I'm thoughtful this evening. I found a site with several of Harry Chapin's poems available for download. Two of them in particular spoke to me.

An Admission

and

One Simple Question

I respect his body of work a great deal.

  posted by Matthew @ 2:07 AM

 
Ha! I just had a good, hearty laugh the likes of which I have not had in quite some time. It was cleansing.

I read this comic, which is spectacular because the punchline is not contained in the comic. For your enjoyment, I've found the punchline for you. By the way, don't read the out of order. It's much better to read the punchline after the setup, if you weren't already aware of that. I think that Jef Mallett certainly produces one of the most interesting syndicated comic strips of the day. I enjoy his work muchly. Hope everyone is having a good day!

  posted by Matthew @ 11:36 AM

 
I am incredibly happy right now. The St. Louis ruling of last April that video games do not constitute free speech has been overturned. Here's an article at gamespot. And here's the full opinion. I suggest you just read the opinion, unless you don't have the time. Its a surprisingly refreshing piece of judicial literature. So rational, so well-reasoned, so... well, I'll admit it, concordant with my beliefs.

You may recall the April 2002 ruling by judge Stephen Limbaugh that declared video games conveyed no significant emotion or ideas that would allow them to be protected by first amendment rights. I wish I could find a copy of the 26-page decision online, but I'm not having much luck thus far. In any case, this would have been seen as an attack on the gaming community and initiated a powerful backlash, but the gaming community on the whole tends to be lazy asses. Speaking as one of same, I feel I can make that generalization. Anyway, here's a response from a gamer who definitely had something to say on the thing, from penny arcade and another who doesn't have the same geek-gamer clout, but probably more popular appeal at salon.com.

It remains to be seen whether or not this decision will be challenged again and brought to the supreme court. That could be dangerous. I'm willing to admit some concern that the current court would not see eye-to-eye with the eighth circuit, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, I will celebrate the decision by exercising my constitutionally protected rights and playing some video games.

  posted by Matthew @ 11:23 AM

 
I forgot to go to bed again last night. I blame my little brother. I was about to hit the hay when he comes on AIM and challenges me to see who can stay up the longest, at near midnight. Of course, I accept. That's a contest I could never turn down. Even though he had nothing to do this morning and I had class at nine. So about four he caves, leaving me with not much choice but to go the whole way. I've made the mistake of trying to get to sleep at that point before, and had it come back to bite me in the ass. Attendence is too much of a factor in the class I'm taking now to risk oversleeping.

I think I'm past my glory days of insomnia, though. One night without sleep and I feel like I'm running at maybe 75% coherency. That's pretty low, considering. I've down 72 hours before! Maybe its that I haven't eaten. I guess my body can do without sleep so long as it gets good food. Deprive it of both, and it gets mad at me.

Also, it apparently gets horny. Holy god, I was staring at breasts today like I had never seen them before. It was just sad, really. I managed to keep it to a minimum or at least make it quick during class, but on the walk back I abandoned all pretense. This is me:

Oh, those are nice.
Look at those!
Hmm, yes.
Very nice.
Excellent!
Ah, interesting... wait, that's a fat guy.

I'll leave you to decide whether or not that really happened. In any case, I need sleep! (To answer the question posed by the Barenaked Ladies - oh, what an image!) I have a few things to do before I collapse into an amorphous blob on my couch while Nick Jr. is playing on the TV.

What? You got a problem with that?

  posted by Matthew @ 10:44 AM

 
Things haven't changed all that much between this entry and the last, except for the arrival and subsequent departure of my dad. It was a painless visit, more or less, free of drama of any kind. For that, I am thankful. On the other hand, I think he did give me a cold, but it would be hard to imagine that it was intentional. Its looking more and more likely that I will be spending the latter half of the summer in Kansas City, despite whatever my leanings might be on the subject.

My various crises have not abated to any significant degree, but I think they might soon. Which would be nice, because at the moment I feel like I'm going to have a conniption if this doesn't let up. Okay, that's me being dramatic. But it would be nice if things mentally calmed down in the near future. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, and maintaining an optimistic outlook as much as I can manage.

  posted by Matthew @ 3:41 PM