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Slp006
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Name: Alec
Interests: Poetry Writing,
Dungeons and Dragons,
Nerd Culture,
China and Southeast Asia,
Expertise: Prose Writing,
Biology,
Psychology,
General Academia,
Occupation: Student
Message: message me
Member Since:
6/23/2005
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| Where oh where do I begin to describe the excitement that has gone on over the past two days?! Hmmmm... Thursday afternoon sound lovely, actually.
Ngoc came over and successfully carted my sore-footed self over to UM. It was a ride that felt like it belonged on a Saturday morning after cartoons and a mountain of warm, sugary, chocolatey cookies for breakfast. The endorphins were running smoothly through my system by way of Ngoc's presence alone, and her paranoid driving techniques were as welcomed and pleasant as the cherry on a hot-fudge sundae with ambrosia and whipped cream. Although she got lost a couple of times, I was lost in the new car smells, blistering summer heat, and the aura of one of the greatest women to ever come within five feet of this cynic.
Once she parked and got the wheelchair out of the trunk with a bit of effort (along with some interjections about my mother's uncanny ability to lift heavy medical equipment with grace) we made our way to the Allen Hall Student Services building. Thankfully, Ngoc's sense of direction and spatial memory proved once again to be the superior of the two of ours; she had no trouble finding the little corner of a building, whereas I thought I had already been there with here last summer to buy a Subway sandwich. Apparently, we were nowhere near that Subway, and each corner of the University is required to look similar.
The kid hiding behind the desk refusing to answer the phone ten feet away from him was not slouched enough to hide from Ngoc. "There he is!" she exclaimed in a whisper, and I followed with a droll, "Excuse me, but I am here to get my 'Cane Card processed."
"Yeah, 'Cane Card? Ok." He was obviously relieved he wouldn't have to do anything mentally taxing at this point. "The camera's right there..." he motioned towards a camera that was more than a few inches over my head with no apparent kind of aiming mechanism. He seemed to not notice I was in a wheelchair, or he probably would have been muttering lots of "uuuhms," and "aaaahs" while trying to break it to me that I'd have to stand. To avoid having to hear this once the kid woke up and saw what was in front of him, I decided to help him out. My legs trembled with atrophy as I pushed into the foot-plates to contain my contempt for this lazy stranger managing to say with relative calm, "I actually uploaded a picture to your database this morning..." His face sagged like an eighty year-old bosom. "Oh...ummmm...okay. Gimme like five minutes to look it up, 'cause we've been havin' some trouble with getting the pitchers still today. You can take the pitcher now if you don' wanna wait.,,"
I was wondering how they had gotten the pictures to run in the first place, and how he had managed to get to his age without being able to pronounce the object he got paid to create before he piped up again. "C Number?" I gave him my ID number, and soon the machine started buzzing frantically. "They had it," whispered Ngoc with some level of relief in her voice. She was afraid that all of the work getting there was going to be fruitless in the end. I was about to say, "Yeah, I know, good!" when she gave me something to think about. "It sounds like a laminator."
I had to pause for a moment and pay attention to the buzzing. I've only heard a laminator a few times in my short life, and the memory was a bit hazy. It did in fact sound like my labeling machine, which spits out some sort of glossy ticker tape, so I figured that was a fair guess at the noise.
"Here you go." The shiny ID card, complete with magnetic tape on the back to allow easier access to my parent's bank accounts when I buy something on campus (as well as access to the library, which costs laypeople five bucks), was rather glossy as if laminated. The picture, which is a slightly modified version of my default profile picture on the blog, flowed over the designated white space. "Get a Mac" was covered in orange, an ironic testament to the fact that I'll be carrying around a Windows laptop, as well as the ineptitude of whomever had the task of coming up with a size range for the picture's dimensions. It was as small as they would allow, and still it cut me off.
Ah well, Ngoc didn't allow much time for mulling the thing over as she pulled me backwards out the door and hurried back to the car. My mind was on Krispy Kreme the time, so I can't remember much of what happened on the way there beyond the fact that I was very happy Ngoc managed to get me out of the cave I call a bedroom.
The road to crispy Kreme was paved with Ngoc's spirit. Bottled-up colorful language, u-turns, and constant fear of a cop noticing some minor driving error made the trip very tantalizing.
The doughnuts we picked up were an added bonus, in my opinion. They were fresh, and the spherical women at the drive-thru provided at least a few minutes of laughs. It looked like something out of a fairy tale: Hanzelita and Gretica Martinez were manning a house of fatty, sugary, oily goodness while smells attracted appealed to the rebel in many dieters, compelling them to venture off the trail and the path to healthy sainthood more than a box chocolates could ever manage.
The horrible part? The frozen coffee machine was broken. We had to settle for hot coffee in hotter weather. (It still made the doughnuts taste even better, though, later on)
We got back to my house a little more than an hour after we started. We talked of life, school, and generally pleasant things while I tried, successfully, actually, to drink in Ngoc's spirits. I felt as though we were one, Yin and Yang, as it had always been before life had been kicked up a notch from childhood. My soul felt complete, filled with thoughts of sugar-sweet best friendship.
At the end of the day, I was content with life, ready to die tomorrow if I had to. August 4th, 2005 was made up of moments I wouldn't mind re-living a thousand times.
Now, as for Friday... well, let's just say that it was the perfect precursor to a day of D&D, and that this week seems to have turned into the best one I've had this summer.
Hyvää matkaa! | | |
| I wrote a narrative this morning, inspired by a melancholy mood I was having, fueled by much existential angst. Keep in mind that narrative isn't my strong point, but I figured I'd give it a shot; I mean, if the inspiration hits, then one must use it. Most of it isn't introspective, but it's got some subtle commentary relating to my opinions about destiny in there. Enjoy.
Swordplay
The young soldier threw on some trousers and stepped outside the barracks one evening, his pair of longswords still in their hilts on his waist. He was human, as everyone in this small town was, sinewy, had a bare scalp, and skin like cured leather from numerous hours in the sun. The longswords he wielded were of very fine quality, a gift from his master years ago. He didn’t wear armor, so he could make his way out of the barracks without waking the sleeping regiment.
He looked towards the heavens and inhaled the dewy night air, letting it out with a heavy sigh. I’m a warrior, thought the soldier. Aren’t I? ‘It was written in the stars, boy! You’ll be the greatest swordsman there ever was, and spend your life saving the world.’ “Huh, save the world indeed, Master,” he mumbled to himself. “From what? Petty street thieves? Runaway carriages? The occasional wild dog that wanders too close to the farmlands? Look at all of those stars. I think you read the wrong constellation.”
The young man began walking down the path from the barracks to the town gardens, which were constantly tended to by a retired sorceress of about sixty who insisted on being called Rose, despite the fact that her real name was something quite different. The soldier talked to her about it once, and she just smiled and waved him off. “I’ve had a thornier past than most, young one. Better to leave old roots buried and focus on the flower that everyone can see.” He wasn’t about to press her further on the issue; he wasn’t one to pry when an elder told him to leave well enough alone. Besides, she was a sorceress, and a good one at that, what with how extraordinarily lush her garden was.
The garden was his favorite place to visit when he felt in low spirits; it was full of exotic smells and colors that couldn’t be found anywhere else in the town, or anywhere else he had been, for that matter. There was also a quiet, shady area where he could practice sword drills in peace. He couldn’t practice long in the barracks before some thug with a broadsword and a metal shell decided that an unarmored guard needed to be given a lesson in the importance of defense. The others thought that the young soldier was too full of himself with his unconventional dual-sword style, and refraining from wearing even leather armor just made him more of a fool in their eyes. No matter how many times he would best his clunky bunkmates in practice duels, they wouldn’t respect him. As for being haughty, the man was surely not. He practiced alone for hours on most days when he wasn’t assigned guard duty or doing the occasional odd job for Rose. He constantly feared losing his skill in this sleepy town.
The world hadn’t seen a great battle or war since he had begun training, and that war was horribly bloody. Millions of soldiers from all over the continent were lost to all sorts of undead creatures sent to wreak havoc on the world by some megalomaniac necromancer. The young soldier’s master intended on training a swordsman to stop this menace. However, the necromancer, now known to the public as Thanamus, was vanquished before the soldier completed his training at 18 years of age. The master died soon after. The soldier still remembered his last words clearly, even though ten years had passed since then. “I’ve fulfilled my purpose here. Bring greatness to the world! Defend the innocent. Carve peace into heart of Evil!”
The soldier entered the garden and found his favorite spot. He grinned as he inhaled the sweet smells of Rose’s flowers. Master, he thought as he drew his swords, I’ll be ready for Evil when it comes. And he trained, as he had done so many times before, hoping for a good fight tomorrow, as he would continue to do for the remainder of his life.
Perhaps the old master should have used a better telescope.
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| Well, it's time for an update. Last week I received 18 pounds of Goetze's Caramel Creams. I bought them two weeks ago online. I like them, and want them from time to time but always forget to ask for them or remember that I want them, so now I'll never run out. Fun fun fun. ;)
Oh, and in the process of making an avatar for herself, Riibu made one that has my name on it! How cool. It's my Finn name, of course. Ransu Sorsamo. Unrelated to my real name, but still my name.
OOoO! It's a crown of flowers. Lei, perhaps? Daniel Harris is the original artist; he drew the gremlin, you know! | | |
| I'll be napping soon. Ok, well, I sort of lied before about *playing* Geneforge. It was more along the lines of editing the crap out of it to suit my evil desires. No one can stop my shaper now!! Hahaha...ahem. Ok, so it was mainly just editing the scenario file to make my character go zoom zoom, and to add in lines of script to one of the editor's dialog options so I can click on it once and max out. GF2 doesn't like me messing with its scripts at all. If I add lines, the scenario file fails to load, thus crashing the program. Dammit Jeff. You've stopped my tinkering. Oh well, at least that doesn't happen in GF1 or even GF3, and the latter gives me hope for GF4 when it comes out. Oh, and when it does come out, I'll have finished an editor within a weekend of its release for the Mac. >:)
I also bought the third edition of NBA Street, a basketball game I had heard about three years ago. It should amuse me; basketball video games are fun. I guess I'm packing my gaming into this limited period of time. It's on the Microsuck Xbox console, out of convenience. I blaspheme. | | |
| What can I say? I'm tired, content, and my gut hurts, so I'm awake. No more carcinogenic charcoal cooking for this man, oh no no no. As of now, I'm still following Riibu's earlier suggestion of keeping the dress to an absolute minimum. What she doesn't know is that my mother recently told me I should join a nudist colony when I'm older, so dressing lightly is hardly a new thing for me. That's way more than you wanted to know, isn't it? Oh well. "That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
I'm wondering right now how Ngoc is doing. Then I go off to play Geneforge!! :D | | |
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