RANT AND PANT:
I am dismayed after reading a review of Generation X Goes to College it's not so much the Gen X bashing - Gen X already showed the world that they were perfectly capable of becoming idealistic sell-outs in the DotCom boom - but the second customer review was so damn cynical about what he deemed "Gen Y." I am so pissed off with old intellectuals who stubbornly persist on dredging up this pathetic nostalgic drivel about the "greatest generation" and how bad people my age are - how spoilled and unappreciative we are of their benevolent kindness to us, and this pristine world of technological wonder they have handed us. That is just baloney, the world was not a better place, it just seems like that when you remember it fifty years later - and personally the world we are being handed is crap, filled with toxic and nuclear waste, and I'm not so sure any American generation should brag about being spoilled.

posted by Steven at 7:51 PM

The Importance of Being Intelligent:
So my gym attendance is verging upon full-blown addiction...I go 5 days a week, which makes me feel simultaneously great and terrible. It's good because I'm doing something good for myself, it's bad because I am now precisely the type of gym rat i once detested. The other interesting thing about going to the gym is the fact that I go to the Student Rec Center and unlike other gyms, you not only have to be buff and good looking while working out - but you have to be smart. Usually you go to the gym and you see these women reading "People" and these men reading "Sports Illustrated," which are fine publications - but they are hardly the stuff of academia. At the Rec people read notes detailing the physics of Carbon Nucleotides (Yes, that is real I saw it tonight) while pedaling on the stationary bike, and "Atlantic Monthly" while swishing on the eliptical trainer. I read "The New Yorker" on the stair-climber, I tried the "Atlantic Monthly" for a while but it was just too demanding on my brain (there are only so many things I can do simultaneously, and that number drops the longer and harder I exercise).

PS: New review in the Emerald tomorrow...err...today. SPUN. Also I might be riving down to Cali for the weekend.

posted by Steven at 12:35 AM

Musings on Summer
There are some days in summer when I am so happy to be alive, the sun shines and everything breathes in unison, even the music playing on my laptop seems tailor-made for this day. You can smell the sweetness of the grass, that zing of chlorophil that smells on the intensity of green, and the palestst azure sky you can imagine. This is what dreams are made of; the tastes of popscile and sweat, and the dangerous flickers of skin. Life, you done me right.

posted by Steven at 3:41 PM

This is Funny:

hehehehehe.

posted by Steven at 5:21 PM

And the War Just Keeps on Getting Better:

Mr. Bush's war has been over since May 1st, and more American soldiers have been killed since that date then in the duration of the war. 5 American GI's were kiled in 24 hours, that is unbelieveable. The proclaimation that the capture of Hussein's sons was going to spell the end of all "resistance" to our "rebuilding" (not to be mistaken for the nation-building Mr. Bush campaigned against in 2000) is just pure bull shit. And Mr. Bush's claim that the war was over was just a simple ploy to take the wind out of a growing peace movement. Welcome back to Vietnam 'folks, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

5 G.I.'s Killed in Iraq in 24 Hours
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
NEW YORK TIMES

AQUBA, Iraq, July 26 — Three American soldiers with the Fourth Infantry Division were killed and four were wounded here today after an assailant, who witnesses said was probably perched inside the children's hospital the troops were guarding, threw a grenade into a group of soldiers who were playing a game of cards next to the building.
Another American soldier was killed today and two others were wounded in an attack on an Army convoy in Abu Ghraib, just west of Baghdad, military officials said. And early Sunday, a soldier from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was killed in a grenade attack. A military spokesman had no details on the location of the attack.
The hospital here was sealed off shortly after the 11 a.m. attack, and at 8 p.m. military officials were still refusing to allow anyone, with a few exceptions, to enter or leave. Inside, employees and patients were searched, interrogated and fingerprinted, according to people who were allowed the leave the hospital.
The attack is a blow to hopes that the slaying in Mosul on Tuesday of Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, would weaken the resolve of Iraqi insurgents.
This has been one of the deadliest weeks for American troops since President Bush declared major combat operations over on May 1. Of the 104 Americans who have died in Iraq since then, 14 have been killed in the last seven days.

This article has been editted for length, please click the title for the full text.

posted by Steven at 3:27 PM

No Sex in the City: Or no sex at least, Eugene hardly qualifies as the city. I am having no luck in the romance dept. Blah to the blah - no matter: thanks to my near-obsession with the gym I will soon be a sex god.
I have so much stuff to do, not enough time. -sigh-

posted by Steven at 8:27 PM

Letters to Abigail: My world has turned to blah. Without school I am now in the relentless pursuit of "the job," but basically all I'm doing is bumming around Eugene tanning my pasty-white belly and going to the Student Rec Center; which I guess isn't that bad. I'm losing weight, even though I remain fixed at 185 - I supose it's because I'm lifting while exercising so I'm gaining muscle mass. There's no way to deny that I'm losing the pot belly I've had since I was like 12, I put on an old pair of boardshorts and the fell off. I want to go home to my beloved San Francisco, I miss the cool nights, I miss the culture, I miss the music. Jo went down there this weekend, and all she could talk about was how beautiful it was and I wanted to strangle her for getting to go down there. Also, I'm getting the website going again too, it was really bad and I suddenly felt myself needing a big change. I have been listening to David McCullough’s book on John Adams. Normally I am not a fan of the audio-tape variety of literature, this being only the second time I have ever attempted to listen to a book, I do not know why I find it so distasteful; somehow it feels vaguely trashy in a Wal-Mart kind of way. However, it was given to me as a distraction to the drive from San Francisco to Eugene and I soon found myself engrossed in the detail of a very interesting historical figure. What struck me most is how much the author has been able to discover simply through the numerous letters that John and Abigail sent and obviously saved. No one takes the time to write letters anymore, no one saves copies of email. How will the biographers of the future know anything about the present? God knows I cannot remember the last time I wrote a real pen and paper letter. The other thing that I find discouraging is how thoroughly intelligent these letters sound, they are not stiff and formal, but rather loose and witty like a Jane Austin novel. I had long ago assumed that no one actually wrote or spoke like a character from Pride and Prejudice, but these letters have unsettled me. They are full of romantic and charming phrases that seem to have aged very well. When was the last time you told someone in an email: I have resolved to take up horseback rides along the beach once again, though my heart pines for your glowing and warm embrace?

posted by Steven at 9:53 AM

A New Start: There's a new site in town, and it's mine. So as you may have noticed I'm remodeling the whole shebang. There's going to be a lot of bugs and stuff as I get everything in order, but hang in there and we'll all be rewarded with a slick and spanking new hyperbole.

posted by Steven at 9:56 PM

Cultured Weekend Today has been miserable. I have never been so bored and I am worried that the site will never look good again (although how many times have I said that before) One bright spot on my radar, I am going to get to see the 'rents tonight. They're driving up to Ashland and I'm driving down. It should be nice - if they don't drive me crazy.

posted by Steven at 12:34 PM

Ruminations on Two Decades: Yesterday I turned 20. To tell you the truth it could have been any day. There was nothing earth shattering about discarding my teenager status, although I have noticed a marked interest in the past year in subject s I had never considered to be of much interest (this can be easily illustrated by my relatively newfound obsession with NPR and “All Things Considered”). The only especially different thing was that I held a small little barbeque, and went out with Dahvi and Kelley but regrettably not Claudia who went to Dan and Max’s house because Kelley was not sure that she could get them into her friend’s frat house, Brett’s frat, the Betas. “One guy I can get in, two guys is a little much,” she said holding a tallboy of Busch light delicately in he hand. Stephen dropped by during the barbeque, and was as usual extremely humorous and quite civil. He had brought his friend Heather and her small Dalmatian puppy. Heather turned out to be not only beautiful but completely personable and intelligent, a rare find. We discussed some mildly intelligent subjects, architecture, and of course the perennial college singles favorite – sex and relationships. After playing numerous drinking games at various locations I called DDS, stumbled into bed, and fell asleep in the mountain of soft cool comforters. Snap Crackle Hip Hop – or how the rocker boy went rap for a night After an 8 hour marathon drive from San Francisco to Eugene (only made possible by my recent discovery of sugar-free Red Bull) I arrived to my tousled apartment at around 4:30 to find a message from my manager at work. She wanted to see me as soon as I got in so I hurried over expecting at worse a write up for some inane mistake like putting too much mocha powder in a hot chocolate. Instead, I got a pink slip after braving the mind-numbing horrors of interstate 5. Completely crushed by my first firing I called Claudia looking for some sense of human existence to take my mind off the gnawing self-doubt that was running up and down my spine like a case of shivers after a swim in a cold glacial lake. She invited me to the hip-hop show, and it was only because of my desperate countenance that I decided to attend. The show was not what I expected. We drank tequila sunrises that I had bottled in some Snapple containers, and after a few mediocre acts, and quite a bit of tequila my disdain for the genre was quite dissolved. A young guy took the stage and after performing some intense, but fairly run of the mill hip-hop, the mood of his act shifted dramatically. His DJ took a breather while he poured emotion into what could be easily construed as an extremely terse bit of beat poetry. The moment was full of charged electrons and suddenly I felt very much connected to what people saw in hip-hop or beat poetry or whatever it was that left the crowd in a hushed and stunned silence. It wasn’t any freestyle parlor-trick, or anything bling-bling; it was pure, simple, raw and beautifully delicate. Sundays with Amy I think that if there ever was a woman over 30 who I would most like to sleep with it would have to be comedienne Amy Sedaris. The ingenious and miraculously witty remarks that stream from her mouth on talk shows have convinced me that there could be nothing better than to wake up next to her on a Sunday morning exhausted, lay in big overstuffed bed dissecting the New York Times, listen to slow blues songs, and drink fresh orange juice.

posted by Steven at 9:15 PM