and are getting nothing, or very little for it. All I did was sit down for 3 hours and take a test that, as crazy as it sounds, I enjoyed. Someday I'll get over the ridiculous guilt I feel for things like this, but not today.

-alex

blogger confessional

If you scroll down the blog for about 10 minutes you'll come across my post regarding my passionate disdain for phones. I must admit, despite that post, that I went down to Alltel and got the latest and greatest in cellular technology. It rings like a stereo, it has a camera, and yes, I can make your picture pop up when you call. What drove me to buy what I did not necessarily need? I don't know, but I hope my loyal fanbase doesn't think any less of me.

-alex

return of people watching

Listening to the radio in my car on the way to dinner, there was a report on the weather. After talking about the storm in Tucson and the forecast for the week, the meteorologist proclaimed that "there is a 50 percent chance that there will be more rain than average this fall/winter." Enlightening. Absolutely enlightening.

-alex

a spade's a spade

If you can read this cryptic hand history of one of my hands on PartyPoker.com, you'll appreciate how I knocked this guy out of the online tournament.

***** Hand History for Game 50841069630 *****
NL Hold'em 10 Buy-in + 1 Entry Fee Trny:6779168 Level:4 Blinds(50/100) - Wednesday, September 15, 21:26:20 EDT 2004
Table Play money 1257577
Seat 6 is the button
Total number of players : 3
Seat 2: BHawk00 ( $5715 )
Seat 6: koyre ( $315 )
Seat 10: afay05 ( $1970 )
Trny:6779168 Level:4
Blinds(50/100)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to afay05 [ Js Qs ]
koyre calls [100].
afay05 raises [250].
BHawk00 folds.
koyre calls [200].
** Dealing Flop ** [ Ts, 8c, As ]
afay05 bets [150].
koyre is all-In.
** Dealing Turn ** [ Jd ]
** Dealing River ** [ Ks ]
afay05 shows [ Js, Qs ] Royal Flush.
koyre shows [ Th, 8h ] two pairs, tens and eights.
koyre finished in third place and won 20 play chips.
afay05 wins 135 chips from side pot #1 with Royal Flush.
afay05 wins 730 chips from the main pot with Royal Flush.
koyre has left the table.

-alex

place of business

To outsiders the men's bathroom may just be a place of "business", there is an incredibly complex dynamic to it that is worthy of blogification. Here are my unwritten rules of the men's room.

-Conversations are off limits. I don't want to be in that place any longer than I have to be. Talk to me outside, never inside. Ever. Never.
-Never assume the position at a urinal directly next to an occupied urinal.
-Only use the little boys lowered urinal if your willing to sacrifice your dignity to a whole bunch of guys who won't say anything, but will still laugh to themselves.
-You don't need to be so close to urinal that you appear to be humping it. We aren't trying to catch a peek. We already know you're small.
-Don't stand 6 feet away from the urinal either. Distance urination isn't an Olympic sport. It never will be.
-Don't use the mirror. The risk of seeing something in the background you don't want to see is far too great. You look fine.
-If the guy who exits the bathroom right before you doesn't wash his hands, you can avoid touching the contaminated door handle by sneaking out as someone else enters or exits. If there is a garbage recepticle within reasonable distance of the door, grab a paper towel, use it as a makeshift glove to swing the door open safely, then toss it in the trash and escape before you become trapped again.
-Don't turn the loose hand dryer up towards your face and let it blow on you. You're not in 4th grade.
-If you're going to go through the trouble of wetting your hands so it appears you washed them, just take 4 extra seconds and use soap. Other guys notice the dunk-and-dash. You will be red flagged.
-Don't worry if you put your hands under an infrared faucet and it doesn't activate. It happens to all guys. We won't frown upon you. In fact, thank you for sacrificing yourself so no other poor man has to experience similar embarassment.
-Eyes should be horizontal at ALL TIMES. You don't want to see any wayward equipment, and it makes last minute recovery zip-ups easier to execute for everyone.
-Don't enjoy any part of your visit to the bathroom. When guys walk out of the bathroom laughing or smiling, it makes us all suspicious.

-alex

growing up VHS

I think some of the most underrated movies of all time are kids baseball movies. There are some all time classics in this category. Little Big League. Rookie of the Year. Angels in the Outfield. And yes, quite possibly the greatest baseball movie ever: The Sandlot. There are other sports movies (The Mighty Ducks, Little Giants) that had similar appeal but the baseball movies are the ones that we were enamored with when we first saw them as little kids. Seeing someone close to our age involved in the big leagues in some way was simply captivating. The slow motion shots of the baseball in mid air. The seasoned pro that overcomes his disdain for the kid to take him under his wing. When one of these movies appears on TBS or ABC Family or another offbeat station, we forgo watching the latest Real World or World Series of Poker or Chapelle's Show so we can be little kids again for an hour and a half. We have to. Our childhoods makes us. We see how many of the little kids in the movies are actually actors we recognize now. We let out the "oh yea......" as the scenes come that we didn't remember. We still sit on the edge of our seats even though we know that the batter strikes out on the floater, and that Ken Griffey rips a homer, that the Angels win the pennant, and that they find out who lives behind The Beast. We all played little league baseball and home run derby because of these movies. None of us didn't even know what derby meant, most of us still don't, but it never mattered. We just wanted to play baseball. We wanted to watch the movie again. I'm sure there are younger kids now and older adults that enjoy these movies. But for those of us who didn't grow up on the internet or skateboarding or with 3d video games, these movies were more. They were huge. They were all that mattered.

-alex

writing under the influence of lividity

I've decided that people need drama to survive. It's a form of sustenance. We thrive off of it, it drives us to do. It's entirely possible to remove yourself from the social hustle and bustle and sit by the wayside. It makes things simpler and you tend to learn a lot about how people act. As you watch all your friends and acquaintances trudge through every painful situation, you convince yourself that this is the way to live, free of drama. Unfortunately simplicity and life don't coexist. Social inaction desensitizes you. You become instinctively objective and stoic. You don't become overly angry or overly happy. You almost forget how to become overly angry or overly happy. Life becomes routine. With drama, you are a piece of the social puzzle. You have to identify who you are, what's around you, and where you fit in. As tedious as this may be, at least you end up surrounded by people that make life fun. It may seem like you could enjoy yourself so much more if you didn't have to go through all these difficult situations but without dark there is no light. Happiness is relative and if you have no pain to compare it to, it won't be happiness, it will just be. Life is drama. So when you get your heart broken, or argue with your parents, or fight with your best friend, realize that though life shouldn't be that hard, it is, it has to be. If life is easy, you're not living.

Bright white is best, but I'll take pitch black over dull gray any day of the week.

-alex

a travesty of elastic proportions

So I usually wear a number of rubber bands on each wrist to school. I kind of don't know why I do it, but I do it. Today in AP Gov, an assignment that required the use of notecards was due. The teacher instructed us to put a clip or band on our notecards for organization. Of course everyone comes crawling to me for a rubber band and reluctantly I give away 6 of my 7 rubber bands. These weren't just any rubber bands either, they were fresh clean high quality rubber band of the perfect width and circumference; this was no petty sacrifice. No sooner does everyone turn in their cards with my bands on them, some girl starts walking around with a huge bag of colored rubber bands for everyone. So not only do I go from hero to zero in about a quarter of a second, but everyone else is sporting multiple colored rubber bands on their wrist. I'm left with one, lonely, classic tan rubber band. It's like being put up on a pedastal, thrown off the pedastal into the mud then having the pedestal hurled at me. Fantastic.

-alex

tug of war

Hey I haven't had much to write about lately. I think that last poem drained all my writing energy. Neither the blog writing nor the song writing has been impressive lately. I'm constantly being pulled back and forth from my fun, relaxing world to my emo world which makes it tough to focus on one thing to write. It's also hard trying to get all your work done and still make the most of your last (and most fun) year of high school, all the while trying to retain something resembling sanity and stability. Enough complaining.

I'm doing my best, I'll be back. No worries.

-alex