Strider

Today I took a walk. A long walk. I started my Discman with Talkie Walkie upon leaving my apartment and listened to it the entire way through. Then, while still walking, I put in Return of the Space Cowboy and listened to that all the way through. The Air CD is only 42 minutes but the Jamiroquai one is over an hour...let's say 65 minutes. So that comes to 107 minutes. I think that constitutes a long walk, don't you?? I certainly didn't know what neighborhood I was in when I decided to turn around and I sure as hell didn't feel like walking back. Thankfully, Seattle has a great transit system and the bus stop was nearby. It was somewhat upsetting, however, when the bus returned me close the the University in just under 15 minutes. In my defense, the trail I walked curves all over the place, so I'm sure I walked several miles. But it was just kinda disappointing to realize that I was still essentially in my backyard.

Scheduling and Shakespeare

Alright, alright. I know it has been a few days since I last posted, but understand that the couple-days gap is a more realistic (and likely) schedule. For the period just starting out the site I wanted to do a posting blitz of sorts so that there would be substantial content for people to enjoy and to form their impressions. Now that that's done, I hope you'll continue to check back periodically to see whatever Ice Climber is discussing.

Do you want to know something I'm oddly ashamed of? And I know there are much more important things to be concerned about in this life, but this one comes to mind from time to time. I've never read Hamlet. Something about that just bothers me. All of Shakespeare's plays carry vital themes, but isn't Hamlet like the most important one? Kids, you've gotta read Hamlet and Macbeth and Othello and slog through the language and understand the themes because those ideas come up in real life all the time. I think this is why I got into education...there are just elements that I think it would behoove people to have had experience with. Not only works of literature, but certain values and critical attributes that I think prepare a person for anything. Hmm...maybe I should talk more about this a different day. Kinda tired now.

If you just want to appear cultured read As You Like It and Twelfth Night (or say you read them).

The Energizer and the Plan

I'm gonna be up all night. Got a paper due tomorrow for Children's Environmental Health about the effects of supercaffeinated beverages. You know, your Red Bulls, your AMPs, your Sobe Adrenalines...there's a million of them. I've even learned there's a Nelly-sponsored drink called Pimp Juice. Well, in the name of research I've kicked back 3 of these badboys tonight. Just hoping they can keep me going til 5-6am; I'm in no mood for the 24-hour shit tonight. Wow, my leg is totally shaking...I feel like Thumper. Hmmm, maybe that's not a good analogy.

One of these energy drinks I gulped down was a Jolt Espresso. On the label it says it's a coffee-cola blend. It's kinda like coffee-flavored Coke if you can imagine it; similar to Vanilla Coke, I suppose. For what it's worth, I won't be drinking it again.

I don't know WHAT the fuck was wrong with me today. I walked two blocks to the ATM, back one block for the convenience store for this supercaffeine and then back to the apartment. I haven't been outdoors since. I'm jogging my ass to the Space Needle tomorrow. Or maybe take the bus out there and jog back.

Dreaming of Saint Patrick's Day

Hey girl. Sorry to hear that spinning the wheel has caused you such pain. But if I were with you, you know I'd take care of it.

I like John Mayer for a couple of reasons. For one, there's the gentle movement of his music from Room for Squares. There are also his young man-pertinent romantic life lyrics. But, perhaps most of all, I like him because he sings in my range. My voice is very low (I sing bass) and I can do some Prince-style falsetto, but there's a whole middle, tenor range that I just can't hit without singing at the top of my lungs or sounding like Michael Bolton...wait, that's the same thing. It's difficult to find popular male singers in that lower register and you can forget it as far as women singers are concerned.

So "St. Patrick's Day" has been on single repeat in my Discman all day yesterday and today. It's track 14 on Room for Squares. Listen to it, it's really good. I can see myself singing in a Las Vegas lounge. Nothing big. Just one of the maybe 5 or 6 located in some minor corridor of Bally's. I have a drummer, bassist, guitar and piano behind me...or maybe just a keyboard and a drummer. And we'd go through our nightly set but always play St. Patrick's Day at the end. It would be our signature tune. And maybe write the lyrics on little cards to put on every table so that everyone could sing along. It's that kind of song. I'd love to make this happen at least one time.

LUP #1 - Showering in the Gym

Ice Climber is coming at you this evening with notice of one of life's underappreciated pleasures: showering in the locker room after exercising at the gym. First, I'll argue against the alternatives:

Alternative 1: Showering at home - This method involves walking home in either sweat-soaked clothes or causing a new change of clothes to smell because you are not yet clean. Fatigue is a factor. You want to get the the shower as soon as possible but the cooldown period between the last fast break and the first steps to your apartment can make the walk a touch exhausting.

Alternative 2: Not Showering - All the stuff from alternative #1, plus if you go to bed without showering your bed, clothes and entire room will smell like ass for days. Or so I've heard.

The Ideal Way: Showering in the Locker Room - One must overcome any insecurities about seeing other men naked, but it's a small price to pay. And hey, we're all guys, right?? I don't know if the ladies experience a similar thing, but I'd be happy to read (and reread...and savor) any accounts of showering in the women's locker room. You know, just a gender comparison. But regardless of one's sex, the heat of the water, the scent of the soap...it's a thorough cleansing that brings your exercise session to a satisfying conclusion. I implore everyone who works out at the gym...don't bypass the locker room. They provide towels not just for the weight machines. They provide them to help send you home clean and content.

Horrible Titles

KKK, wow. That title is even worse than the other one.

Keep Kitsch Kitsch

I've gotten a little bit of feedback about this page. That makes me oh so happy!! Please continue to read and tell your friends. Your readership and free advertisement are the generators of my mind. They will keep me writing silly and trivial (but hopefully entertaining!) posts for a long time to come.

If any of you use AOL Instant Messenger you've seen the Garfield: The Movie ad at the top of the interface there. Is anyone else really, really upset by this? Some things really should just be left alone.

Don't get me wrong. The Garfield comic is shit. I think it started in 1978 and it hasn't been funny since 1982. Someone in my family had one of the Garfield books. Not the long rectangular ones containing strips that had been printed in the newspaper, but some sort of "Visions of Garfield" graphic novel for adults where he led nine different lives. In one he was a private investigator, in another he was a cavema...uh, cave-cat, I guess. Oh ok, here I see it on Amazon.com. It's called Garfield: His 9 Lives. Out of print. Hey! 37 Used & New from $0.98!! Anyway, that was decent and creative...but it was also written in 1984 (I was born in 1980. It took me several years to understand EVERYTHING in that book). Well, it's 20 years later. The dream is over.

So I'm not upset about a Garfield movie because I particularly like Garfield. But does the material lend itself to a CGI blob falling out of a skyscraper, as shown in the AIM trailer? Or Jennifer Love Hewitt "holding" the cat and smiling in the camera? Are there even any women in the Garfield strip? And what the fuck happened to Nermal??

I felt the same way when they made a live-action Inspector Gadget movie (with Matthew "reckless driving" Broderick, no less). Who knows? I haven't speculated on reasons for this phenomenon of remaking kitsch-y things, but I need to think about this less. Damn, it's already noon?!

Write right, dammit!!

Yeah, man. I get these emails where the author substitutes "u" for "you" and "r" for "are" and it's really, really annoying. All due respect to you if you're a perpetrator of this trend, but please consider stopping. I know you're talking with your friends on Instant Messenger or chatting with BigUnit69 and you want to show them that you're friendly and smiling and LOL and ROFL and OMG-I'm-so-carefree-I'm-like-Peter-fucking-Pan!!!!!!! But I believe the end result of all this horrible misspelling and substitution and bad grammar will be its continuation throughout the lives of its practitioners. You couldn't imagine an oncologist saying "How r u feeling today"? There aren't any company chairs saying "LOL Stanley, our stock is rising at 3 times the rate of our rivals, LOL". Could you imagine an astronaut in space typing a message to Ground Control that read: "Dood we r on the moon. i dint knoe we culd jump so hi"?? Don't you want to be an astronaut?! Try capitalization, grammar, spelling and punctuation. It'll take practice and you may not get it right away (hell, I still don't get it all now), but it will benefit you in the long run. I'm stepping down from the soapbox now. Good night.

Grocery Store Let's Make a Deal

I was at the grocery store at 1:30am last night. I was debating between buying cookies or buying salsa.

I really should have bought the cookies.

Exultation. Plus a helpful tip!!

In less than 3 weeks I'll be updating Ice Climber from the San Francisco Bay, baby! Going back for the summer and I'm excited. Why excited? 'Cause I'll be reunited with:

- Taco Bell
- My Car
- Naan & Curry
- Southland Mall
- BART
- My Family
- Santa Cruz
- Ricers
- CSU Hayward
- My Friends (not counting Master P)

...and these are AMONG OTHER THINGS! Can you tell I'm excited to go back home for few months? Oh, don't worry, Seattle. I'm not done with your ass just yet. I'm just gonna enjoy a 3-month blow then return for Round 2.

Helpful Tip: "blow" can be used to mean a respite, or "breather". Impress your friends!!


Umm...insightful comments will be supplied a different night.

The Frenchman and the Message

Hey ya'll. I don't really want to use this platform to talk about things from school but today I encountered something that everyone should sit and just consider for a moment. We were reviewing writing from some of the great philosophers of education. Pedagogy in tha HOUSE!! Anyway, my man Johnny Jack had something poignant to say:

"How rapid is our journey on this earth! The first quarter of life has been lived before one knows the use of it. The last quarter is lived when one has ceased to enjoy it. At first we do not know how to live; soon we can no longer live; and in the interval which separates these two useless extremities, three-quarters of the time remaining to us is consumed by sleep, work, pain, constraint, and efforts of all kinds. Life is short, not so much because it lasts a short time as because we have almost none of that short time for savoring it. The moment of death may well be distant from that of birth, but life is always too short when this space is poorly filled. We are, so to speak, born twice: once to exist and once to live." -- Jean Jacques Rosseau

Isn't that perceptive? And true? He may have insulted the very young and the elderly by calling their generations "useless extremities", but his message is something to keep in mind.

So, we've all heard messages like this before but sometimes they need to be repeated. If you're hedging on something or making excuses against something you know you ought to do, stop. Then go for it. I'm going to try to keep that in mind for awhile, and I hope you'll do the same. Out.

Poor Title Choice

I'm gonna apologize right now for the title of my last post. Ice Climber doesn't have the strictest editing and this writer posts pretty late at night. Daleks just wasn't a good word. And, plus, I've never ever seen Doctor Who!

The Spectator and the Daleks

For a good chunk of the afternoon I was sitting in the massive library computer lab getting my Power Point on. I was also looking at people (female) working on their assignments or otherwise chatting, spending time or passing though. First, let me tell you about the lab. It's definitely one of the social centers of the campus, although as a graduate center who doesn't know anybody I feel somewhat out of the loop. Everyone is in there working or playing or smoking outside and it's always very populated. In fact, it's a 24-hour facility and I've witnessed it still going strong at 7am. That was back during fall quarter when I was getting my feet wet and didn't know how to finish papers by, oh...say 4am.

Okay, so I'm sitting and looking...and I'm appalled at what young women are wearing these days! Well, not at what they're wearing. I am not gonna complain about seeing skin, boobs and body art. Which gets me to thinking...my cell phone is kinda old -- maybe I should get one of those cameraphones??! My problem is with the uniformity. I know in college, people aren't far removed from high school and adolescence and the pressure to fit in but, seriously, it's like an army of fucking low-rise jeans and spaghetti straps. Especially jeans. I don't buy the whole "jeans are my workhorse/everyday clothes" argument. I've been watching "What Not To Wear" on TLC and Stacy London would kick some ass after hearing that. Or scoff and be speechless, who knows? But dust off a skirt or hook up some sweats and go sporty. Anything but the same old thing! Same goes for the guys. Take off your jeans and sit in my lap. Huh?? I mean, take off your jeans and put on some motherfucking Dockers, man. Or go Rocawear or at least a button-down shirt. I know I sound so stupid for ranting of such a trivial thing but sameness really makes me angry. Let's overcome sameness, everyone. Let's bring variety into everything that we do. I'm gonna switch directions on my bed tonight.

The King and the Gangsta

If you're a newcomer to this page I welcome you. Read, enjoy and please make your presence felt. I do this for you. 'Cause like Chicago...you're my inspiration.

Let me tell you. I've rediscovered Michael Jackson's "Man In The Mirror" and I've been listening to it over and over this past weekend. I know, I know it's cheesy shit. I know, I know Michael Jackson is crazy. But this is like a triumph in pop music, no one can deny! I especially like how the arranger overlayed (overlaid??) Michael Jackson's breathy little "ah's" over him and the choir singing. You or someone you know owns BAD. Listen for the breathy noise immediately after he sings "and no mess-age could've been any clearer". You will feel stupid doing it but afterward you'll be glad you did.

Ooh, I've kinda run out of things to say for tonight. But I don't want to end this streak of posts with two main subjects...set the precedents for laziness and not posting regularly. Well, I'll keep on the music beat and say that Regulators is playing on my Winamp right now. When this song came out way back when I totally wasn't into rap. And I'm still not, really. But one day I realized the brilliance of this...Warren G and Nate Dogg. I mean...the guy's name is Nate Dogg!! And I searched high and low, across oceans and deserts for this title and finally, one day I found it. Regulators = Shangri La. Listen to Regulators after you listen to Man In the Mirror. Keep doing what I tell you to do. Facetious.

The Drama and the Drink

First things first...

Fuck the fucking Lakers.

The NBA playoffs aren't over, but the script has been released to the public and Los Angeles has won the title. It's like when you went to see Titanic (you know you did) and you know the ship will sink but it's about getting to that point in the plot. That's how it is. The NBA playoffs began like Mulholland Drive, hella interesting and mysterious, then it devolved into by-the-book Titanic. Nothing more to say about this tonight...far too upset.

Damn, what the hell is that noise?

You know, I can't remember the last time I had a mixed drink. Not counting that gin I was drinking with mineral water, but even that was back in October/November. I think that the culture of Washington isn't conducive to mixed drinks. There are no little ads on the bar walls for Stoli or Skyy, but instead miles of neon signage for Fat Tire and Labatt Blue. I ought to order a Long Island Iced Tea next time I'm in a bar and see what sort of glance I get from the bartender. Or better yet, a Fuzzy Navel. Which makes me think of something...there should be a mixed drink called the Deee-Lite, after that one-hit wonder "band" with the woman wearing those crazy brightly colored outfits. Wouldn't an electric yellow drink remind you of her and doesn't the name fit perfectly? When I had the gin I coined the Tropical Goddess, which is gin plus Tropical Sprite Remix. I think Deee-Lite ought to be gin, that Berry Sprite Remix and some yellow food coloring.

The Professor and the Video

Rose still has my Justin Timberlake CD. Believe it or not, I really want to listen to that right now.

I've been in school for a long time now. I'm certainly a veteran of college and the American educational process. But I absolutely must overcome my irrational aversion to professors. Are other people the same way? Does anyone else skip all office hours, avoid their professors in the hallway and sweat bullets during the advisor meetings? It's irrational because even when I know I'll be received warmly and positively there's this fear of somehow being chastised. Maybe this is part of something larger...

You know, I held off for days but then I actually watched that beheading video of the civilian. The blurriness of the footage made it not so graphic, but the images and the concept and the knowledge that this previously fantastical act was being forced on a real person is, well...disturbing. Did shit like this happen before? I don't mean atrocities committed against innocent people or making an example of someone. I mean the gleefulness and desire for the spotlight the perpetrators must have had to carry out such a process. So much has changed in such a short time. I'm only 23 but I have to ask what this world is coming to.

I know you were right, Raquel. But I'm still shocked that "revengeful" is a word.

The Pride and the Shame

Yeah, people. I'm like Quincy Jones...Back on the Blog.

While watching the NBA playoffs I saw an update of that Coors commercial on accomplishments. Well, it's really on buying beer, but you know what I mean. It shows a bunch of former Sigma Chi or Lambda Gamma or Skaggs Alpha Beta guys telling you, the beer-buyer, how proud they are for "accomplishments" like buying tacos or nailing their friend's Mom. But it got me thinking about dumb things I'm shamefully proud of (Is that an oxymoron?). They include:

- throwing a guy's bike into a lake
- breaking my foot and not seeking medical care
- jogging 50 blocks after midnight in S.F. to catch the last half-hour of a birthday party

Damn, this list sucks. There must be more. To be continued.

It's interesting the qualities I'm saying I'm proud of here. The first one conveys anger, the second one conveys toughness and the last one suggests endurance. Is that just me? Is shameful pride a masculine thing? Does the shameful pride women feel about their accomplishments involve looking and acting tough or does it involve something else? Think. Discuss. Reveal. I'm out.

Okay, it may not have been broken but it was really fucked up.

This blog was born at 3:00am on a Thursday morning

It's Christopher. The $ynchronizer. I'm making another attempt at a blog. I will learn from my mistakes of last time. This will be a cartharsis for me. Nothing else right now...it's hella late.