Warning: Personal rant next 5 miles.
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Back in LA. Bleh. Finals week went by in a whiz, and everything more or less worked out. I think I actually did well on my calc exam, if finishing 40 minutes early and checking over the damn thing three times is a good thing. I had to pull an all-nighter to do my compsci project (partially because I spent 3 hours the evening before shooting ducky footage), but I had enough to show the prof for the demo. Actually, I stayed up for 42 hours straight (well, okay, i kind of took a nap while watching a movie) that day (9am Wednesday to 3am Friday) too. I think it's a new record for me.

Now I'm back in LA, and life ain't so good. No Reg, no Bartlett, no homework, no papers, no stupid compsci projects, no all-nighters in the A-Level, no frozen puddles, no icicles, no prospect of snow, no squirrels, no wireless (or even decent wired-) internet, no friends, no movies at Doc, no filming ducky, no nothing. And what's worse, I still have 3 weeks before I can go back. What am I to do?

There was this cute girl from my school on the flight back to LA. She sat in the row behind me... I should've talked to her. But I didn't. Of course.

I'm going to have to file this under the "Non-existent Life" section. First one in a long time I'm afraid...

My first weekend since classes started is about to end, and I believe an update is due. Actually, I should be working, but what the heck. It's not even 11pm.

On Thursday (or was it Wednesday?) Donny George Youkhanna from the Iraq State Board of Antiquities came to do a little presentation, where he talked about his experiences at the Iraq Museum during the US invasion. He was one of the 5 people actually in the museum when US forces entered Baghdad. He was here thanks to the Oriental Institute which is the real-life home of Indie Jones (who was based on an actual U of C prof).

Sometime last week, Prof. Coetzee won the Nobel Prize in literature. He currently teaches at the U of C, which brings the total number of Nobel laureates related to the university up to 75. In general though, the "normal" reaction upon hearing this news here appears to be, either to sigh or groan. It seems like us new students are the only ones excited about it...

On Friday night, I had my first shift as AP (Assistant Projectionist) at Doc Films, which was very exciting. I knew absolutely nothing about projecting film, so it was a completely new experience for me. Apparently you're supposed to start with 16mm before doing 35mm, but they messed up and scheduled me on Fridays, which is all new 35mm film. We projected the Hulk, which comes in 8 reels. Basically, there are 2 projectors, and you alternate back and forth. Considering this day and age, I was expecting something heck of a lot more high-tech than what we (and probably most theaters) use. Loading the film entails passing the film through 5 gates and sprockets, making sure that the frame is lined up right (which is done visually) and also ensuring that there is enough (but not too much) slack in certain places. Then you forward to the 7 second frame (basically, you see a big "7"), and you're done. When the reel on the active projector starts to run low, you get ready by the other projector and stare at the upper right hand corner of the screen. Eventually, a dot flashes, and you turn on the motor, then the lamp. Another few seconds later, the second dot flashes, and you bang on a foot pedal which makes the switch happen. Since each reel is about 15 minutes long, and it takes me nearly that long to load up a new reel, I really didn't get to watch much of the movie, except when Jason (the projectionist) was loading reels... In the furture, I'll probably go to early showings (with my free volunteer pass :-) so that I'm not too distracted by the actual movie when I'm projecting.

Today was the first meeting for Fire Escape Films. The main purpose of the meeting was to meet the officers, then split up into groups with whom we will be working this quarter on our intro projects. They had a few past members with their own ideas, but they also asked new members to present their own ideas, if they had any. I would've been perfectly happy going with one of the existing projects, but I decided to do my own, because I'm crazy like that. One other person was interested mine, and there were a couple of other groups that only had two people, so we all joined and formed the "Experimental" group. Basically, we're going to make all 3 movies, except we can get help from the others. We also have two "mentors" who will help us figure things out as we go...

I only had a rough idea of what I wanted to do when I presented it at the meeting, but it's since evolved into an action-packed thriller with a surprise ending. Titled "The Beast", it entails swooping camera action (i.e. flinging expensive cameras around at high speeds), murder, and a rubber ducky. That's all I can say for now, but it's going to kick ass.

I just got back from a pre-release showing of School of Rock, which turned out to be better than I had anticipated. No, wait, ahhh! That's what them evil distributors want me to say. That's why they were giving out free tickets. So I'll shut up now.

Speaking of which, I managed to get a volunteer position as Assistant Projectionist at Doc Films, which means I get to learn how to operate the 16mm and 35mm projectors, and get a free season ticket for two. They have showings every night (2 or 3 on weekends), and I got the third Friday shift which usually starts around 10 or 11pm. That kinda kills my Friday evenings, but I figured I probably wouldn't be doing much then anyway.

Classes started yesterday, and I'm 75% satisfied. The 25% that I'm unhappy with is my Calc class, which sucks no matter what. But I'm really happy with my other classes. My Hum ("Readings in World Lit") and Soc ("Classics in Social and Political Thought") classes seem like a lot of work (~100 pages of reading per week + a paper every other week), but it's pretty interesting. And we actually have real discussions, although I do wish the groups were smaller (they cap at 20-25). I'm also taking 3D Graphics, which sounds like it'll be pretty fun. The projects will be easy to start ('cause I've dabbled with OpenGL before) and the theory should be relatively familiar (since I've written that 3D graphics engine). The professor's pretty interesting (his teaching style is a lot like Tyson's -for those of you who know him), and what's more, we get to use the 1.8GHz PowerMac G5's in the MacLab. MacOS X is the preferred platform in U of C's CS department, Linux is accepted/supported, and Windows isn't even talked about. You just have to love that...

Anyway, I think I should go do some reading. I think I have about 100 pages to read from Plato's "Republic" by Thursday...

I was going to write a longish post about my last day of summer break (classes start tomorrow) but I also want to get a decent night's sleep one last time... So, instead, I'll just talk about my day.

The main event today, I guess, was the student activities fair. There are several hundred officially recognized student organizations, and they all had booths in one of the gyms. Most organizations are loosely formed, and are usually centered around mailing lists. So, basically, all the booths had sheets of paper so that people who were interested could write down their name and email address. I basically went around and signed up for just about every organization that sounded remotely interesting, or were giving out free stuff. I can't even remember half the orgs I signed up for, but I'm getting a flood of "welcome to the xyz mailing list" messages... I'm guessing I'll actually join Doc Films (student run film theater), Fire Escape Films (they make movies), and the Outdoor Adventure Club.

The only other real event for the day was the first real House meeting with most people present. It was the first time I got to see everybody living in Stony, which was kind of nice. Afterwards, everybody who was interested in joining the house council stuck around... and being the crazy guy that I am, volunteered to become the Dining Rep. Apparently I'm supposed to go to meetings every now and then to talk about various issues relating to the dining halls, and lobby to make things happen. From what people have told me, my first priority is to try and get more tables or a bigger table for Stony in the dining hall (each house gets designated tables, but we just have 2 4-person round tables).

BTW, my photoblog section is up to date, so you might want to check that out if you haven't in the last few days...

It's the last weekend before classes start, so there's a sense of urgency in the air. All the new students know that the last week's been insanely fun, and some of the fun will turn to stress starting Monday. But over all, spirits are high. My roommates have arrived, so it's not nearly as quite around here. I'm still mostly hanging out with the other transfers and people I hung out with during O-Week, partially because everybody else in Stony seems to be less social... Hopefully that'll change though.

Yesterday was a pretty slow day... I can't remember much of what happened during the day, but in the evening, the Museum of Science and Industry was opened up to all U of C students. We got free cookies and brownies, free Omnimax tickets, and got to wander around the museum for a couple of hours. After that, a bunch of other transfers went to a party. I went along, but the queue, thumping music coming out the doors, and the $3 cover turned me around before I got in. So, instead, I threw a frisbee around with Nichole in the parking lot until 2:30am...

Today, I went on a short tour of Chinatown (which included a free dimsum lunch), then went to a reception on the observation deck of the John Hancock building. This annual tradition is usually accompnied by a minor prank, usually in the form of people drawing in an adjacent beach. This year, I and two fellow Stony Islanders (Eric and Nicole) decided to etch our mark in the sand as well (it says "Stony Rocks"). The other Stony Islanders liked it, although the "rocks" was more of a pun than a literal declaration...

I think a bunch of us are headed to some frat party in half an hour or so. I'd normally stear clear of frat parties, but it's worth going to at least once, and just about everybody I know (including firsties) are going to it. We'll see how it goes.

Things are definitely starting to wind down, although there's still plenty to do. Today's highlights:

• Slept in until 10:30... although since I was up until 4am, that was only 6.5 hours of sleep.
  
• After an early lunch, went to a meeting about my loans. After that, turned in some paper work with financial aid, and a petition to transfer one of my courses.
  
• Went to an UT informational session. It's funny because theater people are the same everywhere... it's scary almost. This bunch reminded me of the group I was in in Japan, which, despite it being something that reminds me of Japan isn't a bad thing. Pete, my host from my over-night visit, is designing lights for a show and is apparently looking for a ME (Master Electrician). Not sure if I'll have time, but I might be interested (if nothing else, I'll go help hang lights).
  
• Took a tour of the Rockefeller Chapel tower, which included up close and personal views of various parts of the carillon (the musical bell things), which is actually the second largest in the country, and the largest one built in a single installation (the largest carillon is in New York). The largest of the 70 bells weighs 18.5 tons, and all but the 6 largest bells are actually manually operated by the player. The actual console used for playing looks somewhat like an organ, but instead of keys, there are huge foot pedals and handles that the player literally bangs with a fist. The six largest bells are run by an air-powered system. Again, I took pictures, but I'm too lazy to put them up on the site... Another interesting tidbit is that the whole thing is tuned to A-flat. Unlike most other instruments, you can't really tune a carillon. Instead, when the largest carillon is cast, it is tuned to whatever note happens to be closest, and all subsequent bells are created to be in tune with that first bell. That's why carillons almost always sound "out of tune".
  
• After dinner, there was a "Aim of Education" address. Personally, I didn't find the speech to be provocative, inspirational, educational, or anything else and seemed a bit too bland. After that, we went back to the RH's apartment for a discussion session, and that ended up lasting 5 hours (at least for Peter and I who stayed until the end) instead of the alloted 2 (most of us were initially planning on going to the movie in the quads at 10pm). Although, I think we only talked about the speech for an hour and a half... after that, we got into a heated debate on national identity. Now that I think of it, I think I started it (oops) and I didn't even get my point across until long after most people left.
  

Another exciting day... Some highlights:

• Signed up for classes. I'm taking Readings in World List for Hum, Classics of Social and Political Thought for Soc, calulus, and 3D Graphics (which might be kinda silly because I've written a 3D graphics engine, and the course seems to be on OpenGL, not the theory of 3D graphics).
  
• Went on tour of The Regg (the biggest library on campus, with over 4.5 of the 7 million items U of C has) and saw Enrico Fermi's Nobel prize, and a letter CC'd to Fermi (with a hand written note) dating back to 1939, which discusses the possibility of using nuclear energy as a weapon.
  
• Had job interview with USITE. I won't know for sure until next week, but I think it went really well. The opening is for one of the two major labs that they have, and it sounds like a pretty good job. Starts at $10/hour, and they have very flexible hours (the labs are open until 1am).
  
• Over dinner, decided with a bunch of friends to go on a crusade to turn Squirrel Fishing into an inter-house sport (or some form of tradition) at U of C. I've written a draft of the ground rules, and we're planning on doing a trial run sometime in the next couple of days. So far, there are 4 people involved (and another person has shown interest), which means we just need 1 or 2 people to start an RSO (an official student organization).
  
• We then went to Doc films (the nation's oldest film society) to watch a bunch of short films made by Fire Escape Productions (a student film-production group), which ranged from entertaining to extremely bizzarre...
  
• Party at Reynolds... not too much there. All the food was gone by the time we got there. Except, I got to watch Peter work on his new writing system. In the process, he described a binary system that might act as a high-density barcode replacement. Basically, each character would be capable of representing 16-bits (i.e. 2 bytes).
  
• Oatmeal at Nicky's. I started the day with oatmeal, ended it with oatmeal... Yay for oatmeal.
  

I just got back from my first real U of C party... it was a blast. It was technically a "transfers party" but a couple of O-Aids from Stony came along, and I think there were a few 1sties in there too. It was held in one of the huge suites in Shorey (Shoreland - a 12 story hotel converted into a dorm). It was pretty much what U of C parties are famous for... there was ample booze, music (and some isolated dancing) but otherwise, it was a bunch of people huddled in small groups engaged in all sorts of interesting discussions. For example, at one point, Jakob, Peter and I (all Stony Islanders) started talking about the Beatles, then about exactly what art was. It was awesome. After that, I mostly hung out with Peter because he's practically the embodiment of information. He knows stuff about just about every possible topic you can throw at him, and he's eager to share it so you can't tire listening to him. We finally got kicked out because of complaints (there were at least 25 people there) but it was great fun nonetheless... I look forward to going to more parties in the future (and that's another thing you would've never thought you'd hear from me).

I spent most of the morning talking to advisors, and things are looking workable. Last night, I managed to chart out my remaining course work and found that it could fit into 6 quarters. I spoke to the CompSci counselor at length, and she was able to transfer all 5 CompSci classes from Chico, which leaves me with 9 courses. She was also able to help me chart out a plan for the next 6 quarters, that fit right into the preliminary plans I had written out last night.

The only other major event for the day was a "Sex Signals" presentation. Basically, it was a two-person (one guy one girl) act that covered various communication issues, gender stereotypes, and other issues like date rape in a series of skits and improvs. Unlike a lot of similar events you'd see at colleges, this was more or less entertaining, although not exactly educational.

Anyway, I have to get up in about 5.5 hours to meet my advisor and sign up for classes... After 4 months of getting all the sleep I wanted, I haven't quite adjusted to the 6-7 hour/night sleep cycle, but I'll get there, I'm sure. Or, I hope. Oh, I also have a job interview at 3:45. Better not forget...

I think things are starting to wind down a bit, although today was another full packed day. I somehow managed to get up at 7:30, showered (imagine that... it hasn't even been a week since my last one), and went to grab some breakfast before taking the Russian placement test. Over all, I didn't do well, but unlike the calc test, I felt like I was able to say what I knew how to say, and do the things that I knew how to do. I just got an email earlier saying that I basically failed it (i.e. I have to start from scratch) but I'm not too concerned. I'm going to take the Japanese competency exam to get rid of the foreign language requirement, and perhaps audit some Russian classes if my schedule permits.

After lunch, I bumped into Lindsay, one of my Chicago Life leaders and fellow Stony Islander so we walked to Ida Noyles for our second Chicago Life meeting. I'm not sure what Ida Noyles used to be, but it's one of the really old buildings on campus, with an amazing interior. The walls have dark wood panelling, and the railings on the stairs have all sorts of cool carvings on them. I kept thinking how it'd make a great location for a movie set in the late 19th or early 20th centuries...

After that, the masters of each core division did a short talk in the theater in the Reynolds Club (basically the student union). Some talked about the historical process of how the core requirement came to be, or what the main principles and goals were, then talked a bit about some of the courses. Basically, the U of C core (which apparently was the fore front of liberal arts education as we know it today) consists of 7 major groups: Humanities, Social Sciences, Civilization, Arts/Drama/Theatre, Math, Physical Sciences, and Biological Sciences. The first four are pretty much common for all concentrations (U of C lingo for "majors"), but the last 3 differ slightly depending on whether you're concentration is in the math/sciences or not. So if you're a PoliSci major, you can take stuff like Astronomy to fulfill the Physical Sciences, but us CompSci concentrators can't (well, we can, but then we'd still have to take calc). On the other hand, us CompSci people can take stuff like "Bioterrorism" for Biology (after taking 1 class of real bio). In my case, only one class transferred as Civilization, so I still have 14 units to go.

One of the main concerns so far has been how the heck I'm supposed to graduate in 2 years when I still have practically all my core, and half my concentration left to do. You see, most people spend more than 2 years on their Core, so I have to do it all plus more in less time. It turns out that if all my CompSci courses from Chico transfer, I can do it in 6 quarters (2 years) provided that I take 4 classes every quarter (3 is considered a full load). I actually wrote a grid and practically planned out all my classes for the next 6 quarters. I'm sure things won't go according to plan, and I still need to talk to my advisor about it, but it looks like it might almost be doable. The only bad thing about the plan I put together is that I manage to finish my Core on my 5th quarter, and end up taking 4 CompSci classes during my last quarter here...bleh.

Okay, I need to create a new section called "life" because what I'm living through seems to have more of a semblance of life than anything I've had in recent years. No, I don't have a love life or a sex life (yet) but I have a social life (yeah, can you believe that?), which is more than a geek life (which is like saying, "existence of absence").

Anyway, let's see.... I really need to go to bed (Russian placement test at 9am tomorrow... gotta study before that). Today, I talked to the transfer person, ate lunch, went to a Chicago Life meeting (one of those intro to college type small group sessions) where there were 4 people I knew (well, including one I didn't know but she knew me), and then failed my 3 hour calculus placement exam (recognized a lot of it, but couldn't remember how to do it... 2 years of no math does that to you). Then, I came back to Stony and hung out with a few other xfers, then went and got some chow with them, then went downtown (mmm Hot Chocolage Sundae) and walked around for a couple of hours. I got back about an hour ago, and have spent the time translating course descriptions from Keio (the university I went to in Japan).

I want to put up the pictures I've taken, but I just don't have time. No, that's not the typical Ryo-style "I don't have time" (which usually means, "I'm too lazy"), I actually mean "I don't have time". Which basically means, "I have more important things to do... like getting a decent night's sleep before a Russian test."

Okay, gotta run...er, sleep. Oh, and leave a comment so I know you guys are reading this (thanks for the last one Mr. Hodes!).

I'm in Chicago... yay!!! Okay, I've been waiting for this day for the last, oh... 9 months or so, and the fact that I've had 2 hours' sleep in the last 25 hours makes it feel more magical.

We left LA at 9 pm last night, had a lay-over in Las Vegas, and landed in Chicago O'Hare at a little past 5am (Central). I didn't sleep on the flight to Vegas, and got at most 2 hours' sleep on the flight to Chicago. After that, we rented a minivan, had breakfast at a hotel near my dad's company's Chicago office, picked up the luggage I had sent two weeks ago (on the day I drove over my PowerBook) at 7:30am. I was in front of my dorm at 8:07, was then directed to a different dorm for check-in, only to learn that the lady there didn't know people were arriving at our dorm today (there are only 5 transfer students arriving today). Eventually, I managed to move everything into my apartment.

Oh, my apartment. Yeah, it's great. It's really big for a dorm (even an "apartment-style dorm"). There's a big huge kitchen area, two bathrooms (for 4 of us), a pretty big livingroom area, and the bedrooms (which I'm sharing with one other person) are pretty big too. What's more, it's located right across from the Museum of Science and Industry, perhaps one of the coolest science/tech museums in the country. Like, today, they were flying an exact replica of the 1903 Wright Flier on the front lawn. Right across form our apartment/dorm. If it weren't for all the trees (yay for trees!), I probably could've seen it from my bedroom window.

Oh, and there's wireless. Yup. In my room. They told me all the dorms had wireless, but not all the rooms did. But I do in my room. Two-bars dude. Except, when I authenticated, it told me to reboot... how lame. Of course, I turned AirPort on and off, switched to ethernet, etc and eventually got online without rebooting. *Shrugs*

Anyway, after seeing the replica Wright Flier attempt to fly and fail, we headed to the Reynolds Club for registration. Considering the amount of people, and the amount of stuff we had to do, it was very well organized. First we had to pick up our schedule (for O-Week), get a bunch of freebies (t-shirt, cup, a big huge folder full of stuff, and more stuff), then sign up for language placement tests (I signed up for Russian and German). Then we were ushered over to Reggs (the main library) to get our ID cards, and then got a bag from NSIT (the network/tech guys) that had stuff like a CAT-5 cable and bunch of pamphlets inside. Oh, in the library, they also had stations where you could download some Orientation related program on to a Palm. I had my Visor with me, so I checked it out. Cool stuff.

I took my dad on a quick tour of campus, showed him the quads, the hammer and sickle statue, etc, then went to the Financial Aid office. The good news was that they'd finally processed my application. The bad news was that we got heck of a lot less than we hoped for. Part of it might've been because they thought my brother was a grad student, and not an 8th-year undergrad, so we haven't heard the last of it yet. Anyway, officially, we're still not sure how we're going to pay for it. My dad and I did some brainstorming over lunch (in Bartlett, a gym-turned-cafeteria rated 2nd best in the country) and decided to start a company. Unlike the other times I "started a company", we're literally starting a company but without a business (unlike the other times when I tried to have a business without a company). I have a few ploys for milking, er making money, and if all else fails, I might turn IlohaMail into the ultimate webmail program and hold it ransom. Before that though, I'm going to see if I could get some scholarships or a grant for my work on IlohaMail. After all, I've got upwards of 100,000 people using it... somebody's gotta be willing to pay (I know, I'm starting to sound like the RIAA).

Anyway, we're just taking a quick break back in my room. Opening Convocation is at 3pm, then there's a bagpipe procession... whatever that is. I haven't met very many people, mostly because there's nobody here in my dorm (although I think I've met just about everybody who is here). But I've been enjoying the sights... don't let them fool you when they say "the squirrels are cuter than the girls." It's true, but only because the squirrels are extremely cute, not because the girls aren't cute... they are. Well, at least I think they are. The girls, I mean. The squirrels too.

I received my preliminary transfer evalutions from U of C. They were supposed to have sent it to me way back in May, but apparently my file never made it to the right person until I emailed them last week. In any case, it says I still need to take 21 to 28 classes which should take 7-9 quarters, or 2-3 years (there are three actual quarters in a year, not counting summer) to finish my CompSci degree (not sure if it's the BA or BS).

Unfortunately, most of my credits only transfer as electives, which means I have less of an excuse to take classes "just for fun", and only one of my classes will transfer as a General Ed (or "Core" as they call it). But then, their Core requirement is something I actually look forward to, so it doesn't bother me too much. Also, if all my CSCI classes from Chico transfer, I'll only have 9 more CompSci classes to go, which comes down to around 1 per quarter.

The real remaining concern is financial aid. We're supposed to get our first bill sometime in the next week or so, but we haven't heard back from the financial aid people, which means we really don't know how we're going to pay for it all. This has been an interesting experience for me, because it's actually the first time in my life that I've needed more money than I can muster (either myself or with my parents' help). We don't consider ourselves rich, but our family has always been able to afford what we needed, plus a little extra, until now. My dad apparently couldn't sleep the day I got my admissions letter because no matter how we ran through the numbers, he knew it was more than he could afford. But I've been telling him not to worry too much. I'll take what they can give, but I'll pay the rest by getting loans. I don't really care much for money, but if I come out of college with a $100k loan, I probably wouldn't have a choice but to make money. And I figured, if I really had to make money, I probably could too. There's not a whole lot that I've really wanted to do that I couldn't do after all.

I got back from Chicago yesterday (or Sunday), after spending the weekend there. Even though I really didn't have much time, I did manage to pop over to Hyde Park to meet up with one of my soon-to-be roommates, Gary. He's a total geek, it's awesome. If the other two are anything like him, I'm in for a really good year. Unfortunately, I only had about an hour before I had to get back downtown and head for the airport, but we had a good conversation over breakfast anyway. That says something because I don't have good conversations with very many people, and it's one of the reasons I'm going to U of C: I know I can have good conversations with people there. Towards the end, we started talking about girls, inevitably, but then listening to myself, I almost felt like some horny baller from out West. I know those of you in Chico are gasping in horror (or laughing in disbelief), so let me offer you a little conversion table that might help:

	in Chico	at U of C
You're horny if	you haven't had sex in two days.	you think about girls.
You're a baller if	your goal in life is to sleep with as many girls as possible.	you're interested in meeting/dating girls.
You're a pimp if	your best estimate of the number of girls you've slept with is only accurate to the nearest 10^n (where n>2).	you have the guts to ask a girl out.

So as you can see, in Chico, I wasn't even horny because being horny assumes that you actually have a sex life. At Chicago though, I'll be somewhere between a baller and a pimp, and if I live up to my aspirations, I be pimpin' for real G.

Oh, this actually might be a good time to unveil my Scary Old Man Test script I wrote. With this nifty little program, I can easily make sure a potential is old enough to date without rendering myself a "scary old man". Having to check actually might make me a "scary old man", but well, sometimes we just have to pick our poison. Anyway, how it works is, you put in the girl's birth date, and it calculates whether or not the girl is old enough. If she's not, it'll also calculate when she'll become old enough (basically, it's when my age is twice the sum of the difference between our ages and seven years). Unfortunately, PHP's date functions (or perhaps the POSIX functions themselves) choke if the date is beyond 2035, so I know I'm in trouble if it spits out a date in 1905.

At any rate, I was actually in Chicago to attend a wedding. Well, sort of. I was there to see Kathryn, the sister of the groom and one of my best friends (there were two) from high school. Her brother (the groom) was also my brother's best friend from high school, and that completes the loop. Anyway, I had a great time. I actually dressed up (sorry, no photos yet) and, believe it or not, was forced into dancing in public for the first time since... since 8th grade, I think. Well, if you could call Ryo stumbling randomly "dancing", that is. The thought of it still makes me cringe (and it probably has the same effect for the poor souls who had to watch) and it probably will for the rest of my life, but, alas, I seem to be free of symptoms for PTSD.
I also got to see people I hadn't seen in years, and quite frankly, didn't think I'd ever see again. I was very happy to see Danny, who used to bug us in the sound and light booth all the time, and whom I had to kick out all the time (and then do whatever possible to keep him out). I didn't have a problem with letting "unauthorized personnel" in the booth as long as they behaved themselves and didn't interfere, but Danny failed on both counts without exception. One time he lasted for 5 minutes, but then threw M&Ms at us when I commented on how well he was behaving. Anyways, jump forward 5 years (I think), and he's not a little kid any more. He's over 6 feet tall (at least tall enough to make my neck hurt), and furthermore, he's very well behaved and even picked up a crisp British accent. I felt sorry for him because it turned out that his school in England didn't let students do theatre tech, but at least he's learned to calm down, which I think will open up more doors for him than he might know. Of course, I can only be happy for him because I don't know of the horrors he must've gone through to actually learn to behave that well...
Apart from Danny, I also saw a couple of kids that I baby sat a few times back in Germany. I probably would've baby sat them more if I hadn't gotten addicted to a game they had and kept one of 'em up until their parents came home. I don't know if that was the official reason, but I was never invited back after that... It still felt great to seem them all grown up though.
And then there was Katie, a childhood friend of Kathryn's, whom I'd actually met the Summer of '96. I don't think we did much together that summer, and perhaps the only reason I even remember having met her was because she was the first girl I was attracted to after getting out of a traumatic infatuation (and I'm not kidding when I say "traumatic"; it literally changed my personality, and took 4 years before I could think about it without getting depressed). Anyway, we got along for some reason (I think... yay for low esteem) and I'm debating whether I should email her (and we all know how often I even get email addresses).

You know, it just occurred to me that these blog entries are so un-manly (which makes it feminine, I guess), especially that last block of text. If you cut that out, changed around the genders of one or two characters and showed it to people, I'm fairly certain that most of them would assume the author to be female. No wonder everybody thought I was gay. Or maybe I am and I'm in denial. Denial is a scary thing. I could be an alien in denial, a Jesus reincarnate in denial, a genius in denial, a mass murderer in denial, or possibly even dead and in denial. I mean, who can provide empirical evidence for any of these things? Anyway, back to the whole gender-of-the-author question, which actually might be a pretty big gender issue. Feminists (and others) claim that men are the oppressors, which is true, but I think we've just found an example of men oppressing themselves (or ourselves). Machismo is a masculine concept in that it's imposed by men on other men, however, in many respects, it's just as restrictive as male endorsed ideals of femininity. And that makes me wonder. You've got feminists looking out for women, and the gay culture looks out for their own, but who looks out for effeminate men who aren't gay? But then, maybe we don't need anyone to look out for us because we slip under the radar... I mean, after all, nobody's ever gotten eggs thrown at them for writing effeminate posts in their blog. Or I could flip the whole issue on its head and say all men are in denial: they'd write girly posts if they only had the guts to do so. So there.

I went clothes shopping with my mom today. Actually, let me be more specific. I went shopping for clothes to wear at a wedding I'm attending this weekend. For those of you who don't know me that well, I have a rule that goes "any occasion that requires me to dress up is not worth going." Of course, I make exceptions (once every few years, literally) but the bottom line is, I hate dressing up.

When I'm told to dress a certain way against my will, I consider it a blatant attack on who I am. I see it as another example of society's lack of respect for individuality, and the individual. I don't think I'm being excessively individualistic or self-centered when I say that. I understand full well that from time to time, sacrifices on the part of individuals are needed to serve a greater good. But the way one dresses is not such a case. I mean, what function does one's attire serve, apart from classification, conformation, and segregation? In fact, is making judgments about people based on attire any different to making assumptions based on skin color? Sure, you can change your clothes more easily than you can change your skin color. But isn't it fundamentally the same in that you're making judgments solely based on physical appearances?

My mom thinks my aversion towards dressing up is immature, and I can't deny that I might sound like some punk kid. She tells me that it's just the way it is and that I should suck it up and accept it. It appears that, often times, growing up means to conform, or worse, accept injustices as being inevitable and unavoidable. But, as immature as I may be, I also know just enough history to know that social norms are not to be trusted. After all, at one point in time, slavery was the norm. At another time and place, extermination of Jews was the norm. If being accused of immaturity is the only consequence for questioning the norm, then that is a risk I'm willing to take.

In any case, it really isn't that extreme. It's not like I was insisting on going to the wedding in t-shirts and cargo shorts; I just didn't want to wear a business suite. My mom thinks someone my age should own a business suite, and she went through a whole list of reasons. I'll need to wear a suite to my dad's funeral, if he's killed in a plane crash ("Mom, let's deal with that if and when it happens"), if I go to a job interview ("Mom, I'll be in college for a few more years"), if I win some prestigious award ("So what, they're going to retract my award if I don't dress up?"), or if I meet some rich girl and she insists I wear a suite when I meet her parents ("Mom, any girl I date will be more understanding than you"). After a while, though, I realized that my hatred for business suites was unusually strong, which usually implies some psychological reason that goes beyond mere preference. Alas, I have yet to find a plausible explanation (although, Freudians would be quick to point out that I associate business suites with my dad).

At the end, they bought me a blazer and dress pants that I actually liked. I like blazers because it's more modular than a real suite. I can practically wear it on top of anything, and instantly become a little more formal, whereas a business suite is like a monolithic kernel.