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By “rest”, of course, I mean “non-awesomeness”. I knew I couldn’t make it through a quarter without going on some crazy trip, but apparently Tahoe and Joshua Tree weren’t enough. The Sunnybrook house Last weekend I went home to say goodbye to our house (above), which we’ve lived in for almost exactly 4 years. On the way there from San Jose I passed through San Luis Obispo, CA, Los Angeles, CA, and Chicago, IL, for a total of 15 hours in airports and 9 on planes. At least the horrible travel experience wasn’t a complete waste: I wrote this awesome paper, a 20-page term paper for a philosophy of mind class, which I’m afraid will be ripped to shreds by my professor despite its inherent awesomeness. The highlight of the Orlando trip was not being stuck on planes, obviously, but sitting in the hot tub for hours 3 nights in a row. Goodbye, sweet hot tub! ...

It is my opinion that movies have become, as a matter of fact and whether we like it or not, the premier storytelling vehicle of our time. This is not to say that books or music cannot convey stories compellingly–indeed, my favorite book, Tolkien’s Silmarillion, and the songs of my favorite band, Pedro the Lion, are good counterexamples to such a claim–only that the ubiquity of film (whether or not such ubiquity exists only because it is self-reinforced) and the immediacy of the transition from screen to mind tend to vault it (film) to the forefront of storytelling devices. Therefore, as my friend Phil [entry closest to this date] intimates, it’s about time someone got around to making a movie that effectively tells the story of the Christ. ...

My trip to Joshua Tree this past weekend ended up being a legitimate adventure, replete with traveling, beautiful scenery, good companionship, physical and emotional hardship, and fight-for-your-life experiences! I thought I would chronicle it here (with pictures!), partly for your entertainment, partly for my own informatic scrapbook purposes, and partly as a record of God’s goodness in keeping me alive. Pictures, as usual, will be linked in brackets. At 6 AM last Friday morning, Dan and I woke up ready for the 8 hour drive to Joshua Tree. We were hoping that the odd start time would allow us to avoid much of the weekend traffic in the city areas and getting into Joshua Tree itself (we also wanted to score a decent campsite in the park, and those are preciously hard to come by on a Friday night). There were no incidents on the way there, and we made pretty good time, despite numerous stops, at Carl’s Jr for lunch, WalMart for the requisite 2 gallons of water per person for the weekend (there’s no drinkable water in Joshua Tree, or any water at all, really), and the Five-Ten outlet in Redlands for some sweet deals on rock shoes (I got some brand new Huecos). We got to the park, situated at about 5,000 vertical feet amidst the Mojave desert, just before sunset. As luck would have it, we were able to find a smallish campsite in Hidden Valley, the most sought-after campground in the park, so we set up the 2-man tent Dan had brought and settled in. ...

Intense Self-Reflection–that would be a good way to describe the past week or so of my life. At least, these days have been intense, and they have been self-reflective (more properly, I have been self-reflective in them), if not intense ly self-reflective. In any case, it’s all part and parcel of the fact that this senior year of college, whether by my will or not, is forcing me to discover my identity–who I am, and why I do the things I do. Remarkably, given my propensity towards self-analysis, I think the core of who I am has remained largely opaque, not just to others, but to myself. In fact, the ever-running inner monologue (more accurately, inner debate) has served to obscure the reason for it–the substratum on which it rides. Perhaps more importantly, it has come to light that I am actually the opposite of who I am, which, as you’d imagine, will fool any but the most careful of self-analyses. ...

For those of you who have the audacity to be so egregiously ignorant, I’m currently in a band (of sorts) with my brother David. We’re called Splendour Hyaline. I sing and play guitars of various kinds and write music, and David writes and plays percussion parts. Anyway, we recorded a new EP (which has a secret working title–“the EP”–don’t tell anyone!) over Christmas break, and somehow it ended up rocking. I mean, actually rocking. Our last CD, if you remember that, also rocked, but this rocks even more. And so, I prophesy, will it always be–each CD better than the last, in a continual asymptotic progression towards auditory perfection. ...

The title of this weblog entry is “K”. You might be thinking that this is either (a) for some reason(s), or (b) for no reason, but that’s only if you believe in Logic. And who does that nowadays? Actually, it’s not that complicated, and I don’t recommend thinking about whether or not you should continue to believe in Logic or if Logical Truths are true–you won’t get anywhere interesting, especially if you use arguments (i.e., Logic). The real “reason” this weblog entry is entitled “K” is that I don’t have any other weblog entry whose title starts with the letter K. Don’t ask me how I found this out–let’s just say I know everything. ...

The Oracle could have been talking to me (actually, she was: remember, I’m Neo)–“I think you’re waiting for something”. It’s true, I’ve been waiting for something. You see, recently I’ve taken to waiting until my thoughts are something of a unified whole before I move to compose them into a weblog entry. This is all part and parcel of the ideological shift that took place in the move from Blogger to MovableType, when I decided to put childish things behind me. The problem is that, far from unifying, it seems that my thoughts these past weeks have been slowly decomposing, fragmenting and breaking off into little pieces of Mentalese that fall into the sink and down the drain while I’m cleaning dishes. Every so often I try to master a few streams and get them into some coherent form, but I’m too weak. ...

Occasionally, maybe even most of the time, I seem to forget that I have anything resembling roots. You know, childhood streets, trees that you climbed often enough to have favorite spots in, elementary school friends that you see making out at junior prom: in other words, a history, or the necessary result of being somewhere long enough for something to happen. I suppose my pride at being from so many places all over the states and even overseas has translated into a subconscious averaging-out of my locational story. Though it is true, I don’t think of myself as having spent just under half my life in a little Dallas suburb, because how can I let one place overpower all the others? ...

The day or two after Thanksgiving is traditionally occupied, in my family, with setting up Christmas decorations. We usually have two trees (fake ones, but they’ve been with us for so long now it would be sacrilege to opt for a real tree even if we wanted the mess), one for looking all classy with its white lights, see-through glass ornaments, and gold tinsel, and the other for putting lots of colorful things on, including all the meaningful knick-knackish ornaments we’ve collected over the years. Then there’s the wreaths, the stockings, the candles, and the outside lights… ...

On Saturday the 22nd I went to my first Big Game. Big Game is the ongoing rivalry between Stanford and our “evil” arch-nemesis, UC Berkeley (though it’s admittedly hard to care when their most obvious failing is being too socially adept to get into Stanford), manifested in the form of a football game. Traditionally, it happens in the Autumn, when more college football seems to be played, and is the equivalent in this area of the world what the UT/A&M game is on the day after Thanksgiving in Texas. ...