I will write a short story.

I am taking a creative writing fiction class that fulfills a requirement for my English major. For this class, the majority of the assignments will be writing short stories and critiquing the short stories that others write. Since I have full artistic licence to write whatever I feel like, things should get interesting and stay interesting quite quickly.

I have to have three characters minimum for all of my stories. In class we discussed how difficult it was to make up characters out of nothing; we are best at writing about that with which we are most familiar. Luckily, I live with a gentleman who has been blessed with three first names and a variety of character traits swirling around in one personality. Michael Taylor James will become Michael, Taylor and James.

Michael is the hopeless romantic who is in a long distance relationship with a girl who is a Creationist despite the influences of Michael's level headed intellect. He spends his time away from his girlfriend texting his girlfriend and serving as a mediator between Taylor and James. Taylor should be at MIT, but he is underachieving instead as a physics and chemistry double major. He is very up tight and easily flustered. James is probably the best character. He has long hair, a beard, loves drinking, cussing and having a good time. As uncouth as he is, everyone has an affectionate spot saved just for him. At the same time, he is infuriating to live with and impossible to bring to reason. Most of my stories will not be fiction, but rather I will use things that have happened to me or that I have heard about as a member of PHA. The best part is that my roommate and fraternity brothers make these stories...everything will write itself. I just wonder how much of them my professor will be able to tolerate. We will see.

Thanks a lot, McGwire.

Today, Mark McGwire finally admitted to the press that he used steroids prior to and during his once record breaking season. McGwire was once a man I looked up to as a young boy; I remember vividly following that season and admiring both McGwire and Sosa as they smashed homerun after homerun. But now, all of that season means nothing. Unlike Aaron and Ruth before him, McGwire did not do it the right way.
The phrase ‘right’ itself is one that the media and guilty players alike seem to find repugnant when it comes to discussions of who used what, when they used it and when those same individuals will get into the Hall. For some reason the media has given a free pass to a so called ‘era’ of baseball that has been finally exposed as corrupt and without integrity. So McGwire apologized, sort of. He is sorry that he got caught, he is sorry that he has to admit to hiding things from his wife, he is sorry that he likely ruined the faith so many fans had in him. But when I watch the replays of him giving Sosa high fives during the home run derbies and his celebrations upon breaking records I do not feel as though I am looking at a man worried at all about cheating.
Yes, it is right to admit to steroid use. But, it is wrong to make admissions accompanied by excuses and explanations. The right thing to do would have been to deal with injuries like a grown man, deal with hitting slumps and batting average fluctuations like everyone else should. The steroid ‘era’ should be considered a disgrace to the game of baseball and a disgrace to the commissioner under whose watch it occurred. Hank Aaron and the other clean Hall of Famer’s who did things the right way are being polite by declining the opportunity to make negative comments about the choices McGwire and numerous others made during a time when it seems an astonishing amount of the MLB was morally bankrupt. I watched every game I could of the season McGwire and Sosa were chasing the record; if I get my hands on a time machine I will go back and tell my 9 year old self as softly as possible to turn the television off and just stick with Jordan.

Good Friends, Bad Habits

There is a song by Owen sharing the title of this entry that is pretty sweet. He, Owen, who really has another name, likens his friends to the literary figures Oscar Wilde and Ernest Hemingway. This is a pretty absurd analogy given that Wilde allegedly dabbled in homosexuality, by which I mean he was rumored to have had sex with dudes here, there and everywhere even though he married a woman (named Constance I believe). Hemingway probably drank a lot and eventually committed suicide. Owen is obviously a super emo fellow who enjoys things a bit over the top. But the song itself is very pleasant to listen to so I listen to it all the time. I think he is singing about feeling lost amidst his friends' tendencies and how he wants to do something cool too. Given that I admittedly may over indulge from time to time I think I am well within my bounds to say that I too have friends that are a bit crazy at times. But I like it that way; boring people are not very good to be friends with if one would like to enjoy oneself. But when Owen sings so nicely about his friends fucking like Wilde and dying like Hemingway I think that perhaps being reckless catches up to us all. Luckily, college and the years in close proximity are made for such things. I require coffee. I do not like P.B. Shelley and I would like to finish Moby Dick since I never could on the plane back home.

TOMS + ELEMENT and giving and what it means to help

I am supposed to be reading and taking notes on The Mask of Anarchy by P.B. Shelley. However, due to my inability to remain focused and my propensity for starting things I never finish I decided to wander through some of the internet to see what I might find. My starting point was TOMS.
I have known about TOMS for a while but only just recently purchased a pair of shoes from them; the idea that buying shoes for me would get shoes to someone who needs them was too good to postpone any longer. In addition, I have been looking at pictures of a lot of the work TOMS does on their site because pictures are interesting. TOMS worked with Element skateboards on a project in which both shoes and skateboards were delivered to kids all over the place. I am supremely jealous of those who are able to go out and do something cool while I must be content, for the moment, doing nothing but studying so that I have options later. I assume it is a very exclusive group that gets to travel with TOMS specifically to do their work in Africa but surely it is not as difficult to sign up randomly and go. I think everyone should buy a pair of TOMS because it is a ridiculously available way to do something good without any personal sacrifice. I suppose 50 bucks is not cheap but to be honest shoes for an African kid are a bit more important than a meal at a restaurant or football tickets or whatever. Plus TOMS look cool. You can be cool. And you can help people too.
What TOMS really makes me do is doubt the purpose of all the studying I am doing. I will take the GRE and the LSAT, go somewhere for post-graduate studies, get more degrees, teach English and so on and so forth. Boring. The more immediately productive thing to do would be to fly to Africa. However, this shmedium existential crisis about the meaning of my purpose and what is most right to do is really just me enjoying pissing myself off. I know I need to get all the serious studying and degree receiving out of the way. Even if I want to go give Africans free stuff all the time. Also this Africa thing is questionable too because I think it would be fair to say there are many people who need help in America as well. I wonder if anyone is giving them free shoes. But no one can fix everything at once. Baby steps. Maybe baby steps in TOMS. Giving, at the end of the day, must come in all forms. TOMS is just one of them.
Lastly, the band The Avett Brothers is bad ass. So is Brand New. I will listen to both of them as I continue reading Shelley talking about little kids being knocked out by the stone tears of some dude named Fraud while Murder leads bloodhounds around squashing Irish Rebellions and the like.