to be the man

You have to beat the man.

Let's see, what's in the news today...

Oh, wait, I just remembered that I don't really care about the world around me. Nevermind.

I'm sitting here at the computer, which thankfully faces away from the television.

Why, the faithful reader asks, is our fearless protagonist facing away from the wonderfulinvention of TV, that bringer of joy and monotony?

The answer is this, o loyal reader: Clay Aiken.

That's right, the bane of the American audiophile, Clay Aiken. It's not that he can't sing; he actually has a good voice. It's the pap that his producers try to pass off as music that truly bothers me.

An example: "If I was invisible, I would watch you in your room".

That would be the chorus hook from Aiken's number one hit, "Invisible".

Not only is is vaguely creepy, but it's also poorly produced. The arrangement smacks of the trashcan of some obscure Swedish pop mogul, as if the song was originally intended for that long-lost Brian Litrell album. (He was the second one from the left of the Backstreet Boys, for those of you keeping score. Can't tell the guy with dreads from N'sync apart from the guy with dreads from O-Town without a program.)

Anyways, that little rant proved that I am entirely too familiar with late-90's boy bands.

Let's forget that whole thing happened.

I have a shitload (metric measure) of orders to go out. I've got about five tapes to go out, not to mention the four tapes I got in return that I need to watch. Darn my wrestling addiction. Now if I could only convince people to send me free tapes.

I got accepted into my backup college today, the good old University of West Georgia. Big whoop. I'm not gonna go there unless I absolutely have to, mainly because I don't want to move to the other side of Atlanta. That would entail paying rent, which would entail getting a job, which would mean I would actually have to get up and do something with my life.

That doesn't fit in with my "five-year plan", to steal a phrase from the Maoists.

Then again, the Maoists' five year plans never worked either. At least, they never worked without a massive outbreak of starvation.

I have got almost no work to do for the next week, barring any ninja projects (ones that sneak up on you silently and attack quickly and viciously).

My project in WebPage is done as of today, it's just got to be uploaded to the school's server. It's an animation of a car on a road, and it's a bitch to do. My teacher said to me sometime last week, "I'd really like you to pull my fat out of the fire, so if you could, join the Future Business Leaders of America, design the webpage for the state competition, and generally be a hired gun in the world of Web Page Design. If you do this, you can work on it in class, (ed. note: here's the clincher) and you're exempt from all of the work the regular class does." So I spent a few days laying out the opening montage using Movie Maker (hey, it's a school, I'd rather use non-Microsoft programs, but you know how it is), Paint (bane of my existance, especially when using a touchpad on a laptop), and Photoshop (finally, a program that's useful!). I sketched out a background in Paint, then drew out each animation cel to lay over it. Then, in Photoshop, I moved the cel (a car, for those who are still reading) a few pixels for each frame, saved it, moved the cel a few pixels, saved it as the next frame, and etcetera. This went on for about two periods worth of work.

Then, I threw it all in Movie Maker (because I dont; know Flash very well, that is to say, at all). A day later, *poof*, out pops an animation worthy of Disney's approval. Or at least it's good enough to keep the teacher off my back while I try to trade for tapes online.

Calc test on Monday, it's over the same stuff I learned in Physics, so it should be failry easy. Except for the fact that I forgot how to do Physics before Physics was over, and as a consequence nearly failed the final. Oh well, I've got an 89 in there, so I've got nine points of failure cushion. And I plan to use them. Go team!

The less said about Digital Media, the better. Let's just say I'm determined to do as little work as possible and still come out of there with an A.

AP Lit is boring as always. We're plodding through Macbeth, and I'm one of a paltry few who get the jokes, as usual. I always get stuck with one of two parts: the one where you say a lot of lines that don't mean a thing in the context of the play, and the ones where you say three lines that change the entire plot. I can breeze through the first parts (but I actually have to pay attention), and I inevitably stumble over the three lines (but I can sleep through most of the reading and have someone poke me when it's my turn).

A word to the elephant in the room: If I was you and you were me, I would have punched me in the face yesterday. Or at least a good kidney punch. You get a free shot if you want it. Things got out of hand, and a joke went way too far. I'm sorry that I'm an asshole, especially in this instance.

With that out of the way, it's arrivederci. Or however it's spelled.

Damn, I wrote a freaking book today.