Deranged Ramblings

I went to my Grandparents’ house today, expecting nothing more than the weekly Sunday dinner which has become one of the few constants during my time in Utah . I certainly did not expect to relive childhood games of the variety I described in my last post. Imagine my surprise and pleasure, then, when I ended up having a three-day long sea voyage adventure in which I barely escaped with my life! It happened like this: I was lying on my aunt and uncle’s hammock, talking to my little cousin Danny (age 6) about the biggest storm he ever saw, and suddenly, I’m not sure exactly how, the hammock became a boat and little Danny turned into a brave and fearless captain. We were adrift in the gigantic waves which rocked our tiny vessel back and forth. There was much scrambling about at first. I wasn’t exactly sure what I supposed to be doing, but the captain found his place at the front of the boat and took command. “Oh no, another wave,” shouted...

Do you ever remember random events from your past with such great clarity that suddenly you are in a way reliving the experience emotionally, even though you have not thought of the event for years? Well, I do! Sometimes, of course, its a memory with especially intense emotional baggage checked and stored in overhead compartments, but often, in my experience anyway, it is something rather mundane and simple. And when this memory is from one's childhood (and, as young as I am, what other memories do I have, really?), I not only relive the experience but view it as an outside observer who can more fully understand what’s really going on in the situation than the child version of myself in the past can. You didn't realize, at the time, how annoying or rude or naive you were, but from your current vantage point it is all too painfully obvious. This leads to a strange sort of double consciousness - in your memories, you don't know something and act accordingly, but in your prese...

I think my imagination is dead, and I think I know exactly who the murderer is. You see, the “golden days” of my blog, when ideas for fun posts were coming every other minute, coincided perfectly with the period of time in which I was not in school and unemployed, and therefore in possession of no small amount of free time to just sit and brainstorm. Now, my full-time job gives me little time to think about anything but frozen TV dinners and paperwork associated therewith, and what free time I do have I want to spend on video games or TV, not on anything associated with thinking. It just proves what I’ve always believed: once you join the corporate world, the artistic side of your brain just shrivels up and dies. Yes, I have more than a little streak of bohemian in me (viva la vie boheme!) but its true that by the time I’m finished with work I barely have enough creative juice to get me through rehearsals for the two plays I’m in, so forget about a clever idea for the blog. Which ...

This is just a short update to let you all know that I am still alive. It has been a week since my last blog post – this delay is due simply to a lack of inspiration on my part about what to write. Never fear, I’m sure I shall come up with something any day now. As it is, allow me just to tell you what I’ve been up to. I read the new Harry Potter book this last weekend and enjoyed it quite a bit. A lot of people seem to be disappointed with it, or so I’ve heard, but I think that may be because the whole series has become so popular that its beginning to be easier to find things to fault than to praise. The hype surrounding the new release got so big that nothing in reality could live up to it. We expect nothing but the best from such a celebrated series, so expectations are high. So even though Mrs. Rowling delivers another solidly crafted, entertaining book, we are now harder to impress. Needless to say, I think it is a brilliant work by a brilliant author who really knows how to tell...

Speaking of Costco, I found myself there again yesterday in order to fill up my car with gas. Its pretty cheap there, and as I am now an exclusive member with access to all the rights and privileges associated therewith, I thought I might as well take advantage of it. For some reason, Costco employs a man whose sole duty is to watch people pump their gas at the station. He walks back and forth, inspecting people’s gas-pumping techniques like a military commander inspects a soldier’s barracks. As I pulled up to the station I thought to myself that having the man there was pretty silly. Filling your car with gas is a pretty simple process, especially since the pumps have those little computers that won’t let you get any gas until you pay, so I think everybody there could probably handle the job without any supervision. After all, we are Costco members, we’re smart enough to recognize the cost-efficiency of buying in bulk, so we’re more than qualified to pump some gas. I was wai...

And now for something completely different: My roommate and I went shopping at Costco yesterday, after he persuaded me that buying in bulk was the cost-effective and masculine thing to do. I didn’t have a huge grocery list or anything – I just wanted to purchase the ingredients I would need to make a favorite dish of mine. My mother and I invented it when I was quite young. She was improvising on the ingredients to use, so I helped with a few random suggestions and, if I remember correctly, was allowed to stir. My mother indulgently named the result after me, which was quite an honor because up to that point I had never had any sort of food bear my name. So I was in Costco with my roommate, buying the ingredients for Matt salad, when I began to get frustrated with the whole “buying in bulk” thing. I needed a bag of noodles, as Matt salad is a variation of the popular pasta salad, but you cannot buy a bag of noodles at Costco. You can only buy eight to ten bags. A can of olive...

I was just as shocked as anybody to find out about the explosions in London. It hit me pretty close to home, though, because I've walked those streets and ridden on the buses and the tube. London felt like a second home to me while I lived there, and its always difficult to learn something disasterous has happened at home. It reminded me in a small way of the feeling I got when, in an extremely remote area of the Philippines where I was the only American for miles, I found out about 9/11. It hurts me to see what hatred and intolerance can do. Man's capacity to destroy himself is a painful concept to see acted out at the cost of innocent lives. No doubt we will only see more violence in the years to come, for violence begets violence in a terrible cycle. I only pray the pain we feel at being attacked doesn't turn us into the very thing we are fighting. The last five years have given us new meaning to the word "tragic."

I'm fat. Ok, so I'm not really all that fat. Yet. But I'm certainly feel like I'm heading that way. As I mentioned last month, I got a gym membership and I'd like to report that I have actually been using it quite regularly. I'd also like to report that in that very same amount of time I have gained over fifteen pounds. Now that wouldn't be quite so bad except that nearly the entire bulk of the fifteen extra pounds has decided to take up residence in the inappropriately named "love handles" area, with the remainder commuting from the suburbs of my belly. The overall result is that I begin to take a shape not unlike a pear, and clothes that once fit with a nice sexy snuggness now tear at the seams. Take, for example, the shirt I am wearing in the photograph on my profile to your right. The photograph was taken over a year ago, when I was in England. I tried to put it on the other day and was only able to button it up with extreme effort and while ho...