I handed the TV remote to my father...

... as I told him not to worry; tonight's airing of Glee was a rerun. A wave of masculine shame swept over me, and I decided to return to the blawg.

Things have changed. I have (formally) abandoned journalism. Academically, I have reunited with my long lost love, IT. Things also have not changed. Beer is delicious, Metal Mondays at Stella's is a headbangingly good time, Mary smells, and seeing my parents drunk is one of my lifelong goals. I turn 22 soon.

html? easy like sunday morning
flash? php? soon to find out
xml? ajax? mysql? ize on the preyes.

A reflection... a rowflection?

"College isn't real life." I still believe it, but only generally. Upon growing into the team, I saw that I had forgotten what it's like to be social. There are certainly real feelings and friendships. I still miss GRCC, but not nearly as much now. My best friends there - the ones who gave my education personal meaning and lasting inspiration - are staff and faculty: Rog, Bob, M. Ryden, Laurie, Joey, and Shavaal.

Bob recited a question posed to him sometimes, "'Don’t you get bored teaching stuff over and over and over again?' I don’t teach ‘stuff,’ I teach people.” I'm heavily considering changing my major, maybe something I should have done some time ago.

I remember my first time sitting on an erg. They were lined up in my high school's music hallway.

I remember my first wearing my uniform rowing shirt. I let it sag a little because I didn't like how short it was.

I remember my first indoor regatta, and how proud I was of my 7:32 2k.

I remember my first race on the water; I sat 5 and and Z sat 6 over the Grand River. In it, I caught my first - and three consecutive - crabs. I remember how because of them, I was afraid to pull hard for the rest of the season.

I remember walking Toby around regattas for the sole purpose of picking up females.

I remember while derigging, Coach Moon explaining to Chris and me the lab study of to female rats successfully reproducing together. "In other words, 'lesbian love.'"

I remember Geoff... and his sprints.

I remember wet docking at Stony Creek.

I remember Swedish Betany rubbing Zeth's nipple at the end of my first season.

I remember meeting Dave George.

I remember my first time rowing the Canadian Henley, and finishing the same place every year. I remember my first time inside Regatta Sport; my 4 wrote on their graffiti wall and I bought "either // oar." I remember, in 2005, how all the future hipsters at school thought it was an Elliot Smith reference. I remember when Mr. Ronda Tire treated our boat to Hard Rock Cafe by Niagra Falls.

I remember my last erged 2k in high school. 6:50 at 27 spm.

I remember my last time at the Canadian Henley. I remember eating at Domino's, playing Apples to Apples with the closest thing I had to chance with "the Verkadian," and then ruining it along my trip.

I remember two years later, when I decided I wanted to go to State. I also decided exactly what I wanted to do there.

I remember meeting some of my favorite people here, along with maybe my favorite person, too.

I've rowed more than a million meters on the Grand River. I'm back at 5 seat; I used to hold top measurements, and now I'm close to the smallest man in my boat; I now get seat raced. I still like coxswains, though.

post script... I think my iPod is dead for good, conveniently a day before a 20-hour road trip, and when I'm laughably out of funds for a replacement. I'll just sit next to someone who has an iPod Touch to dick around with.

I feel like Ivan Drago -

Big news; I'm going straight-edge starting Saturday. First race is on the 27th.

We're doing lots of test pieces, so I gotta keep up with the other beasts. This past weekend didn't help much. Not being drunk will - or should - cause two things: I'll post blog entries more often, and I'll stop being physically destructive. Violence isn't my scene, but the weekend exposed the laughable weakness of an off-campus house's locked bedroom door.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day marked my only heartbreak. I celebrated in a similar fashion when it happened last year; El Toro then, Captain Morgan this year. That and Jersey Shore string together my relationship with my sister.

Women.

The ROTC suits that run the building we practice asked coach to have us not take our shirts off while we're in there; "shirt rule." After today's test piece, I said, "Coach, I could have pulled like ten times faster, but my shirt was weighing me down."

Eat, sleep, Flo-row-da

That's how I lived for nine-ish days. I thought bullshit weather was reserved for Michigan.

I rowed a single for the first time, and not just any single; I sculled the Dave George. By the the end of the week - switched to port - I got the attaboy to end all attaboys from Coach. He even went in for the jump-hug today when we parted ways. GV babes were babes. 20+ hour road trips were tolerated with naughty stories, a screening of the live-action TMNT, and Ben Thompson's Badass and reading Paul Mooney's Black Is the New White cover-to-cover. Apparently, Mooney coined the expression, "Nigger, please." I also participated in an actual spandex/nothing-clad friend pile.

Do you remember in South Park, how there was this super low audible note that could make people shit themselves? Nikola Tesla discovered that note for the earth. When he publicized the finding, no one asked him to prove it.

Someone asked me if I had a girlfriend the other day and I had to think on it for a moment. It was weird at first, and then I became giddy and bit my bottom lip. That's cryptic, but that's all.

dental flossed

I had a short laugh at the outlandish Belle and Sebastian reference in 500 Days of Summer. No one else in the auditorium responded, though. I keep having dreams with my late dogs in them, or just waking up with the same feeling. I'm continually sitting down to watch indie films with my 12-ounce friends: Pabst, Miller, Spaten, Red Stripe... I'm awfully skeptical of "crewcest." I've made my point.

University seems more similar to community college than I had expected. I feel like I've traded doing cool shit - reviewing instructor candidates for academic departments and coaching youth and younger in swimming - just to row, just to advance, just to earn a bachelor's.

Ask questions, question everything, they tell you, me. What if I tire of questioning?

Drinking with your professors? maybe the single greatest idea to ever grace higher education.

I remember my heart-to-heart with Bob. It was in the village of Mullaghban walking home from the village's only and nameless bar. I knew it was late at night because the sun sets at around midnight in Ireland and it had been dark for a good while. We walked through one of two streets in the village, modest houses just like in the Midwest to our right, and the primary school and its football fields to our left.

I'm certain that Bob had consumed an infinite number of pints of Guinness, while I my score was somewhere in the numerical range. How we got on the topic is lost in time. I asked him though, toward his experience in worldly subjects like conflict-resolution and transnational relations, about a man I occasionally encountered back at home. He wades around in the pool I lifeguard. Sometimes his wife and little boy accompany with him, but usually he comes alone near closing time, when the pool is empty of other patrons. The scene is routine, except for the man's back and arms. They make an exquisitely tattooed mural of hate, with complexly flowing ribbons and huge feathered wings surrounding a swastika the size of his head. About the icon reads, "WHITE POWER."

Whenever he comes in, the one or two other "waders" see his advertisements and leave. They walk to the locker rooms, and I want to shout at them, "Hey, thanks for leaving ethnic minority that has to stay here with the seriously troubled and more than probably racist individual!" Then I tense up and and my heart rate climbs and doesn't let off until he leaves. I wonder if he's looking at me when I'm not looking at him, because I'm definitely looking at him and his back.

I asked Bob something like, "How do I respond to that?"
He looked up in thought for a few seconds, then said, "Hm. I don't know, man. Dealing with fascism is pretty difficult."

I'm still not sure why, but that meant the world to me. I know that teachers don't know everything, but it's certainly comforting not to feel alone.