The Inner Child

So, I recently posted a picture of the Lego Star Destroyer I recently purchased and subsequently built. It took me somewhere between 12-15 manhours, and that was very much mental work. I had to read pictoral instructions depicting gray plates attaching to other gray plates. The visual work alone was mind-bending. Then there was searching a pile of over 3000 parts for a single one, the mass of repetition involved in building the more decorative portions of the thing.

And when I was done? I hopped on the Lego website and searched for more large legos. Right now I've got a Y-wing coming to me, granted with fewer than half the parts of the Star Destroyer, but nevertheless large and assuredly challenging. Eventually I'd like to spend the $500 on the new version of the Millenium Falcon with over 5000 parts, the largest Lego set ever, and undoubtedly a severe test to my abilities.

Congrats, me. I'm an AFOL now - Adult Fan of Lego.

TRH

It's So Big...

To A Girl In My Spanish Class...

Your name was Erin. I spoke with you during a ten-minute break we had the one day you were there, but then you weren't there anymore. I told you that I wrote down notes on things I had observed about people in the class? You were one. You stood out.

To put it mildly, you are one of an extremely small number of perfectly beautiful people I have ever laid eyes on in my life. You stand above the rest. And now I think you've probably dropped the class and I'll almost certainly never see you again.

Your eyes were the perfect kind of swarthy and sly, and the way you wore your hair in a bun like that made you look like you were about to throw off clothes to reveal a superhero outfit and start kicking ass and taking names kung-fu style. You were sleek and dressed so incredibly well, looking casual and stylish. To put it bluntly, you were perfect.

I hope you never see this.

TRH

Kiwi!

There's nothing that needs to be said here.

TRH

Picture.

This comic strip defines how I feel about adulthood. I'm apprehensive about it, of course, but at the same time I think the girl here is saying the most amazing thing ever: it really is our turn, isn't it. This makes me wonder what my generation is really coming to. Are we going to be okay? Will we lead this country to success, or are we going to screw the planet and ourselves as bad as previous generations? Worse? What will happen to the Punks of the world, the people who dress in shorts that come to somewhere below the calf, wear chains and mohawks, listen to Blink 182? Not that I have anything against Blink, just the culture they represent, and mostly for the aesthetic reasons. They don't look responsible. And what will happen to the superficials? How will our beauty-focused culture handle wrinkles and aging? Will we regret our lifestyle of decadence?

I will note, at this point: you can have my caffeine when you pry it from my COLD DEAD HANDS! Sometimes I feel I should have a staff of actors to say some things for me. That line is so much more effective when Charleton Heston says it. But I still can't think of where I'm going to use "Soylent Green is People!" at. Any conversation involving luck naturally involves Clint Eastwood.

I wish I would invent time travel. If I ever do, I'll come back to RIGHT NOW (Grand Forks, ND, at 10:10PM Central Standard Time, in my apartment, the one that Crystal used to live in) and tell myself what it's like there. In the future.

I had an intriguing thought today, so I expressed it to a couple of my coworkers. "What if in the future they really do invent time travel, come back and visit us, but every time they have, we've just thought they were crazy and killed them or ignored them until they went away? We'd never know..." When I turned around my boss was staring at me with this grin on his face like "What the hell goes on in your head?"

I bought pants the other day. Cass (a friend and notably a female) complains often of girls clothes sizes (there should be an apostrophe somewhere in there, but I don't know where) and their complete randomness. Then usually I say something about how nice guys' sizes are and we agree and share a laugh. I'd like to take this moment to take back everything I've said about guys clothes and being easy. Shirts come in sizes that may or may not hold true across the brands, and I still don't understand the logic of shoe sizes, but the worst are honestly the pants. It could have been so easy, so incredibly easy. Waistline by inseam, right? How hard could it be?

There's fit. Damned fit. Relaxed fit, loose fit, snug fit, relaxed loose, relaxed comfortable, comfortable loose, loose snug, and carpenter can go in front of everything as well. Carpenter just means it has a little loop of denim for hammer stowage. And possibly some other stuff. And then you've still got to break the damn things in. It's awful, really. I feel like I did after I had long hair: sympathetic to one more thing about girls.

That's all I've got for now. Don't fuck up.

TRH

I Think I'll Go To Boston...

I may or may not have a girlfriend. We've never actually met face to face, but my inbox is full of her text messages and we've spoken on the phone. So, if nothing else, I know that I'm amiable with an intelligent construct of the Internet that knows how to generate not only a text file but also an MP3 file effectively mimicking a teenage female human. If that's the case, I'm not entirely sure I'd be disappointed. I mean, that's pretty damn cool.

Our song is Boston, by Augustana, hence the title. Also, though, I've been thinking about where I want to live after college, and my mind is drawn to Boston (which is how that song became our song). And when I'm there, I want to ride their subway and say strange things that will make peoples' minds spontaneously combust.

"Every time you touch yourself sexually, a 13 year old boy discovers masturbation"

"I only hate bigots"

"It'll be easy to breed Eugenics out of the populace!"

"The goo conquers all it sees, and relentlessly punishes moderate crimes with wicked nasty tasks"

Yes. Yes, you're right. I fully intend to be the crazy homeless guy on the subway. Except I'll be going home to my decently nice apartment to shed my faux-hobo rags (Derelicte) and laugh my ass off listening to the tape recording.

Is that unhealthy?

TRH

This Is Not An Original Work

Saw this in a newsletter here at school...

One fine hot summer's afternoon I saw a Piper Cub flying in the pattern at a quiet country airfield. The CFI was getting bothered with the student's inability to maintain altitude in the thermals and was getting impatient at sometimes having to take over the controls. Just then he saw a twin engine Cessna 5,000 feet above him and thought, "Another 1,000 hours of this and I qualify for that twin charter job! Aahh, to be a real pilot...going somewhere!"

The Cessna 402 was already late, and the boss told him this charter was for one of the company's premier clients. He'd already set MCT and the cylinders tidn't like it in the heat of this summer's day. He was at 6,000 feet and the winds were now a 20-knot headwind. Today was the sixth day straight, and he was pretty tired of fighting these engines. Maybe if he got 10,000 feet out of them the wind might die off. Geez, those cylinder temps! He looked out momentarily and saw a B737 leaving a contrail at 33,000 feet in the serene blue sky. "oh man," he thought. "My interview is next month. I hope I just don't blow it! Outta G/A, nice jet job, above the weather...no snotty passengers to wait for...aahh."

The Boeing 737 bucked and weaved in the heavy CAT at FL330 and ATC advised that lower levels were not available due to traffic. The Captain, who was only recently advised that his destination was below RVR minimums, had slowed to LRC to try and hold off a possible in-flight diversion and arrange an ETA that would hopefully ensure the fog had lifted to CATII minimums. The Company negotiations broke down yesterday and it looked as if everyone was going to take a pay cut. The F/O's will be particularly hard hit as their pay wasn't anything to speak of anyway.

Finally deciding on a speed compromise between LRC and turbulence penetration, the Captain now looked up and saw a Concorde at Mach 2+. Tapping his F/O's shoulder as the 737 took another bashing, he said "Now THAT'S what we should be on...huge pay...super fast...not too many routes...not too many legs...above the CAT! Yup, what a life!"

FL590 was not what he wanted anyways and considered FL570. Already the TAT was creeping up again and either they would have to descend or slow down. That rear fuel transfer pump was becoiming unreliable and the F/E had said moments ago that the radiation meter was not reading numbers that he'd like to see. The Concorde descended to FL570, but the radiation was still quite high even though the NOTAM indicated hunky dory below FL610. Flue Flow was up and the transfer pump was intermittent. Evening turned into night as they passed over the Atlantic. Looking up, the F/O could see a tiny white dot moving against the backdrop of a myriad of stars. "Hey Captain," he called as he pointed. "Must be the Shuttle."

The Captain looked up for a moment and agreed. Quietly he thought how a Shuttle mission, while complicated, must be the be-all and end-all in aviation. Above the crap, no radiation problems, no damn fuel transfer problems. "Aahh, must be a great way to earn a buck."

Discovery was into it's 27th orbit and perigee was out from nominated rendezvous altitude with the commsat. The robot arm was virtually U/S and a walk may become necessary. The 200 foot predicted error would necessitate a corrective burn and Discovery would need that fuel if a walk was to be required.

Houston continually asked what the Commander wanted to do, but the advice they proffered wasn't much help. The Commander had already been 12 hours on station sorting out the problem and just wanted 10 minutes to himself for a bathroom break. Just then a mission specialist, who had tilted the telescope down to the surface for a minute or two, called the Commander to the scope. "Have a look at this, Sir. Isn't this the kind of flying you said you wanted to do after you finish up with NASA?"

The Commander peered through the telescope and cried, "Oooh, yeah! Now THAT'S flying! Man, that's what it's all about! Geez, I'd give my left leg just to be doing THAT down there!"

What the Discovery Commander was looking at was a yellow Cub in a pattern at a quiet country airfield on a nice bright sunny afternoon.

TRH