*hails a passing comet from the the office chair strapped to the navigational buoy on the midnight, star-strewn, tranquil sea. The comet comes near enough to append a small stack of papers, and then it's zipping off into the smiling black.*

Just checking in again. I'm really quite surprised at how the summer's been progressing thus far – a weird mixture of idle nothings, intense experiments (in the GMOD simulator, naturally) and muted progress in a variety of pursuits ranging from room cleaning (little brother's been in here since August, what with the exchange student [who's incidentally leaving within the week] living in his room, and my collegiate absence.) With the recent discovery/introduction to last.fm, the overall mellowness of home life has been enhanced by ambient jazz and quiet indie/alternative interludes occurring while I read about negative utopias, or reminisce quietly to myself under the pretense of tidying things up. To be sure, I've been a-visiting the home-land gang, but (to my chagrin) I've discovered that I'm existing in a sort of flux-state between school, home, and work, each of which are entirely different and independent environments inhabited by uniquely brilliant folk... and each has seen slightly different versions of the original Matt design. Reconciling these facets has proven to be at once, both metaphysically disturbing but in a number of ways curiously new.

( Ack! Waxxing at 2:36am on Tuesday morning. Hmm, we'll need to keep an eye on him. )

(Incidentally, I shall be watching the Star Wars Trilogy all too soon, I bet.)

Holy Cats, Batman, it's been almost an aeon since I've been on the LJ, but now, on this side of the Finals Beast, and in much closer proximity to the Mississippi in general, I have triumphed, Dear Readers!
The fiction I promised you is forthcoming, but first I has needs to wax about my situation.

Home! How sweet and relieving it is to be back. While my room is a veritable sty of clothes and boxes as both I and my brother are in a sort of pseudo-limbo so long as the exchange-student occupies his lair, I have slept extra well on my very own Ikea-wrought bed. My little Klaus-box has been tasked with extracting the files from my MP3 Player, and soon the Zombified Alfred-machine, and I have once again started reading (entirely for entertainment!) The first book on the docket is 1984 by Orwell, but I will be getting to I, Lucifer; Snowcrash, and a heap of Steven King before too long, here.
To turn to the worser things: I have been scheduled to be Dewisdomed this coming Monday at the bright and early hour of 7:00am, and I'm planning to undergo the process: awake. While this may not be the final result, such is the plan.


(a more serious note) My last remaining Grandmother, after more than a year of battling Alzheimer's, has slipped into a coma. My Mum (Grandmom's only daughter) has been having a really rough time of it, but we're very glad that it's been as peaceful as it has. It's been a long hard time for everybody involved, this last year.

Oh, let's see how I can pick up the mood.... At long last, I can write and write as much as I want, like some kind of continuous verbal stream, gushing out through my fingers. Some you'll see, some you won't, but all of it will count towards my livelihood's goal.

Now, for your edification, the edition of the story that won me a whole 500 Smackers in the form of the Margaret W. Baker Prize for the Best Creative Writing by a First-Year Student at Beloit College. Not that I thought it was particularly good, I was more than a little pleasantly surprised to get notice of its success.

Health: 100% Restored
Desk: 75% Cleaner
Workload: Stable
Homework Status: 95% Complete
State of Mind: FRaZzLEd As heLL! ZOMG!

I am reminded of a commercial that went something like this:
A smiling man is seen in a variety of scenes contextualizing his statements, growing progressively more manic as the list goes on. He tells us:
"I own a five room apartment with my wife and two kids. We work every day while the kids are at school. We have a dog and a cat, two cars, and a gently used boat. How do I manage?
I'm in debt up to my eyeballs.
And then it goes into some kind of insurance or credit or bank schpiel (sp?). Something like that anyway. It doesn't matter here.

The point! Sub-Free House is a happening thing! With just a couple of snags (to be perfectly honest, our members are too devoted and too eager, making necessary residency cuts extra painful), the scheme is a go! Persistence seems to be paying off! Who'd've thunk it? *High Fives Hilary galaxy_frog*

*commercial break sized mini-rant about time, desire to watch movies and write for fun, and frustration that school makes you do stuff*

I've been reading Number Our Days by Barbara Meyerhoff for Society and Culture, and as a result mortality and perspective have been some of my recent bedfellows. Strange ones to be sure, but in a weirdly comforting/positively terrifying sort of way. Thank goodness for the 10-Minute Nap, I've no idea what my state of reality would be without it.

Easter dinner went down at Applebee's, and it was a good one. Coupla unfortunatenesses, but not writing those here. Next time, I promise something fictitious. 

ACK!

Why is being home so blissful? Fantastic people clambering to visit me while I'm in town, low key dinner, and tea, and summer luncheon, and LAN, and board game parties, or even just getting together to cram for a test with a tub of cookie dough at the ready, or to watch an episode of Planet Earth and ponder the tenuous state of reality, having a loyal friend over to clean before the rest of the company arrives while jamming out to Motion City Soundtrack or Raymond Scott's Powerhouse, cooking literal vats of chili for a winter camping expedition, plotting summer-time roadtrips, I have a half a dozen other things to add! .... Bemidji! I ... *growls in a contentedly aggravated way*.

The original point of coming home was to relive me of my homesickness! But no! I want to stay for two weeks, or a whole month. There are heinous plots to hatch, memories to forge in the bogs and forests, wood to burn, hay bales to relocate at midnight, dinosaurs to design and discuss. FIE! There I go again.

Godda$&@t, it's the 21st Century! Where's the flipping teleportation technology! I'd settle for continuing to wait on the flying cars if we could (inexpensively, and with very little environmental degradation) transport ourselves instantaneously around the world, or even just across states.

FRUITBASKET!


I love Beloit with a part of my heart that I share with Concordia: a sort of quasi-immaterial connection that is reinforced over time, while home has possession of regions that have, for at least the last four years, developed tendons strong enough, that will prevent forgetting or easy release....

And it's hard for me to identify this attachment as some kind of distaste for growing up: I'm incredibly glad for the ability to do so many of the things we dreamt of as kids, namely: prolonged and well articulated adventures. I totally understand the whole responsibility thing (pfft), I have a summer job that is still fun, while also work. And I seem to have somehow managed to stay on top of the ever increasing heap of words that is college these days.

Rant rant.

I've done wrote a Zombie Moose story (that may or may not have phallic imagery and homo-erotic undertones [srsly, what prompted that? And what do you counter with?]) Alas, rereading it has revealed a number of highly unfortunate corrections that ought to have been made by a more aware Matt person before distribution. We'll have to see how that all goes. Curious as to if folks think the end's a cop-out, or if the pacing's too off. In it's unwholesome and largely unfinished entirety:

Incidentally, I played video games almost all day, except for the part where I ate breakfast, took a shower, and talked to Mum. My eyes feel like they're bleeding. I need a desk lamp, but I left my good one at college. Must find another before my optics rot out of my head-

There we go. This one didn't have a shade, so I put a pumpkin-head candy-basket on top. A little orange for this time of year, but it serves my ends.

Try as I might, I just can't make Viva Pinata as dark or as dismal as I had originally set out to do. Despite the incest, the geometrical paddock organization, the all-too-frequent poisonings and rain storms, my Farm still has a happy-go-lucky charm about it. It's actually starting to erk me ... does this definitively prove that I thrive off of misery and malcontent? I would always play the Dark-side campaign first: Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, Fable, Neverwinter Nights, Morrowind, Oblivion, ... I even found myself sympathizing for the space pirates in EVE, and wondering how I would subvert the kind and generous corporation that took me in from the malevolent void.

Am I Evil?

( Well, that was meant to be rhetorical. )

You. Thank you so much for just being yourself. You don't get enough credit for what you do, but I think it's amazing.

As for You,

I'm waiting to play Super Mario Bros. 3 co-op with You. You can even be Mario.

And You, You've got some dreams to capitalize on, even though You might not think You can get to them right now.

You, on the other hand, need a hug, and I'll be distributing those as soon as I get home or have the sudden impulse. Whichever comes first =).

You, though. We're never. And I mean NEVER using Your family's "Secret Garlic-Bread Recipe" ever again. Your Bruschetta idea was by far and away, more superior.

As for Me. I'm just excited to be half done. Dinosaurs are puzzling me at the moment, though. Cloning didn't turn out to be as profitable as I had hoped.

So, what if, through some horrendous galactic fluke, the asteroid that collided with the Earth to produce the moon (Luna) as we know it, was literally stolen by our gravitational pull from an independent in-between-solar-system with no sun? (Thus, some kind of ... lunar system I guess.)

What if that micro-system belonged to some race of pan-galactic beings, who had purposefully placed this system of moons in a very precise configuration, to pointedly destroy or ruin planets that had grown (through accretion) to sizes able to harbor life (as we know it, for the sake of argument).

What happens when they come back to check on their trap, only to discover living things with a tidally-locked moon? Will they be all like, "Oh SNAP! Guess that's that, then." or something more like, "Send the rest of the horrible moon-rocks at 'em."

I sort of hope for the former.

Who gave me the keyboard? I'm so tired, I shouldn't be worrying about pan-galactic beings. I have a Bible as Lit midterm tomorrow afternoon. AND a presentation for the Residential Life Committee. I'd so much rather play Half-Life 2: Episode 2 or dink around in EVE online or WoW. Shheeeeeoooot. Or read. So many books to read. So much .......... Fffilllthy crap to do before sweet sweet break is mine to hold and love.

Soon you'll be mine, my dear.

All mine.

We Like the Moon, Because it is Close to Us.

IN OTHER NEWS:

The '50's, contrary to what Little Ben might believe or say, were pretty much amazing.

A List of 15 Cool Things that came out of the 50's:

Singin' in the Rain!,
Tupperware,
Elvis,
Jazz,
Monroe, Marilyn,
Bergman's Seventh Seal,
Hitchcock!,
Beatniks,
LOTR!,
Lord of the Flies,
Fahrenheit 451,
I Am Legend,
Atlas Shrugged,
Pollock,
Sputnik.

And there are more things too, these are just 15 I can think of/recover spontaneously.

One of the neater video game premises I can think of, atm, would be some kind of 50's, Dinosaur Fighting, Utopian Society gone all to hell, played in a FPS/RPG mix style.

Hey All,

Just watched two episodes of the Venture Bros. over Papa John's Pizza, and earlier today had a conversation with a one Mr. Baron VonZach, who has kindly consented to assist me in my Arch-Nemesising of a one Distinguished Explorer.... Damn it, I want to write. For my fiction piece for Creative Writing (that I seem to be taking), I expect to explore the world of Arch-Villainy through the eyes of a protagonist with the name:

Cecil J. Newtwell.

I considered spelling it like Neutwell, but after watching exactly half of Aliens, Ms. Emma Orr and myself determined that Newt, with a 'W' is an appropriately unfortunate name indeed. I anticipate robots, mid-jungle skirmishes, and an exciting show-down inside a gigantic cavern with many a phosphorescent tentacle beast, hovering above the scene.