Jason is going to pick me up at 1:00. As in the past couple of days, I sleep in....today until 12:30. wow. 30 minutes to pack for 3 days. ...plenty of time. ...we're talking done in ten, with twenty minutes to spare.
It's funny though, ..that the things you remember to pack last, ...really show where your priorities are.

It'll be great to get away from this town for 3 days and spend lovely afternoons stuck in Memphis traffic. I don't know, but for some reason, while getting ready to leave tommorow, a particular verse from a particular song has come up numerous times through my brain: "Things are gonna change I can feel it" I have no idea what that means, but anyway:
until monday, two things:

Something short and funny from a letter written by Groucho Marx to T.S. Eliot:
"Do I dare to spit a peach pit in your eye?"

..And something weird and interesting from those people in Europe:
“It’ s not actual urine, it is the scent of urine. I haven’t actually smelt it myself, by I’m told it’s lovely for a dog.” Emma Read, commissioning editor of Animal Planet, commenting on the use of posters scented with canine urine to advertise its pet awards. The channel hopes that sharp-nosed dogs will lead their owners to the appropriate lampposts in the United Kingdom, where posters will be displayed at both human and dog’s eye-level.

I think I'm going to get a car like this, so I can haul stuff around.

Mom and I drove down the driveway to our house tonight and all the cats immediately ran up from wherever they were laying and sat expectantly all around the front steps. They have this bond with mom you see, for no other reason than for the fact that she feeds them with regularity. The cats don't behave this way whenever anybody else drives up; Only for mom.
Recently though, she got a new car. It would seem that this would confuse the cats, and they wouldn't discern that this particular car coming up the driveway had mom in it. But this is simply not the case. The cats knew. Somehow. They knew. That this car was driven by the person who cares for them.
Again tonight I noticed this joyous cat behavior when mom drove up to the house with me in the passenger seat. I said: "They only act this way for you. How long did it take for the cats to figure out that you drove a different car?" She said: "They can tell it's me no matter what kind of car I'm in, because I don't try to run them over".

Corey's Sony computer came today, and it's better than yours.

New stuff

Today was a great day. It's been a LONG time since there was a day like this, when I had absolutely no prior commitments and none of those "I'll do that tomorrow" things that all of us tell ourselves to do the day before. (I know, that didn't make sense)
I've been using Trillian a lot lately. I love it. Simply put, it allows you to use all of your chat programs simultaneously in one smooth interface. For people who have an AOL Instant Messenger account, a MSN Messenger account, a Yahoo Chat account, AND an ICQ account, Trillian throws them all together. Great, simply great.

Got lotsa photos today. I'm now in the habit of shooting five or six rolls before getting them developed is even considered, so laying all around me are great pics from CnC's graduation, hiking at Petit Jean, busting my window out at the Wal-Mart Supercenter because it was cheaper than calling the locksmith, and the grand trip to Smackover. Having a nice camera is great. These photos are rad. So tomorrow:
I'm buying a new flatbed scanner. Mine sucks, it is slow. Too slow. Way too slow. Because it was manufactured in 1843. All these photos should show up in the photography section by tomorrow night.

Part of the reason that drew is showing signs of being semi-inspired/motivated to be productive: I just saw Bono on Charlie Rose. Now THAT'S a motivated individual. I love U2's music, and to listen to the lead singer ramble on and on about issues and inspirations for a whole hour was moving. Charlie Rose has a great show, ..whenever he's got a great guest, but the show is always interesting whenever I catch it to say the least. A couple of months ago me and mom caught Don Henley on Charlie Rose. It had to be one of the most thought provoking entertainer interviews I'd ever seen. It was funny, that a couple of weeks later me and Jason were riding to lunch and talking music. He point blank asked me: "Did you see Don Henley on Charlie Rose? It was cool." I know for a fact that neither he nor I, watch Charlie Rose with any frequency, so I infer the premise that sometimes brothers have a multi-level connection that's hard to explain.
Anyway, an interesting quote from the interview:
Talking about the moral state of the developed world in general, Bono: "There seems to be am emptiness in idealism. And in the void, there is indifference". ...wow.

And it is truly a shame, that on such a great lazy day, that I've been thinking alot about a good friend of mine who I just learned died saturday night when his truck veered off the road and into a building. I saw it yesterday in the paper. I don't know what to say about it, other than the obvious. What a waste. James Clifton was a guy who I went to school with and joked around with everyday from 5th grade, ..all the way up to our graduation in 98. And now he's dead. He was ejected from his truck when it hit a concrete embankment, and then the truck smashed into a U-Store-It near the Rainbow Mart Gas Station in Jones Mills. I talked to Daniel Caddy, another one of my classmates, at the gym wednesday night. He had heard that James pulled a double shift at K-Mart and fell asleep, veering to his death. Again, ...what a waste. And remember, it's not K-Mart anymore, it's "Big K Mart" and don't forget it.

That night after work I drove up to the scene of the accident to make some sense of it all. None could be made. The wreckage had all been dragged out days before, and all that was left was the crumbled retainer wall that separated the gas station from an adjacent parking lot. And then there was the building, ...that looked like a truck had slammed into it at 60 mph, because one did. I got out of my truck and walked around. There was a distinct smell, coming from a dark stain on the asphalt. I noticed it, because it was the same exact smell of dead human that I remember smelling when an airplane crashed not far from our house near the Malvern Airport. The 3 people in the plane died instantly, and burned. We arrived by foot through the woods just as the fire department did, and the same smell of dead human was everywhere. I won't ever forget it. This world is just pathetic. James died. And three days later a little blip in a small-town newspaper said only when and how he died, along with the mention of his graduating in 98 and playing football. This guy was funny, and likeable. And a double shift at Big K Mart reduced him to laying decapitated in a U-Store-It parking lot. SUCH A WASTE.

Whoa, that was the first time i'd ever had to go in and actually "edit" the hate board posts. It's probably not the correct way of thinking, but I really find it hard to think anything of what people post on there. If it's crude or slanderous, ...most of the time it'll just make the person who posted it look stupid, ..or pathetic. And for some strange reason, I find this process enjoyable. ...But when people attempt to masquerade as someone else, and post very crude x-rated trash, the whole novelty of having the message board in the first place is outweighed by the hassle of going in and cleaning it out. ....not even to mention the ill-effects and bad-blood that stuff like that creates between the trash-talkers and the unfortunate "talked about". ...hmmm I "hate" that. And oh yeah: remember that I can view the IP addresses of each and every postee.. That being said:

"Eeeexellent..... I know who you are..,Smithers, I want you to personally oversee the dipping of that man into boiling goat lard"

And on an unrelated note: THIS really cracks me up.

From this month's edition of the Smackover Journal:
Highlights from the upcoming Smackover Oiltown Festival:

Saturday, June 15:
Horseshoe Pitching Tournament; 5pm

Yarnell's Ice cream social; 7:30 pm, Sponsered by Ed Henely, Phd, and his wife Sylvia. There will be plenty of flavors to choose from.

Concert: "Haywire"; 8-12 pm

5th Annual Goat Roast ; Teams will recieve thier goat at 9 am, judging will take place at 2 pm

Great Turtle Race;10 am; NO killer turtles or water turtles please.

Rod Wrenching Contest: 10 am

Drill Bit Throwing Contest: 11 am

Tug of War 1 pm

Arm Wrestling Contest: 3:30 PM; Weigh-in begins at 3 pm

I'm actually thinking quite seriously about going. It's been awhile since I've gone down to see my grandparents anyway. Besides, just think of the COOL photographs I could capture if I attended a redkneck Turtle Race, "Rod Wrenching"?, Drill Bit Throwing, or Arm Wrestling contest. It'll be grand I tell ya, ..grand.

Things change when you get married and move out on your own. I can remember jason's living quarters when he still lived here at the house. They could be compared somewhat to the present condition of mine: My room leaves the impression that somebody can't possibly live in it. It could be described as a temporary shelter... something that the United Nations would provide for a persecuted ethnic family on the run. I''ve got "way too much stuff" and no place to keep it all. So it's my room. I sleep there, use my computer there, listen to music, and store all kinds of semi-useless crap, ..in one small room. Logically then, pride in it's condition or arrangement eludes it's occupant.

It was much the same way with Jason, before the whole marriage and mortgage thing. He and Ginger spend alota time talking about windows and garages and furniture. Things change. As in Jason's case if you're lucky, ..for the better.

Something I sent to Eric and thought it would make a nice entry:
Corey n collin started working for a big electrical contractor in Hot Springs two or three weeks ago. Yoda: Mad cash they are making.

As for the spending part, I helped corey pick out a Sony video editing workstation:
(Ok, no, ..I didn't help him pick it out, but it just sounded better that way)

He got this year's model used off ebay for $800, ...w/o a monitor.
It should be showing up on the doorstep anyday now, so during the window period when it's sitting on the porch until we all get home in the afternoon, mom's 4 cats will piss and scratch all over it. I can envision driving up to the house, and happening to glance over at the big UPS package, sitting next to the door, with two cats loudly having sex on top of it.

So, I've been tinkering around with ideas on how to setup some kind of new "discuss" feature. ..Checking out some possibilities with php or perl, and even thought about just building an automatic feature that will spit out a link to one big message board with every post. Anyway, I'm a moron, and there will be no time for such things this weekend. So for now, if there IS anybody reading this,
Corey and Collin got ALL KINDS of music store gift certificates for graduation presents and we're planning on a big cd buying-binge sometime soon. Your job, is to let me know what albums we should buy.
Use the all new
Cheezy Discussion Board
to voice any reccomendations.

MORE:
"What is the focus of the new image infrastructure? Attention. Its all designed for capturing, tracking, quantifying, manipulating, holding, buying, selling, and controlling attention."

This afternoon I read some great things. short, great, things.

things like:
Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

and:
Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

and:
Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it.

and:
Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

and:
Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

This world is turning into a weird place.

In a previous life, I worked on an expert system to paginate the yellow pages. .....and my personal favorite thing that I learned about phone books after too many years of hacking on them, is that the filler that says ``Call Before You Dig'' can't go in the ``Mortuaries'' category.

Wiggle in my net, little flies.

This place is grabs you.

America Online practices censorship on a large scale. The reason for this is not because they feel they hold the moral high ground. It's not because they think they know better than you what is good for you. It's because they believe that practicing censorship is profitable. They believe that it's what the majority of their customers want. Do you think that's crazy? Think again. They want to position themselves as a ``family oriented'' site. To a huge number of people out in the real world, the Internet is a disgusting wasteland, full of rude, cruel, nasty people, child pornographers, and photos of people having sex with dogs. They go to AOL because it's a kinder, gentler face for the Internet. They go there because AOL will keep them safe and clean.

Now, if there are people who truly want that, that's their prerogative. If someone chooses to use a censoring ISP, or to install censor-ware on their own machine to keep the internet boogeymen away, I have no problem with that.

But what happens if the world changes, and AOL becomes even more wildly successful than they already are? What happens if the independent, non-censoring ISPs can no longer compete with the AOL behemoth, and it turns out that the only practical way to connect to the internet is through one of the large, international internet corporations like AOL? What if, of all the practical choices available for internet access, all of them are ``family oriented''? What if it turns out that the only way you can practically publish your web pages (without serious bandwidth or cost problems) is by doing so on a server like AOL or @Home, and what if to publish a document there, you need to comply with their ``Terms of Service''? Meaning you can only publish material suitable for children?

Perhaps this is far-fetched. I hope so. But if you think that non-censoring network access and publication will always be available because there will always be some people who want it, consider that Barnes and Noble have all but eliminated the independent bookseller, and that Blockbuster Video have all but eliminated the independent video store.

The best muscle car-movies, ..ever: (in no particular order of course)

Bullitt
Vanishing Point
Two-Lane Blacktop
White Lightning
Dirty Marry Crazy Larry
The Blues Brothers

Amazon.com has an audio stream of Amnesiac...the whole thing.

``He's lit the fire under so many people,'' said Shelley Poticha, executive director of the Congress for the New Urbanism. His book, ``Geography of Nowhere,'' she added, ``was almost a call to arms.''

His wit borders on, and sometimes crosses over to, cruel.
"``Suburbia creates enormous amounts of anxiety and depression and there's not enough Prozac in all the world to cure it,''

.... Both space and time, individually, are as elastic as bungee cords. It was a further step, still, to see that the fabric of spacetime itself could warp under the influence of matter like hot asphalt under the tires of a heavy truck.... And then, the last straw: Not only could spacetime bend under the influence of matter, it could take matter into its own hands.
Cole's book makes a wry, witty complement to Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe. It's an exploration of string theory (among other things) that will leave your brain only lightly tied up in knots. Or in nots. After all, as Cole writes:

Nothing may be the single most prolific idea ever to plop into the human brain.... Understanding nothing matters, because nothing is the all-important background upon which everything else happens.

Dr. Green died sometime last week. It wasn't a great surprise, ..but still somewhat of a shock, if shock is the right word to describe the fact that he isn't here anymore. Yesterday I was climbing through the eternal mess that is my bedroom, and came upon the last essay test of mine that he graded while still in his hospital bed. This happened to be a particular test that didn't have a big red "F" on the front page. I had done well, a "B" in fact.
I turned to the back page of the multipage essay test, and started reading my response to the question. It was one of the only questions on the test that I didn't understand, so instead of looking like an idiot and attempting to bs my way through it, as usual I made an attempt to be funny, and where a response was to be provided about my opinion of a philosopher's (yet unkown) idea, I simply wrote something like:
I would't really have an opinion about such an idea if it wasn't properly marketed, packaged, sold to me at Wal-Mart.

In red ink, he responded (quite largely): "Cute, but ignorant"
..And so, with him being dead and all, those are the last words he directed at, me. And while they specifically had to do with a question on an essay test, , I'm thinking about them more often.

Finally something new.

"There is a Difference"

various events of the day:
So I'm talking to dad's mom (Nana) this morning, and I find that when she was growing up during the depression in east Texas, they didn't have electricity in her home until after she'd moved off to college. wow. My recommendationfor everybody is to have more conversations with older folks. Those people have been through some tough crap.

Corey borrows/steals cd's from my room 24/7. So I'm sifting through the the stuff on top of his dresser in efforts to reclaim my stolen goods, and see the new jewelry box he got for graduation. The man/boy HAS no jewelry. So the only thing he keeps in there is a white necklace. ..I say necklaces are for punks anyway, but I'm a jerk and that's a jerk's opinion.

Last night on the way home I ate a hamburger at Burger King, this afternoon I eat a hamburger after setting up Miles'z phat new computer. And this evening dad cooks up hamburgers on his new monolith-of-a-grill. I love animals, ..they taste great. If I look at another burger I'm gonna puke, but might just eat one or two tommorow just to continue the streak.

Speaking of streak, Allen Iverson was has been fun to watch these last two games. Dang.


...and I want this mug

For obvious reasons I hate myself for saying it, but constantly 'going' and 'doing' stuff all the time gets old. Go figure.
But today was great. There are things that happened. Strange, unpredictable, things. Some stupid, some some wild, some scary, ..ok mostly stupid.

You just know your day hasn't been normal when you can recall the act of sternly making sure everybody in the boat can swim, and swim well.

As I type these pathetic sentences, some of those goons are still out there on an island, soaking in irresponsible juvenile goodness. There's nothing quite like it, but some activities tend to seem dull after you get good at them. ..and that, is why wakeboaring will never be dull for drew. ..good times, good times.

Using SSL to syndicate all the blogger posts, as well as the blogger archives onto multiple sites, and tweaking the layout on all files concerned, ....,has taken WAY too much time. But in the long run, it will be worth it. The first time is always the hardest. Whenever the time comes to edit or recreate a similar scheme, it'll be a freakin breeze. ..because drew is a freaking nerd. ...,who wants to be a designer ...,but he's still just a nerd.
Note to self: Don't become skilled at that which you do not enjoy.
sleep.