Birthday Weekend Begins!

So today is the first day of my birthday weekend. Birthday weekends, and sometimes even birthday weeks, are a tradition in the Paddock family that goes back into the far distant past (about 20 years). Basically the idea of the birthday weekend is that the person having the birthday gets to do whatever they want, and if they have to do something they don't want to then you repeatedly whine, "But it's my birthday weekend!"

This weekend I plan on eating lots of rich and delicious food, catching up on my homework, and generally being lazy. After class today the celebration begins! I will pick up Emily and go cash my check, then a leisurely lunch at Pho Hien Vuong, then maybe a movie, and finally some Thai food. Saturday begins with brunch, then maybe a trip to the comic store or the used bookstore and the scary taxidermy park, then dinner with the fam. After that i'll probably work on homework. On Sunday, which is my actual birthday, I'm gonna fill up on Indian food and gloat over all the presents i received the night before. Included in this post is a picture from last years birthday party. Aren't those flops sweet? I love that picture, it just makes me happy.

I finished The God of Small Things last night, and boy was I pissed. I had added it to my books read for the year list because it was so great, except for the last 20 pages. The story involves two Indian children (dots not feathers) who are separated after a traumatic event in their childhood. The novel is very well written and manages to make one feel like they've been to India. Over the course of the novel most of the mystery about the traumatice event is unwound. The twins mother had an affair with an untouchable man, who was falsely accused of kidnapping the twins (and leading to the twins cousins death), so that the police could justify beating him to death for sleeping with a Touchable woman. The evil aunt has been lying to everyone in order for there to be as much suffering as possible. All of this leads up to the climactic ending when you think that the twins are going to figure out that their aunt was really to blame when...the twins sleep together. There. I said it and ruined the whole book for you. Ha! The twins sleep together and the last 15 pages are an erotic retelling of how the Touchable mom and the Untouchable man came to start bumpin' uglies. The whole thing left me feeling very uncomfortable.

Hopefully I'll be able to get the Chairman Mao waving watch post up soon.

Man of the Year

I've had a really long day today and feel deep down inside the smallest reptile brained part of me that I should be angry for some reason. No real particular reason for these rushes of anger as nothing terribly bad has happened to me, no matter how hard my screwy little psyche wanted it to. I looked for things to be grumpy about all day. I woke up at six and drank a disgusting little energy drink because i was so tired from staying up late the night before reading the most depressing education text ever. The disgusting energy drink promptly made itself known by attempting several time to make me throw up. While i desperately wanted to be mad about it i never did actually throw up. There were a few retching incidents but nothing to bad. At work I kept waiting for one of my coworkers or a customer to say something even slightly inflammatory, but everyone was sweetness and light. Also, people kept tipping pretty well which only served to make me angrier. How dare they try to make me happy! The sheer audacity. A meeting that i had been dreading (mostly because i hadn't had time to finish reading the information that would have prepared me) went off swimmingly (he hadn't had time to finish reading either), and even culminated in a talk about ukuleles (which i love).

--Just a quick side not. Isn't this picture fantastic? I look so serious...BUT I'M HOLDING A UKULELE! It's emo but funny. And emo's funny, so really it's funny and funny. Plus, look at that beard. I miss that.

Anyhoo, my first class went great and, as a little extra boost, a wonderful girl gave me a Flight of the Conchords cd! I stayed at the library and finished some math homework before heading homw. I went home and had some snacks and then came back to campus for my math class. Of course, when i had been at home indulging in Lance crackers and trail mix, I had changed the books in my tiny yellow man-bag. As my math class began i realized that i had transfered my math homework from its happy satchel home to the cold sadness of the floor, AT HOME!!! Furious with myself and blaming the whole situation on a myriad of other nonexistent factors, I quietly told the prof. that i didn't have my homework. She told me not to worry about it. THat made me even more angry. She exacerbated matters by letting us play fun card games in which i totally lost myself and forgot about being angry.

Notes on a Book List

I tried to compile some of the books i've read this year, and have reached the following conclusions:
A) If I can't give myself a succinct (yet accurate) recitation of the book-it doesn't count.
B) Only some graphic novels can count. If i listed all the Marvel Essentials or Showcase Presents i read over the summer i think i would die of embarrassment.

*side note* ---- lest anyone be confused the truth shall be told here. I, Jeremiah Paddock, am a HUGE nerd. I like and enjoy all kinds of things that most 14 year olds would cringe at. I however, feel very little shame and can rationalize just about anything to myself. If you follow the myspace link to my, um, myspace, than you will see that i have a whole photo album devoted to my weird obsessions with material clutter. I'm the person that still collects comic books, and I'm the one that regularly peruses the vending machines at grocery stores for interesting trinkets. The upside is that i'm the only person i know who can win stuff from those claw machines. I know when to gamble on those. Once, in an effort to impress this really hot chick, i got the prize with the claw machine not once but twice!!! We promptly had sex right there in the Wal-Mart entrance. So you see this weird nerdiness can

Hello!

Hello! I desperately wanted to title this first blog something like "Welcome to the blogosphere!" But that sounded to 80s/Mad Max. This is my first real blog. I was inspired by this cool guy I have a class with. He told me about his blog and I, being the creepy lurker I am, immediately went to it. As I scanned down the list of titles for his blogs I saw "Why I Blog" (or something to that effect). While all of his reasons were very humorous and self-deprecating, what stood out was his view that a blog is the modern journal (duh) and that it does tend to provide one with an easily viewable history. (His section about all the books he had read this year was also very inspiring)

About me. My names Jeremy, I'm about to turn 25, I work at Starbucks and go to school at Guilford College. I'm majoring in elementary education and english. Just the thought of pouring out all the effluvium that clutters my poor skull warms the cockles of my heart.

I chose the black background because i read in Popular Science that it's good for the environment.

(Just in case some crazy rich person reads this, I want a scooter and an Asus Eee pc)

Hopefully the blogs will get a little better as i get more practice.