Astron Song Proposal

The Astron Song, written by Chris Severino and Ryan Stotland, is probably my greatest achievement in college, and surely one of the best works produced at Tufts University. The song was created as a team project for my Astrophysics 22 class. Needless to say, we stunned the professor to speechlessness and all got an A+ in the class. However, behind this epic ballad is a little-known, and potentially equally important aspect of the project itself: the proposal.

This proposal was a gem. We wrote it up in about half an hour, mostly in an attempt to troll our professor with bloated wording that literally held no meaning. The requirements were to describe our proposed topic in the first paragraph, the sources we had found so far in the second, and the type of presentation in the third. She held a class in which she went through each proposal to ensure all the teams had an appropriate topic. As she went down the list of teams in class, she was cutting down proposal left and right. Ryan, our partner Pete, and I were shitting bricks, because we knew that our proposal was held together with nothing more than a few whimsical sentences about nothing, and good intentions. But when she got to ours, she ATE IT UP WITH A SPOON. She loved every second of it. We were blown away. Ryan and I were actually speechless, and we had to go directly to Dewick to discuss how we had beaten the system. It was magnificent. Also, I'll try to highlight the more ridiculous aspects of the article. I present to you, our Astron Song Proposal:

Stellar Evolution: a Tribute to the Life of a Star

The project that we plan to undertake is the life sequence of stars. This includes the possibilities of how a star transforms from its creation until its death. Its life on the main sequence is obviously an important part of the star’s life, so it will be included in our project. How a star becomes a giant and then a dwarf will also be covered. One of the more interesting aspects of this topic, my esteemed colleagues and I have found, is how a star dies. There are many different possibilities for how a star can die, whether it be through a supernova, black hole, or neutron star. We will also go over the various attributes of each phase in a stars life, and how the mass of a star plays an important role in how a star lives and dies.

For a subject as important as stellar evolution we decided to go to the guru of all reference sources: the library catalogue. Upon reaching our master, we found a plethora of available articles that pertained to the subject at hand. We found several websites that are particularly applicable, reliable and just great! One source, an article by Chiosi discusses the H-R diagram in great detail. In the H-R diagram, stars are graphed based on their luminosity and temperature, resulting in a main sequence of stars. It might be helpful to reinforce this concept of a main sequence to have people imagine the main road in their hometown. Most important stores are located on this main street and a store might even be considered to be an outlier should it not be located on this street, like a star that doesn’t fall on the main sequence. (Ok, I have to mention this one. Our professor was SO ADAMANT about the fact that the Main Sequence was like a main road in a town, as if we were incapable of understanding that "a lot of stars are there." She went over this idea on about 6 separate occasions. It was ridiculous. So we ran with it.) Another scintillating article from Jørgen Christensen-Dalsgaard discusses stellar evolution. More specifically it discusses how energy is radiated from the stars and how the star changes from its infancy into its old age. A third article was found, written by James Kaler, concentrates on how a star is formed, how the star evolves, and finally, the different ways a star can die. We were also able to locate a great number of sources in Scientific American and Popular Science.

Many motivated and intelligent students have attempted to put forth an interesting presentation of their topic but have gone down in flames. We are confident despite the great failings of other students in the past that we can put on an original presentation that will be discussed for years to come. For our presentation we plan to compose a lyrical ballad that will capture the beautiful spirit of our fascinating topic. This is only small potatoes compared to the thrilling and captivating PowerPoint slide that will encompass some of the rawest data pertaining to stellar evolution. Both Chris and Ryan will write the lyrics and chords for the song. The presentation involving a greater description of the life sequence of stars will be created by Chris, Ryan, and Pete, and will be delivered by all three as well. This is a very tall order for any mortal, but should we be able to accomplish this almost impossible feat, we will go down in history as the greatest astronomy presenters known to mankind.

We really lost control at the end there. Seriously: we got an A FRIGGN PLUS on this. If you want to hear the actual Astron Song, it's on youtube:

Part 1:

http://www.youtube.com/user/EmperorChrizice#p/u/4/mX3hMi-Z1i8

Part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/user/EmperorChrizice#p/u/5/UPlOlQGXHcw

Yeah, over 11 minutes of pure brilliance. Including a ~2 minute guitar jam session and a harmonica solo. AND guest appearance singers. SO MUCH AWESOMENESS.

Cable Remote Video

I have a hard time watching this video without cracking up. The video is shaking because I'm laughing literally the ENTIRE TIME my Dad goes off on this tangent. And this is just a normal interaction between me and my Dad.

My Dad consistently has no idea how to use our TV. There are two remotes: one for cable and one for TV. One of them has an "all on" button, which is the only thing he uses. But when I come home on the holidays, I flip his world UPSIDE DOWN. (Also, I hid one of the remotes to make him lose his mind. Mission accomplished.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTZi4wG7WAg

No. Fucking. Way.

This is hilariously impossible. Straight up PREPOSTEROUS. My mind has been blown to the degree in which I am tripping balls. I am tripping ALL THE BALLS. There is not a single ball left un-tripped. In order to join me on this storytelling journey of unfathomable mind-blowingidness (that's a word now btdubs), you're going to have to reference my previous post FOUND HERE.

That time where someone had farty-times while we were alone in the bathroom? Yeah, that is very much involved in another installment of "Is it possible to get fired for laughing in the bathroom at work?"

This particular story begins as I'm, once again, alone in the bathroom at work. This time I'm sitting in the stall playing games on my phone, as I am wont to do. I hear a guy walk in and go over to one of the urinals. Everything is fairly normalsauce for about 5 seconds. Then, like a recurring nightmare: he blows SEVERE ASS. He must have thought he was alone in the bathroom and decided to let one rip. And it wasn't just a "pffftttt" either. It was one of the foulest varieties of gaseous eruption that I have ever heard. The kind that make angels weep.

My immediate instinct is to laugh. Any potentially mature reaction of being shocked/appalled was completely overwhelmed by the fact that this was the funniest thing that has happened to me all day. There was nothing in the Universe that would prevent me from having a lol session, try as I might. So I laughed. I failed miserably at my attempt to stifle it. It was a full-on 2 to 3 second chuckle-fest. My first thought was "holy shit, that was funny, but WTF! WHY IS THIS HAPPENING AGAIN???" Luckily, I was behind closed doors, and thus would be able to avoid any face-to-face awkwardness that would most definitely occur. The thing is, now I had to wait for him to finish and leave the bathroom before I got out of the stall. Whatever, another round of Angry Birds never killed anyone. So I waited until I heard him flush, and then gave him some buffer time to wash his hands and walk out. Ok, so I was in the bathroom for a crazy long time, because he seriously took his time. He must have been drinking incredible amounts of water. So I waited. It was totally worth it, because I had just gotten away with what should have been an EXTREMELY awkward moment. Or so I thought.

I exit the bathroom stall feeling triumphant, and walk towards the sinks to wash my hands. And what do I see? The same guy who urinal-farted the last time I wanted to die from awkwardness. The same fucking guy. How is this possible? How could fate throw this situation at me? Statistically this is either impossible, or this guy farts EVERY TIME he goes to the urinal. What the hell dude? Are you on a diet purely made up of baked beans and Chipotle? I don't know how I survived the next few moments. Everything I've come to understand about how the world works tells me that I should have immediately died. My HOPE is that I tried to play it cool, but in reality who knows. I kind of blacked out due to the sheer force of palpable awkwardness. He was looking at me. I can't remember what expression he had on his face, because the only thing my brain could focus on was how strange my gait must appear with all of my ass muscles simultaneously clenching under his gaze. I seriously don't even remember the rest because my brain was stroking all over the place. By the time I got to the sink area, he was gone. And so ends my second encounter with the guy that I don't know who works on my floor and farts whenever we're alone in the bathroom.

If anyone has any advice on how to deal with the fact that I will eventually walk by him in the halls, please let me know. The only thing I can think of right now is to shoot myself in the face so that I can avoid that situation. UGH.

Seriously though. Hilarious fart. Top notch.

Trust Me, You Should Be Jealous of my Dreams

Holy crap, I am the greatest at having the best dreams ever. I'm not even exaggerating. If you ever get the opportunity to be in some crazy science experiment to be transplanted into my dreams, even for one day, you should absolutely take advantage of that seemingly insane option. Sure, it might be a trick to steal all your organs or splice your DNA with a turtle so that you can live in a sewer and learn ninja skills from a talking rat so that you can fight crime, but if it's not, mmmm boy: you're in for a treat.

This weekend I had an epic recreation session in Portland, Maine (to make up for a concussion-y, theft-ful ski trip in New Hampshire the other night) with a renegade band of misfits bent on super awesometimes at Maine breweries. I don't know if it was this particular "Cribz-level mansion-esque hotel room that only cost $40," but my dreams were of the highest caliber. I won't be able to do it justice by explaining it, but take my word for it: it was some serious shit. It was literally the funniest dream I've ever had. I laughed so hard in the dream that I actually started rofling really hard in real life. To the point where I woke everyone up in the hotel room, including myself.

And if I'm not having the most lol-ful dreams in the world, I'm having the most epic adventure dreams that have ever been conceived. Trust me: every one of my dreams could be an awesome movie, and you should want to be a part of them (don't ask me how, because I'm pretty sure Inception isn't possible yet). To sate you until that day comes, here are a few more dreams from my freshman year:

3/23/05

My Dad, sister, and I were creeping through an empty, deserted building to stay away from creatures that attack people. It was on a beach somewhere (I don't know why I wrote that. Knowing the setting of this edifice does literally nothing for the plot of the dream). I wanted to play a casino-shark-looking guy in a crazy, made-up card game for some reason, assuming that by playing a guy who is really good at cards, I will win. Logical.

There was also some winter scene dream in which some Tufts friends and I had to escape an ice fortress by sledding down a mountain.

3/24/05

I was setting up for a game of dodgeball. Not many people were there yet: just me, Matt, and some girls whom I went to middle school with. We played a round, then my Tufts friends and I went to a store in Davis Square. I met a guy in the square, who set a date and time for when I was going to die. I later learned that it was the Grim Reaper. I was able to get out of it by hiding in a bush, so he scheduled another place to kill me. When I showed up (I actually showed up to my pre-scheduled meeting for death? That doesn't sound like something I would do), I ran around telling people that he was trying to kill me. He didn't want to do it in front of everyone, so he made another appointment.

Later, I was trying to study prehistoric fish for some test. I went to lunch with a few Muslim students at Tufts. They got mad that I played a violent sport like dodgeball, so they kicked me out of the room. Well THAT was unfriendly of them!

3/26/05

I was dreaming about my housing situation at Tufts, but then had to go out to dinner. I forgot my shoes and realized that there was a party in the room that I left them in, and I needed a toga to get in. Luckily, I had just taken a shower, and had a towel on.

Back at Tufts, no one knew where Arlen was. Suddenly, we were going to war with seven different territories of creatures that looked like they were from the Never Ending Story. We beat three so far. That was it. Man, that looked like it was about to get good.

3/28/05

The dream began with a lot of my friends and some randos at a dinner party. One or two zombies showed up about mid-way through. We tried killing them by bashing their skulls, but it was very difficult. They started turning some of the guests into zombies by biting them. At this point, about half the attendees were zombies. Some girl came up to talk to me and said something really dumb. I was great at detecting who is a zombie (this is a recurring ability of mine in all my zombie dreams. I think it is the most valuable skill set during the zombie apocalypse), and discovered that she was in the process of becoming a zombie. I hit her in the head with a pipe, but she didn't die, and for some reason, this meant that she was clearly a zombie (yikes, I can't believe the "are you a zombie?" test includes smashing somebody in the head, and if it doesn't smash their brains out, they are a zombie. Rough place to live for sure). Some girl named Karen (how do I know her name and why is it relevant? The shit I choose to write down is pretty boggling sometimes) asked me how I could detect zombies. While she asked, one of the zombies started attacking her, but I saved her. I was about to run out the door with her, since almost everyone inside was a zombie by now. I called out to Gary and Jordan (friends from home and Tufts, respectively) to escape with me, but they told me that they couldn't because they were turning into zombies.

Karen and I ran out while the zombies tried to follow. We ran to the top of the Tufts hill. The zombie version of Jimmy (my best friend) came at us, but I talked to him and got through to the last remnants of his human side, and instead of attacking us, he helped us. He showed us a trail to go down the hill secretly, so we were able to get away. Karen was now Lauren (my girlfriend at the time). We walked through Medford, seeing warrants for our arrest as we tried to escape. We stole a car and got away. Then Lauren started singing a song, which turned out to be the song that was playing on my alarm clock, so I woke up.

Dream Journal Number 1: Continued

These are from freshman year, and they are completely blowing my mind. They are so effing ridiculous.

2/12/05

I was collecting a lot of different flavored drinks, like bubble-gum flavored juice and a bunch of other weird ones. That is all I remember. Ok, that one was a dud. What the fuck could I have been dreaming about?

2/13/05

I was about to engage in a foursome with Lauren (my girlfriend at the time) and two other girls, but Hitler forced us to move to another building (whoa, that is an intense start to a dream. Hitler and foursomes? Holy fuck). They played music really loud as we walked to this building. The other two girls we were with turned into Jimmy and Asako (my best friend from home and his girlfriend at the time). The only way to get to the doors was to climb a huge hill that was almost vertical. We tried, but kept slipping back down. When we finally got up, we had to fight a Predator that guarded the house. At this point, there was only me and some animal, and the Predator blew most of the walls down to get to us. Me and the animal ran to the side of a wall and I started shooting with my chain gun. That's all I remember of this dream.

The second dream started with me and some friends from Lewis (my freshman year dorm) wanting to go up to New Hampshire, but we had to work on our AutoCAD project. We trudged through neck-deep snow to get to the engineering building, but when we got there, Kessler (friend from home) was already there. He brought some rich fancy game that could either shock people or be used as a knife. It was weird.

2/18/05

I was on some vacation, but I had to study wave equations for my physics test. I went downstairs to eat and ordered a hamburger from the place in the campus center that grills stuff. They said they were out of beef, so I ordered a chicken burger. While I waited for it to cook, I knocked over some guy's chicken parm. I told him I would pay for it, but when I found out it was $40, I booked it out of there. All the women who worked there had weird hair. Of course, why would their hair be normal? I love how stupid my details are.

In another dream, I was walking around Tufts in a snowstorm and was attacked by some kid with snowballs. He kind of looked like Slippy from Starfox. I wasn't able to balance myself or run in the dream, so I got really pissed off (oh man I seriously hate those dreams). I eventually met him in their dorm, but we were getting ready to go out. I went to their bathroom area, but everyone was naked, so I got weirded out and left.

In a third dream, I got a call from some guy, who in real life I was getting these stupid emails saying "Have a nice day." In the dream, he said on the phone, "stop sending me emails that say 'have a nice day.'" I told him that I was getting those from him, and that I thought it was a virus. Some lady told me that this person was dead after I hung up. Then weird ghost-like shit started happening. Somebody let a cat inside, and once downstairs, he became a demon cat. Then he was eaten by a bigger demon cat (what the fuck is going on here? why am I so bad at dreaming about normal stuff? And why do I sound like a 4-year-old when I write these while I'm still half-asleep?). I eventually had to seek this guy out in a shady, darkly lit building to get rid of the ghosts and demon cats. I was about to go into a dark menacing room when I woke up.

2/21/05

I ate a really enormous bowl of rice soup. I ate it for a really long time. It wasn't an interesting dream; I just kept getting more in my spoon and eating it. BAHAHAHAHAHA I can't believe that is the whole friggn dream!

In another dream, me, Jimmy, and Gary (friend from home who we re-named because there was already a David) were doing all the missions of Goldeneye, but in real life. We got to where we had to fight everybody off in the facility while Gary tried to set a cheat code to finish the mission. We shot SO MANY PEOPLE. We never found the code, but we ended up killing everybody anyway.

2/26/05

Chelsea (friend from home and Tufts) and I went to get ice cream, and she pointed out that they had LEGO ice cream. It was insane and awesome. It was semi-solid so you can build your own ice cream cone. I ate a few Lego cones. That's actually a pretty awesome idea. PATENT PENDING.

3/4/05 Nap

I was in Boston with Lauren, and some of her friends came to visit. I broke one of my T tokens, and when I bent it back into shape, it was elongated (holy crap, I can't believe I forgot that we used to have tokens!). I could hold onto it while I put it in the coin return, so that I never had to actually spend the token. Score. All of us took a semi-tour of Tufts, with one of Lauren's friends claiming she knew her way around. We got into an elevator, but all it did was go up and down: it never stopped at any floor. One of her idiotic friends enjoyed it.

Later on we were in New York and me, Kyle, and Ryan (friends from Tufts) had to kill Raven (my freshman year roommate) because he was actually an evil spy. At first we could turn into dinosaurs. Kyle was a Triceratops, Ryan was a Tyrannosaurus, and I was a Stegosaurus. We messed him up pretty good in a fight. I went to go get my silenced gun to finish him off. It was in my mailbox, but I couldn't get it since other people were watching me. Then some lady questioned me about why I had the mailbox to myself, and where Raven was. We eventually killed both her and Raven.

Later, in another dream, I was happy that I my first dream wasn't real and that I didn't actually kill anyone, because I felt really guilty. Lauren ran off a bridge though, for no reason. A cop came up to me and accused me of pushing her off the bridge. People didn't believe me, until Lauren eventually came back and we played card games. Ah, that's good. All's well that end's well I suppose. "Oh, how was randomly jumping off a bridge and getting me accused of manslaughter? Ok good. Do you have any 8's?"

3/9/05 Most epic nap I've ever taken

Ryan and I were having a nice dinner. I was dressed up in my Eagle Scout uniform since it was a dinner for a scout ceremony. Lauren came and sat with us, but when we looked away, she ran and sat at a table with her BU friends. Ryan and I got up to see the small performance they were showing, but it blew. I saw some people from Tufts: Diana, Oanh, and Jordan. Oanh was naked though. It was strange, because everybody acted like everything was normal.

In another dream, people were being evacuated in a future-looking Boston because some weird disease was spreading. My dream was of a third-person view of some alien looking blob shooting lasers at dumb, ugly looking mutant things (I think my brain is broken). As the blob progressed, he faced more and more difficult creatures, all the while changing into some polygon warrior creature. This creature eventually evolved into a person, and then it became me. (I can't express enough how mind blowing it was to go from third-person to first-person in a dream, after WATCHING some thing evolve into myself. HOW DO I COME UP WITH THIS?) I had to go help Lauren evacuate, so I ran to BU. I was afraid to go in though, because the main lobby had all these evil creatures, so I started to call her. Then I woke up.

When I went back to sleep, I was outside of BU as myself in a similar dream and situation as the first (it was actually a continuation of the other dream from where I left off. How fucked up is that?). I was on the phone with Lauren, telling her to get out since Boston was being evacuated. I ran to try to find a place to get evacuated from, but they all started leaving without us. Kyle, who was working as a medic to treat and sedate the people so they could be evacuated, saw me and helped me. He was good at taking my blood and stuff, and after a bit we were ready to go. All of a sudden, the main doctor attacked me. He had black color pigment around his pupils, meaning he was a zombie (I just knew, ok? Deal with it). I asked Kyle to help, and he turned around. His pupils are huge in real life, so I thought he was a zombie too, which he wasn't. We both started smashing the doctor's head in with pans, but he tried to stab me. I grabbed the blade of his knife to save myself from getting stabbed in the heart, and it hurt a shitload. The doctor died right when I woke up.

In the last dream, I continued the same dream from where I left off (this is ridiculous). I was with Lauren, escaping BU in this epic dream. I killed two zombies in the Warren Towers with the knife. We ran, being chased by zombies, to the line where they put you to get evacuated. They checked our eyes, and we got in. So did Kyle. We were finally on our way to being saved.

That was mind-blowingly intense. A three-part dream about an epic escape from a zombie attack. My past-self impresses me.

Bird People Suck

I was looking through some pictures from my California trip, and they reminded me of a group of people that I absolutely despise: bird-watchers.

Seriously, I would have no problem if every person who describes themselves as a bird-watcher suddenly stopped existing. First off: WHY BIRDS? Shut up, don't even answer that question. Just go to hell.

What is cooler than taking photos of birds? MOST THINGS.

Here's a little anecdote of the moment I realized both the existence of, and my immediate hatred of, bird people:

Rebecca and I were driving through Point Reyes National Seashore near San Francisco. We were having an awesome time checking out the cliffs and beaches, and it was the first time I had ever been in the Pacific Ocean, so I was obviously really pumped. We were driving around on our way to check out the lighthouse, and we saw a group of people on the side of the road all looking at something. We pulled over, thinking "whoa, something awesome must be over there, let's go check it out!" Rebecca said something along the lines of "I think it is a lion or something!" I can't be certain, but it was definitely something about lions. I was flabbergasted to the point of speechlessness. After a few moments of mentally dealing with the fact that my friend just suggested what might be the LEAST POSSIBLE EVENT IN ALL DIMENSIONS AND TIMELINES, we walk towards the group of people to check out whatever it is that they were looking at (after telling Rebecca that there was a 0% chance of it being a lion). We walk up and notice that there are about 25 people, all with cameras more expensive than their equivalent weight in gold, all taking pictures of a little brown friggn bird. It wasn't even doing anything cool. It was just sitting there like some useless bucket of uncooked chicken fingers whose only reason for existence is to piss me off.

I was livid. These people caused me to waste MINUTES of my life by pulling over and walking around as if there was something worthy of my time and effort. I could have cured cancer AND aids in that time they wasted. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's exactly how I would have spent that time. Thanks a lot assholes, I could have cured all the cancer and Super-Aids. Way to go.

So, there you have it. The reason why I hate bird people, and the reason why we, as a society, don't have the cures for cancer or aids.

PS. That is a picture I took of a Raven at Point Reyes. There is nothing wrong with taking pictures of birds as long as you keep your grip on sanity. I took this picture while eating my lunch: I didn't go seek it out, I didn't waste any time that could have been used curing all the cancer. It friggn came over to me looking for food, and after I took a picture, I threw rocks at it until it went away. Like what most normal people would do. I assume.

Another Round of the First Dream Journal

Is it time for- yes it IS time for YET ANOTHER SEGMENT OF "Strange Intense Dreams from the Mind of Young Chris Severino." This shit is getting insane.

1/15/05

My family had a backyard cookout with the McCormacks (Jimmy's family). There was SO MUCH FOOD. I started stocking up and devouring it because I didn't actually get to eat anything yet in the dream. There was egg nog, Popsicles that you freeze in those plastic tubes, steak, and other stuff. I tried cooking the steak, but it was a charcoal grill and we didn't have any coals. I was devastated (OBVIOUSLY. When I get my mind on dream steak, I NEED that fucking steak). My sister and I ganged up on my Dad with water balloons at the end of the dream. The whole time I had the song "Psycho Killer" by the Talking Heads stuck in my head. When I woke up, it turns out it was playing on my computer.

1/16/05

Some friends and I were going paintballing up at Tufts. Ian and Jimmy (friends from home) were there too, but it was hard to sneak out of the building without the guards seeing (because paintball is apparently illegal in this particular dream. Let's just roll with it, ok?). We finally made it through the gate, but it turned out that I forgot my gun in my bag, so I went back inside to get it. I went through an alarmed door, and when the cop came to investigate, Ian and I made up a story. It worked, so we left to play paintball. There were a bunch of us behind a bunker, and someone on the other team looked like Samus: he could roll really fast and could turn invisible. I saw him setting up for a sneak attack and shot him before he went into invisible mode. For some reason, we decided to play 2 vs 4. It was Nate (friend from Tufts) and me versus everyone else, and we ended up winning. Then it was Kyle (future roommate at Tufts) and me versus everyone, and we won because I set a paint proximity mine that devastated their entire team. Where did I find such a futuristic and sadistic weapon to play this game?

1/23/05

Jordan (friend from Tufts) and I had to present our computer project about a dog who could lasso bones. The only one who liked the project was the dog. Ian ate his project, which was some cardboard-based cereal. I desperately want to meet this dog.

1/24/05

A few people and I went into a room armed with swords on a mission to destroy the zombies and other monsters in it. Four humans were also inside, and they were harder to kill than the zombies (wait why am I trying to kill humans also??). The first human appeared, and I had to fight him with my ninja sword while all my friends were fighting the zombies. He stabbed me a few times, but eventually I won. Then Lauren showed up, and I had to kill a zombie by cutting its head off to save her.

1/27/05

In one of my dreams I had a pet raptor who protected my house from other kinds of dinosaurs; the kinds that steal eggs (HAHAHAHA what is this? Am I some sort of insane egg-enthusiast who will stop at nothing to ensure the safety of his precious eggs?). The other dinosaurs ganged up on him, but I came to rescue him. We were then zapped into a time portant thing where I saw the skeleton of some kid.

In another dream, I was on some space colony with really tall buildings. I was going up one building in a fast-moving elevator for a job interview. I passed all the tests, and for the final "interview," the guy told me to "suck my own dick." Since this was impossible, I didn't get the job. I was livid, because none of the other applicants had to do that, and it was extremely inappropriate and fairly gay. Later, he told me that I got the job anyway, but in order to accept I had to go pray at a Japanese temple.

1/30/05

I was in my house, but my family was imprisoned in the basement and a bunch of guys with guns were roaming around all the rooms. I had to stay alive and help my family by killing all the bad guys (I love these Die Hard dreams where I'm super badass. I wish I dreamed up more explosions though...). I had a knife or something stupid like that to start with, and I killed a couple guys with it. Some others saw me and started shooting at me though, so I kept frantically running into random rooms, which happened to have other bad guys in them, so I repeated the entire process. I was running and ducking behind walls for most of the dream. I finally killed or injured most of them, except the main guy. I ran upstairs and saw him in the bathroom, staring out the window. I ran into my parents' room, looking for a gun, but all I found was my Dad's old Civil War rifle with no bullets. I snuck into the bathroom, where the guy was still looking out the window. I smashed the butt of the gun over his head. There was a little blood, and he turned around. I hit him again, and he passed out onto the floor. I was really worried that he wasn't dead and that he would eventually wake up and shoot me, so I kept smashing his head with the rifle until part of his brains came out (wow, I apologize for how freakishly graphic this dream is. The weird thing is that I remember it being INTENSELY graphic when I had it, and it really disturbed me when I woke up. GOOD TIMES.) Then I went downstairs and rescued my family.

2/2/05 Nap

I had a nap in which Arlen (friend from Tufts) kept waking me up, like 4 or 5 times, but I was still in the dream. I was always "in the middle" of dreams, so I was all groggy and stuff. I started "punching" at Arlen when I was in the middle of "waking up." Then I taught a Physics class for Physics 1. By the end of the dream, I knew it was a dream, and could pull myself in and out of dreams. However, when I woke up from one, I always ended up in a more real version of another dream. I lost my Eagles hat in the snow when I had to crawl into some sort of snow cage for some reason (yeah, I crawl into random "snow cages" a lot. It's a hobby of mine). Near the end, I talked to Lauren on the phone. I didn't know what was reality and what wasn't. Then I had no fingers. I had thumbs, just no fingers. When I actually woke up, my hand was asleep because I had been laying on it.

2/4/05 Nap

Nate and I were trying to get little miniature fungus action figures because we just saw a cool action movie about fungus (how the fuck is that even possible?). We went to great lengths to try to steal them even though they were like two dollars and we had coupons (SERIOUSLY WHAT IS GOING ON HERE. How am I capable of coming up with an intricate "fungus-toy" heist in an effort to save $2?).

Later, my friends and I were in a huge group with some people I didn't know. I was on a sled in front of a truck because there was no more room inside it. We were driving through a snowstorm. I kept hitting dwarves with my sled. They rolled right over my sled, falling backward into the truck (oh my). One of the dwarves was my friend. I was able to roll him off the side of the road so he wouldn't get run over by the truck like the rest (oh wow, I feel bad about laughing at this dwarven genocide situation). When we got back (to wherever we were), I saw Jess (my sister). Her new friends that she had been hanging out with were weird hippie people. They had tank tops on and had hair all over their stomachs and armpits. I quickly turned away toward my sister so that I wouldn't hurl. To my HORROR, I saw that she too had armpit hair down to her hips. I immediately threw up. I think the dream ended there. And if it didn't, it should have. (The dream might have ended....but the nightmare didn't).

Ok that's a good enough place to stop. Because I'm probably going to go drop a barf just thinking about that scenario.

First Dream Journal Entries EVER

You lucky motherfuckers.

Do you have any idea how big a treat you're in for? The answer is a definitive "no." I was back in Philly for Thanksgiving, where I stumbled across my FIRST dream journal. That's right. The day I decided to start keeping track of my dreams by writing them down. This is HISTORIC. You are about to begin an adventure into the mind of 18-year-old, freshman at Tufts, Chris Severino. Your lives are about to change.

12/12/04

Last night I dreamed about a very strange occurrence (wow young Chris, so eloquent! Compare this to the bullshit, half-asleep, pseudo-writing that I crap out now). I was some demon/vampire thing with big wings, sort of looking like the giant demon from the mountain in Fantasia (I compare most things in life to how they relate to Fantasia, don't worry). I was making a crazy plan to trick a group of villagers roaming through my woods. My minion, a normal looking guy, kept foiling my plans and plotted against me. I don't know exactly what I was trying to trick them for, maybe to eat them? Anyway, I woke up. I went back to sleep, and had the EXACT SAME dream, except from the point of view of my minion (holy fuck, that's pretty twisted actually). It was very freaky. There were the exact same conversations and everything; I was just thinking what the servant was thinking. Somehow foiling all of the demon-guy's plans made sense now. I woke up when this was over. Is it possible for this to happen? It was insane. I don't know how to react. (This is so fucking weird. My past self's brain just freaked out my current self aka. me)

12/14/04

A cop was trying to help me and my sister with something, but it turned out that he was an impostor and was trying to kill us (standard Severino dream scenario). I stole his cop car and sped away, but other officers stopped me. I explained about how it was a guy who was tricking us, but I was constantly being framed. While they tried to find the real bad guy, weird stuff happened (engineers are very descriptive). I made pancakes inside a racetrack of Diddy Kong Racer. Then, Jimmy (best friend from home) and I kicked kids out of an elevator so we could learn how to make shark puppets. You can't make this stuff up. (Seriously wtf? How are these things even possible to imagine into a reality?). Eventually it was ok to go back home, so a bunch of us were talking outside about leaving. It was REALLY windy, and one of the nearby radio towers was bending and flailing in the wind. It eventually came down and smashed into my arm. Worst pain ever. I actually felt pain in my dream. I had a huge brown bump that was bleeding all up and down my arm in the dream. As I went to the hospital, Oanh (friend from Tufts) said it looked like something happened to it, entirely missing the fact that I had a huge gash that was bleeding profusely. Then I woke up.

12/14/04 Nap

Holy shit, I forgot that I used to take naps!

It started off as a pretty great dream. My roomate and I realized that our dorm room was right next to two friends from high school, so we opened the center section to make one gigantic room. We also got a washer, dryer, huge hallway, and cabinets somehow. Then it got weird. I ate a Fruit-by-the-Foot snack, and all my teeth broke in my mouth and fell out. I knew it was a dream at this point (I HATE when the tooth-falling-out thing happens, but at least I always recognize it as a dream at that point), and I kept trying to wake myself up. I was on the roof of Lewis (my dorm freshman year) trying to get to the dentist to help me, but three guys randomly picked a fight with me for no reason. I threw one of them off the top of Lewis (Wow, extreme fighting technique!) as the other two kept kicking me. I tried really hard to wake up, and Raven (my roomate) walked by my bed, so I was finally able to wake up.

12/15/04

I've had a dream like this before. I was a sniper, but my division failed and I was taken prisoner. I was tortured, but it was also some strange rehab program where we all share stories. I had a spy camera that was also a gun, but the access code was broken, so I couldn't use it. There was a girl who was also taken captive, and we tried to escape together. Then all of a sudden me, Jimmy, and Olsen (another friend from home) were in a team go-kart race, and we won. (That's not random at all)

12/17/04

I forgot most of it, but at one point I was in need of surgery but no one would take me to the hospital. Then I was bit three times by a rabid raccoon. A lot of my friends started watching Family Guy on Adult Swim, but I was sort of dying from rabies. (That might actually be the best text I've ever written in my entire life)

12/18/04

I remember playing football at one point, and then wrestling. Me and some other guy discussed how on a certain date the ocean's current would get stronger and the polar axis would switch. Today's South would switch to North. I didn't believe it. I also solved a crime somewhere in there.

12/25/04

Some friends from Tufts and I went to BU's "porn room." (what does that even mean please?) We had to get flushed to another dimension in some weird toilet that we stood in (like in Harry Potter! I really hope it turns out that I'm a wizard in this dream...). I walked around barefoot in a gross bathroom, and I was drunk. Oleg developed some crazy cosine converter equation that I tried to understand.

12/28/04

I made a really good sandwich and was about to eat it when Geoff (one of my best friends from home) and I got a message from some dude claiming that he kidnapped Jimmy. I never got to eat the sandwich, but it had bacon, chicken, ham, salami, and mustard, and I kept thinking about it the entire dream (BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA). Geoff and I looked up the guy's voice online and found him (because that is a thing that is possible). We went to his house, and it turned out that he didn't do anything to Jimmy, but there were a bunch of naked people there. Suddenly, I was playing Game Cube at Tufts. I went down the hall and found a guy from dodgeball, who invited Geoff and I to a party. I was on rollerblades somehow, and I slipped a lot, so everyone thought I was drunk. I tried looking for my shoes (in trashcans) but I couldn't find them. Cops came. They didn't bust anyone, but they asked me and the guy from dodgeball some questions about adding and subtracting numbers. Geoff went around asking different girls to dance, but kept getting slapped. At this point I went back to my room. Raven apparently lent my Game Cube to some other people. I started working on a lego robot for class, but I had millions of legos all over the room, including two huge bins that I brought up to school. They got mixed up with the robot legos, and I had to sort them until I decided to wake myself up.

12/30/04

I was exploring the library at Tufts when I came across a section of couches and beds. I forget a little in between, but later I was frantically locking a door because a poisonous giant snake escaped in this room. All of these snakes were going around killing people, so a bunch of people were locking themselves in other rooms for safety. I met this guy who was selling kittens. I tried to buy one from him, but he never gave me a price, and I woke up. (This dream very rapidly shifted from an exciting thriller about deadly snakes to a kitten-related business proposition. I'd be lying if I said this was unusual.)

1/6/05

I was playing dodgeball, and I was trying really hard to peg one of the douche bags who lives in my dorm. I fell dodging a ball, and someone threw a ball at me while I was on the ground, but I caught it somehow. Then Jimmy, Geoff, Olsen and I got off a school bus at my bus stop and played videogames in my garage.

Then a bunch of us started playing some game where you have to roll these weird candies into holes. Some other kid tried playing with us, but he got arrested.

Then I was on my way to Philmont (a place in New Mexico where I backpacked for two weeks), but I didn't know anyone in my group. I was setting the table for our lunch before we started hiking, but people started fighting over who got shrimp. I tried to get napkins from the top of some Aztec ruins, but these monsters who lived there kept trying to smash me off the temple with giant mallets. They eventually hit me and I woke up.

1/11/05

A couple of Marines were climbing up a cliff like in that commercial. The difference was that once they got close to the top, they got zapped by lightning and fell most of the way down. But they kept scrambling back up that damn cliff.

1/12/05

It was the first day of second semester, and I was having a shitty day. My classes were miles away on some desert sandy path. I went to the bookstore to find a gigantic crappy old $300 physics book that I needed to buy. No EN elective books though.

Another dream I had was very strange. It started with me and some other guy trying to track me down to sword fight with me. We ran around the mall, and I finally escaped, but ended up killing a lot of people (meh, it happens). We were then taken to some basement dungeon, where we met a common enemy: some weird phantom creature. The guy and the creature sword fought with each other, but the guy lost. While they were fighting, I escaped to a hidden area where a bunch of people were, and they already knew about the creatures, who began to multiply. We found that it was only safe in the light, and when you took a photograph, they were all surrounding us in the photo: slimy, bloody looking things. As I was getting flashlights to protect everyone, all my friends bought guns and tried to take on the creatures. They were either killed or assimilated. There were only three of us left, and we found that we were gradually turning into the creatures. We decided to finally make a last stand in a suicide mission, but I woke up.

Ok, now that I've thoroughly blown my own mind, that's enough. HOWEVER! You may have already noticed that NOT ONE OF THESE DREAMS included zombies! How weird is that!?

How I'm Going to Die

Thanks to the Earth continuing its orbital period around the Sun, we are rapidly approaching the date in which I have lived for a quarter-century. There are still about three months left, but that's not going to stop me from spiraling into a depression/mid-life crisis. I say mid-life crisis because, given my insane personality and the spontaneous, adventurous, and downright dangerous choices I tend to make in life, I'm giving myself a 50 year lifespan. I'm being generous here. After all, I did JUMP OFF A FUCKING CLIFF for no reason. This brings me to my next thought: how can someone as awesome and invincible as me be killed?
Obviously I plan on dying in the manliest way possible. Something that, even when the most badass person around hears it, they'll be all like "whoa." However, I also have to keep in mind that it has to be somewhat realistic. Sure, I'd love for my demise to come about as a result of being hurled into a black hole, only to be torn asunder by the intense forces at the Event Horizon. But there's like a 99.999% chance I won't even get to go into space in my lifetime, let alone anywhere close to a black hole (although there's hope that the Large Hadron Collider could seriously mess somebody up; I'll keep my fingers crossed on that one). And you know what? I don't even know if that would kill me. Sure, I know that light can't even escape a black hole. But do you know what can? Me.
That's why I'm opting for something that, even if it doesn't kill me, it will still be as badass as though it DID. I am going to fight a bear.

I'm not afraid of you bitch

Fighting a grizzly bear with my bare hands (see what I did there) would be epic. However, due to the fact that a bear has the advantages of weight, strength, muscle mass, claws capable of mauling my face off, and teeth, while the only things I would have to work with are adrenaline, the capability of formulating a plan, memory, and opposable thumbs, I am going to cede myself the ability to use a knife with a 3" blade. I don't feel too bad about it, because that tiny blade isn't even big enough to get all the way through its fur AND skin. I will NOT be using a gun, because that is weaksauce. Anybody can kill something with a gun.

What is this, Amateur Hour? Get out of here with that gun bullshit.

The best part about this plan is that I might even survive this fight. HOW INSANE WOULD THAT BE?? Can you even imagine how jacked-up I would be on adrenaline? In fact, I think this is the only way I can truly prove my invincibility. Sure, my survival rate is 100%. Now. But we'll see how that holds up to a bear fight.

Potentially the Greatest Thesis Proposal Ever to be Written in All of History

This idea is so epic that I have to use a line immortalized by Jurassic Park: "Hold on to your butts."

I was thinking about topics for my upcoming thesis, most likely leaning towards wind energy generation. Obviously my topic would be infinity times better if I could include bacon in some way (like some Bacon-Matrix-Composite material), but it didn't look like it would pan out. Then Andrew and I had a very frank, illuminating discussion about a new type of energy that will change the world. Bacon-Energy.

No. Not poop. Let me explain.

Get out your wallets, because I'm going to need a lot of start-up capital to get this thing off the ground. Imagine hundreds of thousands of giant hamster wheels, hundreds of thousands of pigs, a little bit of food and a few generators and BAM --> Gigawatts of energy and delicious, delicious bacon.
The greatest part is, once the pigs have used up their energy potential, they can then be converted to delicious lean bacon! You get energy AND bacon! But that's not all.
You then take ~50% of the bacon you produce, and use it to feed the next generation of energy producing modules (pigs). Since cannibalism doesn't require your digestive system to break down the protein as much, the pigs build muscle way faster. This means MOAR ENERGY AND MOAR BACON!!! Plus, PETA will get SO cheezed-off! Win-Win-Win!

I think this will go down in history as the greatest mechanical engineering thesis to have ever been proposed by Man.

FYI, here is the a recap of the conversation that led us to this momentous discovery:
Andrew: what about bacon-power

me: like...like pooping?

Andrew: no no

you need to think bigger

me: diarrhea

Andrew: hundreds of thousands of pigs running in giant hamster wheels
when they're all worn out, you get bacon

and it's 90% lean too

me: my god

Andrew: indeed

me: that's just crazy enough to work

and hyper efficient too!

feed them ~50% of the bacon from the worn-out pigs

Andrew: i'm not sure peta would like it, but you could heat homes and feed people.

me: i know, it would be perfect AND PETA gets pissed off

win-win-win

Andrew: oh my goodness, you've stumbled upon the most efficient use of cannibalism in history

me: I KNOW

and the digestive systems won't have to break down the proteins as much, because they are already in the form that the pigs need

so these pigs just become SUPER MUSCLY

Andrew: omg super pigs

me: = more energy + MOAR BACON!!!

Andrew: MOAR BACON

me: it's an exponential loop

Andrew: no kidding

me: it probably plateaus after the pigs get insanely huge, but whatevs

we'll maximize energy production and bacon deliciocity at that point

Andrew: well

what do you start with

giant wheels

kinetic generators

a shitload of pigs

and some food

me: yeah, and after that it is just maintenance and butchers

Andrew: and you end with fertilizer to fertilize MORE FOOD for the pigs, you end up with electricity, you end up with BACON

i just don't see how this is a losing strategy

me: so, high start-up cost, but i predict you could make up that money within the first year in bacon/energy sales

Andrew: you could even put fins or sails on the wheels and create your close-minded "wind power"

me: i'm sick to my stomach just thinking about the prospects here

Andrew: yeah, this really could put a new face on the existing american industrial agriculture model

less evil, more delicious

me: i'm so happy just thinking about the shear number of people this idea could piss off

Andrew: energy corporations, small business farmers, oscar meyer, peta

lada gaga would probably like it though

me: that's fine

Dream Journal Early 2007

Holy fuck my dreams are so weird.

1/1/07

In my dream I had to do a lot more work for my fluids class (I should explain that the previous semester, in which I had taken Fluids class, had recently ended. It was a difficult class. Don't fuck with Reynold's numbers). My professor gave us two additional tests after our final was already over, and I actually did them in my dream. Also, I learned and played a lot of games involving knees and flying while attacking things. It was a weird game. (I should also explain that I had recently had knee surgery after tearing my ACL that year. Like...two days prior to this dream. I guess I was still thinking about it...)

1/3/07

My Mom was going over a test with me and eating Chinese food. I was getting pissed because I wanted to take a shower, but all my shower stuff was disgusting from my Mom's food getting all over it. Then she dumped out all my crayons. (How old am I? Crayons?)

Later, I went to Little People (my old day-care) to take a nap with a wrestling helmet. Then I went across the street where my friend Geoff was doing carpenter stuff (what the fuck is "carpenter stuff?"). I slid up a ramp to him because there was no friction.

1/4/07

I played a huge game of dodgeball. I was really good at catching. I have a feeling I really liked this dream.

1/10/07

I was at an amusement park area with a bunch of people, but it felt like I was in a movie. I had to give some guy $5 for tax software for some reason. Then me and Jimmy went exploring. Later on, we found some of the other people again, but zombies were attacking. Some were zombies of celebrities, and tricked others to come near them, but ended up attacking them and turning everyone but me and Jimmy into zombies. It actually turned out to be the movie that I was watching at the amusement park though.

1/12/07

I was able to derive the Navier-Stokes equations on Jeopardy. I also had to go to my 11th grade History class because I had apparently missed a test, and I had to choose a project to do. I chose to do my project on opium. Where the hell did this come from?

1/16/07

I was packing to go home really late at night in one of my dreams. Some friends were over, and Olsen said that if you light a lighter after thunder and count until the flame goes out, that's how many paces a ghost is from you. It really freaked me out in the dream.

In another dream, I was a sniper in a helicopter, and the enemy was shooting anti-aircraft missiles at us. I was able to shoot all the missiles before they hit us.

1/24/07

I was in France in some Twilight Zone kind of place, where if I left a building I would die, but the building was like Death's waiting room or something stupid. Then I took a tiny cab to Talloires, France. Lauren and I visited my host family, but Lauren was really rude. Emmanuel, my host brother, had hurt his neck.

1/25/07

Me and Cronin were playing some Mortal Kombat game because we were stuck at a toy store until our train arrived. Then it turned into a game where I was a rabbit stealing stuff at some mansion.

2/5/07

It was my birthday and I was on vacation on some tropical island (wow, a dream about my birthday ON my birthday!) I stole some weird little trinket from a store for Lauren. Later on, Gary was telling me how his old girlfriend sucked.

In another dream, I was taking classes at my old day-care. I was doing a self-portrait in charcoal. Matt Higger was also in my drawing class, and he was pretty good.

The last dream was about some really old vampire movie, which switched to a movie about shady trains in the snow of Eastern Europe (wtf does that mean?). Then Dodgeball House had to give a presentation on potatoes. That seems really interesting.

2/26/07

Jordan and I were sneaking around the Fogg, (a museum near Harvard where we went for our drawing class) at night. We had to scramble around a bunch of pipes so some guy wouldn't see us. Then I was in charge of a drinking and driving program. I was running around the school, but it looked like it was a level in Resident Evil. I had to build a fire at one point.

3/1/07

A bunch of my friends were living at a house similar to Dodgeball House. I had to travel to some nearby city, but was attacked by two guys. They tried to kill me, so I attempted to out-run them. I ran into a building and ran around it like a maze, eventually coming up behind them and stomping on one of their heads (holy crap!). When I got back to the house, a bunch of people were watching TV in my room. Jimmy came over, but then quickly left after finding no snacks.

3/5/07

Me and some other people were lost in an underground system of really small tunnels. There were some bug-people, but they didn't do much except stand around. I took out a pocket knife and cut a hole in the side to get out; somehow I was able to saw through the studs in the wall. Also, we stole a bunch of sweatshirts (I'm not sure how that fits in with the rest of this story). When we got out, some guy started shooting at us with a really weak laser. I snuck up behind him and stole the laser gun. I shot him a couple times, and then lectured him not to use it again. Later on, I pretended I was retarded at the mall. I'm going to go ahead and end with that one....

Dreams from the Summer after Sophomore Year

For part of this summer I was abroad in Talloires, France, and was about to move in to Dodgeball House for the first time, so these might come up in some of these dreams. Oh yeah, I guess I should mention that I took a "Flowers of the Alps" class in France. That's right. It counted as a liberal arts science credit AND I became a friggn expert on flowers. Impressed? You better be.

6/20/06

I'm going to start off here just to inform you that NOT ONE THING IN THIS ENTIRE DREAM makes ANY sense. Enjoy.

My dream had a kind of Star Wars theme to it. In the end however, some girl was shooting at me and my Dad, who was actually Randy Marsh, on a boat. I was trying to save the report that I was writing, so I knocked her out with a basketball. I apologize for how random and stupid this dream is. I'm sure it made sense when I wrote it, but what the hell.

6/22/06

In one of my classes, we had to read a book and then play a videogame of the book. The handheld controller was made of cheese though, and I'm not sure what that means, but I couldn't use it. There was also a part where we were swinging over ravines with Poison Ivy vines, and the Batman character Poison Ivy was there. Yet another retarded situation.

6/26/06

I was working for the Queen of some African country, and we thought the building we were in was going to be bombed. Instead of stopping the bombers, we decided to go upstairs to pack our stuff and leave the country. The whole dream was pretty much just packing. AYFKMB??? I had a dream about packing a suitcase? What?

7/6/06

I was on some kind of trip, and a guy I didn't know said he would give me and two other guys a lot of money to eat dog crap. One of the guys I was with agreed, and he ate a juicy turd. I was sickened and started to cough. I actually started to cough in real life, which woke me up.

7/14/06

The dream started with Jimmy and Lauren trying to mash up some music onto some anime while I was at work. Then me and a few others, including Jimmy, had to escape some warehouse in the woods full of zombies. We jumped off a stone wall into a stream, where I slipped. We eventually met up with Dick Wang (ok, Dick Wang rode my bus in high school. I was the one to give him that nickname. It wasn't really a stretch; his real name is Richard Wang, but I was somehow the first person to think of it) at some apartment complex. Jimmy threw a stuffed animal at him, which Dick Wang then threw off a couple stories. We were in Germany, and I had to walk to a train station in France. I eventually met up with people, including Colin (a friend from home), who were hiding secret gears from some evil guy who was upstairs. We were planning on escaping. While we tried to converse over a phone system in his basement, something went wrong. I pretended to be weight lifting when he came down. Later, a lot of us had wagers on our friend who was boxing. He won in the end. One of our guys heckled two of the other guy's friends. WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING HERE. I was clearly still half-asleep when I wrote this. I use pronouns all over the place like it's my job, and I have NO IDEA to whom I am referring.

7/17/06

Some older guys led me and a lot of other people to a weird old restaurant. Then they started cutting off peoples' hands and other body parts to cook up for food. Some people tried to run away, but alarms went off and all the doors locked. A guy tried jumping into the river running through the middle of the building, but it was too shallow and he died. Me and a few others escaped somehow and ran down the long trail through the trees (we were in a jungle) to get away. Some of the cannibals were chasing us, and big bats kept attacking us if we got too close to the edge of the cliff (like in one of the levels in Mariokart). I ran really hard, and eventually we got to our hotel, where there was a small plane ready to leave. We started the plane, taxiing back onto the trail we just came from. Some of the people we were running from tried to stop us, but we got by them. We almost made it to the cliff where we could fly off from, but one of the cannibal guys held a kid up in front of the plane to stop us. I jumped out and pushed them out of the way. I grabbed the side of the door as the plane went over the cliff, climbed in, and we escaped.

7/26/06

I was in charge of security and had to stop a tiny man who came into the building. He got caught in a spider web, but it turns out there were like ten of these guys who eventually grew way bigger (that's what she said) and then got arrested. Later, me and a few others had to mop up a bunch of weird blue stuff that was growing and infecting the building.

8/2/06

I dreamed that Jimmy and I were moving into Dodgeball House. I was waiting for all my Tufts friends while Jimmy was driving a goldfish on a remote controlled car. Jordan eventually showed up, but his hair was dyed in a strange rainbow.

8/15/06

I dreamed that the zombie disease started spreading at the Desmond (the hotel where I worked part of that summer) after I told one of the front desk people not to help an infected guest. I warned Nick, another bellman, who was asleep in the "Desmond Barracks." (whatever that is) Then I warned my friends and we tried getting away. I got the sunglasses that can detect if people are vampires, which is apparently what the disease turned into instead of zombies. I could see who was a vampire and could shine a flashlight at them to hurt them. There was some super-vampire who was invisible, and she killed a whole unit of army guys. Then she killed my Dad. She went after my Mom, but my Mom stabbed and killed the vampire first. But the disease transferred to her first, so now my Mom was the new super-vampire. She came after me and my brother (I have a brother now I guess?) who was actually Kyle, trying to kill us, because now she was crazy. I started eating some sacred beef jerky that could stop the vampire process somehow (only I can come up with this kind of stuff), but I woke up first, right as my Mom was about to kill me and Kyle.

In my second dream, a dracula-type vampire trapped us at the end of a pier. Sharks were gathering in order to eat us as we came closer to the edge.

8/24/06

I had several small dreams. One was of me clearing a house of zombies with a bunch of different guns like in Resident Evil. Then my friends and I had to go figure out a mystery. Apparently I turn into a super-detective/Scooby Doo groupie in some of my dreams.

Dream Journal Entries

I'm just going to jump right in here.

3/20/06

I was trying to get my dodgeball team from home together because we had a match. I said I was going to the bathroom, but I actually went to go get O'Malley and Jimmy. Then all of these circumstances happened in which we almost died, like a train with jutting, knife points came off its tracks at us, or a really big guy attacked us with dental supplies. (What the fuck? Where did that come from?) We eventually made it back to the game as Senator McCarthy started arresting people.

They started setting up a carnival in Germany, and I was helping out for whatever reason. German rap was playing and I knew the translation, but wouldn't tell what it was because it was a bunch of inappropriate stuff and swearing.

3/26/06

Kyle and I were living in what seemed to be Emily and Molly's room. (Kyle and my dorm room in South Hall was exactly identical to Molly and Emily's room. Why would it surprise me that it looked like their room, or any other person in the dorm.) We were doing work in the morning and Kyle started playing Swan Song on guitar. I got jealous that he learned a Zeppelin song before me, especially a rare unreleased song. He could even play the drum parts. It turns out when I woke up, Swan Song was playing on my cd player.

3/29/06

I thought I had written down this epic dream twice due to dreams afterward where I had recounted what happened, but I guess I tricked myself. I even wrote it down in the dream. It started off with me and I think a lady who was supposed to be my Mom going into some abandoned warehouse. (Warehouse dreams usually turn into zombie dreams for me). Somehow, she turned into a zombie (yep), and a group of assassins came into the building as well. My mission (I guess I'm a spy now or something?) was to get out, and the only way out was on the first floor. There were zombies or bandits on every floor. I ran into Napoleon Dynamite, and together we tried to escape. I shot some bandits and stabbed a zombie in the head, and eventually we made it out.

4/17/06

We were getting ready for a dodgeball tournament, where teams from Canada and Florida were coming. (ah yes, really stretching here. All the way from Canada and Florida? No way! Maybe even Ohio!) The governor wanted us to win. For some reason, you couldn't exceed the team's maximum weight limit, so Pikachu was one of my players, because he was light. (This is evidence that we played ENTIRELY too much SMASH Bros. sophomore year).

5/2/06

Me and a bunch of other crime fighters had to fit into one little car in order to find whoever it is we were looking for. I had to face Trevelian, who betrayed me just like he did in Goldeneye. Some guy had to be put in a cage in the car because he turned into an alligator sometimes. Or something along those lines.

5/4/06

My dream had a lot of stuff from Silent Hill (Jizz Jizz, you really fucked us over with that videogame. I had so many Silent Hill related nightmares that year.) Me and Cilke and a few others started off in separate cages with one of those acid spitting zombie things. I had to let it spray acid at me to corrode the metal bars so we could get out. Then I killed the thing with a hammer and freed everyone. I found a huge group of people in another cage, so I freed them too and then we went to go stock up on food. It was a trick, and the people tried to lock us in.

Then I was in some fish store with Jimmy and Lauren, and Angelina Jolie was the main bad person ("main bad person?" What am I, 5? Is she the boss for this level? What the shit, I need to go back in time and tell my former self to learn how to write, or at least not to sound like an asshole.) Lauren bought a fish with a bunch of weird tentacles coming out. Me and Jimmy left, and when we came back, the tentacle thing was huge and tried to eat Lauren. I couldn't do anything because Angelina grabbed her and locked themselves in a big house. Then me and Jimmy had to battle Pyramid Head (GOD DAMN IT I HATE WHEN PYRAMID HEAD SHOWS UP IN MY DREAMS).

5/10/06

In one dream I was playing a huge game of darts. (ok....)

6/2/06

A zombie infection broke out, so Jordan and I ran away from our host family in France when they got attacked. We ran to a park, where the infection hadn't hit yet.

6/8/06

In part of my dream I jumped off a huge diving board into the ocean. The current was really strong and started carrying me off, but I was saved by a fireman. Then I found a ninja weapon. I played with it for a while, but then left it. The next day, Ani was dressed like a ninja with the weapon I had and some other gear. He looked so funny that I took a picture, which made him mad. He started fighting me. I was trying to fight fairly, but he bit me, so I punched him in the eye and then woke up. (I would would never, ever want to start fighting with Ninja-Ani for the record.)

Most Awkward Incident at Work in the History of my Professional Career

I am still reeling from what I consider to be the most hilarious disaster to ever befall me at my place of business. Listen close as I regale you with a story of triumphs and miseries.

I went to the bathroom, as I often do after eating a lunch large enough that two normal sized human beings would find filling, and during this particular visit, I was alone. It is a small-ish sized bathroom, 5 stalls and 4 urinals, but usually gets a lot of traffic. Anyway, I'll skip the gruesome details, but the trip was a success. All waste was deposited in a toilet, no mishaps; I was in good shape. Despite the fact that it has been 23-ish years since I've mastered the toilet, I still celebrate the little victories.

So as I exit the stall and start washing my hands, another guy comes in. This guy doesn't work in my group, but right nearby, so I see him from time to time. We have the sort of relationship where you give the casual head nod or mumble "hey" as we pass each other in the hallway. He walks up to the urinal, staring straight ahead, and I am about 5 feet away from him, at the sink, also staring straight ahead (standard bathroom etiquette). We stand there in near silence, with only the sound of running water and soapy hands to stifle the subtle awkwardness.

Then, out of nowhere, he releases a prolific, reverberating fart that cuts through the silence like a super-heated sword through butter. I did everything in my power to stifle the unstoppable roar of laughter that would have otherwise erupted immediately. And when I say I tried, I really mean it. Sweat was coming down. I started shaking. But after a few moments of dead silence, a single snort-chuckle slipped out. Oh my god. What had I done? In that instant, he and I were linked on so many levels. We didn't DARE look at each other, but in that moment we could see into each other's souls. It was surreal. The awkwardness was almost PALPABLE. We could taste each other's fear.

Without hesitation, I turned off the water and fast-walked out of there without looking back. I didn't even finish washing my hands; they were still coated with soapy water. The moment I got out of this bathroom, or as I will forevermore refer to as the "prison of awkwardness," I burst out laughing. I'm sure he heard me as the door was closing, I'm absolutely positive, but I literally couldn't hold it back any longer. With dripping hands, I rofl'd all the way back to my desk.

I am really dreading seeing him in the hallway again, because we both know that this situation has forever changed the dynamics of our "head-nod" relationship. I'm going to have to start working weird hours or something so I can avoid these encounters when I arrive or leave work.

Partial Road Trip with Joe and Rebecca

I will transcribe my road trip journal once again in an attempt to document some of my crazy adventures. And this road trip had some motherfucking crazy adventures. Pictures and videos can be found here. I'll dive right in:

9/8/2010

And so it begins. When Joe told me that he and Rebecca were road tripping across the country (Boston - San Francisco, similar to mine last year) and invited me for part of it, I was ecstatic. Re-live some of the greatest experiences of my life, not alone this time? Yes please. Sign me up.

My day started by going to work. Not a regular work day, mind you: Cedardale. My company rents out a corporate outing location for the day for some food and fun activites. So Jacobs picked me up (I had my car parked about 7 blocks away so it would be ok for the multiple street cleaning days that I would be gone for). We arrived, and I played beach volleyball for almost the entire day. Oh, and mini-golf and swimming. It sounds like I have it good, but really this is just my company's way of saying "sorry we douched you over by taking away your health care; hopefully a paid 'fun' day makes up for it."

Anyway, Jacobs drove me to the airport right afterward (what a guy!), where I caught my flight to Denver. Joe, Rebecca, and Joe's friend Josh picked me up and we drove into the city. We got some dinner at a cool restaurant, and in typical Colorado fashion, they had some delicious microbrew beer.

Denver, although I didn't really have a chance to see much of it, seems like a really cool, clean, fun city. I've said it before; I wouldn't mind retiring in CO. But yeah, that two hour time zone thing is hitting me, and we didn't get back till late, so I'm taking a shower (my last one for 4 days!) and going to bed.

9/9/2010

I'm sitting here writing this entry by flashlight and firelight. Our dinner is cooking on the fire (baked beans and Indian food - perfect combination perhaps? Or toxic recipe for gaseousness?) while Joe and Rebecca are setting up their tent. I, as I have recently been wont to do, am opting to go sans tent so I can sleep under the stars, and it promises to be an epic night sky.

Today has been friggn incredible. Like hands down one of the best days in the realm of possibility. We woke up at Josh's place around 6am and left Denver just as the Sun was starting to come up. We then proceeded to drive through the Rockies during sunrise, while Rebecca gasped with awe at every single turn we made. I forgot how much fun it was to drive through the Rockies. And now that I was a passenger rather than a driver, I could take pictures in a much safer capacity. We got to Vail, and I took over driving. Joe showed me a bit of how to drive manual a couple weeks ago, so I did alright. Minimal stalling out, and I did fairly well at shifting gears. Until I got to Moab, UT. I really dropped the ball there, but whatever, we survived. Sorry Joe.

We grabbed lunch and some microbrews at "Eddie McStiff's" (classy name, right?). It was clear that our waiter had no idea what was going on by any definition of the phrase. How he manages how to figure out how to do simple tasks like brushing his teeth is beyond me.

So eventually we made our way into Arches National Park. Now I remember why I love this place so damn much. You cannot take a bad picture here. It is too beautiful. We drove to a bunch of lookouts and went frolicking. Or scampering. Basically just tearing around like 8-year-olds. So much fun. We saw most of what I saw last year and more. The parking lot to hike up to Delicate Arch was full, so we opted to save it for sunrise tomorrow. We went to see Landscape Arch and a shitload of others for sunset instead. (I'm not sure why this word processor doesn't have "shitload" in its dictionary. Seems pretty common to me.)

We basically trailblazed really high, steep, suicidal-looking ridges, traversing the windiest and most deadly paths I've ever imagined. And I imagine some ridiculous shit. But we found an awesome area with no one else around to frolick/leap-and-almost-die. The wind was so nuts that it could pretty much hold you up while peering over the ledges. I peed over the edge (upwind of course), and it was hilarious. The pee went everywhere after a few feet of stream. Oh yeah, did I mention I was on top of the highest peak in the area? Awesome.

After that, we then ran around like maniacs from awesome view to awesome view. We found an incredible 360 panoramic view of the entire valley/mountain area at sunset. It was literally the greatest view I've seen to date. Even better than Delicate Arch last year. SO EPIC. Fuck.

Seriously. WTF. So awesome.

But we decided to sprint back down the trail before it got too dark, seeing insane colors in the sky and in the background of the landscape. Landscape Arch was cool because it spans such a huge length, but it didn't compare to the sunset that we had just seen. Holy fucking shitballs. So intense. Kind of like a double rainbow.

And now I'm about to nom some baked beans out of a frisbee, so... I'm done writing.

9/10/2010

For those of you who thought the road trip couldn't get any better than yesterday, including my past self, you are sorely mistaken. I am once again waiting for food to cook over our fire pit (this time with delicious Utah beer) after another epic day.

It started off cold and dark as we packed up the car. We wanted to do the Delicate Arch hike to see the arch at sunrise. The hike itself wasn't as arduous as last year because I wasn't in direct, brutal sunlight the entire hike up. We actually managed to get to the top before the Sun came up, and the view was as amazing as I remember it. It was made better because we were the only ones up there to see the arch at sunrise. It was amazing, competing with our sunset view from last night. Less pants-crapping, but same awesomeness. (I didn't actually crap my pants you guys, don't worry).

Holy shit my fingernails are so dirty. I need a shower for sure. I think our campsite in Zion might have showers? Cool. But I digress.

From Arches we snagged some breakfast (blueberry crepe) and gas in Moab and then headed onto the scenic Utah drive to Bryce Canyon National Park. The scenic route was totally worth it. The Utah Rt. 12 is easily the best drive ever. Even better than the CA Rt. 1. We first drove through part of Capitol Reef National Park: a pleasant surprise for sure. We took some cool pictures and took a dip in the small river by the side of the road. It was a lot of fun, really refreshing, and pretty impressive that we stripped to our underwear, forded a river, and played a mini frisbee game.

Hilarious

We then proceeded to Dixie National Forrest, where a mountain sprang up out of friggn nowhere and an amazing crazy green wooded area popped up. I started driving, and immediately the road became an insane, windy, mountain roller coaster ride and was super awesome to speed down. I've never had so much fun driving. I was shifting gears, making 180 degree bank turns at 60 mph along curving cliffs; it was nuts. NUTS I tell you. I have some videos we took of the crazy driving in this folder near the bottom I think. We got out at a few scenic overlooks to romp around for a bit, but continued on our way.

We then drove through part of the Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument (seriously, Rt. 12 is awesome. I even started a manual car IN REVERSE, UP A HILL. I rocked it out. I was so impressed). We drove through, saw some stuff, it was cool, whatever.

Anywho, we get to Bryce Canyon National Park and immediately see some Hoodoos. Hoodoos are some crazy-pillar rock formations native to Bryce. And they have hilarious names. Joe and I annoyed the CRAP out of Rebecca by saying it in every sentence for no reason at all. It was great. So we parked at Sunrise Point and hiked the Queen's Garden hike. It was a short 3 mile hike down into the Canyon amongst the Hoodoos. HOODOO! Joe and I came up with so many great hoodoo related songs, to the dismay of Rebecca. But the hike was so unique and incredible. I was a fan.

After the hike we hit a few more overlooks including Sunset, Bryce, and Inspiration Point. We saw the crazy shadows from so many angles that it blew my mind. We saw sunset from Inspiration Point, and seriously words cannot describe how amazing the view was. Photos do not do it any justice. It was just bad-ass.

Hoodoos!

I'm going to bed down, sans-tent again, after dinner. Hopefully the stars will be as awesome tonight as they were last night. They were crazy you guys. You could see billions and billions.

9/11/2010

Ok, so we just burned Rebecca's sneakers trying to dry them off by the fire. But besides that, it has been a pretty sweet day. If I had to choose a word to describe today, it would be (in honor of Bryce Canyon) Hoodoo-rific. That is a positive adjective by the way.

It seems so long ago, but we started the day in Bryce. We got up in the freezing cold, dark, frigid morning a little later than expected, around 6:15am. It was fine though, everything turned out pretty cool; we didn't miss sunrise. Joe and Rebecca decided to take the tent down when it was warmer, and I, without a tent, was eager to see an awesome sunrise, so we started off on the 18-mile drive to the last viewpoint: Rainbow Point. Similar to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, this drive was mostly a bunch of viewing points you stop at along the drive to look into the canyon. They were really incredible (meaning: a lot of Hoodoo), and we managed to catch sunrise at an awesome spot.

We drove back to Sunrise Point (or Sunset, whatever, they were pretty much the same, it doesn't matter). We then packed up and said our goodbyes to Bryce. After a really short drive, less than 2 hours, we were already at Zion National Park.

The drive into the park was a little annoying because they were doing some construction and parts were one-way, but it was definitely amazing. There were some crazy checkerboard mesa rock formations, a mile-long tunnel through a goddamn mountain, and then a shitload of switchbacks into the Zion Canyon. (By the way, Zion Canyon is a delicious beer brewed in the local town right outside Zion. I'm currently drinking it). The park itself was pretty crowded, but most people park at the Visitor's Center and take the shuttle buses throughout the east side of the park. In fact, that's what all people do, because personal cars aren't allowed after a certain point. It really helps reduce the amount of retards driving around the park.

Pause for game of 3-Person Hearts

Result: Joe - 26, Sevs - 31, Rebecca - infinity

Rebecca didn't do so well.

Well, I passed out and am on my flight home from Vegas right now, but I'll continue. We took the shuttle to the last stop, the Temple of Sinawava. We hiked from there up a short trail along the Virgin River to the end, where we started hiking IN the river. This river went through the Narrows: a thin river path with huge walls on both sides. It was seriously awesome through there. I'm pretty happy my boots held up, because that could have been a disastrous hike otherwise.

At some places the river came up to my waist. It was unbelievably awesome. We came across a big boulder (that we obviously climbed for no reason) with a smooth side, so Joe and I did some mini-watersliding. After a while we turned back, but were pretty sad to do so.

We checked out a couple more steps to look at some amazingly huge cliffs and to grab a burger to hold us over till dinner. Our next step was to take a hike to the Emerald Pools. Relative to the park, they were only so-so, but in real life they were pretty great. I think at this point I was fairly jaded from seeing basically the coolest things on the planet. As usual, Joe and I climbed around on some rocks for absolutely no reason while Rebecca relaxed, enjoying life.

After some more hiking, we grabbed some delicious ice cream, fajitas, and Zion beer in the nearby town. We made a fire to drive our socks and boots (unfortunately burning the shit out of Rebecca's sneakers, as previously mentioned), and then went to sleep. Our campsite was just outside the park right next to the river, so we had the sound of rushing water to fall asleep to while we all slept under the stars. Seriously, the night sky is friggn amazing out west. Apparently a huge tree branch broke and fell right next to us in the middle of the night, but since I reach coma levels of deep sleep, I remained completely and blissfully unaware.

9/12/2010

I think my watch battery is dying, because it didn't go off when we wanted it to, and therefore got off to a late start. We wanted to hike Angel's Landing trail, a really intense hike, to see sunrise, but everything worked out fine regardless. The hike was pretty strenuous, but fairly short. The last half mile was completely insane. Like "holy crap has anyone actually survived this before?" levels of insanity. Both sides were shear cliffs, so even the slightest miss-step would be semi-fatal. Or very fatal, since we were 1500 feet up. We had to use hands to climb and chains at most parts. It was definitely not for anyone afraid of heights. I have no idea how I am insane enough to lack any fear of heights, but it worked out for me here. We got to the top for what I can only assume is the best 360 view ever imagined in all dimensions and timelines.

Needless to say we took some great pictures.

I sat on a few cliff edges with my feet dangling down, as I am wont to do, and it was so extreme that it got my adrenaline going like crazy.

I managed to pee on the top, which by law dictates that I am now the owner of that trail. The way down was still pretty extreme, because you had to look down the entire time. Looking down those cliffs on either side of you is seriously intense. Rebecca, who we convinced to go up the whole way to the top of the trail, had some shoe issues, so she heroically hiked down the entire mountain in socks. We saw a vulture, or Condor, or some damn big bird along the way (well, we had to trailblaze and rock climb to get to it, but we saw it).

We climbed that. We are goddamn champions.

This day was so ridiculous because after we did this incredible hike, we left Zion, ate In N' Out Burgers (yum!!), and drove to Las Vegas. Within hours of hiking an insane mountain, I was full of delectable burgers and relaxing in a hot tub.

We grabbed some drinks at the pool bar (where I saw the Eagles lose, which seriously blows) and then went out to buy some alcs for the room. Did I mention that we had a suite at the Venetian? Because that part is pretty important. We were pretty baller. We cleaned up (first shower in four days! Yes!) and dressed in our fancy clothes to go hit the town.

If my current headache is any indication, we had an unbelievable time last night. We saw the Bellagio water fountain show, hit some casinos, and had an all around amazing time. I knew I was doing pretty well in Roulette and Black Jack, but I was certainly surprised to see a $100 bill in my wallet when I paid for my cab this morning. To be fair, I only made about $70 or so, but still. Awesome.

The flight at 7am this morning is certainly destroying my will to live, but what can you do. Awesome road trip. So much fun.

Wow. I can't believe I didn't voms on the plane.