The First Time

In life you only get one opportunity for a first time. You only get one first kiss, one first relationship, one first semester of college, etc. You really hold a special place in your heart for all those things or experiences you can coin as "your first." Along with all those things I believe your first car should be held in that soft spot of you heart... Well it will for me I guess.

For weeks my parents had been stringing me along telling me that when I come home for spring break in a couple weeks, the Buick (who has been in the shop since Thanksgiving Break) would be fixed. Not only would it be fixed, but ready to make the trek to Pullman and provide me with another 3+ years of memories in college.

That was all a lie. Deep down I knew the Buick was dead and had been since Thanksgiving, but I was in denial. I was still in denial a couple hours ago and optimistic, until I skyped with my parents and told me that it's done.

Hearing the words "it's done" has been ringing in my head for hours. Since that conversation with my parents I have been doing what is commonly done when good things for you come to an end... Reminisce.

I will miss that white, peeling paint that made it resemble a boat. I will miss that spacious interior that included the bench seats in the front. I will miss that drooping roof that annoyingly touched the top of my head. It's funny that when you don't have something you loved so much, you even begin to miss and appreciate everything, even the flaws. I will miss riding around in it blasting music, feeling like I was straight out of GTA San Andreas" (Direct quote from Aaron Bagherpour after riding in the Buick for the first time).

Overall, I will just miss the Buick. I will never get to have another first car, and I am glad that you were my first. We had some good times, and they will never be forgotten. I cant't help but feel with the death of the Buick, is the death to an era of my life. RIP Buick and the era you represent, hello new era...

There Is No Point To This

Dear Magikarp,

This post has nothing to do with anything just letting you know I am still alive. I have just been up to my neck in shit I have to do that is why I cannot post something "deep and with a point." I just finished my five page English paper in an hour. I find it hilarious that every teacher claims they can tell when you write a paper a day before and your grade will reflect that... except that has yet to happen. Maybe I am getting a little cocky, but I just feel that some things never change, in English at least.

Speaking of writing, blogspot has been adding new bloggers almost daily. It's crazy three weeks ago this was almost unheard of, but three weeks later it's the new cool thing to do. Either way, I am excited to see what new perspectives will be shared on the internet. Hopefully people stay in their element.

Oh so get this, today we found a five bedroom house to live in next year, and it was weird because there is only four of us, but we needed an extra person for that fifth bedroom. Hmmmm I wonder who would have fit that perfectly?

Oh wait that's right you are not here. In many ways, I wish you were still here. With Beej and Ben Moore's bromance and Brian Reidy as ghost... it's just weird.

Anyways man, I am done with my break. I need to start this take home test. Just letting you know my blogging career is not dead since you are my biggest fan. Thursday expect a post with some meaning. And I know you're pumped because it's not a SHARED theory of you and I, or at least not yet.

Blame It On The Goose, Got You Feeling Loose

So there have been many times I have gone to class on a Monday and heard people’s weekend perils. A popular phrase I hear seems to be, “Oh wow, I was so gone that night” or “What I did that? Get out of here” or my personal favorite “I only did that because I was drunk.” Being a three day weekend, my Tuesday classes and Wednesday classes were no exceptions. As people get older, it’s usually expected that we, as young adults, begin to take responsibility for our actions, whether we are proud of them or not, but it seems that my logic is mistaken. I thought we left the days of passing blame to people on the playground. Our new scapegoat is not a person though; however, our new scapegoat is alcohol.

I am sick and tired of people using alcohol as an excuse for whatever actions they do under the influence. I flirted with this topic a little bit in my controversial piece titled “My Theory,” but decided to save it. It’s quite funny to see how people act as soon as some alcohol gets in there system. People figure when they consume alcohol all their morals go out the window and whatever they do is fair game. Seeing what people do drunk though, tells you more about the person any sober acts can. It’s kind of like that notion your parents taught you when you were younger, “to always act like you are in the presence of your mom.” I am pretty sure if there would be some greatly disappointed mothers out there if they truly saw how their children act.

When no one is “watching” the truth comes out and nothing helps the truth come out like a couple shots of vodka, a couple cups of Caribou Lou, or shot-gunning Busch Light. If anything when we are sober, we filter out what we say and tone down who we really are. People turn to alcohol use as an opportunity to open up. People do or say things that when they are drunk they would never dream to say about sober because they have that safety net. That safety net of drunkness allows random hookups, controversial rants, etc. because the next morning if you regret it, you can always use that lame excuse of an excuse that you were drunk . Even if you don’t regret your actions, you can use your drunkness as an excuse for being a complete ass.

Just like the things you say aren’t random, drunk dials or texts aren’t random as well. Again, drunkness is an excuse to be open, no matter the means of communication. Technology is just another way to express how you truly feel. Those who lie and say they randomly called or texted you is a liar. Usually there is some sort of agenda and reason you are being contacted. Either you have done them wrong and they want to tell you did, or they care about you and don’t have the courage to admit that when sober. It’s quite funny that our true moments of honesty and purity is when we “don’t remember.” It’s scary how much this world would make sense if we just we spoke our minds like we did when drunk. Relationships could begin earlier, cutting out all the BS and build-up, you know that fun stuff. You also wouldn’t have those fake friends and would tell people what you really thought.

However, nobody wants to put how they truly feel out there. Nobody wants to be vulnerable, so they mask their real feelings. Alcohol is just a socially accepted way to put yourself out there, so know that actions aren’t really random when under the influence. Those actions are genuine to how the person really feels inside and exposes those feelings because they can hide behind that cloak of alcohol if they felt too vulnerable. I guess you can view blogging as my alcohol, an outside thing forcing and encouraging me to make myself vulnerable by sharing my thoughts. So, I hope all of us will be able to find a better outlet than alcohol to expose our feelings; however, if you remain to choose alcohol as a way to open up, don’t talk about how you regretted the way you opened up, embrace it because that’s how you feel and who you are.

Stimson, The Abstinent Dorm

After my friend Haley's post (ohtheweatheroutsideisweather.blogspot.com), I have noticed more how college in a way promotes safe but still pre-marital sex. Any kind of promotion of pre-marital sex is unheard of to my Catholic High School virgin ears. Exposure to sex is inevitable in college. It waits for you on the corners of the streets of Greek Row. It's present at every party I have atteneded. Even the all girls hall of Regents gives their residents free condoms like it's candy. I am curious to why all guy dorms, oh such as Stimson don't offer the same perks? This question has dawned on me since reading Haley's post, yet today my curiosity was satisfied.
Over the weekend my friend in Stimson got written up for ummm, well having sex in the shower of his room. Hearing this surprised me because I have heard stories and even witnessed the bathrooms of Stimson being used as the venue of choice. Hell I feel like more girls have been tagged in my cluster bathroom, then tags of a city billboard, courtesy of Jonny Gannon. As if hiding and covering up alcohol use from our RAs wasn't enough, but girls when in Stimson cover your mouths.
I guess I am taking this opportunity to say thank you Stimson for allowing me to hold on to something I learned from Catholic school... No sex, in the bathrooms at least.

World Be Prepared

I love hanging in the library. It's a good way to tune out everything surrounding you and just focus on the tasks you have set out to complete. I use the library to escape the many distractions the 202 cluster has to offer. Such as the projector and any gaming system you desire, all tied together with surround sound... ahhhhh good old cluster (I bet you miss it Swainy). Anyways, I feel that the library has just as many distractions as my dorm room. Of course there is always Facebook there to distract you, but a new distraction has been people watching. A couple days ago I watched some girl trying to study glare at the Ben's while they argued about something important (that was some BJ sarcasm). However, today I couldn't help but just watch my good friend Ben Johnson (BJ). For about an hour BJ put the same beat on and tried to come up with lyrics. So I decided to become his hype man because his flow is so sick. You can say I'm his Spliff Star, or his Puff Daddy.

INTRODUCIN'...
DJBJ

is the hottest rapper on the streets of P-Town (not Portland, but he'd be the hottest rapper on the streets of Portland too) right now. Born in Spokompton, WA, DJBJ has been has been spitting ryhmes for as long as he can remember. It's legend that he actually wrote every song for the movie Tin Cup. When asked why he did it, he replied that he could just relate to Kevin Costner's grind. His biggest music influences include a Tribe Called Quest, Blackalicious, Wu-Tang, NWA, and Peter Frampton. And his rapping style has been described to be a mixture between Mike Jones and Lil Wayne; however, he never recorded any of his raps. He was content with rapping on the corna with his homies inbetween selling rocks. That is until one day he saw Eli on YouTube, and saw all the mad love he was getting. He was like fuck that main, I am tired of pushin' these packs, I wanna push 6 digits. Ever since then he has been working on an album featuring Jeff motherfucking Hanes, Ben Moore, and Breeezy. The album is said to be the most anticipated album since Soulja Boy Tell 'Em's. Except to hear his first single soon titled "Smart Bitch", a song about the difficulty of finding a decent, wholesome girl, aka a smart bitch? Expect fire.

A Tribute to Chris Krantz

After three hours of studying some chemistry, I still don't feel I have a very good grip on it, so I decided to take a minute and turn to a subject I have a grip on: English. Or that is, I thought I had a grip on it prior to today's class. For our first essay, we were assigned to write a personal narrative about what our plans were for the future and to introduce ourselves as well, so our English teacher could get a better feel for who we are. I thoroughly enjoyed writing this essay, and it payed off because my teacher enjoyed reading it. He even left a comment saying it was a "great paper." But I guess he didn't feel too strongly about the papers in general. He said that most lacked basic organization and skills such as thesis statements, intro paragraphs, and conclusions.

In response to this my teacher basically gave us the same assignment, but not with as much freedom. To insure that the class as a whole would have a thesis statement, he gave us two different sentences with blanks. Those two sentences were our choices for how we wanted to convey our thesis. And if you think that's awful, we have to go back to the old school 5 paragraph format, I thought I left behind in Milani's class.

And that is what today felt like, a blast from the past. A flashback from the horrors of Milani's class. I hope today doesn't mark the day where my love for writing died for the second and probably last time. The first time my love for writing died came with my enrollment into Ms. Milani's class. She took away any critical thinking that you could and forced her ideas and even thesis statements upon you and docked you down for anything different. If you were to hand me a stack of essays from the "Lord of the Flies", I would not be able to tell you which essay was mine because each essay had the same thesis and contained nearly identical content. That was a huge problem as well, the content was less important than those damned GWE's. Sophomore year was probably when I decided I wanted to become something having to do with math and science because I wanted to run the hell away from English. But that's not the case anymore, I wonder what changed my mind....
Oh yeah that's who it was Mr. Chris Krantz.

Second semester junior year I had Mr. Krantz for Creative Writing and senior year had him for English IV. Krantz challenged us as a class to think outside the box and blow him away with anything and everything we wrote. Up to this point in time, I never had a teacher that welcomed a challenge, let alone let me outside the box of familiarity of the conventional essay. It was under Krantz that I really started to love writing and even to excel at it. His unorothodox teaching style held my interest and pushed me to write the best papers I possibly could.

I count myself lucky to have had him as a teacher to prepare me for college writing. I look around my English classroom today and am baffled to see how very few people actually know how to construct an average paper because they weren't as fortunate to have a teacher like Mr. Krantz. Actually, the only thing that I view as a negative to having Mr. Krantz as a teacher already is experiencing that freedom to convey our thoughts in paper in any style we wanted. He broke me from the chains of the Milani way and gave me the tools to succeed. However, today I felt as if those tools were taken and am backtracking to those days of hating to write

Does It Offend You, Yeah?

So after my first post about my theory on women, I have been getting a lot of criticism from most females. It's funny how every girl finds those words harsh and untrue, yet every guy finds those words to be real and spot on. I agree that I was a little extreme by saying every girl has an inner skank. But I will say in nicer terms most girls do have that curiosity somewhere. As I mentioned earlier, this statement was offensive to almost every girl who read it, except one. A friend of mine read it and thought that I hit this right on the nose. I told her I was surprised, yet thrilled that a female actually agreed with these statements. She simply responded with this, "Well it's the truth and any girl who denies it or is offended by it is in denial." Case and point.
But let me also defend some of the ladies and say guys are fully capable of having an inner skank, yet don't receive the harsh criticism women do. It's a two way street, and I have not forgotten that, I was simply just throwing out a new, developed well thought opinion I have formed based on personal experience and observation.
Which leads me to my next point: that post could also be perceived as me being bitter and upset about a break up and letting it affect my views on all women, which is not entirely true. I can honestly say I feel no bitterness, but to say I have forgotten about that situation, would be a complete lie. I am 19 years old, and my beliefs, my views, and my opinions are all based on real life experiences. It would be unfair to myself to just forget the events that took place. It's one thing if you let those thoughts consume you at all times (which it did before), but it's another to learn from those thoughts. So no I am not bitter, I have just learned. We are all naive in the beginning stages of romance. Optimism, passion, and vulnerability are all there when we first begin romantic relationships regardless if that person deserves that innocence from you or not. I am not saying that all those things disappear after one failed relationship, but after a first heartbreak you stop acting with your heart and think with your head. It's inevitable that the guards are thrown up after being hurt, and let's face it, it's harder to let people back into that intimate place that has been recently abused.
It's human nature to feel vulnerable, but one bad experience can't ruin them all for you. If you fear letting others in, it can push out others that care for you or even potential new friends. I may have seemed like that in the first post, but all I was trying to get across was yes, I was hurt but I learned to not just let any girl back in. It has to be done with discretion, and it's really discouraging when you really view how most girls actually act. While unloyal acts distort my image of women, I know there is clarity out there.

What to do...

It's rough being a college freshman. Today I was sitting in my lab tutorial for chemistry, trying to focus, but frankly chemistry just does not float my boat. Right now I am a Mechanical Engineer major and as I write this I shake my head. I chose ME as a major because in high school I thought my skill set favored the fields of science and math. Hell, I was even the student of the year in Chemistry for my high school. But day after day, the love I have for sciences fades little by little. I am stressing for my chemistry midterm on Thursday and just spent four hours straight trying to read that dry chemistry book. I'm thinking about switching majors since I am struggling with sciences and voice this to my parents whenever I talk to them on the phone. My dad tells me to stick with it and to just not be a chemical engineer. I guess I will stick it out until the end of the year and see if next year physics bends me over and has its way with me like chemistry has. Time can only tell.

My Theory

So what better way to pop my blogging cherry by introducing a little theory that I have been working on. Some may think this is a very cynical view about women, but here it goes anyways: All girls have an inner skank within. This thought popped into my head after a rough end to a relationship of mine almost a year ago. It's crazy how some one you have spent so much time with, some one you cared about, some one you loved can change in the blink of an eye. A beautiful, complicated mold with crevices and cracks you have memorized, abrubtly changed without any sort of notice.
When this first happens to you, you are thrown off and wonder what has changed. And you find it funny how each day does not seem that different than the previous yet, when you look back on a bigger time frame a lot has changed. Guys can credit themselves for the great change or the dynamic of the relationship, but I can tell you what didn't change. Those girls always have a burning curiosity, a desire to break from the familiar. I call it their inner skank. EVERY girl has one, and very few can control it.
After dealing with it first hand, your eyes are opened to it. Going to a public university as I do, it's not hard to find a girl showing off her true colors. The inner beast of skank can't be tamed by realtionship status, distance, or time invested. Once it reaches the surface there is no telling what kind of destruction can be done. Women often hide behind the mask of "Oh I was drunk last night", but in many cases drunkness gives off more truth than any soberness. When sober, you filter the truth, but when you are drunk you let the words and actions flow freely because if you regret it the next day you can TRY and hide behind the fact that you were drunk, which is a completely different topic within itself, so let me get back on course. Whether it be alcohol or even just months of routine, the curious beast within women lurks and searches for any subtle opening to expose itself. For the women that can control that beast, more power to them, and for the boyfriends or husbands of those girls hold on to them, there are not many of them out there.