I just came from my crappy art of the film class, which was mildly amusing today. That is only true because we ended the hour with the screening of "Un Chien Andalou." It was quite amusing listening to and watching others' reactions to the film. Then, you walked outside class, and everyone was talking about it. Most of them were trying to rationalize everything that happened, like there had to be some plot to it and the man must have been dreaming, etc. Anyway... I got back up here to the Bijou office and I decided to check out The Spark. They have a new gender test, so I had to try it out. Those dumbasses thought I was a woman! Fools! Anyway... I should get some stuff done before my class later this afternoon. I just had a phone call from Brian, so now I have to go.

It's late - quite late - and I should have gone to bed hours ago. Why am I still up? I got caught up in reading the news. I started with reading the new Onion, a usual routine for Tuesday nights. I then moved onto reading Wednesday's Minnesota Daily, which provided me with the exciting news, mixed in between all the talk about the budget worries, that Agnes Varda films would be featured in February at the Walker and that she would even make an appearance toward the end of the month! Kick ass! I figured, hey, why not move onto the Post-Crescent? Among articles about the winter storm that passed through northeast Wisconsin and tickets for the Brewers' home opener at Death Stadium (aka Miller Park) being essentially sold-out, I came across a column by Chuck Carlson that I actually agreed with and found entertaining. Of course, I disagree with his prediction of next year's Super Bowl showcasing the Rams beating the Jags 34-24, but what can you do? Of course, this meant I just had to read the New York Times. Well, that gave a copious amount of interesting articles. It began with an article about Democratic Senator Russ Feingold voting in favor of confirming John Ashcroft for Attorney General. Hmmm... interesting move Russ. That was followed by an article about Indiana considering adopting daylight savings time. Both of these articles have come to reinforce something that has come as a huge surprise to me. That is that Wisconsin isn't quite as conservative as I once thought. Having grown up in Wisconsin, I was pretty sure that Wisconsin had to be the most conservative state around. Then I went to college in Minnesota. Then I started reading about other states. Man, compared to many other states, especially in the Midwest, Wisconsin is damn near liberal! One more article that confirmed that line of thinking was an article about a Utah man who edits violence, sex, and explicit language from videos and then offers them for sale. Geez, some places in this country are just sad. There were three more articles about incidents that I'm glad didn't occur near me. One was about 5 Brooklyn boys, aged 10 to 13, who raped a 13 year old girl. Even scarier than what they did, is reading what some others had to say about the 5 boys. There were men interviewed in the article who damn near supported what the boys did!!! A just as disturbing article concerned the city of Denver. According to the article, the city of Denver is agreeing to pay a young man $1.2 million to settle a law suit. Apparently, the boy was caught in the middle of a burglary three years - he was 12 at the time - and a police officer shot the boy in self defence. The officer thought he saw the boy aim a gun at him. The boy had a gun, but it was in his pants and not loaded. Even so, what is a 12 year old boy doing with a gun and/or burglarizing houses? The third article concerned the practices of a British doctor. He had apparently ordered the organs removed and kept from the bodies of children who had undergone autopsies at his Liverpool hospital. He is wanted for crimes in Canada and was currently practicing at a hospital in the Netherlands. Weird and scary. Two articles that were closely related with each other in one way or another were an article about the status of Dot-com's at the world economic conference and an article about this year's Super Bowl commercials. Of course, I was able to read a positive article also. This one concerned American skier Daron Rahlves upsetting the Austrians for the gold medal in the Super-G at this year's world Alpine skiing championships. And to think, I could have gone to bed hours ago, but I would have missed out on an opportunity to read all these news articles. With all the daily happenings of the world... makes you think sometimes.

Okay, I'm going to bed now.

I just returned home not too long ago, and it perhaps feels better than ever to be home. The weather outside is horrific. It's been raining since early this afternoon and with the temperature hovering around freezing, it's creating interesting conditions. What began as rain is turning into slush and later snow. The ground is rather slick with ice, but the slush is forming patches and the rain is still collecting intermittently. As a result, there are puddles 3/4 inch deep everywhere on top of ice and sorrounded by slop. Yuck. It reminds me of a night when I still worked at the grocery store. I was pushing carts alone that night in the rain and the temperature was maintaining a steady 34 degrees. My gloves and coat were soaking up the rain and the parking lot was one thick mess of slush and rain. I was freezing and tired. Man, it sucked.

Tomorrow is Tuesday... my easiest day. Today was Monday... my pain in the ass day. I finally made it to my ArtH recitation section and found out that it's easier and more pointless than I originally expected. I'll live. Of course, as expected, Russian is the highlight of the day. Now it's time to eat....

Monday morning... have to get up and get ready for class. Damn. I hate classes. I'm sick of them. I still haven't done my Russian homework. I'm screwed. Ravens won the Super Bowl. Wouldn't be so bad, except now Trent Dilfer will forever hold the title of Super Bowl champion quarterback. Good thing Greg Gumble wasn't picking MVP or Dilfer would have gotten that also.... Since nobody really gives a damn about the Pro Bowl, I guess the season is finally over. Atleast the Sunday afternoon distractions will be gone.

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! Yes fellow netizens (man, I feel like I should be making commercials for Brown Institute or Globe College when using a word as stupid as "netizens"), I am finally back up and rolling. Well, my computer is working again atleast. This actually hasn't been such a bad week. Not only did I get my computer fixed, but I got my new fridge finally also. Yes, it was a long, long wait, but after having seen the new fridge, I think it might have been worth the wait. I have a lot of file recovery and software replacement to do yet on my computer, but atleast the damn thing works again, so that's a step in the right direction. It's about freakin' time.

I don't have much to talk about otherwise right now. Last weekend at trivia (even though I think all of my readers were there) we had our best weekend ever. Too Much Trivia in the Pants had our most successful year ever, answering 133 questions correctly for a total of 770 points. That point total more than doubled our previous team best of 360 points in 1998. Don't think we're going to sit back on our laurels and bask in the aura of our vast improvement for too long folks! We've already, more than a year in advance, begun planning for next year. Next year shall be the year when we finally make our real impact on trivia known. In other news, I read this article in the New York Times this morning. I'm sure it's not as funny for people actually involved with the ordeal, but for someone at a safe distance, I find the ordeal to be quite entertaining. I guess that's it for now. It just feels good to be back in business again.

So, you might have noticed that I more or less just fell off the edge of the Earth somewhere in the past two weeks. Well, that's only partially correct. You see, I got back to Minneapolis back on January 7 only to find that my computer was completely fucked. I tried to rectify the problem, but nothing worked. After many, many problems with the jackasses who are supposed to give me computer support, it was finally determined that I need an entirely new hard drive. Now, it's going to be another 5 days before I get my new hard drive, followed by a few days minimum before I get back online. What I'm saying is that my posts will continue to be few and far between for a few weeks. Man, this really pisses me off.

Of course, it can't be all bad, right? Well, other than the fact the cd-player on my new stereo went to hell last weekend also, and of course classes started, no, it's not all bad. This is only true for one reason - trivia. That's right, trivia has finally arrived. Tomorrow afternoon, Molly, Annemarie, and I shall depart Minneapolis for Appleton and over 50 hours of trivia madness. Sure, I'll miss a few classes - it's worth it. This IS my Super Bowl, birthday, New Year's, Christmas, etc. all rolled into one. Party! So, until next time, remember this: Stevie Ray Vaughn fuckin' rocks! "If this house is a rockin', don't bother knockin'..., just come on in!"

HO-LY-SHIT! I can't fucking believe what I just read! Liverpool has just signed Jari Litmanen!!! I almost shit myself when I read the news. Robbie Fowler, Michael Owen, Emile Heskey, and now Jari Litmanen... I don't care what anyone else says - I think Liverpool now has by far the best strikeforce in England... if not all of Europe. That's just fucking crazy.

Maybe I'll write more here later. I just had to get that out of my system. Damn.

Another day passes and I march on into the future. As for the day that has just passed, what did I do? Nothing really of note. I sat around watching tv after my last post. I took out time to grab lunch from Hot 'n' Now and after dinner I went over to Matt and Carrie's again. We played Monopoly and even though she was far in debt when she acquired them, Carrie won having gained possession the three green properties. The game wasn't actually over, but at 2 in the morning we examined our monetary situation and the current currency trafficking trends and realized that it was futile to be in denial any longer that Carrie would ultimately triumph. I came home afterward, I've checked my email, and now it's about time to be going to bed. Response to the trivia email has continued to be positive, so let's hope that trend also continues.

What an up-and-down day already! So, I worked on a new mix tape yesterday and after dinner I went over to Matt and Carrie's, where Matt and I watched tv until Carrie got home from bowling. Then we all went to Perkins. I got home about 11 last night and must have fallen asleep in front of the tv soon thereafter. I woke up at 4:30 when my Mom got up and was turning off the tv and the lights. I went back to bed and got up about 9:30 this morning. I decided to check my grades (which the university just posted today, but not all are up yet), and I fell just short of getting my first 3.0 since like freshman year of high school. I got 2 A-'s, a B+, and a D. A D! I don't know where that came from! Damn Marty Roth anyway! That bastard can go to hell! That's one more class I can't apply to my major, that jackass.

Okay, other stuff... trivia is approaching rapidly now. Trivia weekend starts 2 weeks from tomorrow. I sent out an email to everyone and so far the response has been positive. In fact, I've been quite surprised by the amount of people replying and saying that they ARE going to make it this year. I mean, we haven't had response like this since the first year when we were still in high school so people didn't really have to go anywhere. Man, it's going to be great!

The time has nearly come for the end of my time here at home. I guess I haven't really been doing much, so getting back to school will give me something to do again. Then again, I don't really need anything to do. A few more days here, and then it's back to Minneapolis. Then again, classes don't start again until the 16th, so it's not like I'm going back to class right away. I still have over a week to screw off after I get back. It's a week that'll probably see me leave - nay, get dressed - about 3 times. Yep, I'm going to be even lazier than I am now... and I'm going to love every minute of it!

I had to rise early this morning to bring my mom's tire to the tire shop, so I've already been up for quite a while. After returning home, I flipped on the tv and noticed that Drive Me Crazy was coming on HBO. Having yet to see it, and knowing that once in a while I get in a mood for a teenybopper flick, I sat down and watched it. It was... okay I guess. Of course, the "bad" kids in all of these movies always amuse me with their pathetic stereotyping and the fact that it's the "bad" kid or the "loser" who always gets changed the most and not the "good" kid or the "popular" kid. Since then, I'm chillin', but really I'm bored.

Maybe it is time once again for me to bring up my friend W. He has now finished naming his appointees to his cabinet and I've got one word for him: pussy. Talk about a guy trying to make everyone happy and yet overly willing to surround himself with an old boys' club. I think the best way to describe his cabinet selections is just to quote The New York Times:

Mr. Bush's cabinet selections now include three women, two blacks, two Hispanics, one Asian-American Democrat, and with today's announcement of Mr. Abraham, one Arab-American. Mr. Bush's choice for national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is a black woman, but does not serve in the cabinet, and several other high-level positions, like trade representative and United Nations representative, have yet to be filled.

As I said, pussy. I do not know any of his appointees personally (although, having lived in Wisconsin for nearly my entire life, I can say that I know HHS secretary-designate Tommy Thompson pretty well), nor am I well versed on their backgrounds and records, but I hope that W. is picking these appointees for their ability and not just to make his cabinet more ethnically and gender diversified. How fitting that the only Democrat he picked (atleast he finally picked one) is a Japanese-American. Oh yeah, he is a current cabinet member, isn't he? Oh, that's right - he just took over Bill Daley's job, now I remember. With the new Congress meeting today for the first time, Bush supporters like to point out that even though Democrats hold a slight edge in the Senate right now due to Vice President Gore, they will take over that slight edge when Gore is replace in two and a half weeks by Cheney. Well, let me remind all you Bush supporters that you may have a lead in number of Republicans, but you have a major thorn in your side, he's one of you, and his name is John McCain.

Let's see... what's been going down since yesterday afternoon.... Well, we sat around watching tv yesterday and then we went to dinner at Chili's. After that, we went to Family Video and rented Baseketball. None of us had seen it before. I found it slightly amusing, but it seemed to get old quickly. We watched a little more tv after that, but then I finally came home. I started watching Lawrence of Arabia, but I was pretty tired and I dozed off. I ended up going to bed and finishing it this morning. After that, I watched The Manchurian Candidate. I returned my videos and got some hair dye from Shopko. I came back here and dyed my eyebrows back to their normal color. Yeah, I looked like a dumbass with bleached eyebrows. Mom came home a little late because she had a flat tire, but after she got home we ate and then I booked plane tickets for spring break... we're going to Europe!!! Jonathan and I are going to spending 4 days in Sweden and 3 days in Iceland - woohoo!! I went over to Matt and Carrie's and Carrie and I watched some tv. When Matt got home, he joined us, but he seemed pretty out of it. They went to bed and I came home. I have to remember to set the timer to record Apocalypse Now at 2:30. I might have tried to sit up and watch it, but my mom wants me to pick her repaired tire (she has the spare on now) and bring it to her at work at 7:30 in the morning. Well, I guess atleast it'll get my ass out of bed earlier in the morning.

It's Monday afternoon and I'm sitting here at Matt and Carrie's computer, so I apparently survived last night. Actually, I was quite intelligent about the matter and didn't drink much last night. We didn't do much last night. I got here about 2 yesterday afternoon and Carrie and I dyed our hair. I'm a blond again. We sat around watching tv and I picked up some dinner from Taco Bell (because it actually was still open). People started showing up about 7 and that ended with Ben showing up about 1. We played a few games and watched Orgazmo. It was a little different for me, because it was the first time in 4 years that Asphyxiation didn't play on New Year's. I ended up eventually just falling asleep after everyone had left and I woke up a couple time in the night, but finally got up sometime after 10 this morning. Carrie woke up soon after and then Matt stumbled down the stairs. They're upstairs getting dressed right now and I think we might go get something to eat soon. That'd be good, because I've had more to drink since I got up this morning than I did last night. Yeah, I'm weird. I don't have a clue what's on tap for today, but I'm sure it'll be cool. 2001 is here....