Win a Trip with Krister Rollins, more like it

I'm signing up to try and win a Trip with NY Times journalist Nick Kristof. He selects two people, one student and one teacher, to accompany him on a trip to Africa to report on... uh... Africans, I guess.

Anyway, the application requires an essay of 700 words or less. Mine checks in at a hearty 678. And here it is:

Under the orange glow of the sodium arc lights, I gave 57 copies of The Gospel of St. John to various friends, acquaintances, strangers and passers-by at a house party in the 19th Ward of Rochester, NY. Religiously, I'm unaffiliated. I was testing myself and looking to start a lot of conversations.

Lately my conversations with strangers have been of a more biological impetus, but the thrill of discovering people remains.

I have been writing since at least the fourth grade, including investigative journalism. Apart from a fiction story about time-traveling cats, that year I wrote an article about the student at the neighboring desk and his propensity for passing gas. I took a few liberties, as I recall, about the teacher passing out and the class guinea pig dying, but the article remains one of my fonder grade school memories. It was one article I had written in a self-produced journal of four pages. The other was about a ground-hog we had espied traversing the grounds from bush to bush.

Maybe it is because I'm an only child from a quiet, rural town in a quiet, rural state or maybe it is because my family has a long-standing history of activism but I have a drive for humanist causes. I firmly believe in the power of people to do the Right Thing. Sometimes a little prodding or poking is needed, gentle nudging from those in the know. I would like to be one of those doing the prodding.

I'm tired of standing aside and talking with friends who largely agree with me. I'm tired of preaching to the choir, of not making waves and of not informing. I got a taste of it writing for my school paper and it whet my appetite. I'm ready for more.

I have traveled. Not extensively but I've been around a bit. I have not had an experience yet that I have regretted. When I was sick in New Zealand and vomiting water and mucus, I was pleased the perfumed air was not the air of home. The insomnia brought on by travel and the undying day of Summer Solstice in the Åland Islands was a delight. Listening to birds tweetling and twittering at midnight in a hazy, purple dusk enchanted my Mother and I and eternally endeared me to that land. The Bahamas are a lovely place but in desperate need of environmental reform. For every sun and rum soaked tourist there has to be half a ton of waste and refuse. Styrofoam and bottles litter every inch of Eleuthera that isn't a lived in tourist abode.

I know something about determination, drive and sacrifice for your art. During High School I broke my thumb in a poorly executed stunt for a movie that wound up abandoned. The director, Nick, was less than sympathetic.

“Nick, I think I really hurt my thumb.”

“Shut up, pussy, get back on the ground.”

I've made mistakes. In an article about the Middle East, I made some editorial slip-ups that were, unfortunately, interpreted as anti-semitic. But after a brief talk with Hillel House and a reconciliation in the next issue, the situation was ameliorated.

I've seen a man die. A heart attack at the bottom of a ski trail. I've been the ring bearer in a wedding. I've been pulled over for drunken bicycling. I've had a hamburger with a fried egg on it. I've broken up fights. I've witnessed an underground boxing tournament. I've sat by my dying grandmother and I cried when she walked again. I've looked ten generations into my past. I've driven 370 miles to sleep on a mattress on a floor and film a band. I've been in a car accident. I've fished in the moonlight. I've jumped off the top of a building. I've moved a ton of ice with a small push.

I've lived a good enough life for 23 years but I have not yet done what I need to. I have not yet done enough good for others.

I'm grading...

...PSYCHE!

I'm reading bizarre webcomics from Joey Mac's away message:


Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

And now, back to the toil, yo.

Drawings from the Media

Every now and then I see a picture in the news (online print, not moving TV or streamy internet news) that moves me to drawing it. Or something like it slash inspired by it. And here they are:



I believe this is based on a well-dressed middle eastern man responding to a car bombing that killed his brother.



This guy was involved in a riot in some place, I don't remember. There were impressive flames and smoke behind him in the picture.



Lisa Nowak is the astronaut lady who drove across several states (Texas to Florida, I believe) in order to kidnap the current girlfriend of her former boyfriend. I can see how she was once rather pretty but is a little... strung out.

This is one of my favorites, although I think the text could be worked in a lot better and her jacket needs to be darker. Alas!

BaDRAWmas

Here's some drawings I made in the Bahamas. Not all of them, but stuff where I felt there was some goodness ahappenin'.



There's clearly something wrong with some of the perspective there, but I dig parts of it. I'm working on finishing up a drawing of some brain coral that has the same wall thing on it, perhaps a bit better executed. But there's so many fine lines on that brain coral, man!



These came out of a magazine my grandmother brought with her from Sweden. Luckily, it was in English. They were in different articles, but I think the whole thing was about the human brain and language roots etc.



Mostly I like this one for my comment on the lizard neck-flap. I drew this stuff sorta drunk.



I rather like the tree stump. (The thing on the right). The image on the left was my first Bahama Drawing and resulted in a bit of a sunburn on me neck.

Hmm

Apparently, Blogger's Spam-prevention robots have flagged my blog as being particularly spamful. You'll all only be reading this after I get a human anti-spam dude to check out my blog and see that I'm a real guy.

With real needs.

And those needs can only be fulfilled by blogging!

What I want to know is: What am I doing that would make robots (cool! Robots!) pay attention to me? What about my writing and linking techniques suggests the random, sentences and singular focus of the links of a Spamblog (Spog for those of you innarested in brevity).

Yep.

Well, how about that

China is accusing the United States of Stampeding over Iraqi's rights.

I think that says something. Because if you're going to be accused of violating human's rights, makes sense that it would come from a country that knows human rights violations.

New story

New short story over at grungynoir. It might be a gross violation of the implications of the name of the blog. (It might be a blog's name's implication's gross violation).

1/9/2007

High school girls can be really dumb, he says on his second beer watching Hellboy. All teachers in our high school have, for instance, a study hall. And in that study hall can be any variety of students. Typically not the greatest students because they're in Study Hall and not on Special Privilege (or what have you). So I've had one girl in here all year and she is just a gigantic attention whore. She's a good girl, I like Marie (Pseudonym!) but it's true. She wanders from cluster of boys to cluster of boys eliciting attention and comments in whatever form she can get them. high school boys being what they are (horny) that's mostly sorta flirty insults.

Usually it's no problem. Marie gets her fix and moves on. Today, though, was somehow different and she was protesting the treatment more. Normally I'd've put a stop to it but she was clearly protesting it more because she wanted more attention. Also the kids were being legitimately funny. An example:

MARIE: Hey, guys.
BILLY: You're such a llama, Marie.
TEDDY: Haha, yeah. A llama.
BILLY: You llama. MOOOOO!
TEDDY: Haha, yeah. MOOOOO!
BILLY AND TEDDY: MOOOOOO!!
TEDDY: Llamas don't even go "moo." Marie, you're an alpaca! MOOOOO!
BILLY AND TEDDY: MOOOOOO! MOOOOO!!
MARIE: Whatever, you guys.
BILLY: You're a parrot, Marie. MOOOOO!
TEDDY: MOOOO!

So, she got up and walked over to the door with a pencil, aiming to sign out and wander. Without even asking my permission first.
"Marie," I said, "Where are you going?"
"I need to get out of here! I need to wander!"
"What?"
"Can I go wander, Mr. Rollins?"
"Well," I said, "You can go hang out in the corner."

Also, this girl delivers these fake hiccoughs every now and again for attention. She basically says "eep!" in a falsetto sorta voice.

But she is good people, don't get me wrong. She's just in high school.

Take it, God Dammit

Enjoy!

New Years Post!

Right! I figure if I post these here and other people see them I can force myself to do them because if I don't I'll feel guilty.

Resolutions:
Healthen myself up! This includes eating more healthful foods and less crap foods and losing my paunch and perhaps gaining some muscle mass. I'm going to wait to join a gym until the post-holiday fatties have gotten past their post-binge work-outs.

Get something published. A poem or a story in a magazine. Or a book or publication. Something beyond the tubeoblognets.

Do either the Peace Corps thing or apply for grad school with a linguistics focus. Figure out which one of those my life really needs. See where in the world those will take me.

Date again. I miss dating!

Less heavy drinking, too. This holiday break has reminded me that it's really not that good for you!

So folks, if you don't see me doing these things, make sure you taunt me about it. Shame me into doing them! This list might get stuff added to it.