Nixon-esque Library of AIM Conversations

2000-2004 (RIP).

Whenever I had an "important" conversation on AIM I used to save it, with a naming scheme to quickly identify the who and the what. This came in handy whenever I wanted to brood on the specifics of what was said and try to pick apart why it was phrased as such. I got good at that.

How horrible a friend was I to have to dissect what we said? When such friends became not friends it angered me. I'd try to trace the shifts via the records. Should have seen that coming. It was never good to ruminate on that much animosity, but it was how I did. It was comforting because it was familiar.

Of course, having a record like that was useful for other reasons. It was good material to use against people at times. And since it was AIM, you could do some creative editing and present it convincingly enough to piss someone else off if it was advantageous to me at the time.

Case in point: goading Brandon into calling Cameron a name, and then promptly telling Cameron as such. It was a good way to tip the scales my way. Of course, I got a stick thrown at me for it, but the ends justify the means.

Off Course

1997.

I can trace the driving force behind me getting a Playstation. It was Final Fantasy VII.

I first saw the game at a friend's house. Nader, I believe. He handed me the control and fired up a new game. The opening was amazing. The bombing mission of the Midgar Mako Reactor was thrilling. Here was the RPG that I had played more than half my life but with cutting edge graphics. The music was loads better than the days of 8-bit and 16-bit. This was the glory of full-fledged 32-bit music and animation. Not only was there an epic story and big-ass swords and a blaxpoitation character, there was all sorts of other gameplay aspects. The main story itself takes awhile to get through but then there's all the mini games at the Golden Saucer, Chocobo Racing (and Breeding), materia gathering and whatnot. The battle arena had a wonderful typo that keeps showing up every round and we still make allusions to it. In the Brothers Alvarado Chocobo Breeding farm we developed our naming convention for industry: 023-9 and followed by the letter we were on. The first bred chocobo was 023-9a, but by 023-9h, we had struck chocobo gold.

In retrospect, as with all things, the graphics do not hold up and the gameplay isn't stellar. It was a good game, I'll still say. It was easily eclipsed by many finer ones, one in particular, but it was important since it was impetus of me wanting a Playstation.

13

Lucky 13.

2000 and onwards.

I've spoken before about how marching band brings together folks from diverse backgrounds. The old cliques give way to a separate band clique. One of the defining features for the bands, I had thought to be universal but seemed to be localized to the Dickinson Gator Band, was the knowing how to play a certain card game.

Tien len is a simple game to pick up and handy since it's designed for 4 players and there was hardly a drought of band members. Of course, there is skill required to win consistently but it's great game to soak up time.

I was never the best, but I was good. I spent the majority of my first trimester of junior year playing 13 with two guys, non-band kids, Ben and Aaron, at lunch. The two of them taught me how to shuffle, bridge, quickly deal, and stack a deck. I started carrying a deck of cards in my pocket at all times whenever I was in school, ready for a friendly game when time allowed.

I was disheartened when Robby thought I had just made up the card game when we had time to kill at and a deck of cards at UH. 13 was as big a part of band as marching at festivals. Sure we had to a show to do, but then we had umpteen and three more shows from other schools to watch. That was prime 13ing time.

I still enjoy a good card game. I sometimes miss my old weekly game of poker, but that's a different memory for a lot of different reasons.

Bushido Blade

Fighting has never been my thing, particularly unarmed. While always having an interest in it, I decided not to go pro with it. I could never really get behind the idea. But stabbing someone with a sword? Sure, sign me up.

It's hard to date this one. Let's say 1998, because I don't think I had heard of the game around the time of its release.

Bushido Blade is a very simple fighting game. The premise involves Japanese people killing each other with swords. That's about all I can remember now. Maybe something about a Sue clan and some Narukagemi or something. But yeah, swordfighting and it was cool. I was going through a phase of renting Wu-Tang movies from Blockbuster and so I was particularly into Japanese swordplay at the time.

When I first started throwing-down with my brother and my friends we were a little surprised that you could win in one move. This was, after all, a video game. What's more was that if you took a shot to the leg, you might get crippled. And instead of moving just left or right we had all the directions we could dream of running (8). What was this? Surely, this was no mere game. This was so much more. This was life.

Of course, it was still just a game and it's not really at all realistic, but it got me thinking of how much more realistic games could be, and were getting. Of course, no one really wants to play a game that is exactly like real life as an escape if it was real life. It got a lot of playtime because it was different from all the other fighting games that we played.

One lasting legacy of playing this game as much as I did with my brother and friends was our system of determining a victor. Since death is a mere slash away, we decided on a set number of wins necessary to walk away the victor: 20. Why 20? Because it took just long enough to feel right to give up the control if you lost.

And no, I don't keep the bushido. I know you already knew that, but that's something I wouldn't change if I had the chance either.

The Eternal City

I have never been to Rome. I would like to go there one day and launch my campaign to subjugate the world from the very heart of the city. Or just visit. I hear they have good gelato.

In my quest for power, I look up to powerful leaders. I found the best examples in the Caesars. Not only are they paradigms for current rule and control, but they are great examples for how to get to rule.

In 2006 I caught part of an episode of HBO's excellent show Rome. I hadn't seen the show before, but I had always been interested. This sort of show is my bread and butter but I never caught the start. I had by chance caught the 8th episode of the first series. Caesar, I assumed, by the strength of Ciaran Hinds' performance alone who else could it have been, and James Purefoy's Antony, I assumed, played a scene that perfectly expressed who was who and what was going on. Caesar makes a brash military decision and is questioned by his lieutenant. When reminded that Caesar could have some hubris in his plan, he calmly responds, "It's only hubris if I fail." What was left unsaid was "... and I never fail." That moment of TV-dom struck me as the standard to measure rulers against. I could also imagine Caesar saying that very thing as well. Well, in Latin, at least.

Remember that. Hubris only comes when I fail. And if that impossible situation were to happen, I have an heir eager for power and perfectly capable of rectifying any mistakes I made during my fall.

Do you have any ce-wew-wee?

In 1989, the future was now, only it wasn't since that's 20 years ago now.

In kindergarten, people thought I had a speech impediment. If I did, it was very slight. But, no. My problem was that I thought everyone I spoke to could keep up with how fast I spoke and could also hear me. A boy of slight height and weight, I didn't have a voice that carried so it was hard for an adult to hear me. I also spoke much, much faster than what I could type at the heighth of my programming endeavor. So unless you put serious cognitive effort behind it, you might have missed out on what I was saying. Years later, I'm fairly sure this is the case, since I spoke faster than people were comfortable hearing to try to keep up with my thoughts. I write much slower than my thoughts come to me, but I try like the Dickens to write the speed of my mind. This is one of three reasons of why my handwriting is often confused with hieroglyphics. (My wife disagrees. "Hieroglyphics are legible.")

Anyways, my next door neighbor did have a speech impediment. No one could really understand him because he spoke mostly gibberish and couldn't pronounce certain letters. One day, he came over asking for some vegetables on behalf of his mom. My mom couldn't understand him, so I stepped in as translator. "Mom, he wants cel-er-y," I spoke at regular my motormouth speed. "Oh!" She said.

I was reminded of the sheer speed I can sometimes speak when I'm excited and how I'm not always clear, because, somewhere, deep down, I'm sure everyone can understand my beautiful, precious thoughts and that I'm debasing myself by allowing me to be slowed down by mere words and grammar.

Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge

2004.

The throes of marching band were taking their toll psychologically and physiologically. At Cougar Place, Brandon and Robby both had dorms. In their common room, they had an Xbox. So, one night, we decided to go to Blockbuster and rent a few games. I ended up getting a copy of Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge.

Now, I've played Crimson Skies before on the PC and I always wanted to play the Xbox game. So, finally, I had the chance. Robby, Brandon and myself embarked on a long journey. Having never played the Xbox game myself, I figured we were all on pretty equal ground. (I was more or less right. I should have said level ground, as in it was fairly level where I was towering far above them.) I can not say I've never lost in Crimson Skies nor in Goldeneye, but once I got the hang of it, like Goldeneye, I could not be stopped.

The controls were simple to get and the mechanics didn't take too long to master. In an hour or so, I was sailing around, weaving between skyscrapers and shooting down my friends. I could immelmann out of danger and destroy you before you could barrel roll. I was a scourge of the virtual representation of the horizon.

I would go on to beat the game on its hardest difficulty in an un-upgraded Devastator. It took time to master, but I did it.

You cannot defeat me. If you ever want to die, I will see you on the streets of Chicago. Still no college regrets of how I spent my time, by the way.

How I Met Parsons

1989. September.

I was 5 years old and I had gone to the much dreaded school that I had heard something about. It wasn't so bad. They asked me easy stuff like colors and to count as high as I could. (I got to 100 and then added tax. I knew there were numbers past 100, just wasn't sure how to get there. And I knew that tax always meant you had to pay more.)

There I met a lot of other kids, like almost 20 other kids. I saw this one kid who was called Michael, or Mike for short. (I think there was at least one other Mike there, but they were pretty different.)

I was in the AM Kindergarten class, so I recall playing behind the house in the afternoon. Lo and behold, but who were to come walking down my street? It was Mike. He was flanked by two other kids. Little kids. So I said, "Hey Mike!" He got angry as he approached. "How'd you know my name?" he bellowed. "It's me, René. We met at school today." That answer didn't seem to satisfy him. We were approaching melee range, so I dropped into a hyper-assassin stance I saw on TV as he and his backup entered into similar stances. As we worked up the nerve to throw a fist, kick, swipe, or bite, or something, he exclaimed, "Oh, I remember you!"

We both instantly dropped the aggressive stances. We were best friends afterwards.

I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski

1998. March. A most magic time.

I saw my first R-rated movie without a parent or legal guardian. My best friend Parsons and I went to see the most important movie of the modern era: The Big Lebowski.

The two of us quickly huddled inside the house and excitedly chattered about what it was we were about to embark on. We entered mere boys of 13. We left forever changed. We left as mere boys of 13 who had experienced something too awesome to fully fathom when one is just 13. It had loads of humor, wit, action, drinking, nudity, and CCR.

The Big Lebowski is movie that requires no explanation. That's handy of it because there is little explanation possible. The Dude's journey and travails was the modern interpretation of what Joseph Campbell called Hero's Journey. That's at least what I wrote about in my English Composition II class at UH in 2002. Something about having Jesus and a gang of nihilists and a marmot altogether meant that it had to have deeper meaning in there. Or it's just a stoner movie. All that adds to the fun.

The Dude spoke to me on a personal level because he was the laziest man of Los Angeles, which put him in the running of laziest man worldwide. Yet, his unique set of skills allows him to solve a web of mystery and do it with style.

My friends and I can still spout quotes of this movie for long stretches at the time, but not quite go through the whole thing verbatim. Though we've only forsaken what we were doing at the time to go bowling once, we have done that. My favorite cocktail is the White Russian, and it makes me bowl better.

When my wife saw the movie the first time she gained a deeper understanding of my friends.

Today, I am an ordained minister of Dudeism. It's one of my proudest achievements.

All that from a fortuitous combination of being bored one weekend, having the money and a ride, and an overly lax enforcement of ratings for my best friend and I to get in at the theater.

The Dude Abides.

Me and the Cap'n (Trips) Making It Happen

I have come down with the superflu a few times. It wasn't pleasant. I got better. However, whenever I get the flu, it's in its weaponized or at least africanized stages.

One particular bout against a mankind-ending strain, I recall vividly. By vividly, I mean I wasn't sure at one point if I was alive or dead. It was 2001, and Zarathustra had long since spake. Zarahustra may or may not have been speaking to me personally.

This illness was important because it marked one of a few pivotal events that started me over the crippling phases of my fear of death. During a period of wakefulness, I made myself get out of bed despite the inordinate amount of pain it took to live, and started pulling books from my bookshelf. I started leaving index cards marking how far I've read in these books and placing them inside. I wrote things like "Unfinished" and "Unread" on a number of books.

When I was done, I grabbed a book, I think a Lord of the Rings book, or perhaps one chronicle of Narnia and collapsed on my bed. I started to read. I think I maybe made it a page. I then fell asleep and had a fever dream.

In the fever dream I was battling hordes of monsters, easily dispatching them because that was a hero's lot. I was on an epic journey and I'd knew I'd make it regardless. I would be fine.

When I awoke, my fever broke and I felt a strange calm. I collected my index cards from my books and realized that whether anyone knew I read these or not didn't really matter. They were my books, I could read them or not read them if I chose. But, regardless, I'd still, one distant day, die. But I would be fine.

Whatever awaits us or whatever lack of anything that doesn't await or whatever, I'd be fine.

The Stick Incident

2001. Summer. That's as specific as I can get.

I was looking forward to a lot of changes that year. We had a space odyssey to look forward to and the rise of the machines. It was a scary and exciting time.

The Stick Incident happened at a park on Bay Area Boulevard. I was still friends with my friends (this would not be the case in 4 months' time) and we were invited to a party by a friend of a friend, or some such. I recall going because my ride to my gig that night was going to the party. I was in the pit for our local playhouse's production of Li'l Abner, as was my best friend at the time. His twin brother (our ride) was in the play. So it all worked out for us.

Reyes, someone I quickly lost track of after high school, was grilling burgers. For some reason, he put meat tenderizer on the burgers which made for great disintegrating meat piles. That memory alone would have made this party stick out in my mind.

A girl named Cameron I liked at the time was also there. As soon as I had arrived, I had spent most of my time talking to her instead of my friends. We separated ourselves from the group.

Brandon was also there. This will be key in a moment.

When Cameron and I rejoined the group to eat, Brandon was fairly irate at me. Now, fairly for Brandon can typically be considered out-of-whack for other folks. When Brandon shops for irateness, he buys it in bulk and doles it out in spades. For this particular instance, he doled it out in stick. During his tirade he had been using a fallen tree branch to gesture emphatically.

To be honest, I don't remember the build-up to it. I don't even recall the last thing he said before it and I tend to be good about this sort of thing. But no. All I remember was the stick he threw at me. He was a good (I suck at judging distances) 5 yards away. The stick spun a few times before it struck me in my gut.

I didn't do anything.

In the eternity it took for the stick to make contact I didn't move. It's been pointed out to me that I can have the reflexes of a sleepy tortoise. I stood there. I just stood there. It hurt but I'd felt God's undistilled vengeance before. The only reaction I gave afterward was asking, "Why'd you throw a stick!? Who throws a stick!?"

The other party goers, including my future wife, her best friend, The Wicked Witch of the Southeast, and my favorite teacher from high school all shouted a disapproving, "Brandon!"

He gave a confused, "What? Why didn't you move?"

That was 7 and a half years ago. I finally have an answer: Who the Hell throws a stick?

The Spirit of Houston Cougar Marching Band: The Haves and the Will-Nevers

2003-2004.

UH Marching Band is an awing experience. From the first fiendish practices onward, it drew you in, it did ... things to your soul (and that's its own memory for later on, after the damage has been healed), and made you part of something much greater than yourself.

I'm an egoist. This is not a bad thing; it is only right and proper to worship that which is holy. So when I say this, you need to truly understand the frame of reference.

The band was diverse. It had both kinds of people: Music Majors and Nons. The Nons were a frail, sickly, and dying breed. The director tolerated them only as much as he did because they enjoyed equal opportunity employment protection, at least for a little while. The first year wasn't so bad, but in my second year when the band became much more regimented and "structured" then it was it more noticeable.

Now, the Music Majors were the alphas of the pack. They got first dibs on the loot from our fallen foes and fought in the second line using the Nons as fodder. The Music Majors were always in the know of the happenings of the band, having to relocate their dens to the Moores School of Music during their tenure lest they perish. Whether or not you wanted your form corrected, on the overall, they would do it for you. They were in the right because they had classes in this and the Nons were just some pissants. The arrogance was often visible in the heat haze of practice.

Music Majors were majoring in music for a reason, however. These people would lead their own marching bands and cause untold suffering on their legions one day. Others would try to make the world a brighter place and actually teach music. Others would make their living by playing their horn. Those people were very, very good at what they did. That didn't necessarily make them the kind best-suited to quietly accepting criticism or putting up with someone who very clearly was not (nor will ever be) at their level.

I am fond of the clarinet. I've accepted I'm not at the best at it and I have only rarely done the necessary practice to improve my skills. Clarinet music tends to involve the instrument's range and also require a lot of dexterity for highly technical passages. I was able to get through them, but I wasn't going to be performance-level like some of my betters. When it came to the marching and playing, I had trouble keeping up, as did other Nons.

The second year, there was a squad leader system set up, wherein members were would be in squads, who report to the section leaders (or the assistant section leader), who report to specific drum majors. We weren't anything close to even a PMC and we weren't interested in the band becoming one. But the Music Majors, the elites, prospered under this system, lending them authority to be superior.

I really thought I had more, but ... it sucked.

There were a few bright beacons of hope despite this. Another story for another day.

The Spirit of Houston Cougar Marching Band: An Intro

2003 was a great year. Not as great as 2004, or 2005, or 2006, or 2007, or 2008, or the start of 2009, or 2001, 2002, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995, 1994, 1993, 1992, 1991, 1990, 1989, 1988, 1987, 1986, 1985, 1984, or around 44 BC, but an excellent year nonetheless.

The second year at UH was markedly different from the first. Where the first year I hardly went to class and had long bouts of insomnia, the second had a lot of the same but I recall eating more pecan pie.

The second year at UH was also my first year in the marching band. All told, this was my third year of marching band counting high school. The level of marching was on par to what I was used to. We even had a band director that reminded me of my first director.

Between dancers, color guard, and all of the band itself, we fielded about 300 people.

The first week was an awing week, as the sheer grandeur of college marching was quite the sight to behold. It was also, of course, grueling. In high school we learned to march a show to perfection in a few months. Now, we had two weeks per show, or less. I believe we had 30-40 causalities within the first hour.

Two things struck me on that first day. The first was that there were no bad marchers. By my senior year of high school I wasn't the best, but I was extremely able. At UH, I could easily have been on the bottom tier of marchers, particularly that first week since my freshman year could easily be summed up as an excess of inactivity. But I never gave up. And neither did anyone else. The second thing was that at the end of practice, we all came together around the director and we sang the alma mater. My high school didn't practice a similar tradition so to hear such vigorous (and perhaps angelic? I'm not sure, I was in beaucoup amounts of agony) singing after such hard work.

It was inspiring. Or brainwashing. I'm still not sure.

How I Met My Mother-in-Law

2006. April.

Instead of a music memory, here's another food memory.

I started the morning by going to visit my brother and sister-in-law (as in his wife, not Judith's sister) at their apartment in Houston. We went out to eat at a place called Prince's, which is a pseudo 50's diner place. I had a 1/3 of a pound of burger with avocado. I had a mountain of fries and a milkshake to go with it. So, foodwise I was sated.

We went back to my brother's and left for home shortly thereafter. A few minutes after I got home, I went to Judith's. She had invited me over for her mother's birthday. Her old place was a just few minutes so I was there in short order.

I was greeted by Judith and then promptly herded to the table, which had pipian, which is a pork dish with a pumpkin seed sauce. On a scale of not awesome to totally awesome, this tops off at totally awesome. Unfortunately for me, I had already eaten just a bit previously. I told Judith I couldn't finish my rather sizable plate of rice, pipian, noodles, served with tortillas. I said that it was great but I was full. She offered to take my plate away for me but I insisted that I'd continue to pick at it. She relented because I said I didn't want her mom to ask me if I didn't like it. Later, my plate didn't get completely finished. Judith's mom saw my plate and immediately asked Judith to ask me if I didn't like it. I tried to assure her that I did, but I had just eaten. I'm not sure if she believed me.

It's just something about moms and food, I guess. I would have backed off the burger, had I known and had a chance to do it all over again. But it was a good learning experience. I learned to starve myself whenever Judith's grandmother was in town.

Farorei

Another music memory.

With Callehe, I had my fractured mind. And it was good. It took me a long time to write and it took a lot of hard work. I had to write it against standard music theory and still make it listenable.

2006.

Farorei ... was different in a number of ways. It was the first and so far only piece I've ever written for something not of my creation. In this case a character in WoW (which is something we'll get into later. Much later. And invariably in great detail).

It was always meant as a string piece. I even started it as such, rare for me since I prefer writing what I know. I chose the strings because I had been thinking of a string quartet that's in Band of Brothers (String Quartet In C Sharp Minor, Op.131 by Ludwig van) and because strings sounded the best in the Garritan Personal Orchestra. It took me less than 90 minutes, beginning to end to complete the notes. (I'm still fine-tuning the balance, but I haven't touched a note, just trying to re-master it just right.) It started off as "not sure yet.mus" until I had finished it and then I knew what it was. It's a sad song of the dreary eternal existence of undeath. The repetitious nature and fade out were meant to show how each day just drags on. The beginning and the end are the almost exactly the same so it could easily be looped. Within the song, even, the variation of the second verse is even the same notes, just in a different rhythm.

This was a by-the-numbers verse and refrain bit. The little music theory I knew went into play here. The repeating 4 bass notes, the phrasing, the leitmotif, all pretty basic stuff. And it sounded awesome. It was as if I had a small chamber group doing my bidding. I was easily able to convert it to .mp3 and send out the file to everyone. Prior to this, everyone got a .mid of my music. Depending on their software and hardware, it'd sound different to different people. Finally, with the .mp3 format, it'd sound just about the same everywhere. My friends were really impressed with it especially since it was leaps and bounds better than the blips and bloops of the antediluvian midi. I shouted it out from rooftops: I am a composer, hear me roar. Worship unto me! Listen and adulate me.

Yet, it annoys me that people say it's my best song. Yeah, it sounds great. It's catchy. It's very easy on the ear (since it follows music theory closest of any of my named pieces). But it didn't take a lot to write. Though, I'm glad people like it and all.

Blarg.

Callehe

There are times we all have to take stock of our lives. Rather simple questions are fraught with deep contemplations, usually with some wine or extremely expensive scotch. These questions are usually the of the ilk of: Who am I? Where am I? What have I done? Where am I going? What am I going to do? (N.B.: There are times which you have to ask yourself these questions and you shouldn't deeply contemplate. In these situations, you often need to run, call a guy to set up an alibi, or help fill in the gaps from the missing days, and usually help you bury the body. Adrenaline, not reflection, gets you through those situations.)

When I look at what I've done, I'm usually happy (orbis non sufficit aside). I kept a running list of things to do before I died (or entered a cryogenic state to wait out my enemies and conquer the world). I've crossed off a whole lot of those things. This memory is about a musical cross off. I always wanted to write a song that captured "something". Then I wanted to capture specific "somethings."

This begins in December of 2005. I sat down and started with a piano piece. Now, I'll never claim to know music theory, but I knew I wanted to do something different. What I ended up with were variations on a somewhat haunting theme. The problem was, I essentially had two pieces that went with it, but they didn't go together. That's when I realized, that's what made it work.

Callehe is a character of mine. There's various incarnations of her in pretty much whatever I write. She's even been worked into stories for RPGs I've run. Whatever the universe, Callehe's an interesting person, to me. She was first conceived of as the main antagonist of my Great American Novel. She's a vile little girl who is also paranoid schizophrenic. She's not vile because she is crazy. She's just malice incarnate. It had a side effect on her mental well-being though.

Callehe and her many incarnations struck me as I considered the piano piece I had nearly finished. When those disjointed melodies were joined to represent her, I finally had captured that "something" or at least a fraction of it. I had my picture of a fractured, evil little mind.

The file started off as Kappa.mus (following my music naming conventions) and then became Callehe.mus. I finally upgraded my version of Finale and I had the ability to move beyond the midi and have actual sound samples of a Steinway Grand Piano play my disjointed song. I fine-tuned it from there, playing more fully with dynamics and the expressions. Finally, I had the right mix of plotting, malice, and insanity. In Callehe these different facets are expressed into one haunting leitmotif throughout the piece. (Later re-arranged into Callehe Major this point is made much prevalently.) Sure, legendary composer Nubuo F. Uematsu wrote the Mad Jester Kefka's theme and captured something similar, but Callehe's mine, my own, my precious, vile, little crazy thing.

I tentatively played it for my friends at the end of 2005. I took their feedback, discarded any changes they had suggested, and then completed it on my own in the opening days of 2006. I would continue to re-arrange it as upgrades to my computer made it possible to support more and more channels of instrument sampling. The definitive version for awhile was Callehe for Strings, until it was eclipsed when the last set of upgrades made Callehe Major possible for full ensemble. I presented Callehe for Strings, as part of a presentation in Abnormal Psychology about depictions of mental illnesses in media. The professor and class agreed that it was indeed a song about schizophrenia.

For the final reckoning, I'll always be able to say I did this. I captured something in a unique way.

And I did it my way.

How I Met Robby

Now, college was good times. There was all sorts of folk there; all walks, all interests, and all that jazz.

2002 again? We're not sure, to be honest. I recall parts of this memory very clearly, but I cannot pinpoint the date better than that.

This afternoon was like many others. Brandon and I went to the Moody Towers cafeteria and got the usual of unhealthy food. I had the chicken strips and as per usual, took a long time to eat them. We chatted awhiles about various deep things like how much calculus sucks, how we don't understand women, and how much the world at large was a big (yet small) and confuzzling place. So as I finally finished my meal, we were getting ready to leave. Brandon then noticed two friends showing up: J.D. and Robby. Robby and J.D. got their food and then sat down with us. There we sat and shot the breeze and waxed philosophical about a wide range of things. After they finished eating, we continued to talk.

What makes this memory particularly memorable was that Robby kept playing with an unopened ketchup packet all the while. He was arranging various packets, squeezing packets, flicking them, etc. In the middle of the conversation the ketchup packet he was playing with burst. He looked genuinely surprised at it, as did we all.

Robby's a smart guy, one of the smartest I know. He was a founding father of Contest Theory and has scored more than 1 victory against me in Crimson Skies (2 is still more than 1). When it comes to academics, he can sit down and power through just about anything when he needs to. We would go on to become very good friends after eating lunch together regularly later on. All that being said, to this day, whenever I see him with a packet of ketchup I wonder if it's going to burst.

My First Memory

Cognitive psychologists have proven that the mind doesn't have a videotape (or cassette, or hard drive, or flash drive, etc) for a memory storage device. Memories aren't retrieved and replayed by finding the appropriate media holder and hitting the play button so we can watch the memory play out in perfect clarity. Memories are retrieved by cues, which can be triggered by a whole slew of things, and these cues sometimes pick up the wrong disc or whatever metaphor I'm using and the play button isn't really a play button; it's more of getting it all thrown at you at once button. This leads to misremembering events, places, things, and can even lead to wholly concocted memories that never happened.

This preface isn't to discredit all of my entries. No, instead it's meant to cast into doubt the veracity of this one. But it's my memory. It's imperfect (yet probably better than yours) but it's mine.

1987. I am standing in the living room of our house. Only, I wasn't sure it was a living room or a house. That was because I hadn't fully grasped the concept yet. I just knew I was safe, wasn't cold, wasn't hungry. I stood standing for a bit and I looked around. I recall the light blue carpet we had then. Looked at the stairs. Looked at the floor. Looked up at the ceiling. All of these particular objects I'm sure I've seen before: what was to my side, what was under me, and what was above me. I saw the door to outside, only again, wasn't sure of the concept of doors, really, and outside. I knew something was beyond the portal. I then spoke to myself, "I'm here."

My next memory doesn't come for awhile: 1988. I can't remember the basis of knowing it was 1987 when I experienced this and remembered it. It was all very surreal.

High in Fiber

Eating alone sucks and I do my best to never eat alone. Going to school meant I was always eating lunch at the same time as a bunch of other kids so eating alone was never really an issue. This does, however, sometimes pose problems.

Almost every single day of school I would have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This sammich usually came with milk, I favor chocolate, and usually two sides (perhaps some chips and some cookies), and possibly another drink like a Capri Sun or something. So, it was quite the meal.

So I started eating with a band friend. Oh what the Hell, let's go ahead and name him. So Sentell and I were eating lunch together. We started being friends by being friends by association by merit of both being band members. By this point we were pretty good friends. It was also at this point he started stealing parts of my lunch. It wasn't anything major. I really didn't need to eat all that much so I could part with my chips as such or my second drink. He was also my ride home for leaving school early. It was a small price to pay.

Anyways, this memory is of one fateful day. It started like normal: he stole my bag of chips. Then something new happened: I promptly snatched them back from his hand. He next tried for my cookies and missed. He tried a third and final time. He grabbed ahold of my napkin. He then ate it.

That was the last trimester of our senior year.

You have to admire his tenacity.

¡Que se lo coman!

Food is an important part of my life. Food's been a daily ritual since before I can remember, kinda like sleep. Food and I didn't go our different ways, though. We kept up through the years and he was there for all of my major milestones. Food has also always been a social event for me. We would sit around the table and eat as a family and talk. As such, I'm an extremely slow eater. I also have a bad habit of talking with my mouth full if it means I can get in a joke or otherwise add to the witty banter. This can happen many times in the course of a meal, since again, slow eater.

Now, I'm a manipulative bastard. There may even be a few who intimate that I am evil. People who know my parents always comment on how nice my parents are; how nice my mom is; how the Hell I am so evil if they're in fact my parents and not detectably so. Y'know, standard fare.

Well, power, as we've established, is influence over resistance. Just keep that in mind.

2008. The world was a different place. It was a simpler time. Well there was the widespread panic in the streets of the end of the world was a mere 4 years away according to the Mayan calendar. In an attempt to foster happiness in a hysteric world my mother invited my future wife and my future sister-in-law for brunch. My mom would teach my future sister-in-law how to make crepes.

For the culinarily-deprived crepes are sort of like thin pancakes. They are very light and they taste like awesomeness. These crepes were not only awesomeness-flavored, but it's common to serve fresh whipped cream and/or a hot cinnamon apple filling with them. Additionally, you can pour maple syrup on top of it because why the Hell not. Crepes are a bit labor-intensive to make, but well worth the pay off. So when it's crepe day it's for reals. My sister-in-law-to-be gorged herself on crepes as did the wife-to-be, and as did everyone else. We had a few left over. I had long since signaled defeat as did the wife. My mom politely suggested that someone should eat the crepes. She politely said that they don't reheat well. She politely suggested a second time that we eat the crepes. She then politely yelled that she said we should eat them, as she politely banged the table.

My wife, polite and gracious woman that she is, and her sister, being of similar stock, fearfully and obediently reached for the crepes and devoured them.

Man, it should be crepe day soon.

Power.

2004. On the first day of my sociology class of social structures, my professor arrived a few minutes late, wearing his full doctoral robes, complete with mortarboard and tassel. Now the professor was a genius. He was also a bit crazy but in a good way.

He then invited the strongest guy in the room to the front. He challenged the guy to an arm wrestling contest. Now, the good doctor was great at sociology (as we would later find out) but he wasn't nearly as fit as his opponent. Right before they started, he leaned in, whispered something and the guy nodded. They started the match and the good doctor easily won.

Of course, he made an arrangement to win to prove a point about social structure. The person with (nearly) complete authority over grades holds sway over someone who gets a grade from him. Sure, but the guy could have been an asshole and not thrown the match. Yet, the good doctor won and he had a great segue into the class overview.

Power, he said, was the ability to influence over resistance. I was aware of this definition before, being as power-obsessed as I am. I've also seen power used in various ways. But an old man in doctoral regalia and the former football player arm-wrestling is an image that stays with you. It was inspiring, in a way.

I did very well in that class.

The Carnival of Lona

Ah, school.

Let's look again at 2002. This would be around the time of Attack of the Clones. Senior year was drawing to a close. Classes had long since been deemed irrelevant and I was burning bridges with people I'd never thought I'd see again.

Let's recap the major milestones:
I didn't have a lot of band friends left. That kind of sucked, but my non-betraying friends were still good. (So, no great loss.)
I was broken up with my first girlfriend. We weren't speaking. (This turned out to be a good thing.)
The girl I liked at the time wasn't speaking to me. (This was actually a good thing.)
The girl that sort of liked me prior wasn't on speaking terms with me. (This ... was also a good thing.)

Yeah, I thought the epoch of this memory sucked more, but at this point was when the pendulum was swinging towards the awesome spectrum. I guess this is the story of the turning point: my best day of high school.

First class of the day for me was band. But this was after our UIL run and even after the Spring Concert. That meant we no longer had a reason to practice for the rest of the school year (all like 10 days of it). We didn't have to do our morning routine of being ready to warm up before the first bell of the day rang. So the band sat around the band hall doing non-band things: cards, gossiping, goofing off. Actually, those are all band things. Let's say we weren't doing anything musical. Then the director comes out and tells us to get our horns. Groans erupted but we followed orders nonetheless. We were baffled by what we could possibly need them for but we took our seats and started to warm up. Of course, we half-assed it, but we did it. Then the director handed me a large stack of papers. It was a song of mine.

At the start of the year I had composed my first large ensemble piece. I had shown the band director it. He said he liked it and he promised me that we would play it. That promise probably kept me in band. By the time that promise was fulfilled, that day seemed so far away.

I quickly handed out the piece to everyone. It was The Carnival of Lona, a song that's part of my special collection of music that I try to tell a story with. I had signed it with my pseudonym: Nomandy Santo. People asked me about it as I handed them the sheet. I merely told them to read the tail of my letterman jacket, my pseudonym emblazened on it.

When we were set, the director told everyone I wrote it and he told them of his promise. He said that it wasn't perfect but it was my first ensemble piece.

And so ... surely you've heard this piece. I had heard it myself many times but this was a real band playing it, one of the best in the state of Texas.

It only took the second note before an entire section played the wrong note.

We played it, slightly undertempo. The french horns couldn't hit the high notes, the flutes couldn't nail the technique, and I myself could barely keep up with the bass clarinet part. It was shaky but it sounded better than the midi from Finale.

With an upgraded Finale, the Garritan Personal Orchestra does a much better job of playing the music as I had intended it, but even perfection in sound is no substitute for the sheer power I felt that day.

Immediately after finishing it, people started griping to me. A pseudo-band-friend turned around and immediately told me that it was silly of me to give the band something to play in G Major first thing in the morning. The french horns said that it was too high for them and that the rhythms were awkward. The trumpets complained about the range. The woodwinds complained. The percussion complained. Some had valid points. I would say that some may perceive a flaw or two in the piece.

But that didn't matter. I had just heard the Dickinson Gator Band play my song. My sworn enemy played my music.

The rest of the day was full of me gloating. I had won that contest.

That ... that was a good day.

Contest Theory

The foundations of Contest Theory are deeply and inextricably rooted with evolution. Contest Theory has waxed and waned in recent years but the premise and corollaries hold steadfast despite a tumultuous world.

1) Everything is a contest.
2) For every contest there is an equal and opposite contest.
3) If you don't realize it's a contest, you've already lost.

While these premises can be held as self-evident, there are the Luddites who take issue. This post however, does not deal with the unenlightened.

Contest Theory's murky beginning is shrouded in mystery. One leading theory pinned it on a group of UH students. I, like I am at all momentous landmarks of human history, was present for it.

The year was 2004. We were at a band trip. We were supposed to be wearing our new band polo shirts. A good friend of mine was a grizzled veteran and still had a perfectly good old polo shirt. He pointed out that a few of our fellow compatriots weren't even wearing polo shirts. By default, he said, he was winning that contest against them. He also said he was tied with anyone wearing the old band shirt. He admitted defeat against anyone who was wearing the proper, new shirt.

The sun burned a little brighter, aiding the revelation burnt into us then and there.

After that day, we were finally able to properly codify everyday events. It was that day ... we learned to live as God intended.

Who Needs Sleep

Sleep and I haven't really been friends. I mean, we met and things started out okay, I guess. That was before I had conscious memories. Then, things changed. We changed. We drifted apart.

In 2002, still a freshman at UH, I was growing accustomed to the whole not having to go to class thing. Staying up late and sleeping in were pretty cool. What wasn't cool was the insomnia I sometimes got. One week was particularly bad.

I arrived back at campus Sunday evening. Feeling unusually tired, I called it an early night. All of a sudden, I shot up. It was around midnight and I was feeling hungry. I went down to the convenience store, waited for it to reopen, and got some chocolate milk and a candy bar. Booyah, the healthy diet of a college freshman. Anyways, I went back to my dorm, sat at my computer. I was playing a game I was enthralled with at the time and wasn't feeling tired. 6a rolled by. 7. 8. 9. My first class was at 10, so it was about that time to get ready to go. I didn't always go to my Intro to Psychology lecture but I went that morning. That Friday we had our term paper due. The prompt was something along the lines to write about an approved psychological topic citing academic sources. My thesis was effects of sleep depravation on academic performance.

I went to the rest of my classes that day, setting up a time later in the week to meet up in the library with my friend who was also in the class, and lived 4 doors down from me on campus. That night, we played pool and I ate an unhealthy dinner of chicken strips from the dorm cafeteria. Around midnight, I tried to go to sleep. I laid in bed for about an hour and realized that I wasn't tired enough to sleep. I mean, I was tired, but just couldn't sleep.

Tuesday, I went to my classes, ate, and didn't sleep again. Laying in bed pointlessly wasn't a good idea so I sat at my computer.

Wednesday, didn't make psychology, went to my afternoon classes, ate, and went to the library. Didn't sleep. Wednesday was when I started to notice the heavy psychological toll I was paying. During the morning my cognitive abilities were far duller than I was used to them being. At the library, if my mind wasn't actively engaged, I'd be unsure if what I saw or heard actually happened or if it was just in my head.

Thursday, I only made my history lecture. By that point I was feeling like a zombie physically in addition to mentally. And not one of those Dawn of the Dead remake zombies, but more along lines of Dawn of the Dead original zombies. It was Thursday night when my friend and I started on our papers. We had a plan: we'd take turns writing our papers at my computer. My friend had the first shift. It was then I finally slept. It was all of maybe 3 hours. But then I shot up when it was my time, proofread his paper, and started on mine. I only had one draft and there wasn't time to proof mine before having to turn in the paper. So we went turned in our papers and then went to play pool.

We both made B's.

Yeah, college mistakes were made. Passively.

if(nightmare==1)

I remember my dreams for the most part. In my professional opinion dreams are just unprocessed information that gets jostled around into the subconscious. Basically, they don't mean anything special. They do mean that something's been on your mind recently. Sometimes we forget what's been going on in the last day or two and when something we dream comes up, we're surprised and think that it's prophetic. Other times we know exactly what's been going on and so it shouldn't be a surprise that we're dreaming it.

In 2002 I was a freshman at UH, studying computer science. I was taking Intro to Computer Science I. We were programming in C. I had written programs due for that class in C++ (the language I knew fluently) to start and translated to C. An exam was coming up and I was still having trouble writing in just C and not C++ to begin. While extremely similar the differences in the languages are kind of important. I ended up doing something I rarely did: study my textbook.

I was in the habit then of reading before going to bed. Dreams tended to come from a mishmash of things I had just read and things I did in the recent days. I fell asleep after studying. And this dream was different. I've only had maybe a dozen nightmares in my life. They all sucked. This sucked the most vividly.

Here is a snippet:

if(run==1)
vampire.chase=1;
if(run==0)
vampire.attack(target);

The AI wasn't really sophisticated but the attack code was a mess. That was kidna scary in its own right.


After that dream I started to see everyday things in terms of code. Breaking down characteristics of simple objects was easy. I started looking at the games I played in terms of its mechanics and how to approximate it in code, at least in general terms. People though ... that's something else. I still want to program an AI. I wonder how that'll work out for humanity.

Can't do much to change that particular memory, at least not simply. Eh.

Goldeneye 007

Goldeneye was a pretty good movie, for what it was. The N64 video game made a much stronger impression on me.

The year was 1997. Well, that's when it came out, but that doesn't span the length of the memory. I was in 8th grade when I started playing. The game was legendary. It was an enthralling FPS that wasn't stupid (okay, yeah, the single-player plot sorta was) but that wasn't the enthralling part. The multiplayer feature wasn't groundbreaking but the level of polish in it made it "the new thing" my friends and I did. For at least a short while, I think I actually played it at least once a day with at least one friend.

Now, I'm not the best at video games and oddly enough, for someone as winning-obsessed as I, do not cheat in video games. When my friends and I first started playing, we were pretty evenly matched. I think my 3 best friends all had an N64 and a copy of the game too. As time went on, we all get better at Goldeneye. However, one day, I overtook them all.

I don't remember the exact second it happened, but the game clicked for me. The single-player mode was accessible to all on it's easiest difficulty. The harder difficulties ramped up the difficulty in a pretty even way. By the time you finished the game on Agent, you'd be up for trying it on Secret Agent. And once you were done that, it was time for the no-nonsense Double 0 Agent. Added on top of that, there were unlockable cheats available under some pretty gruelling time limits. I believe I was the only one of my friends who completely unlocked everything in the game by myself. (If memory serves, however, I did beat the untenable Facility level on 00 Agent for my best friend to unlock the cheat.)

Soon afterwards, mutliplayer games weren't an even contest where the four of us vied for the lead. It was pretty much an effort to just beat me. My weapon of choice was pistols. I recall coming up victorious in many matches of 3v1 where I was pitted against my friends. After awhile, I never lost a pistols match despite the odds.

One day, I challenged my best friend to a simple duel. We'd march ten paces away and turn and shoot. He'd have a PPK, with 7 bullets per clip and I'd have the Golden Gun, only 1 bullet in the chamber. He'd get 7 shots to my 1 before having to reload but we both had one hit kills. I didn't always win, but I usually did.

It's entirely possible that I've spent more time on Goldeneye than I have in psychology lectures. Well, I'm not a master of all thing psychological, but I know my fair share of stuff (particularly the things that I can use in everyday situations). Goldeneye, though, no man of woman born can defeat me. (For the record, no woman has ever defeated me either, but the sample size might be too small for statistical significance.)

Yeah, I'm perfectly comfortable with the decisions I've made.

Them Bones

I've broken 3 bones in my life. They were all hairline fractures, so nothing too serious or life-threatening. Just a couple of months in a cast and I was right as rain. Well, here's the story of the first bone break.

The year was 1989. I was a boy genius of 5. One exhilarating night, I had just finished concocting a master plan in the basement. It was simple in its beauty so the execution would be a cinch. All I had to do is climb onto the small table (maybe 16 inches tall) and jump for the string of the balloon that was resting on the ceiling. Afterwords, I would float. The world would then fear me.

I climbed onto the table and readied myself. I visualized the jump and grab. I was ready.

I leapt. Soaring through the air I swiped at the string. Catching nothing but air, I didn't quite have time to be confused for my plan's failure. No, instead, I fell elbow-first to the hard ground.

The pain was ... well, I'm not sure really; that was almost 20 years ago. In high school I developed a profanity-based chart to quantify pain. I hadn't learned profanity when I was 5 but had I been older, this would have been off the chart on some fabled level of pain reserved for vegetarians. That night I felt God speaking to me in a unique and profound way. The heavens opened and from God's almighty hand came a searing maelstrom of anger and hatred. This malevolence was channeled directly into my funny bone to atone for my past and future sins. The numbness in my fingers was terrifying as I cried for help and supplicated God to put an end to all suffering on earth (scientists and leading theologians later proved that all suffering on earth had been redirected into my elbow that night).

To have it to do over again, there's one I'd really like to have back.

Pajaro Campana

I am an auditory person. I learn best when hearing an explanation much more so than seeing one. As such, one would think I would have a natural proclivity to music. I started my music lessons on the clarinet in the 4th grade. I was never the best and would never be the best. My introduction to marching band in college would do wonders to drive that point home (another memory for another day).

Growing up the house would often be full of music of various kinds. I grow up with a healthy regiment of classic rock and oldies, even for that time. I've always had a fascination with a particular kind of music that I heard and never fully understood: Central American folk songs. They were so interesting because they were always so different from everything else. Sure, the Beatles were good, and Elvis was king, and Led Zeppelin takes you back in time to kick your ass and then spit you back into the present, but this stuff was something else.

These folk songs would get stuck in my head but never in that annoying "brain itch" way. After learning to compose I wanted to write a song that emulated the style. Of course, I fell short, but I wrote a harp piece that captured at least part of that essence. (If you're reading this, you probably have that piece in one form or another.)

Well, God bless YouTube, because here's a link that has someone playing the song I was thinking of this morning.