It's Two AM, I Must Be Crazy

Hopefully this will be my last post before my new computer arrives later this week, or early next week. As for the old computer, I just don’t want to talk about it right now.

It’s two am, I’m not all that tired for some reason, and I cannot fall asleep. It’s hot here this evening. To all of those of you everywhere else in the world other than Malibu, No, I certainly don’t believe that it’s hotter here than it is there, but you see, ya’ll probably are sleeping like babies, all tucked up in your sheets enjoying a little thing called Air-conditioning as I lay here sweating, trying to convince myself that the wetness I feel from my sweat beading up on my forehead is actually ice or something. That whole mind over mater thing never really worked out well for me. Anyway, with the inability to sleep I find myself with the opportunity to use my roommate’s computer while he dozes soundly, and my mind turns to random musing rather than anything particularly coherent or enlightening for this post. As I held the door open for a friend of mine as we were walking into the Sandbar today at the same time, she remarked how southern I was that I always held the door for her. Now, I always considered that as something that you just do, regardless of where you’re from, but that’s a rant for another day. What it got me thinking about was my tendency to try to be able to work with all groups of people, while still remaining fairly outside their stereotype. Note strongly here that I say their stereotype, as I most certainly always tend to perpetuate some stereotype. For example, in California, I tend to play the role as Southern, Texan, significantly less wealthy individual. People view me as blunt, sometimes abrasive, but just generally honest, and that doesn’t always work out in my favor. What is strange to me though is the fact that when I’m in Texas people tend to view me as quite acclimated to a California life style. I honestly believe that my accent is quite a bit stronger in many situations out here at Pepperdine than it ever was at home. Why do I do this? I have no idea. In all honesty, it’s not even a conscious distinction I make. I guess it’s just the physical manifestation of my desire to go everywhere, but never actually completely fit in. I don’t want to be just another anything. Is that good? Is that bad? I don’t know yet…. Ask me in 20 years.

I’m sure there is an abundance of grammatical errors and erroneous arguments in the above statement. This is my disclaimer for this evening: I don’t care. The entire point of this is merely to get something up here after my absence. I assure you, there will be more to come in the next few weeks which, I hope, will be much more interesting and, perhaps even shocking??? Who knows… I haven’t let out a good political rant in a while and my Poli Sci class combined with producing Cultureshock FM again has given me significant fuel for the fire. Stay tuned, you never know what will happen next.

What's happiness you to David?

Well boys… here we go: Still no computer, I’m beginning to get worried about that, but am currently trying to remain optimistic since there’s not much I can do about it at this point. I’m actually quite excited today for no reason in particular. There are certain contributing factors of course. I got to talk to Mom today, who just got back from a whirlwind weekend in London. While I was talking to her on the phone she said it was “quite possibly the most fun I’ve had in my entire life.” I can’t express how happy it makes me to hear that. I’ve been bragging to my friends about the fact that my mom up and went to London on less than 12 hours notice, how cool is that? Also, my parents had mailed me a transcript of the speech that Steve Jobs
(the CEO and co-founder of Apple Computer) gave at Stanford’s commencement ceremonies. He rephrases the overused cliché “live like you were dying” in a way that I really love. “If today was the last day of my life, would I want to be doing what I’m about to do today?” It makes the phrase so much more applicable, and honestly I gotta say that I’m exactly where I want to be, and that’s quite reassuring. Anyway, I can’t say too much cause I’m on other people’s computers. Check out www.johndeniston.com/blog if you look through it a little you’ll find a link for a video tour of our apartment. I’ll go back later and repost it on my blog for ya’ll for now, consider it an adventure. Cheers ya’ll.

the title's a movie quote... what movie was it?

What's happiness you to David?

Well boys… here we go: Still no computer, I’m beginning to get worried about that, but am currently trying to remain optimistic since there’s not much I can do about it at this point. I’m actually quite excited today for no reason in particular. There are certain contributing factors of course. I got to talk to Mom today, who just got back from a whirlwind weekend in London. While I was talking to her on the phone she said it was “quite possibly the most fun I’ve had in my entire life.” I can’t express how happy it makes me to hear that. I’ve been bragging to my friends about the fact that my mom up and went to London on less than 12 hours notice, how cool is that? Also, my parents had mailed me a transcript of the speech that Steve Jobs
(the CEO and co-founder of Apple Computer) gave at Stanford’s commencement ceremonies. He rephrases the overused cliché “live like you were dying” in a way that I really love. “If today was the last day of my life, would I want to be doing what I’m about to do today?” It makes the phrase so much more applicable, and honestly I gotta say that I’m exactly where I want to be, and that’s quite reassuring. Anyway, I can’t say too much cause I’m on other people’s computers. Check out www.johndeniston.com/blog if you look through it a little you’ll find a link for a video tour of our apartment. I’ll go back later and repost it on my blog for ya’ll for now, consider it an adventure. Cheers ya’ll.

the title's a movie quote... what movie was it?

What's happiness you to David?

Well boys… here we go: Still no computer, I’m beginning to get worried about that, but am currently trying to remain optimistic since there’s not much I can do about it at this point. I’m actually quite excited today for no reason in particular. There are certain contributing factors of course. I got to talk to Mom today, who just got back from a whirlwind weekend in London. While I was talking to her on the phone she said it was “quite possibly the most fun I’ve had in my entire life.” I can’t express how happy it makes me to hear that. I’ve been bragging to my friends about the fact that my mom up and went to London on less than 12 hours notice, how cool is that? Also, my parents had mailed me a transcript of the speech that Steve Jobs
(the CEO and co-founder of Apple Computer) gave at Stanford’s commencement ceremonies. He rephrases the overused cliché “live like you were dying” in a way that I really love. “If today was the last day of my life, would I want to be doing what I’m about to do today?” It makes the phrase so much more applicable, and honestly I gotta say that I’m exactly where I want to be, and that’s quite reassuring. Anyway, I can’t say too much cause I’m on other people’s computers. Check out www.johndeniston.com/blog if you look through it a little you’ll find a link for a video tour of our apartment. I’ll go back later and repost it on my blog for ya’ll for now, consider it an adventure. Cheers ya’ll.

the title's a movie quote... what movie was it?

Blood for Television

First and foremost, I have to tell you that this is only the second time I’ve composed a blog post using a computer that was not my own. The first time was in Ireland. So this is a new phenomenon for me in America. For those of you who I have not had the chance to tell yet, I’ve sold my laptop. Currently, the old machine is winging its way to Nigeria. Yes, that is correct, I said Nigeria. The woman who bought it from me lives in Washington and wanted it shipped directly to her nephew in Nigeria. I should be going to get my new computer at the beginning of next week, where I will be moving on to the 12” Powerbook which will be much easier to use in class, and I’ll get a number of advancements that have been made in the two years I had the old computer.

Continuing on with the electronics discourse, I have to take a moment to brag. Our apartment, A36, Lovernich, now is the home to a very large television. For those of you who don’t know what John Deniston (my current roommate) to go pick up the tv. True to her word, the TV was exactly what she said it was, and was in perfect working order, with a gorgeous picture. I quickly found out though that I brought the wrong person to help me get it. I looked up the stats for the tv and found that it weighed 235lbs, and I overestimated John’s strength just a tad. Though John is a flight commander for his AFROTC detachment, he’s built more to be successful in the realm of doing all the pushups, sit-ups, and running that such a position requires than the strength of largeness that carrying large televisions necessitates. We got the TV to the door okay, and then down the two steps off of her small porch when I notice that John’s beginning to shake fairly considerably, so we try to speed it up a little, hoping to make it the last 10 feet to the pickup bed before John kills himself. Big mistake. There was about a 16inch high stone wall sticking out a couple feet from the side of the porch that John failed to notice. Already shaking from the load, he struck his shin fairly decidedly on the tip end of the wall. I’m watching everything in slow motion as John folds in half like a paper doll and just disappears on the other side of the television. The woman we bought it from jumps in just in time to slow the fall of the tv enough that nothing at all was hurt and it landed on it’s base, next to John, rather than on top of him. Still considerably shaken, John and the woman on one side, and I on the other, we picked up the TV and got it the rest of the 7 feet or so into the back of the pickup. Now, before I let you get to far into harassing John for the fact that a woman had to help him on his side of the TV, I have to tell you she was every bit as big as I am and covered in tattoos, exactly the kind of woman you wouldn’t be too ashamed to get a little help carrying something from. I made a few phone calls before we got back to campus, and when we arrived there were four other men waiting to help us get the TV up the three flights of stairs to our apartment. Allowing John to rest and nurse his wounds, the other five of us, with much difficulty, got the set up and into our apartment. But after watching the kick off of NFL football last night on that monster of a television, it was clear that the moral of the story is that good deals on large televisions are worth every drop of blood it takes to get up to your third floor apartment.

Thanks to everyone who helped.

Good Day

“It’s been a good day. It’s been a very good day.” As my roommate, and good friend, John Deniston can attest, those exact words just issued from my mouth. I’m sitting here, listening to Remy Zero, soaking in the moment, reflecting on one of the more enjoyable days that I’ve had in a long time. I woke up naturally around 8am this morning despite staying up late last night, and completely ignoring the fact that I had absolutely nothing to do until about noon decided to go ahead and get up. I used that time to finish my book over the NSA, which I will hopefully be posting a review of soon. Then I ran down to Ralphs and picked up some Bratwursts for lunch. Following lunch, I made my way down to the beach for the annual Campus Ministries sponsored “Fun in the sun day.” This is where throngs of Pepperdine students storm tower 12 at Zuma beach with fervor rivaling that of the allies in Normandy. On the way down to the beach I gave a ride to three girls I hadn’t ever met before, but were looking for a ride. You just gotta love how that works out here. Heading back from the beach I had my former roommate turned RA Ryan Harvey with me when he received a phone call inviting us to join some other friends up at Dresher for some steaks. So, we swung by Ralphs, picked up a healthy sized porterhouse, and as luck would have it Ralphs now carries Stubbs marinade, and had it on sale today. I’ve had a number of very fine steaks in my life, but this one certainly ranks high up on the list. I returned back to my ocean view apartment in Malibu, California (Lovernich A36, just sounds so much more impressive when called an ocean view Malibu apartment) to find that I had an email waiting for me from a woman whom I have been conversing with about buying a TV saying that she has everything ready, and wondered if we would like to pick it up Monday. I’ll save the whole TV story for a post when we actually have it, but it’s been an interesting process. Well, I know that this is one of the less interesting, controversial, or eloquently spoken posts that I’ve ever had, but I’m just feeling good right now and felt like sharing. I will be reformatting my computer tomorrow prior to selling it so I may be out of communication for the next week or so until I get a new one. Have a wonderful Labor Day weekend!

Semester Outlook

Welcome back for this week’s installment of “Where has Taylor gone to?”
As life would have it, I’ve actually not gone anywhere. I’ve just been very bad about posting. So, here’s the quick and dirty wrap up.

School started this week and I’m pretty busy, here’s the class outlook.

Math 102 – The Nature of Mathematics:
Class looks to be very doable, as long as I keep on top of things. Homework every night, but only a couple pages of problems or so to tackle. Prof is extremely excited about the world of math.

Religion 102- History and Religion of the Early Christians (New Testament)
Will be one of my most demanding classes. Nearly 100 pages of reading prior to each class, random unannounced quizzes, and a 15-page research paper. Professor is an extremely engaging orator, but very strict, doesn’t allow laptops, and I have a hard time keeping up with him on handwritten notes.

Political Science 104- American People and Politics
My only lecture hall class for the semester, PoliSci promises to be a very interesting class indeed. The professor has a Who-Wants-to-be-a-Millionaire-esque audience polling system set up for the class, which provides very interesting feedback. After one class it’s obvious that Pepperdine’s students aren’t quite as politically conservative as the school would suggest. Of course, we are talking about College Students, in Southern California, two of the clearest indicators of liberalness there are.

Communications 300- Communications Research
Class workload would typically intimidate me. However, this prof has a reputation of not actually following that workload very closely. He’s also South Korean, and has a very thick accent that makes him very difficult to understand. I think it would be okay, if we could just get him to speak a little louder than the fan in the projector presenting his powerpoint.

TC 270 (and Lab)- Field Video Production
The professor for this class is a senior editor at ABC/ESPN. On top of that, he’s done just about everything there is to do on the darker side of the camera. Editing, Producing, Directing, Writing, Graphics, etc. Suffice it to say, the guy knows his stuff. The class is at 8am because he has to go into the real world for most of the day. I look forward to learning from him, however the class is starting on a slightly frustrating note as we learn which direction to point a Camera and where the viewfinder is.

I am also enrolled in the Junior Writing Portfolio (JWP301) this semester, which means that I have to submit a portfolio of my various writings to a panel to prove that I’ve sufficiently learned to write effectively. I don’t actually have to write anything new, just organize old papers and send them in. I sincerely hope I can figure out where I put those papers.

And to round it all out I’m enrolled in a class called (I believe) TV261 which simply is a technical recognition for my work in the Television Studio and awards me with a credit hour. Ha! A single hour for the great multitude of time I’m sure to spend working on three separate shows. Oh well, it’s just there to make things look pretty I’m sure.

Yes folks, you got it, that means it’s an 18.5 hour semester when you include that .5 credit for Convo. The most you can have and remain in the flat rate tuition. Oh yeah, did I mention that I’m working in the coffee shops on campus too? It’s a wonderful life! Honestly, I’m very excited about my classes, TV work, and new job. It’s going to be a busy semester, but I like it that way.

My goals for the semester are as follows:
1. No less than another appearance on the Pepperdine Dean’s List. Before first semester last year I never thought this was possible for me, but now that I’ve tasted it, I want more.
2. Be an integral part of a quality Pepperdine TV broadcast. By quality, I mean, my version of quality. I want to be proud of what I’ve done, and the final product of the shows I’m working on. This is something that I did not walk away with after my limited involvement freshman year. I believe that it will be different this year.

Here We Go!