I think the band Semisonic would still be around if they didn't choose to release "Closing Time" as their debut single.

So anyway, we're walking up this wide outdoor staircase and somewhere in the middle of this trek, me and my father separate from the other two and I believe we ended up in an elevator somehow. Now, it turns out that my father is a sinister little bastard in this dream. A "bad guy" character in a way. I can't quite remember what he did first, but I do remember that he stole someone's wallet by "accidentally" bumping into them at one point. But anyway, in the elevator, he pulls out a small blue revolver. It was really blue. It looked like a toy but somehow I knew it wasn't. Then he decides that we should go into the casino. Under his breath he was conspiring something that I couldn't quite make out. Anyway, I told him, "You're not actually going to go into a casino with that, are you?" referring to the blue revolver. I think I talked him out of it somehow but we ended up going to the casino anyway. As it turns out, the casino is where we were going in the first place with the wide staircase. My sister, if it was in fact a sister, had disappeared somewhere. My father did executed some more random petty crimes, all things that my mother certainly wouldn't approve of and I guess I could've told her, but by then I didn't have enough time.

We reach the top of the staircase and the earthquake start. Now, this was really fascinating, I'm serious. The special effects in this dream were amazing and all on an extremely low budget. I'm pretty sure the huge casino building at the top of this wide staircase collapsed and the glass doors in front of us exploded. Buildings began falling down left and right and people were running everywhere. This is happening at night, by the way. Anyway, it's just chaos in these downtown streets. Looking off into the distance as buildings are falling down everywhere I see the CN Tower and I think "Okay, I'm in Toronto." Somewhere in the middle of all this chaos, a building lands on my father and something goes severely wrong with my sense of proportion in this dream. Somehow, the building that lands on my father is smaller than he is, if that makes sense. It crushes him like a vehicle landing on someone's back. So my father is still visible, but there's just a building on top of his back. Does that make sense? I don't know, but it was weird. Of course, it seemed perfectly normal in the dream as though people can always support the weight of a building on their back.

So my father is still alive, wounded here and there and he's sort of trying to ask for help as I just stand there and watch a couple more building fall on top of the building he is already beind crushed by. My father is such an ass in this dream that I really don't care what happens to him and certainly don't feel sorry for him. I'm sort of glad there's a building on top of him. Somewhere near my father, there is a revolving door just sitting in the middle of the street with a big beam on top of it. For some reason, this is significant.

Okay, so my father gets out from underneath the buildings that are on top of him somehow and he's following me as I just walk around looking at the chaos. The earth is still shaking but I hardly notice. Some of this chaos is really quite fascinating. Some of the explosions from these buildings is truly amazing. Like I said, great special effects. Anyway, so there's my father traililng behind me with broken bones left and right. Not too far from the revolving glass door, I turn around and look back up at the CN Tower and it is beginning to collapse. This was easily one of the coolest things in this dream because it was just a nice night sky and the revolving restaurant in the tower was all lit up and I'm sure lots of people we're just enjoying their dinners when the building begins to fall over. I suspect it broke off at its base and began falling towards me and my father. So then I glance at my father, he screams and the CN Tower lands on top of him. It was classic. Just like all the other buildings had crushed him before, the proportion was way off so I could somehow still see my father and the CN Tower on top of him. He was taking his last breath with his tongue hanging out and a lot less blood around than there should have been. At some point he just died as more buildings exploded and fell down all around me.

Here's the weirdest part. The earthquake stops and I see my mother and possibly my sister, I'm not sure, come through the revolving glass door with the beam on top of it in the middle of the street. So we meet up and I think I was explaining something about how the loss of my father wasn't a really big one because he was actually just a stupid criminal. My mother didn't seem disappointed at all. Then there was a brief pause in the dream and all of a sudden it was daytime again. All I could see was a downtown building, the daytime sky and then, out of nowhere, the top of the Calgary Tower falls on top of the building and causes a lot of damage. Just the top, just that revolving head of the building. It was interesting that it just seemed to fall out of the sky and land on a building. Then, suddenly, it was nighttime again back in Toronto with my mother there and my father's corpse having been crushed by the CN Tower. Everyone in the streets seemed a little more calm and there was the general post-earthquake chaos with destroyed buildings left and right. Then the dream switches to a shot of the casino with the wide staircase where it all began. It appears to be intact, but there's nobody around. Then the eight or nine glass doors that make up the main entrance just remove themselves from the building and are floating side by side in midair over the staircase. Then they all fold together like one of those wallet inserts where people put pictures of their family. They just all folded up like an accordion and exploded in the air, sending tiny shards of glass everywhere. Really tiny pieces of glass. This thing really exploded. It happened very fast and after the glass doors exploded the rest of the casino appeared to be destroyed again. And that was the end of the dream.

Now that Saturday is here and as I have sat at home bored for the entire week, the phone rings. I was going to enjoy a peaceful day of solitude today, but hey, if there is a friend of mine who actually is phoning to do something social, fine. I'll go with that. Nobody seemed up to it for the rest of the week so why not now? My dad brings me the phone. "It's for you," he says, "I think it's Ton of Fun." *dies*

Anyway, back to the newsletter idea: the biggest problem would be that I don't think I would be able to write a newsletter without posting it on the page as an archived thingamajig. This, aside from defeating the purpose of e-mailing it to people, is because I always like saving everything that I write. Chat transcripts and e-mails and ramblings and pretty well everything that I type is something that I want to save just so I will never read it later, which I usually don't. However, I'm a fan of nostalgia and therefore I don't like to be missing out on the opportunity to get my fill later.

When I finish the profiles I just realized that I'll probably want to go through everything I've written here and find every spot at which I mention someone's name and then link to their profile. There's always consequences it seems. I think it's worth it for the profiles, though, because it's a section that has helped me distinguish this page from all the other ones that I copied off of already. At one point, Et cetera was very much like the ramblings section of Lindsey's page, which I believe I mentioned in the first entry. By now I have certainly distinguished myself from that and after doing a bit research, it turns out that ramblings and online journals and the like are not all that rare, anyway. All of them are different in terms of content, but they aren't hard to find. Many homepages consist of nothing but ramblings. Whether or not they are entertaining is up to the reader, I guess. I would think that something so great in quantity on the web would consist of primarily poor content, but everything that I've read so far of the genre is pretty solid.

I think I just trailed off topic there, didn't I? What was I talking about? I guess I could scroll up and look for myself, but I probably won't. I'll just talk about another new idea of mine. Well, it's not that new, but it's new to the page, at least. I don't think I've mentioned it yet. You see, I would like a companion site that would be identical in format to this one, but written by someone else. It's called: DiEt cetera. Is that not a cool name? Anyway, the trouble is I don't know of anybody who would write the page. My first thought would be that Timothy La Rocque should be the author of DiEt cetera, but I think that one page is difficult enough and I really wouldn't be able to maintain it myself. R.C Allen was a good choice as host, too, and he seemed half-interested at one point. I'll have to ask some more people. I wouldn't want it to be just one of those homepages that people abandon after three months. So it would probably have to be someone who enjoys rambling on and on like I am doing now. This doesn't give me a very broad selection of people to choose from already. I've got a couple of people in mind and I'll probably ask them tomorrow if I can.

Another complete waste of time that I, for some reason, am considering is an Et cetera message board. This would really complicate things. I'm sure I could handle it, but I'm not sure if I really think it's appropriate to do something like that to a page such as this which gets maybe five hits a day (three of which are probably me). Actually, I'm going to do some advertising. I like the message board idea, so maybe if I advertise a bit I'll get more people who read this thing (not likely).

The folks down at the office are calling people down for course corrections and textbook collections. I got the textbooks yesterday and I believe I'm next for course corrections. It seems that they can never get the schedule right. Although, this semester, it's all about indecision. I just didn't know what to take so I picked things I would regret later and then need to change and yada yada yada here I am.

My my, this is going to be a boring class. Five months of doing nothing. Fun fun fun. Plus I'm in a classroom of Grade 9 and 10 students. That's not necessarily a problem but there's still nobody to talk to. That's fine, I guess. There's never anybody to talk to anyhow. I don't know why it is that I end up in a bunch of classes where the only "sociable" people turn out to be storytellers and morons. Andrew is a prime examples of a storyteller. Actually, I should make an entire section for Andrew alone. Nah, it would take to long for me to write all about his Kendo training in Japan. Not to mention his strategies of pyrotechnics and plans to bomb certain teacher's cars.

I need to read some books. I should've brought one today. Maybe I should do that during my free time in here, rather than adding entries to the website. It's much more productive, I suppose. These things ultimately mean nothing and are rather boring to read when I don't know what to talk about. Then I find myself looking around to find things to comment on but it's a computer room, you know. Not much to talk about. To my left, there's a computer. To my right, there's a computer. All around me there's computers. Let's see, what's on the walls? Hmmm paint...interesting.

I'm going to die in here...

In case you haven't guessed, I'm still at school for the last period of the day. 80 more minutes of doing nothing and adding more garbage to this page. Looking over it, I do notice that a lot of it is garbage. I don't always have realy content in these entries. In fact, most of the time, the only thing I'm writing about is how terrible the other entries are. Therefore, I will now shut up and think of something worthwhile.

This classroom is crowded. Apparently, most people choose ExOp (shortened form) just because there's nothing to do. Then they realize how boring it is and don't bother adding it to their schedules for the rest of their time at this school. I thought most people had clued in to this and the class would be much smaller. Oh well. That's fine. I've been enjoying far too much solitude lately. I feel awfully weak lately. Maybe I should do those chinups again.

That probably makes no sense. I don't think I've mentioned the chinups until now. At one point I did about eighty chinups a day in sets of ten followed by five hundred situps or so with Richard. It was rather hard but worthwhile I think. Then we just sort of forgot about it and never kept up the routine. At one point, we were doing 1000 situps a day all in on sequence. It was...time-consuming. I'm losing my athleticism. That's not good. I like being athletic. I like being able to do a back flip. Especially in mid-conversation with someone else. You'll be talking with someone and all of a sudden WHOOSH! back flip in mid-sentence. Good fun.

I'll probably be back.

It looks like DiEt cetera is running smoothly despite some speed bumps in the road of progression. His format appears slightly different. The main page basically stays the same for the sake of conformity, but all the linked pages have the DiEt cetera banner on them that links back to the main page, which I don't have. Actually, I've never had a link back to the main page on any of mine because I always figure people just use their Back button and that's the end of it. Maybe one day I'll go through all this and put in some links like that. I'll have to do that once I finish up the profiles anyway. I've probably said that already, but I do plan to have links to the profiles of people who I have mentioned anywhere else on the site.

I think I'll get to bed at a decent hour this evening. It's approaching nine thirty; I'll make it a mission to be in bed by 10.

Later on I think I'll add an Et cetera survey, since I have been meaning to write one for some time now. I haven't really looked into how I'm going to do it yet, as I am sure there are several ways and one won't be hard to find when I'm inspired. I've always been dissatisfied with other surveys written by a cheap staff from some sort of thematic free e-mail service. If you can't fix the problem, I might as well write my own. Most of these surveys don't cover enough things that interest me. A lot of them, but not enough. For example, they never ask if the writer likes their middle name or not. That stuff interests me.

I've got to think up some more good content for these entries. I'm running short here. Even more vocabulary is weakening lately. Sometimes I forget to put commas where there are supposed to be commas and it drives me bananas (I only use the banana thing because nobody uses it unless there's some sort of childish monkey picture beside it and they think it's a creative pun. If that made any sense.) 9:36 pm. I'm now downloading something called The Goodbye Song and it's like 15 minutes long. I'm really looking for something that seems like it goes on forever. As long as it's something pleasant to listen to.

The message board is doing better than I expected it to. I doubt the post count has hit triple digits or anything, but people do actually go there and post stuff, even if it is only people I know. I expected I would have to shut that thing down several days after putting it up. I guess I'll keep it. I added the section on Visual Conundrums, finally. I've been meaning to do that for a long time. I had this Mr. Wolf picture in my binder for a few months and thought that would be a good excuse to start that section. I'm actually running out of ideas for new sections too. My creative veins have just been running dry lately. I can't imagine the crap that would turn up if I actually sat down and tried to write something again. Maybe I should and get those juices flowing. It's not much of an occupation if I have lost the ability to think of creative things and write them down in a half decent way. This past month or so I feel that I've been getting steadily stupider and less creative and just not as good a person as I was awhile ago. I try to strive to be the best I can, but it's just going backwards lately. I don't know why. It's like I'm really bored. I haven't had anything to do. No that's not true, I could've been writing. I don't know why I didn't. I need initiative again. Somebody needs to give me initiative. I can't do it myself. I should make a promise on the Et cetera message boards that I'll finish a story by a certain date. That seems to work sometimes. But that's only if everybody is anticipating it. And how can they anticipate it if...actually, I could post a plot summary. But it would have to be an interesting one. Maybe Fountain Orange. I like that story, it's turning out alright.

I should also put the stories section back up for this page. And finish the links thing that I've left dangling. Ack! I keep thinking I've got so much to do! I really do need to finish the profiles, too. But I need digital pictures. I need pictures of everybody. I should do the text part first, I guess. The pictures can always be added afterwards. I'm listening to The Goodbye Song now, by the way. It seems pretty peaceful--Oh god!!! Heavy metal?! That piano thing was nice, now there's a bunch of unnecessarily loud punk music! I didn't want that. Crap!! I can't take fifteen minutes of this!

Now three and a half minutes into it, the piano starts again. Now there's some silence. What is this? I'm confused. Is it just another ten minutes of silence, or is there more content here? Well, I scrolled to about nine minutes into it and they're now just fooling around on the mike. Something about pudding and incessant singing. This is weird...

Anyway, back to hating stuff, I should probably add to my passionate hatreds subtitle in my profile that I really really really hate having to write something over that I have already written. This entry is a good example of that. Although, I haven't really mentioned many of the same things I did before the computer crashed on me. Whatever, I don't care. There's nothing that siginificant anywhere on this board. Nearly everything that I find important I have saved on the hard drive somewhere. Not this one, of course, because I wouldn't trust one of these computers with something of value to me.

I think I'll end this and save it before it tries to disconnect me again.

I'm trying to understand exactly what the story is behind the lyrics of Kashmir. It seems to be telling a story of some sort. Something about going to Kashmir, apparently on foot, because there seems to be a lot of sentences dealing with walking and the heat of the sun and eyes filling with sand, etc.

I'm also trying to remember what the original colors were on Et cetera. Maybe I'll ask everyone on the message boards if they remember. I changed it twice I think, coming up with this finished product. (just in case I change it again, the colors right now are #191970 and the text is #f5f5f5, and I don't think the text has ever changed)

I'm getting angry again because some smartass thought it was cool to switch all the number keys on this school keyboard around so the one key has the symbol of the backspace arrow and all the other ones are scrambled. And my walkman's batteries are still dying on me so it shifts in and out of key because the motor slows down sometimes thus screwing up the sound. It really bothers me. At least I don't have to listen to the conversations going on elsewhere in the room. Actually, I have this music playing pretty loud. Maybe the guy next to me can't hear the conversations going on elsewhere in the room either. Okay, it's not that loud, but I can't even hear the clicking of the keys as I type.

I should buy some more batteries. Actually I think I have some. I'll check...yes, I still have two of them in my bag for when this thing really starts to screw up.

Some laminated letters stapled to the bulletin board above me:

QUIET thinking in progress
RESPECT yourself and others
PREPARE bring materials
FOCUS stay on task

Are those supposed to be definitions or something "Focus means 'stay on task,' children." No, really? I thought it was the dial on my friggin' camera! I hate it when posters and the like try to state the obvious. Of course, this varies from person to person. Maybe those things aren't so obvious to some people. "See those posters," I might say, "those are statements of the obvious and I hate that." "Oh then you must hate all of these kinds of signs then," one peer may or may not say (probably not). "Well yes, I don't like any of them, but not because they are statements of the obvious. Most of them are either staing something that is true and obvious or something that is false and stupid. Like the one on the far side of the wall over there: 'Do your best and leave the rest to God...' Is that a statement of the obvious? No, it's just stupid and opinionatively false. Why is God going to give you a helping hand if you do your best? If you do your best, I should think that God wouldn't see it necessary to make you the victim of divine intervention and improve you even further. If I were God, I would not honor such a quotation. I'd be more concerned with helping the people who don't do their best because that makes the world a better place collectively. It's like rich people writing their opinion on the economic situation and living conditions of the city they live in. Will they comment on the slums that they live so far away from? No.

Oh geez, I'm starting philosophical conversatoins with an imaginary classmate. I need to find something to do in this class.

I will therefore change it. Great, now there's two weak paragraphs. I considered making it three but too much use of the background blue in one entry is rather tiresome on the eyes. Not that pages upon pages of white text isn't, but still; it looks way out of form. I certainly wish I had something to do in this class today. Every assignment that has been assigned is done. At the moment everyone else is working on their keyboarding which is something I really need practice on (shoot me). Dave also said he loved his old Volvo. Sorry, I'm just reading off the screen next to me. These typing programs just have some terrible sentences to help build your skills. How about something a little more common, rather than "Jade's flask as a lad's fad eghad!" That's the trouble with computer programs that are not designed for entertainment. Everything produced for these machines are either entertaining and mindless or inefficient suppliers of information and teaching. Typing programs are likened to the Encyclopedias that they somehow fit onto one CD. At one point in time, I'm sure the people who typed out all the encyclopedic data used another computer-based typing program to gain their speed. It's all connected. But where did it begin? I sometimes wonder about the origins of these things. What's a good example? How about a photocopier? Let's see what kind of interesting chain of events I can pick up from spontaneously babbling about photocopiers.

Let's say you have a little application form or something that you need to photocopy. You take the form and you put it on the machine and you press the little button (which always happens to be green, by the way) and it does the work for you, giving you a brand new copy of the original document. But mayhaps that original document was, oh say, several hundred years old. But wait, this isn't the original document! It's a copy of the original document! How did it get here? The sheet of paper that you have just photocopied is actually just another copy of the original one. Where did the original come from? Well, judging by the quality of the print, it was probably printed off by a computer at one point. So what we are left with is the copy of a copy of a printed document. Wonderful. But they didn't have computers several hundred years ago. Who entered this data into a computer? They must have typed it up from some other really old piece of paper. Probably from a typewriter. So the original sheet of paper that was entered into the computer when technology began to shine was something that was typed up by someone else on a typewriter. But wait! Where did that come from? Sure, typewriters are old, but not as old as the original sheet of paper. The person who typed it up and entered the data of the document into the typewriter was obviously copying off of another sheet of paper. Where did that paper come from? Well, probably a printing press. There isn't really any other alternative. So the typist on the typewriter was copying off of a sheet of paper that was originally printed on a printing press. Naturally, the person who entered the data into the printing press was probably copying off of the very original sheet of paper having been written out by hand. So what's the final product? The copy of the form that you now have is actually a carbon copy of a carbon copy of a computer-printed document copied off of a typewritten paper that has been copied off of the product of a printing press whose data originates from a handwritten sheet of paper. Actually, technology these days and the laziness of man leads me to believe that the typewritten document wasn't typed into the computer; probably just scanned then printed, then copied then copied again by the person in question. This being YOU.

Well that was a fun ramble. I'm enjoying this class, though I can't imagine why. Dictionary.com doesn't seem to want to load on this computer and it's rather depressing. I wish I knew of some other dictionary website. I'm sure Webster's has one. I'm attempting to load it now but it seems to be pretty hopeless. What is it? Websters.com? Webstersdictionary.com? I just don't know and I'm far too lazy to run a search engine for the sake of one teensy-weensy insignificant adverb. Hey it worked! Dictionary.com, that is. Wow, these people bought the websters.com domain name. Interesting. I should pay attention to the Word of the Day. I thought I typed in an e-mail subscription to that, but I have never received anything from them. I'm going to try and do that again now.

Actually, the main reason I began ranting about styles of clothing is to point out all the "evil" people I associate with. There is an entire genre of clothing and related apparel devoted to three types of styles that I don't understand at all: punks, goths and the girls with all that makeup. I might be defining these terms incorrectly when I place certain individuals into these categories. First I examine the 'girls with all that makeup' section because I have the least to say about it. One of the biggest problems I have with it is that some guys even fall into this category. Cologne is the best example of this little mix-up. Anyway, as I was about to say, the first person that comes to mind when I think about this category is Ashley Vay a rather plump, arrogant, pompous human being whose actual face has not likely ever been seen. She is buried under makeup constantly and insists on layering it whenever she has a spare moment. Stand within a metre's radius of this person and you will be choking on perfume and quite possibly swimming in it if the room is humid. The use of makeup is one thing and I can tolerate it when the amounts are moderate. And as much as it is against a typical respectable cynic's way of thinking, makeup does in fact improve the appearance of many people. But when used in excess beyond even the most outrageous hyperbolic number, it begins to make these people look like action figures! Why would you want to look so plastic and so fake? It's just ugly, for lack of a better expression. And then you insist on damaging another of the five senses by marinating your clothing in Chanel No. 5 every night!? And then, oh lord, these people try to speak! Ow! My Ears! It hurts, it hurts. How can you say things that are so stupid? It's a good thing I don't have to touch and taste these freaks of artificial nature. The mere thought of it is repulsive. And then they have the audacity to stop working in the middle of class, reach into their bag and draw up an entire mannicure kit with thousands of shades of eye shadow and blush and a collection of whatever the hell those pencils are forming a distinct parabola defining frequent color usage along the side. And while everyone else pays attention to what the teacher is saying (if that were only true) they sit their and embellish themselves even further to the point where the actual gender of this person under the makeup is completely indecipherable.

I've only got about three minutes here so I'll have to think of something quick and type it even quicker. The teacher has inadvertently closed the previous copy of this entry causing me to have to re-type everything and I hate typing things that I've already done. Re-doing stuff sucks. I probably won't add another in-school entry for awhile. At least a few hours. Actually, I might try to do something academic. I have a couple of things I can do. I still need to pay these schoolish ingrates to get my religion course. Again. Blecch, that's such a bother. I've grown weary of mandatory spirituality lessons where you sit in the class and watch the half-educated instructor talk about her stories as a social worker and the really moving tale of the kid whose father turned a screw into his hand. Show me a picture and maybe it'll be more entertaining. Otherwise, I'm leaving.

Uh oh, the clock says it's 10:10 and that means the bell is supposed to ring. I'd better be fast on the save. Good thing I don't really have any books or anything to pack up. That's the great thing about these computer classes is the extreme lack of necessary materials. Well, maybe I'll put my project thing into my folder and get out of here. Toodle-oo.

Chris Broughton was passing around a booklet of seemingly random content during the lunch hour today. I believe it is supposed to be a journal or a personal organizer or something but when you open it up it certainly defies the plethora of office etiquette that I see on the title page. It's full of small musings by Chris and others whom he passes the book around to. There is some magazine clippings and little quiz questions and various little "colouring book" activities for the simple-minded. And it's rather good. There is very little intelligeble original speech in it, but that can be expected simply because the book has made the rounds and not everyone is capable of such an ideal perspective. The book is entertaining though and I found myself scanning the pages and realizing that it was actually quite similar to this website. I don't think my Et cetera idea is all that original after all. Sure, the specifications of it are unique but the concept of having a page of randomized content is not new at all. Well, this is just a book I'm comparing it to, but the content could easily be extracted from there and uploaded onto a website and appear to be similar in content as this Et cetera mini-network I've got going. Fascinating stuff. It always turns out this way, too. I think I'm doing something original and it turns out that it isn't all that new. In retrospect, the same law of creativity is applicable to boredatheist.com, which I once considered a very unique page. Who woulda thunk it? Someone posting an online journal of their deepest darkest secrets for all to read. But you'd be amazed at the amount of online journals there are. Left and right, run a search and you'll find thousands of pages that focus on only that: the online journal. Boredatheist.com is rather lengthy in comparison, but the concept is not really unique despite the distinctly individual webmaster.

I have no idea how to advertise. If more people read this, I would be a lot more comfortable with adding all kinds of stuff to it. These entries always seem pointless when I think that I get about twenty hits a day. How many is that a year? 7400? Something like that? Yeah, something like that. Yet, did you know that the Ty Beanie Babies website got close to 3½ billion hits per year? That's a frightening statistic and I don't understand how such a commercial site gets such a huge volume of readers? I don't even want to think about how many annual visits hit the popular search engines. But those are tools, I understand that. The Beanie Babies website?? Is it that exciting? I've purposely avoided visiting it to find out myself, but geez, how entertaining could a page about inanimate embalming be? I read the interesting things on the internet, despite the extreme difficulty I experience in finding them. Doesn't anybody else take the time to look for something worthwhile? The web is just one very very busy wire of junk and even though there's a lot going on, it's all just dead air in the end.

Take this gun and beat up the wall behind me using my brains as a weapon."

Yay! I made up a suicidal, depressing quotation! I'm not really feeling that dour but I though it was an alright quote so I'm posting it here so I don't forget it later. That's the great thing about web-based page editing. No matter where you are, provided there is a several thousand-dollar piece of machinery and a monthly bill for the internet paid by the landowners of the local address, you can always write something down when you need to. Or you could just carry a pencil and a small sheet of paper in your pocket.

Anyway, onto more interesting matters. I just emerged from my creative writing class under the newfound discovery that I have to hand in a complete piece of writing by Friday. I was a little bit stuck there. I have spent this past month in a creative writing class and I have completely forgotten that I actually do write stories. What an astonishing discovery! I haven't sat down to really write anything since Christmas Eve when I finished the novel and that was the end of it. For some reason, I just haven't had the incentive to stretch out those flamboyant finger muscles and type like there's no tomorrow (which there isn't, but that's another generic theory I happen to agree with and don't have to explain). So anyway, I got the teacher's permission to initiate a small excursion to the classroom next door so I could use a computer to write something. I had had an idea going for awhile based on the theory of the Earth having once been nothing but a molten mass where there was constant rain, or something like that, but I had no idea how to construct a story out of it. So I basically just sat down and started writing. This seems like such a backwards thing to do after a month of literary abstinence. As I was writing, it came to my attention that what was appearing on screen was a story about raindrops that were capable of conscious thought. Sort of. It's just a couple of background paragraphs followed by some more brief sentences dealing with raindrops and what raindrops would say if they could talk and how raindrops would feel and think if they were forced to do the same thing over and over again. In short, it was really fuckin' weird. But not all that bad. Reading over the content of my brief snippet to the story, I wasn't disappointed with the construction of any of the sentences like I usually am. Could it be because I took this break from writing and now I'm refreshed? Or could it be that I took this break from writing and now I have forgotten what a crappy sentence looks like? I can't decide.

So now I've stumbled into ExOp again and weasled my way out of that terrible classroom into the library where the computers are considerably better and don't usually crash in the middle of an entry. It's very relieving to be able to safely write an in-school Et cetera entry without opening notepad and copying and pasting and all that other crap into the webpage editory. Ugly process. I wonder if I can go to the library every period. That's not a bad idea, I'll look into that. That would probably mean at least one new entry every school day not to mention anything additional that I throw on here on the weekend or during the period of leisure time I have before and after school on weekdays.

Speaking of adding a lot of entries, I expect that there will be a point when this main page just gets too huge. Then I'll be forced to actually create a new index with the entries on it. I'm very uncomfortable with this because, well, it's just not proper to what I had in mind for the page. But again, it's ultimately necessary to have subsequent directories to store these on. I'm sure many of the readers will appreciate it, but I always liked everything on one page. The question I'm facing now is "when should I create a second page for entries?" I thought maybe Entry #50 would be a good time to do that, but it's really not all that big yet. Of course, the size of the page varies with the size of the entries as well. Just for organization, though, I'll separate it based on the number rather than the size of the existing data. Oh what a terrible situation. I'll have to look into how I will format the numbers for a separate page. I'm not really sure how to start a list at a number other than 1. Maybe I'll break it off at 60. Then #61-120 will be shown on the following page. That seems reasonable. Of course, I'll double check when I reach sixty to see if I can cram anymore on here without any trouble, but you catch my drift.

I'm looking at the cement pillar standing about a meter adjacent to this computer desk. All the rocks and stones are plainly visible in the concrete, as it is with most concrete things. Except for sidewalks. Why is it that they pave the sidewalk so well that the rocks and stones aren't even visible unless you take a sledge hammer to it and examine the innards of the block. Seems kind of pointless. Why not just use asphalt? I think it's equally smooth. But why is smoothness an issue anyway? When I fall off a bike and slide headfirst into the concrete of the sidewalk, "wow this is smooth" isn't the first thing that comes to mind.

Wow, this is a really boring selection of minutes I'm taking part in here. I certainly have added a lot of stuff to this page in the past 24 hours or so. I should probably get to work on some more peoples' profiles. Three of them are up now. I can't really call them complete, because they are always subject to change. Okay, well, that's enough from me.

For reasons of consonance, I actually have a small bracelet of cheap plastic scented pearls around my wrist. I don't expect I'll keep this up for long, but it's just one of those things that everyone seems to do. Yuck, I hate conformity. Especially when it involves things that I would otherwise object to. Like thieving potato chips from the broken vending machine. Yes, that's the big news at lunch today. Someone smashed the vending machine glass and soon a mob gathered to take as many free food items as possible before the janitors and teachers got in there. Apparently the change machine had also been opened due to the force of impact and now it's empty too. It amazes me how fast people react to things like that. Well, the speed not so much as the direction of their advertency. People are quick to react, but the thing they're reacting to is the ability to receive free food. Not something insignificant like, say, the person lying on the ground in a pool of blood because of the broken glass. I'm sure that would have received attention had it been the case, but I can bet that the vending machine comestibles would not remain untouched.

I admire actors. In fact, I admire anyone who can entertain someone else by stepping out of their own character even if it is just briefly and they don't consider themselves actors. It is beyond me how some people can so effectively re-enact scenes or past matters without the slightest bit of nerve. I can't even say the hermaphrodite paradox to someone if another who has already heard it is present. What kind of thinking is that, I wonder? Could that be some bizarre form of selfishness and self-doubt blended into one heinous concoction of unsavoury traits? Grr...I don't like doing that and I do it all the time. Everytime I think of one of my traits that submits to the overall product of being a social failure, I always assume that it is selfishness of some sort. But do I really value myself so much as to put my own needs on a pedestal above everyone else's? I don't think so, but maybe I don't know for sure. Now and then I confess that I become an elated, self-righteous prick, but I do it around people like Jeff Vander Elzen so as to try and prove to him that he might not be the coolest, funniest guy in the world. There are people that just need to get a clue and take some of their selfishness out of their system. I doubt I've mentioned Jeff before, but he's basically a Grade A moron who dresses all "punk" and what not with his neato wallet chain and takes every opportunity available to say something stupid that he finds absolutely hysterical. See, today, in art class, I decided to see just what would happen if someone would give him a clue. I'm not one todo this too often, but I do enjoy the occasional slap-someone-in-the-face-with-word. Chris Broughton has a little booklet where people write things and paste magazine cutouts or whatever; it's aptly titled the "shit book." So anyway, I decide to start a new section titled "Insert Your Opinion of Jeff" and I did. I simply wrote what I thought of him and expressed it as best as I could using words. Of course, he reads this book quite frequently and I wasn't hesitant to let him review the new section. I can't decipher whether he was hurt or not but he was affected by it enough to write a response that was about as typical as you can expect from a pompous, egotistical pothead with an IQ comparable to his shoe size. Here's an excerpt (mind the spelling and grammatical errors):

Randall: A witty, smart ass. He 'blends' in with the crowd and is afraid to make the step from computer nerd to man. He waists his time making un-constructive critisism and thinking up new ways to 'insult.' Oh, big words. Well, we'll see who gets laid first.

That's probably not verbatim, but you get the idea. Yeah, it was fun. I should borrow the book from Chris and scan that page just to show everyone the unique little magazine cutout photo that he glued to the side of his response as a hypothetical portrait of me. It was a desecrated drawing of Robin Hood and apparently it was appropriate. After all, being the computer nerd that I am, I'm constantly spearing dead cats with Friar John's trusty pike. I'm smiling. His stupidity is rather enlightening.

Now to get going on the activity once referred to as "social drinking." My idea. My idea entirely. I take full credit for it but I am ashamed at what it's turned into. There are three things that you guys talk about nowadays. There are only three. You're either bashing religion, talking about killing something or talking about drinking. That's it, I'm serious. I watch for these things. I'll focus on the alcohol for now. Keep in mind that when I first thought of the idea of social drinking, I was watching my father and my neighbour sitting at the kitchen table at about three thirty in the morning getting drunk and talking about angles and the mathematics of a certain piece of woodworking my neighbour was doing in his house. Every once in awhile, my dad would stand up and go over to the counter and mix a rum and coke for himself and my neighbour. And they would casually drink those while talking. That was the whole idea of social drinking. It was just a social event. Fine, that's not a problem at all. At this time, Richard didn't drink and didn't smoke and didn't do drugs and didn't want to touch any of them. After all, wouldn't want to turn out like your father, huh? It was on the bus one day that I told him about my social drinking idea and convinced him that the drinking wasn't so bad as it might sound. Whether he remembers this conversation or not, this is how it happened, trust me. So my best argument was that I have no problem with drinking because at least it is legal. I wouldn't have "social drugs" because well no matter what age you do those at, it's illegal. The consumption of alcohol is fine. At least they can sell that in a store without getting busted by the cops. It can't be all that bad. And that's what I used to convince him that social drinking was an okay idea. Plus, it would be fun. And it was. Oh, but Richard you don't know how much you've changed. You don't even have a clue. Your basic morale has stayed the same, but everything else is different. Be nostalgic for awhile and maybe think about how you used to be. You won't notice that drastic change because you see yourself on the inside. I, however, see you on the outside and I see how you treat people today as opposed to how you treated people back then. At one point in the history of social drinking, you introduced Colts, the small branch of cigars as an enjoyable festivity to top it off with the 'no smoking' rule of thumb you held for awhile. And drugs, well, drugs. Do I even have to talk about this!? Drugs are the very thing that I used to turn you into a supporter of social drinking. I simply said "at least it isn't drugs." And you seemed to see the logic in that and came to the social drinking ritual of long ago. Fine, but what now? One day, pot became okay. It was okay to get high. It's only weed. It's legal for medicinal purposes in some regions! What the fuck!? When did this come about? When did it become okay? Don't get me wrong, I'm not some paranoid, overprotective peer with a college major in Iknowwhat'srightandyoudon't. I don't particularily care if you do weed or not, but I'm wondering why it became an okay thing. What changed you? I'm going to skip ahead a bit here and backtrack when necessary. About...oh three months ago or so, I haven't really been keeping track, there began a rather large drinking spree. Richard and Chris Broughton set out to break a record, I guess. Anyway, it became a weekend ritual to go and get drink. Often. Too often. Every weekend that was the first thing that came to mind. "Hey, want to come get drunk with us?" All the time. So it got to a point where for Richard and Chris I believe it was 6 weekends IN A ROW, where you got drunk everytime. Now here is my big chance to quote something in my ICQ message history with Chris Wong who participated in several of these adventures. You see, they were "cut" from alcohol for awhile. 'Because you know, they just had a little too much. So I thought, "good, they have been having too much. It's about time they took a break." So, the very next weekend, they all went and got drunk again! I was distressed but not really surprised I guess. Shortly after this, the SEVENTH weekend in a row, I had an online conversation with Chris Wong that contained this snippet of text:

Chris: Cool. you know, blue 100 is not near as bad as Rich and Chris said. And my new nichname is noodle now.
Randall: Oh I have no interest in any of that. Richard's seventh weekend in a row was a stupid stupid idea. It's getting out of hand.
Chris: We're done for now. At least a month or so. We have it on video, so we won't forget.
Randall: Forgetting isn't the issue. It's denial. Richard himself claimed to be "cut" after the sixth weekend there.
Chris: Yeah, but we will this time. Seriously. We will.

I put heavy emphasis on that last line. He was serious. And I trusted him, I believed that. This conversation took place on a Sunday. THE VERY NEXT DAY, during lunch hour AT SCHOOL they spontaneously decided to SKIP the afternoon to go buy LIQUOR and get DRUNK! THE VERY NEXT DAY!! I thought I could trust my friends. They had it on video so they wouldn't forget! I told you forgetting wasn't the issue. You people deny your little promise to stop drinking for awhile just so you can skip school to do it the day after your mini-pact. So what happened then? The beginning of February, you all created a pact. This big, ultra-significant pact that everyone promised they would abide to that nobody will go drinking for ONE month. And that was good. That was okay for awhile. But this goddamn temptation that everyone is feeling screws everyone up. At a certain point during February, that became all they could talk about. Alcohol. Drinking. Liquor. Can't shut up about it. You people are fucking alcoholics and I hope you're proud of it. Oh you think I'm wrong already, don't you? Let me rephrase that then. TO ME, you are fucking alcoholics. You know where I get that from? Here's my logic accompanied with a bad analogy. To me, an alcoholic is someone who has an extreme obsession with alcohol. Imagine some kid who went around the school telling everyone about Britney Spears. This kid knows all about Britney Spears, her background, her song lyrics and everything. Suppose you talked to this kid who talks about Britney Spears constantly for awhile. You talk to him for, say, two weeks. It gets annoying because he just can't shut up about Britney Spears. But secretly, he has made a pact with all his queer friends that he can't listen to Britney Spears for a month because he's just had a bit too much lately. So you know how he remedies that situation? Well, he just talks about Britney constantly with everyone and listens to Christina Aguilera B-sides to get his fill of cute pop music for the day. But even though he hasn't listened to Britney Spears for a full month, you would look at this kid and identify him as a person with an extreme obsession with Britney Spears. This is EXACTLY what is happening with alcohol. Substitute Britney Spears with liquor and Christina Aguilera B-sides with drugs and the story of the month-long alcohol-free pact has been told. All you talk about is alcohol and occasionally you talk about drugs while you aren't doing them. INSTEAD of alcohol, everyone involved with this pact has agreed that DRUGS are a decent substitute. "Oh it's okay if we do drugs as long as we don't get drunk or anything." What the fuck kind of stupid pact is this!? Why do you bother having a pact at all!? What good does it do you to stop drinking for a month? Tell me that. Especially if you're just going to do drugs as an alcohol substitute. The pact was fucking worthless and meant nothing. It meant that you can stop drinking for a month as long as there is some sort of illegal substitute. And what problem does it solve? Nothing. It gets you nowhere. You've stopped drinking for a month just so you can go back to drinking every weekend and the occasional schoolday again! You've solved nothing! What was the purpose of the pact!? And just for the record, the pact didn't go so well anyway. Two people broke pact and Chris Broughton got everyone excited about doing mushrooms when he got really whacked out on those one day during school. So now everyone is really desperate to try mushrooms just because they saw how much fun he was having. And of course, everyone has planned this huge "end of pact" celebration and you've bought so much alcohol that you might die consuming it. It's all planned out real nice and a bunch of people are coming and you're all going to get really plastered to celebrate the newfound ability to drink again on March the 2nd! Great, good for you! But please, try to remember who you really are for once.

Richard, do you remember who you were when we talked to Deanna about the milkman? Do you remember who you were when we talked on the phone till late at night to develop ideas for a novel? Do you remember who you were while talking to Andrea Marasco on the bus? Look at yourself then and look at yourself now and tell me what these people think about your transformation into what you have become, especially the person on the other end of the phoneline?

Chris, do you remember enjoying playing through Pokemon on your translucent purple Game Boy in math class with your level 100 Scyther? Do you remember where you used to sit in the cafeteria? Have you improved? I think you have, but you have to see that. See who you are now and be glad that people change because you're getting to be better everyday and you can't afford to let that slip anymore.

And Jonathan, do you remember Junior High? Do you remember standing behind Jayson and Chris Newland as they had a laugh pushing me backwards making me trip over another person and somersaulting backwards to my feet? And do you remember watching Fairfield make her promises about paintball in Bragg Creek? Do you remember riding our bikes home during the lunch hour and tuning to Power 107 in the hopes that that Robyn song would be on? Do you remember playing badminton afterschool often till late at night over by the small patch of grass by the sportsplex? Do you remember the Coral Springs Youth Council dance that we helped coordinate and how much more attractive Kelsi Vescarelli became that day? Do you remember looking at the clouds at seeing some things that were truly frightening at the time? Remember biking around Coral Springs to find elastic bands for the elastic ball? Remember that one sleepover with Val, Mitch and Grand Theft Auto? Remember frisbee in the lake? Beating Metal Gear on Halloween night? I Know What You Did Last Summer at the moviedome? That was a scary movie, wasn't it? Yes, yes it was.

Ah much better. I was attempting to get through the entire Mission Impossible 2 soundtrack. Don't do that. It's terrible with the exception of maybe...five tracks? Three of which are good. One of which is okay to listen to while writing a long overdue entry. Not good thinking music at all. Not that I put a lot of thought into these entries. Most of them don't really have a subject right from the start. The trouble is, I'm usually walking around in some place where there couldn't possibly be a computer (like the Gobi desert, for example) and I have all these great ideas for entries (like ways to avoid getting lost in the Gobi) but no place to write them down. It's unfortunate really, because then when I finally do get to a computer, I've forgotten all those ideas and am forced to write about reasons why I can't think of good ideas for entries.

I do intend to finish that complicated story section that I keep rambling about in the scrolling status bar update message within the month. Hopefully sooner. Maybe I'll get one of those motivationl HTML highs that are everso productive. Hmm..I hoped I might get more done on this entry but I think I'll just go work on other things that need attention.

So here we go as I begin to rant about unnecessary commercializations of store-bought items. The subject drawn from the chatroom is about deodorant because I guess there's this new peach deodorant available, as well as three other fantastic flavours. This drew my attention to lip balm. Have you noticed the extreme fascination with lip balm in teen culture these days? In one of my classes at school, there is a small quartet of classmates that sit directly in front of me that discuss lip balm on a regular basis. One of them owns 20 different kinds of this chapstick and they spend half the class just passing around their cylindrical vials of pasty, scented lip moisturizer! Then, get this, then while the females are fascinated by using different flavours and applying new scents at hourly intervals, the only male association with this shit is EATING IT!! Jesus Christ don't your parents feed you! Do you not have the aplomb to trouble someone for a freaking jolly rancher!? You don't eat lip balm, it's the most unwholesome violation of popular medical trends since the recreational use of rectal thermometers! So many flavours, too! Yeesh, if it does the trick who cares what it smells like. Your lips aren't supposed to smell like Strawberry Passion Fruit Guava, okay? "But I like that smell!" Yeah me too; do you also buy socks that reek of Mango Black Current Citrus? Is it really so bad to have the seemingly malodorous stench of a person anymore? Cologne and perfume are both taboo in my books, but when you start wearing lip moisturizer simply because it smells good, there's a problem.

Turns out the power button was completely nonfunctional. My computer froze to the point where I couldn't turn it off. I pushed the button and nothing happened. That flying windows symbol just kept staring right back at me no matter how many times I pushed that button. "OFF DAMN YOU!" But no, it just stayed on. The only alternative was to unplug it. So I did. Then I plugged it back in and pushed the button to turn it on. Can you guess what didn't happen next? That's right, it didn't turn on. So I have this power button that doesn't work. Got it taken in to some computer repair place the following day and I should be getting it back tonight, but it seems weird to just not be online in the evening. Probably beneficial, but as I told the folks at the Dark Side of the Monkey, this experience has just been way too healthy for my liking. I look forward to once again mutating into a lethargic, simple webmaster with a depraved and limited social life. Mm..mm..good.

• I was being my quiet, observant self in T/A the other day and I was stunned to see the behaviour of people. Well, stunned isn't the word, but I'll get to that momentarily. In case I haven't explained it before, T/A is the euphemistic equivalent of "homeroom." So anyway, my Teacher Advisor, being the kindhearted individual that she is was jubilantly handing out chocolate bars to all those people who didn't skip any classes that week. My reading was interrupted by someone handing me a mint Aero and I thought, well okay fine. But I can't believe the pathetic rationalizations that I heard from all the people who did skip class that week. "That absence wasn't my fault, Miss! I had a doctor's appointment." "Oh c'mon, Miss, I'm always in T/A! Can I please have one?" "But Miss I was there that class!" Jesus Christ people give it up and quit your whining!!! It's only a chocolate bar. The things people will do for a frickin' candy bar is absolutely astounding.

  Unfortunately, then my T/A felt bad for not getting enough bars for everyone who came up with a pathetic excuse because that's just the way it is. Don't you people have the teeniest bit of respect for her? She was nice enough to bring everyone chocolate bars and you have the audacity to pretend that you earned by meekly getting on her good side. It just pisses me off, that's all.

  In the same class, there was some guy fiddling around with someone else's cell phone. I honestly can't believe that these little things provide people with so much amusement. Worse yet, the only thing he was playing around with was the multitude of musical ringers. Please, shut up. I have a vehement hatred for any small device that thinks it's cute to beep to the tune of the William Tell Overture. And if I hear another digital interpretation of that Mozart song while minding my own business on the bus, I'll be tempted to kill someone. Namely the prison reject who chose to set his phone to play an arpeggio or two everytime his homosexual lover needs him to bring some more eggs home. Okay, that's pushing it. Not all euphonic cell phone-wielders are playing on the wrong side of the field.

• In religion class later on that day, I was doing my independent study where I basically read the textbook and answer the questions in the accompanying activity booklet. Anyway, one of these exercises required me to read one of the "inspirational" stories that the textbook provides every once in awhile. Now I know they are all poorly written and have very little value of any kind, but I nearly laughed out loud at this simile: "Danny's stomach was churning like a concrete mixer." HA! That's great. It's so bad I just had to put it on this page.

• Recently while playing the guitar, I was thinking about moisturizing hand lotion and my Grade 10 gym teacher. Now, my gym teacher obviously used a lot of this lotion because I remember being forced to Fox Trot with the instructor during the dance unit last year and her fingertips were like...like...it's difficult to describe without using that whole "soft as a baby's butt" thing. But it was softer. Almost liquid. And anyway, I was thinking about that while playing the guitar, and then I imagined the damage that playing the guitar would do to her fingers. I mean, holy shit! My fingers have taken a beating, but if you gave her a steel string guitar and told her to play constantly for three hours, yeesh! It's like a new kind of leprosy. Her fingers would be so tender that the thin strings would probably cut right to the bone on the first chord.

So that's my rant for the day. Time for...looking at the clock.

I had this other thought lingering in the back of my mind that I really wanted to put into an entry on my way to this class but I think I've forgotten it. I hate it when that happens. I've made it a mission to carry a small piece of paper and a pen with me for when I get these ideas. Hopefully the quality of the entries will substantiate. Entry #58 is a product of one of those sheets of paper, in fact. That's the biggest problem. I get good ideas for entries all the time, but I don't have a computer just sitting in my back pocket during the day. Hopefully the paper will alleviate that problem. The other option, to stay "technologically hip," would be to purchase another of those delightful electronic organizers and use the memo function to list my ideas. I'll consider that. I may or may not still have one sitting in my house somewhere. But the spacebar fell out and it really slows down typing speed when you have to dig into the plastic crevace and run your finger along the small metal flat.

This site has officially crashed more than one computer worldwide. It's getting too long, meaning that I have to do the inevitable and create a second index page of entries. Yuck, I don't like that at all. Gotta move some time.