Lex Talionis

I would like to start this blog entry by stating that it is no way as interesting as Rob's entry and I will not be disappointed if you don't read it in its entirety. That being said, here goes.

I spent the Memorial Weekend honoring the senseless deaths of millions by swimming, drinking, jet skiing, and fishing in southern Virginia where the Confederacy is still very much alive.

I also witnessed the wonders of the Potomac River wildlife by seeing a turtle(pictured), bald eagle, water moccasin, osprey, egret, catfish(pictured and caught by me), maryland blue crab, gopher, and an awesome fish called a Croaker which makes noises like a frog.

On an unrelated topic, I am currently taking a colon cleanser to purge my body of unwanted toxins. I have pooped 7 times since I began taking the pills less than 24 hrs ago. Strangely I had not anticipated the effects this would have on my anus.

On an equally unrelated topic, I have become sadly distressed by the news of dog fighting in the NFL. I have come to the conclusion that the only just sentence for a person caught dogfighting is lex talionis(an eye for an eye). Let said persons be put in a ring with one of this dogs and if he makes it out alive than so be it. I also wonder if there has ever in the history of cats been an all out duel between two felines to the death?

Last note: I absolutely love the look Grace has in that picture but have yet to figure out what kind of a look it is. I'm guessing perplexed.

peru1

a rough recap:

the first night in peru was spent hanging out all night in the hotel in lima, drinking duty free scoth and enjoying the company of my travel mates. we talked to some fellow gringo travelers and shared advice, and got gradually more manic as the night went on. we arrived in cuzco at 7am the next morning, completely disoriented, and enentually found a hostel. a private room with three beds was under $20 and as we sat down to talk about the details we were served coca tea. it would not be my last taste of the leaf.

we spent that day and the next planning our machu picchu journey, sipping the local beer, and getting toursit crap shoved in our face. food and souvenirs are cheap and the people are quite friendly, but the combination can be overwhelming.

muchu picchu journey, day 1: a very confused start. the guide said he'd show up at 7:30 and drive us to the bus station for the 8am 3 hour bus to the start. showed up at 7:50, on a bike. the bus was oversold, so peruvians sat in my lap. after we}ve been climbing a seemingly endless muddy mountain road with attempted construciton and closures for 6 hours through the rain, the guide decides its time to get out and get on bikes. the peruvians happily take our seats and stare dumbfounded as we put on some strange helmets, sit on the bikes, and start riding down to the jungle, instantly covered in mud. expectations were quite low at this point. it was about 40 miles downhill and turned out to be one of my favorite strange adventures. we eventually descended below the clouds, the road and mud on my face dried, no more consturction, great views over the amazon basin. my ass paid the price of entry to this paradise. jake's bike exploded and was stranded in the jungle as night fell.
-day 2 and 3 were about 30 miles through the jungle on foot with small packs, picking fruit off trees for snacks, chewing coca leaves and being dominated by mosquitos. we slept in busted hostels in small jungle town and failed to converse with the guide in spanish. we drink heavily one of these nights in a bar that was like an interrogation room from cop movies and are taught a drinking game that involves poking a cigarette into a napkin on a beer and having to drink the ash beer if you do it wrong. we try to explain flippy cup but it deteriorates into drinking a full beer every time you miss the flip. i got zapatos locos (crazy shows) and refused to go to bed when the guide said it was time and ran away while my travel mates convinced the guide to take us to another bar. he said i was a small problem. roosters do not just crow once during sunrise. those fuckers are relentless. we also crossed a river by a self propelled zipline and learned the hungry chicken handshake.
-day 4 we climbed a moutnain in the dark to get to machu picchu for sunrise, then climbed another mountain to be able to look down on it. absolute beauty. i was really expecting to feel a special power to the place, and i´m a little disappointed that i did not. perhaps it was that there were thousands of tourists and those that pray on them. either way, an incredible place.

then we spent the night partying, making it nearly 24 straight hours awake. we spent the next day in a deep chill and planned a trek, which i am supposed to be on right now, but it got delayed because jake got food posioning. he´s alright. we leave tomorrow and it should be amazing, though if things go wrong we may miss our flight to lima. i just said goodbye forever to the three pretty europeans from the MP journey and i´m really wondering why i didnt try to hook up with any of them, or that one peruvian girl. i,ve written kelly two emails and got no response and have now decided to take off the necklace she made me and experience some local culture in every way possible. before you object, i will state that we decided that we were not together this month, and we're both moving a month after i return.

everything else is basically solid. we eat out for every meal for about 5$. the food isnt spicy enough and i miss solitude, fast internet, my bed, hot showers, friends, family, girl... but its damn beautiful here once you get away from the plazas. today we went to the central market and there were piles of chicken heads and shit. it did not help cure jake´s stomach. tomorrow´s two day hike should be incredible. love to you all.

Somebody had to do it.

Will this do?

STAY PUFT MARSHMALLOW MAN

Kyle updates

I finally finished my PhD requirements, and have a deathly cold to show for it. We're now Boston bound in t-minus 3.5 months.

I'm off to a small island in the south of France in a week. I expect a lot of good wine. Can people get wine guts? I'll find out.

Children of Men is a tasty rental. Check out the two elaborate battle scenes that are filmed with only 1 shot.

Sean is 7 months old now and growing fast. Pretty soon he'll be knocking at your door asking for candy and/or a place to crash.

slump buster

I think I've avoided writing something on our little bathroom wall here a few times because after 10 days of silence, I wanted the first words to be good. Well, they won't be. I don't really have anything to say right now. The pressure is increased by the fact that this is the 400th post, and everyone loves nice round numbers.



"Slump buster" is a term that was developed with a visiting friend of mine, as we debated solutions to his unrequited love. He hadn't had sex in many months (both a support and result of said love) and we decided this was a problem. In a rare moment of forwardness, we started dancing with some girls (repetetive movement as a pickup line...strange choice for society...perhaps because of subliminal similarities to sex?) and eventually ended up at their house. We drove home that night, he got a ride home the next morning after successfully busting his slump. During the awkward goodbye, with both characters knowing they would never see each other again, she vomited on herself in the driver's seat and he said "AHHHHH" and ran into my building.



Tom Robbins is now being definitively stated as my favorite author.



This is a funny video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpBGRA6HHtY

Sometimes I say the line at the end when flushing a nasty poop. I am not sure from whence it came.



I encourage everyone to plan a vacation on Lake Powell. My week on there was among the best in my life.

Anyone have any Colorado trips planned? June 22-24 is Panic at Red Rocks. I have also decided that I will climb Mt. Snowmass. I leave in mid august, and if anyone wants to go backpacking betwenn now and then, I love you.

I'm moving to Ann Arbor, MI for 5 years of grad. school. If anyone can think of ways for me to tear down marketing from the inside, let me know. Also interested in the train from ann arbor to chicago.

Fuck comfort. What collection of Rob thoughts would be complete without my young-adult mantra? My new quote for this thought is "do something that scares you every day." Eleanor Roosevelt of all people said that. "Take a risk, make it sweet" was my friend RobD's version. My latest source of this is exercise. The runner's high. I run fast until I collapse, and then I feel good for a while. As the body falls apart, the mind gathers strength. Meditation tells me I should add this: As train of thought, personality, ego are dethroned (often the result of running or, uh, stretching) a deeper part of the mind is awakened, or at least, less drowned out. This silencing of mental chatter is our deepest and most unexplained craving. Meditation, yoga, fasting, severe intoxication, even orgasm could stem from our soul wanting our brain to just shut the fuck up for a while. While on my vacation, I compared the highs of alcohol, marijuana, fear, exhaustion, beauty, mushrooms, extacy, meditation, orgasm, and ideas. They all had something in common, beyond my enjoyment of them.

Grace's First Cubs Game

Now I know I'm old.

YEAH!!!!

Since we have family all over the nation and beyond, we have created two websites dedicated to the Sean Smackers. Here they are:
www.flickr.com/photos/seanmsmith
www.youtube.com/SeanSmacky
Mr. Trout, what is your flickr address?

Sad day in america

One of the greatest American authors of all time, Kurt Vonnegut, has passed away. He was my favorite author and in my opinion the greatest author of our time.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070412/ap_on_re_us/obit_vonnegut

For those of you who have not read his work I highly recommend any or all of the following:

Slaughterhouse-Five
Welcome to the Monkey House
Breakfast of Champions(my favorite)
Cats Cradle
A Man Without a Country(my second favorite)
God Bless You, Doctor Kevorkian
Galapagos

that thing

We all know the feeling. A sense of clarity characterized by creativty and openness. It's basically a good mood with depth. The train of thought is charging. It's the mood when television is a horrible idea. When most great ideas are midwifed. When bees are funny.

I'm willing to (basically) admit this state of mind is chemical, so the question is this: These chemicals, do they run out? If one were to find away to experience this heightened consciousness constantly, would they eventually suffer a depression (like manic depressive people) or able to sustain it (like possibly buddhist monks). Is it a muscle that can be exercised and strengthened, or is it a well that gets tapped?

It's too bad there isnt an expert on pleasureful brain chemicals on this blog or this question could possibly be answered. oh wait...

stupid post

Dear ESPN

Poker is not a sport.

Love,
Joey Joe Joe Jr.

stupid post

Dear ESPN

Poker is not a sport.

Love,
Joey Joe Joe Jr.

Finish this sentence:

I know that christ is lord because_______________________________.

Kyle extends his congrats to Rob and Jake for grad school admissions. That’s Jakoriffic on both accounts. The more doctors the better on this Godforsaken blog.

Kyle believes you are jealous because he was all up in the press, press, press, and because he gets more money back from taxes than he actually paid in the first place.

Kyle believes you are not jealous because he’s spent the last several months writing a 200pg dissertation, raising a baby, selling a house, and selling a baby.

Has Kyle been coughing up florescent orange bile lately? No, he hasn’t.

Adapt

Drunken train of thought from a few days ago:

"Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend."

Bruce Lee said that. It laid in my head somewhat differently then its existence on the quote websites, but the idea has been phrased by him for me for years. Its always been an interesting debate for me. Water becomes what is around it. Water takes the path of least resistance. Water adapts. But it can also crash like a motherfucker.

Should we?

Tonight, for the first time, I tied this metaphor to the fact that we are 70 or 80% water. Interesting. Just a metaphor still, but it IS in our nature to adapt. We can live in a cubicle and we can live in a jungle. Humans are the most adaptive beings on the planet, we can live anywhere, we can do anything.

But we are also the most self-aware being on this planet. We are able to recognize our deepest goals and how we differ from the other 6 billion humans. Actually this differntiation is one of the deepest goals. We need to believe we are different, we are unique, we should not adapt. Fuck that teapot, I'm better than it, why should I become it.

Personally, I find myself quite adaptive lately. Last night, at a party in Gainesville, watching the Gators play some team, I was a UF fan. Before that, I was obsessed with marketing research. Last weekend, I was really into the University of Michigan, research on preference, and alternatively, scholarly pursuits and doing stupid shit while wearing green. It was fun.

Today I've been myself. And while it may have kept me from swimming in my hotel pool right now with the contents of one of the many sun-dresses I have been surrounded with, it's been right.

There are times to adapt, and evolution has lead us to find ease and solice in this tendency. We must, at the very least, chose what to adapt to. We must face this decision head on, and we must do it alone, because that is the only time when we're only adapting to the rarity of being ourselves.

We should be ourselves, but we become old the day we can no longer adapt.

Daily Rubb

Semantics:
So then I told the proctologist, you may have a fancy degree, but you don't know the first thing about fingering an ass.
then he reminded me that he was just a homeless guy that I lured into my apartment with promises of beef burritos.
He also had a hook for a hand.

I have bronchitis. There's new snow out and I would like to ski on it but my general weakness and breathing difficulty would take the fun out of it. I wonder if we should do things we don't want to do just because we had previosuly considered them fun. I see the widespread use of viagra as a good example of this, and one that will lead me to skiing tomorrow.

I will be choosing a slightly better program in ann arbor or gainesville over boulder or vancouver for 5 years of grad school, and it will upset me.

I want to change how comments work, so they just pop up instead of opening a new page. i think this is possible.

I'm going to Peru in about a month. Want to come Brant? Machu Picchu beckons.

I just read Hobo, which is another good Matt recommendation, and also Less Than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis. Ellis is great.

uhh

Hello......ello.....llo.....lo.....ooooo..

Excuse my language but where the fuck is everyone on this blog?? Pretty soon we can start calling this the
JAKE and MATT BLOG EXPERIENCE with specials guests Kyle and Dee. Reading my own posts isn't very exciting. So where are you bryan, kate, rob, jeremy, maggie, molly, adam, kerry?? Seeing as how none of these cousins will actually read this I've taken the liberty of replying for them:

Maggie: I'm only allowed to post on Jim Beam's blog.

Kate: Wait, there's a cousin blog?? When did that happen?

Bryan: I don't know how to use the new setup. Gerda, Gerda. Its too complicated for me. Gerda, Gerda, Gerda. I'm too stoned. Gerda, Gerda, Gerda, Gerda, Gerda.

Adam: I fucking hate blogs. People who use computers are losers. You all suck. I have a Canondale Skyscaper Hopper 9000 SE with dual X-Shock Compatibility and overhead rims. Kiss my ass!

Kerry: I'm afraid of the blog.

Jeremy: I pierced all my fingers and can't type anymore.

Rob: My job is too demanding, I have no time. Blogging is impermanent.

Molly: Nobody cares about me. Blogging is so 2006.

poobits

I'm really starting to feel this new blog. I can definitely get the feeling something good is happening here. I agree with Invincible Anus that random, though emotion filled, gibberish is better than mindless picture posting and youtube videos. One can't deny the new technologies and opportunities that they open up, but this blog was built for communication. How many brazilions of websites are there out there with mindless pictures and videos (I'm thinking hardcore porn)?

On another note, I am assuming Crafty Wannabe cannot keep up with the high-fi sci-fi intensive programming codes needed to operate the new blogger. Hence his lack of participation. Even Kyle can do it! Sure everyone knows he is a neuroscience Doogie Howser, but what they don't know is that he has a hard time slingin' his sausage fingers 'round a keyboard

After a year of getting the life sucked out of me, by pharmacy school applications (GREs, PCATs, interviews, essays, etc.) I was finally accepted to Midwestern University (200 of 2000 applicants), the University of Wisconsin (13 out of state students including international were admitted last year), and I have a University of Illinois Chicago interview next Tuesday which I am going to slay babies at. For the interview they mandate a suit and tie...Saweet!

If I'm not bloggin' here I blog here.

When in doubt, castle.

So this is the new blogger, same as the old blogger. Awesome.

I'm here to dispell the rumor(started by some fella named Brant) that babies are blog killers. While babies do diminish ones abilities to: sleep, eat peacefully, have a nice quiet bathroom session, think, go to the bars, get (really) stoned, watch tv, read, have sex, and so on. They aren't blog killers.

Blog killers are certain cuzzins'(who won't be named) lack of participation in said blogging.

Anyway I've noticed that much of my recent or pre-baby blogging has been mindless picture and link posting. So, I decided to put together a thoughtful and possibly pretentious posting of random jibberish(for lack of a better word).

(By the way I want you to know that I did not intend to use so many parenthesis, it just kind of happened. On a interesting side note I've heard semicolons referred to as; transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing.)

My first thought is on celebrities, namely Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton, and anyone else in that mold for that matter. I was going to go on and on about how much I hate them and then I realized: fuck them, I don't fucking care about them or anyone else with similar notoriety. I don't even know them, what the fuck is wrong with me? Without their fame and money they'd be just another hick in the local police blotter. Fuck the media too. Its really amazing how much of a market there is for people that most of america will never meet.

Ok that thought was a little too long. My second thought is that most street performers suck.

And while I'm in the bitching mode: I absolutely despise cellular ear pieces. Hate em. I do love the people that are so important that they leave them in all day regardless of whether they have a phone call or not or on the subway where there isn't any reception. Congrats to them, they are one step closer to being a cyborg.

One thing I've learned from living in New york City which seems to pride itself on non-conformity is that: True individualists do not realize they are unique.

Finally in a effort to not make this post too long winded, I would like to share some recent discoveries of mine.

Book suggestions

Earth Abides by George Stewart--an end of the world tyoe book written in 1949

The Tao of Willie by Willie Nelson--sounds cheesy but its very insightful and entertaining

My Belief by Herman Hesse--big fan of any of his books

The Road by Cormac McCarthy--another apocalyptic type book

A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut--just an awesome book, can read it in a day

Funniest Piece of Advice

"When in doubt, castle" I've been thinking on this one for a week.

Best Old Definitions

Twerp: A guy who stuck a set of false teeth up his butt and bit the buttons off the backseats of taxicabs.

Snarf: A guy who sniffed the seats of girls' bicycles.

Best Album I've Recently Discovered

Mike Doughty--Haughty Music

Quote

"We are here on earth to fart around. Don't let anyone tell you different."

-Kurt Vonnegut