Pure Imagination

I was trying to do some school work last night, but the television landed on The Surreal Life. I didn’t want to watch, really, I didn’t, but they make these shows so that you’re just a little curious about these celebrities. The “celebrities” for the evening included Ron Jeremy, Trishelle from The Real World Las Vegas, Tammy Faye, some girl from Baywatch, Rob Van(illa Ice) Winkle, Erik Estrada, Gary Coleman, aluminum, copper, iron, and many others.

I actually spent time away from my writing to ponder the irony of Vanilla Ice, who was trying desparately to escape his past (he is a much different person now), giving Gary Coleman a hard time by trying to convince the diminutive former California gubernatorial candidate to say, “What you talking about, Willis?” to Todd Bridges who happened to show up.

I did eventually return to my studies after forcing myself to at the least put the television in mute mode. I could have just turned it off, but if I did, I wouldn’t be able to glance up occasionally just to check to see if any more ridiculous former celebreties had entered the picture.

At least now I know I never have to watch it again, nor will I want to.

I want a connection.

According to a survey by the University of Chicago, urbanites spend most of their time unmarried. There are some interesting statistics in the article.

There’s a reason they aren’t called “New Year’s Promises.” We’re almost expected to break them. Nevertheless, I try to make and keep some every year, regardless of what other people might think about them. Generally, they’re the same resolutions from the previous year that I’ve failed to live up to. Take number one, for example.

1. Get real exercise.
2. Get more sleep.
3. Loosen up.
4. Stand by my convictions more.
5. Stand up for myself more.
6. Read more books and listen to more music.
7. Meet some new people.

I think 2004 is going to be a good year. Looking back on 2003, I think I did pretty well with my resolutions.

In my intermittent quest to compare today’s American civilization with that of the decline of the Roman empire, I’ve decided that the general populace awaiting life or death verdicts on the edge of their recliners is much like the spectators at gladiator events, waiting for the thumbs up/thumbs down to signal death or life, on the edge of their seats in the coliseum. Also, I just happened to see Gladiator recently.

I’m standing on the track in Newark. Trains are running late. I’m running late. I want to get back to Princeton so I can finish shopping for presents. A train pulls in on track number three. I can’t hear any announcement, so I look up at the screen. The display says that this train is the delayed 7:30 to Trenton. I hop in and the train pulls away. The doors are closed and we’re moving. The pleasant-sounding recorded lady announces to the passengers, “The next station is… Woodbridge.” D’oh! Wrong train.

The girl standing next to me comes to the same realization as me. Other passengers begin to take notice of our predicament and a guy helps by showing us a train schedule for the Jersey Coast line. We determine we can get off at Woodbridge, wait about 10 minutes, and grab a train back to Rahway.

That’s precisely what we did. There’s about five of us who made the same assumption — the assumption that the sign in Newark was correct. I got home later than I wanted and had no time to go shopping as well as do the homework I have tonight. So, that’s where I am now. That’s my story.

I’ve got my new computer running stable now. If you remember, I started planning for this a month ago and received most of the parts before Thanksgiving. I finished building the system when I returned home from California and Las Vegas. When I installed the hard drive, originally I tried setting it up by copying over all the information from my old 20 GB drive and reinstalling Windows. That didn’t exactly work.

Everything seems to be working up to speed. I did make some changes from the original specifications, however, so here is the list of what this baby includes:

• Case (obviously) with a 450W power supply, an ultraviolet cathode tube, and some other fancy extras
• Motherboard: SOYO Dragon KT-600 Platinum Ultra
• CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2200+ with the plan to upgrade in a few months
• Memory: 1 GB DDR SDRAM PC-3200 (2x 512 MB chips)
• Hard Drive: Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 UltraATA/133 200 GB 7200 RPM
• Optical Drives: Sony DVD+RW/-RW 4x and SONY DVD-ROM
• Monitor: 17 inch SXGA flat-panel LCD with 400:1 contrast ratio (the 19 inch monitors were all too expensive for me)
• Graphics: ATI Radeon 9600 Pro with 256 MB video RAM
• Approximate total cost: $1,500 (maybe less, I’ll check later)

I’m pretty happy with the system. I’ve already connected my dual tape deck component to the motherboard’s built-in 6-channel sound card, imported my 1993 Central Jersey Regional Symphonic Band recording onto my spacious hard drive, fixed the sound quality, and written it down to compact disc.

I’ve also played a little with video editing (using Sony’s Vegas software). I felt that the transitions between scenes in Paris Hilton’s video could use some work, so I redid them.

The included sound system doesn’t include a joystick port for MIDI, though the connection is available on the motherboard. So, I’ll still need either a USB MIDI box or a joystick port that connects to the board in order to hook up my keyboard and drum machine. I’m also eyeing a gyroscopic mouse. Maybe someday I’ll have one of those…

While I was shopping last night (thanks to Darren), I decided to pick up a pair of Dr. Scholl‘s gel things. You know these from the television. “Are you gellin’? I’m gellin’ like a felon. You must be gellin’ like Magellan.” (Did the explorer really gel? Maybe they are referring to the mission to Venus.)

Anyway, I wore them on my way to work this morning, but I had to take them out when I got here. It was the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever felt. It felt like I had two extra pairs of socks bunched up in each shoe. It felt like my shoes had shrunk two sizes.

It would have helped if they had a pair in my size.

As you may well know by now, today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. This was on the news this morning and on weblogs all over the world.

The hurricane was a “non-event” for me. A little rain, a lot of wind, but nothing much else. However, I’m one of the very few people who bothered to show up for work today.

Dreamhost still sucks, don’t believe the hype. Their webmail program is wonky again. Anyone have suggestions for a host better than Dreamhost? The problem is, most other hosts are much worse.

My mother wants me to meet her in Vegas over Thanksgiving. It sounds crazy to me, but I haven’t seen her in a few years, and it’s been even longer since I’ve seen my aunt, uncle, and cousins who will also be out there.

In a future time, children will work together to build a giant cyborg.

I’m seeing A Mighty Wind (the folk bands, not the movie) tonight in Philly with Denise and M-D. That should be fun.

Let’s say, hypothetically of course, that you send in an application to be on one of those reality make-over shows — one that takes a poor, style deficient schlub and through the use of a lot of “product,” new furniture, and fashion tips, turns him into a sophisticated member of society. Let’s say, hypothetically of course, that someone from the show calls you back and tells you to show up at a casting call, when you arrive to give them your name, and they will know who you are. The big question is do you show up to the casting call all schlub-like or moderately passable as a normal television “real person” type? Hypothetically, of course.