McGravis the Puffer is On His Way

food for thought

so (the word i probably most usually start a post with)

ive been extremely bored recently, being home and all with nothing to do other than drive around and get lots of coffee with friends. so i said to myself, what would dan do? this time i let myself down. i went to a bookstore. A BOOKSTORE. and didnt even buy an awesome book. i bought PLATO'S REPUBLIC. before i go any further, let me just say i know what youre all thinking. what the hell. i know. i thought the same thing as i was checking out, but i needed some kind of synapse stimulus so i went with this. and i have to say its quite the brain bender- the first chapter blew my mind and i came across a sentence at one point that i had to stare at for like 10 minutes. then i was like OMG. thats one of the more embarrassing moments but STILL. anyway ive found other things to do since. like AVATAR BLURAY. its awesome.

yeah i still dont have a job. it sucks. I WANT MONEY. money is good. i have a plan for money for next summer but unfortunately not this one. the stock market kind of blows cock recently too so thats a bust. guess i have to sell guns and drugs. i hear the biggest markets are california and jamaica (too soon?.......nahh) ba-doom-cha.

ok so here are my job options:

1. sell clothes at vineyard vines. again.

2. fill divots on a golf course for 20 hours a week

3. odd jobs on weekends for 12 bucks an hour

4. sell my body

numbers 2 and 3 are kind of my favorites but 4 is slowly creeping its way to the top. oh and most of those options are from craigslist. so they may just filter down to number 4 anyway...well see.

im thinking of getting an ipad. u know that new giant ipad touch? that half the world hates and half the world loves? well i dont "love" it but i think its pretty awesome. i mean imagine how convenient it would be when u go take a crap. YOU NEVER HAVE ANYTHING TO DO ON YOUR PHONE ANYWAY. this should be a required installation in ever bathroom. you could check up on the news, watch iron man, buy a new album, all while ur....doing the do.do. hahh

another practical application would be to use it as a GIANT lighter at concerts and blow everyone else out of the park. cuz you have super zippo and they all have their pussy phones. suckers.

the next thing im about to say is going to gross a third of you out, make a third of you jealous, and the other third will just be indifferent. next semester, along with all my other classes, im signed up for freaking yoga. its gonna be awesome. cuz NO GUYS TAKE YOGA. probably for reasons ill discover later but still. thats in the bag. dunk and score. the eagle is in its nest. i stand proud, so you can take it or leave it. im gonna be a ninja soon enough so you better take it.

its summer!

PARTTY

Theo's Introduction

my autobiography

i was born on may 24th, 1991 in hinsdale illinois. i lived there for 8 years until we moved to the east coast. when we got there, hurricane floyd was passing through and all i kept thinking was that the east coast sucks cuz it rains so much. but then it ended and i was like nomg a sky.

years passed and i enjoyed gradeschool sometimes. there were ups and downs. the ups were times like whenever i did something that was frowned upon by any teacher. looking back i liken teachers (at least younger ones) to cops. they were beaten up as kids so they held a grudge their entire lives and decided to take it out on kids 30 years younger than they are for horrible experiences in their own past. and its a catholic private school so they have free reign to be dicks about it. but thats just me. the worse times occurred usually right before lunch when it took all my considerable skill and cunning to sneak potato chips from the bag in my pocket into my mouth when the math teachers back was turned. this turned into quite a regular event for me, and as a result all my friends counted on a chip or two in math class before lunch. recess was alright. i usually played wall ball with the guys or four square with the girls. which of course made me look gay because you never hang out with the girls in grade school unless youre talking about the manliest thing possible. such as dodgeball or who can climb the tree fastest.

summers came and went and i found myself in high school. the summer before freshman year i had a class at rcds for spanish. it felt kind of like school, but i could walk around without someone watching me. and i could go to the bathroom without asking. and i could wear what i wanted. and i had the ability to skip a class. it felt great. so i did all those things, maybe save for the skipping class part (there was only one class afterall). i think that was the beginning of my slightly "rebellious" phase. a phase that has never really ended, but i stopped being kind of a douche about it. anyway. high school started and within the first month i was completely behind in all my classes, grades sucked, mr kyle (the dean) basically hated me, my parents and advisor were breathing down my neck and i was on the cross country team. first things first, quit the cross country team. if not out of the need to get better grades, then out of principle. why i did that for almost 3 years in a row i have no idea. you basically....run. thats it. and its taken me until TODAY to get over that hate. ive just started running again. but now im not racing homoerotic men with short shorts through the woods so i can say i ran an 18 minute 5K. no, no. im running through sorority row with my shirt off. now thats better. i digress. so high school was a doozy for my first year. i picked up the pace by the end of the year. ended up with probably one A (choir..) alot of Bs and id imagine some C's. not too great. sophomore year was probably better than freshman year in that i kind of knew what to expect, but i still didnt really get "it". nothing really important happened sophomore year except for the pope dying, a shitload of terrorist attacks (according to wikipedia) and e-coli infested spinach. other than that nothing really. junior year rolls around and thats what i was dreading. okaay so the college process is right around the corner. so what. sooo... endless classes for SAT testing, i have to get good grades for applications, keep doing stuff outside of school. basically every horrible thing you can think of was packed into junior year. it basically sucked other than some remote good times with friends. having friends helps because you always have someone who is suffering with you. and talking about how much life sucks with a friend can only yield good results. one of which is a suicide buddy. nevertheless, junior year ended finally and it was off to the summer. the last 2 summers were basically me either taking classes or sitting around at home cuz i wasnt old enough for a job. well now i was and i wanted money. so i was ambitious, creative, disciplined, and good looking in the process to find a job. and you know where it landed me? as a camp counselor. yep. i was in charge of a group of like 18 young teenage boys. this is like ages 12 and 13. the age where you become the dick youre meant to be in life. except you havent learned that society doesnt like douchebags so it's completely uncensored. you don't listen, you do your own thing, you act like youre the bomb and everyone else should look up to you cuz youre the tallest person out of the group of campers. reality check: youre 13 years old, none of your body parts are in proportion, you still sound like an 8 year old, and youre being a jerk to just about everything and everyone you encounter. do expect that people will respect you? well you shouldnt. needless to say I didn't like being a camp counsellor. though i had some friends to do it with, so i always had a suicide buddy. BUT. i had a backup plan. i had been applying (before i worked at the camp) for a job at a local clothing store that will remain nameless for the sake of my dignity. long story short i got the job and it was much better in every aspect. people were nice, i enjoyed the air conditioning, they even let me dress up as a giant pink whale. not a fact that i enjoyed at the time but a great story now. now that you probably know where i worked, shut the fuck up.

senior year rolled around and i was so pumped. all i ever heard about it was partying, going out all the time, forgetting about school, etc. etc. wrong. you still have to work your ass off for the first semester AT LEAST. that wasnt so bad though. the testing was over and i could rest my head. for the next couple months it was basically same old story, except we were seniors so life was that more awesome. once second semester rolled around, however, things were different. whether or not people still needed to keep grades up, we still went out. because all those awesome things we heard about seinor year would have gone down the drain if we just kept working and working. so we stopped working. correct choice my friends. so it was basically everything we heard about- parties, staying up late, parents dont really care, etc etc. college admissions rolled around and i admit i was pretty happy with the results. i cant remember what they were but i did have options (still pretty bummed about the upenn rejection tho.) regardless, i loved IU and decided to go there. fastforward through an awesome summer lifeguarding, chilling with friends, goodbyes, etc. that would take too long to reminisce about (although thats the point of an autobiography)

COLLEGE started. woot. let me begin by saying that it was more awesome than i thought it would be. i felt no homesickness because i had just been exiting from one of those "i have to get out of this place" phases. so it was good timing and once we all said goodbye, i was on my own. first thing i did was buy a giant stereo. that was awesome. second thing i did was buy a shitload of food. that was also awesome. third thing i did was go out and party. that was ALSO awesome. then the classes came. i did well but we wont talk about that cuz its boring and vain. so it was time for thanksgiving and all i wanted to do was go home. the whole "im on my own" thing was great but it fades once youve been eating nothing but fried chicken for weeks straight and you have to shower in basically a bathroom stall. but i couldnt go home. noo. spent the break in cincinnatti with my mom's side. it was fun. but still. so christmas break arrives, ends, school starts again, same old story. except now im taking more credits and life is quickly getting more daunting. i decide i have to drop choir. very depressing. very difficult. seeing that id been in choir every year since like 6th grade, it had been a part of my life. so it sucked. on the plus side, however, the ratio of sexually suggestive glances i received from guys versus girls diminished rapidly. it lightens up the atmosphere a bit. and yeah. im saying gays make me uncomfortable. at least in close proximity. if im sitting next to a guy and hes obviously flamingly gay, i can't concentrate on anything other than where he's sitting relative to me and how i would avoid giving any single hint of encouragement to his potential "glances" if you will. i was in a cafe down the street and this kind of fat barista is wearing a tight t shirt with a fur-lined hoodie. gaydar goes off. i still need coffee. so i give him the money and as he gives me change and im STILL making a conscious effort to avoid his gaze and just fill my fucking mug, he CUPS my hand in his and puts the coins in my hand. i just left. i just......left. THIS IS WHAT I TRY TO AVOID. WTFUCKING FUCK. this is a memory ive tried to suppress. why im talking about it i have no idea. lets move on.

well its second semester now and thats what i was gonna write about. classes are better and i hate only one of my teachers and its not cuz im doing badly. its cuz shes a complete idiot. im a firm believer in just sucking it up when you get a crappy teacher because 99 times out of 100 theyre great at what they do, you just have to get inside their heads. once you do that and know how to do it, youre set. but ive tried. and this woman is just so dimwitted, slow, boring, inconsistent, messy, unprepared, that i just want to leave the class after 30 second of her talking. i cant get inside her head because shes just SO dimwitted. but anyway.

thats my life story. i would have put my worst days ever, and i do remember them, but i probably would have called a suicide buddy. i can remember best days ever, but thats another post. enjoy, and go do something useful with your time now. i know i wont... seeing as i just wrote about my life story at 2 in the morning.

cars.

the human race needs to do a little introspection for fifteen minutes. lets think to ourselves: the one thing that a man can 1)call his own 2)demonstrate the product of his own effort with 3)establish his dominance with, and 4)get ladies with....is being mutilated and prostituted to the whims of so many people that there are so few companies that are left who still respect the ideaology of a car. Crash course (hah) in automobile loving:

1. a car must be beautiful inside and out. this doesn't always mean that the seats have to be made from the hide of a cow thats been fed a controlled diet inside a hermetically sealed ecodome for the majority of its adult life. this means that when you look at any given car, you should stop in your tracks because its a piece of art. take the lamborghini gallardo LP-570-4 superllegera for example:

if you saw this on the street, you had better hope you're walking because if it were me, I'd be landing in the back of the ford fiesta stopped at the light in front of me cuz i was staring. a car should flow from the front to back in a (pardon the descriptive narration) single stroke of the designer's brush. not even kidding. take a pencil and race it across a paper. now do it slowly. the slower line makes it look like you just developed a horrible case of parkinsons... when the companies try to make everything perfect for everyone to like and that everyone will go for, you end up sitting in a car and thinking "this is nothing new". If you've ever rented a car you definitely know what im talking about. nothing feels right. or comfortable. my dad had to get a loaner when the mustang was in the shop. it ended up being the equivalent of what the evil fat assistant robot in transformers 2 would shit. clumsy, ugly, didn't drive right, there were blind spots everywhere so i pissed off several people on the road. needless to say i abused the fucking thing. my point is that you should enjoy seeing a car and being inside of it. it should be an experience.

2. a cars power needs to match its owner. would martha stewart drive a koeniggsegg CCX? no. because that would be ridiculous. she would drive a prius and die in a horrible crash (there's a natural selection process occurring here). Take yourself for example. do you like driving fast? probably. but do you know HOW to drive fast? probably not. (i mean track speed. not 90 on the merritt). just because a stuffy businessman can afford to buy a ferrari, that doesnt mean he should. i heard a story of a guy who went into upstate CT to a track with his BRAND NEW ferrari f430. took like 2 laps, THEN realized that he had no idea how to work a manual and blew the engine. people like that should just go into the jungle and die. long story short, if you want a sweet car, make sure you know how to drive it. and im not exempt from this. i didn't deserve to have a mustang in my last 2 years of high school. was i excited? you bet. but it took a long time to learn how to drive the damn thing (and its an automatic..). lots of lessons learned that would have been easier to cope with in a 1990 honda accord.

3. when you see a car like the scion ix or whatever the hell its called (i call the whole group of those "box cars". for obvious reasons. honda element is another) please spit on it. there had to have been less than 3 days of actual design that went into making those cars. its obvious when carmakers dont care. hate them for it. don't be distracted by stuff like satellite navigation and cooled seats (though they are cool. HAHo). the primary objective is to decide whether or not any given car will represent you well if you drive it down the street and everyone on that street is looking at you and judging from what they see. does that happen? yes. at least i do it.

not all the best cars are expensive either. audi is a good example of beauty, power, etc. so is BMW. it just needs to be obvious that alot of thought went into making the car. in my opinion, american companies are just getting worse. there are some exceptions with muscle car models, but theyre dwindling. the dodge charger is a joke at this point. you can order a 4 door version. what they says to me is dodge telling me "okay well we'll SAY that were badass but then well make all our cars suck more." ford is just doing everything the same but swapping the grills out. yes, the recession has an effect. but thats all the more reason to move out of the country before emission standards throw all the good cars out.

fucking storm.

spring

so it's 60 degrees outside and im super happy about that because its officially the start of spring when i go outside and feel the ground radiating heat. that being said, if it goes back down to 30/40 degrees in a week, i will lose my shit. however, THAT being said, it's time to party because spring means everyone is losing clothes. and that means bikinis in the quad. and thats awesome. cuz theres also a volleyball court in the quad. so girls+bikinis+sweat=happy dan. simple math. unfortunately for my classes, good weather makes me forget all about the fact that I'm at school. but thats okay because exams are over and the next week of classes requires minimal work on my part. as a result, the current scene is me sitting at my desk, window opened blasting...lenny kravitz for some reason..itunes genius (it's american woman so its okay). it's based off of sugar ray so that kind of makes sense. kind of. anyway. hope everyone enjoys the weather while it lasts. im off to find something to do with this tennis ball i found in a hallway

its morning.

Seeing that my clock says 7:35 and not any other possible combination of those numbers, it has to be morning. Which sucks. Well I guess except 7:55. Which would be better actually no that would mean im late. Here I am sitting at my desk listening to lynyrd skynrd, which is way too hip for this early, eating my toast and not working. For the first time in a long time. A LONG FUCKING TIME. like, i cant stress how long its been since ive sat and not worked. i usually "not work" while in a strange or exotic pose, such as those found in karate kid. ohh tuesdays gone just came on. i have happy gilmore flashbacks every time i hear this song. its at the end when happy sees the ghost of the only guy that died in the film. who just happened to be black. so i was up lastnight studying for a midterm i have this morning and for midterms i have on thursday and friday, ignoring the one i have tomorrow at 8 in the morning along with the fact that i have a paper due at 1:00 which i havent startTHIS IS RUINING MY MORNING RELAXATION TOAST TIME

so spring break is coming up and i am super excited. whos excited? this guy. im even leaving a day early because airfare was cheaper on friday than saturday. my moms like can you leave im like hell yeahz. i was like that. just like that. almost.........too like that.... i digress pointlessly

i have 2 minutes to leave. i havent gotten dressed. maybe ill grace my econ professor with my flannel pants and class of 09 shirt. maybe ill even throw some uggs in there. you know what? im going to. and green sunglasses. im shakin things up around here. its time they get a taste of what I can dan russell....yeah thats all ive got. well its my name so its appropriate. ill add a spice to the end to make it sound exciting and fresh. dan russell jalapeno. except you have to say jalapeno like al pacino would say it as scarface. a dummed down version that sounds like he has a cold..."hallapenno" except with fervor and subtle hints of the possibility everyone in the room is on the verge of losing their lives. omg im late. whatever its review and ive got at least the first half of the semester down pat. like a pancake. i dont kno what that means. please dont judge you know what go ahead and judge me. go ahead. i dare you. i dont dare you. cuz then you might come to a conclusion i dont like and when i come back with full clarity of mind i wont remember this and ill be confused as to why you dont like me anymore. okay time to go

hated people

i dont know about you, but I've met some insanely ignorant people at college. people that tell me things like dylan has no variety and bruce springsteen just wants attention for being patriotic. who the hell do you think you are? If people just took the time to literally go to wikipedia or any other reference source, spent 10 minutes learning how absurd what they just said is, the world would be a better place. now for my rant. lol

as we know, many artists, not just musicians, have been railed about how inappropriate or sucky their music is at any given point in history. this is obviously found throughout history, but I'm kind of surprised that there's still a degree of ignorance when it comes to unique works. Even quentin tarantino and the cohen brothers have specifically unique styles that have meaning, but many people don't see through their use of violence as a channel for getting their message across. heart of darkness was an insanely deep book, but people still watch the movie and all they get out of it is dancing playboy girls and some action scenes. it's admittedly slow, but really? try to look past it. okay, we'd just like to watch a movie without thinking about deeper meaning. its basically half the point of sitting in front of a tv- just vegging out. but when you're reviewing the movie that you watched probably while you were blazed and THEN assess the merits of its plot elements, you fall into this category of ignorance thats hard to escape.

zappa is probably an even further example of this misunderstanding of deeper meaning. while the movies mentioned use metaphors to get the point across, artists like frank zappa, eminem, even elvis presley, used their own accountability to make a point. they set themselves up as a figure to be criticized, but in the process they mocked and satirized the "system" that we know of as censorship. critics derided them for their lyrics and the way they present them. elvis was attacked for his apparantly sexual dancing styles on hound dog, frank was attacked for basically everything he did from his lyrics to the videos he made, and eminem had parents covering their kids ears because of what he was saying. eminem is a slightly different example in this case since some of his lyrics did reveal his intentions to elicit unwarranted anger from critics, but the premise of rattling the cages of the critics stays the same across the board.

there's always an ignorance in someone's mind about how things should be. in the 30's, jazz was associated with the Charleston, which was looked down upon by pompous conservatives. in more recent years, such a trend still continues- a dissonance between the freedom of expression and society's EVER CHANGING definition of propriety. the gap has obviously lessened over the past 75 years, but the ignorance is still there for different reasons. it's now not as much of an issue of propriety but more of an issue of people just caring. this may be the effect of frustration resulting from so much back and forth between the two sides, but there's nonetheless an imbalance between the appreciation of art that stems from freedom of expression and simple act of "watching a movie" to totally veg out. all im saying is people should stop caring about getting the last word about how much a movie sucked or an artist didn't understand the times and care more about putting themselves in the person's shoes. I'm not much of a metaphor guy myself- i like things to get straight to the point in any given situation. I was always somewhat frustrated by the premise of poetry taking 20 lines to say it's cold outside, but when you get over your innate tendencies to voice an opinion, stop and think about why it takes 20 lines to say one thing, you draw different conclusions as to what the poet was saying. it usually doesn't even matter that it's cold outside. likewise, zappa didn't necessarily want to half rape 2 sisters on drugs in dynamo hum. yes, he was appealing to the audience's need for entertainment, but he was also using the material of the song to pierce the cloud of hesitancy that not many people ventured into with their lyrics. we should realize these things more readily and be able to appreciate--not necessarily agree with, but recognize--what people spend careers and lives trying to say.

now if i apply this reasoning to these people in college that I've met, there's a vicious cycle that i just set up for myself. but theyre wrong and im right.