Moving Right Along, Then

Monday's post took a lot out of me to write. I wrote the first line, then sat and stared at it for over an hour. Just staring. It has been a little difficult for me (and I can't even know how hard it's been for those closer to him), but I have to move on. It'll be his funeral and party on Sunday. I'll tell you about that when it's done. For now, though, I want to resume normality. I know Fred wouldn't want me to be paralyzed with grief. So it'll be my traditional style until next Monday.


Right. I got my scores back from the two tests that I took. I got a B in History of Journalism (a little worse than I expected, but meh), and an A in Introduction to Weather (Woohoo, I kicked ass). If I get an A in the other two Intro to Weather classes, I'll be exempt from taking the final exam. Which, obviously, is a desirable goal. I mean, that's that much more time I don't have to study and one day I don't have to worry about an exam. I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch into two more A-graded tests, but if all the tests were like the one I took, I should be fine. Those online notes do help out.

Halo 3 has been an absolute blast. Though, actually, I haven't been playing it as much as I normally would have. See, I'm on a drive to level 70 in World of WarCraft, just having hit 68 last night. For those who know what this means, I'm fully rested all to 69, and I'll bet that I'll maintain that status to 70 as well. Hope so, anyway. Now all I have to do is find a good area to level and quest in, in the meanwhile. I can't decide between Blade's Edge Mountains (really annoying to get around in without a flying mount), Shadowmoon Valley (looks okay, if a bit desolate, but everyone says it sucks), and Netherstorm (in which I think I REALLY can't get around without flying, as it's just a bunch of disconnected floating islands). Asking people gives me only contradictory answers.

Through much wheedling from my girlfriend, I finally cleaned up my room. At least, a bit. I do have to thank her for this, as she was correct to wheedle. I couldn't live in an environment such as I was casting around myself, for very long. She and I recently went to see the movie Feast of Love, which I stupidly ruined by making snarky comments throughout. Frankly, movies like that, it's hard for me to resist. I suppose I should have just sewn my mouth shut and been done with the whole ordeal. If you're reading this, sweetie, I'm sorry.

The whole new Lorwyn set from Magic: the Gathering was released last weekend. Yes, this was the weekend of our ignominious last-second defeat against Auburn, but I'm doing my best to block that occurrence from my memory. Honestly, though, people are treating it like the end of the world. As I was wont to share with people afterwards, not that many listened, "We lost to Auburn last year and still won the national championship. Come on." But, you know how people are.

Lorwyn promises to be both lots of fun and utterly, utterly broken beyond belief. The planeswalkers, the Elemental Incarnations, and the champion a creatures all will unite to break Standard as it has never been broken before. I suppose it was a long time coming. The Magic dev team probably remembered the whole Urza's debacle some years back (now THAT was overpowered), and more recently the Mirrodin nonsense, and longed for just some really stupidly powerful stuff, y'know? Should make drafts interesting, at least. Especially when done with Chaos Magic rules in play, heh heh.

So what else? The show we're playing in marching band is a lot of fun. It's really amazing, I think. It seems as if the band director approached me a few months ago and said "Okay, Luke, what would be in your ideal show?" The first song contains Saturday morning cartoon themes, including Looney Tunes, Flintstones, Jetsons, what have you. The second is video game music, from Super Mario Bros. (both overworld and underground), Legend of Zelda, Ms. Pac-Man, and even Tetris. Look up the theme song to Tetris on youtube or something, I can guarantee you'll be humming it all day long. That is addictive.

The last song is superhero music. Starts with the Spider-Man theme ("Spin a web, any size; catches criminals just like flies!"), goes through Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Batman, and yes, the incredibly amazing Superman music. From the movies.

I'd just like to add this. The person who designs the formations for the halftime shows we perform seems to like abstract art, as we never form recognizable patterns. Well, we do, but very rarely. We formed a zeppelin for a Led Zeppelin show we did last year, and we form shapes in pre-game, but those are the only exceptions I can think of. If we don't form a mushroom, a star, a coin, a Mario hat, or something during the second song, I will be upset.

If we don't form a giant "S" emblem during the Superman song, I am going to actively harm something.

We don't even get the cool parts in a lot of those songs. I say "we," the tuba section. I play the tuba, y'see. We get important bits of the Jetsons and Flintstones music, some core playing during Zelda, but we don't even get what we by rights should get: the octave-leaping rhythms in the Super Mario Bros. underground sections! Isn't that the lowest of the bass? Why do the flippin' trombones get it? It just isn't fair. I tell ya, we get no respect. No respect at all.

But, enough blithering. Er...

That is...

...uh...

See, this gets a little more difficult every time I write this. My life just isn't that noteworthy, most of the time. Important stuff does happen, yes, but not necessarily of the sort I'd like to lay bare to the entire Internet, see? We're learning interesting things in History of Journalism, anyway. For instance, Joseph Pulitzer, made famous by the Pulitzer Prize; and William Randolph Hearst, made famous by all the newspapers he owned, the Hearst Award, and Citizen Kane...they were both jerks. They ran competing newspapers in the beginning of the century, the New York World (Pulitzer's) and the New York Journal (Hearst's).

They were both sensationalist, yellow-journalism-using, scoundrels, but Hearst had a lot of money from his family to back him up, so often he won the little disputes they had. For instance, Hearst wanted a good Sunday section for his paper. This was back when Sunday sections were not generally had in newspapers. He went to the offices of the World and offered all of the Sunday workers there double pay to work for him. They agreed. Pulitzer got wind of this and offered double of that to come back and work for him (Pulitzer). They agreed. Hearst got wind of this and offered double that pay to come back and work for him, Hearst, again. Unsurprisingly, they agreed. Pulitzer gave up at this point, and Hearst can be said to have triumphed, but I think that the real winners here were the writers.

It's this sort of cut-throat competition that typifies the history of journalism in a nutshell, I believe sometimes. Maybe not even just the history. Modern journalism can be seen to be much like this, if you look. Competing papers cut into each other like knives. Opposing news networks are forever denigrating their competitors, if not openly. The whole business has transformed from a way of transferring information to the public into, well, a business, with the whole concept of "the public's right to know" sort of shunted off to the side. Sigh. And this is my field. Sometimes I want to be a cavalier, crusading in and smashing down the dark and fetid walls of ignorance and arrogance that block real journalism from emerging...bring the whole field back into the open light and have it once again be just about bringing news to the people. Other times, I want to sidestep the whole mess and work for a non-traditional news outlet, such as Game Informer or Electronic Gaming Monthly. It's anyone's guess as to which of these I'll end up doing. At this point, it can honestly go either way.

Tonight is Game Night. It should be fun. In fact, I should start getting ready for it, I reckon. So see y'all later. Thanks to all those that comment, you really do inspire me to continue. I may even start doing personal replies later on, if I get enough comments to justify such extravagances.

Toodles.