2^24036583-1 is now the largest known prime. Hurrah!

Look! I won two $10 Muvico gift certificates from a dining hall raffle! I never win raffles! Yay!!

Orcs Overrun Sims City

... so I was burning a CD for Jeremy when the drive caught on fire.

Again.

Mmmm.... carpet!

Take a gander at Sisters, a Wild West lesbian bodice-ripper written by Lynne Cheney in 1981. It's out of print now. Mrs. Cheney, for obvious reasons, refuses to have it re-printed... but you can read the entire book online.

Get it from Amazon!

Yale Owns Harvard

This is all true

What Kind of Geek are You?
Name
DOB
Favourite Color
Your IQ is	quite high
You are a	computer geek
Your strength is	you can see in the dark
Your weakness is	caffine
You think normal people are	aliens
Normal people think that you are	deranged
This fun quiz by owlsamantha - Taken 139779 Times.

New! Get Free Daily Horoscopes from Kwiz.Biz

Miscellany

Well I feel I should say what's been going on for like the last two months.

I was on the World of Warcraft open beta for two weeks or so, causing Jeremy to become the first ever Warcraft Widower. Most everyone I know had WoW- though Kay was playing with the color-contrast on his monitor way up, so that we'd get blinded every time we walked into Teldrassil. The night elf city has green grass and a purple sky! Oi! @___@ Anyway, I played a nudist dwarven Paladin who relinquishes her worldly goods (clothes) so that she may better contemplate virtue. Nobody believed her though. Then the beta ended and both me and Jeremy went through withdrawal.

In the middle of October, Jeremy moved into a nice apartment in Columbia in a complex called "Lazy Hollow," which Niall joked would be full of Mexicans. Still a nice place though, close to a bunch of restaurants (carry-out sushi!) and a grocery store, and with a balcony and woods out back. Moving in is a bit like playing the Sims... there's so much unused potential to every room, when the place doesn't resemble a home yet and like clay, you have all the unshaped dreams in your head. We spent the first day or so assembling furniture, including a very reluctant dinner table, the metal of which we actually had to warp in order to get the bolts to fit.

We went to a pumpkin patch for Halloween and got pumpkins to make jacko-lanterns out of. We still have the pumpkin goop in the freezer for a pie sometime.

Jeremy got to vote in Maryland. Despite having lived most of his life in Pennsylvania, he wasn't allowed to cast an absentee ballot for there because he happened to move to Maryland like a week before the election. That bummed me out slightly, but since Kerry won Pennsylvania our consciences are clear.

I learned to knit. I made a stupid generic tan scarf. I plan to knit dicebags for my RPing group; with my fuschia dice bag and hot pink die, I plan to be the girliest RPer to ever walk the earth.

I've also been learning to cook, with more opportunities at Jeremy's place to experiment, and Jeremy's been teaching me. I took a picture of a sight that brings me joy; a cute guy cooking breakfast for me in the morning, in tight-fitting underwear (and nothing else). Also, I shall use this digital picture for blackmail. As for cooking, I'm amazed that it's really not that hard. My mom always made it seem like some big mystery. Back when I lived at home, I remember recriminations somewhat along the lines of this: "I cook for you every day and do your laundry! The least you can do is (blank)!" But whenever I'd try to cook to release myself from my debt, my mom would always hurry me away, saying impatiently, "I'll do it!" as if I was fated to mess up or something. Most of the time she thought cooking was a waste of time for me and wanted me to do schoolwork or something. Even if I had no more homework to do, you can always do more "schoolwork." (Sadly, in the IB, this was even mostly true). But anyway, now I am no longer inept at cooking. My crowning achievement is sliced fried potatoes. Yay. I can also make French toast. With peanut butter. This last bit makes Jeremy's head explode. "But.. but... syrup!!!" He has real maple syrup though, the good kind. I can't really blame him.

We had sex too. Nobody reads my blog, and those that do never read my long posts in their entirety, so I'm confident that my secret is safe. Does it feel good? Not really. It hurts a lot, less than getting a cramp while swimming but more than giving blood (though neither comparison is really apt, because it's a different kind of pain, like being torn open. Being that mine is not really a pain-filled life, it's hard to describe). Despite that though, there's a feeling of vulnerability that forges intense trust during the act, and irrational bubbly happiness for hours afterwards. I don't think it was terribly transformative; I'm not one of those medieval girls who one day is playing with dolls, and the next day, once she's had her first period, is whisked off to her marriage bed and then can't see unicorns anymore. Looking back, I think I lost my virginity over a long period of time and not in any one act. (This probably makes sense only to me).

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.

Time to Punch Something

I'm glad Kerry conceded, though I'm rather upset at the outcome. I can't say I'm too surprised because the Republicans really had their act together and an amazingly effective attack machine against Kerry. Besides, Bush was an incumbent war president. It was an uphill battle anyway, what with the advantageous position of the Republican National Convention coming after the Democratic one, and Bush getting to close the debates last, and the whole Swift Boat thing (which Bush didn't sponsor, but which helped him). All the big Democratic punches, the convention and Fahrenheit 9/11, happened during the summer and the sentiment dissipated by October.

Fuck the "Anti-Bush." I wish that a pro-Kerry documentary could've been more widely accessible, as opposed to Fahrenheit 9/11, an anti-Bush tract. I saw "Going Upriver," a documentary about Kerry in Vietnam, and it was then that I believed in him. It was only the day before the election, and I saw how courageous and gracious he was as a 27-year old speaking before a Senate Committee. At 27 he made an impact like a meteor, his five minutes of airtime on the national news- five minutes on the news, mind you- riveting the nation, President Nixon, the FBI. 27, hm? What am I going to be doing in eight years? I thought to myself, watching that footage, "There goes the president of the United States."

I wish they'd count the absentee ballots and the provisional ballots. Right now I feel like my vote doesn't really matter, like my vote somehow wasn't "worth" as much as other votes because it was an absentee ballot, because it wasn't in a swing state. I want my vote to be just the same as everyone else's. I know they will count them, but it just seems like an afterthought and a joke right now. And in these four years, with everything that's happened, the states were still pretty much divided the same way as they were in 2000. How many people were actually informed voters, and how many people just voted the party line? The debates didn't seem to matter at all. Young people didn't make a difference after all. After all that we tried, we didn't change a single thing. But I'm glad it was at least a clean election. Thank God for that.

>____<

Today was my first day working at the soup kitchen in Baltimore's East Side. Not because I'm compassionate or noble or whatever; I really don't care about poor people. This sometimes puts me at odds with my extremely liberal group which likes Raising Awareness and Advocates Causes and whatnot. I think Raising Awareness is pretty lame; for example we're doing this event where we give out pieces of candy with hunger trivia facts on them. This isn't even for fundraising, we're just Raising Awareness. First off, I think we're giving candy to the wrong people. Since we're trying to feed the hungry and all, maybe we ought to give candy to, you know, the hungry people. But maybe that's just me. Also, who the fuck needs to raise awareness for hunger? Who doesn't know what hunger is? "Aw Jeez, I'm so full right now! I never knew people could not be full all the time!!"

Also, I personally, think it's subtly wrong if you Care About the Poor, to spend other people's money. You're just a glorified beggar, guilting other people into donating THEIR hard-earned money for your Good Cause. Presumably if you really cared you'd spend some of your own grubby money. You'd get a job and donate your proceeds to charity, or build a house for the homeless or cook food for the hungry or tend the sick. It'd be part of yourself you'd be giving, not part of other people like a fucking commie. Besides, in these fundraising things, the cost of fliers and your non-profit bread-and-circus type events is probably almost as prohibitive as the proceeds. "A portion of proceeds goes to..." Fuck that. However, I also think that as a person I ought to accumulate as many different experiences as possible, which is why I went to the soup kitchen.

I think I spent the time in a state of perpetual frustration. I went into the shelter's "office," which was just basically a room with stuff strewn about it. You know, tables, stacked up chairs, a tiny tv, somone's shitty computer, crappy cast-off shit that people donate to charities for the tax deduction. Nothing was in working order; there weren't labels on anything so we didn't know where anything was. Additionally, Miss Rose, who runs the shelter, didn't have anything meaningful for us to do, and her ebonics coupled with old person talk made her completely incoherent. This meant that she'd tell us to do something trivial, like fetch her the newspaper, and we wouldn't know what she said or where to get it. By the time we actually deciphered her request and found, for example, the newspaper, she could've up and got it herself. Miss Rose is a wonderful lady, but we were the most inefficient team to ever walk the face of the Earth. Miss Rose is damn well capable of running her shelter pretty much by herself with Carlos and Plata. We were just kind of... there. I felt so retarded.

"They all ladies," said Miss Rose. Despite the fact that there were seven girls and we insisted that we were strong willing, Miss Rose refused to let us help do the heavy lifting. So one scrawny boy from our group was appropriated by Carlos and Plata (two elderly men) to move donated furniture into the house across the street, while seven young women of differing athletic ability stood around because ladies just aren't of help.

In general, we had seven volunteers with nothing to do. The first thing we did was carry boxes of cans downstairs. Except that we didn't need the last box of cans so carrying it down was completely unecessary. Because there were so many of us, we even clogged each other in the halls. Then we sorted the cans, filled plastic bags with five cans and a loaf of bread, and placed the bags on a counter for people coming into the shelter to take them home. That was it. We got it done pretty quickly, assembly-line style with eight of us, but Carlos and Plata could've done it. Maybe it would've taken them a longer, but they could've done it, unlike the eight of us who got it done in like five minutes and spent the next hour milling around in awkward silence.

We didn't serve food or use the canned food to cook meals for people; we just gave them bags of cans and sent them on their way. Plata was eating a breakfast of canned corn. How pathetic is that? These dozens of people coming in and their major source of sustenance is eating canned corn. It's the saddest thing in the world; People just throw a can into a cardboard box during a canned food drive and, having done their "duty" to charity, consider the problem taken care of. And meanwhile people are eating canned corn for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and that's our solution. Let's throw another fucking can into the cardboard box. I think next week I'm going to bake some brownies the night before so Plata can eat some real food.

After the can-sorting, as an interuption from the aimless milling, I went with another girl into the urine-soaked backyard. This is something that's really notable about the 'hood (as Carlos calls it). We, as middle class college students, just take for granted that the campus doesn't smell. Sometimes I think, "I'm really fortunate to have a place to stay at night," or, "I'm really lucky to have food on the table," but I've never ever thought to think, "Man, I'm so grateful my house doesn't smell like piss." Well, the next time you say grace, if you do that sort of thing, after you've thanked Our Father Who Art in Heaven for your daily bread, thank him for a reeking-piss-free life too. In any case, we put donated clothes, which hadn't been washed, into different bags. At the end we were left with a giant pile of mismatched shoes and socks we had to throw out because some IDIOTS decided it would be a good idea to donate clothes to charity one sock at a time.

I honestly think most "volunteer opportunities" don't actually help people and are created for the benefit of volunteers to feel better about themselves.

I saw some people outside sweeping the sidewalk so I told everyone, "Hey, it looks like they need help, let's go join them." At this point, maybe an hour into our little trip, we had literally nothing left to do. Ostensibly we were suppose to give people plastic bags full of those goddamned cans of peas and corn, and by "give" I mean, "inadvertantly make them feel intimidated as they come into the shelter to pick up bags of food on the counter in front of them, revealing their lack of financial independence to seven random strangers trying not to stare."

So I said that we should go outside and help the community clean the gutters. Since we had rubber gloves and trash bags, we could pick up trash. But everyone was saying, "Eh..what if people don't like us going into their property?" What they meant was: "Eh.. I really don't feel like it..".. because there were people already outside cleaning the streets and sidewalks (completely public areas) and when I asked Miss Rose if the community would be hostile towards the idea, she said they'd love it. My group said, "Gee, you really want to clean, don't you?" but nobody actually moved to do anything. So we sat around making small talk for the next half an hour.

Some people left to go to the Ford Rally, a rally to protest Ford's new hybrid vehicle. Apparently, Ford's new hybrid is a "a marketing ploy to distract people from realizing the fuel inefficiency of Ford's other models" and we need to boycott Ford. Apparently the great plan to save the environment is to boycott companies when they start trying to reform.

Then, one lady, Miss Anne, came in to chat with Miss Rose, and then took a broom and dustpan and started sweeping up trash in the gutters. I got the rubber gloves and trash bag and went outside after her (she had the only broom) because I wasn't going to let a frail, elderly woman who relies on a soup kitchen to make ends meet clean up trash while FIVE young college students sit on their asses talking about who's doing what major. So I had two people come with me from the group and we picked up trash and threw it in the trash bag.

"Gee, people living here must really like pixie sticks," said a girl I was working with, after we had picked up a plethora of small tube wrappers filled with white powder.

After we finished cleaning the street as best as we were able, that was about time to leave. We met up with the two people who hadn't gone on the cleaning expedition with us, who had been chatting about their majors.

---
Carlos says they need "jobs. It don't matter if it McDonalds, we just need something to make us feel like we worth somethin'." He wants to write a book someday. During the cleaning, besides Miss Anne, we'd met a young woman who told us how she appreciated what we did, and James, who'd been sweeping the streets for eight years. We met an easy-going bald man who joked about us being "working gals," and an old man who would put milk out in little tuna cans for the stray cats that belong to the whole neighborhood.

---

We thought maybe for lunch we could visit to a cadre of young men from the "Jefferson Group," who had been friendly to us when we'd arrived and invited us to eat at the deli on the corner. However, the girl leading our group didn't want to go.

"The less time we spend in this neighborhood, the better," she said, "This place scares me."

... so we went to the NSA museum and we pushed the power button on the Cray supercomputer and all the microprocessor lights turned off. Except then the alarm went off and we ran away. But then we snuck back in and pressed the 'disable alarm' button. So it was all good.

As a writing exercise, I was supposed to write about a place on campus. This is:

The Drainage Ditch By the Admin Parking Lot

A monolithic bunker stands, concrete and compact, beside the grotto overlapped in green. Tiers upon tiers of cars and their glinting window panes rise above dirt, grass, trees. Light flashes through the leaves, the glare off glass and metal. Twinkling like stars, the sunburst flares briefly and then becomes shadowed by the swaying of arboreal curtains. Wind-bent branches and leafy canopy swim above my head and cast their reflections below me into the hazy water. The water runs trickling from the rim of a cement tube, a giant’s jar tipped over, into a pool so thick and murky that the water seems almost solid. Chalky rocks, white and angular, tumble down into the gully where the excess water flows and from the deep-rooted soil, the dark and soft trees reach towards the sky.

The Conservative Case Against George W. Bush

... but I put it out, eventually.

....so somebody decided to use my credit card number to finance an all-expense paid shopping trip to Miami, and my laptop caught fire after something got jammed in the floppy drive.

It's a little embarrassing that I don't know who my suitemates are. Oh, I know who they are because I know their names, and being that I have two suitemates, I have a fifty-fifty chance of calling one the right name. But it's problematic when I'm bringing back the mail and don't know who to give it to. And who wants to tell people they live with that they've forgotten their names?

A really frickin' long description of the Baltimore Aquarium.

Keep on Swimming: The Place Where "Finding Nemo" Quotes Are Said So Often They Get Annoying

Went to the Baltimore Aquarium last Friday. The lobby has a walkway over a pool of sting rays. The water's clear enough that the sting rays, with wings slowly fanning the water, or rippling like the flanges of hovercraft, look like they're flying above the pool bottom.

At the very top of the museum is the rainforest exhibit encased in a glass greenhouse, which also serves as the aquarium's roof. It was close to the aquarium's closing time, and the rainforest was damp and dark. Everything was asleep, except for large toads that sat in dark areas of the footpath, waiting to be stepped on. I saw a sleeping scarlet ibis, which I'd only known about from the story, with head tucked into wing, one leg delicately lifted and the other spindly leg balanced on a cable like some sort of tightrope walking ballerina. It graciously woke up for me, its head swiveling on its long neck. The sloth hanging against an unfortunately shadowed section of mesh, was merely a dark, furry silhouette.

Went to the dolphin show too and sat in the splash zone (aka front row seats), but I was off by the side so I didn't get splashed. In the middle of an arena is a giant tank. You walk up to what appears to be basically a wall of glass that's taller than you are, and you think, "Oh, a seven foot deep tank," which is pretty impressive in itself. However, if you stand next to it and look down, you see the dizzying drop-off where the straight walls of the tank extend, far below your feet. (It's 25 feet deep, actually).

For the show, lights come on inside the pool, they turn the lights off around the stadium, and all of the water glows. The glass is so thick that the distortion is intense. If a dolphin is under water, the dark figure you see at the surface of the water and the figure you see through the glass are in such drastically different locations that sometimes you'd confuse them for two dolphins. If a dolphin or trainer is partway in the water, the part that is above and the part that is below the water seem spliced like twenty feet away from each other. That's how thick the glass is. It's an impressive feat in itself.

Dolphins are strange animals. Because of all that's said about the bond between humans and dolphins, I think I'd subconsciously expected them to look more anthropomorphic, to smile or wink or something. Of course, instead, they looked just like other animals, with expressions that are completely inscrutable. In simpler terms, they aren't really as cute as they're hyped up to be. However, the power in their muscles and their bursts of energy are simply amazing. Maybe you don't think about this except when you see dolphins up close, but dolphins are big, and their sleek musculature is a sight to see.

The show itself was fantastic, but I don't think I as a spectator could describe it to you in a way so that you'd get a better impression than by say, just watching a tape. It is different from watching it on tv though. Take my word for it. They did some stuff, like stand on their tails and propel themselves backwards, splash the audience, beach themselves on shallows and wave, play catch with balls in their mouths, jump into the air to hit a ball with their noses, and swim around dragging a trainer behind at the speed of a small (and completely silent!) motor boat. Stuff you see on tv. But, because it's in real life, better.

If you take a set of stairs under the stadium, you can see through a great glass window at the bottom of the tank. If you look up, you see the underside of the surface of the water, twenty five feet above your head. This is like the height of a two and a half storey building, if such a thing were to exist, or a sizeable city wall. It's intimidating. The glass is thick here too, and curved to bulge outward. At certain points because of the distortion, the dolphins will appear to swim out of the tank. Up close against the glass, you notice their imprefections. Scars here, splotches there, signs of age and experience. Maybe it's just me looking too much into things.

Outside the dolphin arena is a section of the aquarium with all sorts of interactive activities. I stood in a little booth where a computerized voice measured my height. I'm five foot four and a quarter inches, the exact length of a harbor dolphin. I'm so proud.

In another section of the aquarium, there's a racetrack shaped tank, filled with coral and tropical fish, and in the middle of it is a walkway that spirals downward along the inward wall. Because of its shape, all the fish swim in one direction in laps, as if there were some invisible traffic cop. All the fish are pretty cool, like some square-headed fish that look as if they were beaten out of aluminum foil, and an unpuffed puffer fish the size of a watermelon. As you descend the spiral walk, the lapping fish follow you. At night, near closing time when most people have left and the lights are dimmed out of consideration for the sleeping fish, this tank is a bit creepy in its loneliness.

The spiral track descends under the coral tank, the wall around the walk is covered with black silhouettes of different species of sharks, rimmed by purple light. Any babies being carried by their parents begin crying at this point. Under the wall of cutouts, we reach the racetrack shaped shark tank. Unlike the coral tank, it's not filled with color but monochromes. The sharks drift slowly around in laps (traffic cop again), like floating starships of science fiction. In the silence and serenity that fills the expanse, several people sit on the floor, studying. There are ugly sharks and beautiful sharks, sharks sorely in need of braces with teeth jutting out of their mouths every which way, sharks plopped down upon the sand, sharks with skin shimmering iridescent under the intermitant shafts of light, to disappear into the unlit sections of the pool on regular intervals. There's a door in the side of the shark pool, big enough for a human. I wonder why it's there.

Under the shark tank, if you descend further, you reach a window that peeks into the bottom of the sting ray tank, and if you exit that, you're back in the lobby again.

More angst!

See, for an English assignment I have to write a story from the point of view of the guy in this poem.

Being that I've never had a loved one or even a pet die on me, I find it difficult wrapping my head around this whole "grief" mindset, especially with my roommate playing upbeat rock music.

So I'd like to take this time to dredge up my going to college blog posts compilation, kind of like a "best hits" album.

Anyway, I don't know the ethics of quoting blog posts nearly verbatim for English assignments though, so to be safe I won't do it. Bummer. It'll force me to write new material every once in a while, I suppose. I wonder how much I'm allowed to lift; because if I can't use any of my blog, then that means I can't write (in future assignments) about anything that's happened to me for the last three years. Anything of note that's happened to me for the last three years I've written about in my blog already (okay, maybe some stuff about Jeremy that'd be too private to go into an English assignment anyway) and in creative nonfiction format too, so I'm screwed.

Quote of the Day

"Prick the sacred cow!"

-my econ professor on small business, mixing his idioms.

Went to the Inner Harbor with my parents today to watch the fireworks explode over Fort McHenry. Those of you who serve and make this possible for the rest of us, I thank you.

Involvement Fest today. It was fun people watching. Unfortunately, the Political Economics booth I was manning was sandwiched with the Baptist Ministry, the Catholic frats, and the Mormons, so people basically walked by quickly, trying very hard not to make eye contact. If I had wrangled in the Republicans' Club member dressed like a giant flip-flop, I could've made it Conservative Alley or something.

Moved the booth next to the quiet heavily-trafficked College Democrats and Habitat for Humanity tables, and got quite a bit more traffic after that. As a bonus, I now have gimungous John Kerry for President sign which I'm displaying at my dorm room window.

Hey, did you know that there's a group going to Florida to campaign for Kerry? Man, that takes dedication.

Jeremy came to visit me on the weekend. It was very nice. Same feelings that I get whenever I see him after a long interval. You know how it is. I get used to not having him around and it gets weird with him around, and then I get used to having him around and then he leaves and its weird again.

He told me how much he missed me. We also talked about what sort of weapons would be most effective against a T-Rex.

Well, in the evening, Sam IMed me asking me if I wanted to go to Ascension, the name for Goth night at Club Orpheus in Baltimore. So I said yes, because I didn't foresee myself having anything better to do, and dragged Jose along too, because I didn't want to be at a club without at least one person who I knew decently well. We went with Sam and Jenny, his cousin, who seemed nice, if chronically angry. It's a strange combination, but it works like this:

Jenny: Hi!!! I'm Jenny!!!! ^__^
Jenny: Will you hurry the fuck up, Sam??? >___<
Jenny: Nice to meet you guys!! ^__^
Jenny: Goddammit! I need a smoke!!! >___<

Sam and Jose don't mix well. Both Sam and Jose have their annoying mannerisms, and while sometimes two people's annoying mannerisms can enhance one another's, in this case they aggravated each other like a particularly volatile reaction, or like the physics textbook illustrations of sound wave interference. Some of the things though, I don't understand why Sam does. Like why wear Devil's horns in public? Hmm? You must have been asking for the jeers at 7-11.

Ascension itself is close to the Harbor, in a Fell's Pointy type place though I couldn't be sure. You unlatch the thick, wooden door of an unassuming townhouse, and lo! a Goth club. Upon seeing that door, I almost expected one of those scenarios where you have to knock three times and someone pulls back a creaking panel, squints out, and says, "What is the shadow of the five moon ghost?" It didn't happen though. We just had to show our IDs and pay $6.

Orpheus in general seems pretty shitty as a club. It has a basement smell, or maybe the backstage of a community theater smell, and looks somewhat like a garret with a sound system and tables in a corner. The drywall wasn't even completely painted over yet; I think that's why they keep the lights dim. We went at nine, and no one was there. Jose complained that we would have a private club, which I thought was more the better, because Goths hate people anyway. There were people, maybe a handful, and everyone was huddled around the bar, smoking. At any given point there were like maybe three people dancing. Dancing, because you're a goth, in as unenergetic a way as possible, like in that South Park episode on Goth kids. It has to match the operatic moaning soundtrack, after all.

I think I had fun though. Not dancing, of course. The people there were fun to talk to, and Orpheus is quite a successful lounge, if a shitty club. I met a few nice Victorian gentlemen with swordcanes, who gave me good advice on getting good plus-sized men's Goth clothes (cowboy re-enactor sites, surprisingly), and bondage clubs in D.C. It's a shame about its club pretensions, actually, since once you stop trying to be cool (and fail miserably) it's a good place. If we could actually talk without shouting and choking on secondhand smoke, it would be lovely. Overall, I'm glad to be out on a different social scene every once in a while.

Plus, they had free pecan sandies.

---

Came back with Jose. Around one at night, the weather was cool but the campus abandoned. We were on our way to Late Night when we were accosted by a guy yelling, "HEY!" at us. I thought he was drunk, and began walking faster, with my head down. In a very shady tone, he went, "Hey... you guys fileshare? Are you anti-government? Well we all know this school rips you off, and I think it's about time we give something back to the students. Just this year, five students have been arrested for filesharing." The slowness of our downloads is oppressive, the expense of the dining hall an outrage, and Kazaa a political cause. Apparently he runs some sort of private direct-connection filesharing intranet on campus and wants us to be in on it, though he couldn't provide us enough specifications about it to really satisfy our curiosity. Convo goes as follows:

"So, where do you live?" Jose says amiably.

"Apartments."

"Which one?" asks Jose.

"I can't tell you." The guy is dead serious. "You scare me because you're asking so many questions." The guy's eyes dart from side to side. "Stop asking so many questions."

"Hillside!" guesses Jose.

The guy flinches.

"Casselman!" I narrow it down. Me and Jose think of Kay, and laugh.

The guy goes rigid. "Are you laughing at me???" he demands.

"No," Jose says, putting his hands up to defuse a confrontation, "it's just an inside joke."

"Tell me what it is," he insists, demanding proof that we aren't mocking his anti-authoritarian revolution, "I need to know."

So we have to explain it to him, how Kay lives in Casselman and has his own ftp which he uses to share files and the rest. By the time we explain it to him, it's not funny anymore, which is, of course why you don't explain inside jokes in the first place.

The guy gives us the ip address and then, seeing two other guys walking towards the dining hall, yells towards them, "HEY! HEY YOU!"

"Do we know you?" one of the guys calls back in a knife-edge polite, conversation-terminating inquiry. They begin walking faster.

The first guy writes his AIM handle down, and hands us a slip of paper.

"Here," he says. "You'll find me online."
---

Can someone tell me what the fuck?

Weird Day

Had classes... Kay's in my Greek history class, as are Becca and Michelle, the punks of archaeology I knew from Greek Archaeology last fall semester. Apparently Becca and Kay know each other, due to him helping her with Italian during her trip to Rome. This school is so small (for a state college) it's basically like six degrees of everything. Had Creative Essays, with the coolest teacher, and then Women in the Classical World. Becca (and all her friends) warned me extensively against the professor, saying she was insane, literally insane, in ways inconceivable to the human mind.

"You're taking the Women's Studies course, right?" Becca said. "That's her specialty. You'll die."

The class was interesting.

Actually, I don't see what the big fuss is about. It does seem like fun, though I don't like the idea of group projects and oral presentations. Curriculum-wise I'm also not too hot on the fact that the course, as Ancient Studies 320, is also a Women's Studies class. There are only like two guys in the class, and more than half of the class has never taken an ancient history class.

Upon being asked what they knew about women in the ancient world, the students were generally like, "Um.. Athenian women were like.. oppressed .. and stuff."

God help me. It's like taking Bio for Non-majors. Science majors, you understand my sentiment.

After class, I had this weird AIM convo with Will, which I don't think I'll post here. But, if you knew what it was, you'd agree with me that it was weird.

Just nod to this.

Had my first classes today.

Roman history seems alright. I'm glad there's no paper, though there seems to be a bit of reading. My professor seems good, if unconfident and young, like an older version of Peter Parker, with Toby Maguire playing him.

Econ was fine, but it sounds like a hard class.

Advanced Exposition sounds annoying; it seems like a class where you just write essays on political and social views. Also, there are six papers to write. But I need it for my writing minor, so unless I hope for a better teacher (and though I've heard my teacher is a bit crazy, I don't know if she's necessarily bad) I should probably just take it anyway.

Have moved into my dorm, at Harbor North, 342. My roommate seems sociable but not in the cheerful, party girl breed of outgoing that was characteristic of my last two roommates. Weird getting into the hang of things, especially when you look at old dorm buildings that you reflexively think of as your or your friends' dorms, but of course you don't live there anymore. My roommate has a webcam, which she says is basically her only way to see her boyfriend in New York. Will M has one too, one of the fancy ones that tracks his motions. I think this is a good idea for me and Jeremy, seeing that I might as well put my T1 (or T3, is it?) and his cable connection to good use. Also, I'm reminded of Jeremy a lot more than I was at home; I keep thinking I see him out of the corner of my eye, and oddly enough, certain smells remind me of him, though I can't really pin down what they are. Just certain hallway smells (not the Sus smell, mind you, which is still even after that building was renovated). He may be coming to visit me this weekend, God willing. Conflicted as to whether I'm happier around him or no; I mean, it is a lot harder to find things for two people to do than one person to do on this boring campus, as I by myself am pretty easy to please entertainment-wise. Give me the net and peer 2 peer.

Have spent my time after move-in unpacking and decorating. My room is smaller than the one at Chesapeake or Jeremy's room in Erickson, but it does have its own common room and a bathroom that is, unlike Chesapeake, bigger than a closet. Both the bedrooms, the common room, and the bathroom are invadvertantly accessorized in pastel shades, down to the lamps and shower curtains. It looks nice, but I think my Aragorn poster ruins this effect.

Pat and Biting Chris (who should not be confused with Malfean Chris, or Chris K, aka "Brian's Chris") happen to coincidentally share an apartment, so I helped them unpack also, and move furniture around to optimize space in the apartment singles. This is like squeezing blood from a stone. Tagged around after Jose and Brian K, who share a room in Erickson, like some sort of heirs to the Kay-Niall-Jeremy Ericksonian throne. It is, of course, not the same room, but since all rooms in one building look alike, it certainly feels like they've picked up where Kay, Niall and Jeremy left off. Have made various other social calls, including to Will M and On My Hall Andrew (He no longer lives in my hall this year, but this is a name I've given him to distinguish him from Andrew D and P).

A funny story goes here; I was keeping Pat company as he was working the cashier at Late Night, and this girl came in, panicked to the point of hyperventilating, that she had accidentally taken bread from the dining hall, and wanted to pay us three dollars, (I suppose to salve her guilt over accidentally stealing). Pat reassured her by invoking the unwritten truce between the resident student body and the dining hall, passed down though oral tradition, generation to generation, from a time immemorial; that unless anyone saw her stealing, it wasn't actually stealing. I don't think she was very convinced even then, very desperately wanting us to not think her some sort of criminal. Eventually, we persuaded her to keep her three bucks.

Ahhh... freshmen.

Will go now: have class at 8 am tomorrow.

My classes tomorrow are Roman history, Intermediate Macroeconomics (which I've read ahead by about four chapters on), and Advanced Exposition. Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have Women in Ancient Greece, Creative Essay Writing, and Ancient Greek History. I'm majoring in econ, stealthily. Well, until I've got Intermediate Micro and Macro, the prereqs for the advanced classes, out of the way, there's not much I can do in that subject anyway.

Ancient Studies is my declared minor.

Lorica Plumata Americana

I wonder if it would be possible to make scale armor (scale mail, as incorrectly known among D&D players) out of military dog tags? I hope it wouldn't be disrespectful. Maybe you could use those fake fashion statement dog tags, as opposed to authentic ones actually issued to soldiers. In the fake ones, you could customize the text, so that each scale had a sentence of a short story, or a word in a song or poem, or maybe scripture, or the Gettysburg Address, Constitution, Declaration of Independence, of Bill of Rights. Or, you could simply have them be names, maybe names of soldiers in Iraq, or those killed in 9/11, or just names of random, everyday soldiers with no specific theme. In any case, as concept art, I think it'd make an interesting statement, though what it is, I don't know.

One possible interpretation, if you wanted to be cynical, is that it equates the American military with imperial Rome, since scale armor was used as ceremonial armor extensively among Roman officers. (It was too expensive for the everyday soldier.) Another, more patriotic, interpretation is that each serviceman is part of a greater, unified whole in the protection of our country. However, I think the latter statement would only work with ring mail, with the symbolism of interlocked links and such. I don't think the US military gives servicemen rings, do they? However, you could still make the dog tag scale armor, and have it backed by chain, hence becoming actual scale mail. That seems like a bit much.

On Friday, I STed for the first time for Exalted, in a one-shot with Doug, Andrew, and his brother James. We were all Solars, part of a traveling boyband of weaponcrafters called the ArrowSmiths. :P Name courtesy of Andrew.

Came up with the plot 10 minutes before, in the car.

Didn't get anything done plotwise, because we only had two hours. But apparently people had fun. I'm not sure if I'm satisfied with myself; obviously I could've done a longer session, and if I had more time I could've worked out more setting information, coordinated it to fit in better with the player characters, and other details, like NPCs. I didn't feel I got a chance to describe things very well; I have no sense of oral tradition. Example of me as an ST:

"You are in a city. It's pretty big and crowded. Um, yeah."

"I go to the merchant's district."

"After a little while of disorientation, you make your way in the general direction of the merchant's district, uphill. It looks like an open air market. There are stalls.. and people selling things on blankets.. and ... stuff. Yeah."

"I go to the local smith's."

"It's a smithy. Smoke rises up from it. Inside it is an anvil."

It's terrible. I can write much better than this, and I know more than this.

(The houses are made with clay and plaster washed white, with flat roofs accessible by external stairs. The city is built on a hill at the apex of which is a ziggurat with terraced gardens. As you make your winding way uphill, you notice that the streets become wider. Your honor guard leads you up a wide ramp through a pylon gate to the ziggurat's outer courtyard.)

I just can't narrate on the fly. After a certain point I gave up, and told the players, "You're in Messopotamia," to which Doug responded, "I've never been to Mesopotamia." Well, I haven't either, but I still have a rather specific atmosphere for my setting that I wish I could've conveyed. I may use the setting again though.. it's not bad.

I like my character also, a graciously classist aristocrat bastard: "Your retainers are quite skilled. Where did you buy them?" -regarding Doug's characters fellow party members. I'm also quite happy that the whole bell obsession made the cut: "By the time you are a few minutes into dinner, you've noticed that all the kitchen utensils have been tuned." (To E major, in case anyone was wondering.)

Doug and Andrew's characters were also great, doing the usual party bickering to comic effect, which really saved me a lot of effort since the game essentialy ran itself.

Andrew: "Yay, free food! What's for dinner?"
Me: "You're in the servant's quarters, right?"
Andrew: "Yeah.."
Me: "....Gruel."
Andrew: "Rolling... temperance..."

I noticed something that actually didn't come up in the session, but would've come up in a future session. I was talking to the group about what would've happened had the one-shot continued. My character will attempt to convince the party that he's following a set of tracks in order to lead the party in the wrong direction. There actually are no tracks.

Andrew's response: But you have no survival! Why would we believe you?

Which is annoying, because in character, I have high manipulation, so it's not as if Andrew's character would know I didn't have any survival. It's beside the point anyway, since Andrew's character has high survival, so in a contested roll he would probably have had a good chance at calling my bluff.* But if I'd made him do a contested roll, even if the character had failed, Andrew the player would begin to have out of character suspicions: after all, making someone roll a contested manipulation roll means that I have something to hide. It'd be annoying.

Note to self: Get ST screen. Hide ST character sheets. Roll manipulation checks, investigation checks, and other such sorts, behind screen.

Second note to self: Know what skills each character has before making a story. For example, stories that don't hinge on characters having low survival, and stories that hinge on people having investigate...

On Saturday, discovered a starter adventure on Kazaa. -_- Would've saved me some trouble.

But I would recycle the adventure, I really would. Make it a full, multi-session thing. Mostly regretable is that it just worked so well because of the specific chemistry between all the characters. I don't know if it would work as well for another set of chars.

*This is an example of my typical lack of system knowledge. Would that be Manipulation + Survival on my part vs. his Manipulation + Survival, or Intelligence + Survival? I would think that it would be Manipulation + Survival for him if he was using his skill in detecting bullshit, and Intelligence + Survival if he were using his vast tracts of knowledge to check for factual errors. Kind of like how if you were really gullible, but knew a lot about cows, you could still end up being skeptical of a guy's stories about growing up on a ranch. That kind of thing. In the end, I just kind of end up going, "Whatever," and let the players use whatever the hell die pools they want.

Bleeding Man Wins Saber Gold

From the Associated Press, an excerpt from the report on Men's Team Saber.

Quote:

---

After upsetting Hungary, the Americans trailed France 40-38 in the semifinals when Smart came in to fence Damien Touya. Smart rallied to tie it at 44. On the next play, no point was scored, but Smart's saber went through Touya's glove, piercing his hand at the webbing of the fingers, and exiting through his palm. The match stopped so Touya could receive treatment, while France's replacement athlete, Boris Sanson, started to warm up.

With the 10-minute injury timeout set to end, Touya chose to return to the match with his injured and bandaged hand instead of being replaced.

"He was especially courageous since we were tied at 44-44," said Philippe Omnes, the technical director of the French fencing federation.

The two fencers attacked two more times but no points were awarded. On each play, referee Jose Luis Alvarez of Spain determined that the fencers attacked simultaneously.

On the fourth attempt at a deciding point, Smart and Touya both recorded touches, but Alvarez ruled that Touya caught Smart while preparing to attack, giving the Frenchman the victory.

"France ... you know ... man, that hurt," Smart said. "Everyone was there, everyone saw it. For whatever reason the officials didn't want to help us out."

Smart stood in the middle of the strip, his helmet off and mouth agape, after the referee awarded the final point to Touya, who had bloodstains on the leg of his white suit.

---

Whoever says Frenchmen are wussy has it dead wrong. They just have better things to do than go to war.

Pictures, anyone?

Hearts of Fencing

Look! It's a Chinese high school romance fencing soap opera!

Proof that tv shows don't come in genres.

---

Also! Olympic fencing!

Tuesday at 6PM-8PM on Bravo (Women's Individual Saber. Go Sada!)
Thursday 2PM-4PM on MSNBC (Men's Team Saber)
Thursday 6PM-7PM on Bravo (Men's Team Saber)

I will tape, also.

Vivaldi

Fall makes me depressed, because it's when I go back to school, and the nippiness reminds me of oncoming winter. Winter makes me depressed because of the lack of daylight; oftentimes by the time I get out of class it's dark already. And walking anywhere at night the world seems lonely and deserted and quiet and bone-chillingly cold, while walking around in the summer or in springtime, it's never really quite dark because the sky is fully of clouds and never quite black, like purple or red, and it seems like the world is alive. The only time I like winter is during the muffled silence right before a snow.

I like spring and summer, though I prefer windy days where I can see the wind bending the trees and grass and hearing the rustling of the trees and of cicadas, and where there are high wispy clouds or no clouds at all, so the sky looks like a deep dome where the center is a blue deeper than the light blue around the horizon, and if you lay on the windy grass on your back and stare straight up it seems like you could fall forever up into the sky.

Lovely weather we've been having. The air seems crisp and clean again, even a bit nippy at night. Went to Brookside Gardens on Saturday, and was astounded by how much dedication is put into maintaining the place.

Went to Doug's house on Sunday. It was a rather anti-social social gathering. Spent the whole time either playing video games or talking to Andrew D over the phone as a conference call. Personally, I think the whole video game thing would've worked better if they were actually, you know, 2 player games.

Discussed ideas for Exalted characters, Solars. We gave Doug a little crash course through the history of Creation, but he seems shaky on setting information; he still thinks of things in terms of medieval Europe, the typical fantasy paradigm. I'll have to show him some Exalted-style art (not the official art, which often is rather amateurish ahd cartoony), and of course, "Hero," the martial arts flick. Andrew is psyched about getting a game started but would rather not ST. I may actually end up being the one STing, being the only one who's actually played Exalted before, and the only one with extensive setting information. We're probably going to do a small prelude that will take us to Jade City. Nothing world-shaking. It'll be a good experiment.

Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi

This rocks.. so.. hard..

Bush Attacks Kerry on Trigun Stance

Yes, this is a real campaign ad. Watch carefully.

Apparent Kerry is an enemy of Nicholas D. Wolfwood.

A Comprehensive Look at Why Bush Sucks

Now, I don't think that Bush is evil, I don't think he has some sort of vast corporate-military-oil conspiracy or anything like that. I just think he's wrong for this country.

a) Iraq. Bush said we were going in because there was a threat to national security because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. There aren't any. So why are we there? I understand that Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator, violated human rights, etc etc, and I'm glad that we got him out. I don't think we did it the right way. We now have this chaotic mess on our hands. You'd think that if we were to overthrow someone's government we should at least get the clear support of their people first. We rebuilt Germany and Japan after WWII, so it's not like the US is incapable of rebuilding nations, but we have to do it with a willing populace. (Another thing that can be said of Germany and Japan is that they were already Westernized nations, with strong industrial bases and an educated middle class, which helps a lot.) Also, if we were truly so noble-minded, why Iraq? Why not Sudan, or Liberia, or East Timor? If we're trying to be the humanitarian police of the world, it's funny that we only help people when it's expedient.

b) Gay marriage. Ok, with the economy like this, and terrorism, and rising health care costs, our biggest problem is that two people want to get married? Sanctity of marriage what? We'll protect the sanctity of a drunk Britney Spears getting married overnight in Vegas, and Anna Nicole milking an old geezer out of his money? Unless the government has some magic powers to discern whether one marriage is abusing the sacred institution, and another is truly blessed, it should just butt out of the whole "moral authority" business completely. The government marriage license exists to help people planning to live together for life acknowledge their legal realities. Just because gay marriage is banned doesn't mean gay live-in lovers will suddenly stop having to worry about where their property goes when they split up, or how to file a joint tax, etc. The government marriage license exists for pragmatic, not moral purposes. A marriage license doesn't mean that you truly will love each other until death do you part, that God smiles on your union. It's just a piece of paperwork giving you certain legal rights and responsibilites that go with your new position. If your church, synagogue, mosque, temple, coven, cult, or family refuses to marry a gay couple on moral grounds, I respect that decision. But something like that is not the government's job.

I don't see what banning gay marriage is supposed to do, other than look good to religious conservatives. What, will gay people stop being gay because they can't get married? It's silly. Another thing, what about hospital rights? A gay man or woman is denied access to his/her lover in the hospital because he/she isn't technically "family"... now that's just ridiculous! A hospital patient should have the last say in who he/she wants visiting. It's a highly personal decision and the President, the Senate, the House and the Supreme Court can just stick their laws where the sun don't shine, for all I care. It's a free country, and if a dying man in a hospital wants to see, his HAMSTER, for God's sake, then no law, come hell or high water, should keep him from it.

Even if you did oppose homosexuality on a moral ground, which is a personal opinion, I don't see how this justifies amending the Constitution. The Consititution is what prevents presidents from gaining too much power, by setting a groundwork for what, except in dire circumstances, cannot be changed. I don't see the erosion of the Constitution as a good thing.

In conclusion: Bush is dead wrong.

c) Stem cell research: Guh? Suppose you believe that life starts at conception (which I don't). Fine. The embryos are already dead, though! It's not like you're killing them when you extract stem cells. If you are so pro-life, ban the fertility clinics that create and destroy unused embryos in the first place, not the scientists trying to do find ways to alleviate suffering. Besides, not all stem cells are embryonic; there are also bone marrow stem cells, for example. Anyway, I've posted my opinion on fetuses elsewhere.

Conclusion: Kerry rocks.

d) Tax cuts for the rich: In theory, this should work to stimulate the economy. In practice, it doesn't. It's extremely difficult for the government to time economic policies precisely, because first, once the information is available, the situation has likely changed. Then there's the time that it takes to pass legislation, and then there's the time it takes for the legislation to take effect. So by the time fiscal policy enacted, it won't help anymore. Besides, while I'm not a communist and actually like the idea of people who earn their money keeping it, rich people manage to worm out of many taxes anyway. For example, normal people earn a revenue, and then are taxed from that, leaving the remainder to pay their expenses. But if you put all your personal assets in a corporation, you're allowed to use your revenue to pay your expenses first, and then are taxed on the remainder. Also, if your personal assets are in a corporation they can't be confiscated to pay off debt. Or, if you trade a piece of real estate for a piece of real estate worth more, the tax on your gain on the sales of the first piece of real estate is delayed, meaning that if you keep trading for bigger pieces, you can delay paying your real estate taxes indefinitely. Sneaky! Stuff like that!

People who take the brunt of the conflicting 'tax cuts for the rich/ free market' and 'wealth distribution' ideals are the upper middle class. Kerry is going to cut taxes for the middle class, and it's about frickin' time.

e) Bush's policy of abstinence only education: Teens need to learn about safe sex. This is common sense. Teens will not stop having sex because you refuse to acknowledge that they are. They need to learn how to have sex responsibly. If they have it pounded into their heads that they're evil if they have sex before marriage, the ones that have already had sex won't listen to anything else you say, the ones that plan on having sex won't listen to anything else you say, and as adults if they actually do believe that sex is evil, they'll have a hard time surviving in a sexually responsible manner once they have sex. And of course there's the Christian overtones. Many of the abstinence only programs are overtly religious (nothing wrong with that, but not something that should be funded by public schools) and promote tired gender stereotypes, like, "Boys want sex but are less emotionally mature," or "Girls are more vulnerable." Not exact quotes, but you get the idea.

f) Military service:

Kerry won three Purple Hearts, which demonstrates courage, decisiveness and grace under pressure. It doesn't conclusively prove that he has the qualities of a president, but it certainly doesn't hurt. Bush joined the National Guard during the Vietnam War. Nothing wrong with that, but he never did his National Guard duty! Conveniently, the records went missing. Also, his family had an "understanding" with the Army. Bush got out of serving because he was going to business school, which is an excuse that won't appeal to all the men and women who joined the Army because they couldn't afford college. There's a reason most of the people getting shot are working class boys and girls. Using privilege to get out military service is a flagrant display of arrogance and elitism.

Also, if you promote yourself as a wartime president you should have credentials to back it up. If you didn't have military service, fine, but you shouldn't have tried to worm out of it and covered it up. And if you *did* do all that sneaking, you should at the least have the good graces not to criticize a rival who actually served his country the hard way.

g) Accessories:

John Edwards: Born in a working class family, first in his family to go to college, graduated 3rd in his class in college and within the top 10 in his class at graduate school. Great reputation as a trial lawyer in malpractice suits. Smart, ambitious, charismatic, and a fighter for the injured against giant corporations and organizations. (good) Singlehandedly raised health care prices in South (North?) Carolina with the cost of the malpractice verdicts. (bad... I guess? But if there weren't malpractice it wouldn't cost anyone.)

Dick Cheney: Tough as nails, smart as hell (good), CEO of Halliburton, a company which is (quite coincidentally, we're supposed to believe) the one contracted to export oil from Iraq and is making a killing (bad), supports amendment against gay marriage despite having a lesbian daughter who conveniently keeps very very quiet and out of the public eye and a wife who disagrees on that issue (v. bad).

Hmmm.

Teresa Heinz Kerry: Spent her early years in Mozambique and South Africa, would (technically) be the first African-American first lady. Doesn't take @#%$.

Laura Bush: Librarian. Ex-schoolteacher. Wallflower.

h) Dubya: Had an alcohol problem until age 40. Not.. during college or, "in my young days." Until he was 40.

---

Kerry is dumb because:

a) What the heck is that, "Keep jobs in America" crap? What are you going to do? Subsidize companies that don't outsource? That hardly seems like good incentive.. oh, and hurray for keeping prices artificially high and most likely causing many companies to go bankrupt because of the cost of labor. Hurray for discouraging investment overseas (creating job opportunities, modernization, training and infrastructure in countries that would otherwise be economic cesspools). Hurray for starting up another brand of "made in America" jingoism that will no doubt cause even more racism towards Indians and other Asians. GOOD FOR YOU, JOHN KERRY! -_-

---

I still think Kerry wins.

Otakon 2004

Went with T and Mehmet. Got lost on the drive to Baltimore on Friday, as T was trying not to take the highway. It took us several hours to get there, but fortunately the Baltimore Convention Center is not too hard to locate. Baking in a midsummer noon stew, you could smell the line of otaku stretching several blocks down Pratt Street even before you could see them, and you could see them from quite a ways. Stood in line for an hour or so, in air conditioning because I'd pre-registered, mercifully. It felt a bit like an airport (maybe what the UMBC Commons were supposed to be, with more success), from the lines to the row of registration booths, the cosplay security officers from some anime I've never seen pacing around like the real thing, and even down to the people holding arrival signs for other people they intended to meet up with.

Did not know what to do once I got in; ambled around for a bit, peering into panels and videos that'd already started. The panels are not that great. By the time I got in, the seats would be full and the mikes not working so that you couldn't hear the panelist. It didn't matter too much because the panelists, unlike your teachers, are offered the position because of their position in the anime industry, not great lecturing/presentation skills. So what you'd get is a response that's completely incoherent:

Panelist: *mumble mumble thump* Yes.. to answer your question, I'd like to refer back to what Yuki said, about orange eggs.

Audience: (laughter)

I don't get panels.

Sat in for some AMVs and a few fan-trailers. Some of these were pretty good, like a Fight Club trailer set to Pokemon, a Trigun AMV to "Ice Ice Baby," and some Furi Kuri AMV which actually, convincingly, managed to be wistful and sad. This is a miracle, considering the actual anime was loud, outrageous, and seizure-inducing. But most of the AMV's were bad. Little did I know that they were the "Overflow Videos," aka the Contest Rejects. This would be what I'd be doing most of the day, with the exception of getting lost and taking pictures of people in cool costumes.

The intimidating thing about Otakon is that, unlike Rennfest or Gettysburg or other nerd Mecca's, most events are screenings and so have set start and end times. At Rennfest you could drop in on a minstrel here, an acapella group there, a jester here, a juggler there, all punctuated by casual shopping that would bore the daylights out of Jeremy. Gettysburg was a big battle every four hours interspersed by long periods of nothing - mostly browsing, eating, stopping to peer at musicians as you walked by, and talking to re-enactors about 19th century "life." At Otakon though, if you don't get to a certain room by 11 o'clock, the screening starts without you, and the next screening is at twelve. Or, it would happen that you would make it in time and watch 10 minutes of the 11 o'clock screening, not like it, leave, and have nothing better to do for the next fifty minutes, since all screenings basically start at the same time (on the hour). Consequentially, Otakon requires a bit of planning, knowing what activities you will be attending, where you will be when. I did not, so I spent my time drifting from room to room patching together fifteen minute sequences like a cinemetic anime quilt. I'd move from a comedic moment from the middle of some 26 episode series to an action sequence in a 2 hour movie to a completely random scene involving high school girls in short skirts and robots. It's a bit like when you find you've killed three hours watching cable tv by flipping the channel every five minutes.

Went to the Dealers, a giant basement room essentially converted into a bazaar. Got myself a Slime from Dragon Warrior. Still, you can't spend a lot of time looking at merchandise because, unlike Rennfest where there's a lot of cool handicrafts, the extent of anime mechandise originality goes as follows: DVDs. Manga. Soundtracks. Action Figure of Anime Character. Plush Doll of Anime Character. Tote Bag with Anime Character on It. T-shirt with Anime Character On It. Mug With Anime Character On It. Wallscroll with Anime Character On It. Repeat.

I have certain series loyalties, but no loyalty to the big swarming entity that is "anime" in particular. It's like asking me if I like "movies." The answer would be.. yes. But I'm not going to buy a shirt because it has someone from a movie in it. And also, just because I like Full Metal Alchemist doesn't mean I'll buy some shirt with Edward on it. I don't even find those things particularly interesting to look at.

Watched Princess Mononoke at night on a lush silver screen, love it to death. Still, not a kid's movie, that.

Had dinner at the Inner Harbor food court, and on my way out, ran into Janis and Jessica sitting at an outdoor cafe. Small world.

Back at Otakon, went to the video game room, a giant basement room like a ginormous LAN party, with projecting screens everywhere, arcade consoles, and DDR. Played some Soul Calibur, got my butt kicked, decided it wasn't worth waiting in line to play a game I get owned at.

Saw some of Otaku Idol, which wasn't good enough to be good or bad enough to be funny, and some of the yaoi panel. Like all panels, it was boring, but maybe because we came in late, and there were no visuals, like powerpoint slides or videos, only handouts.

Bumped into some people Mehmet knew, and we decided to crash at their hotel, the Radisson not too far away. Me and T checked out the Otakon Rave, and then we stood in line for "I Dream of Mimi," a hentai. We butted in line with the people we knew, and talked about how astonishing it was that it was so easy to see familiar faces. During this time I was looking at the girl standing next to me, who turned out to be a Jennifer from RM, who took ceramics class with me in 10th grade and also was dating Matthew G. Small world.

The hentai was running late, so we in line started rioting and chanting, "Hentai! Hentai! Hentai!" until we were finally let in.

"I Dream of Mimi" is a hilarious hentai about this high school computer nerd who buys a supposed PC from a bum on the street (don't ask why) only to find out that it's a non-refundable sex android. Thus begins a string of "Insert your data in my front disk slot!" and "Oh yes! Enlarge my memory!" jokes that will procede for the next three episodes, including busty American "Nacintosh" virtual fembots who like "installing Japanese fonts."

I must admit though, it does get me thinking about Jeremy, a "hardware engineer," in a new light.

Stayed at the Radisson, eight people to a room. It was extremely hot with the air conditioning on, until we opened the window. The ice vodka with Red Bull chasers helped, but I still insist that chilled or no it tastes like rubbing alcohol. Did some dubious things in the bathroom that tasted like dirt. I don't see why people consider this to be their idea of a good time, except that we are young, and should do something subversive to show that we are alive. Some young people hitchhike across Europe, some climb mountains, some express their vibrancy through their music or art - but for the rest of us who haven't got their physicality and spirit, we sit in bathrooms laughing at things that aren't funny as shadows of people who actually live.

Got lectured on it by T, who said that since my mom had trusted her to be my guardian on this trip, I shouldn't do anything dumb because she'd have to bear all the responsibility. I thought about this more and decided that this was a breach of my mom's trust in me as well. It doesn't matter that nothing happened to me, but it was, in principle, a breach of trust, and I stayed up a while after that feeling guilty.

---

Woke up. Saturday. Ate at Burger King across the street from the Convention Center, stole T's hash browns, went back to Otakon. There are otaku everywhere. It must be terrifying to normal people. Apparently Burger King ran out of food a few years back when they didn't know that there was a con. Anyway, we went to the Convention Center and ambled around for a bit, hanging out in Charles Street Lobby, a beautiful windowed place surrounded by fountains, and a photographic agora for cosplayers. Cosplayers are extremely friendly, and most, if not all, are game to you calling them to pose for a photo. All about the Convention Center, otaku hang about everywhere, curled up in crevices, sitting on the floor leaning against walls, reading manga or playing cards, standing absently strumming guitars, or standing in corners holding up signs (Mostly, "Free hugs!" "Glomp me!" or some variation. There's also, "Death to Hugs!" as a counterrevolution). The pulse of activity procedes so naturally that you forget it's only a few days each year, a conglomeration of misfits, foreigners and tourists, and it seems instead, as you walk through the airy and open corridors, that you're in some giant nerdy city alive with hubbub, that this is one day of many in a teeming metropolis.

I tried to find a place to get a refund for the ticket Jeremy never used. In any case, I was interrupted by a bunch of people I've met online, namely Dr. Lighthead, Sakaki22, CyKairus, and Cookirini from Mobius Forum. Dr. Lighthead called me on my cell, and Sakaki held up a sign. These are all screen names. Real names are irrelevant. For those of you who've never actually met someone you knew online, I shall answer the great question: Yes, you still answer and address people by their screen names, even if it's something that you'd never dream to have someone actually call you by in person. It just seems more natural that way. It actually wasn't awkward at all.

Spent a bit of time with Sakaki (who was dressed up as Squall) in the Dealers, writing funny signs. By the yaoi section he wore a sign reading, "Looking for other MALE Final Fantasy Lead. Inquire within." A Black Mage asked, "Within what?" and then ran away, frightened, as Sakaki tried to give him a hug. So it went. I have pictures.

Met up with Cookirini, who was playing cards with her sister, and we all decided to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe, on the Inner Harbor. I was the only local, and I knew how to get there from the Convention Center (It's not that hard). Dr. Lighthead, despite being from Bowie, didn't. It took a while to guide him. I must express my admiration for Sakaki, who, dressed as Squall, slogged through the crowded thoroughfare of Baltimore in a leather jacket and leather pants, with straps and buckles. In July.

Hard Rock ended up being very loud and expensive, and the food wasn't great. Because we couldn't actually talk to one another, we took out a piece of paper, scribbled on it in pencil and passed it back and forth in a sort of proto-chat. Even after having met one another IRL, it seems that text is always the default.

I was terrified by how much money I'd spent. If you think about it, $50 is not a lot to spend in the course of two days, including hotel fees, but it was terrifying for me to suddenly discover that, out of my wallet, I was down fifty or so. It's not something that happens to me often. Even though I live "independently" at school, I still have rent paid for me, food paid for me, tuition paid for me. I spend money maybe once a week or so, on a movie or coffee, but I never calculate how much that is; just what I consider to be "reasonable" pocket change, and my wallet magically replenishes itself when I visit my parents. My parents had always complained I didn't know the cost of things.. I thought this charge was ridiculous, because I know that a movie is like $9.00 at night ($6.00 matinee), a meal is between five and ten, bus fare is $1.10... but in the end, the accusations turned out to be true. When I was given $60 to spend on everything it all disappeared and I don't know where it went. If you count and list and scrutinize, you see it, leaking out of your pocket bit by bit so you didn't notice. Gas money here. Money for a toothbrush. Money for dinner. Money for breakfast. Money for lunch. Money for a souvenir. Money for a hotel. And then you look in your wallet and say, "Where did my money go?" In my mind, though I know it isn't so, dental hygeine has always been free. Rides have been free. A place to stay at night has been free. A bed and a bathroom and someone to drive me places have been free for me so long that though I knew abstractly that someone somewhere pays, I never had thought about it all too much. It's a very cold shock. Though it's not as if I spent an unreasonable amount of money this year, next year, I shall plan.

Went back to Otakon, parted ways with everyone to wander on my own. Was depressed, went to the bathroom, somehow managed to clog it, felt terrible and fled the scene as water flooded the floor. Still feel badly about this, though nobody knows it was me. Ala anime quilt fashion, saw a bit of Lady Snowblood, a corny kung fu movie, and went to the first half hour of an anime doll panel. Then, went to see the first three episodes of Initial D, which cheered me up considerably. Went to see some of the Saturday Night fansubs, though I couldn't hear much in the echoing vault, and then went to the car.

Mehmet took the last of my money for parking and gas.

Lightning streaked across the sky horizontally, like the arcs of crawling electricity in Frankenstein's lab, and I had a feeling I wouldn't be coming back. I told T and Mehmet that if we weren't coming back that I'd call and find a hotel, and they could go home.

T said, "We are coming back tomorrow."
---

Due to thunderstorms, could not come back the next day.

The last full measure of devotion

I was reading this, which made me think of this. I'd read it before two years ago, but of everything I've read concerning the subject, this stands out most in my mind. It always makes me sad every time I read it, but I think I understand it better now.

---

Today I went and read through the Gettysburg Address for the first time.

---

What were you thinking in your last minutes? What were you thinking in that last desperate charge against the cannons? What were you thinking in that last desperate charge against the cockpit doors? What were you thinking when you donned your colors, blue or grey, and left your family waiting? What were you thinking, when you came off the phone, and left that blinking light one last time on the answering machine? What were you thinking when you died? What are you thinking now, at rest among your sacred bones?

New Oxford

New Oxford, Pennsylvania, in Adams County, is a town of 1,716 people and covers 0.6 miles, square. It happened to be that I was there because I happen to be dating a boy named Jeremy, who happened to be born there, and raised. With the pretense of viewing the Gettysburg battle reenactments nearby, I decided to go visit him.

Jeremy looks different when I first see him, as is the case with him after . He looks alien and unfamiliar to me even though I know exactly who he is; I have forgotten how he looks like. We talk and are awkward, not knowing what to talk about; most conversations have their base in continuity, but it improves with time.

Saturday, July 3rd, after our first stint in Gettysburg, we came back to his house, and I put my stuff away. I said hi to Amie and she said hi back and smiled, a sudden genuine warmness that seemed nothing short of miraculous. Natalie responds when I say hi too, but rather mechanically, and ignores me for the rest of the day. The lively conversation starts. "What do you wanna do?" "I dunno, what do you wanna do?"

We decide to go canoeing. Amie decides to come with us. Jeremy grumbles. Out back, in a wooded area there is a concrete pier, and we push this canoe off, and sit in it. I've never canoed before, but paddling is easy. The creek is smooth and runs deep, and when I pole my oar, probing for the creek bottom, I rarely reach it. Sometimes I leave my oar horizontal just above the water and watch it skim a tiny wake of water, like air over a plane's wings. Amie does this too, but Jeremy yells at her, and not me, for it. With his sister, Jeremy alternates between pushy, demanding, belittling and exasperated, and in general acts like the dad of a teenage girl. She, in turn thinks he's stodgy, boring and a killjoy, like a teenage daughter. Leaves, branches and shadows dangle over our heads. Occasionally, we sweep some overhanging branches aside, and pass by the pylons of bridges overhead, and concrete docks descending like stairs into the water from the banks, from people's backyards. Sometimes we lift the canoe out of the water and take detours on land around rapids, and sometimes we get out and wade through the water pushing the canoe, where it would be too shallow for us to remain in it, and sometimes we pole instead of row. Sometimes Amie gets out of the canoe and stands on a bank and waits for us while we maneuver the boat through rapids and turn around to pick her up. A blue heron lifts off ahead of us in flight, and I listen to the ambient sound as the creek murmurs, and Jeremy and Amie bicker. It goes like this:

**

Jeremy: You're stupid/incompent/ not doing this right.
Amie: You're a nerd.
Jeremy: You're stupid/incompetent/ not doing this right.
Amie: You're stodgy and boring.
Jeremy: You're stupid/incompetent/ not doing this right.

(Jeremy: *warning tone of voice* "Amie...."

Amie: "Oooh, I'm so afraid of YOU! What're you gonna do, hit me with your epee??"

Jeremy: "You always run us into logs! If you're going to sit there, why don't you actually paddle?"

Amie: "I am paddling! And who uses the word log anymore?"

Me: "Everyone uses the word log."

OR:

Amie: "Jeremmmyyyy! Turn us around!!!"

Jeremy: "Honestly! It's just a four foot waterfall..."

Amie: "*incoherent high pitched noises* Jeremyyyyyyy!!!!")

It'd kind of cute. Completely random fact: Amie can imitate her dachsunds.

**

We got quite wet.

We have dinner:

(Jeremy's mom: "I got the low fat chicken....")

Amie acts differently around her parents than with just us. She's withdrawn. I wonder if Natalie is like that too, (I know Jeremy is) and how much I'm missing.

.. and then me and Jeremy do a hundred piece dinosaur puzzle. Amie joins us. We talk. I tell Jeremy to stop being sappy. Amie picks this up, and now her new word is "SAPPAY!" She jumps out from behind corners and yells it, randomly. I think this is funny.

After everyone is in bed, Jeremy takes me down the back road to show me the grove where the fireflies are. He says it looks like a star field when it's dark. My eyes have not adjusted yet, and I only distinguish the darker shadows of the branches against the lighter shadow of the sky where the branches blot out the stars. In a world without color the fireflies seem to glow white. Off in the distance, someone is setting off fireworks prematurely, and I hear the high pitched whistle and crackle as the fireflies dance. Jeremy starts making out with me. I am with a strange man in the dark woods at midnight in rural Pennsylvania somewhere. The woods don't look like a field of stars, I think. They look like a bunch of trees, with chemically-active insects flying abou. That's all they are, trees with insects. I leave, and Jeremy flagellates himself over imagined wrongs. I tell him, as I have countless times, that he has done nothing that needs forgiving, but he will not believe me.

When I got home, I couldn't sleep. I was thinking it unexpectedly pleasant that Amie would smile at me, so I did a little prayer (and I never do) giving thanks to God in His boundless mercy that in one small unexpected instance people should come to be nice to each other.
--

Sunday is the fourth of July. We don't do very much on Sunday. While everyone is at church, we sit around the tv and watch a documentary on alligators while every half hour a wooden bird hurtles out of one or another of a pair of cuckoo clocks on the wall, and the painted wooden figurines inside the clock do a little hellish German dance. In the afternoon we go to Gettysburg again, where it rains. At home we walk about New Oxford, around dusk. There's not very much to see. It's a very pretty town. A postcard town. A Christmas ornament town, a snow dome town, with ivy covered walls and small houses with porches and American flags hung on rods by the door, and pots of flowers. At the center of town is a brick paved square, and at the center of a circle with paths and benches and small trees, is a fountain and flagpole. Down the street from his house is a horse farm and a track used for harness racing. Train tracks run through town, dividing it, and a little historical station sits by them, unused and ornamental, a former connection with the rest of the world. We walk by the turkey plant, which smells terrible, across the rail bridge, and through the newer neighborhood where the houses seem devoid of personality, and if you look in the distance, all you see is fields with nothing around anywhere, even trees, like some sort of insta-village. We go to Crosskeys, an intersection of two major country highways with several gas stations. It's on roadmaps, but nobody lives there, and it perhaps serves as the border marker of the bubble that is Jeremy's tiny world.

At night, Jeremy's dad drives the lot of us (except for Natalie who is doing something else), to Hanover so we can see the fireworks, and parks at the YMCA. We walk through the streets where from backyards we hear high pitched whistles and crackles and watch fireworks and rockets explode above roofs and behind trees and cheers of spontaneous joy, and people spill into the streets. We reach the field where the legal fireworks are planned, and sit down, watching people in the houses nearby set off fountains of fireworks in their front yards like pyrotechnic sprinklers, and little children run about, their sparklers hissing. A pre-teenage boy darts furtively past us; several minutes later firework after firework shoots into the air and erupts some distance away from us in the woods. In rural Pennsylvania, nobody is uptight enough to arrest you, and the place is happier for it. The official fireworks start to ooh and ahs, shooting stars in the air that divide and fall glittering, or bloom in an expanding circle of points. The amateur ones fizzle out, at least for a bit.

When we get back, we have pie and go to sleep.

--

Monday starts with Jeremy in the shower, and a phone call. Jeremy's mom got it. It was the YMCA asking if Jeremy could work a lifeguard shift from 6-9:30 PM. Jeremy had already canceled an earlier shift from 9:00 am to 12:00. Jeremy's mom asked Jeremy if he could take it. He said he could but would rather not, so his mom said he could. Jeremy came out of the shower and got pissed off because she said he could though he didn't want to. (I told him that when it comes to jobs, if you tell someone, "You can but would rather not," people stop listening after the, "I can.") In any case, though Jeremy's mom didn't so much misinterpret him as he made himself unclear, I was rather annoyed myself after thinking about it, because my parents were intending to pick me up in the evening, and I'd have liked Jeremy around for me to say my goodbyes. Really, what sort of shitty job doesn't call at least 24 hours ahead for a change in your schedule, especially on the day after a big holiday? Really, Jeremy should've just told his mom to say, "Sorry, but I've already made other plans," which is perfectly valid. I told Jeremy about this, and said I would tell Jeremy's mom nicely that I'd like for him to be around when I leave and if she had any ideas, except that Jeremy got to her first, and they had a yelling match. Jeremy then called the Y and canceled his newly appointed 6-9:30 shift. After his dad found out about this, they had a yelling match ("You know, there is such a thing as respecting your parents." "This is my life, I should be able to say what I do with it!" "And this is my house, so as long as you live under my roof.." ) and I hid. I could hear it anyway, so eventually I came out and said that for the love of God I'd just call my parents and tell them to come later, after Jeremy's come home, which seemed to agree with everyone. I call.

We take time to calm down for a bit. We do another puzzle and play cards some, and occasionally Jeremy wishes himself away from home. My dad calls, and though reception is bad we figure that he and my mom are stuck in traffic driving down from Toronto, and can't pick me up until Tuesday. If he'd've called earlier, we'd've avoided a situation.

We have dinner early, and go of to the Y.

Jeremy changes into his life guard uniform, a red wifebeater with black swim trunks, and looks silly. However, he has a nice whistle that, as his sceptor of authority, sounds out shrill and piping. I hop into the pool and get bored quickly. I also sit around in the sauna, and soak in the whirlpool, and then, bored, go back into the pool and bug the lifeguard every fifteen seconds. There are many little kids and sound carries across the water. Jeremy is hot and I splash water across his toes. 2 hours and thirty minutes to go. After a bit, the free swim closes so I get out and sit shivering on the bleachers. Jeremy tests the chemical properties of the water, like Ph and chlorine level. A woman in one of the water aerobics class gets a nosebleed, so I check up on her in the woman's lockerroom at Jeremy's behest to make sure she's okay and then we clean up the trail of blood with disinfectant, and file an injury report. This is about as exciting as lifeguarding gets. With nothing better to do, I play with the water aerobics class "weights" (they're actually foam so they float, providing resistance in the water) and do laps.

We come home and decide to play in the backyard pool, since we're in swimsuits anyway. The water is cool. The back porch lights are on so we see no stars. Jeremy takes my hands and I step on his toes and we waltz across the pool. He says he can't dance, but this is because he is only thinking of what other people think of as dance. He dances better than he knows.

When we get back in, everyone is asleep. We take showers to rinse the chlorine off. Jeremy is drunk, in a fashion. For many people, being drunk causes horniness. For Jeremy, horniness causes a semi-drunken state, in which his judgment is impaired, he speaks in monosyllables, cannot walk in a straight line, and should not be allowed to operate motor vehicles or heavy machinery. I toss on my clothes, pry myself away from him, slam the bathroom door between him and me and flee to the living room. After a while, he comes out sober, and we rest against each other on the couch in the dimness of the nightlight feeling the rise and fall of our breathing until we fall asleep.

--

Tuesday comes with Jeremy's morning shift, so I go off with him. There's not much different about this time, except that I am much more serious about doing laps, and giving Jeremy neck massages with water to cool him down every once in a while. Sometimes I sit on the bleachers next to him and we talk.

After his shift, Jeremy's dad takes us to the Utz Potato Chip Factory (the Utz factory) in Hanover so we can take a factory tour. We get free samples, and look through windows down on conveyer belts of potatoes and steam rising from fryers and rather frantic packers, and a giant warehouse. By each window is a red button. Jeremy's dad gleefully pushes each of them. When pressed, soothing music emits from a speaker in the ceiling, and a cheerful, phone operator-type voice narrates the fascinating process of how Utz creates its tasty, high quality products from only the freshest ingredients, etc. Jeremy's dad comments on how it would be great to have the job as one of the guys who picks out potato chips considered defective for being dark. You could eat a few here or there, but Jeremy disagrees and says the defective potato chips are simply sold to farmers and used for pig feed. In a for-profit company, not an ounce goes to waste. The process of making potato chips is not a revelation (slice, dip, fry, pack, ship) and Jeremy's dad says that it's a pity that the Snyder's pretzel factory is closed, but I find it fascinating that each room in the factory sequentially follows the accounting process: raw materials inventory, works in process, finished goods inventory. I ponder whether it would be calculated under job or process cost accounting and decided it was process, and which processes would be covered under joint costs (washing, slicing, frying, but not flavoring), and how since Utz is a manufacturer and not a retailer its Cost of Goods Sold (ending Finished Goods Inventory minus Beginning Finished Goods Inventory) would be based on Cost of Goods Manufactured (Ending Work in Process Inventory minus Beginning Work in Process Inventory). I may be wrong; it's summer. I took a little accounting field trip. I'm sure you don't care.

Plus, we went to the Utz outlet store and ate free samples of all different flavors. I asked Jeremy's dad if the turkey plant gave out free samples. He thought I was grotesque.

At home, after lunch, I went with Jeremy to an old abandoned train, by the old station, which had been converted into a coffee shop (the train, not the station. The station is a museum.) We ordered some chai and were ecstatic, realizing that a shelf to the rear of the train was stacked with all variety of board games and card games, and we especially enjoyed Mind Trap, a card set of groan-inducing riddles, mindteasers and puzzles. Nearby, a gaggle of elderly customers were talking about the joys and sorrows of living in Bethesda. Small world.

Apparently my parents got lost because Jeremy's house is out of the way, and people were none too friendly in pointing it out to them. But eventually we got home and my parents picked me up, and when I got home and my mom went to bed in a roadtrip-induced stupor, I was lonelier than before I left.

Gettysburg 2004

So over July 4th weekend, I went to Gettysburg, and by default, New Oxford.

Friday night, I stayed up til 4 am making pies. The banana creme pie worked out to be quite yummy, the personally I thought it tasted better hot than chilled, like you're supposed to. The latticed blueberry pie had a fatal collision with the kitchen carpet. Sustained an oven burn on my arm.

Saturday, July 3rd, went to Gettysburg to watch re-enactments. Met up with Jeremy, and presented him with a slice of banana creme pie. He left it in the car, and it melted. The Gettysburg re-enactments themselves have the feel of a country fair, with a rows of rectangular white tents set up with aisles in between them littered with straw, selling overpriced lemonade, hotdogs, funnelcakes, and other miscellaneous fair fare, and of course the line of ubiquitous blue porto-potties. There is of course Civil War merchandise unique to these types of events; the nightmarishly hot woolen uniforms of the Union and the more comfortable cotton ones of the Confederacy, sturdy boots, collectable weapons for ungrown-up adults and plastic guns and wooden sabers for children, prints, hair braiding services, wooden craft knicknacks, video casettes of previous battles or DVDs of old favorites, Civil War movies, CDs of folk music from Appalachia and the South. Women in gingham and calico hoop skirts and straw bonnets wander around fanning themselves, contemporary naval officers in full uniform stroll about looking at muskets along with brass-buttoned historical counterparts, looking rather dashing in gold and red piping, with their sideburns or muttonchops, and modern mounted policemen do slow patrols around. Gettysburg is a bit like Rennfest, except the accents are real. Bikers and other species of red-blooded American males display their Confederate pride, or perhaps simply a breed of country music patriotism in shirts emblazoned with things like, "God Bless America, " or "Freedom isn't Free." Pickup trucks, draped or painted in the blue cross on red of the South roll up the hill and squash the grass in the parking field, and closer by, pickups pass with Union or Confederate soldiers seated and dangling their legs out the back. Some of the trucks haul artillery.

We were a bit early for the battle, so we had a stroll around. Away from the glut of merchandise, we talked to a camp surgeon, who showed us various amputation procedures on his comical collection of plastic and rubber legs, complete with fake blood. We passed tents as men and women tended to smoky fires wafting the smell of frying ham, and a camp follower woman generously fed us hardtack, much to our misfortune. We ended up getting, in the commercial area, "Italian sausage," which is fair fare, not Civil War fare, but a lot better tasting.

Didn't get a very good view of the battle itself, though we were in the front row of the general "seating" (by which they mean standing, in a crowd) area flanking the (more expensive) grandstands. A man with a loudspeaker began to narrate from a platform, explaining the battle and its significance. I ignored him. From the Union Camp on our right, a mass of men, dark and buglike against the distance of the hills, snaked to the top of a hill, where the cannons already were. Further out, a line of men set up, in formation, hunkered down in the high grass at the crest of a hill, muskets pointed. Solo cavalrymen, on horses doll-like in the distance, charged back and forth, seemingly at random. A signal from somewhere, the line moved. All this setting up was interspersed by long periods of nothing, with the sun beating down upon our backs. Cannons fired, a blossom of smoke expelled from the barrel and a vortex cloud spiraled from the mouth visible, and half a beat later the boom of thunder like a loud clap, and gradually later, the rotten-egg smell of sulphur and the battlefield cloaked in plumes of smoke. Something was happening on the other side. The deceptively cheerful music of the fife and drum corp, escorting people to "kill" each other. Long periods of nothing. Being that it was a Union retreat, it ended with a bunch of people swarming spectacularly on our side. Then the battle "ended," by which they meant somebody won, I guess.

We were hot and a bit bored, so we left.

-----

Sunday, the Fourth, went back to Gettysburg for the last day of battle, which is supposedly the most intense. We got there pretty late, and so we couldn't find any seats. Apparently the last day is the most popular, and everyone had camped out in the general seating area with picnic blankets or lawn chairs. We spent the first battle, a cavalry battle, running back and forth behind the grandstands trying to get a peek of the action through the gaps in the bleachers. We did end up just standing behind the press photographers, which made for a good close-up, if limited panoramic view, and watched cavalry skirmish with fake sabrists wheeling about slashing at each other and shots of smoke puffing out from pointed pistols.

Spent some time going over to the Confederate and Union camps (Reb and Federal), where re-enactors actually lived for three days. Union camp was larger and seemingy better organized. It seemed quite normal, with tents, smoke fires and food, signs with rules and regulations posted, people sitting around talking, a group of rowdy young men firing their muskets into the air, and a more disciplined dozen or so doing drills, horses tied to lines stretched between trees, surrounded by a ring of horse trailers, patties all over the ground like mud, and plentiful piles of firewood. A black cavalryman on a prancing grey Arabian poses and parades for hoop-skirted, bonneted women and girls. "I was just in the Midwest, chasing Indians," he says, of his full-time hobby/job. Semaphore signalers stood a few yards apart and practiced, while having colorful conversations with a modern Navy signaller. As it started to rain, a boy with a tin whistle, a fiddler and a guitarist began to improv within one of the tents, a high and lovely music to the patter of rain on canvas, a dry place and home (at least for a bit) while the world stormed outside.

When we left, we could still hear the tin whistle from the stalls. a grinning trio of teenage boys beat snaredrums for loose change. We decided to get a funnelcake and lemonade and get seats.


The last battle was Pickett's Charge. We did get a good view this time, at the center edge of the general seating area, near the front. It began to pour, historically accurately, and umbrellas bloomed above the lawn chairs. It stopped, and the umbrellas disappeared. The boring, eternity of setting up, as usual, at least this time, without the heat. We had a better view of both sides this time. Cannons boomed their incoherent language to one another across the field, and short flashes flared up in the grass where the cannonballs "hit." A haybale exploded in flame and tiny firefighters in the distance rushed out to douse it, unspooling hoses. Through the smoke, the signallers motioned their troops into position; far off at Confederate camp I saw, waving around, a tiny white flag with a red square in the middle, in the distance almost appearing to be a dot. I was starting to expect samurai. Though you couldn't see them, the Confederate host down the hill far to the left took up a wild and undulating battle cry, and like the dramatic scenes in movies, became louder and louder until the sudden line of them rose, visible, above the hill's crest. Pickett's Charge. They began running, past and away from us, the flag held high, and threw themselves upon the Union barricates. With a sound of repeated, reverbing, popping, cracks, not one of which would end before the other began, like marbles being scattered to a hard surface, and a leaping line of muzzleflash ripping down the line, the Union formations let unload the contents of their rifles, again and again. Yelling, smoke, screams, people fell, from the Confederate camp, men and women with stretchers racing up at what seemed to be painfully slow pace. We, calm spectators, watched a man attempt to get up, and fall to the ground again. Clash, hand to hand combat.

"Where's the Confederate Army?" I asked, peering at the field of blue. A woman next to me handed me her binoculars, and I peered at all the Grey men scattered on the ground, and in close vision, saw smoke and broken lines and the surprisingly brief, frantic, animal struggle that follows and concludes after half an hour of setting up, boredom, impatience and waiting.

"This," announced the announcer solemnly, "is the true horror of war. You can buy this video for $7.99."

People in the general seating area began leaving. They decided to get lunch. Meanwhile, the Union and Confederate reenactors were shaking hands in the right field, and firing off their muskets in random celebratory round of a weekend well done, and the corpses picked themselves up off the ground. A group of re-enactors yelled, "HOOAH!" There came the review, where the soldiers would march from one side to the other by the audience, waving, saluting, grinning and posing in general for photographs, including a Union cavalry officer who looked remarkably similar to Mr. Hines.

The rain, having let up for the duration of the battle, couldn't hold it in any longer, and the skies opened. In the gaps between the rain, a couple of young boys pummeled each other with their wooden sabers and shot each other, proving that in every generation, children will always play soldier, and then grow up, and stop playing. The loudspeaker announcer wished the best of luck to those re-enactors about to leave for Iraq and Afghanistan. Me and Jeremy looked around, and decided to leave. We sat on the haybale in a tent listening to a brass band playing "Stars and Stripes Forever" with instruments they claimed dated from the Civil War.

They must have, because they sounded awful.