How Yoda May Change My Life
Mood:  chatty
Topic: movies
I was watching Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back the other day with Danielle. I'm not a huge fanatic, but I appreciate the movies for the groundbreaking fantasy/sci-fi masterpieces that they are. They fundamentally changed sci-fi from a cheesy B movie category into a legitimate movie thus paving the way for everything that came after from Speilburg's career launching Close Encounters to Men In Black. In my ignorance I may have ignored some other important sci-fi movie, but for the most part all of the older ones I've been exposed to were quite cheesy with the exception of the original, not-dubbed-and-nuclear-weapon-desensitized-for-the-US, verion of Godzilla.

So I'm not one of those people who stood in line forever to see the new movies or the re-releases, but I appreciate them as an artform. I found out that Danielle had never seen any of them and, with all of the contemporary references, I knew that she had to see them. So we rented the trilogy and saw the movies over our free moments during the week - dinners and weekend study breaks.

So as I started off this post saying, we were watching ESB. Skywalker lands on Dantooine (SW fans, don't crucify me if I get it wrong or commit the worse error of spelling it wrong) in search of Yoda. While he's in the home of the last Jedi, Yoda begins a dialogue/monologue addressed to Ben Kenobi's ghost where he says, in description of Luke, something like, "Always looking towards the future - never his mine on where he was - on what he was doing." In fact, such an offense was this attribute that he says it with a stern voice.

That was Saturday night/Sunday morning around 2 am. But I haven't been able to get the quote, or it's gist, out of my head since then. I feel that it kind of applies to me as well. When I was a kid I couldn't wait to turn 16 so that I could drive. Quite a few waking moments were spent with me unable to wait until 16. Once I turned 16 did my longing for the future end? No, then I couldn't wait to turn 18 so that I could vote, be an adult, and go to clubs. Then I couldn't wait for HS to end. Now I can't wait for Cornell to end. What's next? Can't wait to have kids? To own a house?

Sometimes I am concerned that I spend so much time thinking about and planning the future that I am missing out on the present. Sometimes I can't wait until I get to a certain favorite class. Once I'm there I can't wait for it to end. I don't think this is right....

This isn't the first time that I've thought of this, but I haven't taken any steps towards remedying this because I don't know what the right balance is. Living solely in the present isn't good either - if I only lived in the present I would buy everything, recklessly have sex, and not study. Because today none of those things have consequences. So obviously, like everything else in life, there is a needed balance.

Well, we'll see what is the ultimate effect of Yoda's words, after all, it's not the first time that I've heard them. Perhaps this will pass and I'll stay the way I've been - afterall when we begin to worry about things, the negatives seem amplified. So it's always hard to tell if I'm being overly negative or if this is one of those moments that Tony Robbins, preachers, and other thinkers refer to as the moment of choice or the proverbial fork in the road. Is this a chance to radically change my life for the better or just everyday brooding?

We'll see what direction God guides me in. I know for sure that if this thought doesn't dissapear by next week that it's something that I need to act on.

hope you found a room
Mood:  chatty
Topic: School Stuff
Hope you found a room here for Graduation because every hotel from here to Syracuse is booked. Super 8 is even booked at a price of $999.99 per night.

First Snowfall of the school year
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: "Let It All Out" - Relient K
Topic: Ithaca
This is from last night around 11 or 12. The snow is here to stay.

A Quick, but Important Post
Mood:  celebratory
Now Playing: "Which To Bury, Us or The Hatchet" - Relient K
Topic: School Stuff
This Friday at 8:30p I'm going to be DJing for my fraternity (Phi Sigma Pi)'s AIDS Ball. So if you are a Cornellian reader, please come and support us.

Why?

1) I'm going to be playing some kick@$$ music
2) It's only $10
3) ALL of the proceeds are going to benefit pediatric AIDS so if you want to help lil kids whose have AIDS and it's not even their fault because they got it from their parents or something like that then you should come.

So please come and check it out - even if you can't dance, it's all good cuz dancing is subjective, just contort your body in a convincingly confident way and people will think that you can dance.

Brown Game Rocked!
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: "Maintain Consciousness" - Relient K
Topic: Hockey

We defeated Brown 7 to 2 last night in an awesome game! There was fighting, foul play, and lots of fun times! We even scored our first two goals 5 and 10 minutes into the game. It was much more exciting of a game than Harvard was.

If you want to see the best hockey Cornell can play, make sure to check out the Brown game next year. Or travel to Rhode Island to see them play the next one.

Star Wars III
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: movies
Check out this trailer for SW III: Revenge of the Sith. It is an awesome trailer especially since I was just recently watching SW IV and heard all of this - now I can picture it in my head.

HAR-VARD.....SUCKS!
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: "I So Hate Consequences" - Relient K
Topic: Hockey
We cremated Harvard at last night's hockey game. We shut them out with 2-0 over the two hour game. There weren't any fights, but usually the Harvard game is pretty quiet because we always play Brown the next day and if you get into a fight, you are ejected for two games. Brown is a pretty hard team, so we usually can't afford to lose a player over a fight. That didn't mean that the tensions weren't high on the ice. There were many confrontations and explosions of violence. At one point we were even 5 on 3 because two of their players got removed for high sticking and cross checking.

I have to say, though, that one of the most interesting things about our team is that we almost never score on a power play. We had 5 or 6 power plays last night and none of them led to goals. In fact, most of our goals were within 1-2 minutes after a power play. In the four years that I've gone to Cornell hockey that tends to be the general trend for us.

As usual there were fish on the ice - no amount of police pat downs could stop that from happening. It was less fish than before, but I think that reflects the fact that this year a lot of the fans are freshman, since most of the upperclassman fans have graduated. So when they heard that we couldn't bring fish, they got scared. But they didn't know that they tell us that every year and it doesn't really matter. You can't really kill a trend like that.

Tonight is the Brown game, and you can bet I'll be taking pictures there as well. I really love my camera's ability to take fast action shots. Over the last three years most of my pictures had blurred elements, but this year with my camera that allowed me to manually configure all the settings, I was able to shoot at 800 ISO with a shutter speed of around 600. I'll see if I can get some better shots today, my seats this year aren't as good for photography as in previous years.

Taking a break from my morning hw bash
Mood:  chatty
Now Playing: "Who I Am Hates Who I've Been" - Relient K
Topic: random
Did you guys vote? I hope so!

I bought the new Relient K a couple of days ago. I got it in CD format because it's still not clear if WMA or AAC will be the format that lasts, and if I'm going to pay for music I want to be able to listen to it from now until I die, not until 2 years from now when they switch audio formats. The chords are awesome - that's Relient K's big strength. This is their fourth full album (not counting the Christmas album) and they continue their trend of exponentially improving their lyrics. If you shyed away from them around the time of their first two albums, definitely check out this release. They are awesome - I'm talking secular radio quality stuff here. If you like Blink192, Boxcar Racer, or Bowling for Soup you'll love Relient K. Speaking of being on the radio, they are being released by EMI this time around even though their official label is still Gotee Records. This has two consequences. First of all, you'll most likely find Relient K in the regular rock section of your music destributor, not in the Christian section - that's how it was at Best Buy anyway. Second, this means you may soon hear Best Buy on your pop station. I really hope they do get on the radio and maybe even MTv. They deserve it because their music is awesome. I'll be posting lyrics over the next few days.

If they do come out on the radio it'll be like Switchfoot. Some of you may not know, but they've been around forever. I have one of their first albums from ~4-6 years ago. Only now everyone's talking about them as if they were a new group because they finally got on the radio and Mtv. It's pretty funny - I wonder if that will happen to Relient K. I guess it's the Grateful Dead Effect because they had a huge following and a bunch of albums before that one pop song that EVERYONE knows.

Ithaca is getting VERY cold! My hands look like a boxer's hands because they've gotten so dry they are bleeding all over the place. In fact, according to the forecast, it's supposed to snow @ 4pm today. Who knows because the Ithaca forecast is always so far off, but if it does it will be the first snowfall of the year. It would also mean that I am officially an Ithacan after four years here because I accurately predicted that it would snow this week. I was talking to my grandmother and I said, based on how the weather has gotten recently and just on how the trees lost all of their leaves over a 2 day period as well as some things that I just can't put into words, I know it's going to snow by the end of next week. And here it is...maybe...well, it'll be snow AND rain, so it may be hard to tell if I'm right or not. And it definitely isn't going to stick because it's going to be too warm for that. Well, I'm certainly in no hurry for the snow to permanently arrive. It gets slippery, biting cold, and pretty darned depressing. I'm not THAT affected by SAD (seasonal affective disorder), but just like Superman (in one of his incarnations) life without the sun has some kind of weakening affect on me.

Well, I have to get back to stuff. At least this is a third "real" post in a row. q:o) I still can't believe it's been a year! Just to make it easy for you guys, here's the link to my first post ever in case you want to relive things. My first post - the beginning of It's A Binary World

Republicans take over the US
Mood:  chatty
Now Playing: "I So Hate Consequences" - Relient K
Topic: News
So, sometime around 2 EST Kerry finally gave up and gave the election to Bush. Well, it was more like Kerry's advisors told him that the provisional and absentee ballots weren't going to have an impact in his winning Ohio and so he decided to exit a little more gracefully than Gore. Personally, I'm ok with Bush winning this time because he had the popular vote. I mean, he beat Kerry by 3 million! In an election where not too many people turn out, that's a pretty nice win. It certainly isn't a landslide, but it is impressive considering that fact that most people thought it would be a repeat of 2000.

Yet there are still some people whose votes will not count. I'm talking about the three states still coloured white - at least they were still white around 7 when I last took in some news. Essentially, there is no point in tabulating the votes there other than for curiosity's sake. Since they would have not given Kerry enough electoral votes to win even if they had all gone to him, they are inconsequential.

But how does that make the people of those states feel? Just because the other states were tabulated first doesn't mean that these states shouldn't count - and yet that's what it means. If I lived there I would be a little peeved that no one in the media was talking about their state - especially when they are Florida close.

Another election time surprise were all of the amendments to the state constitutions that passed banning gay marriage. The federal amendment didn't have a leg to stand on, but these other states were able to get prohibitionary bills passed. I'm surprised that people in these states didn't shoot the measures down. But then again, a lot of the places that added this to their constitution are states that don't have a large gay concentration so there's no one to protest or just vote against it.

Well, I must sleep for class tomorrow - my pillow beckons and I must answer the call

The Blackeye.....I mean Buckeye State
Mood:  chatty
Topic: News
So Ohio has become the Florida of this year's election. There's one key difference this year compared with the last election cycle - Kerry has not yet conceded despite the fact that he's almost certainly lost. I think that, more than anything else last time, the fact that Gore had called Bush and congratulated him really weakened his case later on. There's something that just feels wrong in the gut of an American, as competitive as we are, about someone who admits defeat and then takes it back and asks for a "do over". In fact, thinking back as a child - didn't you usually hate the person who called "do over" whenever you finally won. He would always list some spurious reason and depending upon who had the support of most of the other kids would win. In a sense, the "other kids" in 2000 were the Supreme Court. This year, however, Kerry is refusing to lose - for now. He's deciding to be the person who says, "let's wait an see what the impartial kid says," going back to my childhood metaphor. Only time will tell what happens, but I hope for two things.

1) It shouldn't go too long or people are going to get ticked that this is always happening
2) The Supreme Court better not decide the election again or I predict there will be a huge riot

PS - I guess my cynicism was unfounded - Osama did not appear caught right before the election.