My first couple hours here flew by with unpacking. My first couple days here flew by with introductions, re-introductions, mass cleaning and class. And I'm sure that my year here will fly by in the blink of an eye. And according to the gas station attendent, the movie store employee, and the grocery store clerk...but best summed up by what the computer store worker told me, "School is great...after that, trouble. School is fun...after that, nothing but problems. That's when the problems start."

The night before I drove the six hours to school I went to my first concert. Yes, I'm now dirty and used just like everyone else. But I had a fantastic time. And I got some pictures with Aaron and Christina that will surely end up on the site. Of course you are now asking, "who did you go and see?" Don't ask. You don't know. (oh, and we got lost on the way there...of course)

That night we took more pictures.

The next day, school-Aaron and I went on a smoothie run for a bunch of friends. About 100 yards from the dorm the cardboard thing that is made to hold the drinks somehow dissasembled sending the drinks careening to the ground. The resulting explosion sent smoothie flying in all directions. Aaron scooped some out of a broken cup to have a taste while a cop laughed at us. I now have partially orange spotted pants.

Aaron attacked me with 10 open felt tip pens, streaking color all down my arm, while Megan wrote "I am sexy" on my hand and then told everyone that I was the one who wrote it.

I spent $370 on textbooks that I don't want in the least, and $180 on Windows XP which I don't want in the least. I could buy an incredibly nice acoustic bass for that price.

I just signed up for singing lessons, ate a bowl of EasyMac, and read the first chapter of three books.

Ah...college life is back in full swing.

um...my comments don't seem to work anymore. i went to the site: netcomments but it doesn't seem to exist anymore. maybe i never had a comment thingy and all of you are just figments of my imagination. maybe i'm a skitzo. maybe i've seen Fight Club too many times. maybe i need a new comment thingy. dangit.

I am the concert virgin. I will forever be the concert virgin. I must learn to deal with this.

I made my second attempt to see a concert within the last couple weeks...and met with failure once again. Luckily I have my friends Aaron and Christina to help me pop the proverbial cherry (no, not Aaron and Christina from school...Aaron and Christina from home...yeah...it's confusing). The first attempt was ditched for a rousing game of bowling...made even better by converting our outfits to show off our white ghetto selves (rolled up pant legs, shirt sleeves, etc). The second attempt was a failure due to a corporation that deserves almost as much hate as Pep Boys. Mapquest. Yes, this wolf in sheep's clothing has sent me careening in the wrong direction so many times I have begun to believe that it's all a practical joke. I just haven't found the hidden cameras yet. But like a dog that is beat and comes back to its master wagging its tail, I come back to Mapquest, eager for directions. So to make a long story short...we got to Slims to see Something Corporate and were turned down. I asked a passing security guard if we could take his picture as he yelled at us all to go home...he just laughed in my face. So instead of seeing my first concert, we rented some movies, got McDonalds, and discussed the laws against polygamy.

In light of the $750,000,000 Santana Row-- set to open in less than a month --burning to the ground as I write, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about the ins and outs of shopping. Going to your friendly neighborhood mega-store these days can be dangerous, confusing, and as we saw today...deadly. So here are some hints and tips to follow to make your shopping an enjoyable time.

Picking Your Store- Most important in finding the store that is right for you is checking what the store has in stock. Why shop at a store that fails to carry 1-gallon sized mayonnaise or live cats in jars!?!

Cart Procurement- Once at your store, finding the appropriate shopping cart is essential. It is a known fact that band-aid and ice-pack companies are profiting from carts that suddenly swerve into the shins of shoppers to one's left or right. Fight the system! Buy your own cart that is sure to work right. By revamping this popular model with the engine from the increasingly common Mini, one can peruse the produce isle at an impressive 80mph. And don't forget your safety flag!

Trying New Things- Why be bored with the same old food items you normally pick up? Why not be creative and try something new. Like pink bananas in syrup! Or some Potted Meat Food Product (obviously great on crackers)! Or, heck, get something with a label like THIS...then cross your fingers and pray that it's edible.

Checking Out- So there you are, standing in a huge line waiting to check out. Your cat in a jar is meowing, your electric cart is low on power, all you want is to get home and have a big heaping helping of Potted Meat Food Product but the line is taking forever. Your best bet? Following this easy-to-use chart...prepared just for such a situation.

So you've picked a store, tricked out your shopping cart, made up your mind to try new things, and practiced being an "arrogant bastard" or maybe someone with the "mental doldrums"...so get out there and shop! Oh, and you might want to pack a fire extinguisher on your new cart...you never know when you'll be caught in a 6-acre structure fire.

ok...what the heck? I read someone's site that talked about searching for certain words on google and seeing how soon their site was listed. So I did some of my own research. I typed in 50fifty to see how soon my site would come up. Not only could I not find my site at all, but Crisp's site AND I Make No Promises showed up. Then all the results were Japanese pages. This must be some kind of conspiracy.

So imagine an x-games veteran gone bad toting product placements in the form of sports drinks, energy drinks, clothing, cars, and sports equipment spouting lines straight from the worst acting coach in Hollywood and you have a perfect image of XXX. Other than male teenagers and those too cracked out to realize that major movie theatres have not suddenly decided to put porn on the big screen, this movie would appeal to nobody. Then again it did have its high points. Like a guy wearing a jacket and no shirt in a night club using a really bad russian accent saying, "bitches...come" to summon the barely dressed, appropriately named "bitches" to do God knows what with him. So all in all this movie made realize three things. 1- I really want to go to a Rammstein concert...I love fire. 2- Russians would probably be offended by this movie since one of the most in-depth conversations the bad guys had was: bad guy 1: How's it going? bad guy 2: Life is sh*t. bad guy 1: Well, what can you do? 3- Vin Diesel (or however you spell his name) can't act...even though he has a line in the movie where he mocks someone's acting. Oh, and the end credits are so distracting that it proves one of two things. Either nobody wanted people realizing they worked on this film, or the guy in charge of the end credits got shafted and took revenge by making it impossible to notice the names.

Speaking of movies, my good friend Jordan and I recently tackled the urban legend of the "hanging lovelorn midget" from The Wizard of Oz. If you're not in the know, supposedly one of the munchkins hung him/herself in the background of one of the scenes. Some of the stories even said it was murder. So of course we had to find out. Jordan brought over the tape and we single framed our way through the appropriate scene. I was sorely disappointed to find out it was just some large bird silhouetted in the background. Pretty unmistakable, but if you want to see for yourself...go to the scene just after the tin man sings his little song (which by the way seems to be the least known of the songs in that movie...probably because of his wacky accent...which is too bad since I was the tin man once) and the witch shoots a fireball at them. Then they go skipping and singing like full fledged gays on a San Fransisco street off into the background and STOP!!! It's right there. Slightly behind a tree, dead center, upper portion of the screen. Right at the end you see it flap its wings. After nearly crying in disappointment we went to McDonalds to get some McFlurries. So now I'm bent on getting the Pink Floyd album (which one is it?) that is supposed to match up with the movie in perfect unison. If that ends up failing I just might have to kill myself. Maybe by wondering onto a movie set and hanging myself in the background where nobody notices and starting a true urban legend.

And I changed some stuff with the about me page, added some more in the "my photography" section, changed the comment thingy to match the site, added a new link to my friend Aaron's band Demeri Followed, and saved the world while I was at it. You can thank me by giving me large sums of money.

Hey...I uh...made a couple small changes. See if you can't figure out what.

It was 5:45am and we were driving to Pismo Beach. I was drinking an Odwalla drink, which, if I remember right, was strawberry and banana flavored. I don't really like bananas, but I still liked the drink. I was in the way back of the van, which has cup holders on the sides. I leaned over and set my drink in one of said cupholders and it suddenly disappeared. I realized that the cup part of the cupholder was removed, so my drink fell into the inner recesses of the van. Which I found particularly funny. I leaned over to fish it out when a huge boom sent shockwaves through the car. I leaned up and looked at the windshield, which now had a smashed circle with a foot wide radius right in the center. Thin lines spiderwebbed from the circle and reached the very edges of the windshield. Everyone in the car just sat there and stared at it...dead quiet. Finally I said what was that? My dad responded with a rock, like it was a normal everyday thing.

I don't remember the last time I was that exhausted. Or this exhausted. But I got to build part of an icon screen for a big church. And I learned how to wire electricity for a house. But amidst spraying giant wasp nests with poison and dodging the pissed off renegades who survived, drilling hundreds of holes through wood planks, installing windows on the second story, and avoiding losing limbs to the various large bladed machines, I had a fun time. Except for my near death experience, which wasn't so fun. He has a backhoe (one of those big yellow machines with a hoe on the back and a huge shovel on the front) He fixed it so he can raise the huge shovel part and stand on it to work on the second story. There I was with the other guy, kneeling on the huge shovel, and holding a sliding glass door that was going on the second story. Then he raised the shovel. At about the 20 foot up level the spring for reverse broke and all hell broke loose. It was kind of like those fake bucking bronco things in the western bars, only there was nothing to hold onto. So he's yanking on levers and we're lifting in the air and falling back down and trying to not fall off and break our necks. I literally thought I was going to fall off and die. But maybe I was over-reacting.

Time to visit an old friend for a couple days.

Talk amongst yourselves while I'm gone.

I have once more donned the disguise of Lobster Boy whose main power is to scream really loudly when somebody pokes his sunburn. Luckily my sunburn is on my face, and I usually don't have people walking up to me and poking my forehead. When that starts happening, so does the murdering...and we all know that's a bad thing. The reason I am Lobster Boy is because I went to Great America and walked around in the sun all day. And one of the group had an un-needed wheelchair because she left the park for lunch and someone hit her car, so she got a wheelchair for kicks and got us to the front of all the lines. Being gimpy has its advantages. I would know. I'm gimpy in the brain. Oh, and Lobster Boy has one other known power...only he has this power whether or not he is firetruck red. You know the muscle that makes your eyebrow go up and down? I'll deem it the eyebrow muscle out of sheer lack of knowledge. Well, my left eyebrow muscle has been twitching for days. Yes...days. But it's off and on. And always at night. So when I'm trying to sleep, my eyebrow muscle twitches out of control. I'm still not sure how this amazing twitching power helps me, but I'm still doing tests. So for now, if you want to find me, I'll be running around at night. Not because I'm fighting crime, but because being in direct sunlight hurts too much.

Everyone wants what they can't have. Even if those who have what they want explain why it's not so great. Think about it. Those with over-protective parents always want parents who never ask any questions. Those with "uncaring" parents always want parents who show concern...even if it is constant. (I have the over-protective kind, and of course wish I did not). Girls with large chests always want smaller chests. Those with small chests always want larger chests. (and if you think I'm just guessing, I've talked to many girls about this. I personally side with the larger breasted girls...smaller is better...though nobody ever believes me). Those with nothing to do always want busier lives. Those with busy lives always want more down time. So um...yeah...I swear I was going somewhere with this. Nevermind...I'm going to work out because I want large muscles...even though I've been told it's not that great.