Moving is the Bane of My Existence (Luke)

So I already started to write this stupid post when my iPod decided it didn’t like me sharing my feelings on the Web and exited out of Safari, so this is try number two.

I will tell you that it’s hard to imagine just how depressing it is to move from one house to another. And I’m not even factoring in the emotional pangs that you experience when moving from your childhood home. It’s the knuckle dragging work of sorting through piles of crap and organizing them into semi-orderly piles of crap. This is the moving part I didn’t see coming. I have participated in numerous moving days consisting mainly of taking large items from a house to a moving truck, and then taking ‘em back out again. So that main moving day was a breeze for me. But what I hadn’t experienced was the slow moving of inconsequential items over to the new house that never seems to end.

Where’s the plunger? At the old house.

Where are all the towels? At the old house.

Where’s the Internet? ….

I know the last one doesn’t count, cause you can’t physically move the Internet, but I will tell you that it was a serious pain to live in a house without Internet. In fact, the majority of this post was written at El Camino. It really reveals how dependent I am on the Internet. I was sitting at home, homework done, no book readily in sight, and I realized that I had absolutely nothing to do at all. It was a bit disheartening, but then I decided to go outside and play with the dogs, so I ended up feeling pretty good later.

Speaking of feeling good, there is no feeling like the feeling of building something useful for yourself out of raw materials. I built a support for one of the shelves in my dresser, meaning I had to cut the wood with a handsaw, screw in the brackets and everything. And the most wonderful feeling of competency and satisfaction came over me, that I actually did a I-built-something jig in celebration. I’m gonna chase that feeling…

Well I guess I should get back to weeping over the hundreds of boxes of unpacked crap populating my garage.

…maybe later…

First iPod Blog (Luke)

Hello everybody!! This is my first blog on my iPod! Generally speaking, I guess this is my first blog in a while. Don’t think for a moment that I’m going to promise to blog more, because I’ve already realized that as a person, I’m about as focused as Mr. Toad…With that being said, I’m happy to say that I have fully embraced Facebook and all it’s addictive ways. All the paranoid people out there are weeping over my foolishness, but I consider myself practically immune from the touch of identity theft or stalkers. For one thing, I have nothing digital worth stealing, unless of course they want to hack into my documents and steal all my English essays. You can have ‘em boys, they got A’s! As for stalking, I doubt that there’s anybody out there who would consider me worth stalking (besides Richard, of course). And if they did, I would warn them to get ready to sit for hours as I watch X Files.

Yes, my father introduced me to X Files, unaware of my tendency to watch shows obsessively till their end. It’s a horrible habit. Believe me when I say it’s a problem, because I have, on numerous occasions, gone in to a binge-like state and gone through the entire series. Scrubs being an example, I went through all 100 episodes in a week. I felt pretty useless afterwords, as I had spent 33+ hours watching a sitcom that never seemed to change, so I’m trying to keep the Scrubs Debocle from happening again with X Files.

On a more serious note, school is going as well as it could go so far through the semester, given the classes that I’m taking and the amount of work it is. I’m working my way through Calculus 1, Chemistry 4, and Psychology 5. If most people had to guess as to what my favorite class is at the moment, they probably wouldn’t pick Calc, but oddly enough, it is the class that’s keeping me sane throughout the semester. It’s definitely my teacher that makes the class so enjoyable, and he makes it enjoyable by being a good teacher. I’ve been so deprived of truly good teachers recently that to have a great one is refreshing and rejuvenating. He comes in and starts talking about math like a sports fan talks about football. With excitement and energy, he goes through all the different concepts, and for those of you who’ve had a inspiring teacher before, it you know how it can drive you on to really enjoy the subject itself. Oddly enough, I am a science major, and while my math teacher inspires, my Chemistry teacher depresses my natural love of the subject. It may be the fact that I already know all of the material that’s making the class so boring, but I’m sure his teaching is exacerbating my disinterest. As for Psychology, all I can say is easy A. That’s school for you…

Hopefully more to come….

Look Up In the Sky! It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s……Luke?

Hello everybody!! Since this blog is designed to, pretty much, keep Richard and I from going insane with boredom( see about ), I’ve decided  to let a little bit of myself into this thing! As you may have noticed, most of our posts have something to do with or are narrating an event that recently occurred. And hopefully the event was relatively interesting, or else you get a post like “Circle X”. What a horrible post…… Man, I was bored writing that thing! Anyway….. The few posts that strayed from this formula ended up short and pointless, in the best meaning of the word. But as there is no relatively interesting event recently, and I feel the need to blog it up as the kids call it nowadays, I’m deciding to do a short and pointless blog that has something to with a hobby of mine. That’s right people, buckle up and get ready to enter the world of Luke! This post, as you may have gleaned from the title, is about comic books. Now, I consider myself to be a pseudo-comic book nerd, I say pseudo because I don’t want a bunch of REAL comic book nerds to attack me AND…. because pseudo is really fun to spell and to say out loud. Go ahead, try it out! Pseudo. Moving on, I’m what you’d call a batman-and-robin-aholic. I LOVE Batman and Robin, but more specifically Robin. He’s been my favorite crime fighter since I was a kid, and it endures till today. Just an aside, I believe that we should all band together and make an Alfred Pennyworth Fan Club and website, just ’cause the guy deserves it. Back to main characters, Robin rocks my world! Yes, I know that the first couple Robins only wore green speedos essentially( Dick Grayson, Jason Todd), and yes, that is kinda gay, but the later Robins are kick butt! Specifically, Tim Drake( aka Tim Wayne), who is now the unchallenged winner of the Awesomest Superhero Award as Red Robin (the dark vigilante, not the restaurant chain). 

Anyway, recently Red Robin has reignited my passion for comic books, and I totally forgot how much fun it is! It’s really enjoyable to see caped and cowled crimefighters take down scumballs with crazy acrobatics, mind-blowing martial arts, and super sweet weapons/gadgets!! So yeah, this has been a little look into the mysterious life of Luke’s weird hobbies. Hope you enjoyed!!

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PS: Hobby is another fun word to say!

Disneyland At Midnight Part 2 (Luke)

Hello everybody!! I went to Disneyland the other night for Gradnite, and it was a painful experience, to say the least, and it all started at my church. Jero, Josiah, Abel, and I arrived at 9:15-ish p.m. to find that no one was there. My entire week was leading up to this night, and I was really excited about the prospects of the coming evening. That was my first mistake: getting my hopes up. I don’t really blame myself, ’cause the last Gradnite I went to was pretty enjoyable, and this kind of enjoyment, after long periods of time, becomes more and more exaggerated until it seems to you that the last Gradnite was the most amazing time ever. Once Alaska arrived and joined our party, people started trickling in to the alley where we were meeting, and as soon as everybody had arrived, we took off towards the place where magic happens. After a painfully long drive, we finally made it to the, so-called, happiest place on earth, where the first warnings of doom descended on me. Why were there so many buses? We were sent to the bus area, being in a fifteen passenger, and let me tell you, there were more buses there than fish in the sea. I swear, if they were all parked bumper-to-bumper and side-to-side, we could probably play a lengthy game of football without a problem. Emphasis on the word “lengthy”. We sat there in the bus parking lot with the other buses for a half-hour before my dad, who was the chaperone along with my mom, got out and started to walk around. After about fifteen minutes, passing rather nicely for me since Jero brought his cards and we were playing war, my dad jumped back into the car, and told us the situation. Apparently, last weeks Gradnite was cancelled due to low attendance, and they were all moved to this night, and on top of that, they were trying out a new way of organizing the entry into the park, which made sense, ’cause, as Alaska pointed out, the wait was much longer. Figures. Anyways, my dad, coming back from another fifteen minute walk, turned on the car and took us out of bus hell. We came up to the normal parking lot, but this time we told the lady there that Caesar sent us. You heard me, Caesar. My dad happened to meet him on one of his information strolls, and apparently Caesar was some kind of coordinator for the bus parking lot. Seeing that my dad was a nice guy, he sent us to the normal parking lot to cut the wait. See kids, this is why you should be polite! Well, the lady didn’t seem very happy about letting us go through after already sending us to bus hell, but what could she do? Caesar sent us. We parked, put all our worldly possessions in plastic bags, and walked to the entrance, and after being frisked, some of us more carefully than others(Abel), we finally got into the park. The raw energy of the place stole away with my exasperation, and I once again got excited. Deciding that the Space Mountain line was too long, we instead headed to Thunder Mountain. It was awesome! After that we hit Pirates of the Caribbean. Also awesome! Then we decided to dare Space Mountain. The little estimator thing said the wait was to be about two hours. It was right. That’s right! We waited for two hours in that darned line. Moving slow enough to be irritating, but too fast to adequately play cards. And then we realized that we were like cattle, except they are herded by others, while we herded ourselves. I wonder if cows think they’re going to go on a cow-rollercoaster, when in reality they’re being led to become hamburgers? After the ride, I was euphoric to be out of the line. We went straight to Matterhorn after that. There I started to, accidently mind you, annoy Alaska, which is pretty much as dangerous as coming up to a rabid Grizzly bear, while covered in steak juice, and prodding it with a pointy stick. Not the best idea for a hobby, I admit, but I was tired out of my mind, and when that happens, I revert back into Junior High Luke who likes to pretend he’s punching people. After Matterhorn, we made our way to Star Tours, which is amazing, also stopping by the Buzz Lightyear shooting thing, where Alaska totally kicked all our butts. Shaking off the defeat, I convinced everybody to go on that ride that spins right at the entrance to Tomorrowland. That ride concluded our rollercoastering, and we slowly made our way to the decided meeting place for the entire troupe. Everybody in the entire park was making their way back to their cars at that point, and we joined them. Seriously, if a director wanted free footage of zombies, all he’d have to do squirt some ketchup on the people in the front and record away. After an uneventful drive back to the church, my parents took Abel home, but the rest of my group, meaning Jero, Josiah, Alaska, and I, had to stay for school: that started in two hours! Josiah went to what would be study hall and promptly passed out, while Jero said he had homework to do, and ended up passing out too, but in a different room. I couldn’t sleep, believe me I tried, so I went and bought an apple-fritter. Alaska was too tired to walk, so alone I walked up the hill to a park called Sea View, even though you can’t see the ocean. There I sat in the dew covered park and ate my doughnut, watching the sun crest over the trees. Once I depleted my store of sweets, I walked back to sleep for twenty minutes before being woken up by study hall persons. I spent the rest of study hall playing solitaire and laughing with Alaska as she tried to write a current events article in her exhaustion. I didn’t get to sleep until four o’clock, what with school and a band audition. By that time, I had decided that Gradnite is the worst. But that could’ve been ’cause I was so dead tired. Looking back, it doesn’t seem that bad, yet to tell you the truth, Gradnite wasn’t really the part I enjoyed.

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Songs-Part 1(Luke)

Hello folks! I’m listening to a song that all humans on earth should know. It’s a little ditty called “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins. This song always makes me happy and hopeful, which is odd ’cause it’s a pretty depressing song, all-in-all. Greaaaaaaaaat drums is included in this masterpiece of 80s music. Actually, I was initially introduced to the song when a friend of mine sent me a Youtube video that contained a commercial with a monkey playing drums to this song. It was awesome! I would also like to note that Phil Collins just happens to be one of the best singer/drummers of all time. He’s right up there with Don Henley, and………..yeah that’s the only other singer/drummer I know. But I’m sure there are other good ones. I’ve noticed that I have a very singular music taste, because in the small time it took me to write this tiny paragraph, I’ve gone from ol’ Phil, to Stevie Nix, to Benny Goodman, to a Christian/alternative rock band called The Swift. Odd wouldn’t you say? If not odd, then very random. I’m hoping to get a little Bluegrass on this baby, and when I say baby, I’m referring to the 1st gen. iPod Nano that is playing my sweet tunes. It’s pretty hot. Anyways, my nano, in reality, kinda sucks. But that comes with age and dropping it multiple times. And my iPod case seems to be confused about what it’s job is, seeing as it ejects the object it’s supposed to be protecting every time I fumble it. Well, I’m done. Still waiting on that Bluegrass.

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Why? Because I Can!! (Luke)

Hello everybody!! You might not have noticed, but I added a new category to our list of, you guessed it, categories. Why did I add this new category you ask because you’re insanely interested? Well, I’ll enlighten your mind. Because I can (This is the only place I have real power, being usurper, and I’ll exploit that fact anyway I can). But more importantly than that, because I’m bored to the highest degree. This seems to be occurring more often than not, and “not” seems to be occurring less often than is (Does this make sense?). Either way, I’m more excited by doing nothing than I would be if I was doing the grating, monotonous something that I should be doing. So you could say that I’m relatively excited. But this excitement is a farce. Something that did make me excited was an event that happened to me in Precalculus class this morning, where I realized a relationship between two measurements of speed that comes into play when a circle is within a circle. It was fantastic! I actually made a formula with this revelation(I also made a unit called “batts”, pronounced like watts, but have still to understand what the unit represents), and decided to become world-famous, when I realized that this divine knowledge bestowed on me was actually not that important or revolutionary. Kind of a disappointment, but life goes on. Something else that has made me excited is blogging again, and I plan to employ the practice more often, even though I’m probably going to slack off of this plan later. Anyway, it’s nice to be excited, every once in a while.

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PS: I hope Auntie Lou doesn’t mind me hijacking her signature dot-dot-dot at the end. I kinda like the open ended-ness it brings. It makes blogs more like thoughts…

I’ve Got Some Bruises (Luke)

Hello everybody!! It feels like forever since I blogged about something, and that feeling probably stems from the fact that I haven’t blogged about something in forever. Despite my rustyness, I’m gonna try to write again. So we went paintballing this last weekend; we being Richard, Jason, Noah, a bunch of other people, and myself,  and it was awesome. The day started with being woken up by someone yelling, “Luke! We’re leaving in five minutes!” Which wasn’t exactly true, but it sure got me out of my bed. I’m a very heavy sleeper, in case you didn’t know. So, after dressing half in dreamland ( I’m pretty sure with my eyes closed), I walked groggily out to eat a bagel before we left. A few drives later, I found myself standing in the parking lot of the SC Village paintball park, in awe of the I-fought-in-Veitnam guy, suped up for shooting paint pellets. Luckily, I wasn’t going to be up against this commando. I had a private group. So I would be up against the commandos I came with. Once everybody who needed rentals got them, we started to play. I had a pretty awesome team, including Richard, Noah, and Jero and we were an okay team, actually, considering we were up against some really experienced guys. Unfortunately, the Dobrucks were not on my team and they were kamikazes the entire time, running out shooting and such. They struck fear in all our hearts, cause you couldn’t put suppressive fire on ‘em. Anyway, once the day was over, we cleaned up and headed towards In-N-Out where we ate and hung out. Getting home late and taking a shower to get the paint off you is all part of the experience in paintball. I wonder when we’re going again……….?

Of Holloween Haunt And Broken Down Doors(Luke)

Hello everybody!! I went to Knott’s Halloween Haunt a little more than a week ago, and it was a memorable night, to say the least. We had been planning to go(we being Noah, Jason Dobruck, and myself) for about a week, and the whole week felt like it led up to that night. After teaching karate, and selling popcorn for Boy Scouts, I was feeling pretty worn, but right when we arrived at the Dobruck’s house where we were going to leave from, energy just oozed from every pore of my being. I was ready. After an hour of driving, we set foot in Pink’s hotdog stand(awesome) for a little snack and to meet up with the rest of the group, making us nine: the people mentioned above, Mr. Dobruck(who drove us), Jeremiah Dobruck, sisters Anna and Kristi, Tim, and Ryan(I don’t know their last names). We followed the crowd into the park and began our adventure into the world of dry-ice smoke and stuffy mazes. Beginning with the mine cart ride(Black Widow’s Cavern) is always a good idea. One, when you get into the park, it’s still light out. Not very scary. So the mine car ride takes you under and when you get out, it’s dark. Two, for some reason the line gets longer later in the day. We try to avoid that as much as possible, and we would’ve done the same for the log ride(Pyromaniax), but  it wasn’t open yet. In case you didn’t know, the way Halloween Haunt works is you go to different attractions(we call them mazes), in which you walk inside and there’s a set path that you take that winds through the elaborately decorated maze, all with different themes. Between mazes, there’re street monsters that try to scare you. You can go onto the rides that are normal, but that’s lame. Anyway, the first maze we entered was Dia De Los Muertos, one themed after the mexican holiday. Mucho, mucho creepy, and way better than Las Vegas, which was in its place last year. The mazes that followed were The Doll House, and Terror of London(Jack the Ripper themed), stopping shortly to watch the The Hanging: Wrath of the Witch. The Hanging is, in decent words, inappropriately horrid. It is a comedy show, that parodies many pop culture subjects going on that year, and can really deliver a hilarious punchline, but taints their performance with jokes that make you cringe with disgust. Although it’s intended for mature audiences, some of the “jokes” cross the line even for adults. I saw it the year before, and hoping it had gotten better, went again this year, and I was surprised to find that it’s like a traffic collision: you want to look away, but it’s so bad that you can’t! Pretty much the best part is when the Jonas Brothers got shot in mid air. Anyway, God willing, it’ll get better next year. After the Hanging, we proceeded to enter Lockdown-The Asylum(a prison themed maze), Club Blood(a vampire maze that usually fails to impress), Quarantine(after the movie, creepy!!), and Uncle Bobo’s Bigtop of the Bizarre(the clowns). The next one was Cornstalkers, boasting an evil scarecrow and such theme. This maze didn’t scare me very much last year, but really got freaked out this year. Oh my gosh, they made me jump a hundred times. Soooooooo gooooooood! Following that was the Labyrinth( after Pan’s Labyrinth, the movie), and finally getting on the log ride, which makes me jump EVERY time. I’m not even kidding! After irking through Alien Annihilation, professor Freak’s Funhouse for Kids*(Not For Kids), the disclaimer is part of the title, thus ending our Halloween Haunt experience for this year. Drowsy from the late night breakfast buffet and the car ride back to Jason’s house, we perked up when we spied the police car in the front of the apartment building. Walking into the courtyard, Noah, Jason, Mr. Dobruck, and I saw the Police officers banging on the door to one of the apartments, to no reply. Quickly running into their own lodgings, we watched as the Cops warned the occupants that they would come in open door or not, and then BAM BAM BAM BAM!!! Four kicks assailed the door! They stopped and knocked on the door again, with no answer they took one last kick, and totally broke the door down. After bringing the suspect out, we found out that the occupants were having another fight, and that the neighbors heard the man allegedly abusing the woman. Once the man was on the ground in cuffs, he said that he couldn’t hear the knocking that could wake the dead. We were told that she wasn’t pressing charges, so after locking our door, we decided to watch a scary movie. A perfect ending to a an exciting day.

Hillsdale, How Thou Dost Love Me. (Richard)

Note: This is probably best read alongside Luke’s most recent post.

Hey all! As many of you know, school started about three weeks ago, and it’s been extremely busy for me, though most of it has thus far involved lots of reading and nothing more. Anyway, I started taking classes at Hillsdale College three weeks ago, and I, being a full time student endowed with all the rights pertaining thereof, had all of my classes scheduled for me. I cannot tell you how fantastically unannoying this process was. The college scheduled all of my classes to take place on the exact same days, leaving Tuesdays and Thursdays wide open for me to do homework or whatever else suits my fancy (and indeed I more often choose the latter rather than the former, a choice which I cannot afford to continue making, but still do nonetheless). I’m am currently taking Western Hertiage (History), Science 101 (Chemistry/Physics), Economics 202 (intro to microeconomics), and English 101. Two are amazing, one is great, and one is…pathetic. Whenever I leave History or Economics, I feel quite enriched, as though I am actually learning something. Science is entertaining because the professor is a science nerd in the best kind of way, and English is…boring, insipid, and generally terribly inconvenient. It is absolutely the teacher’s fault for English being the way it is, and it doesn’t help that the class is at 1:00 in the afternoon, right after lunch and right in the middle of nap time. Despite this, all of my classes are important and at least three are challenging, but no matter what this school year has to offer, survival, a horizontal path of progress, and saying “screw it” and doing it my own way are the only directions I plan on traveling.

Now that I am done copying and paralleling Luke, what more do I have to write about? The majority of the people here hail from the midwest, and I have found that they are the most enjoyable people to be around – they are calm, for the most part, level-headed, as long as no one mentions Obama, reliable, self-sufficient, and simply, good. Good in such a way that their faults and imperfections do little to shape their character, and do not lower my opinion of them in any significant way. At any rate, I suggest that everyone from southern California who I hang out with moves to midwest with me. The people are better, the weather is wetter (and therefor better), and we’d fit to the letter. (The last one is a bit of a stretch, but I have seen and written papers dealing with worse). And with that, I close.

El Camino, Why Dost Thou Hate Me?!(Luke)

Hello everybody!! As many of you know, school started about three weeks ago, and it’s been extremely busy for me. Technically, the full school year started this week. Anyway, I started at El Camino College three weeks ago and I, of course, had to add all my classes. Why did I have to go through this fantastically annoying process, you ask with sincerity? Well, the college gave me the absolute last day to register officially, and also failed to inform me of the prerequisites needed for my classes until that day. And get this…….the only place where I could fix it, was closed. Big surprise! And I had been freaking out the whole day over getting the prerequisites there on time. After realizing that I had to add, I attended my selected academic endeavors, and got into two of the three I wanted to get in to. One by pure providence. I’m now in German and Trigonometry, and they are awesome. Sometimes. German is AMAZING!! I’ve never taken a language before, and I’m really happy about this class. It’s really fun! Now Trig is the one that can be a drag sometimes. For one, my teacher looks like a walking turtle who’s really fun to listen to, but the subject itself is SOOOOOOO boring(unless we’re doing Trig ratio proofs ). It’s not his fault, it’s the material! And it doesn’t help that it’s like an oven in the classroom. Both classes are important and challenging, but no matter what this school year has to offer, I  think up is the only direction I plan on traveling.