Matt in a Tux

In no particular order, and without name, here are my end of '08 blurbs to roommates of current and past.

• Playing video games and having someone up all the time was awesome. Not to mention your keyboard skills for Come Sail Away were awesome.
• Bass coming through my walls only bothers me when its rap bass; it was cool to have the classic riffs coming through for the year.
• Sorry I had sex with your friend as you were sleeping in the same room. But seriously, you shouldn't have stolen my papers.
• You were gone a lot, and the upstairs kind of did their own thing most of the days. Sorry bout that dishwashing/silverware debacle; that was a waste of good time.
• Best room mate tie person 1. You were gone a lot, but when you weren't gone, it was awesome. The drama wasn't even that bad.
• I thought it was going to be a lot worse than it was, but you actually were a cool dude mostly. Like everything, moderation is key. But hey, you stick to your guns and I give you credit for that.
• I thought you were a good person. In retrospect, you're selfish and lack of a lot of respect for people. It's a shame and I hope you can figure out a way to live comfortably while not disregarding those around you.
• Best room mate tie person 2. Awesome times, man. I really don't know what we did though. Time flew by. Good luck with everything, but I hope this isn't where I say that for the last time.

Well, damn, it looks like I've gone through a lot of room mates. It is tough living with some people. Being friends is one thing, but sharing the same common areas all the time can really push some people over the edge. Its tough to find people who can deal with you at the same time you're dealing with them, but not caring that you have to deal with them.

Christmas is here, a time to celebrate family, friends, and, most importantly, the winter solstice. Granted, winter solstice was December 21st; however, with the transformation of natural holidays into religious holidays, I figure it is very appropriate to celebrate it all at once on the commonly-accepted day.

So, Merry X-mas!

Well, I haven't updated for quite some time, have I? I guess I got wrapped up in other things... finals, work, friends, etc. It's a pain in the ass to keep these things going, especially since I don't have all the time in the world like the new-age hipsters seem to.

Seriously, how do they get by? I could understand if they just had no job. But then they go to Starbucks and get coffee and pound cake. That shit isn't cheap. Seriously, its like 6.50 for a small piece of pound cake and a mint chocolate chip mocha frappachino. And thats just a medium size drink (or grande, if you want to get Starbucks-technical).

In other news, I think I'm going to try using twitter. It seems like everyone and their moms are doing it, so I might as well, too.

Twitter me!

I also found this other cool service; its called muxtape. Check it out here.

Good day.


[EDIT]
Muxtape is no longer in service, sadly. If the link does work, it doesn't take you to the same cool service that once existed through them. I believe there are alternatives, but I haven't gotten into any really.
[/EDIT]

I hate when I get out of the shower, don't wipe my feet off, get the floor mat wet, go to use the restroom later and get my socked soaked. And what I hate even more than doing it once, is doing it twice.

Yes, that was the most eventful thing to talk about for the past couple days.

It's funny seeing pictures of people dressed nice and holding a can of Busch Light or Keystone Ice in their hand. It's like, hey, I'm here to look good, but I still know how to party.

That last sentence there feels like I'm ripping off Talladega Nights and Jesus in a Tuxedo shirt.

And on that note, I retire for the night.

Dear NIU,

Thank you for setting the bar to a new low concerning attractive women.


Sincerely,

Matthew

Let's keep this as abbreviated as possible.

I went to Nashville and Memphis for spring break and in that order. The drive was about 8 hours. It was a blast. Pictures can be seen on my facebook (1 & 2) and a couple videos on my youtube site.

• Night 1 -- Nashville: Drove around for a bit. Found a free wi-fi hotspot. Booked a hotel room from there. Went to hotel room. Checked in. Got a taxi to some billiards bar. Payed too much to play pool. Left. Went to a karaoke bar. Found out people in Nashville sing way too good. Had a few beers. Pretended I could sing well. Got a taxi to the hotel. Hangover ensues.
• Night 2 -- Nashville: Called up Sandy our newly-dedicated taxi driver. She was a bit overweight. Cab smelled like Arbys. Went to a blues joint and listened to Watermelon Slim. Met a guy from Chicago-area there. He was full of shit about playing music. Talked to another dude about NPR. Wished I could play the harmonica. Cab ride home from Sandy. Hangover ensues.
• Night 3 -- Nashville: Went to Dave and Busters during the day. Played games. Fun. Went to Broadway and 2nd via Sandy at night. Ate a grilled cheese. Mediocre. Went to a bar with 6 dollar pitchers of highlife and natty ice. Sub-mediocre. Hung out with some people from somewhere else. One was gay. Listened to a local country band while the locals tried to dance like they were from Chicago and the Chicagoans tried to dance like they were local. Left bar. Went to another bar. Danced with a woman-Albert-King-look-a-like. She spoke like a witch doctor. Left, went to another bar. They had a stand up bass. Called Sandy. Hangover ensues.
• Night 4 -- Memphis: Graceland. Cool. Beale Street. Awesome. Open containers permitted outside. Friend wanted to go home. Boo. (wtf.) Drove home. Got in at 3 am. Cried a little.

I felt the urge to post this. It is regarding vegetarianism and a friend's discussion with another friend.

My friend's friend made the claim that there are no direct effects on the environment coming from an individual's decision to not eat meat. The claim is that all efforts are only for selfish reasons. The simple argument is that the cessation to eat meat by one person will not impact the industry. When one person stops eating meat, the store which they do not buy from will still be ordering the same amount from the supplier. The supplier will continue to fulfill this quota. Therefore, there is no direct effect, but merely hypothetical promises for bettering the environment. He also made the claim that direct effects can be seen in other situations, such as taking shorter showers, changing out light bulbs, etc.

I partly agree with the selfish reasons. Many probably start out for health reasons or to feel better for not eating Mr. Moo-moo. However, I see greater effects coming from this. As my friend pointed out, when a store does inventory they will notice that less meat is being purchased and will therefore order less from the supplier. If his friend were to disagree with this, then he surely would not be able to agree with his own argument that his taking shorter showers directly helps, for somewhere else someone may be taking longer showers, thus making his efforts moot.

Furthermore, we can see historically that more people eating meat contributes directly to more animals being slaughtered for consumption. If one person stops eating meat, it will not save an entire slaughterhouse, but if that one, plus another, plus another and so on cease eating meat then there is a higher chance that animals will not face these deaths. Granted, it will not be instant due to the fact that animals are raised directly for consumption and therefore there would be a period between the efforts and the actions. Breeding for food would have to decline first.

Let me offer a last analogy to support the individual efforts. Say your friend murders another person. You have no direct relation to this act, until he asks you to help him hide the body. Here you have two choices: (i) help him hide the body, or (ii) refuse to help him hide the body. (This obviously forgoes other responsibilities to report him to the police.) (i) seems perfectly viable since you still do not have direct affiliation with the murder – the person is already dead so you would not be harming them. However, this does not seem right. It does seem like you have some kind of connection to this murder if you help hide the body. If you help hide it well, your friend may go without punishment. Furthermore, what if he decides to murder again and again you aid him in disposing the body? Your lack of individual efforts directly contributes to further harm being committed.

Much more could be said on this, especially based on animal rights alone. I've also left out all of the environmental and economical positives of being vegetarian as that is not the main topic at hand here in my opinion. It is simple logic that is being argued, and I fail to see the sense in the other side.

I bricked my cell phone last night. Luckily they are shipping me a new one overnight. Don't try to flash your own firmware on LG Voyagers without wanting to take risks I guess. Oh well.

As long as I have it for spring break, I'm good. I can't be lugging around a loaner phone while we're traveling down south. How would I keep up on my email and news without mobile web? I've become much too reliant on technology I think. I was actually debating on taking my laptop just in case. Thankfully I don't have to -- my luck it would get crushed somehow or just have the screen messed up a bit.

Tennessee should be a good time for break. If not, we're gonna just drive around a bit more southish and see what happens. The best plans in life are the ones without rhyme, reason or "must do" lists which take over each day. Road trips = epic.

Yeah, I used the word epic. It's time for midterms now. Yeahhhhhhhhh.

So, I am trying the vegetarian lifestyle after all. I ate one of these yesterday:

It was ok. I won't lie and sound excited -- it was actually quite different than the succulent taste of cow between bread. But it wasn't necessarily bad. Just as I have learned to love meat, beer and older women needing money working at a strip club, I will give this an honest chance. Note: that was not my actual meal, I got the fries instead of the salad and, since I'm not vegan, swiss cheese and mayo were on my "burger".

For lunch today I went out with my mother and grandmother. We ordered the Greek Pizza with avocado instead of chicken. It was damn good.

Overall, I think this should be a good thing. Except right now I am craving everything I see on TV with meat. This isn't just since I decided to do this, but mostly because I'm in love with food. Seriously. I could eat and eat and eat and, well, eat.

In other news, the Spaghetti-Sauce-Idealistic-Silence is still going on. It's quite the ordeal, but don't be envious.

I think one of my favorite The Who songs is The Ox from the album "The Who sings My Generation". It's a magnificent cacophony which I find awesome to listen to in dim light.

I realized that when I think of titles for posts, they usually make no sense to the post. Which means I might just roll with it. And use sentence fragments. Twice in a row. Wait, three times. You get the picture.

Lately I have been tinkering with becoming vegetarian. Well, actually I have been thinking about it for a long time now, but just lately have been pushed to the edge where I might actually try it and see if I can adopt the lifestyle faithfully. My only concerns are as follows:

• I won't be manly anymore.
  
• Cows might realize they have power over me, attack me, and end even my vegetarian life out of spite.
  
• I'll have to buy an Apple product because I'll feel more pretentious than most.
  

The final concern is the most troublesome. At least I can be cool though and do this in my spare time:

Overall, however, I believe that it will be a promising endeavor. Some things really shocked me about eating meat compared to not eating meat.

For one, why inflict pain on a creature when it's not necessary? For the religious, God gave us dominion over animals might be a response. However, the line most cite comes from Genesis, and roughly quoted by me is 'and Man shall have dominion over animals'. Shall is the key word there. Many scholars have the belief that shall was said in more of a predictive sense than a privileged authoritative sense.

Another reason, and the last I will submit at fear of boring, is the inefficiency of eating animal meat. For instance, it takes 8 pounds of human-edible protein put into feed for a pig in order for the pig to produce enough meat for humans to reap the benefit detriment of only 1 pound of human-edible protein. With that kind of a turnover, what logically makes more sense?

Now, how long this lasts for me is tough to say. For one, I am on a budget, and it's cheaper to eat meat than fruits and veggies for the reason that government subsidizes 75% of industrial farming for meat, whilst only subsidizing >1% of fruit and veggie farms. Ridiculous, eh? I think so.

I wrote a 2500 word paper last night with barely any prep. I'll post back at a later date on the result of that.

I think some people intentionally go out of their way to find problems with things. Like half a jar of spaghetti sauce. Apparently that is enough to warrant storming out of a house and a week of being douche. Not that I know anyone like that.

It's weird being back on campus today. Counselors are in classrooms. The facts of what happened are setting in a little bit more now.

Monday, Monday, can't trust that day.

Jenifer Lopez had twins. A boy and a girl. I would hate being a twin that had a boy or girl twin-mate. Think about it, you have a 50 percent chance of either looking too manly, or too feminine. (Of course I'm assuming monozygotic twins.) But how bad would that be? "Are you the brother or the sister?" For example:

Dan is on the left. Ellie is on the right.

This could go two ways from here:

OR

Either way… it's not my cup of tea.

(And the title suggests something about animals in this post. However, I'm going to postpone that until next time. Some of us have a job to go to soon.)

I really enjoy watching time lapse videos of things. This morning, the enjoyment is coming from videos of people where they took a picture of themselves every day for a period of time. The most impressive one so far has been over the length of 6 years.

That has to be weird for a person to look back on. Other than memory which fades away, it's the only thing connecting them to who they once were.

If I was smart, I would have done something like this when I came to school. But I never claimed to be an Einstein.

I hate when people, particularly girls, have pictures of themselves with their tongue out, eyes crossed, or other such facial gestures followed with the caption "Just me being crazy!! lol" You aren't crazy. You are acting like a moron. And you're probably fat since all the pictures are shoulders-and-up. (Disclaimer, person pictured below is probably not fat. But there is always the exception to the rule.)

And to these people in the video. Crazy does not mean retarded. Sorry.

If you want to be crazy, and truly unique, go dress like a clown and stand on street corners selling helium filled balloons so people can talk funny.

I'd come buy a balloon. And if you're a real crazy, some crack.

(Really though, as a disclaimer, some girls pull off the "crazy" thing and it just makes them adorable. Its a rarity though.)

As many have heard, there was a shooting on Thursday February 14^th at Northern Illinois University. A lot of people started hearing about it around 5 or so in the afternoon. I had the extreme pleasure of finding out nearly immediately after it happened. Sitting at work, about to leave, some friends began receiving phone calls that there was a shooting at Cole hall. Of course, the first thing I think about is the threat that was written on the wall of a dorm restroom last semester. I dismissed it as more hearsay… which apparently was the wrong thing to do. Calls began pouring into my phone, and eventually the cell networks were down. Friends from other schools were leaving me voicemails, text messages and facebook posts to see what was going on and make sure everything was alright. Luckily, everyone I know was ok. I had avoided the area luckily… you see, I had decided to skip class on that Thursday, for some reason. I normally never skip that class. If I hadn't, I would have been walking through Cole hall at about the time that the shooting took place. That would have been quite the thing to have to hear on campus – gun shots ringing through the lecture hall, echoing between the screams of students.

I'm still in shock a bit about what happened. It's still sinking in that yes, this happened at my school. Our school. It's a completely weird and surreal feeling.

I hope everyone keeps NIU in their thoughts. And for the religious types, in your prayers.

Forward, together forward.