"SUP GOLLUM" "HEY SMEAGOL"

i am taking a course on "health behavior change." my professor is a quack. i think that he is trying to induce the development of dissociative identity disorder in his students. you know, multiple personalities and such.

each week we have an assignment to read certain passages from a mind and body health book and then write a one page report on our experience with trying the techniques in the book. most of the exercises are typical of a yoga class where you try to control your thoughts and use them to relax your body. things like putting out outside influences and concentrate on breathing and such. i have heard of this stuff but until this class had never really tried it. i dont really get much out of it. but i can see how some people might find it to help relieve stress.

well last week our "assignment" included creating a special secret place in our minds and creating a figure that is an expert with a problem we having in our lives. once the figure is there you are supposed to ask it questions and seek advise with your problem (usually an ailment, like cancer). you are supposed to follow the direction of the figure and ponder its answers to your questions. if you dont want to do that, then you are supposed to create a figure for your "pain" to take shape in. then do pretty much the same thing to it. ask it stuff like "why are your here tormenting me?"

now let me explain dissociative identity disorder. an individual has a traumatic experience. this experience is often violent and painful. in an effort to cope with the trauma, the person develops an alternate ego or personality that they can assume. this personality can be completely unrelated to the person in gender, age, maturity, expertise, etc. if this practice is repeated, over time the secondary personality can actually take complete control of the person for an indefinite period. it could be years before the original personality actually comes back into control.

i dont know about you but i see several similarities between creating a fictious cancer expert to help you cope with your disease and the development of multiple personalities. i pointed this out to my professor in the report and told him i thought the assignment was ridiculous and that he should explain himself during lecture.

i recieved full credit for the assignment and no explanation. i doubt he even read the report.

by the way, dissociative identity disorder is not the same as schitzophrenia. schitzophrenia implies halucinations but not a personality taking over the person's mind. only tormenting it.

DOWN HILL BOTH WAYS

age is relative. i know this. but when talking about old versus young there are certain things that help with those pesky grey areas. for instance, i recently moved from a student housing apartment complex to a house. how this makes me old is that i had lived in that complex longer than anyone else currently living there. in fact it will be a few more months before the runner up catches up to my record.


i recently hit the quarter century mark. not too impressive in the grand scheme of things i suppose. however, not a week after my birthday i discovered a grey hair on my face. this wasnt a hair that had fallen from my head or anything like that. this sucker was 1 inch long and still growing. (i have a beard, by the way. so dont think that i would not notice a hair like that growing out of my face if i were otherwise clean shaven.) since then i have found many other white hairs coming out my face (insert bill cosby voice here).

sigh, girls i dated in high school now have up to three kids. some of them were younger than me.

and the clincher, this saturday my little sister will be married. she is over three years younger than me and she beat me to the punch (no real surprise there, but i have to act like it to protect my pride).

congratulations, melissa. what's his name again?

HUNGRY HUNGRY HIPPOPATOMI

so this last sunday we were invited to a dessert party. it was later in the evening and was to be at the house of a bunch of girls. not a bad set up for a party. they had a multi level house and plenty of brownies and cookies to munch on.

as my roommates and i entered the house we were over whelmed by the clatter of "hungry hungry hippos." it was deafening. four full grown adults pounding on the plastic hippo butts as hard and fast as they could. about half way through the 'game' one of the hippos was completely broken off from the base. he lost. so did the hippo. my roommate commented, "yup, this game requires just as much skill as i remember."

we fought our way to the dessert table in the kitchen. ate some very good treats and decided to mingle.

after sliding in and out of a few groups, we all ended up on the front porch by ourselves again. so we started quoting "arrested development" to eachother (very good show, by the way). as we stood there trapped in self-inflicted isolation, we noticed other people were starting to gather around us to see what we were laughing about (i guess we laugh louder than 'hungry hungry hippos'). and pretty soon we found that about a third of the party was outside participating in our outcast conversation.

life is funny sometimes.

FEARLESS

this is a quick post to let everyone know that the new jet li movie "fearless" is awsome. i dont want to talk to much about it and spoil it. but it is very well done. plenty of great fight scenes, but not so many that i would warn the squimish from watching it. and it has a good moral.


enjoy some pics from the movie.



























if you want to see a trailer or more pics, check out this website.
http://www.fearlessthemovie.com/

YOU SUNK MY BATTLESHIP

so last weekend some friends and i went about two hours south and went 4-wheeling. we had two atv's (pretty nice one's i might add). from this trip i realized two things. first, i am getting one...eventually. second, it will have a 100-foot tow rope.

allow me to ellaborate on the tow rope (i assume the first point is selfexplanitory). you see, we almost lost an atv that day. no joke.

moydie was driving an atv with a girl who had never been on one before. just prior to their leaving i pointed out a really cool ridge by a dam to moydie. so naturally he wanted to go see. so off they went and on the other side of the dam they found a dried up resevoir. there was no visible water anywhere. so moydie started to cross the patch of mud where the water had once been. the mud patch was about 100 feet in diameter. about half way, moydie thought that he might be going too fast for the first-timer girl. so he slowed down. and sank. to the fenders.

luckily, i was also giving a girl a ride nearby and we drove past them as they were walking back to the cars. they had mud up to their knees and no atv in sight. moydie asks me, "does that atv have a tow rope?" it didnt. they told us what had happened and we went back to the scene. as we came over the dam, there it was. smack-dab in the middle of a 100 foot mud puddle. impressive to say the least.

so i drive around the mud a bit to see how close i can get with out sinking the other atv. after nearly losing my shoes, and ruining my pants i determine that we cant get my atv close enough for the tow rope on the stuck atv. this has to be the thickest mud i have ever seen. the top was a rock hard shell about 8 inches thick, below which was about the thickest, most grimy mud you can imagine for about 2 feet. so we go back to the cars and collect all of the rope and tie down cables and bungie cords we can find. it is just barely long enough to link the atv's together. so i rev up the atv and go and go and rev it some more and SNAP! we almost get cut in half by the tie down cables which have ripped in half and shot in opposite directions. i cant say i was surprised, but it was worth a shot.

our next attempt was to rummage through our fire wood and see if we could find some 2x4's long enough to shove under the back tires. we did. we had to take some nails out but they were long enough. unfortunately, the mud was too silky for the tires to get any traction at all (by the way, it required crawling on hands and knees to get to the atv without sinking two feet). so moydie decided to go back to his dad's house (30 minutes away) and see what they could come up with. we werent disappointed.

they came back with shovel, plywood, a few lengths of some very heavy chain, and a 100-foot cable twice the thickness of the tow rope. so moydie and his dad crawl out to the atv and we toss them the shovels and the plywood. we attach the cables and chains together and i rev up the other atv. the only problem now is that the atv is so stuck that my front end comes up and almost flips the atv on top of me. so we get everyone who isnt in the middle of the mud puddle and put them on my atv. that was enough weight to keep my atv on the ground and get the other atv out of the mud.

what a day.

HEY LOOK, A WORM

recently i have noticed more and more people who dont like me. some have gone so far as to say they hate me. i am going to relay some of the more recent scenarios so you can see what i mean.

on my way back from the bookstore i ran into one of my roommates who was talking to a girl i had never seen before. i walked up to them and joined in the conversation. they were talking about buying books for their classes. usually at the beginning of each semester i have to fork out an extra $200-$300 for text books. this semester was an exception. i pointed out that i only had to buy one book this year. and it cost me $22. the girl i just met says, "i hate you."

well later i find out that i actually have to buy another book. and i have to go to the local "hogi yogi" to buy it. i guess it was by a local printing company who wanted a location closer to campus. so i go to the hogi yogi and find the lady with a booth set up next to the donuts. the book cost me $18. i point this out to a friend on AIM and she tells me that i suck.

later in the week i was at work talking with a co-worker. he was going on and on about how tough his work load is. he gets up at 5:30 am to train with the ROTC and has classes until noon, then comes to work all afternoon and so on. and he is right. his work load sucks. i have three legitimate classes (ice hockey barely counts as a class). two of them have the same teacher. this teacher has yet to even lecture in either of the classes. the first day we went over the syllabus and got out early. the second day he was at a conference so no class then. and yesterday he took our pictures so he can learn our names. since he took pictures alphabetically, i got to leave in the first 10 minutes of both classes. and my other class is run by an old quack who loves busy work and thinks lectures should include as much inspirational, life-changing material as actual pertinent material. my co-worker hates me too.

then there is the house. i cant tell you how many people are jealous of our new house. i dont usually brag, but we got really luck on this one. we have two full size fridges, stadium seating (three couches and a lazy-boy), comcast (8Megs split five ways for the internet), two full surround sound systems, washer, dryer, dishwasher, home-made ice cream maker, bbq, private parking lot, 30 gallon turtle tank (they love it bytheway), what else... oh ya, it is NOT the villa!

let the hate mail commence.

MORE MIS-ADVENTURES IN FAST FOOD

as i waited for my order i saw middle school kids, standing next to high school kids, sitting next to college students, sitting next to college students with facial hair (me!), standing next to newly married college students, sitting next to married middle-aged people, sitting next to middle-aged people who wished they were married, standing next to middle-aged people who wished they werent married, standing next to old people who wished they were married...again, standing next to old people who wished they werent married, standing next to a very pregnant woman (i assume she is married, too), sitting next to people who cant spell "married," sitting next to people who will never be married, sitting next to people who will never be married and who are ok with that. and yet not a single child as far as the eye can see.

school must have started.