Garbage trucks come each Monday at around 5:45 AM. This is the second week I've noticed.

And I feel sorry for people who strictly follow crosswalk signals. Low traffic, cross-traffic stopped by a red light, and he's still waiting for the ‘Do Not Walk’ sign to change? (I cross in the meantime and he stares at me as if I'm some sort of rebel.) Here are some thoughts:

1. Obey any traffic cops
2. Observe relevant traffic lights (i.e. – the ones that stop traffic perpendicular to your intended path, and green arrows)
3. Double-check any oncoming traffic (including around the corners, if possible)
4. Crossing speed tends to vary in direct proportion to the probability of being hit, except when said probability is high
5. Polite pedestrianship is encouraged

Advanced techniques and insights, such as waiting in the middle of the road, are learned more through instinct, and trial without error. Keep a weary eye, but don't be a slave to the signal.

He returned with several more but starting making his own version, doing something prior to frying that was supposed to help the taste; he said he should be a chef. I thought he was being crazy. Andrew was so tall that even though he was resting on his knees in front of the stove, his head was a couple of feet over the fryer. And I couldn't figure out whether blue cheese dressing and tabasco was a good enough mixture to coat the wings in.

The kitchen was a small rectangular space carved out of a long square brick wall, on a piece of land surrounded by a canal; I didn't know what the walls contained inside. The walkway around the wall was a bit narrow. The canal was roughly 10 feet wide, with murky, swampy water and occasional trees growing from the sides, separating other island areas.

I jumped across the canal fairly easily but was always afraid to fall into the water, or even get my feet in (being barefoot, I didn't want snakes and insects biting my feet or risk catching a water-borne disease).

Moving backwards in time, I came from an attic – in a house a bit south of the kitchen – after checking my directory entry. The @Home servers cached data from so many months ago, so for a while I kept seeing my old info before figuring out how to get new data into the browser. And then I thought of telling Ryan that cable modems suck.

Backwards still, in the basement of this house, I was invisible and in an episode of The Pretender: Jarod was protecting some woman from an unknown man making death threats. He had to leave for a few minutes but was worried about this woman; she told him not to worry.

The camera zoomed in close a the door handle, and this woman slowly reached for it. Slowly turned it. Slowly opened the door to darkness and rain and flashes of lightening. Instead of the evil man appearing and dragging her away, she blew a whistle three times then quickly closed the door. Footsteps began falling onto the floors above, along with murmuring voices and flushing toilets.

Within a couple of minutes, several linebacker-sized men lined up around the woman. She apparently had a team of bodyguards living in-house.

I think the guards were just football players. They were still dressed in practice gear.

And since I no longer trust my Elph in low light, I drew a rough rendition of it:

The sprinklers were on when I passed the quad, and I had this urge to get soaked. So I stood under them for a few minutes, just enough to get slight chills. Then I walked home with my glasses off (because I didn't want to look too dumb wearing lenses covered in water droplets), and all the lights more than ten feet away looked like floating, glowing, fuzzy balls.

Walk around campus at night. There's so much to see and do without really seeing or doing much.

I guess they needed a change after 4ish years of the same design.

And I'm getting more comfortable with the shaved head. I want to keep it shaved a while longer, but the thing I worried about before resurfaced:

me: i shaved my head sunday
bro: what>
bro: why?
me: eh
me: just because
me: i wanted to see how it looked
bro: oh
bro: don't tell mom
me: yeah, i know

School also sucks, etc.. I want to disappear for a year or two.

1. I was 22 years and 1 day old
2. It was the 1st day of fall, on the 22nd of September
3. There was – at one point – a huge, bright, orange moon engulfing the sky
4. The weather was cool all day, with no warm or hot spots
5. My parents still love me
6. A cute girl likes me
7. I'm still in college; this could be my last chance
8. I told my editor I planned on this
9. I chickened out a few times in the past few years
10. (School work could go much better, but that's a little too much to ask for.)

Good omens and logic led to an experiment last night:

Penelope, Tank, Archimedes, and kARRl mARRx

Write-ins are welcome and encouraged.

(Yes, I know that second line of English is misquoting the song in question.)

Jackasses.

Well, today I decided to do something different: I made a conscious effort to slightly raise my knees more. This resulted in more of a bend in the knees, an added emphasis on my balls (of the feet), and an overall decrease in foot dragging.

I had no incidents of falling socks to and from class this morning. This is enlightenment.

It's still sweet and edible. Just not…pretty.

While I agree with these views, I tend to shy away from showing interest in these people. Maybe it's out of embarassment, being seen in public with ‘activists’ that have little or no pull in policymaking. And besides, I don't want to be politically involved in the bedroom of some run-down apartment, writing manifestos with candlelight and no running water.

Today was a bit different, though. I walked out to the quad hoping to find a nice spot to study; there were too many people, so I decided to go to Espresso Royale. But as I walked closer to this guy I was curious about the contents of the paper, and I thought I could get a free copy.

The guy introduced himself as Dan, and we chatted for a few minutes. He asked whether I was interested in revolutionary politics, what were my views on Iraq and Israel, and then briefly explained what the group does. (They are the International Communist League, Fourth Internationalist, I think. That's the address he gave me.)

So as the sweat started to form around different parts of my body from standing in direct sunlight, I bid him farewell, having spent $10 on a one-year monthly subscription to Workers Vanguard, and three pamphlets from Spartacist Publishing Co. (subjects include imperialism, ‘Black history and the class struggle’, and a Trotskyist critique). It'll be a few days before I actually get around to reading these things.

More importantly, I hope it was worth it. I forfeited two mochas from Starbucks or a clearance item from Gap to potentially enlighten the leftist within.

Life would be satisfying right about now if I didn't have that damned algorithms class.

Will Ryan still make those gingerbread firemen?

If I didn't take Derek's car today to go to Barnes &oble to buy some newspapers I might've never known who invented the Uzi.

It really is a big deal.

• Hayes Accura External 28.8kbps V.FC/Fax modem

  I really believe that this sort of equipment will become next generation's antiques. For computer nerds, anyway. I wanted to buy some old software (like Aldus Pagemaker 3.0, on 5.25" diskettes) but decided against it for some reason. I regret it now.

• Positive Thinking, issues 2–11 from 1999

  It's some sort of Chinese or Korean publication (leaning towards the latter, based on the miniscule knowledge I have of the Korean alphabet and its use of circles). Positive Thinking might not be the title either, but those are the only English words printed on the cover, or anywhere else for that matter. The photos on the covers are very pretty, though, the only reason I bought them.

• A Chinese cookbook
  Another Chinese book, thin and bound with thread, and a picture of Buddha in the back

  Did I mention that UIUC has many Chinese students? Many. These books are interesting to look at.

• SimCity 3000 Unlimited manual

  Why would anyone throw this out? To make me happy. This might rekindle my love for the game.

• The Supermarket Handbook, Nikki &David Goldbeck

  Why not? It's classic ‘70s.

• Bad as I wanna be, Dennis Rodman with Tim Keown
  It takes a village, Hillary Rodham Clinton
  Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki &James D. Houston
  Dragon Lance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
  New Testament/Psalms/Proverbs (pocket-sized)
  Langenscheidts Universal-Wörterbuch Italienisch (German-Italian/Italian-German dictionary)
  Fodor's 90: Japan
  Smithsonian, August 2002

  Why not?

• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel T. Coleridge, illustrations by Carol Moran

  Could be interesting.

• Super Mario Bros.: Trapped in the Perilous Pit
  Star Wars: Planet of the Hobojibs
  Star Wars: Adventures in Colors and Shapes
  Star Wars: Adventures in ABC

  Illustrated childrens' books, with audio tapes? Hell yeah. (I bought the Star Wars things for my brother, though.)
  

• Vis-Ed Foreign Language Vocab Cards – French

  This will compliment my pirated 4-CD Microsoft Encarta Learn French program. Oui.

• 3 clothe dish mats, blue and white with diamond patterns

  A fresh alternative to cardboard ‘dish mats’.

• 2 girls' hats

  One is a sky blue beret, the other one is black with a brim and a maroon ribbon all around. A hot wash to kill any lice and they'll be good to go.

The grand total was $6. Unbelievable. I made it late to this one, but I'll be there the first day of the next.

If only the other 14 hours of today were as productive and interesting as that one hour thrift-shopping this morning.

What's the point of living?