So here I am a week into my physical make-over.
And dad was worried....hah!

Of course these pills are making me feel a little weird.

I ate steel wool today for breakfast. Is that weird?

I have a craving for more...

It's been going great! These shots I have to take every day are expensive, but whatever. The 14 pounds of muscle I've managed to put on in the last 72 hours is worth it. Of course it'd be better if it wasn't all in one leg, but hey, you gotta start somewhere, right?



I'm packing up right now.

Everything I've managed to assemble over the past six years is once again being boxed up and set aside. I decided to organize a few things this time, though. Like all of the bills and what not that I've been getting in the mail for a while. (There are a lot of them too! It's like they send this crap every month or something.) A great deal about student loans and what not, but I just decide it's best to continue using those as toilet paper, as I have been for the past couple of months.

Crazy, isn't it? You get a job, and you're poorer than ever. Oh well. I'm getting by. I found an old toothbrush I thought I threw out behind the toilet yesterday. It didn't look quite as worn out as the one I had, so I started using it again.

The word "toilet" turns a lot of people off. As though some people think its something dirty. More girls have stopped talking to me when I start talking about the toilet. What's the big deal?!! If it was dirty, it would be something we cleaned all the time! But look at mine! I haven't cleaned it in months and it still works just fine!

Stupid girls.


One of the things I've encountered in packing up is my box of photographs which has been collecting all of the photos I've snapped since freshman year. There were a few things I'd forgotten... like how bad a photographer I am. How much happier I am with the digital camera that allows me to make mistakes and not find out about them until AFTER I have the pictures developed...
anyway, I was rather revealingly able to track my weight gain over the past six years through these photographs. Here's a breakdown:

Freshman year: Skinny little do-gooder kid from the farm. High and shining aspirations, even shinier forehead. Acne control a thing of the future. Slim, but no threat to the ninjas which regularly stalk the hallways of my dormitory.

Sophomore year: The pinacle of good looks and fashion. Have crazy roommate and crazy girlfriend who school young farm boy in the ways of fashion and stupid behavior. Student proves to be a remarkably quick study. At least in one of the lessons.

Junior year: Sad times, and the aspiring violist turns to late night snacking to fill the void once occupied by studying. Times are rough, but so are the gastro-intestinal episodes. Student's body responds to emergencies by calling in reserve forces which set up camp next to the student's existing chin, reinforcing this position. Waistline at this point decides to abanon all hope of finding the 32-inch pants that it lost, so decides theres no longer any reason to wait around for them any more. Time to grow up(out) and throw out the childish notions of svelte good looks and atheletic prowess. Buttockular region decides this is phenomenal idea and alligns its efforts with the waist and forms a coalition to fight against all clothing the student owns. Eventually, victory is assured.

Senior year: Student convinces family and friends that "weight training" has added to his girth and bulk, and he is now in a stronger place than ever before. The flesh on his shoulders laughs (behind his back, of course.)

Graduate years: Buys couch, and it is the end of existence as we know it.

This pretty much brings us up to date.

I've taped some photos of sophomore year to the wall of my room for inspiration. I know this is what I'll have to get back to in order to take the job with the Air Force, and I will get there. It's just been a long ways since that time. God grant me strength.

(I know I'm gonna hear about that "crazy girlfriend" thing in a while...)

T.

...The Next New Nextest Thing I'm Waiting For...
Jack White refuses to get bored. Whether it be the gradual 180-degree turn from blues-rock (which has not been entirely abandoned) to bizarro-songcraft, or his newest venture, the Raconteurs, his fingers and mind are continually find ways of keeping busy. And also keeping the music world buzzing. If negative press is still good press because of the attention, then there's been no lack of attention thrown Jack's way these days. Not to say the press has been negative about the music, but we're getting a glimpse at the true feelings behind many music journalists plastic exteriors. More than once has it been said (in some form or another): "finally! Jack White is stepping out of the White Stripes to pursue music-making with other minds besides his own!"
I.E. "We haven't really liked what he's been doing since the release of White Blood Cells, but it would've tarnished our hipster appearance to backpedal on any band we once worshipped. So we'll swallow down Elephant and Get Behind Me Satan for solidarity, but really...thank god!!"

You'll not hear such rubbish spewing from this mouth. I'll admit I was hesitant and scared when I heard that Jack was beginning his side project. (Traditionally this can mean the end of an era for many bands; a sign that someone has gotten bored.) Yet I have enough faith in Mr. White's enigmatic, fish-in-a-fruitcup mentality that leads me to rest assured that the daring and dynamic dynamo that is the White Stripes will resurface to obliterate musical conceptions once again.

For the meanwhile, we are left to muse over the aural offerings of the Raconteurs, the shotgun marriage of Jack White and Brendon Benson, the power-pop songsmith from Detroit. Apparently Jack and Brendon used to share diapers or something. In any event, we are led to believe that the connection between the co-songwriters is deep and mystical.
The quartet is rounded out by two people who no one seems to notice or care about because they only play drums and bass in another band, the Greenhornes which hails from Cinncinati. They also don't offer much in interviews, so they're generally disregarded as furniture.

Usually such supergroups (in the "I've never heard of any of these guys" category) end up leaking a great deal of their bounty over the internet long before the album is released. My own personal research can testify to the fact that the vault has remained securely locked on this project, and the only tastes of Raconteuristicisms that we will be allowed to have come from their already-released single, Steady as She Goes and the far more intriguing Store Bought Bones which recalls dark psychedelia and sensless mumblings in the stead of lyrics. Awesome.

The claims that the songwriting remains absolutely "50-50" between Benson and White seems fairly aparent, although oxy-moronic (the idea that they should exchange letters of the words and still come up with a coherent sentance? Impossible!) alternating between Benson's talent for hooky melodies and riffs that you later try to remove from your head with a board, and White's confounding ability to still find sounds in an electric guitar that I've never heard before. And be a eccentric weirdo, of course.

So despite the copious amount of verbage being slung around this column, I am anxiously awaiting the proverbial dropping of this album on May 16 (US.) It should prove to be one of the more interesting records that will be released in recent months. (That is right after the special anniversary re-issue of Captain Beefheart and the Spider Monkeys.)
The only bone I'll pick with the boys is how a "full-length" album can constitute only ten tracks (which isn't the big deal) but can clock in at only a shade over thirty-four minutes! This album had better sell for about $5.86 at Wal-mart to ensure we actually get our money's worth.

T.

This is excerpted presumeably from a German newspaper. Its original home is not really of consequence. What's important is how loudly this column screams the truth. We are much closer to repeating recent history than we think. European Jews have known this for some time.

"German news commentary
March, 2006

It's fascinating that this should come out of Europe. Mathias Dapfner, Chief Executive of the huge German publisher Axel Springer AG, has written a blistering attack in DIE WELT, Germany's largest daily paper, against the timid reaction of Europe in the face of the Islamic threat.
This is a must-read by all Americans. History will certify its correctness.

EUROPE - THY NAME IS COWARDICE (Commentary by Mathias Dapfner CEO, Axel Springer, AG)

A few days ago Henry Broder wrote in Welt am Sonntag, "Europe - your family name is appeasement." It's a phrase you can't get out of your head because it's so terribly true.

Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives, as England and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated too long before they noticed that Hitler had to be fought, not bound to toothless agreements.

Appeasement legitimized and stabilized Communism in the Soviet Union, then East Germany, then all the rest of Eastern Europe, where for decades, inhuman suppressive, murderous governments were glorified as the ideologically correct alternative to all other possibilities.

Appeasement crippled Europe when genocide ran rampant in Kosovo, and even though we had absolute proof of ongoing mass-murder, we Europeans debated and debated and debated, and were still debating when finally the Americans had to come from halfway around the world, into Europe yet again, and do our work for us.

Rather than protecting democracy in the Middle East, European Appeasement, camouflaged behind the fuzzy word "equidistance," now countenances suicide bombings in Israel by fundamentalist Palestinians.

Appeasement generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore nearly 500,000 victims of Saddam's torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the self-righteousness of the peace movement, has the gall to issue bad grades to George Bush... Even as it is uncovered that the loudest critics of the American action in Iraq made illicit billions, no, TENS of billions, in the corrupt U.N. Oil-for-Food program.

And now we are faced with a particularly grotesque form of appeasement. How is Germany reacting to the escalating violence by Islamic Fundamentalists in Holland and elsewhere? By suggesting that we really should have a "Muslim Holiday" in Germany?

I wish I were joking, but I am not. A substantial fraction of our (German) Government, and if the polls are to be believed, the German people, actually believe that creating an Official State "Muslim Holiday" will somehow spare us from the wrath of the fanatical Islamists.

One cannot help but recall Britain's Neville Chamberlain waving the laughable treaty signed by Adolph Hitler and declaring European "Peace in our time".

What else has to happen before the European public and its political leadership get it? There is a sort of crusade underway, an especially perfidious crusade consisting of systematic attacks by fanatic Muslims, focused on civilians, directed against our free, open Western societies, and intent upon Western Civilization's utter destruction.

It is a conflict that will most likely last longer than any of the great military conflicts of the last century - a conflict conducted by an enemy that cannot be tamed by "tolerance" and "accommodation" but is actually spurred on by such gestures, which have proven to be, and will
always be taken by the Islamists for signs of weakness.

Only two recent American Presidents had the courage needed for Anti-appeasement: Reagan and Bush. His American critics may quibble over the details, but we Europeans know the truth. We saw it first hand: Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War, freeing half of the German people from nearly 50 years of terror and virtual slavery. And Bush, supported only by the Social Democrat Blair, acting on moral conviction, recognized the danger in the Islamic War against Democracy. His place in history will have to be evaluated after a number of years have passed.

In the meantime, Europe sits back with charismatic self-confidence in the multicultural corner, instead of defending liberal society's values and being an attractive center of power on the same playing field as the true great powers, America and China.

On the contrary - we Europeans present ourselves, in contrast to those "arrogant Americans", as the World Champions of "tolerance", which even (Germany's Interior Minister) Otto Schily justifiably criticizes.

Why? Because we're so moral? I fear it's more because we're so materialistic, so devoid of a moral compass.

For his policies, Bush risks the fall of the dollar, huge amounts of additional national debt, and a massive and persistent burden on the American economy - because unlike almost all of Europe, Bush realizes what is at stake - literally everything.

While we criticize the "capitalistic robber barons" of America because they seem too sure of their priorities, we timidly defend our Social Welfare systems. Stay out of it! It could get expensive! We'd rather discuss reducing our 35-hour workweek or our dental coverage, or our 4
weeks of paid vacation... Or listen to TV pastors preach about the need to "reach out to terrorists. To understand and forgive".

These days, Europe reminds me of an old woman who, with shaking hands, frantically hides her last pieces of jewelry when she notices a robber breaking into a neighbor's house.

Appeasement?

Europe, thy name is Cowardice."

To all who do not yet know. . .

YIPPEE!!

I'll catch y'all in DC. . .

T.