Gee, I wish all my posts made cents...

Hello, all!

While cruising through my inbox this morning, I came across a forwarded message that had all the markings of "Psshaw! Not readin' this crap!" spam. I made a few emphatic raspberry noises, one while selecting the adjacent box and one while selecting delete, and then giggled to myself over the fact that I still derive pleasure from making those aforementioned noises. You should try it sometime, though. It's quite satisfying.

*Note: The first toot has to be of a higher pitch than the second, more drawn out noise.*

                                      ,,¡ɥʇqqqqqqqd `ɥʇqqqd,,
              

 Great.

I tracked down the email in the deleted column and, for no odd reason whatsoever, I began to read it. Immediately, I was transported back to when I encountered my first chain letter. I was an inquisitive youngster somewhere around the 2nd grade and I found myself the lucky owner of a note from someone who I had, at the time, considered a friend. Little did I know that if I failed to pass the note on to ten of my other friends, I would break this letter's ancient streak and some unknown tragedy would befall me. I was close to tears as my mother, after having glanced at the note, lightly tossed it towards the garbage can and politely told me not to worry about it. I cursed whoever had given me the note and began to prepare for the worst. Long story short, I guess mom was right (yet again) as everything turned out to be just fine. I haven't suffered any mystical maladies of recent memory, but I do have an odd looking butt-chin and horrible luck with women.

I don't think that those stem from a chain letter from the 90's, though. It's also strange that this is one of my earliest memories, too. Hmm. Moving onwards...

I cruised through the email which told a blahblahblah story about a woman who questioned her fantastically wealthy boss as to why he stopped one evening over a penny before picking it up and placing it in his pocket. Her boss replied that he always stopped to pick up loose change since the words "In God We Trust" inscribed on the coin reminded him to pray. Bam. My perspective on finding random pennies was forever, uh, changed. I love encountering things in my daily travels that remind me to pause and thank the Lord since I can be somewhat scatterbrained as days go on.

Less than an hour later, after having ordered a coffee at the 'Bucks, I walked out onto the patio to find two pennies sitting at an open table. I put my new Penny Philosophy into action and laughed a little to myself about how amazing the world can be. I took one penny with me and ever-so-benevolently left the second one for the next wayfarer.

It sure beat the old "Oh, hell! That penny is upside down! AVOID IT LIKE THE PLAGUE!" philosophy of years past.

I hope you're all well in your worlds! Keep a steady watch out for loose change!

Cheers,
Jake


Pages:
Lamb by Christopher Moore - It's a comical view on what Jesus' possible antics were between the ages of 6-30.

Tunes:
Trying to get into La Dispute. It's random...but there's hope for 'em yet.

Afternoon ramblings (Now with more calcium!)

Greetings!

Pleasantries aside, I'll get right into the thick of it.

Since the creation of this page, I have been restlessly awaiting for the time at which I'll actually write a few lines of stimulating content. Comical run-ins and fan-boy worshiping of bands - however incredible they might be - should not define the extent of which I write.

Rather, I would wish to write of times where I have devised, stumbled upon, unveiled, or witnessed ideas or events that simply begged themselves to be shared with others. At these times, I feel an energy and a passion that rarely hits me. It is the type of fury that causes me to latch onto an idea, expand upon it, excitably theorize "what-ifs," and ultimately sprint off on tangents before I can sufficiently resolve the originating idea. I will attempt to explain myself more clearly, but if I should come across as a wee bit deranged, well, at least this could prove to be an enlightening glimpse into the vanishing mind of a crazy person.

While reading at a local coffee shop (a familiar site to a high proportion of these 'epiphanies'), I had the wherewithal to quickly scribble down some of the concepts that I wished to lay out on the examination table for operation. I was reading through "Speaker for the Dead," a sci-fi novel associated with the more recognizable "Ender's Game," and found myself wandering from the pages to dream and philosophize about some of the concepts that were taking place in the book. Normally what would happen would be that I would think these heavy thoughts, tell myself, "Attention, Self! Important thoughts ahead!" and then return home to eat a sandwich and inadvertently allow the thoughts to fade into obscurity.

Oh, no! Not today! The sandwiches can wait!

I'll reveal my notes to see if there's any support or interest in what I spent my walk home contemplating. Secretly, I wish to write a novel someday that would centralize a few of my thoughts on the world, behavior, relationships, etc. into one orderly, tangible place. I'll also note that I have a tendency to think an idea or passage is pretty stellar, only to come back to it the next day and think to myself, "Wow. What a load of garbage." So, some of these 'epiphanies' may not be all that great once the dust has settled. I'll also split them up over a few separate posts. I don't want your mind to wander too far. FOCUS!

We'll see where this goes...

Note 1:
Humans "advanced?"
-food, sex, reactions

In Speaker for the Dead, there is a commentary on humans feeling pity for other things that aren't quite as great as they are. The book describes the collective observation of the Hundred Worlds (mankind) as a new alien race is found on a planet. In all of mankind's existence, there was only one other life form, the "buggers," that was encountered. Ultimately (**spoiler alert**), the buggers meet a grim fate as they are systematically destroyed out of fear and misunderstanding with the unwitting help of the protagonist, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin. With the discovery of another race, the "piggies," Ender leaps at the chance to make sure that things go differently this time around. There are many more sides to this story which undoubtedly provide more depth, but I simply cannot do the book justice with my limited review. It's great; read it.

The author, Orson Scott Card, uses the piggies to critique some of the inherent flaws in man. It felt similar to the style C.S. Lewis used in The Screwtape Letters in which he used a discourse between a few demons to illustrate similar flaws in human behavior. Card describes the debates at which people argue what's best for the piggies without even understanding some of the piggies' simplest of actions. Simply put, it aggravated me to read about the actions that were discussed, however plausible and valid they seemed to be.

I left the pages at this point to daydream about this concept of mankind's place in the hierarchy of things. With technology, careers, constructions, and statuses, who wouldn't want to be human? Nevermind if one should find themselves lacking in one of these areas. Nevermind the selfishness that runs just below the surface of our skin; the first reactions to secure one's self before others (that's MY parking spot, that's MY spot in line [MY time], the you shouldn't have that, I shoulds). Nevermind the deceit, corruption, war, hatred, discrimination, and intolerance of others.

Well...I might be stretching on that last line. I need to lay off the caffeine.

I simply want to convey that while being part of the homo sapien taxonomy is unarguably great, I don't want to lose sight of where we could be going. Where we can make advancements in the way we think and communicate. Where we set our eyes onwards and upwards to greater things. It's too easy to become complacent behind this feeling that mankind is at its peak. I can certainly feel like the most dignified and evolved chap in the room during any given day, but once you place a stack of BBQ short ribs in front of me or let me pass by a swimsuit calendar at the mall and it's bye-bye 'civilized' me. I rather wish that more people would recognize this urge-driven beast inside them so we could formulate plans and means to go about dealing with it.

I wonder about what we would hold as important once we began to solemnly and resolutely address our shortcomings and ignored a few of the distractions of the world.

Cheers,
Jacob

Pages:
Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card
Lamb - Christopher Moore

Tunes:
Someone this summer renewed my interest in Sum 41. And yes, I can still sing along to 90% of the songs. It's miraculous how the brain works, no?

Random picture to illustrate my stance on the whole pirates vs. ninjas thing.

Ninjas win. Ninjas always win.

Major/Minor

Greetings!




It was, yet again, another wonderful week of adventure out at camp!
My weary soul could not wait to get home, brush my teeth (soul's have teeth?), and begin to make a list of next week's preparations. I added the list for one main purpose, however, and that was so that I could have something to put off for another time in order to nap. Procrasto-naps are the BEST. You should all try one sometime. But not now. Do it later.

I received a warm welcome from my brother and friends and quickly set about catching up on recent news.
Then I picked up a magazine, laid on the couch, and, well, I don't remember what happened next.
It was heavenly.

During a mid-nap stretch, I rolled over to a nearby computer and squintily began to see what was going on in the world. Being in a forest all summer has somewhat limited my exposure to world events. For the most part, I've been OK with that. The hipster in me wants to begin a rant about how much "Daily News" is actually news, but I have something much, much more substantial to jabber about.

Thrice.

Thrice released a free download of a new track listed on their Major/Minor album due in September. There were also tour dates, a kind message of support, and lots of chatter from fans about how "epic" Thrice is.

How did I react to this information, you ask?

Well, it's now 2:30am and sleep seems far away. "Yellow Belly" is on repeat and I am in absolute euphoria.

I am thankful for moments like this.

Here's the link to Thrice on PureVolume if you'd like to check it out. Lyrics are linked through Thrice.net. Lyrics make everything better.
No, Thrice makes everything better. 

http://www.purevolume.com/new/thrice

More to follow, I'm sure.

Cheers,
Jacob



Pages:
Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card

Tunes:
I think you know.

Pffrt?

Hello, all!

Summer is fast approaching its midway point for me. Without any doubt, I can say that the past six weeks have been a true blessing. The counselor position came about so unexpectedly that I hardly had time to consider what I had gotten myself into before I found a dozen energetic hobbits all awaiting my leadership.
I attempted to jot down quick reminders of the moments where I had to step back to fully grasp what was occurring around me. There were brief periods of time where I was cognitively aware that in THAT exact moment something important was happening; however, I fear that as time marches onward, I am growing unable to accurately depict these almost euphoric surges of awareness.
Times such as when I found myself fully encompassed by night as friends dared a thunderstorm to safeguard a swimming tank from high winds. With only snapshots of light thundering over us, we navigated terrain in Frankenstein-esque motions towards our goal. It's a miracle that we all made it back safely to shelter without anyone from our adventure team getting fried.
Or the times where I found myself completely surrounded by the stillness and beauty of nature.
Or the jubilation of watching groups of once-strangers bond, grow, and take care of one another.
As I look back at some of my older posts, I feel slightly ridiculous. I originally started this page in attempts to explore whether or not I could seriously write something that others might be interested in reading. Yes, being at the mercy of a renegade train is comical, but I am not overly proud of what I have written to date. I hope that once things settle down, I will be able to write some posts of substance.


There will still be fart jokes, mind you, but they will be substantial fart jokes.

Cheers,
Jacob



Pages:
The Bible
Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis


Notes:
New FOO FIGHTERS!
New BAYSIDE!
Sum 41, Bob Dylan, Zebrahead...it has been a beautiful evening.

BOOM. Blam.

Inside jokes. I has them.

CHOOCHOO chuggachuggachuggachugga CHOOCHOOOOO

Yikes. Has it been a month? Why, yes. Yes it has.

Onwards, men!

I did try writing after an energizing conversation with a friend and fellow blogger. I whined about not having my X amount of factors in line that I deemed necessary to write: a theme of substance, a quiet place to write, gallons of coffee...She told me to suck it up and to just simply write something. Motivated, I returned home that night determined  to kick out the world's best post...EVER. As it turned out, the Blogger site was down for that evening. Now I could have quite easily written in Word or Notepad, but I gallantly tossed my head to the said and said, "F that!" Still, I couldn't help but laugh at the coincidence.

It wasn't the only incredibly blatant, comically unavoidable event that happened to me in the past week. There have been quite a few, actually. It was enough that I regretted not carrying around a little notepad to jot down life's happy little moments.

This past Monday, my cousin's car broke down as he was returning from a four-day concert binge across the Midwest. The poor guy hadn't slept in a few days and was caked in mud, overpriced beer, and other people's sweat. To make matters worse, his car then crapped out on him after he pulled over at a rest stop for a few hours of shut-eye. I guess, to look at the brighter side of things, he wasn't assaulted by rogue truck drivers armed with bottles of lotion for him to put on his skin.

                   Don't make me do the No-Wang Dance!! 'Cause I totally will...

Yeah. I'm not proud of that caption. Suggestions are welcome.

Anyway, his phone is near death, so the only information I get from him is that he is at a rest stop on the west side of 680 near Shelby, Iowa. That puts him about 30 miles outside of Omaha near Avoca, Iowa. Oh, it's also 7:30am. I call a few nearby gas stations that pop up on good 'ole Google Maps, but no good comes from that. Unsure of what to do next, I resign myself to driving the 30 minutes to search for him. I was actually glad for the quest. I love my family and I enjoy helping others out. That being said, I did drop a few random curses at things on my way out to BFE, Iowa.

His directions were fairly accurate. Sadly, I have absolutely zero sense of direction, so I ended up taking the world's longest route to the lovely hamlet of Shelby, Iowa. I find him on my first pass and we quickly attempt to jump his car, but his ride simply whirs and buzzes twice before finally dying completely. Defeated and dejected, we drive to a nearby gas station, call a tow truck, and dine on a fine breakfast of Nutrigrain bars and coffee. Mr. Tow Guy comes, jumps the car, and proceeds to take my cousin's arm and leg, all in the span of 15 minutes. My cousin and I high-five one another (a high-ten being impossible) and decide to call it a day. With my cousin happily back on the road towards home, I also turn west and I quickly begin to dream about all the sweet napping I can get in before work that evening.

Being slightly sleep-deprived, I decide to cut through Council Bluffs on the way home so that I can take care of a quick client for drug testing. Great idea, you say? No. Not at all. The client doesn't answer, so I get a nice laugh out of the articulate message I could have left for him had I no attachment to keeping my job. The bridge I'm close to that takes me over the Missouri River and back to civilization is out, so I wiggle around backwoods Council Bluffs aimlessly as I begin to create new and ingenious ways to swear at inanimate objects.

My breaking point hits when I encounter a train crossing. There sits this train. This stupid, stupid, butthole of a train. It sits at a dead stop covering up the intersection with no end in sight. Underneath the train, I can see happy traffic on the other side waltzing about on their daily business without a care in the world. And there I sit stuck on the wrong side of this enormous metal bastard practicing karate on my sweet, innocent steering wheel. The train begins to inch forward and I perk up as I assume my arduous climb out of hell will be resuming momentarily. Ah, but the train then brakes, backs up, and returns to its original spot. The 100ton turd-on-wheels proceeds to do this three more times as I nearly choke on my tongue out of pure rage. The train could have been carrying a payload of magical kittens to an orphanage of cute, British-speaking children nearby, but as I sat and watched in horror as the engineer cackled and flipped me off, all I could do was picture myself driving into the train, backing up, and driving into the train again and again.

I then notice that there is a car behind me further back with a father and his young son standing in a ditch. As they watch the train troll me mercilessly and without end, the kid claps and smiles as he points a finger at the choo-choo.

I come down from my Mountaintop of Hate and remember a random quote about patience that I had come across recently. I'll butcher the phrasing here, but it essentially described a man talking about praying for more patience. The man is not surprised in the least when he his faced with things to test his patience, rather than just having copious amounts of patience loaded into his being. Humbled, I pulled my head out of my butt, turned off the radio, and spent a few moments in contemplation.

Leave it to a little kid to remind me of my place in the world.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's kind of what kids are good at doing.

I returned home in silence and resolved myself to be slightly more cheerful going into the evening.
And the day was good.

Well, most of it, anyhow. The punchline to my story had yet to hit me square in the face.

After being home for a few minutes, I receive a call from my supervisor about a work referral in Avoca, NE and she asks if I'd like to take it.  I broke down into tears and raised two fists towards the sky as I shouted, "Khaaaaaaaan!" It was quite theatrical; you should have been there.

I wish you peace through the rest of the week as you all go about your work. And should you find nothing but Asshole McChoo-choos blocking your path, think of the man who asked for patience and use the roadblocks as chances for training.



See what I did there?

Cheers,
Jacob

Pages:
The Idiot - STILL

Tunes:
New Bayside
New Young the Giant
New Thrice (circa summer, 2011)

Sittin' round, singing songs 'til the night turns into day

Good evening, interwebs!

I've got a free night.

That being said, I've already tried reading and playing music (two of my favorite pastimes). The books that I'm mining through just didn't seem to hit the spot. First off, I'm halfway through two separate books. This is simply something that I have always tried to avoid. It seems as though I get mentally fatigued within a few pages of either book and I just end up faceplanting after only a few brief moments. That's certainly one way to spend an evening; however, I'd like something that is a little more fulfilling (and that won't leave ink splotches on my forehead).

The next step was to move to the basement, twist my amp to 11, and knock out some high-decibel ear candy. This went well, but I ran out of steam after about 30 minutes. I have since drifted to my computer where I am now listening to random music via YouTube.

And it's quickly becoming the best night. Everrr.

The only lowlight came while I took a wee break from all this writing to grab a burger from a local bar (re: Dundee Dell). There, I was subjected to watching the NBA playoffs while my order was being artfully prepared.

Basketball is awful.

But the music, food, and drinks are not. I'm not getting much writing accomplished, but I am air drumming/falsetto singing like a madman. It feels great.

I'd like to open up a discussion on philosophy, romance, world events...but nothing's really forthcoming.

If you feel so inclined, toss me some new musical suggestions. I can't get enough!

I hope you are all doing well and that you've found your own ways to spend this great, great evening.

Cheers!

Jake


Pages:
The Trial of Socrates - I.F. Stone
The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoyevski

Tunes:
Gypsy Woman - Jonathan Tyler & Northern Lights
The Ocean - Led Zeppelin
Every Power Ballad song ever written
Drum solos on YouTube of all things Thrice