Halloween Stuff

I AM BATMAN! these are just too good, sorry. But one must admit that even though he is not technically a super-hero BATMAN is awesome, and needs to be admired for his awesomeness.

I got a parking fine today issued by the campus parking services (yes those are horns). Now one would think that since I have a parking pass which I sold my left kidney for they would let me park in the lots on campus and not charge me enough that I would need to sell my right kidney, but no this is obviously a flawed line of thinking. With all of the construction going on, one of the old student lots has become a residents only lot, which I parked in, and got ticketed what would have to be about 5 minutes after I parked. I took the ticket to the campus police, who told me that I should appeal because basically they thought it was stupid. So I tried to access the online appeal procedural file form and guess what... that web page does not exist (that is the appeal form) even though its printed on the back of my ticket. So I wrote a letter to parking services and will keep my fingers crossed that the reader feels like dropping the charge (COUGH entrapment COUGH).

But something to brighten the spirits (yes that is a joke) tonight is Samhain (Halloween for you laymen (laymen being non-folklore majors)). Which means parties, costumes and general shenanigans. One is never too old to dress up or go trick-or-treating... ok so maybe you can be too old for the door to door stuff but what other day of the year do you get to dress up?

Warning

This blog is not suitable for: children under the age of 3, infants, the illiterate, the indifferent, the non-readers, those who find this blog not suitable, persons living-and-or-dead, the sane, those without the internet, those who do not think, people in comas (may contain small parts that could constitute as choking hazards).

This blog may be offensive to: children under the age of 12, adults above the age of 21, teens between the ages of 13 and 19, people in their 20's, the young, the old, parents, adults, geezers (the really old), the literate, the single, the dating, the engaged, the people in "it's complicated" relationships, the readers, persons living-and-or-dead, the healthy, the sick, women pregnant or nursing, people who take anti-depressant medication, the sane, the attractive, the politically correct, the smart, the dumb, the average, those with eyes, those who think, the masculine, the feminine, the neuter, those who prefer briefs to boxers, or those who prefer Macs to any other form of computer (including the abacus), and those who can and do read this blog.

This blog may contain offensive material if the viewer deems such material is offensive. This blog does not promise to always be comical, nor does it promise to always be serious, nor does it not promise to be both at the same time, or neither at any given point, but does promise to not promise that it will not be cynical in any way possible. This blog may contain flagrantly random material that seems un-suited to this blog. This blog may talk about itself in the third person with no regard to its own feelings.

F.A.Q.
Q.
Why the warning?
A.
Because this blog has surpassed the realm of the contextual, jumped the fence to the dimension of the intertextual and run clear across the freeway naked in broad daylight into the newfangled world of the Hypertextual.
Q.
What is the Hypertextual?.. and why is it CAPITALIZED?
A.
Put simply it is the world of the internet where videos, information and pictures are a mere click away and plagiarism runs as rampant as pop-up ads. This blog will do its best to never "steal" work and will try to cite all of its unoriginal sources. It may however "borrow" information from other places which could lead to it's mildly occasionally inappropriate behavior. (Hypertextual is capitalized because it is not my word... it was in fact borrowed from some other place)

If you take offense to the humor used here, please do not comment about it but rather just stop reading and close your browser window. If you are using a mac, please just toss it out the window and save yourself the trouble... use the insurance money to buy yourself a real computer.

Thank you

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As they said in Roma, caveat emptor!.. Err... Caveat lector!


(...best definition ever...)

I am Batman or Picking on the Disabled Kid

I woke up this morning and sneezed and split my lip in two places. So basically I awoke to a bloody mouth. A good reminder that you are alive (especially on your birthday (which I had removed from all public forums (as it is a dark and unholy day and all))). But in the writing of the post last night I came up with the best idea ever... So if per-say you are in class and turn in a test, write the name "Batman" as the name or pseudonym in whatever you are doing. The teacher will be forced to ask the class who is Batman, to which the only correct response is "I am BATMAN" (in a deep raspy voice) after waiting a minute for either everyone to respond that way or someone to tell the teacher that you should never ask a superhero their real identity. That or the answer could be Bruce Wayne or even Superman, or heck Mr. T. (that's right... that did just happen...) since he could have hacked the movie and made himself Batman.

Now on to more things I will surely burn in hell for... namely picking on the wheel man (affectionately known as the jackass in the wheelchair (not given by me... (really))). I was hanging out with an old friend today who happens to be a wheelchair guy, and because of something he said I threatened to intentionally spill soda on his business suit (its picture day... or career day... or arbor day or something). To which he replied "let's not and say we did" so I will say that I intentionally spilled soda on a disabled kid... (his term to evoke sympathy towards him and hostility towards me in the eyes of the audience for writing this) well not really a kid per say, since he is almost old enough to be my father... but that is a tale for another time. Its just one of those things, when a guy comes to campus dressed in a suit, it needs to be made fun of. Even though or even because this is a "serious and professional learning environment" (please no comments on that picture... and don't even try to understand what is going on in the background... it won't lead you to a happy place) the jokes are a required part of the day (that and they help to pass the dead time between those classes that are best used to catch up on much needed lost Z's).

Kid's Book

After many hours pondering over my various post-collegiate career options I decided to revisit the idea of writing children's fantasy novels. I considered this route several months ago when I realized that my younger brother has no good fantasy to read at his age, leaving the market widely untapped. There is a catch however, which is the stigma associated with children's book writers. I have heard from several of my professors that once a person writes kids books (especially children's fiction and even more so for fantasy) their career as an intellectual dies on the operating room table without any chance of resuscitation. This is widely thought to be due to the fact that children's fantasy is considered a lower form of writing (not to be confused with the difference between low fantasy and high fantasy). I have heard that many scholars who have written fantasy for children have never been able to publish a respected scholarly work from that point on. So if I do decide to finish this story and try to get it published I may need to use a pseudonym. The only problem with that is, if the book or series does become popular or win awards fame and fortune will be harder to come by with only the publisher knowing my real name... But I started writing again and have what should be 50 pages of material to cover (its really quite a bit shorter but with large font and small pages for kids it looks long) which is plot diagrammed and outlined. Now all I have to do is decide where the second book should begin (I have roughly 15 chapters outlined and it ends in a cliffhanger). So now its back to the grindstone... er... notepad...

Rockin'

Last night I was not able to sleep. The night was cold and the morning came all too soon. I learned around 1am that at 930am I had an exam for that class I haven't been to since the last test (Adj). But since I don't really fear about my grade in that class anymore (the grade is 80% based on the exams, one of which is dropped) I have made an effort to skim over the lecture notes just before attending the exams as a way of doing my part. It's not that I have anything against the class (the other students are dumb, the material is self explanatory, it starts before noon, the lecture notes are on line, the book cost over 250 dollars and I didn't buy it...) I just don't like to go. That and I see no point since the lecture notes are on line. So I took the exam then quickly skipped campus (and my other classes) to sneak in to my old high school.

Luckily I didn't have to do that much sneaking since my old AP Physics teacher was in the office, so I had him sneak me out a visitors pass and things were gravy from there. I like to return to high school from time to time, it gives me a sense of accomplishment since I know that I am way better and smarter than the hooligans who dawdle like zombies in those halls. But also I have some good ol' teachers that still have jobs and are still not uncool to hang with from time to time. They are good people, if you ever get the time after you finish a course or class, thank your teacher for putting up with your lazy butt (but don't do it while still in the class because then it looks like you are sucking up). So in about a week I'm meeting one of them to go drinking. Good times, good times.

Life is good

Well, I'm sitting at home sick, not doing my homework, and life is good. My last post was a frustrated rant about a number of general "sincere" people I know and maybe a few in specific. But it was just blowing off steam and nothing more (I am the only one able to truly ruin my day, others simply don't have that power).

So somehow I always come to this when it happens... Being sick really is not all that its cracked up to be. It always sounds great to not be in class for a reason (aside form the rampant and flippant skipping I do on a regular basis). But even with a reason, sitting in bed because the body hurts too much to do anything productive is not quite as fun as it always sounds somehow. Tomorrow either way I need to kick it into gear and get some more research done. I have been working on studying a sheltered society for an ethnographic research paper, and wouldn't you know it, outside sources are not quite readily available.

The good news is that in my down time I was able to get my hands on a few other games, both old and new (yes that is basically what I spend all of my time and money on... its research). So I have now played "King's Bounty: The Legend" which looked like WoW and felt like a bad strategy game. Got "Redguard" up and running to realize that running from an emulated DOS prompt that is emulating a direct 3d drive just sucks the life out of a game... (Cyrus' voice sounds like the same guy who does the male Redguard voices in TES3 and 4, probably the same guy... Also it was sad that I recognized many of the people who worked on the game in the intro credits... Me and Bethsoft have a troubled history). "Temple of Elemental Evil" which looks cool, I just finished installing it and it now crashes on start up >[ and Arena still is not working quite right. But all in all a productive day... except for that whole not doing anything part.

So my plan is, and this is only on paper (so that I can burn it later and pretend it never existed) to get up early tomorrow (not gonna happen) get to school (also not gonna happen, at least not before lunch... er... wake up time) access the on campus folk archive (might happen) and do some more observational research (if I feel like it). May not sound like a lot, but the last two do take quite a bit of time and effort. Also I have other things to do, so it could be a long day... especially if I still feel sick.

Big News Everyone!

The new and exciting things that are happening in my life are in fact not big or new! As usual I have made a fool of myself romantically for someone who did not show clear signs until it was too late. I hit the brick wall going full speed and have only to chalk in another tally mark for my failures while at college. I think that makes... something like 17 or so. Its sad really, I keep this running tally so that if ever any of my past potentials happen to come back and desire a relationship I can politely give them the same opportunities that they provided me... that is to ask them that if I was not worth their time, why should they now be worth mine? I know there is a plan though so it is in fact a good thing that this time I hit the wall so fast (I once chased a girl for a whole year... it ended with her father lying to me about something he had for me then candidly taking me aside and asking me to never speak with her again... yeah that was a good day. And get this, the girl herself never once to my face expressed negativity towards me.). People need to make their intentions clear and then live by them. If you say that you want people to ask you questions, then don't be surprised when they do. If you spend time with agreeable people they may in fact try and spend time with you. And if you call on people for help, do not be shocked when they return the favor. Somehow these simple rules seem to have been lost along the way. Granted I'm in a bitter huff right now but seriously, My actions are not illogical and do in fact follow a rather simple and straightforward pattern. I guess I can only pray that I am not as blind or hypocritical as other people and then that if I am it wont go to my head. I mean seriously, isn't the phrase "First do no harm" there is a reason that such a thing is supposed to be followed. But alas, I suppose it is too much to hope for a maiden who understands the old way of things and that A. nothing is free B. everyone deserves a chance C. a person's words and actions DO IN FACT have meaning and should not be treated lightly and D. people are stupid, they always have been stupid, they always will be stupid and because of that everyone needs a little leeway from time to time to make mistakes. I only add in the last one because I have had my ear full of people complaining about stupid little things that really do not matter, and how these things seem to be given the power to actually effect how people care about other people... Are we hopeless as a species? I would like to hope not, but as of right now all signs point to yes... And yes, because I got shot down I did just blame all of mankind for it, so nah-nah nah-nah nah nah!

Back to the Basics

So I FINALLY got my hands on a copy of TESI Arena. This was great as I have been playing through The Elder Scrolls series for some time now (Morrowind GOTY first, then Oblivion GOTY then Daggerfall and finally Arena, Redguard to come soon). A while back Bethesda hosted a free copy of Daggerfall on their site as a celebratory gift. So I tried to unzip and install Arena just to be completely confused by the breakdown of the file structures. The game was contained in 8 separate zip files which all contained some files of the same name but slightly different sizes. After pondering this for a bit and trying to run the .exe which did not work I realized something. Each zip corresponds to what would have been a floppy disk as each one is about 1.5 megs. So now its on to find a floppy disk so that I can properly install this thing... From what Ive seen it is something like Daggerfall (which both bear a haunting resemblance to the first Wolfenstein 3d game) which is frustrating since in that game I could rarely survive the tutorial and if I did manage to escape the smugglers hold I could not for the life of me navigate towns....

Things, Stuff, and of course... Games,

I have been conversing with a young lady the past few days just for the sake of getting to know her as a person. It has been... an interesting task since her answers are quite straightforward and so to the point that there is little room for actual conversation; as it feels more like a test or an interrogation. But somehow this got me thinking about what it means to play by the rules. Now again, going back to some prior topics, playing by the rules is not only what is taught, but also provides what is to be expected in social situations. That is to say that when people do what they are "supposed" to do with regards to other people very much is left up to the unknown. However doing this will in fact doom you to an eternal existence as a meaningless nobody lost in the crowd. See, if you stand in line and follow the rules, you will be just like everyone else who stands in line and follows the rules and thus look and feel no different from them. Whereas if you break away and do something unexpected, slightly off, or just plain different you will stand out apart from the masses. Reading over what I just wrote could be grossly taken out of context so let me specify. When it comes to male-female interactions, simply following all of the rules will make you look boring and normal, so to get noticed one must stand out. This may mean holding the door for others (a long lost art), doing something unorthodox (kidnapping is not advisable here... that can wait for the honeymoon), or NOT doing something well used and bland like complementing her on how good she looks, or (big finish) just being yourself which is most certainly different from all those other guys who tried to be "that guy" since the popular idea of "that guy" is so generic and universal it no longer stands out. Make that first date ice-cream, not dinner, ask her about her favorite Disney movie, not if she "comes here often", and before it's all over, shoot her a good smile Indiana Jones like, but don't say anything, just let her think you're thinking something.

So In the past week I got a hold of the game "Mount and Blade" which turns out to be a lot more complicated than it ever seemed to be. I had to play through it for about 20 hours before I even understood how to use and manage all of its varying aspects, but despite this high learning curve and the meager graphics I applaud the game's complexity. Even though the current cut is without zombies it uses some innovative concepts (Which our team had developed four years ago) in good ways (a tracking system, motion based damage calculations, RPG/Strategy/Simulation mix). I recommend trying or reading about it if you have time.

In totally unrelated personal news sometime in the past two weeks a series of bumps appeared on my forehead. They look like zits, but they are small and numerous. At first I thought it was an allergic reaction to something, but after checking my routines and realizing that not much comes in contact with one's forehead I am left at a loss.

What is the (game) world coming to?

I am fairly certain that nearly everything I write and have written has been written by someone else sometime before. And as time goes on the percentage probability of this being true, and of how true it is shall increase until everything I write will have been written by someone else somewhere else and at some other time. This should not dissuade you dear reader from continuing to read these articles, for if nothing else then you can say that you heard it here first... That and... Yeah, I've got nothin'.

Now on to the game-related weather... So Capcom has just released a strategy game named and I quote "Age of Booty"... Now am I the only one who sees a problem with this? Before reading the review I could just as easily surmise that this game is about walking around any high school, college or mall. It's just a bad name choice, what are they paying their designers and marketing guys for 'cause its not making games that wont get made fun of even before they are released and the public knows how bad they really are. What is wrong with "Age of Piracy" it makes more sense and even sounds better... I am also dismayed to report that Ubisoft just released "Cesar Millan's Dog Whisperer" as a "simulation" game... they are really running out of ideas.

Con. Con. Cont.

The true source of the problem, which I never really fully explained, is the nature of the experience itself. Life, society, religion, all of these things which are good teach people to play fair. Yet life is based in competition. One must play the game (yes... you are Leonidas) to have a chance to win it. Dating is not dissimilar to hunting, but beware, once you see it this way you have already lost. You must ready your weapon and wait. That's right, wait. If you fire off a round or two into the forest you will only scare away your prey. Or in more dating related terms, if you show too much interest too fast you scare away the prey. Whereas if you choose to not hunt at all, you will never catch prey unless it just so happens to wander by, and we all know that animals are naturally frightened by humans (except for slugs and snails, but they really don't have a good way of running away fast). So we have the basics down... you must ready your weapon and wait. First you must find your prey though tracking or trapping. Tracking involves following the signs and looking for trails or waterholes to steak out. Trapping involves knowing the well traveled areas in advance and setting up bait, it takes less traveling, but is still an activity that takes work and is an art form to perfect. Then you must check your selection, put the option most suited to your needs in your sights, close your eyes and pull the trigger knowing full well that your actions can never be undone and that if you make a mistake, you must live with it. Now the reason that you will have lost the game if you see it as such is because in understanding it this way you begin to see how it can be more effectively played and risk playing it for fun and loosing sight of the fact that the outcome of this game is a serious and life-effecting matter that should not be taken as lightly as to be seen as a game.

Contending Contradictions

In life many things seem to be general laws of the universe that just happen to contradict other laws of the universe that are also necessary. That is to say that often two things in life that are at odds must both be true, yet by the existence of one it is assumed that the other cannot also be true. To get to the point (which is difficult for me to do given my natural inclination to ramble... case and point) I wanted to discuss my dealings with the contradictions of fairness and life. Religion, civilized society, yes even courtiers push humans toward a state of imaginary "fairness." Now the simplest and most complicated question to ask is "why?" Granted I cant totally answer that but wanted to point something out and get off this tangential spiral into oblivion (you know, that place with Sam and the Daedric peoples). In unity is found strength, and it is true that great causes need great amounts of people to first make them great and second just make them work. Ever since I was a child I was taught to play fair, to give others a chance, to not cut in line, the same sorts of things that most people are probably taught. However this sense of fairness happens to contradict with a simple and core fundamental in life, namely competition. Almost everything in life is in some way driven by competition, associated with, or produced by competition. In the past week I have had several heart-to-hearts and a few head-to-heads with friends and acquaintances on this topic. Some things in life require initiative and a good solid preemptive strike (see there is a point to taking improved initiative, +4 goes a long way). Going back to my so called "favorite topic" of women, they are a perfect example of where fairness goes out the window. Granted there is that great mantra "all is fair in love and war" but since that place that calls itself Geneva started holding all of those conventions, war has become almost as complicated as it's counterpart love. Love was at one time simple, you hit her with a club, drag her back to your rock, and spend the rest of your short life regretting that decision which was based in the excitement brought on by those few moments of passion where you hit her with your club. Later love got more complicated when tunics got involved (which as you can see was very confusing to all and often ended in death by crucifixion) and even more frustrating when every maiden who had "huge... tracts of land" happened to be locked away in a tower. But then later we went crazy and decided that such things should not only be "fair" but that they should actuially follow codified laws (crazy Elizabethan romantics... I curse the day my kind was written into existence)who totally went off the deep end with how complicated the rules are. Around 1165 the definition of love began with "Love is a certain inborn suffering derived from the sight of and excessive meditation upon the beauty of the opposite sex, which causes each one to wish above all things the embraces of the other and by common desire to carry out all of love's precepts in the other's embrace." (note also point XIV). But for the sake of me taking some time for R&R on the topic later, I will have to stop here (ranting and rambling).

(Post Scribit - I tried to find the "Armies of Darkness" quote of "... that was just what we call pillow talk baby" to link to love, but couldn't, so if someone can find it I'll gladly make the edit.)

Group Hug

It actuially turned out well. I had set up a meeting for the tech team on campus to help the new generation of underlings to get to know each other better, and I think it actuially worked. One guy could not make it, but the rest of us hung out over dinner and exchanged insignificant life facts (the first step to getting to know people generally). Additionally we have agreed to try and make some kind of habit out of meeting weekly like this. I had originally set up this meeting to help the youngsters get to know each other better since when technical things go wrong (which happens all the time, I swear that the equipment is demon possessed) then they can be there for each other and defend each other form the onslaught of attackers that will be the audience who does not understand that it's not a tech's fault when a cable dies or a video crashes. Again, a special thank you goes out to those who helped support me in my efforts to set this up. I hope that this becomes a tradition of brotherhood that is passed on, I certainly would have liked someone to both show me the ropes and get to know me when I was a worthless freshman...

Leadership

To be a leader of men is to be surrounded by people, and yet be alone. Thankfully there are kind and wonderful souls who offer their time and insight, helping to stave off the loneliness while providing much needed and appreciated warmth and friendship. To those of you who fulfill this role, you know who you are, thank you.

Super Mario Pt. 2

Upon further reflection on "Super Mario Brothers: The Movie" I have come to the conclusion that it reminded me quite a bit of the original Ninja Turtles movie. It had similar bad jokes, outrageous action scenes, early 90's cinematography, scripting and acting... Though I think the Ninja Turtles movies made more sense (if that makes any sense) as a congruent storyline. That and they actually followed the canonized storyline much more accurately.

More to come later,
-Rambley

The X Factor

As I was pondering on the porcelain I came to an interesting conclusion. In my college experience I have had a Professor Y. and a Professor Z, but no Professor X... This train of thought quickly lead me to the X-Men, for if I did have a Professor X then a possible prerequisite might be mutant powers (distinctly different, but not unrelated to super powers), and sadly I have none such powers to boast in. Ah, those were the good 'ol days... Somehow I remember nearly every time I would watch X-Men it would start with, "Previously, on X-Men, Cyclops: 'GEAN!!!!!'" But it would seem that such a thing never actuially happened...

So I just finished "Super Mario Brothers The Movie" (1993) and am generally thoroughly disgusted with the entire thing. Nothing in that movie was right, it was like they took a bunch of random actors, gave them the names of the characters in the Mario games, filled the script with inside jokes that would only be known by playing the game, and made up a random story based on old failed scripts from bad 80's movies. They could have just as well changed all of the names and re-named the movie "adventure in the parallel dimension." The movie strongly emphasized evolution and a second dimension where dinosaurs are the ruling species... except all of the dinosaurs looked human... lame. It was like they were trying to make the Mario games into a legitimate real world story, which I really just don't think can happen. They would have been so much better off making it a true fantasy movie, it probably would have saved them on props if they had and the movie would have made more sense... Though I bet the live action part of the "Super Mario Brothers Super Show" had a lot to do with the influence of this movie... Don't get me wrong, the cartoon portion of the show wasn't that bad...cough... Nothing is as good when you look at again almost 20 years after the fact...

Apathy is Death

For several days now I have been trying to force myself to go through the class notes for the class I have skipped for roughly a month now. It is ever so frustrating to be in freshman classes as a senior, even more so to be surrounded by ignorance and even worse still to have a class that posts the notes online while all the while giving out homework and taking down class participation and attendance scores... So I have an exam tomorrow, I've only been to class for the first day of the material covered on it, and I still can't bring myself to look over the class notes. But as so many of you know "Apathy is death" as it was so well put in KOTOR 2 TSL within the tomb of Ludo Kressh. The exact quote goes: "Apathy is death, worse than death, because at least a rotting corpse feeds the beasts and insects." It holds some good truth to it, and its fun to repeat so tell your friends.

For those of you whom I know that I have not seen in days or even weeks ..."fear not, for I am watchful," Along with two exams I have been organizing a fellowship for the tech guys since we all just sit in a corner and very few approach us on non-business related matters. So things have been busy... and I finally got the FCOM: Convergence mods working flawlessly with Oblivion... yeah that may actuially be a more-true answer. This weekend was full of plans, but miss communications among the organizers of said plans should have never been put in charge of organizing in the first place...

So I sit here, not reviewing the material for my two exams tomorrow, listening to a song lovingly titled "Tristram" by Matt Uelmen. A great choice of a name on Blizzard's part, for "tristis" in Latin means sad or emotionally bitter, thus with the neuter -um ending we could fudge translation a bit and call Tristram the town of sadness, sorrows, or pain if we stretch it beyond scholarly limits, quite fitting based on its history, poor Griswold, but at least Wert got what he deserved (little punk).

Wow, look at that, in the span of one post I seem to have touched upon references from at least four games, and more like six if you are more generous. On the topic of games now (not like I wasn't on it before, for they are always on my mind... its like a gift, its like I can't even control it)let us move on as I continue to not do my studying... This may be a long post for that very reason... I do have several qualms with FCOM, mainly that there are not enough health potions, seeing that every enemy is beefed up, and there are more of them, and every one summons more help you'd think that health would need to be abundant... but no, that is not the case. If that were fixed... and a few more items added, I think it would rank quite high on my list. You see, I am something of a self-proclaimed aficionado of games (not without good reason though) and though I can claim to know everything that the internet lets me, I happen to have a good deal of real world experience in that which pertains to these fake worlds. I am pleased with how much they follow the official lore, but that is a tale for another time.

Now, I believe it is time for a walk... ha ha ha, you didn't actuially think I was going to say that evil word study did you? I don't believe in such things... And that is official.

Where is the line?

Ah, today is now over, it has been a long day. This is partially due to the controlled events of the day, and partially due to the ones that cannot be so well fixed by my own hands. After setting straight some stuff for graduation, I went on what may be considered a date with an old friend. Now let me say that the context of this date was somewhat unclear which lead to further awkwardness since neither of us were really sure what it was. So, note for the future, be sure that if you are just meeting for dinner, it is just meeting for dinner, and that if it is a date, then it is a date. This would have generally been fine except that since I meant is mostly as a friendly gesture (though I have not ruled out the dating aspect) I arrived quite unkempt with a full beard, messy hair and a fashion nightmare of a clothing color blend, whereas she had done her hair, smelled nice, and was wearing some nicely prepared clothing. The evening went well enough, two hours of conversation passed decently though I would hate to talk to myself for that long, and in the third hour it slowly trickled to a basic halt as we had exhausted most common topics. I did have my common problem of trying to find the line though. My normal scare tactic is to overwhelm a person with the essence of me, and if they stick around through that then I know they deserve to see me at my good and even my best. I fear using this tactic, but do it none the less because if they flee then they have proven themselves not worthy and I can justify moving on. So the evening passed, nothing profound was said or done, and I really don't feel like calling it a success in any way since nothing was really gained other than putting us both in an odd situation.

Later in the evening I went out on a walk as I normally do around 11pm. While there I ran into two girls looking for their sister who had run away form home after an argument with their mother. At first I wished them luck and walked away, but the further I got the more I realized that the world will be a better place if two random sets of strangers can help each other out. So I returned and for the next two hours jogged around the neighborhood searching with them. I wish I could say we found the girl and brought her back home, but after searching everywhere these girls could think of, and everywhere I could remember after living in this neighborhood almost my entire life, we did not find her. Rather they filed a police report and went home, as I too returned home. I pray the girl finds her way back safely.