Much ado about nothing

I think most of the readers are aware I am not as avid a reader as I would like to be. However, I've gotten into the swing of it, and have actually piled up a small to medium sized reading list.

First up is finishing the His Dark Materials series. I read The Golden Compass in about two days.. three days. In fact the second I finished it I went to the public library to check out the second book, but to my horror it was checked out. I promptly reserved it and it should be here tomorrow, and I guess I'll check out the third tomorrow too since I'll probably finish the second in like a day since there's no school. My brother was actually reading Compass for a school project, and I just picked it up because I had nothing to do. I sense a Harry Potter-esque addiction coming on.

Also I was reading the AV Club, and in the My Year Of Flops feature, which is the best on the site, he made a reference to.. you know what, it doesn't matter. Long story short, I ended up on Neil Gaiman's page, and now American Gods is definitely on my reading list. Maybe some Sandman too because I used to be obsessed with the art and only just now put two and two together and realized that it is in fact Neil Gaiman who writes it. (I have never before read anything by Neil Gaiman.)

Finally on my list is The Corrections, which I checked out from the school library on the second day of school. It's really long though so I've been avoiding it, but the first hundred pages were really good. It's under my bed now. I'll get back to it someday.

I realized I really like reading.

P.S. On a somewhat related note, Dumbledore is gay? I was only really shocked because I always thought of him as asexual. (I specifically thought of him as asexual.) As I said before though, if he's going to get it on with anyone, it might as well be Grindelwald.

halloween

Halloween is currently ten days away.

Current Costume Ideas:

Voldemort- If I had just shaved my head the day before and I wasn't sporting a beard of Grizzly Adams proportions, this would have been a lock. Unfortunately for me, Voldemort's head appears to be quite hairless, as I imagine the rest of his body to be. Without that added effect, my portrayal of Voldemort would likely be sub-par and uninspired, so I'd rather not get involved with something that I can't put my heart into.

Guy who likes fruit- There is no secret to this costume, it's exactly as advertised. I appreciate the conceptual nature of the costume, the fact that it's somewhat abstract, but visually, it can't really get its point across. While I would enjoy communicating an obsession with fruit and maybe getting some fruit tattoos or something to really show the love, I have fears that telling people what I was all night would make the costume "guy who is a fruit" instead of "guy who likes fruit."

Political Cartoon- Dressing up as a political cartoon would be awesome. The actual costumes would be unimportant, but telling people that you're dressed up as a funnel representing the World Bank and that your friend is dressed up as a water bottle representing third-world countries sounds like a hit at the right party. I have no intention of doing this, as I don't have the audience for it, but for readers who do, it's highly recommended.

That's all the juice, currently, but I might be back with more. I'll certainly be back with the end result, and I'm open to suggestions.

facial follicular fantasies

There are a lot of things that I should be doing right now. Impending physics projects, statistics tests, college application deadlines, coupon expiration dates, and newspaper deadlines are all piled upon my proverbial plate.

"How will you handle it, John? How will you cope with all of the stress?"

The answer to these questions is that I'm growing a beard.

In all honesty, the beard began as a 'playoff beard' for the local HS football team, when they clinched their berth, but it has managed to avoid being typecast in that role. The only way I've ever accessorized my face prior to the beard is with acne, and I'm coming out in favor of the beard. I'm considering the Charles Manson look, letting my hair grow long too. Perhaps with a more lustrous beard than the one he sports in this photo:
In non-serial killer related news, does anyone have any beard growing tips? They're for a friend.

we're not related, but I call him uncle sam

When dealing with government, my rule above all else is that it should stay out of my shit, and unfortunately, the current trend is towards less of that and more involvement in my aforementioned shit.

The real problem with the United States is that legally, everything is dependent on the constitution, a document that is outdated and imperfect. Ideally, the constitution would be redrafted every certain amount of time, say around 40 or 50 years, by a group of people similar to the founding fathers, a group that can assess the most recent period of time and say, where did the constitution fail? Where did it excel? What trend is the country following right now?

I don't have time to expound on all of this right now, and indeed, I think I could write a thesis about it, but I want to retain the idea by at least putting it out there.

potatoes

So I am over a month into my final year of high school. I feel pretty safe in saying that high school is a strong competitor in the category of "Most Useless Experiences of My Life." Honestly, school is such a manufactured and fake experience I don't even know why I go anymore. For example, let's agree with the idea that C is average for most schools. Saying that an average C is 75% (at Waunakee it would probably be about 80% because of the seven point scale). That means that the average student doesn't understand 20-25% of the material presented in class. One fourth. They can miss out on one fourth of the knowledge in a course and still get the credits. This is a ridiculous system. And look at grades in a more abstract sense (I feel like I've written about this before). Grades are not at all representative of how much material a student understands. In a perfect world, tests would be the only graded activities. If you can learn everything in the class without doing any extra work, then you should be able to just pass all the tests and get on with your life. Forcing assignments down people's throats that is not going to help them is stupid.

And frankly, in terms of scholastics, college is even worse. To get the degree you're told is just to get a job, you're forced to take completely irrelevant classes. But I'm not going to go any further than that.

Otherwise, life has been pretty mundane since my last post two months ago. I started my new job at the Video Library, which is a pretty pimp job, but very boring sometimes. It has afforded me the opportunity to watch many movies I haven't seen, like The Royal Tenenbaums, Marie Antoinette, and Hot Fuzz though. When I'm not watching movies I'm sitting on my butt quietly contemplating. Less than twenty people come in every shift. Oftentimes it is much, much less than twenty and very, very rarely is it any more than that.

Wow, next time, I'll need a more concrete theme. For now enjoy the potatoes portion of your meal.

Oh, also, I've narrowed my university choice down to a top three: Madison, Minnesota, or Marquette. It doesn't go beyond top three though, I have no preference beyond that really.

meat

I spent this past weekend in Minnesota with the Brothers Flynn, and on the trip to Minneapolis with Sam, we saw an inordinate amount of fireworks stores. Not just a few of them, somewhere around five of them. These were not just roadside operations, but rather, they were huge buildings with equally large billboards extolling the virtues of pyrotechnics.

Now, I'm no businessman (Mark Antony, anyone?), so I have absolutely no idea how these firework facilities can fiscally function for full years between each fourth of July. These places are open all of the time. While I've never truly investigated any of these institutions outside of holiday shopping, the fact that they are key players in organized crime seems to be the only conclusion with any merit, real or imagined.

As for their specific role in organized crime, money-laundering would seem to be the most obvious thing to assign them to, but their potential as storehouses for anything from weapons to drugs seems to be far greater. The fragile way that one handles fireworks would be advantageous to the smuggler, as it lends itself to the handling of other delicates, such as firearms or containers filled with heroin or cocaine.

At some point this year, I'm going to investigate the local branch of these 'firework' operations, Cornelier Fireworks. I don't know exactly what I'll do, but I'll probably just go in and say to whoever is working, "What goes on in here all of the months that aren't July?" and hope that they don't immediately shoot me in the face. My death notwithstanding, it should be an illuminating experience.

the next episode

Even though you haven't seen us in a while, we're prepped for a comeback. Not just a comeback, but specifically vengeance. Our holy pen-sword of blogging acumen will basically rape and pillage the domains of shitty blogs such as Chow Main. Not only will we match in content, but Gil promises that even his defecations upon the keyboard will match in quality. Max Girly still owns us though. We essentially have no recourse for babies.