11/20/2005 11:00:00 PM|W|P|Steve Geluso|W|P|My computer was acting a little bit funny last night and wouldn't let me sync my iPod with my computer last night and I was kind of mad because I had just made a killer playlist and wanted to listen to it while I slept. Yeah, I care what I listen to while I sleep.
Naturally, when the computer didn't do what I wanted it to I showed it who was boss and reinstalled Windows. "Take that stupid machine! I'm the man! I wear the pants!"
Well honestly, reinstalling windows wasn't my first intention. One thing kind of led to another and then things got totally out of control. I went from getting rid of a suspicious 3rd party iPod program to reinstalling iTunes to noticing an error message I've been irnoreing for a long time when the computer starts up to trying to fix that error by repairing my current windows installation to trying to reinstall windows nearly eight times. The important thing is that I won and I'm here writing this now.
The scariest part of the whole ordeal was thinking that I had somehow lost all my music in the process. After I had finally installed iTunes after the Windows re-install, I wanted to know if it would keep all my song information like ratings and play counts. Knowing that I'd thrown plenty of stars on his tracks, I went straight for my Damien Rice folders. I opened them up and my jaw dropped.
I've never shown as much astonishment in my entire life than I did when I saw that empty folder. I literally let out an audible gasp. *Gasp!* Then my head bobbed back and forth and I whispered "no, no, no, no.." while feared that my entire music collection was gone.
It turned out that I had just organized my Damien Rice stuff somewhere else and that all my music was fine, but, man, that was scary. If I had lost all my music I think I would have cried -- audibly.|W|P|113255726433653666|W|P|Crap-pantsing Scary|W|P|stevegeluso@gmail.com11/16/2005 10:04:00 PM|W|P|Steve Geluso|W|P|Tonight at Bible study we had some chocolates with random trivia questions on the inside of the wrappers. They weren't very funny at all. There's nothing funny about trivia.
Most other candies have the stupid jokes on their wrappers. Usually, I love those jokes. I mean, I love making those jokes actually funny; there's nothing actually funny about the answers provided.
Tonight I had fun reading off the trivia questions as jokes and coming up with my own answers that were way better. Here's some examples of the trivia questions and jokes, they're real answers and my own answers that I've made funnier.
Q: What is the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis know as?
A: The Gateway Arch.
My A: A waste.
Q: What religious figure is recognized on December 8th, Bodhi Day?
A: Buddha.
My A: The Dark Lord Satan, himself. (I am not implying that Buddhi is in fact Satan himself, instead it was way funny because we were in Bible study and a joke like that in a candy wrapper would be outrageous.
Q: What did the art dealer say when a man asked what a picture was supposed to be?
A: A reflection of you.
My A: Whatever gets you high, man.
Q: What kind of brush do you use to comb a bee's hair?
A: A hair comb.
My A: A really tiny hair brush that also sprays smoke to keep the bee calm.
Q: What do you get when you cross a grape with a lion?
A: A grape nobody picks on.
My A: A cross between Willy Wonka and The Lion King.
Q: How do you turn soup into gold?
A: Add 24 carrots (karats)
My A: "Add 24 carrots (karats)" (the difference there is that you actually have to say "carrot" and "karat." My answer is not funny in itself but it's pretty funny when you look at the original answer and see that it has to clarify itself like that. Darn. I just realized I'm doing the exact same thing by clarifying why my answer is funny.)
Q: What did the finger say to the thumb?
A: I'm in glove with you.
My A: *the finger*
Q: What do pumpkins and bats like to eat on Halloween?
A: I scream and boo-berries.
My A: Children.
Q: What does a worm do in a cornfield?
A: It goes in one ear and out the other.
My A: What does a worm do anywhere?
Q: Where does a pet bunny go when he's sick?
A: To the hopspital.
My A: Out back to be shot.
Q: What has a tongue but cannot talk?
A: A shoe.
My A: A horse.
Q: In baseball, what's at home plate?
A: Dinner.
My A: A loser batting, a loser catching and a loser that can't do either.
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: To get some Laffy Taffy, silly!
My A: To get away from the blatant corporate propagandaa.
And that's it. Up at leadership camp we ate a lot of Laffy Taffy and we had a great time making up our own answers to the jokes. If anyone from Mt. Oly happens to see this, say "hi" and tell me any of the ones you remember.
Yeah, homework tonight was totally non-existant. As in I didn't do it.|W|P|113221035430926218|W|P|Candy Wrapper Jokes|W|P|stevegeluso@gmail.com11/15/2005 05:32:00 PM|W|P|Steve Geluso|W|P|SssyAmiga0307: so wacha up 2?
Scuba5teve002: nothing.
Scuba5teve002: wacha?
Scuba5teve002: ha.
SssyAmiga0307: *whacha
Scuba5teve002: HAHAHAHAHAHA!|W|P|113210488116522378|W|P|e-slang|W|P|stevegeluso@gmail.com11/14/2005 08:22:00 PM|W|P|Steve Geluso|W|P|I've been working on another site for something this evening. I always get totally absorbed in my work and wont do anything else until it's done. Tonight, I even skipped dinner to sit here at the computer and work on it while listening to music.
When I listen to music, I usually just patch my iPod through my computer speakers and let it play everything on it at random. My music collection is so huge that listening to my own music is practically like listening to the radio; there's tons of stuff that I love but, every now and then, I'll find something new that I love too. It is pretty cool when that happens.
One song has been coming up a lot recently. Every time that it plays I think "hey, I love this song!" Then I look over to see what it is and realize "oh. This song? I hate this song," and I immediately skip it.
LOVE! oh.. hate. My bad.
Why do I hate the song? I'm not sure. I remember when I got the album this summer and that I kind of bashed it here on the site. I guess I ended up liking on of their songs but my feelings towards the band have not changed.
When the song came on tonight, my first reaction was to skip it but then I went back to it and gave it another chance. Love is a hard thing to learn.|W|P|113202955070993249|W|P|Love/hate|W|P|stevegeluso@gmail.com11/10/2005 10:23:00 PM|W|P|Steve Geluso|W|P|
Tell me this wouldn't be a totally awesome story.
Basically, there's kids or something that escape to a sweet fantasy world at night through their fridges. Gandalf could be there too. Wizards guarantee a fantasy story's success.
I don't know what they'd do. Probably cool stuff like hunt for milk and stuff in the lush jungles of their fridges.
There could be a chapter about the fridge-habitants going crazy because the sun doesn't rise and the adventurous kids that explore the fridges finding out that the fridge light is just broken and going on a magnificent journey to fix it. They could even fall in a hot pit of salsa on the way there.
I need to lay off the crack.|W|P|113169043905838644|W|P|A Frigid Fantasy|W|P|stevegeluso@gmail.com11/09/2005 11:14:00 PM|W|P|Steve Geluso|W|P|What's better than brushing your teeth before going to bed?
Grabbing a piece of spicy teriyaki jerky and calling it good.|W|P|113160742496879526|W|P|Beef Jerky - now with whitening!|W|P|stevegeluso@gmail.com11/02/2005 09:08:00 PM|W|P|Steve Geluso|W|P|Last week, when I was walking through the compound to my locker in the morning by myself, I noticed how many people were outside in the compound. They were everywhere. No matter where I looked, there was a group of five to ten people standing in a group, talking to themselves. But I knew that none of the groups were talking about their ordinary morning topics. No, every single boy and girl outside that morning was plotting to kill me.
Listening to my iPod, walking past all the groups, I was suddenly aware that I could be jumped at any moment. An odd sensation came over me and I was ready for anything. Now, everyone that I looked at was an immediate threat to myself. My mind started racing, imagining different ways for me to take people out if they jumped me.
If someone was dumb enough to attack me from the front, I would dive forward into a somersault past them, delivering a crippling blow to their gut with my elbow as I passed, before rolling back up onto my feet, pivoting on my left heel and using my right leg to sweep their knees out from under them. Then, using my momentum from the spin, I'd slip my right shoulder out of my backpack strap, hold onto the other strap with both hands and swing the backpack up over my left shoulder and down onto the attackers skull. That'd take care of him.
On the other hand, I realized I wouldn't stand much a chance against someone jumping me from behind. Pondering this vulnerability, I decided that the best thing to do would be to let myself be taken down to the ground at first and keep the fight on the ground. Not too much damage can be dealt to anyone in a scuffle on the ground. I'd let the guy hit me while I reached for the pencil in my back pocket and wait for the perfect moment to shank him in the gut with it. No one expects to be shanked with a pencil.
Much to my dismay, no one ended up trying to kill me that morning. Someone must have noticed that I was walking around tense, like a spring waiting to snap. Seriously, I really did think this and was preparing to fight a hundred men at once on the way to my locker. I kept an eye on everyone near me and would have broken your arm in three places if you said "hello" to me.
When I got to my locker, I sat down and wrote a quick note in my pad about everything I had thought. I don't know what you all will appreciate more, the absurdity of the situation as a whole or the fact that it's all true and it's really written in my notepad.
Remember, before getting me in trouble for threats, you're a moron.|W|P|113100005399386069|W|P|I'm a Killing Machine|W|P|stevegeluso@gmail.com11/01/2005 11:10:00 PM|W|P|Steve Geluso|W|P|I hit up the Good Luck Mr. Gorski show at 321 this weekend with Kayla, Adam, Kristi, Justin and Jordan. It was just about the coolest, most fun thing I have ever done.
The show started out with Tim, the owner of the place, playing guitar while another guy read poetry under the soft glow of a table lamp. Tim introduced themselves as something other than Travis Bickle, the group name that the flier had announced themselves as, and got things started. He apologized for his broken arm and explained how it was kind of hard to play the guitar with it.
Not too many of the poems had names. The only one that I remember, because it was so ridiciously funny, was introduced as "'Untitled' or 'Summer's Escaping Dreams.'" Honestly, I don't remember what the poem was called after untitled, but it was something long and specific; quite the opposite of just "Untitled."
Nevertheless, when he read through the first poem, I was totally blown away. His voice and the guitar riffs blended perfectly to create an ambiance impossible not to get lost in. I wish that I had written down some parts of his poem so I could throw it here but basically it was a long list of things that he would rather be doing rather than being there at the moment.
For some of the rest of his poems, the poet played some cassette tapes of spoken word in slow motion. I couldn't identify what the cassette tapes were saying but, again, everything just sounded perfect when he read along with it.
Another cool happened when Tim set his guitar aside and started playing along with the poetry on the keyboard. He used a pedal to capture a small drum loop he played on the keyboard which then repeated it over and over throughout the rest of the soem, song-poem. (or would it be better to call it pong? poem-song?) With the drum loop being played by the pedal magics, Tim was freed up to play some simple stuff on the keyboard along with the loop and the poems being read. Again, I don't think I've done justice describing what they did. It's just not something that you can understand, you have to experience it.
Hands down, the best poem read by the poet was near the end of the show. There wasn't any fancy music stuff along with the poem, just the slow-motion cassette tape voices. In the poem, he talked about how scientists had gotten things wrong. He said "Scientific laws are flawed. Even the speed of light is not constant. If I were to fix all the laws, I would replace the speed of light with sadness. Energy would equal mass times sadness squared." At this point I had the biggest, goofiest smile on my face and let out a laugh. I didn't look around to check, but I'm sure no one else found the poem as funny as me. He went on "light may glow or dim, but sadness is constant."
I'm not even sure why I found that so funny. We have been going over quantum physics and the properties of light in chemistry lately so the poem was somewhat relevant to my life. Today in chemistry, Mr. Spencer said e=mc squared for some reason which made Kayla and I laugh.
After Not Travis Bickle was done performing, Tim said that it was time to give out door prizes to the people that wore costumes. Keep in mind that everyone there at 321 are the mellowest people in the world. They're the kind of cool people that would give someone all their money while being mugged without a fight and then ask them for their phone number so that they could go out to coffee sometime and chat.
There weren't too many people that were dressed up for Halloween. There was a woman carrying her baby dressed up in a cute pea pod costume, a twenty-something-year old guy dressed up like an old-time gentleman with a top hat and cane, a girl the same age dressed up like a bum and, my favorite, a guy dressed up as an intern from the Zissou Society decked out with a red beanie, short blue shorts, a glok and all. After handing out bags of candy and Value Village gift certificates to the winners, Tim encouraged everyone to eat some candy and get hyped up for Good Luck Mr. Gorski in the most mellow tone ever.
Good Luck Mr. Gorski took the stage and talked a little bit about the first time he played a show here on Halloween weekend last year. His entire set was great. He shared some new songs with us and played a few that he hadn't originally planned on playing. I guess that we were just that great of an audience.
It was great to see him perform live. He used to be a big deal on myspace but I had never paid much attention to him. A while ago, Adam had went and seen him perform and really liked him. He picked up his CD and told me that Good Luck Mr. Gorski was some good stuff. I believed him and listened to his album a few times without it ever really sticking to me. After seeing him life and buying his album myself, I can't get enough of him.
After another brief intermission between acts, a guy who called himself Thanksgiving took the stage. The first thing that he did was ask us all to scoot our chairs in close around the stage so that he didn't feel so distant. He got through one or two songs on his electric guitar, which sounded great, before deciding that we were all close enough to the stage for him to sit down on the edge and rock out with the acoustic guitar.
One girl in the audience told him that he promised to do a sing-along song when he came to 321. She didn't have any specific song in mind so he whipped out this quick one where everyone in the audience would sing "you say we're alone" or something like that and he'd sing things back to us. Singing along was fun but not as good as humming along.
We were all led in a sweet hum-along song right after the sing-along. Adrian, I think that was his real name, instructed us to go "Hmmmmmm. Hmmmmm. Hmmmmm. Hmmmm," taking it down about half a step between each hum over and over while he sang. He ended the humming song kind of abruptly and left everyone still humming after the song was long over. It was cool. The oh-along song was similar to the hum-along but we all said "Ooooooo. Ooooooo. Ooooooo. Ooooooo." Up and down all over the place instead of humming. The oh-along was a lot harder than the hum along.
My three favorite songs that he played were about a bag of chips on an over-pass, changing the world and art.
The bag of chips song would talk about different times that he passed over some highway over-pass and notice a bag of chips on the side of the road. Between each verse, the bag of chips would change. He started out saying "I think it's a Sun Chips bag," then he said it was a Cheetos bag and said it was a Funions bag the last time.
Asking for questions or comments between many of his songs, I asked him what his favorite kind of chips were. Little did I know, that question led everyone into a lengthy conversation about the ins and outs of the chip world. He initially said that he liked Sun Chips a lot but then said he liked eating healthy foods like diet chips but for no political reason at all. That all led into a story about the reference to the Funions in the song in which Adrian told us how he once bought a giant bag of Funions. He told us how the bag started out great but, as time went on, just got to the point where they burnt his mouth with their sweetness. Adam compared the sensation spot-on to the way your mouth feels after eating lots of Cap'n Crunch. It was a good conversation.
His other great song, about changing the world, had a good conversation after it too. The song toyed with the idea about what he would say if he could have one thing to tell everyone to change the world. I forget if he ever made a final decision of what to say to the world in his song.
When he finished playing the song, he asked us all what we thought about it. He explained how he knew that we people are always changing stuff in the world by moving stuff around but that he meant change the word in the more altruistic sense; like how a kid dreams of growing up to be president and changing the world to make it a better place. To show us the difference between changing the world by moving things and the altruistic sense, he nudged his water jug from one place on the stage to another and made sure that we didn't all think that that's what he meant by changing the world in his song. It was funny.
Thanksgiving's last song was about art. He told everyone to not judge his music or the way he danced and that when someone sings, it goes far deeper than just them standing or sitting somewhere and saying what's on their mind. He said that when he paints, he's not painting for us anyways and that he'll ignore anything that any of us have to say.
I liked the way that he said it in his song. It was the most accurate description of pure art I have ever heard. Ignoring things people say about your art is one thing when people are cutting it down but in his song he made it seem like he wouldn't care what anyone said if they were cutting his art down or praising it. Being able to ignore what people say about your art when they are praising it just because you really did do it for yourself and not to be praised is awesome. I've never done that. Everything I do here on the site is so that people will laugh at it and tell me how great I am.
Overall, it was a good night. No, it was a great night. Or was it a blue-night? I'm not sure anymore. I'll stick with awesome-night.|W|P|113092107016979395|W|P|3... 2... 1.. Awesome!|W|P|stevegeluso@gmail.com
Tell me this wouldn't be a totally awesome story.
Basically, there's kids or something that escape to a sweet fantasy world at night through their fridges. Gandalf could be there too. Wizards guarantee a fantasy story's success.
I don't know what they'd do. Probably cool stuff like hunt for milk and stuff in the lush jungles of their fridges.
There could be a chapter about the fridge-habitants going crazy because the sun doesn't rise and the adventurous kids that explore the fridges finding out that the fridge light is just broken and going on a magnificent journey to fix it. They could even fall in a hot pit of salsa on the way there.
I need to lay off the crack.|W|P|113169043905838644|W|P|A Frigid Fantasy|W|P|stevegeluso@gmail.com