Pointless Announcements

GUYS! One of us is turning legal tomorrow!

PA: I emailed my classmate the e-copy of my BA paper, it was easier than to send him whole books on translation theory (which he asked for).

Do you trust him not to just plagiarise you? I have a group of oddball friends in uni and I never tell them anything because I consider them all opponents. If they knew this they would hate me.

Yes, actually. I never sent anything before either, not that we've written any academic essays EVER, but he asked for translation theory and I have whole books on that, but he's too busy so I just sent him that; my theory chapter is very good and it has everything we need to know at this stage. If he wants to read more, he will, but I lent him a book in Spanish in October and he still hasn't finished it.

I thought you meant he wasn't doing his own research for his work or something.

I just wrote a forty page essay called "The Modern Gentleman and Violence," the intention of which was to figure out what I still don't know about the martial arts, and to provide an understanding of combat for people who took education and careers and relationships seriously as a means to survive, instead of our natural means, and who are probably intelligent enough to realize the few central tactics inherit in almost all combat forms, which could save their lives.

While getting into a chapter about Ninjitsu, in which I wanted the reader to understand ninjitsu only as a thing they don't have, to build awareness of it, I started reading and listening to a lot of different things related to high-stress situations and how the body and mind change in those states.

Some fucked up shit, man. People become trapped in repeating actions when their brains enter what the marines call "black zone." Black Zone is where stress collapses your conscious mind and perception of reality, and being action trapped is when you think of an action that can save your life prior to this happening, and it gets kinda 'stuck.'

There's a video of a police officer action-trapped in saying, "Drop your weapon." He says it over and over again, while a man with a shotgun calmly reloads, aims, and shoots the cop. The cop is aimed at him the whole time, saying, "Drop your weapon. Drop your weapon. Drop your--" until he's shot.

In tragedy fires, people ignore everything and run to the door, and when it doesn't open, they just keep trying over and over to open it, even while they burn to death. The area of your brain dealing with complex motor senses shuts down during increased stress, during the black zone, to the point where, combat analysts theorize, from less than twenty feet away, a man might be better off with a knife than a gun, just because his mind literally can't work to operate complex motor skills--the gun. While a knife has no such meager complications. Cops have been found, in many cases, shot to death, with their gun in hand, and all the tendons in that hand exploded from trying to pull the trigger with the safety on. They just couldn't think. Numerous stories about people watching their loved ones die and being unable to dial 9-1-1, staring at the phone and not knowing how to use it.

The cruel thing is that this absolutely senseless way of reacting to life or death situations is entirely sensible, just so long as your society is constructed of things that are not man-made. If it's a wolf, eating your arm, and you are action-trapped in running away, hitting it with a rock, chewing its throat--then that's good. It's only when a human-made design adds complication to things that this survival instinct becomes self-destructive; when you have to dial a number, reload, push the door instead of pulling it.

And then I got interested in Taekwon-Do. There's a huge divide between the WTF Taekwon-Do you see in the Olympics, and the grungy, head-splitting TKD you see in ITF, and I emailed a slew of black belts from each division to figure out what these differences were. Imagine a guy action-trapped in a tornado kick? Sheeit.

But then I smoked a quarter ounce of weed in two days, played Ocarina of Time for the first time since puberty, and wrote a thirty five page novella called...

BATMAN: OCARINA OF TIME, in which a young Bruce Wayne, after his parents are killed by Ganondorf after a play in Hyrule, falls into the "bat-cave" of the Kokiri graveyard, sees his batspiration, but accidentally lands on Dante the gravedigger, killing him before he can hide the hookshot to aid Link's quest. Bruce, with the hookshot, goes after Ganondorf, only to interrupt the hero's journey, and in doing so, makes an enemy of the Hero of Time.

Anyway, there's a total lack of testosterone and action at this place. Emotional things interesting but they're not everything people.

Hi. I'm tired. Work is just so draining the past few weeks. Fuckin' celebrity weddings.

I always like your posts Nightrious. Some facts mixed with a bunch of What the Fuck. And I mean that in a truly positive way.

PA: Went out last Saturday to a Suicide Girls Party for SXSW. I went into the VIP entrance and my name wasn't on the list. They just let me right in and stopped a bunch or people including hot chicks behind me and told them to go around. It was prolly the tattoos and beard. It was boring so I went down the street to the Dirty Dog to see my favorite bartender and what do you know. There was a good Metal Band playing with a relatively small crown. The singer kept saying that we wanted to see some movement and there was this really tall lanky guy dancing weird so I started shoving him into the wall and people... next thing you know... we have movement. Got knocked down a few and knocked the big guy down a time or two. Talked to a really buff Pole Dancer chick I knew from my gym, I guess she was an ex-Suicide Girl. Went back to the SG party and ran into this guy named Roger that I knew. I wife yelled at him once at a BBQ and he got sad and left, however after that we all got along. He introduced me to a chick that called herself Dandelion and sold me some edibles. Dropped said edibles in my car for a day I didn't need to drive anywhere. Went back to party, some preppy Frat guy told me "You look fucking cool" so he wanted to smoke a blunt with me. So I did, then told him to go share it with the girls. I then saw my friend Johnny all jacked up hitting on an SG girl. I was talking to him when another SG girl tapped me to get my attention and talk to me. I introduced myself then she started texting some dude. Now that is just rude. You don't get someone's attention to talk then start texting so I just walked away from the scene. I didn't want to get in her panties anyways sheesh. At around 1am or so I remembered I said I'd be home at 11pm. Drove home, smoked blunts.... then passed out and woke up at 7am to do my dad job and make pancakes. And that was my Weekend.

Pancakes are awesome.

God-dammit. I KNEW I was missing something fun on Saturday. I wound up at the North Door, flailing around to Electronic music with Bruce Lee playing on the big screen. Actually, that's pretty awesome. Nevermind.

Zack, was Reagan there? I love her.

Just found out my friend's girlfriend lives in the neighborhood again. We exchanged numbers (finally) and are going to take some comedy classes together. I think though, we'll just start with a free improv club I found. Every day I'm thinking of more material at my desk.

Who do you Americans use for car rentals?

I've reserved a Chevy Spark (don't laugh, I'm European) with Enterprise Rent-A-Car. There's an Enterprise garage at the end of my road and it looks very basic, but when I
was looking at Avis the form kept adding on all these ridiculous add-on charges. Anyway, Enterprise is going to cost me $85.76 and then an additional $12 a day for a GPS. Seems a bit too good to be true.

No she wasn't there. I know Missy Suicide was there and was the ringleader. And the girl who talked to me was (sounded like) Misty or something. I don't know I really wasn't listening to her...lol To be honest there are so many of them I don't really know who was there. Here is a pic from the party though. I had a photographer take a pic with me and some of the girls in from of a Sailor Jerry wall but have yet to locate that anywhere online.

Well I used to run an Avis back in the day and have friends who both work at Hertz and Enterprise. I hope you don't plan on taking that Spark on the freeway in the US.

My lab is known as the "cold lab" because it's like 12 feet by 8 feet and because of the way the building was constructed, there are three AC vents blasting in cold air all the time. No matter how many times we've complained, they won't fix the shit. It gets so cold sometimes that my hands hurt. So Sunday i stopped by the lab as usual but this time i stood up on the counter, pushed up a ceiling tile next to two of the vents, and pulled the hose off and rerouted the cold air into the ceiling and took care of the problem myself, Office-Space-sparking-doorknob style. Now it feels fine in here.

...why?

hah, americans are funny. around here you see little cars on the autobahn all the time.
and we really do drive fast.

It's not the spark's lack of speed that is the problem, it's that everyone else will point and laugh at it. Then they'll start shooting.

Speed is important on California's freeways.

Most US drivers are what I call Offensive drivers. They try to take you out before you get to your destination.. that is the game here. Oh and use your turn signal(I do) however some will just try to block you when you use it like they are playing a hockey game. Also that car is just tiny. I'd get nervous driving in between some Diesels out here. And yes speed in important on the freeway. That is why I always use a manual shifter.

Game on!

....

I've never even heard of a Chevy Spark.

Okay, I just googled it. Is that even a real car? I would be afraid of getting smushed in that thing.

lol, Americans

When most cars on the road are four times the size of that thing it's a legitimate fear.

Oh well, if it really is that ridiculous I can get something bigger for slightly more, but I don't feel very comfortable maneuvering big cars. The biggest thing I've ever driven was a Mitsubishi Shogun and that felt like I was driving a tank.

The Brits can make fun of us for being 'uncultured' but you guys still have Cher Lloyd so don't point and laugh too hard.

Yeah all other cars with be Escalades and Explorers and Buicks. Oh and we all carry guns too, so be careful who you cute off on the road. I'm kind of kidding but shit does happen.

The interstate in California is terrifying enough without being in a toy car.

Come to think of it, I can't believe that Cher Lloyd even made it to America?? And she's really a gypsy anyway so we're not responsible for her, haha.

EDIT:

Okay, so if Californians love their big cars so much, how come the Toyota Prius was the best selling car in the state in 2012?

Hopefully I will see a few others on the road and they won't laugh at me in my 'toy car' then. Hrmph!

A Prius is a hybrid, but not a mini. It is a full size car.

Okay, but the difference in length is only 30.6 inches apparently.

I do agree that something slightly bigger will be more comfortable and safer anyway.

FTFY

A Prius isn't exactly a big car, but it is bigger than a mini, and that's only two and a half feet! Seems like a good deal to me.

Cher Lloyd is much more successful in the US than she is here.

It's not an "uncultured" thing AT ALL. In general Americans seem to drive much bigger cars. Everything I watch that's reality TV from the US people want these giant cars. They are less frequent here and there is a stigma attached to them, that people who drive them are dicks. Because why do you need a thing like that driving through congested city streets? Also people park them in ways that take up 2 spaces.
America is different, it isn't uncultured it just has a different culture. I hear that, "You'll be crushed in that car," thing as a reason for buying massive cars all the time which is fine, since all the other massive cars on your massive roads are massive. It just isn't at all like that here. We do not have the space to have so many massive bloody cars all over the place.

Yeah the State alone I live in is larger than most of Europe.

yeah, that's a lot of inches, especially on something like a car.

Go with whatever you want to drive, but do keep in mind that if you do take a tiny car, like people said, there is a very good chance that people in bigger cars will laugh at you and just force their way around. To them, you and your tiny car are nothing. Shitty, but true, unfortunately.

Or, for better perspective

What about me mang? And I didn't know Jessica was in Texas too?

As am I. Same place as Zack, right now. 600 miles west is home though, in the middle of all that desert, which is why I drive this:

I put the first few that came to mind. No way was I gonna fit everyone on there.

Even though there is totally room.

We embarrassed ourselves today big time. We have 2-hour classes with a ten-minute break halfway through. We went outside, were expecting for the professor to enter the same door we would, she never showed up, two of the girls went inside to finish their homework, I stayed outside with my classmate and just talked like idiots and we finally got inside the building because I was cold, and the teacher was there. It was 10 minutes to the end of the class.

At asshole's house and just want to SABOTAGE.

Ah, I was waiting for you to chime in!

Thanks so much for your advice, Jaz.

Just looked at the next size up and that's only a Nissan Versa or Toyota Yaris (what I drive in the UK). Still small but better than the Spark, which has been compared to driving a new Fiat 500 and I hate those! Luckily there's a lot of flexibility with my booking so I can definitely swap.

When are you leaving, Hattie?

Sunday 31st March!