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November 23rd 2002 - Go me for doing tons of reading for school! Now I just need to actually do some practice problems, and some actual assignments because they're piling up on me, and I'll be great! BUT that's not why I'm checking in. Basically I'm really pissed and upset at the female gender. SO pissed infact that I don't even believe in creating woman world anymore because they don't deserve it! Here's why. At my work, this girl was sexually harrassed. I hadn't even known about it until recently because she didn't tell anyone. It was ALSO by one of my managers. Is she going to report it though? NO! Why? Because she doesn't feel it's a big deal. She's actually thinking about QUITTING work because she hates this guy so much but refuses to actually stand up for what's right and turn him in. What does this do? It allows the guy to just continue harrassing girls like it's all fine and dandy! What the hell?! What is that going to accomplish? I was under the assumption that women looked after other women, etc and girl power and such and such. Obviously that's all a bunch of SHIT! If girls can't even get enough backbone to stand up for what they believe in and for what's right and decent and about how they should be treated, then they don't deserve a world of their own! I mean, it's not like it's a completely helpless situation, as in the real world where someone does something horrible and you can't do anything about it because you're physically lacking in the ability to do anything. This is at work where there are rules and standards and penalties!! How can women bitch and complain about the world and the horrible things that happen and about the evil way they're treated when they won't even defend themselves when they're sexually harrassed!!? Now granted I've only had the same response from two women so far on this subject (ie. the girl in question and one of my friends) but I'm just too disappointed to feel like asking other girls and finding out the same response. So if you are a girl and you feel you'd actually do something about someone sexually harrassing you at work then AWESOME! At least 'someone' has some self love and dignity. - chris

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November 21st 2002 - Well, Jack in the Box sucks. A lot. I got one of their chocolate banana shakes and got food poisoning from it. Thus causing me to miss even 'more' school thanks to me skipping a whole bunch. Ah well. At least I felt better enough to still go see the Ben Kweller concert with Liz. The show was awesome! It could have been better though, but it had nothing to do with the music itself. First off, doors were supposed to open at 7:30, BUT they didn't open until 8:30. Then the first band, some guy called Adam Green didn't come on until about 9:45 or something. So we actually really could have gotten there around 10:00 and then not had to have stood around for 4 freaking hours!! The other disappointing thing is that, though not his fault, Ben Kweller isn't exactly the tallest person on the planet so we couldn't exactly see him very well even with the large assortment of shortish teenagers infront of us. Annoyingly, I even think Ben was SITTING during some of his songs which caused us to not see a DAMNED thing. Other than that though, the concert was completely worth it and Liz even got a free ticket from this really nice guy who was standing infront of us in line. Liz and I were hoping to see some pretty hot Wash U guys, but damn if the place didn't seem to be packed with highschoolers. All in all, I'm really glad I went to the concert because it was great. If you haven't heard Ben Kweller, he's sort of like a cross between (old) Weezer and Ben Folds Five, but with more Weezer-like aspects. Well, it's time for me to start catching up on homework and the knowledge or I may find myself getting some pretty nasty grades. - chris

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November 17th 2002- Eric here, finally, for some reason or another! Its been so long since ive added anything to the site I almost forgot how to do it! For shame, Eric, for shame. So what have i been up to? I have been ensconsing, immersing myself in the creative process, spending hours upon hours making tangible expressionary reactions to my emotions, or simply put, making art. Ive made quite a bit, two big projects that took alot of time, the first is called Four Fertilizations. Its a series of 14 to 16 resin eggs. If you dont know what resin is, ask your priest. Then ask someone at an art store. Or read on! Its basically plastic, everybody has seen little gifts and such at hallmark stores or just anywhere, and those are made of resin. They are painted of course, but that is what resin is, plastic. Its fun stuff too. But a little back story here. My mom, and actually all of this is thanks to her, because she told me about a little shop called Making Time that i could get a wizard costume from for my grade school character parade. I took the costume back after i was done with it and i was looking around this very neat and unique shop, and i found these little lead things that looked like sperm. The owner said that they were swan shot, melted down musket balls from the 1700's. They were collected after they were shot and melted down through a colender like thing, over a bucket of water, so that is why they have these sperm/tear drop forms. So, after rummaging around a few ideas i had, i snuck up on the idea of creating small resin eggs, and putting those bullets in them. I started off with regular eggs that i hollowed out, but those left a film on the resin, making them cloudy. I then moved on to easter eggs, and those are perfectly clear, so you can see the sperm perfectly. So i have 16, or 14, i havnt decided completely yet. But i have four clear eggs with sperm in them, in a line with 4 cloudy eggs with nothing in them. Perpindicular to those i have four cloudy eggs with sperm in them, with four clear eggs behind them. It's basically the idea of potential, of oppourtunity, since that is how i see eggs/birth. Each of those could have been something. The clear eggs that were made from the easter eggs represent making your own possibilities, and the eggs made from the real eggs represent oppourtunities and possibilities that naturally occur. The idea is echoed by the second line of eggs, mirroring that. The other project i have been working on is a map of the world, printed onto an egg (a real egg, not resin) using liquid light, and then mounting that egg onto a globe stand. I found an old iron globe, i assume its iron. Metal anyway. But it is this neat epcot center looking globe, nothing inside it, a mesh like makeup . I can't describe it perfectly. I am going to put the egg inside that, and put them both back onto the stand. The idea behind that is this: Eggs symbolize rejuvination, new beginnings, new life, constant change. The world is always changing, always becoming new, but inside this second globe, it is trapped. The title, which is an incredibly important window to understand the concept, is "A globe for the Saint of Alexandria". So its my concept of wanting to give a constantly new world to someone, but being unable to do so. Look up who the saint of alexandria is and you'll understand. I'm also working on a series of pictures of Rachel, which i think i might title "Viva Levi" because that is all i can think of. At the moment. They are a series of 3 pictures, in different styles and techniques. Also, I made a series/duo called "Nautical Series" with two pieces, one is a small dish with resin and the sperm in it, with a little plastic grid of cap gun ammo. There is still one of the caps left in there (those little round caps you put in a cap gun revolver) its red and a very pretty thing. The dish is white, sperm is grey, aesthetically i think its very nice. That piece is called "Map (Plotting The Course)" And the second is a small glass box, with a broken compass in the middle, pieces of a newspaper from 1925, a few sperm that are circling around the compass, but none facing its direction, and a small clipping from one of my contact lens packages that says "sterile" its very tiny. Smaller than your pinky nail. The box is closed and glued shut, so it cant open, and that one is titled "Compass (Lost At Sea)". These are kind of humorous pieces, called the Nautical series because the idea as the sperm as sailors, or pirates, going in in large numbers and attacking, also, the term Sea-men came to mind. Those pieces are for the fine arts club gallery show that is coming up, and just for my own enjoyment of sorts. I need to create! I also made about 50 things for the fine arts club silent auction. I am mass producing! I also found all kinds of cool stuff at creve cour camera!! They had a photo swap meet and i got a really old camera for 3 bucks, 3 rolls of 120 film for 3 bucks, a camera strap, something cool that i dont know what it is that i can use for art, and a bag. Pretty neat! Im excited. And there is all kinds of other things to talk about too, philisophical things and other things such as how cool the new harry potter movie is! And how Metroid Fusion for Game boy advance and Metroid Prime for the game cube are AWESOME!!!! I played them for a bit at toys R us. Okay, okay, i camped out there and scared off the other children who wanted to play it by putting shaving cream on my mount and freaking them out. Its fun! I gotta go though, so excelsior!!

"Where did all these midgets come from?!?!?"

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November 11th 2002 - Skipped school today (which sucks because I just realized I missed a quiz) because I just didn't feel like getting up. That 'may' have something to do with the fact that I was drinking around 2 o'clock am. Either way, it doesn't alter the current fact that I hate C++! What a shitty programming language! Do people just go into rooms when they're creating new programming languages and say to themselves "Lets see how many different ways we can make simple tasks more arduous and horrible?!" That's what it seems like to me! I've just sat through the most boring lecture going over chapter 8 in our text about overloading operators in classes. This was shown through examples that were PAGES LONG! Do you know what the programs did? They added two numbers. That's it!! And it's REALLY stupid because there are so many programming languages out there when there only needs to be ONE! Damn capitalistic assholes. My brain actually feels like it's going to split open through my scull and out my ears. I actually love Calculus more than programming! I probably even love dental work more than programming. I don't even want to BE a programmer, but I'm forced to take it for my degree. Stupid sonsabitches. In other news, I might as well be an only child now because I haven't spoken to my brother in WEEKS! He doesn't call (me, anyhow), he doesn't write, he's rarely online, and he never answers his cellphone. If I wasn't so attached to having a brother, I wouldn't be that against being an only child, but obviously he probably was just a figment of my imagination! Okay, well nothing else is really new except that Eric is still freakishly busy doing all kinds of art projects. Go Eric for being able to put so much of his time into something he's good at and doesn't mind doing for countless hours and have it NOT give him aneurism as opposed to me and programming!

Now lets get philosophical! Is Fate immutable? No matter what I choose to do with my life, will the end result always be the same? Meaning that every choice I make actually causes my life and surroundings to alter themselves to such a degree that the impact on me is the same as if I had just done those specific events to lead up to that end. Or is there no such thing as Fate and there are countless possibilities of end results due to choices? Are facts and Fate the same thing? We're Fated to die. Or is it just a fact that we all will die? Maybe it shouldn't even 'be' "will die" but perhaps "can die". Because if knowledge is gained enough to alter DNA such that we can "cheat" death and therefore 'not' die, then we won't die. That makes me think that there is no such thing as Fate. Then again, if like I said after making a certain choice, my life and surroundings alter themselves enough to FORCE me to end up in a specific end result, then it wouldn't matter how many choices I made because life would always change my "maze" around so that I still end up at the finish. Is that what happens to crazy people? Did they make such a drastic choice in their lives somewhere or come up with a certain thought that caused their lives (to them) to completely warp itself in order to cancel that thought or action out in order to stop the repercussions and thus cause them to get to the finish line given enough time has gone by? Yeah, try and understand 'that'! But really. Life is all about perceiving. We can all perceive life the same or drastically different given how we think about things. But life itself is what gives us the background for which we base how we think about things. So if we made a certain choice in our lives that changed our life and similarly our perception of life, we would make completely different choices therein. Now if that was the end result (ie being crazy) then it wouldn't really matter. But say that you were "meant" to get to something else afterwards, so your perception of life caused you to make different choices here and there which continued to change your life/perception of life close enough to a perception that would lead you to choosing an identical path to the path you 'would' have chosen if you had just chosen something different earlier. Are ya still with me? Now, if perception of life 'is' life, could we possibly induce a different perception of life enough so our lives were tangibly changed to fit that perception? (Think "Matrix-like" shit and you'll have a ballpark figure) I guess this just sort of reminds me of the topic in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where they're talking about the Answer to everything and then not having the Question. Saying that if ever the two were known at the same time, then everything would cease to exist in order to create a brand new everything with a different answer and question. Now if there were such a thing, then the human brain conceivably is capable of being able to figure it out. The brain is able to do calculations quicker than understanding! Like catching a ball... pretty easy, right? Evidently the calculations for knowing how to catch that ball are outstanding and your brain just does them without even knowing the formulas! Soo, if it's that powerful, who knows WHAT we're actually capable of if given the correct stimuli or situation. Mothers can pick up volkswagons to save their babies in trouble, but only in those situations (normally). Just makes ya wonder, huh? K, I'm done. - chris

"Was all of that really necessary??"

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November 6th 2002 - Ah.. tis a dark day, though it is sunny. Not mainly about Talent beating Carnahaan by ONE PERCENT(!!), but other things concerning election time. Did you know that Nevada actually had on their polls a "ban same sex marriage" that states "Only a marriage between a male and female person shall be recognized and given effect in this state." And it passed with 67%! How evil and full of malice can you be to have such a thing! I point yet again to the paper my friend Toya wrote for school: I Do, But I Can't. It completely pisses me off and makes me want to blow up Nevada with some kind of device. Who needs to hate terrorists when we can hate our own kind!? And now that Nevada passed the proposal, I'm sure other states are just bound to hop along the band wagon of hatred. And gee, why stop there Nevada?! Why not add another clause that excludes transgendered people as well?? It's possible for a transgendered person to still marry someone of the opposite sex and be extremely happy. You should add "natural born male and female" to the state constitution so you don't leave anyone out! Hell, why you're at it, just discriminate further and say that only WHITE people can get married! I hope I'm making my point. I'm so happy that God had it in His plan for people to hate so much. Gah, anyway. More news: My friend Morgan sent me this article about gay sheep and further studies about the possible causes of homosexuality in the womb and the different size in the hypothalamus, you know, thinks they already know. But being the pessimist that I am, I'm thinking about the research in this light. I believe that they view homosexuality as a disease that occurs in the womb, and if they discover just how it happens, they can take measures to stop it and basically stop all "gayness". .. As time goes by, do people just get more and more stupid?!? ::sigh::

In other happenings, I had the most freaky experience today at my bank. About two months ago, they started remodeling and they were like any other bank with normal tellers you could talk to and hand them your checks, etc. Well today was the first time I've been back since they finished the construction and changing the name of the bank. It was completely different! I even had to 'ask' where to deposit my checks because I didn't see any tellers. Well, the secretary informed me to go to the wall to the left where there were lots of monitors and webcams and phones. Lets see if I can make a crappy picture with symbols.

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