Just Shut Up

I have received my first test back in my law class, in which I got a “B”. For most people that’s not bad. For me it’s definitely not good enough. Since this was not a stellar grade for me, I asked to talk with the professor about what I could possibly do to achieve a higher grade in the future.

Hold on, let me back up for a second. Back in class when he was handing back the tests to everyone, a fellow student and I noticed that a good chunk of the tests were clumped together in the “B” range and there wasn’t much divergence from that range. I looked through my test, hoping that my prof would have explained what I was missing, but there wasn’t a single word written on the test. There was simply the score at the top and a few sentences underlined or check marked (probably to note that I touched upon a certain concept).

Now, back to where I was before. We sat down to look over my test. He reread most of it and told me that they were good essays. I hadn’t missed anything or left anything out—they were good, but just not good enough. Hoping for a better explanation, I asked for further elaboration upon what he meant by that—did I need more text citations, more developed thoughts, added points of view, or other things he might have been looking for. He told me that I wasn’t missing any of them and again that I did a good job, it just wasn’t there in that “A” category. The only real advice I did get out of him is that I need to state the difficulty of the question as I’m answering it. Hmm…ok, that helps lots. It was simply frustrating to get a mediocre grade, but not have been given a justification for that grade. At least I know that on future tests for each question I should preface my answer with, “This is a terribly tough question that can only be adequately answered by the almighty gods of the law, but I, a poor, puny human being, will now attempt to put forth an answer that will appease your thirst for perfect knowledge.”

On the plus side, however, at least I know that I’m doing well in my sociobiology/evolutionary ethics class. My first paper was one of the top 5 scores in the class of about 25, so I can’t really complain. I have come to really appreciate that class and have taken quite an interest in it. I think it also helps that it is my only class on the days that I have it, whereas I have my other three classes on the opposite days. Since I only have that one class on days like today, I can give a lot more focus on that topic instead of splitting it three ways like I have to on the other days.

As for fun stuff, I recently picked up Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance for the Xbox. I wanted a new fighter to play since I was getting sick of having the crap kicked out of me at Tao Feng by Kristin. I couldn’t pass this up as it was on sale for $15. It was really funny, though, that when I was at Electronics Boutique the guy that works there (who I might add is the most pushy and annoying person in the world) kept trying to push all these expensive titles on me.

“Hey, I see you’re eyeing Mortal (he didn’t want to say the entire name of the game for some reason). Why don’t you pick up Soul Caliber II? It’s way better.”

“No thanks, I’m kind of strapped for cash and don’t have that much to spend right now. What do you think of Mortal Kombat?”

“Oh, Mortal is a great game, a really good fighter, but I know that you’d really want Soul Caliber”

“Naw, remember that I don’t have that much money to spend.”

“Tell you what, you can get a used copy for only $45 instead of the $50 new price.”
“Sorry, I’m just not interested in spending that much money on a video game. Can you please just check me out?”

“Ok, that’s cool. I understand what you’re saying. Now do you want to join our frequent buyers club? It’s only $10 and you get a magazine and a discount and………blah blah blah.”

(Trying to cut him off so I could leave) “Umm..no…….uh, I really……..that doesn’t…….NO THANK YOU!”

About 15 minutes later I finally get to leave. If there was ever a more pushy retail store worker in the world, I sure would not want to meet him. I wonder if he knows that by trying to push all his crap on me that I’m probably going to go out of my way to eventually buy those titles somewhere else? Maybe I should tell him that next time I stop by…or maybe I should just cold-cock him so he shuts up. Eh, I suppose I’ll just have to stick to ignoring him……

Mid Semester Break

Last week, and even now on my long weekend break, I’ve been utterly swamped by the sheer amount of homework I have had to do. On Wednesday, I had two papers due, one on the Waksal and ImClone insider trading case and the other on the philosophy involved in law interpretation. Since I was at the comic convention and disc tourney last weekend, I was left to finish those two papers (along with the plethora of reading I have to do every day) on Monday and Tuesday. Luckily, I finished them both, but in doing so I put off much of my other reading.

That other reading has occupied almost the entire evening and afternoon yesterday. I had nearly 250 pages of philosophy text to read, one article review to write and one paper on Leibniz and Spinoza to write. I finished almost all of the reading, but I haven’t started the paper yet. I’ll probably work on that some tonight after my volleyball game. It’s amazing how much time my reading for classes actually takes up. I suppose it also doesn’t help that I’m also in a reading group studying Thomas Khun’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. It’s an interesting take on how we should view science, but I don’t think it is nearly as revolutionary as many modern philosophers have said it to be.

Anyhow, now that I’ve finished my complaining about how much I have to do (yes, I do realize that many of you out there probably have it worse than me, but I definitely know there are also some of you out there who don’t have nearly as much as I do to do), I can talk about the fun stuff! This has been SJU’s long weekend—we get Thursday and Friday off as a mid-semester break. It’s hard to believe that half of this semester is already over, and with it, half of my final semester of college experience. Eek! Scary! I don’t really want to talk about that anymore…

So Kristin came home with me for Wednesday night through Saturday morning. We had a wonderful couple of lazy days. We also managed to get a lot of stuff accomplished. We watched a couple of movies, read a bunch of comic books (she’s now starting the X-Men series that debuted in the early 90’s while I’m still reading New X-Men and Weapon X). We went for some walks, tried to play frisbee in the wind, and even took the 4-wheeler out for a spin. It was so dry out that when we got in, we were covered in dust and our hair felt like it was straw.

When we took the 4-wheeler out, I wanted to take Kristin to see how harvest works, but we’d finished the field close to our place and moved about 6 miles away. She got lucky, however, in that when we went to pick up my car from the shop (it was having all of its filters changed), we stopped at Grandma and Grandpa Gebhardt’s place (which is also the home farm) and caught dad while he was in between loads. Since he was on his way back out to the field, we hopped a ride with him so that we could show Kristin the harvest equipment. Now that she has seen the farm life, she can no longer be thought of as 100% city girl—she’s down to 97.2%.

The only downer about being home for those few days is that I didn’t get to see my family a whole lot. Dad was busy with harvest, Ryan was in school, and Mom had to work 11 hours both days. Since they weren’t around, I thought I’d make their days a little easier and I cooked every meal that we were home. One time we had chicken stuffing, corn, and onion rings. Another meal we had chicken stir fry and garlic bread. Another we had pork chops, stuffing, bread sticks. The last meal I made was hamburgers, green beans, and bread sticks. I can honestly say that I don’t mind cooking at all, in fact, I quite enjoy it. If only I could be a stay at home dad in the future, that would be the life for me……

Now break is over and I have to return to the grind. It was nice to have a couple of lazy days off, but I think I needed a couple more. I suppose I should finish off my homework now this morning because I have to go get a haircut this afternoon and then I’m going to Kristin’s place for supper before my volleyball game.

Comic Craziness

I have just finished typing a substantial amount of writing so if this thought is a little hodge-podge, forgive me. I have two papers due tomorrow and another writing that I had to finish for today so I’ve been quite busy (especially since I was gone all weekend and couldn’t work on anything then). Speaking of the weekend, it was pretty sweet.

As most of you know, on Saturday Kristin and I went the FallCon comic book convention at the Minnesota state fairgrounds in St. Paul. They had everything housed in the education building, which was just large enough to hold all of the vendors and artists that were there. When we first arrived we bought our tickets (it cost $9 to get in, but it was well worth it) and were given a grab bag of stuff. In my grab bag I got some sweet comics—mostly JLA and Thunderbolts. Kristin got a few X-Men comics (which she was quite happy about) and a Batman one she gave to me.

Once we got in, we decided to make the buying run first and look at the exhibits later so that way everything wasn’t picked over and all of the good books gone. I managed to get a bunch of stuff that I needed for less than $50. I bought the entire New X-Men run from issue 114 to 140, about 10 random Batman back issues, the Wolverine Xisle miniseries, and three graphic novels—Ghost Rider Resurrected, Cable (his origin collected into one volume), and The Trial of Superman. Each of those books carried a $20 retail price tag and I got all of them for $9. I really, REALLY wish that I had more money to spend while I was there because I could have gotten so many comics that I’ve wanted for so long cheaper than anywhere I’ve ever seen. I guess I’ll just have to remember to save a lot of money for next year’s show.

Kristin also got a few things while she was there. She bought a Psylocke action figure and a Wolverine metal action figure. She also got a few X-Men comics to read. After I’d used up my money, we looked through all of the original art that they had on display and also looked through all of the toy displays that they had. It’s amazing how much the toys that we played with as kids are selling for now. One Gargoyle figure that Kristin wanted was selling for $20. Insane!

All in all the show was a lot of fun and we found some sweet deals. I’d tell you more (and I might tomorrow), but I really have to get back to my papers. Man, I can’t wait for tomorrow since we have a long weekend break—no class on Thursday or Friday!

Pizza, Boobs, and Piano

I have just been issued my first test in my philosophy of law class. I’m not a pre-law major, I only really have a cursory knowledge of how judicial reviews work, and I’ve only had one other class that’s touched upon law. Knowing that, it’s easy to see why I’m somewhat baffled at our first test. I’ve read over the questions and right now I don’t know exactly how I’m going to respond because I don’t know exactly what I should be looking to include. Oh, yeah, by the way, it’s a take home exam, which is why I’m pondering it so much at the moment. To alleviate my worries of that test, I took most of last night off to go to a few activities on campus.

The first was a movie about women, their breasts, and what they mean. I shouldn’t lie, only part of me actually wanted to see the movie—I mostly went because they had free pizza. The movie was interesting, but it wasn’t really very enlightening. I was hoping to find out deep insights into the psyche of women concerning their breasts, but instead it was a bunch of women talking about boobs and the different topics that related to boobs (size, cancer, bras, etc.). I was actually disappointed by it because it didn’t seem to be very deep, but I’m sure many of the guys there didn’t care because they were just there to see some boobs.

It was really weird because the entire time I was watching the movie, I really didn’t have much of a reaction to seeing boobs up on the big screen. They were just there—a part of the movie. Afterwards I was thinking to myself that this was an interesting reaction, that of indifference. If I was 14 and saw this movie I probably would have been intently staring at the screen while thinking, “Oh my God, oh my God, it’s boobs. Real life boobs. Wow, I’m looking at boobs right now. Look at them, boobs Boobs BOOBS BOOBS BOOBS!”. I really think this is one of the few times in the last few years that I’ve contemplated how much I have grown up since my early teenage years. Most of the time I have a difficult job of seeing a difference, but I know I’ve changed (even though I still do act like I’m 12 some of the time).

After the breasts & pizza experience, Kristin and I went to see Fr. Bob Koopmann’s piano recital. It was a very good performance and I enjoyed it immensely. He played a great variation of pieces, including two that he composed himself. Some of the pieces he played were traditional (Beethoven and Chopin), some were jazzy, others very non-traditional, and one where he not only played the piano via the keys, but also plucked the strings on the inside of the piano, which was very interesting, and in my opinion extremely beautiful.

I did feel a tad bit hypocritical while I was at the piano recital because I hadn’t had a chance to dress up before hand. I had come directly from the breasts and pizza presentation over to the piano recital so I was still in a sweater and semi-old pants while wearing a cap. I didn’t have time to dress up before the breasts presentation because I had just gotten in from a run, and I also forgot that I was going to the piano recital right after the breasts presentation. I really dislike people that attend fine arts performances not dressed up, and last night I was one of those people.

So, tomorrow is the big day. The FallCon in the Twin Cities. I’m so looking forward to it and I hope that I manage to come home with an armful of comics from the show. I’m also hoping I can snag a bunch of free stuff while I’m there. I’ll give you the big rundown when I get back. Maybe I’ll even have some pictures (Lord knows, it’s been a while since I’ve had new pictures to put up).

We Need a New Social Class

Oh yes, my friends, it is only 3 days now until the FallCon in St. Paul. For all of you out there who aren’t avid comic book geeks, this is a convention of comic creators, dealers, and fans. It’s a great time to meet writers and artists, while at the same time get some good deals on comics from the varied dealers that will be there.

Kristin and I plan on being über-geeks for the day so please don’t make fun of us too much :-) You wouldn’t believe some of the weird looks and responses we’ve received from people here on campus that we’ve told we were going to a comic book convention. Most often people will ask me why I’d drag Kristin along to something so dorky. It’s at that point that she so kindly explains to them that she actually wants to go. I really think that it’s hard for people to see girls as liking some things that are stereotypically male in our society.

Comic books are a great example of this. I didn’t know any girls before Kristin in my entire lifetime that read comics. I often wonder what the actual percentage of comic readers are female? I would guess it’s extremely low. We’ll probably find out this weekend when we see the prevailing gender at the show. Are comic books simply something seen as a male, computer geek, “I don’t have a life” hobby? Unfortunately, that stereotype rings true more often than I want to admit. For that simple reason, I’ve often hid my “inner dork” so that I wouldn’t be lumped into that category of guys that stay up, talk like half-elves, watch Star Trek religiously, and spend more time on their computer than socializing.

Oddly, I love half-elves…well, actually full elves (they’re my character of choice in most RPG’s), I did watch Star Trek religiously (up until Voyager, which blew horrendously), I do love to play video games, and my job over the summer had me spending around 8 hours a day in front of a computer. Still, I don’t consider myself a dork. I play on the ultimate frisbee club team here at college, play volleyball three nights a week, work out, put in about 10 miles of running a week. If you knew only that, would you lump me into the category of jock?

Beyond that I am going to school for my philosophy degree, I participate outside of class in many philosophical groups, I read philosophy and classical literature for fun, and to pursue, eventually, a master’s degree in this field. Knowing only that, would you classify me as an intellectual? Now, knowing everything, what category do I necessarily fall into? I guess I’m just a part of each category and depending on the situation, I’m judged according to which category I appear to be a part of at the time.

Now let’s get back to the topic I was discussing before, are some things simply odd for women to do, like read comics or play video games? That’s another think Kristin does, and does well as evidenced by her continual domination over me in a good portion of fighting games (especially Tao Feng). I was initially very surprised that Kristin had a “boy-ish”, “dork-ish” side to her and it caught me off guard, but now it just seems so natural for me to come home and she’s sitting down playing Bloodrayne or reading the latest issue of Exiles.

I guess what I’m trying to get at is that I have come to really dislike the constant grouping of people into certain categories. We all do it every day, but that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t like the concept of it. I wonder if there will ever be a group of intellectual jock-nerds to surface in the near future? Maybe I’ll have to start that stereotype……

Lots of Writing

I’m back again and can lay down some writing now that I finished my sociobiology paper. Well, at least I’ll be back until I have to start work on my Business Ethics case study that’s due next week. It seems like that as soon as I finish one paper it’s right on to the next one. When will it ever stop??? Well, right around December 20th, I guess, but that’s still a ways off (but a little too close for comfort). I don’t want my college career to end. ‘Nuff said.

I seem to have a real problem when it comes to writing essays for my classes. The last one that I wrote (the sociobiology paper) was supposed to be around 750 words, but could be a little longer if it needed to be. I sat down to work on mine and once I had finished I checked the document’s stats—2400+ words. Eek, how do I manage to expound that much wordage on a supposedly short, easy essay? I had the same problem with my paper before that. My prof wanted a short, 3 page-ish look at Descartes. I ended up at 8……after I cut out some of the stuff I wrote. What amazes me is that I don’t feel like they’re that über-long. Later this week, if I don’t have time to write something new, I might just post my Descartes paper for you all to read, if you care to, of course.

I can see my next paper ending up being a little shorter, though, because I have come into possession of a very wonderful time-killer, Halo for PC. It’s finally out and I managed to secure a copy. I’ve played through the first level and it’s so sweet! Kristin used to play this on Xbox and then rant and rave to me about how good it was, but I haven’t gotten around to getting it for that system (because of the continuing $50 price tag). Now, the PC version has finally been released and I seem to have a reason to play video games on my computer again.

The only beef I have with Halo for the PC is that it’s unbelievably resource intensive. I only have an Athlon XP 1700+, 512 mb DDR ram, and a GeForce 3 64 mb card in my computer (which isn’t too shabby), so I’m stuck turning down some of the nifty graphics so that it runs smoothly. I’ll live with it, though, because I can play it with a mouse/keyboard combo, which works much better for me in first person shooters, instead of a controller.

Speaking of my computer, I’ve had an odd problem as of late with Trillian (my instant messaging client). It takes all of my IM contacts (AOL, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, and IRC) and puts them into one program so that I don’t have an assload of IM programs running at one time. The weird thing about it, though, is that for some reason the option to set my status to not away is gone. I’m always stuck in my “away” state. So if any of you have been trying to IM me and I’m always away, there’s nothing I can really do about it, so just IM away and hope that I’m there. I really wish I knew why it does this, but I’ll just deal since I’m too lazy to really care too much about how my dumb IM client works.

A Tragedy in Rocori

Just about everyone who lives in the St. Cloud area, and even Minnesota for that matter, know about the school shooting that happened in Cold Spring yesterday. Actually most of the country knows since it made its way on to CNN here. So what is there to say? One dead, one injured, and the student who performed the deed is in custody after a coach talked him out of the gun. That’s the facts, but the ramifications here in the St. Cloud area could be huge.

I was hoping that this, my final semester of school, would go without scandal or tragedy, unlike most of my previous four years here. There was Josh’s disappearance last year, the summer before two students died in Lake Sag on campus, and the sexual scandals involving the SJU monks. It’s been crazy, but I thought maybe we’d used up all of our bad karma for a while. I guess I was wrong.

What makes this shooting, more so than any of the previous school shootings in the US, scarier for me is the proximity to SJU where I live. Cold Spring is right down the road from us. I work at the high school here at St. John’s and all this morning I have been finding myself wondering what I would have done, or what the students and teachers would have done, if the student had gone to school here. I have such a hard time imagining any of the students that I supervise here bringing a gun into school and starting to shoot his or her classmates, but that’s exactly what happened right down the road.

This shooting hasn’t seemed to have much of an effect upon the kids here at the prep school, which is probably good. I would rather it be forgotten instead of publicized. Whenever a horrific deed, such as this one, is plastered all over the news I always fear that some kid seeing that will want to go and do the same thing. If that kid on tv can go and shoot the people he doesn’t like, then why can’t I? That’s simply a thought I don’t want entering any kid’s mind.

Since this also happened in a small, country school, I also think back to my high school where my little brother, Ryan, still goes. What would have happened if something like this would have occurred there? I really don’t want to think about it, but when a tragedy happens in close proximity to you it is much harder to detach yourself from the situation and say that it could never happen near you—because it did happen near you! Heck, Kristin taught religion class at Rocori, the high school this happened at. She taught some of the students there.

I think I’ve probably talked this subject over enough, but it simply is hard to believe that this happened so close. It’s sad that it had to happen, but I am very thankful that it didn’t happen here.

Sometimes I Need a Time Machine

Yes, I realize the gigantic time span that has passed since the last post I’ve put up, but I have been very busy working on a research paper covering Descartes for my Modern Philosophy class. Now that I have finished that I’ll be able to post more, well, until I’m stuck working on my sociobiology paper which I should be starting…right…about…now! But before I do, I will catch you up (and I promise to give a more concerted effort to make posts more often). Let’s get to the rundown of the last, oh, week or so, shall we?

Thursday: The Minnesota Orchestra. What can I say? Un-frickin-believable! I have been to many a band concert, many punk and metal concerts, some folk & blues concerts, a piano & cello performance, and many others, but never before have I seen an entire orchestra perform. I was simply amazed and awe-struck by the sheer beauty of their performance. Every note was precise, every piece filled with emotion, and everything simply much better than I expected. Kudos are definitely in order for Kristin for proposing that we go.

Friday: Since Kristin’s birthday was going to be on Monday the 22nd, she wouldn’t really get a chance to do much celebrating because of class and whatnot so we decided to have a birthday party for her at our place. A bunch of her friends and my friends all came over and we had a wonderful time playing DDR, watching Old School, and simply hanging out. It was really a lot of fun.

Saturday: The Johnnies had their first home game against the University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire. We haven’t been able to beat them the last few years so I was a little bit worried that we might not pull this one off. Thankfully, I was horribly wrong and we had a stellar victory over them. After the game, Kristin and I had contemplated going to see Underworld but my brother and most of the reviews I read said it wasn’t really that great. We didn’t want to waste $10 going to see it if it was going to suck. Instead, we went for a walk around the lake to the chapel and took the rest of the night easy at my place.

Sunday: The parents, Ryan, and Grandmama came up to visit for Kristin’s birthday. We met them at Fazoli’s for lunch, which is our usual eating place when my ‘rents come to visit. After that we sort of splintered and my mom, grandmamma & Kristin went to the mall to shop while dad, Ryan, and myself went back to my apartment to watch the Vikings take down Detroit. When the girls got back from shopping we let Kristin open her gifts and had some wonderfully chocolatey chocolate cake. The rest of the time we had a pretty lengthy tournament of Tao Feng. Kristin, of course, was the undisputed champ. She continually kicks my hinder at the game, and surprisingly she also pummeled Ryan over and over again (I think he only won maybe 2 or 3 times out of like 20 or so). We even managed to get my dad to try out the game. For never really playing video games he picked it up pretty good and nearly beat Ryan a few times. I’m thinking as Ryan gets older his prowess for video games might be waning.

Monday: Kristin’s birthday!!! Unfortunately, she had classes all morning and night class that night so she only had the afternoon to really sit back and enjoy her day. I went over to visit her for her b-day (of course) and we went to grab lunch and then proceeded to watch some quality episodes of the 90’s X-Men cartoon. We seem to do a lot of that lately since I picked up the entire 76 episode series run on VCD a little while back. After we finish up the X-Men run, we have the entire run of Gargoyles to watch as well. Wow, talk about being uber-nerds!

Tuesday: Nothing really special happened Tuesday. I had work, then class, then frisbee practice, then volleyball games, then I worked out, came home, did homework while watching the Twins clinch their division, and proceeded to go to bed early. Long days without a solid nap make it imperative that I get to bed early lest I be very cranky the next day.

Well, that gets us all caught up to today. Whew, I didn’t know if I was going to make it or not. Anyhow, you know how I said at the beginning I had a sociobiology paper to do? Yeah, I’m going to go work on that now. Ciao.

Robot Vampires

I finally got around to beating Mech Assault! It was an extremely fun game, but a couple of the missions were really tough and frustrating so I almost gave up, but I just couldn’t because it’s just so darn fun! I only wish that I had Xbox Live so that I could play it online, but there’s no way I want to shell out $50 for the Live kit and then pay $10 a month just to play a couple of my games online.

Feeling that there was a gaping whole in my life now—that being I was lacking my video game addiction, I decided to start playing Silent Hill 2. It’ll be a little bit of a change from the pure action and robot carnage that Mech Assault was, but I’m kind of looking forward to something that is a little more thinking and a little less trigger-finger oriented. Kristin also found a new game to play while we were in town yesterday—Bloodrayne. We managed to pick it up for $15 that we split between the two of us. It looks like it’ll be pretty cool from the little bit I was watching Kristin play it.

We picked up Bloodrayne yesterday on one of our weekly trips that we take into St. Cloud when we need to get away from campus, walk around, and people watch. Another ulterior motive for going to town yesterday was that the new Krispy Kreme had finally opened. Before Tuesday, the closest Krispy Kreme was in Maple Grove, a good 45 minute drive away. We splurged and brought back two dozen to share with our apartment-mates since John and Jared cooked supper for us last night. It was great having something that didn’t need to be microwaved (we had spaghetti).

……Crap……the computer lab here at work just had a quick power outage and since we aren’t on battery back up in the lab I just lost all that I wrote from here on. Grrrr……Well, basically it was just me complaining about how much homework I have lately in comparison to other semesters and how it probably amounts to all the extra reading that is a part of upper division philosophy classes. I really don’t want to type it all out again since I already did once, so you’ll just have to survive with a short thought today. Damn computers………and prep school……

Starting Strong

It’s good to see that the Vikings have started off their season with a 2-0 start. I always have high hopes for the Vikes, but I really didn’t expect a whole lot from them this year, especially after last year’s horrible performance. It’s also good to see that my last season of volleyball here at SJU is off to a good start, as we won our first game.

It was pretty apparent that we were all a little rusty as we had many communication errors and some flow problems, but it felt so good to have the team together and playing again. We put ourselves in all three leagues this season so every Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday night I’ll have a game. It definitely feels like college again now that my usual routine is kicking in—work, classes, frisbee/volleyball/lifting, sleep, repeat x5, weekend. I really think I would have a hard time getting anything done without a schedule. If not for a deadline for getting things in, I will let them go indefinitely.

Speaking of deadlines, my first paper of the semester is soon due. The preliminaries of the paper have to be in tomorrow, and if not for Karl asking me what I was doing, I probably would have forgotten to do it. We are writing our first paper in Modern Philosophy on Descartes’ Meditations, which deal with existence and epistemology. I have found the reading very interesting (much more so than most of my other classes), and am even looking forward to writing my paper (which obviously will criticize some portion of Descartes—I’ve come to gain the reputation with the philosophy department as being overly cynical, but at least I don’t believe everything at first glance). Hmmm…I’m guessing none of you really care about philosophy much so I’ll move along.

I found a very interesting article while I was reading the news this morning (you can read it here). It talks about the differences between the movie industry and the music industry and how they are handling piracy, customer relations, and pricing. It’s amazing (and refreshing) to see how well the movie industry is doing with their more customer-friendly marketing and relations, while the music industry continues it’s downward spiral as it alienates customers more and more each day.

Ever since the RIAA started handing out lawsuits to casual users of file trading software, I have decided to not buy any more cds, and I haven’t in well over 2 months. I have also started going through my cd collection and am selling off many of the discs that I don’t listen to anymore. I really want to distance myself from such a greedy and heartless organization. If I really want to hear a song or cd I’ll borrow it from a friend, but there isn’t too much for new music that I like to listen to anyways. There isn’t a whole lot new talent in the heavy metal music circle lately. Just look at the recent crap that’s been released like Metallica’s new disc or any of the generic radio-rock cds out there.

I haven’t bought a dvd in a while either, but that’s mainly because I haven’t had the money and because I have a decent backlog of dvds already stockpiled in my room to watch. If there’s a movie I love, I’ll probably buy it simply because you get so much more for your money with a dvd than you do with a music cd. As much as I’d like to sit here and bash the RIAA, I think the article above does a good enough job……well, that and I have to go to class.