Staring at Walls

      I have returned from a week writing hiatus, which for me is a long time. I usually do a daily entry but unfortunately, the last couple of days has prevented me from doing that. I was bombarded with test after test, midterm after midterm and I found only a minimal chance to take a breath. Once I did have a breather, I didn't want to write. I wanted to either sleep or stare at the wall.  I don't know what it is but staring at the wall has comparable therapeutic effects as Celexa or Xanax do. It calmed me a bit before the utter terror that is the Compounding midterm drove all over us students this past Friday. Surprisingly, as I was taking my exam there was a undeniable peace within me that helped me to move on from question to question. This is not to say that I did well but that I did it. Now that week has come and gone. Onward to the near future.
      I remember telling myself that changes will be made after this dreadful week has passed. Changes like finally balancing out work and play, doing assignments early, spending time in the gym, looking after myself health-wise, being smart with money, and actually cleaning the house. When a tough week like that comes around, I fail with in all of those categories. The basement was a dump, my bank account was in shambles, I added number of pounds to my body, and all the work that I had to do was put on hold. But... It's finally over and for a week, I don't have any tests to worry about and it will be put to good use. The Basement is spotless.
      My mind is clear and the arrival of snow marks a new time in my life. A time in which I will be happy. It will be a time when I do what my heart thinks is right and put others before myself. In the days to come, I see a more responsible me, a more solid me.

Sigh

      I know, I haven't been writing for the last couple of days. Life's roller-coaster has been forcing me into sharp turns and loops. I just haven't been myself. I have some good news and some bad news. Which first? Let's go with the bad news. I recently took a Drug and Disease Midterm on Infectious Diseases, which I had been studying for two weeks straight. I felt confident through the test and yes,  there were some parts which were a bit cryptic, but overall, I thought I did ok. Turns out I didn't. It was a major flop. It's not that I didn't learn the material, it's just a factor of choosing A and B instead of just A. I still haven't got my grade back but I am anticipating a very low grade.
      The good news. You remember a couple of posts ago when I told you guys that I most likely failed my first Drug and Disease section? I passed it. I passed it by an inch but I did it. I actually found out after taking the recent midterm which made me feel that much better. Well, I have to go back to study. I'm changing up the way I'm studying now by studying everyday. There is no way that I won't dominate this next test! But what's really on my mind is the Compounding midterm that is going to take place this Friday. Guess how many chapters are going be on it? 23. I'm just going to end with that.

Diversion

      I know this post was supposed to be a movie post. I know. The last few days were just about studying for the Drug and Disease midterm next Wednesday and as a result, I really didn't have time to do it. No worries, it is coming. Soon. Not right now because it is 4:20 in the morning and I'm a little disoriented from looking at the course material for so long. Nevertheless, I did bite off a chunk of the studying that had to be done so I'm happy about that. You know what else I'm happy about? Tonight was one of those study while downloading immense amounts of music night.
      Remember how I said I was in a pop phase right now? You should forget that I even said it. The following is a list of albums and artists that I downloaded tonight. I can't even fit all of them to my iPod. I need an additional 6 gigabytes for all of them to fit. Never have I had so much music in my Itunes! It's freaking fantastic. By scrolling through them them you could see that I'm truly at a loss for which direction of music to delve into. But, hey, it doesn't matter at all. I just want to listen to some musica.
      Just to make things clear, it might not seem like a lot of artists but, for some, I downloaded their total discography. So if one looks at my iPod and sees that it's filled to capacity and is questioning why there is only about twenty or so artists in there, you'll know what to tell him.

Buckethead: Total albums 1991-2009
Daft Punk: Complete discography
Kavinsky- Three EP's
Tupac- Me Against the World 1995
Beethoven- Complete Symphonies
Bob Marley and the Wailers- Catch a Fire
The Stone Roses- The Stone Roses
Bruce Springstein - Darkness On The Edge of Town
Dr. Dre- The Chronic
Guns N' Roses- Appetite for Destruction 1987
Jay-Z- Reasonable Doubt
Jay-Z- Kanye West- Watch the Throne
Kanye West- Late Registration / My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy/ College Dropout
Nas- Illmatic
Willie Nelson- Phases and Stages
The Notorious B.I.G. - Ready to Die
Radiohead- The Bends
Pavement- Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

Alright!

      It's only uphill from here. It could get worse, a lot worse, but it stops now. I'm pumped! I just took my Drug Information midterm today and I know I aced it. Sure it's not a Drug and Disease course but it's going to be my starting point. I feel energized and recharged to get through this whole shebang. Two extended assignments that will take me hours to do? Let me at them. Boring teachers teaching us a year's worth of material in two days? Music to my ears. Infectious disease midterm next week? I am going to mess you up.
      It's time I took this all to the next level. Time to study. I don't do this often but I'll let you in on what I'm going to write tomorrow, just because I feel like it. So here it is; tomorrow will be a movie entry on Nicolas Winding Refn's 2011 production of "Drive".

I Just Remembered

      In all the mess that was happening the past week, I forgot to let you guys in on something. Guess to came to visit? MJ's brother kitten. I don't know the name of the little one... Was it Bucky? I may have told you guys, but when all this cat business started, my friends playfully called me "heartless" for not taking M.J's brother in as well. "You just can't separate family" they said. My reasoning was the following: 1) We don't have enough money to raise one cat properly, let alone two. 2) We don't even know if the landowner upstairs will allow cats. 3) They're going to make too much noise. 4) Did I mention the money aspect? Do you how much vaccinations and neutering costs?
      A couple of days later, this just happened to be a topic of discussion a couple of minutes before Recitation class. I confided in one of my good friends about the kitten and she was ecstatic. Fact is, she wanted a kitten too to surprise her parents with. (That didn't turn out so well.) So, we gave her a couple of days to think it over until she was ready to give us an answer. She called and said that she is seriously considering taking the brother kitten in. We then told the owner about her interest and presto! A new home for the kitty. But this is all supplementary information. This is not what I really want to talk about.
      What I really want to talk about is M.J.'s interaction with her long lost brother...Bucky? We all thought that they were going to roll around together, touch noses, and make up for lost time but we were gravely mistaken. M.J. is just one nasty kitten. She did something that I never saw her do, hiss. She actually hissed at her brother. Who taught her to do that? Who did it? Let me at him. It's either that or we have to change the way we engage with her. I think throwing her in 720's has to stop, maybe that'll help things out a bit. Don't quote me on that. It never happened. Ever. So there it is. Now, I'm going to get some rest before my 7:30am laboratory tomorrow, a full three hours worth of it.

What Has To Be Done

      After participating in a very enlightening conversation regarding my current academic predicament with my university counselor a couple of days ago, I left the office with a couple of things on the brain. It's not going to be the end of the world like I thought it was going to be. That's not the same to say that everything is fine because, obviously, it is not. I still have to make up for that class by scoring high grades in my other classes. To tell you the truth, I find it very hard to find time to study for all my other classes when Drugs and Diseases is in the way. The class easily eats up hours of my time and is unmerciful. 

      I told my counselor about how difficult it was to balance everything and she talked to me about "efficient studying". Other than just saying efficient studying, she didn't really go into how I was going to do it. So I decided to change up my whole studying method and try something different. I'm starting to use index cards, which I haven't used in about a year, and I'm actually thinking about what are possible questions that are going to be on the test as I'm going through the notes. This are the kinds of things I should have been doing already but I have been a lazy student. I study by looking at the page trying to absorb the information and it wasn't working. 

      There's no more room for failure because there's no coming back from it. I have to be miles ahead of the program to succeed, which means I have to be smart about my studying and using my time well. I have to learn how to study efficiently. I studied for hours but ended up only studying 25% of the test while thers ended up getting eighties and nineties. Which is why I have decided to implement a schedule. Oh, how I hate schedules but I have no other choice. I can't even get up without my roommate pushing me awake. NEVERTHELESS, things have got to change and the laziness is the first of bad characteristics that has to be thrown out the window. 

Time for a new sountrack

      For a while, I have been in this weird transition state between music phases. I moved out of the foreign cultural music genre and for a month or two just casually listened to what was out there, hoping that something would catch my attention. No luck. Just artist after artist. Truthfully, I have been listening to a lot of relaxing piano music and Jason Mraz. Piano music, for the reason that it calms me and puts me into a certain mood that I need for positive thinking and creative writing. Jason Mraz, because I believe that his music is colorful and has a inexplicable smoothness about it. But, it's about that time to move on to something more concrete. This time it going to be Alternative Pop.
      I have already deleted all the songs I downloaded in the past couple of months and look at my iTunes, it's as clean as a whistle. Whether or not that was a good idea, I think by doing this, I am forcing myself to open my mind to new artists and songs that you are not likely to listen to on the radio.
I am in the process of downloading the complete discography of the following artists:
Mat Kearney
Matt Werst
Matt Nathanson
(Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt)
Jon Mclaughlin
Josh Kelley
Greg Laswell
Parachute
Graham Colton
NeedToBreath
      Yes, I said complete discography. So, what will I do with all those CDs in the car? That's a good question. I Dunno. I'll probably buy a CD binder to organize them in and leave it in the dashboard just in case a curious someone wants to rummage through. Lol. Yeah, I still use CDs. Sometimes my friends make fun of me because I still use CDs instead of the iPod I own. I don't know what it is but I like the idea of owning the original discs. A good deal of money (perspective of a college student) was spent on buying them even though I knew all about torrents and free internet downloads. As you can see, I am a bit old school. Nevertheless, I am legitimately excited and can't wait to make these CDs to musically resonate the car with new tunes.

Awakened Passion

Love can be as restoring as it is destructive.
How do you know you're ready to leave memories past?
The flame can be as deceptively gentle as it is aggressive.
How do you know you're ready to set out the reddened mast?

You aimed your heart at empty things,
burned were your hopes, torn were your fantasies.
Mistakenly leaving your pride in their hands,
In pieces it was returned like plucked delicate daisies.

Tossed aside plans and half-hearted words tower to block your sight,
The What Could Have Been lurk to infect.
When are you able to walk onward
conquering ill-fated thoughts so difficult to detect?

You've bore the burden of unfulfilled love.
Alone, you were left in the depths of guilt..
When is the right time to trust?
So you can let rise a paradise, the one that was always to be built.

A soul warming shiver will guide you as she passes by,
a thoughtful sleepless night will pry open your mind.
At a glance, the minute hand will start to double back,
take your time, feel her cure, for she was always yours to find.

Bad News

      Just when you think it couldn't get any worse, it gets worse. I've gone and done it this time. I failed the Drugs and Diseases final and did it hard. This final that was supposed to be the easiest of all three exams we were to take this semester and despite all the hours of studying I put in for this reason, I got the worst grade in the class. I'm ashamed and I don't even know what to do.
      My friends are the only reason why I'm still holding on to a shred of hope. But honestly, thinking about my talk with my college counselor tomorrow...I'm afraid. There's a good chance that I may be left behind a year to catch up on my grades. Maybe she'll advise me to take up a minor to boost up my math and science grades. Yet, this means that I won't be able to graduate with my friends. There is a chance though, a faint chance...but a chance. Based on my grades that I received, I have a 59.45 average and I need a 60 to pass. This means that if just one more question is corrected on that final, I'll pass the course. Looking at my past luck though, if that happens, it'll be a miracle.
      One of my best friends accompanied me to take a look at my score and when I told him that I failed, he didn't believe me. Then he looked at it himself and told me to take a breath. From that point on, he was trying to motivate me and make me feel better. I tried to review my test but I just didn't have it in me to challenge any of the questions. Plus, it's been a week. How can I pull any of that information out of my ass? Especially if I failed. They didn't even let me look at my original paper so I could tell them whether or not I filled in the scan-tron correctly. All the other students were walking past me saying that they got B- in the class and wishing they got better scores. I just sat there like a dumb-ass with my face to the floor. Afterwards, I took my friend to Shea stadium and gave him his first driving lesson, ate some dinner, and came home to drink a beer with my roommate.
      The talk with my roommate about my situation was well needed. It perked me up and caused me to force myself to turn a new leaf. From this point onward, I'm going to do what it takes to graduate. I didn't know how to study for all of this efficiently but now, I'm going to study with other people than just studying by my lonesome. I still feel like shit though and it's right that I do feel that way. I should feel that way. Oh yeah, there's a good chance that the kitten has one of these things: cold, glaucoma, herpes conjunctivitis, or cloudy eyes.

FML

      I screwed up big time. How could I have been so irresponsible? My two good friends were involved in this situation but, I mean, I had the chance at fixing things and I just blew it. Where do I begin? Just promise me one thing, by the end of this entry please don't sympathize with me. I don't really need it. What I need right now is a nice tight slap zeroed in on my cheekbone.
      There are four labs that are integrated in our schedule. Three of those four interchange with each other: Simulation, Compounding, and Bio-Medical labs. This might be a little difficult for me to explain so just bear with me. We have one of these labs each week but they are not placed in any order. For example, I might have to go to two compounding labs in a row and then have a simulation lab, followed by a Bio-Medical lab. The key point to take away from this is that there is no particular order to when I go to each laboratory. We know what we have by looking at a handout which was emailed to us when the semester started. For our first Simulation laboratory, we were notified to memorize a total of fifty drugs along with their uses and class by the next Simulation lab. By mistake, friend #1 told us that it was going to be a Bio-Medical lab this week not knowing it was actually Simulation.
      I could have easily checked but I was irresponsible as fuck. We got ready for the Bio-Medical Lab quiz and finished our lab reports that were due on the second lab meeting. It was five minutes before lab started when friend #2 called and told us that we prepared ourselves for the wrong lab. This devastated me. We were supposed to be dressed up, ready for the quiz, wear a designated lab coat with our name tag on it, all of which we did not have for Sim. Lab. Notifying the professors of how we came to make such a mistake didn't matter. Our grades were already dropped one letter grade. ONE LETTER GRADE! I didn't want to do anything after that, nothing. I didn't even go to my two later classes, which were both important. Estos muchos Importantes.
      Ladies and Gentlemen, you are reading the entry of an idiotic student who doesn't know the importance of what he is given. The grade for the final exam I took about a week ago came out today and I didn't go check it. Honestly, I just didn't want to deal with it right now. I don't even know what I'll do if I fail that course. What will I tell my parents? What are my options after this?...I'm going to bed.

36 Wings?! Is I stupid?

      Forgive me if some of my sentences come out as incomprehensible or just plain redundant because: 1. It's too early in the morning. and 2. I have reached my maximum gastric capacity which makes me extremely sleepy. It was three weeks in the making but finally, I had my first experience at Hooters today. When I was younger, I thought of Hooters as if it was a strip club in which resided fairly young big breasted women. It was always considered a place I secretly wished to go to and never dared to bring up in a conversation. What? I was an ignorant, puberty directed boy who had nothing better to do but think and dream about these things. For those who are thinking right now, "He is seems like he hasn't changed one bit" I would have agreed with you a couple of months ago, but not anymore. (Don't take that seriously, it's a joke guys.)

      I am forever enlightened. I don't think Hooters as a strip club anymore but a place where champions are born. Care to explain more, you awkward buffoon? It was only recently that I was told that every Monday, Hooters has a wing buffet special that costs about what? ten dollars? My roommate and two of our very close friends had already gone to Hooters before, without me, those bastards. I was at work at that time. It was rumored that my roommate had a cows stomach and ate twenty five wings, which didn't impress me. I was determined to beat that record. 

      Once we stepped inside the...what do you call Hooter's anyway? A social area with food convenience? A restaurant? I don't know but whatever it is, we stepped in it and the competition had begun. Let me tell you how we scored this. Drumsticks and actual wings both count as one point each. Pretty basic, right? I love drumsticks so I stuck with them for the most part, I think I ate about ten or so actual wings segments. My roommate loaded his plate with chicken bones pretty fast so both my other friends, who were looking on, were very doubtful of my victory over him. But never fret, it wasn't over. 

      Let me try to remember what seasonings we had...Hot, Spicy Garlic, 9/11, Daytona, BBQ, and Samurai. I think if it wasn't for the flavorings, I would have been able to eat a good five more. Nevertheless, I ate till I felt like throwing up and then ate five more. My friends were both very concerned but urged me forwards. What friends, huh? (It may not seem it but they are the best of people.) After both of us exceeded our capacity, it was decision time. And it was a.....a tie? It was a good thirty five points each and there was two wings left on the dish in front of us. My roommate took one and I just looked at the final wing in disgust. FOr that one moment I hated wings with an unrelenting passion and then I ate it. Afterwards, I put down money and carefully went outside to get some air to create some distance between me and all the others just in case my stomach decided to say "uh-uh". I didn't want anyone else to have involvement in that delightful experience. 

      In my eyes, even though I didn't beat my roommate, I did destroy his previous record and gave my friends a good mental ass-whooping. The thing is though, tomorrow, they'll still be talking about how I bad I felt after the wings not considering that I ate so many.Our friendship, there's nothing like it and life wouldn't be the same without it. 

Flaw #457

      Having more than four hundred problems is normal right? Who dare deny it? You or is it you? Lol. Let me clue you guys in on yet another one of my personal flaws that I wish could evaporate into thin air: Giving directions and anything that has to do with getting from place A to B.
      Guys, you have no idea how many times my friends got angry with me because I'm just downright retarded when it comes to driving people to recently visited area as well as new ones. For example, last semester I spent every Monday working in a store about twenty minutes or so from my previous apartment. When my friends wanted to go eat at a diner that was in proximity to the store, I got us lost. It's the stress I tell you, the stress! Next example. I drop my one of my friends off in front of his house pretty much every other day and even then I sometimes miss the stop and end up having to take him back the long way around. Actually, just the other day, we went to go to Modell's to get him a sports accessory. What do you think ended up happening? I got us MIA, big time. We found ourselves in a whole different city this time around. In the end, we did come across a Modell's, unfortunately, that store didn't sell the product he desired. So we got it at Radioshack.it wasn't at Modell's but a Radioshack.
      My ex-girlfriend openly hated this flaw. One time, she said that she was hungry and asked me where to go. I don't know the city very well but I did come across a couple of restaurants and diners surfing the web. I gave her the name of a place that had good reviews but I guess I wasn't clear enough on the directions. She ended up sending back a heated reply about not knowing where to go and that she couldn't find that particular Bistro anywhere. As a result, she ended up asking a pedestrian for directions. Right on! Good decision. Thank the Good Lord for the creation of the GPS. Without it, I probably would end up two states away when I only wanted to get to the local Dunkin Donuts.

Abduction

      Don't ask me why I decided to watch this one. I'm pretty sure I predicted that this movie was going to be a flop. You'll follow my thought process if you watch the trailer to "Abduction". Frankly, I don't even know why they decided to call this movie "Abduction". It had NOTHING to do with an abduction! No one was even kidnapped through the duration of the movie, there weren't any failed attempts. Wait, maybe I'm just getting this wrong. I am a bit vocabulary deficient so let me check the dictionary..."The illegal removal of a child from his or her guardians" or "to carry off by force". There is only one possible way of making that title work for the movie but even that idea is up for questioning. Usually the title of the movie is the constant, you can't have people questioning your title! Fine, I'll lighten up. It's not like the movie was made to grab my attention. They made sure of that when they decided to have Taylor Lautner portray the main character.
      I'm only writing this entry because I wanted to follow up on my prediction and see if I was correct or not. It wasn't much of a feat anyway but I also wanted to do it for those who were curious about this movie. Maybe you want to know how Lautner acts in roles outside of his normal muscle bound wolf-self?

      Lautner plays the role of a "badass" adrenaline junkie highschool teenager who has trouble coming to terms with himself. He knows he's different from the rest of the crowd but not anything more than that. After learning that his "parents" are not who they say they are, he is placed smack dab in the middle of a Russian Operative war against the CIA. So through these experiences, he starts to piece together untold past and his origins. Honestly, I didn't hate the movie. There were some aspects of the movie I did like. For example, his guardians were amazing. I want to work out like that with my dad but... no dice. The soundtrack to the movie wasn't half bad, I actually enjoyed the well orchestrated background music. The screenplay was 99% folly but that 1% was used very well to tease my curiosity. They didn't "reveal" Lautner's real father till the very end. Truth be told, I wanted the father to be Mr. Vin Diesel so badly! No, I'm not going to tell you who the father really is. I mean they don't even clearly show him, but it's pretty unmistakable.
      What else... oh yes! Dr. Octopus also played a role as a CIA agent. Doctor Octopus as in Alfred Molina. I have a knack for calling people by their previous cinematic role names. I think he's a brilliant actor and it's tough to call him out on anything because he just has that aura about him. This movie needed him, if he wasn't in there with Sigourney Weaver, ah this movie would have had an even worse rating. What was it? 3.6/10 the last time I checked. So let's get down to it shall we? Will I watch this again? The only way this movie will be in my line of vision again will be if I'm to entertain my future niece and that, if she wants to really badly.

Contagion

      When you got nothing better to do with your time and your body is as sore as Brett Favre in a 49ers game, what's better than a good old fashioned movie in bed? Yesterday, I did an upper body workout fit for MMA and UFC contenders. Now, my arms barely want to move and I haven't stepped out of bed all day. That is, not counting bathroom visits and the three or seven times I went into the kitchen to devour the first thing that popped into my line of sight.
      Before the review, let me bring you guys into my head for one moment. Let me know if you ever felt the same way. Every time I'm stressed out about an exam I just took, when I physically do something bad before the distribution of the grades, I think I'm going to end up failing the test. This is because I think God just doesn't believe I deserve  it. Did I lose you? Let me put it in another way. Let's just say, you think you did pretty badly on an exam, and you pray to God Almighty for a good grade and then you smoke. After you do that, you feel guilty and feel as if God's not going to listen to you anymore. That's the way I'm feeling but, in my situation, switch sheesh with laziness. Now that that's out, let's get into one of the most boring movies I have ever seen.

      Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, and Gwyneth Paltrow all star in Steven Soderbergh's 2011 production of "Contagion". It may have been due to the bias that previously exposed to me by my friends, who already watched this film, but I started off with my mind half open to what this movie had to offer. The movie tells it's viewers of man's will to survive, the compassion of few that greatly affects many, all through the use of a meatless screenplay. "Yo! What you mean, meatless?" Well, you see, seventy five percent of this movie consisted of the viewer looking on at mere pictures and listening to the background music. Which to me is absolutely fine when the music is attractive and the movie interesting. But in this case, it wasn't.
      I believe, I've seen this movie already, multiple times, except the difference is that I actually enjoyed those times. Who here hasn't seen an "infection that kills off half the world" movie? The Mist? I am Legend? Quarantine? Anyone? There was only one part of this movie caught my attention and that was the scene when the doctors talked about the chemical structure of the deadly pathogen that was spreading like a cute kitten video on youtube. There's the effect of hours and hours of non-stop studying of pathogenic infections and toxic reactions for you.

      It's good to see that actors from television shows are finding their way to the big screen. Bryan Cranston, "Malcolm and The Middle", and Enrico Colantoni, "Just Shoot Me", are both participants. About what they brought to the table, I don't think I'm buying it too much. Contagion is a somewhat serious movie and both these actors come from somewhat comical backgrounds. Not to say that they are jokes in their field but they have a particular genre that suits them. So when they partake in movies like these, they have to be liable to criticism. The only difference I saw from Cranston was his undeniable facial cringe that he kept constantly through the movie. Oh yeah, that and the fact that he didn't laugh. Not to seem, a bit over the top, but if their roles were given to two other individuals, the movie would have been slightly better. So, would I watch this movie again. You guessed correctly, if you said no. If I was going to recommend this movie to anyone, I'd suggest it to those who just want to keep a movie playing while playing games on their Ipod. Lol. That's what I did.