“a week of adventuring”, or “a somewhat non-uninteresting blog entry” note: i will include links to pictures throughout the extremely long narrative. you will recognize these links because they will be within brackets–square brackets, like “[” and “]”. there may be no other designation that these are links, so keep an eye peeled. pictures are at 35% size and are in .jpg format another note–“the crew”, “the guys”, “us”, or other similarly first-or-third-person plural designators usually refer to: dan urban, joey carucci, and myself. dan you all should know already–he is my suitemate, was my roommate last year, really likes weezer, and can make cool crap with metal using lathes and stuff. joey carucci has long black hair, is the most inquisitive/challenging person i’ve met, and is without a doubt the most italian-looking of the three of us. lastly, i, of course, am simply me. ...

i am back in the states! everything went fantastically. i’ll write an extremely long blog entry about the aforementioned week of adventuring soon. for now, i am off to mt. hermon in the santa cruz mountains to stay with some family friends for the night. ah, the glories of having my own car.

well, i’m off to the UK for a week of adventuring. see you when i get back, and everyone, be safe.

hello, war. it’s been a long time. and cnn’s technical advances will bring you that much closer. “Tune into CNN: you can have the war, narrated by the indefatigable Dr. Sanjay Gupta at camp Iwo Jima somewhere [he can’t say where] in the northern Kuwaiti desert roughly 2km from the borders of Iraq, broadcast live into your living room! Hear about the mysterious possibly-chemically-or-biologically-armed missile which made a noise and caused camp Iwo Jima marines to put on gas masks until the all clear was given! See live pictures of a random street in Baghdad where nothing happens! More false alarms and top-secret U.S. war plans to be internationally blabbed to God knows who [and we don’t care!], after the break. [Closed Captioning provided by Flonase: ‘Flo, for your every nasal need’]” ...

as of today, winter quarter 2003 is over. this marks the end of my 8th quarter of instruction as an undergraduate at stanford, and my 2nd as a graduate student. without a doubt, this was the hardest quarter of my stanford career, and possibly my life. tonight i stood outside in the cold with dan, smoking tobacco mixed by an old man in st. augustine, florida [memories of home], in a pipe bought years ago in oxford, england [rite of passage]. i put my hood over my face and allowed the beautiful scent from the pipe to drift up and be caught in it, obscuring my vision with an aroma that did its best to take me far away from here. i looked back over the quarter, and saw a bleak landscape that i never realized was so heartless. ...

the show on thursday went well. i feel that i played at least as well as i usually do. i only broke one string and it was while tuning, so disasters were kept to a minimum. i was touched also that many of my friends showed up for the cd release party, who might not usually come to one of my shows. of course, i only sold 6 cds, so i’m not really well on the way to paying back my investors. still, i have hope. ...

i am now officially done with 2 out of the 3 classes i am taking for credit. in order to reach this end, i spent all day “working” on the term paper for my Kant class (had to be around 15pp, due tomorrow). in reality, i didn’t even start thinking of a topic until after lunch. then i read the portion of the book which spoke to that topic (for the first time). then i took a nap. then i had a dinner meeting. by the time i put virtual pen to virtual paper, it was 7:45 pm. understand, at that point no planning or thought had been given to the argument. ...

behold: www.splendourhyaline.com download mp3s and buy the CD! (unless you live in stanford, in which case talk to me, or orlando, in which case talk to rachel, or gainesville, in which case talk to david or jason killingsworth about how to get the CD without paying s&h).

procrastination for end-term papers and finals is really good for my music career. i’ve already written one song in the past few days and i’m about to start another. hopefully i’ll play at least one at my show on thursday! don’t forget to come to the CoHo this thurs…i go on about 10:15pm.

i’m really not in any position to finish strong this quarter. two large papers and a final in the next week, and i’m just ready to give up. ready to give up and spend my life paralyzed by good music, manufacturing whatever emotion i feel like having at the moment. though i would always choose just one: self-pity. there’s nothing like that particular emotion to lull me into thinking that all that matters in life, and i’ll that i’m good for, is listening to good music and feeling self-pity. it’s a magnificent circle, isn’t it. ...