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:: 03.26.2003 ::
Some kids at my school are on a hunger strike to protest the war in Iraq. They’ve got tents and blankets set up in the middle of campus and they hang out and play acoustic guitar and piss off a lot of people just by being there, and probably play Scrabble or something. It actually looks kind of like fun, if just for the experience of urban camping or something. Wow, urban camping. I think I just made that up. Or maybe I didn’t.
Anyway, we’re eating in the cafeteria today and this kid David May runs up and says “Hey guys, did you hear? Bush just called off the war!” And we’re all like “ha ha, yeah right, mr. hilarious.” (we didn’t actually say that though) And David’s like, “no, really, he was just on TV and said that he thought the whole war thing was cool, but then he realized that six college students were starving themselves, so he decided to back down!”
This sarcasm would probably have been a bit more biting if there wasn’t a quote from one of the hunger kids in the school paper about how it was ridiculous to think that what they were doing would make any kind of real political difference, but that they were doing it for themselves as a statement that they would suffer along with the Iraqis or something. Um. There was going to be something funny here, I swear.
Oh yeah, so then I said “hey man, that’s not funny I’m on the hunger strike, too” and then took a bite of my cookie in an irreverent fashion. And then he said “whoa, hey man, that’s your food, you’re not really on strike,” and then me or someone else said that I was only eating a certain amount, so that I wouldn’t get full and that I was going to stay hungry anyway, so I was still on strike. And then everybody laughed. And there was something in there about an orange, I think.
I don’t know, it was funny at the time.
I’m really only updating because Drey was bugging me about it earlier in our evening meal. I said that I didn’t have anything to write about. She said write about that thing you told me about losing you ID card or whatever.
Ok. This one will be good, I swear. So, you have to use your ID card to get food from the cafeteria, so I walked down there, thinking that I had my card, but guess what?? I really didn’t have it!!!! So I had to walk aaaalllllll the way back to my dorm and it was like “oh man, where’s my card at, oh it’s probably on my desk with the rest of my stuff” but when I got there it was like “holy crap, it totally isn’t here!!!!” Wham! What are you going to do now?
And I was like, “oh man, I totally don’t know, maybe it’s on my floor or on my bed or something, but it totally wasn’t there either!” and then it was like, man, my side of the room is really freaking messy, how can I ever find anything in here?? And it was like the clean room police were like “you need to pick your junk up, do you hear us? So we’re taking you ID card so you get the picture, mister!” Ed also told me he stole it, but he really didn’t. So then I was like ok, better pick up some of this stuff at least, maybe I’ll find it. And I did! It was right there on the floor, only I couldn’t see it at first. So I got my card back and the messy floor police were happy I guess. Except that later that night Ed tripped over all my stuff and got scraped up on my popcorn tin, so I guess I need to pick stuff up some more. But I did that after he told me he got hurt so it’s ok, don’t worry.
My favorite part was the clean police part, that was really clever and funny.
Whatever, you guys, I’m going to bed.
:: Aaron Humphrey 12:15 AM reply [+] ::
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:: 03.25.2003 ::
Days keep on slipping away from me in ways that I've stopped trying to understand . . . I was just getting ready for bed thinking I had a nine ay-em class tomorrow, but it turns out that TODAY was my early day, and I don't have class until 11 tomorrow! Thank goodness for finding those forgotten days again.
Been listening to the new Zwan album all night. I'll probably keep it in my headphones all week and then get burned out on it, but I can't seem to find anything else that catches me like these songs do right now. The website is cool, too.
Don't have much to update y'all on tonight. Made an impromptu In + Out run and watched breakfast epiphanies play The Hub and read through a bunch of screen-plays. So no complaints here.
:: Aaron Humphrey 12:04 AM reply [+] ::
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:: 03.20.2003 ::
War. What more do you want me to say?
I think it’s sad that there are still so many people out there who think that this is some kind of justified retaliation because of September 11.
I also think it’s fascinating that The Internet has become an actually viable forum for discussing this thing. The ratio of words that have been written about the war against Iraq to the number of hours we’ve actually been at war is probably staggering compared to every other major military conflict in history. I’ve read message board posts and blogs and journals written by people from all around the world with different religious backgrounds and political standpoints and surprisingly, a lot of them have been kind of thoughtful and informed.
What we’ve got is an unprecedented world-wide dialogue about not just this war, but all wars, past, present and future. And it does make a difference. I’ve got Tracy Chapman on my stereo and it’s an old album, but she’s right, we are talking about a revolution. And it’s because we are talking.
oh, and by the way
no war!
:: Aaron Humphrey 12:16 AM reply [+] ::
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:: 03.15.2003 ::
That car alarm sounds like it’s going off inside my freaking room. Maybe I should close the window.
It’s raining again today. Usually the California sun floods our room with urgency in the morning, but today nine a.m. was soft and quiet. Grey’s not always a bad thing. Around noon I skate to the library and splash through puddles that soak my jeans and submerge my skateboard. The city is more like a river today than I’ve ever seen it and this isn’t really ground transportation any more, it feels more like I’m rafting or canoeing. The water parts against the bow of my board and splashes up onto the deck.
And I’d nearly forgot: I almost drowned, once.
When I was eight or ten we’d gone to visit my grandparents for the day. After lunch my sister and I ran off to play arts and crafts while mom and dad got ready to set out for the afternoon’s canoe trip down the Willamette. When they were all packed up I had to decide whether to go with them and be brave and grown-up, or stay with my sister and Grandma’s well-worn, welcoming supply of Crayloa markers and stubby crayons.
It was one of those pit-of-the-stomach decisions where no matter what I chose knew I’d regret it, but after my mom told me it was ok if I didn’t go, I decided to spend my Sunday staying warm and safe and eating oatmeal raisin cookies.
My parents, usually pretty adept on the river, misjudged the current that day. It had rained recently and the river was fast and littered with debris. They tipped, were thrown into the cold, violent water and the boat, which my dad scrutinized mercilessly for scratches after every voyage, hit a snag and jack-knifed around it, bent completely in on itself. My grandma got a call from my mom a little while later, and we drove down to pick my parents up, soaking wet, at a stranger’s house. My mom had trouble swimming to shore against the current, and my dad told me, his voice layered with laughter of relief and disbelief, that if I’d gone with them, I probably wouldn’t have made it. But I was in a less dangerous world of construction-paper comic books, unaware that at that very instant I might have been sucked underneath a roaring current, silently struggling for air.
So I’m 20 years old, standing in the library in a 3-dollar thrift-store jacket, my hair dripping on the carpet, facing a shelf full of books about movie stars, pages and pages about Brando and the Marx brothers. And the water rushes down the sidewalk outside, and I pick up a book of art photography and sit down at a table, thankful for glue sticks and safety scissors, and now for stacks of words I’ve never read before. I could be drowning, I could have drowned, but once again I’m idylly lost, absorbed in another quiet, lazy afternoon.
:: Aaron Humphrey 4:48 PM reply [+] ::
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:: 03.10.2003 ::
Ahoy, kids. I've got a lot of things I want to tell y'all about, but I haven't had time to sit down and write about any of them. Went to the anti-war rally on Wednesday and further upped my hippie level, went up to Palm Springs on Thursday to shoot a Production 1 movie about a kid who claws his eyes out (hey, I just had to load the film, I didn't write it or anything). Filmed in a burned out resturant in the middle of the desert, an eye clinic and an ice cream truck, then got back in time on Saturday for an intimate evening with Vanilla Ice. Well, it was actually the Noise of the Needy concert at my school, and it was a rather big and loud evening and we left before Vanilla was even half way through his set, but some of the bands that played before him were pretty good. Spent Sunday trying to study philosophy. All this, plus the little things that keep the world a-spinning. I've got at least four essays up here in my brain, and none of them are the ones I'm supposed to write for class. No fair. Anyway, time for me to run along to badminton.
Here's a picture in the meantime ... no one else seems to think it's as funny as I do, though.
:: Aaron Humphrey 12:00 AM, midnight, baby! reply [+] ::
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:: 03.04.2003 ::
Ed’s got a vintage Nintendo Entertainment System. And while we also have a PS2, a N64 and (my personal favorite) a Sega Genesis in the room, the NES is the one that really matters. Since we took down the giant willow tree branch that made our room look like a jungle, the vintage Nintendo is been the first to start conversations when new people come to visit. But the conversations don’t last very long. Because it doesn’t matter how totally awesome it would be to play Super Mario Bros. 3 or take ExciteBike down memory lane, that doesn’t make a difference if the system won’t show more than a green screen or maybe some pound signs when you start it up. And it won’t.
Stuff breaks, it happens, you know? Take my electric toothbrush for example. I was wary at first of putting something with electricity in it in my mouth, but man, those things are the bombdiggidy of toothbrushing! Every night I used it I thought of all sorts of web-page entries I could type up dealing with teeth, brushing, electricity, and all the different, amazing ways they work together. I say used in past tense, because, well, my toothbrush broke. It’s sad. Actually, no it didn’t, it just needs new batteries. But I don’t have any of those! So it might as well be broke L Manual toothbrushes just don’t cut it for me any more now that I’ve had a taste of the good life, but what else can I do?
Or, it’s like my desk lamp. That thing is great! It totally lights up my desk and lets me see what I’m doing! But it broke, too L Well, the bulb burned out. But where am I going to get a new lightbulb? And what kind of bulb? And where am I going to find that kind of money? Sigh.
My phone did legitimately break sometime last semester, or at least it stopped working and I couldn’t fix it. For months I’ve been using my roommates’ phone, but I finally got a new one this weekend! It’s red, like it’s for emergencies. And it is! If you have one, call 714-516-5356, and that will make my phone ring! Wow, my website is interactive, just like those American Idol shows! You can totally change the outcome of my life! Just by calling those 10 easy numbers! Or maybe you only have to dial six because you live in my area code! Holy crap! I’m getting way too excited about this, and I wasn’t even planning on talking about my phone or giving out my phone number. Wow. I hope that doesn’t blow up in my face. Oh well. Stuff breaks. But then you can fix it or replace it, and it’s ok and I should stop whining. The end.
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I am embarrassed. And yet, I’m still posting the link. Something may be wrong with me.
:: Aaron Humphrey 12:00 AM, midnight, baby! reply [+] ::
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:: 03.01.2003 ::
In case you haven’t been following the continuing saga, my backpack turned up missing about two weeks ago. Today it turned up found. Since my desperate, ask-everyone dash the day after I lost it, my calls to public safety have been on an exponential decline: five times a day, twice a day, once a day, once a week. I’d found a backpack to borrow, gotten new course syllabuses, explained to all my teachers, whined to almost all my friends and last night cracked open a new notebook and wrote my first new journal entry. Besides paying for the stuff I'd lost, I'd moved on. And I was even about to pay for some of the stuff I lost (specifically my mailbox key) this morning when I figured I’d call public safety one last time, just for kicks. And they had it. And I’d honestly expected never to see it again and it had actually been sitting in their office since Monday. Crazy. Further proof that you can only really get things back after you've really let them go. Ah paradox.
As for whether or not the whole ordeal was a bunch of stupid running around or not, I’ll let you judge for yourself with a rare (and probably rather under whelming) look into my journals:
Feb. 1
I live on the fourth floor of a dorm building built like a Holiday Inn in a city called Orange which no longer grows oranges. The floor shakes sometimes like it’s an earthquake, but I’m pretty sure it’s just the people on the floor below me. My life’s on the verge of getting boring. I’ve got mostly the same friends as I did last year, but they’re all moving on and I’m still stuck here.
Ok, first of all, I’m recapping the most obvious, mundane facts my life in the middle of a journal that I’m writing for myself. I'm sure I thought the Holiday Inn bit was clever when I wrote it, but the whole thing's really kind of emberassing. Then there’s part where I’m whining about my life not going anywhere. There’s actually a lot of that in that journal.
Feb. 28
Um . . .
There’s not really anything that I can excerpt from this one that would get my point across. So here’s my point: I feel renewed and refreshed and glad to be here. Goodnight, kids.
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I can’t go to bed until I finish eating this orange and throw away the peel so that the ants don’t attack it and swarm my desk (I can deal with one or two crawling around, but really, it's true what they say: three is a crowd, and four and five are . . . nine! That joke never gets old. Fifty bizillion ants on all my stuff does), so I’ll take the bit of time to point you to the new "writing"section I put up the other day. It’s got some stuff I wrote in it. I think some of it’s pretty ok!
:: Aaron Humphrey 12:35 AM reply [+] ::
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