I unlocked a Pandora's Box of intense proportions. Sundays need not be the boring post-drunk recuperation day. Now they can be part of the problem! Open mike with Blair Harvey at the road. No cover and a beer a song. Seriously! I go down, lay out some Robert Johnson cover and get drunk out of it.

Maggie played a few songs after some cajoling. *swooooooon* That girl is something else.

I did feel a little tired and anti-social when I got there but I (re)met Marthe Barnard who I have apparently met before had a great old time just talking about stuff.

I've been reading a lot about Zen lately and I am learning a lot from it about myself and being a lot more receptive. I've lived several years now with a real heavy focus on being able to live in the right way but I haven't thought at all about harmonizing it to my own life. It might be why I've always felt so dischordant. It might be time to stop simply going through the motions and start becoming the things that I want to be.

Yeah, so the downside of reading lots about Zen and philosophy is that I start talking like a 16 year old again. Time and place for everything I guess. Goal 1 should be understanding why I find things interesting and how I can articulate these reasons to myself and others. That'll be a subject for another day. Now I've got to find what Robert Johnson song would be best for the Rose & Thistle.

Inner Peace and a Job

I spent a fun evening with Cheryl and Sushi and MST3K. (There was ice cream too :shhh:)

It's just been a great week in general. During the end of exams I set down some goals for myself regarding what I wanted to do now that I don't have to be stuck in school anymore. I'm going to catch up on reading books that I've been interested in for my own development. I'm also going to spend more one on one time with some of my less seen buds and drink slower. That last point is a little important. After the apocalypse that was St. Patrick's Day I figured that it's in everyones interest for me to pay more attention to how fast and how much I drink. Last night worked out pretty well (for me at least). I was in just the right mood to have two consecutive eargasms at Bros and Storm before I went to bed. Just magical. I mentally wrote a movie scene that would fit perfectly with Storm but at the end the only appropriate crescendo I could come up with was it god and satan had a tearful brothers reunion and all of mankind transcends to a higher astral plain. I'm not sure that the world is ready for such a movie.

Tomorrow: meditation, relaxation and resume updating. Basically the focus of my life right now: inner peace and employment.

Now I'm a B.A.

And with 1:40 today I am officially done with my Political Science B.A. I kind of hoped it would be more cathartic but I'm just so low on energy now that everything's greyed out. A break would be nice too but it's basically straight from here to a job (and my own place. fuck yeah)

I woke up this morning to an e-mail from my Internship supervisor saying that he gave me a 90 for the course. A 90! I haven't gotten a 90 in a course for forever! Not only that Dunn gave me an 85 on a Theorist Precis I did for Public Administration. Unfortunatly, MUN has a sick sense of humour. Dunn had given us all the questions that he was going to ask on the exam and all the theorists that we should know. I could have written on about ten or twelve of the ones that were on our original list but what does he give us? Five guys I've never heard of before. There's little more frustrating then memorizing the contribution of ten people who all had a page or two in the book and being asked to write on five footnotes in the heritage of the field. Fuck.

Now that I have the time: Vonnegut, Kerouac, Persig and Bukowsi. I've got some living to catch up on.

More nights need to be as fun as that. I had (in no particular order) Stella, Pumphouse's Blueberry Beer, Tequila, India (of course) and a kaleidoscope of jello shooters. There was a band too. They had a horn section. It's an established fact that horns make any act sound better, as does being drunk, so the combination of the two was excellent.

I've got a tonne of pictures too.

And now a day of study madness. I wasted Friday straight up recording a song and yesterday evening was out as well. Likewise this morning with all the hangover and restless sleep.

On the road

By the 16th I have to: write one essay and two exams. Then I will graduate.

I never thought it would be this hard to just sit down and study. Seriously, I must have spent four hours today just clicking back and forth between Drudge Report, Achewood and Facebook. It shouldn't be this hard! I guess I'm anxious is all. Soon it'll be all over with and I'll have that nice shiny piece of paper and I can go about making all my life dreams come true.

I've only been done that big Decision Making paper since last Friday and I'm already feeling a hundred times better, happier.

World, we gonna do some serious shit next week.

Idlers & Vanishing Point

There were fun times on friday. Mags had the great idea to watch some old Bruce Lee. The night obviously led to impromptu wrestling before we went out. The Idlers were great as well. So many happy people and happy music.

Too bad the headliner, BA Johnson, wasn't any good.

I'd heard such good things about him too. I think he was trying to pull off this quirky-lo-fi-humour thing but just came off annoying and stupid.

We took off.

And I finally got to see Vanishing Point and The Great Escape on Saturday. Anyone who's seen Grindhouse (however few of you) will know what I'm talking about. Honestly it really confused and bothered me on first watch but I rewatched some scenes on Sunday morning and it made a lot more sense. There's a lot of the movie that doesn't make any sense if you only catch parts of it. At the beginning he's driving towards a roadblock and turns back before taking off into the desert. He stops there for a minute before heading back towards the roadblock. When you take into account how shitty the driver's life turned out the ending makes more sense, though it still feels really sudden and confusing.

Still, THE CAR CHASES! JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESUSS! They might be making a sequel with the new incarnation of the Dodge Challenger. I think that the old Challenger name probably hit a high-water mark in the 70s. Trying to remake a cult classic with an inferior model is going to be a hard sell, but if they can pull off a good highway chase that's all I'll need.

Pebbles

Every word I write here is one less that I should be putting into my essays! Three days ago this would have scared me but being near on delirious with the flu for the past few days has left me with an altered view of the world.

Birds are shining, trees are chirping and that telltale lust of Spring hangs in the air like a giant evil kabuki mask from a bad Saturday morning cartoon. Speaking of which, my childhood heroes got sent through the corporate wash, dressed up in fancy new duds and still managed to hold onto some of the magic. I am of course, talking about TMNT, the newest installment in that great adolescent franchise, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tutles. Pros include badass fight scenes, Raphael being the man, Patrick Stewart as the villain and some reasonably trans-generational jokes courtesy of Mikey. Cons are the ridiculously poorly defined plot, Master Splinter's 'Sonny Chiba meets a twixer of sake' voice acting and how little attention they paid to all the great monsters they designed. Someone must have been crying into their beer at the premier when the huge beast they spent 3 months designing got shunted to a 3 second jump cut.

Still, better then Turtles 3 (why the hell they even referenced that I'll never know) and even #2 now that I think of it. I think I'd watch it again just to see the Raph v. Leo fight.