Don't belong to her, I don't belong to every choir.

Spring Break Stat #1: Number of times I've watched I'm Not There: 2

Spring Break Stat #2: Number of times I'll have watched I'm Not There by the end of spring break: 3


Spring Break Musical Highlight #1: Charging around on country roads in an old Porsche while listening to early Otis Redding.

Spring Break Musical Highlight #2: Trawling the River and Buenaventura Trails while listening to "Sandinista!" (But not in its entirety; I wouldn't wish that on anyone, much less myself.)

Blowing stacks.

I had this grand spring break plan to catch up on all the reading from my Transition Economics class that I'd been deferring through midterm season. But that wretched Irish teacher's reading list is comprised almost exclusively of readings that can be found only in hard copy. And what's best, there's generally only one copy of each book. Just great.

College teachers suck.

Leave the gun; take the cannoli.

Spring break's just begun, and the cliche home adjustment is getting progressively more pronounced. I'm bored, cooped up by the weather. I just want to run, but my mom's cooking is making my running hard to accommodate. Spring breaks seem especially scattered this year, and lots of my friends have already had their breaks. Just about everything in Redding is the same, except that everyone seems way more concerned with the economy, which is understandable since Shasta County unemployment just surpassed 16%. People are panicky (some are downright kooky; people at my parents' church have planted a communal vegetable garden), and all the shut businesses and foreclosed houses have dispelled any airs of affluence the region might have had during the housing boom. It's just like we've been re-rendered the Okie enclave we should always have known we were. But times are just hard, and I still enjoy being home. No künstlerroman-izing from me.

I know that returning to Berkeley next week will be like entering a great time suck, with OCS preparation taking on a coequal role to school work. For the first time in my life I feel like I need more hours in the day, and, since I've never really been all that into sleeping in, I'm intent on waking up before 7 AM daily for the rest of the semester to get a jump on proceedings. And I mean a real jump- I need to be all wire when I hit Quantico. So with the days lining up to be both physically taxing and full, it looks like things will only slow down when I (God-willingly) resurface from OCS in August. I'm trying to figure out how to spend those few pre-school, post-OCS weeks, and, if there's no logging for me, I'm thinking about a little desert trek on the Pac Crest Trail. Anyone down? (No?)




A propos nothing, whenever I'm at home spending an afternoon on the couch, it seems like The Godfather is always on. And the thing is, there're certain movies that I have to stop everything and watch in their entirety if they come on. They are: The Godfather, The Godfather II, Pulp Fiction, Trainspotting, and Giant. So I watched it, and I saw one of my favorite scenes ever:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxPoqw5cD-Q

I love Sonny. He doesn't posture. He bites, he throws sticks and shoes. He has no sense of the justice people might think he's serving. There's just something going on in him he can't manage, which I find strangely respectable.

Leave me out of this one, man.

It never fails that anyone who posts a picture of him/her kissing his/her significant other on an online networking page is met with "oh my God, CUTE ;)" comments, even from people who are known to dislike one side of the menage. I just find them distasteful and refrain from encouraging that kind of behavior, even if I actively like whomever the friend in question happens to be dating/marrying. No one wants to see that. Granted, it's debatable whether my reason is that I want no one else to be happy; this is plausible. At any rate, it's a matter of principle.

...to say nothing of the contrivance required to overcome the technical difficulties associated with taking pictures of one's self while kissing.

Love,
The Colonel

Variations in form, style.

A letter, addressed to me, from my nipples:

Gus,
From heretofore, please refrain from running in the rain without an undershirt. I know we're really just cosmetic entities, but nonetheless....

Yours,
Nipples

Edification.

Sometime soon, I need to:

-Get my motorcycle license.
-Stop wearing skinny jeans.
-Develop my taste in jazz.
-Stop hunching my shoulders forward.
-Grow more chest hair.
-Actually understand the mechanism linking open market operations and interest rates.
-Do twenty pull-ups (hello perfect PFT).
-Stop wearing stripes.
-Get a tan that isn't only on my forearms.
-Start flossing more.
-Actually learn meter.
-Finish In Search of Lost Time (only five books to go).
-Get my hunting license.
-Get used to wearing hats, so I can hide my penis-head haircut next fall.
-Retire my black minstrel impression.

That's all I can think of. If you see any glaring deficiencies in character, be sure to let me know.

Oh, lordy lord, a confessional.

My moods oscillate between two extremes. The first is 'low and mean.' The second is 'deflated and overripe.' (Cheeriness is the extraneous interloper between the poles.)

I'm in the clutches of the second, and Chet Baker isn't helping.