oflanigan's Journal

9:55AM - The Next Morning

Wow, we got pretty drunk last night. When I got home I sat down with Ben and went through our highschool yearbook and said who was hot and who wasn't. Why is this aspect of my life so shallow.

2:21AM

I came home from school and said to myself "I want to go to a bar and get with some women". So I came home, and Ben and I went to the Liquor Mart and bought a four-liter bottle of Uncle Carl's finest. Then we got really drunk and went to a bar. I was already drunk, and I spent most of the night on the dance floor. It was so great. I bumped. I ground. I bumped and ground with this hot nrrrdgrrrl who said "come find me later" but I forgot, but right now it's all okay and goood because I danced with her and kissed her neck and she wanted me and that's all that matters. When I'm drunk, and I don't care, I love to dance. Yeah.

Current mood: drunk

9:23PM - A story

Well, I was walking through campus and noticed a small circle of people crowded around and arguing with a crazy Christian zealot. He handed out comic tracts about boys and girls who were evil but thought they weren't that bad (they only had premarital sex with people they loved) and they went to hell.
"Judge not!" the students cried, "Lest ye be judged! You don't even know us!"
"I do know you," he replied, "I can see all the way down to your evil hearts every time you open your mouths."
"I am a Christian" said a passerby, "And I just want you all to know that this wackadoo does not represent my views." I applauded that.
Then my friend Tim walked by, and I hugged him grandly, which is our custom, and hoped it looked like we were homosexual which would piss off the crazy zealot. We chatted for a while, and then we walked past a girl who was so fine that she destroyed my ability to think or converse properly, midsentence. She was so fine that I turned around and walked past her again. I got weak in the knees.
I really wish I knew how to meet random women. And also that hotness meant coolness.

"Just imagine. Me and a girl, hand in hand, walking down the hall at school. I'll say... funny words... and she'll burst out laughing, the rays from the fluorescent lights bouncing off her hair."
Hound's Home

4:25PM - Blowing off miass

I've all but given up on my computer science project. I mean, the prof expects us to complete this unreasonably insurmountable assignment, and I just get more and more depressed the more I try to work on this futile monstrosity. So, I'll just turn in what I have for partial credit. Surprisingly, when looking at the syllabus, I found that this project is actually worth only a tiny portion of my total grade.

Current mood: relieved

11:06PM

Unmotivated I am. Never get done this project will. Eat ice cream I must.

Current mood: blank

Current music: Forsythia-Veruca Salt-American Thighs

9:39PM

Sometimes I get stuff done, but it's always at the cost of something else. There are a couple things I should be worrying about right now, but I just can't seem to make myself care.

Current mood: lonely

Current music: Weezer - Jamie

10:11PM

I got my computer back from Apple, thank you AppleCare! I've been working a lot on my script and I think I'm within 10 or 15 pages of being done. I've got the end all figured out, it's just a matter of filling in some gaps. I have this weird habit of writing out of sequence, or as I told Amber the other day, I write the sex scenes, then the murder scenes, then everything else. Well, that's not quite accurate in this case, and besides, I really do have the whole thing figured out in my head.
Actually my writing technique is similar to my method of writing computer code: work down heirarchally getting more and more specific. Each scene is modular, and when I get down to that level I just figure out what specifically drives the scene, what practical things need to be solved to make it work, and then just go. Since I have the whole thing planned out to some degree (with lots and lots of notes) I am pretty free to skip around and write whatever is most pressing to write next without regard for chronological order.

12:59AM - Best Thing

Sam Kieth's comic "Four Women" is the best thing I've read all year. It's so good. Jesus. I'm too overcome to be eloquent now, but let me say this: It would transfer so well to film.

5:42AM - Breaking up with my CD collection

For a variety of reasons that I don't want to get into, I am selling most of my CDs. It is very very very difficult making some of these keep/sell decisions. I'm down to the last 60 or so...

3:32PM - Coding Project

I've finally started my big semester coding assignment, which is a working demo of a student scheduling system. Like what you use to register for classes, only mine has to have all these extra features and be able to intelligently help you pick classes based on meeting times, locations, graduation dates, et cetera. It's a big mean project and I am afraid.
I am calling mine "minimal implementation: automated scheduling system" which means it has a pronouncable acronym: "miass". Pronunciation guide: "my ass". (Thanks to sphaelar for this, what was the original expansion?) This makes it fun to write things in my project journal like Worked a few more kinks out of miass, damn it's getting sleek.

Current mood: hyper

Current music: Dyers Eve-Metallica-...And Justice For All

3:51AM - Phone Stress

Last night I had several phone calls to make. After making them I felt very very very anxious and stressed and uncomfortable, like I had just brought a great evil upon myself.
The first call was to a potential car buyer. They were no longer interested.
The second was to a friend in Chicago. I really want her to act in a short film I'm doing in a month or two. She said "sure".
The third was to my mom, who acted like I hadn't called her in ages, and made some wacky jokes that made me freak out.
However, I think it's the phone call that I didn't get to that's freaking me out the most.

3:46AM - Code Night

I'm working on my long overdue huge intense out of hand programming project. It's sucking me in, and it's sucking my soul. Three interesting things happened to me tonight.

Current mood: bored

Current music: Mindfields-Prodigy-The Matrix Soundtrack

11:08PM - a surprise to me

I have a big crush on someone. This scares me, but I am also happy because that hasn't happened to me in over a year. But it still scares me. We'll see if anything comes of it.

Current mood: anxious

11:07PM

I voted today, and I voted well. Then I went home and made my roommate go vote. He canceled out my vote on mail in ballots (i am opposed to anything that makes it convenient for the ignorant to vote. The stupid can vote if they do their homework, i don't mind that. It's the uninformed that bug me. I like very long voting lines.) Dork.

I am in Franktown at my parents house to do some really hardcore coding for one of my classes. I will code for days. I will not come up for air. I will go balls to the wall.

5:46AM - Looks

I am very superficial, and sometimes that makes me sad. That is, sometimes I just can't dig past someone's appearance to get to their self. I'm not sure how to get past this. Part of me wants to and part of me doesn't, so I guess I'd have to get that aligned before I can really fix the problem.

8:13AM - Pulled over

On my way to Denny's at about one a. m. (to study) I saw those pretty pretty flashing red and blues behind me so I pulled over. The cop said I was speeding, turned on a red light without stopping, made a turn from a wrong lane, and also my address on my license was not current. Then he "let [me] off with a warning across the board". I have never gotten pulled over without getting a ticket, and I have about five or six tickets. This is ludicrous, unbeknownst to me. So, if anyone thinks facial piercings make the authorities come down harder on you, I have solid evidence to the contrary.

In other traffic violation news, they tracked me down regarding my unpaid parking tickets. Stupid post office. Stupid forwarding address.

12:01PM - It wasn't even a movie about good relationships

I'm feeling pretty iffy about the whole life thing this morning. I didn't really want to wake up, I didn't really want to do anything... Fairydust was telling me a couple weeks ago how I'm going to meet a nice red-haired girl from Las Vegas and marry her. I was dreaming about a nice red-haired girl when I woke this morning. The first thing I did was grab my computer and hop online, that makes me more reasonable, gets me into the swing of life. I'm doing a little better now, but the whole thing makes me wonder if I have an ambition gap between my concious and unconcious. I'm pretty excited now about doing some drawing, writing, going to the film festival, etc., but when I woke up all I wanted was for someone to be here. I guess that's what happens when I watch relationship movies before bed.

11:35AM - The Strokes

I went to go see the Strokes at the Fillmore a couple nights ago. Even Chenz hung out in the pit, which was cool. Whenever I start to lose faith in the basic human decency of my generation, I just have stand in the crowd at a rowdy show. People are packed in so densely that you just have to move with the crowd. Sometimes your upper body starts swaying one way but your feet stay in the same place, and people end up on the floor. The same thing happens when the crowd isn't dense enough to support a crowdsurfer. In either case, nearby people always stop, hold back the masses, sometimes forming a ring with their arms, and help everyone to their feet for safety.

As I grabbed a kid and swung him back to his feet at the show something swam to the surface of my memory. It was Holden Caulfield talking about being the catcher in the rye, just watching the children play and making sure none of them run off the cliff. Of course at first my mind jumped at the idea of making a film that draws that parallel, but I've gone back and started re-reading The Catcher in the Rye. That book is phenomenal, it may be one of my all-time favorites. In a way it is a very Beat book, and in a way it is a very Emo book. And it's all about depression, and not being satisfied, and having a good heart but not really liking anyone or anything or being satisfied at all. It really knocks me out.

6:50PM - DIFF Day One

Here is the first installment of my festival report, in a happy double mega secret phatty phormat phor u!!! My webhost is being a little noodly right now, so I have to kind of kludge this together... if the link isn't working let me know. Hope you can read my writing okay.

2:20AM - Transient

I was supposed to catch the B back to Boulder at 1:08 am. I left Paris on the Platte, had to return to get my coat then ran to the bus station. I got there a minute early but the doors were already locked. I ran for the first stop, but the bus passed me a block down, and was already gone by the time I got there. I sat on the Moon Bridge (near Commons Park in Denver) and wrote and listened to the whining and screeching and booming and crashing of the freight train below. I was walking toward an all night diner, when I remembered a friend had given me the access code to the twenty-four hour architecture lab, where I now sit typing this message. At 5:04 the first bus leaves for Boulder. Fun!