WhAt'S uP wItH tHaT????!???: Pretty Preppy Posterchild
Ok...So....last Monday, after I posted my latest blog entry from my college's math wing computer room,I was sitting in Psychology and our seating was all out of proportion due to...well...the professor's wishes,I suppose. I was now behind the woman who pretty much starred in my last blog's side-story and right in front of a cute, obviously preppy,young girl who is somewhat,..let's say....Lara Crofft/Britney Spears-esque in her top-heaviness. For the sake of this Blog,let's call her Barbie. A 50 year old woman in the class was talking about how she goes skiing and how her 70-year old friend told her that she should try body-boarding. Barbie was rolling her eyes and scoffing through the woman's whole story and then, actually said,under her breath "My god....you're 50...die already!!!!!" Now, I could go into an entire thing about the disintigration of my generation's respect for elders, or how this girl is pretty much the perfect example of preppihood gone wrong, but I'd rather have you all come to your own conclusions.

As the vending machine turns
I was up at my uncle's house yesterday and he showed me this old lawn mower that he still uses occaisonally. Truly a beast of among ancient machinery, the noise this thing made when he pulled a certain lever could only be described as fascinatingly bone-chilling.....at least, that's how I'd describe it....some might just consider it rusty. The noise of the old metal had a very distinctive "Medevil torture device"-type quality to it. Coming into school today, I made my usual stop by the cold sandwich vending machine in the student lounge which is used by me, almost exclusively. About twice or three times a week, I'll check it for the absolutely divine cheeseburgers it will sometimes feature. I never thought the best cheeseburger I'd ever have would come out of a cold sandwich vending machine of which I am seemingly the only customer, but, alas, it has. The student lounge microwave in which I nuke my occaisonal delicacy for a minute and thirty seconds, hasn't seen much more action than the vending machine across from it,overall. Unofrtunately, since I'm basically the only one who ever eats out of it,the sandwich vending machine is rarely restocked, thus, I've seen the same slice of "Tony's" brand frozen pizza within it for a bit over a month. The vending machine's only purpose, other than my sustinance, seems to be to give preppy girls something to say "Omigod! Ewwwwww!" in a brief glance as they walk by it. You're in luck,today folks....you get a side-story!
and here it goes....
So the first day of school I walk into Psych class and I take my usual type of seat at the front of the class. On the seat next to mine is a rather plain-looking black bookbag. Over course,in a situation such as this, I'm always hoping it'll be a cute girl sitting next to me. Within 5 minutes, this cute, perky girl who doesn't look unlike Shakira, makes her entrance and takes the seat. She's named after a greek goddess and her last name is completely unpronounceable to the psych professor (we'd all soon learn prounces "organism" as "ogganisim"). For the purpose of this blog, let's call the new girl....Princess Toadstool (After one of the names of the princess from the "Mario" series of games....the character's alternate name is Princess Peach). As the class progressed and we were taking a few notes, I noticed that the Princess was sort of glancing over at me and then giggling to the girl next to her. As the classes progressed,Princess Toadstool really seemed to be taking a liking to me and would choose me when asked to choose someone for one of the prof's demonstrations. One odd thing was that I couldn't figure out how old she was. I would've guessed anywhere between 18 and 26. Within the second week of class,the subject of psychological film came up and the Samuel Jackson film, "Basic" came up. Toadstool said "Ya know, I hadn't heard of that one, maybe my kids have..they're into that type of psychological stuff." Kids? Kids who appreciate psychological film? How old was she? As the classes progressed, it was revealed that several of our fellow students had gone to schoolwith one of Princess Toadstool's kids...and then, it later turned out that in fact, the Princess has an 18 year old son! She dresses like us, sounds like us, acts pretty much like us (us meaning teens to 20-somethings) but must be in her thirties,at least! Then, it later came out that her son has terrible writing. My note writing is so messy that it's like hieroglyphics to anyone but me. Her son probably just left for college..and...she made some type of connection! The pats on the shoulder,the smirks...the giggling...all....because of my terrible writing? I guess...people are only as old as they want to be.

Corner of Shadows
So,I was going down to the multimedia room and I got there and Professor B. was in the middle of one of his usual lectures to the class he was teaching. The Prof. usually lets us come in and work on projects even if theres a class in session, as long as there's a comp free. Unfortunately, since the lights were off (for the overhead projector) and everyone was gathered around the main discussion table, I couldn't tell if there was a computer free in the entire room... it certainly didn't seem like there was one. I stopped for a sec, and then headed back for the stairs, Krystale(prounced Crystal...she's a cute, almost Stacy Kiebler-looking girl who's been in several of my multimedia classes and is now one of the assistants to the professor. She's almost as quiet as I am) was in a seperate room talking to the pretty stereotypical-looking Heavy Metal band lead singer-dude who has been in several of my multimedia classes,also (I think his name's dave...) and she sorta glanced over her shoulder at me as I passed. Upstairs it was...back to the Student Lounge to take a few gulps of my Mountain Dew:Code Red and find that "Family Guy" has now been replaced on TBS by "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" for the 2:30pm time slot. While "Fresh Prince" is a very stable, funny and often witty show, it still doesn't make the change-over suck any less. So now I'm here......again...just hanging out in the Comp lab.

Mountain Dew N' The Hellenistic Era
'sup, guys? I just got out of Art History class so I figured I'd post something here before quickly swinging by the student lounge and then heading down to the Multimedia lab to work on Lesson 8 in my digital video workbook for about two hours. I wound up getting a 100 on that first Art History exam I took last Wednesday and I think I've got another A+ coming from my latest Psych 101 quiz which I get back today. There's no Art History class on next Monday and on Tuesday I'm going to a WWE Smackdown taping! How awesome is that? On the floor, no less! Kiley (the Multimedia Artist Association President) sent all us Association members an e-mail telling us about some Audio work that needed to be done for the local Orchestra or something. I totally thought the Orchestra gig was already filled, but someone must have dropped out of it. I bet it's Shawn. I can really blame the dude because he was sort of signed up for the gig by process of elimination and he really isn't heavy into audio. Plus, Shawn's on the team (with me and one other person) that's going to be working on updating the WAY out-dated MMAA website! I think the prof. has him working on some other projects as well. Oh, and the "Mountain Dew and the Hellinistic Era" thing? The drink that I have in my backpack and the final segment of Ancient Greek art we just covered in Art History.

Pink little poodle
So it was the first day of school on Sept. 3rd and I was sitting around the student lounge, sipping my usual Mountain dew:code red and there was this cute blonde girl at the table at a right angle from mine. For once in my over 2 years at my college, I was actually considering going over and actually talking to a girl I thought was cute. Lord knows what I was gonna say,...but this was a whole new semester...like a whole new start...I would've thought of something,surely. She got a cell phone call and what followed was as shallow as it was hilarious. Soon enough she went into "So,I keep on seeing this nerd dude around school,who I work with. He's all following me around! Omigod! I feel so bad! He's such a nerd!! Omigod!" If this had all been said in a usual valley girl manner, it wouldn't have been as memorable. No, she talked about this nerd boy as if he was a lost beagle puppy who had taken a liking to her. At first Ii was slightly appauled, but,then I sat there thinking about it...and...kinda started thinking maybe if I obviously wasn't going to get a loving, caring girlfriend in the very near future, maybe I could just...find some girl to treat me like a loyal, loving, disposable pup for a while. I mean, it certainly seems to work for some guys, and this girl seemed so into it that she had actually dehumanized the nerd-boy in her own mind. I guess years of heartbreak and rejection have just left me like a tortured lab monkey, jaded but not jaded enough to stop running into the exact same electrified wall, time after time.

Know your local Blog Bob
Who am I? That's sort of a tough question. On a basic level, I'm Bob..,a 22-year old multimedia technology major at a community college. On the vast scale of existence, on which the greatness of a person or the contributions of their life, or the validity of their being goes, I'm a very far way from having any concept of who I really am. I want to be a filmmaker, but all I really have to my credit is a 5-minute documentary about a project I wanted to do for my digital video class that would have been a short, modernized scene from Hamlet. The documentary, entitled "Slings and Arrows" turned out pretty well, but was unfortunately, never transfered to video. The only copy was deleted from the school computers between semesters.

Within my college, I'm sure I'm perceived as "quiet" or "polite" at best. I hang out in the student lounge between classes and drink my usual mountain dew code red,probably, perceived much like Ally Sheady's character from "The Breakfast club" to most of my peers (well, in the first part of the movie,at least). They pay no mind to me and, honestly, judging by my high school experiences, that just might be for the best.

I was sort of a stereotypical loser back in high school. No girlfriend...barely any friends...unpopular...tormented by preppies... scoffed at by jocks. Noone really seemed to care what I was along as I wasn't like them. Three years after graduation,they'll still yell to me out of passing cars "Bob-bay!!!!". Yet another holler, yet another classmate who never quite seemed to think me worthy of paying attention to. "Bob-Bay!!!"...it reminds me of my senior year... of the freshmore (second year freshman) girl who I sat at the outcast/freak lunch table with. Different groups had their own table...the preppies, the smart kids, the cheerleaders......each had their own lunchtable. I was at the outcast lunch table.....we had a paegan witch, some 400 pound dude we called "Cookie", burn-outs...etc... I was at the outcast table and the leader of that table was Nicky, the freshmore. Nicky knew the hierarchial order within the school and knew how to manipulate it to her own advances. She was simply adorable...her two slightycrooked canines actuallly added to her overall cuteness. Soon enough,I was fetching her her usual snack of cheddar chips and apple juice. Of course, it didn't stop there...I walked her and her friends home (partly because of the speedo jogger dude that always ran by our route) and every time we got to her house, after hugging all of her friends, she'd pat me on the head as if to say "Good boy!". Sharon, the girl who I had the biggest crush on since Freshman year was at the preppy table so I was always trying to squeeze into a spot at it and my efforts usually ended with Nicky yelling from the outcast table "Bob-Bay!!!! Bob-Bay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!",like a farmer calling a hog. Boy, could that girl every shriek! I met her and her friends at the homecoming dance and we actually had a lot of fun...for once, I actually felt like I was part of a group of friends. As Eric Clapton's "You look wonderful tonight" started she actually decided to dance with me! This was,of course, the first time any girl had offered to dance with me at a school dance, nevermind one with Nicky's Mandy Moore-esque good looks. We danced and it truly felt surreal...for an instant it actually felt,for once, like a girl I cared about actually liked me back!
The night before Valentine's day came and Nicky IMed me about 10:30 to write a paper on the effects of pot for her. Of course, I immediately agreed, by this point I was well into my "Anything for Nicky" phase. She skipped school the next day and told me she got a 90 on it,once she finally did pick it up. One day, towards the end of school, I walked up to the outcast table and Nicky was standing there on one foot. I went up to her and she gave her usual devilish grin and said "Lick it. Lick my boot." I just starred at her...it was quite awkward, but I soon found she actually expected me to lick her boot! "Lick it, Bob-bay!" I just said "Ya know, Nicky, I think I'm gonna miss you most of all" and got a spot at the preppy table. She stood there...on one foot..for what seemed like 5 minutes before sitting back down! Apparently, she had actually begun to perceive me as some type of willing slave. I pitty people like that, for they shall never truely know love, but, that being said...I know I would still probably fall for another Nicky.

Blog?
I remember the first time I ever heard of a blog. It was a cold night, during a terrible snowstorm,this past March and I was staying after classes at the college for the big Multimedia expo that night. Honestly, I would have rather been home, but I was going to be working the back door at the conference. About 15 minutes before I headed down to the multimedia lab to meet up with my fellow classmates, I remembered that we were supposed to be wearing all black. I was in Jeans, a flannel shirt and my usual heavy leather jacket, so I just zipped the jacket all the way up and headed down there. The multimedia center was like backstage at a high school play. Everyone speeding around, getting ready, making sure all the technical stuff was working ok. I seemed to have gotten there a bit later than most of my classmates. Anyway, the expo started and we actually had a pretty packed house. One older dude in the corner seemed to have just come to gorge himself on our buffet. He was very polite about it,of course,....he called in advance and made sure there'd be food before deciding to show up. Suddenly, there was a problem, the second tape of some of the multimedia department's projects were missing! My Multimedia professor and head of the department was very calm and cool about it as he chatted with what seemed to be reps from another college, but I could tell that inside, he was panicing a little. I rushed around looking for the video....not that I had been the one that misplaced it, or that any of my work was on the video (I tend to be far too modest), but everything was going so well that I totally didn't want some minor mix-up to make the whole thing implode. I searched around for a few minutes....Shawn had it(ya might here about Shawn later).......we rushed over to our prof and with a quick "ummm...sir..." he had the tape. The expo went on and as I was on about my 6th sandwich slice, I looked across the room and saw a girl who I'd had a crush on since that September. She looked amazing. Suddenly, like some victim of cruel torture, It had a flashback to all of my high school dances...and the prom. Same exact scenario... cute girl, decent music (although here it was classical rather than modern and performed live), and me stuffing my face.... the recipe to a Bob school dance. Just like those school dances, even though it was a sad, quite lonely experience,I wouldn't have traded it for the world. These are the types of things that build a person, mold them into whatever they will become...and as a doubtless work in progress, I still need quite a bit of molding before I'm whatever I'm to finally be. With all the dancers from the dance department, and the most excellent classical music, the whole thing had the aura of some renaissance ball. We all filled into the same theatre classroom and the expo's speaker took the stage.....some dude who had written quite a bit on digital video and been in the field for quite a while. One of the first things he asked us was "has anyone ever heard of a blog?" and..of course, very few of us actually had. He was totally surprised. He couldn't believe that multimedia majors hadn't heard of blogs. Anyway, he explained what a blog was and how some senator-type dude had done some stuff that he probably shouldn't have done and certainly shouldn't have written about in his Blog. You know...the type of stuff that made nixon infamous, and that "Rage against the machine" liked to yell about every once in a while. The Blog was a big part of what got the political-type caught. Our speaker seemed quite cynical and the advice he did offer (about creating specialized interactive programming for...oh...say, model train collectors, or bird watchers..) seemed very direct and selective. He ran a bit long and it was about 10pm by the time I started my usual 20 minute walk home from the college (yeah...you read that right)...luckily my dad was actually just driving by so I wound up riding home with him. After a day like that, I was happy to be facing my spring break the next week.