Summer School

Blows

Circle of Life

With every death comes rebirth. The end of an existence brings around the onset of new life. Old relationships die and new ones arise. Thus closing a short-lived chapter in my life. Yesterday, sigh, I cancelled my one month free membership to Netflix. During the cancellation process, Netflix asked me survey questions about my experience. At first it wasn't bad, just simple questions like "How was the quality of our movies?" or "Were our DVD's sent in a timely manner?" But then they got deeper and more personal. Question after question I felt worse and worse about deleting my account. I was flooded with emotions.

Remorse.

Guilt.

Infidelity.

I quickly cradled Netflix, holding her close, reassuring her. More questions. Pleading for mercy.

"What did we do wrong...?"

"Are you coming back...?"

"Is it another entertainment provider...?"

This quickly turned into the most harrowing break up of my life. "It's not you, Netflix, it's me..." I deeply sighed and clicked Cancel Subscription. It was over. Quick and easy. Like ripping off a Band-Aid.

------------

Two hours later, a girl I was with wanted to watch Mean Girls. Neither of us own it. Luckily, Blockbuster doesn't mind being my rebound. We found the movie and I hoped they let you rent without a membership card. They don't.

Death and rebirth. The ending of Netflix. The beginning of a Blockbuster membership. Which is intense by the way. While filling out the new member form, I thought I may have to take out a restraining order on Blockbuster. They asked for everything from my credit card number to my pant size. But, it's done. I'm now a member of Blockbuster, and so far I have 1 rental on my history record.

I'll probably never use it again.

------------

Recently, I set off on a journey. A quest if you will. To conquer the 6 seasons of LOST, beginning with Season 1. I'm at Season 2. While I've only been heavily watching for almost a month now, I've noticed one thing. If these "castaways" would just have a little pow wow and tell each other all their secrets and tidbits of information they know, they wouldn't have been stuck on this "island" for 6 seasons like some modern day Gilligan's Island.

I know of way too many times I've counted one of the main cast members, caught in their little flashback montage, snap back to the island and suddenly realize some weird coincidence or clue. At that point, another character will ask them "Is something wrong? -- Are you ok?" and they reply "No, it's nothing." If they could just hash this shit out, they could have been off this island 3 seasons ago. Come on Jack, you're a doctor, you should be smart enough to think of that. One shining example -- *SPOILER ALERT*... really?? The shows been on for years. If you haven't watched yet, you obviously don't care enough to worry about it being spoiled-- When Hurley tries to stop Locke from blowing open "the hatch" because he recognizes the "cursed numbers" on the side of the hatch door, maybe if he had TOLD everyone about the numbers, what happened to him when he played them in the lottery, and why he thinks they're bad, they may have possibly stopped before blowing the door off the hinges.

Another thing, Season 1 Episode 2 or something... they killed a giant ass polar bear on the island. A polar bear. On an island. In the middle of the South Pacific. And no one thought that was weird? No one thought that was cause for concern? Next episode, they spoke nothing of it. They went about their daily island lives like they DIDN'T put down a polar bear the day before.

Katie - "Oh hey Sawyer, what'd you do yesterday?"

Sawyer - "Oh you know, Freckles, built a sand castle, picked mangoes, shot a polar bear... the usual stuff. Thinkin' 'bout takin' Big Foot out on a date tonight."

Ridiculous.

Plus, there's a "smoke monster" that lives out in the jungle. It's apparently some kind of "security system" for the island. It's fully capable of... somehow.. with its.. wisps of smoke, flinging a guy across the island. But yet, every episode we go traipsing around out in the jungle anyway. No big deal.

But still, no matter how crazy, inane, or ape-shit bonkers the show gets, it ALWAYS has that "What the frick" ending that makes one have to see the next episode. And no matter how many episodes I watch, I end up back in the exact same place: LOST.

Te amo, te amo, te amo

Aside from intermittent cold fronts, tornadoes, and hail... I think spring is here. "But Dylan, that's really shitty weather for spring," you may be saying to yourself. "How can you be so sure?" Easy, we just had "spring" break two weeks ago.

When I'm not saving the world from certain doom, I'm saving Honduras with a group I work in called Students Helping Honduras.

*Warning - Massive Name Dropping Ahead*

Shin and Cosmo Fujiyama first visited El Progresso, Honduras in the summer of 2004 to help victims of poverty and domestic abuse. While there, Shin grew close with a squatter village called Siete de Abril (April 7th, named for the date Hurricane Mitch destroyed their previous home and caused their homelessness in 1998.) Shin vowed to help the villagers of Siete de Abril and returned home with his sister to found Students Helping Honduras as an official student group on their campuses, University of Mary Washington and The College of William and Mary, respectively.

SHH began raising money through local fundraisers, events, and a generous grant from Doris Buffett, sister of billionaire Warren Buffett, to return to Honduras and build a school with the villagers. While working on the school, Shin was approached by a 10 year old girl named Carmer with a letter, expressing her dream that one day, every family in her village would live in a safer home. Touched by this letter, Shin set to work again with SHH, raising money until the organization purchased a land title where the villagers could live legally and began building sturdier, cinder-block houses for the families to live in.

Now in the new village, Villa Soleada (Sunshine Village), groups of SHH members, along with Shin and Cosmo's younger brother, Gaku, and other SHH leaders, Emily, Bobby and Walker, return to help advance and increase the quality of life for the villagers from Siete de Abril.

While I was there, we completed work on the education center, which will provide lighting and internet access for the children of the village to work and study in a safe and functional environment. Also, we began work on an orphanage slated to be built inside the village.

But it's not all about construction. It's for the kids. And these kids are the most adorable children I've ever met in my life. So happy and full of love, despite everything their families have been through. Playing with the children and holding kid's camps each morning was the highlight of my day. Not only could I play and help teach the kids, but they helped me immensely with my Spanish as well.

One of the toughest days was visiting an orphanage on the outskirts of El Progresso in Honduras. I don't get emotional very often, but these children and their conditions yank at your heart strings. These children live in a prison. 10 foot high walls. Bars on the windows and doors. Sadly, they've never seen outside the perimeter wall. Throughout the day, I noticed that the biggest thrill for these kids was just to be held. Shown affection, something they've never had. Being held just high enough to see out the window, to see the outside world they've never experienced was such an ordeal to them. The infant room brought nearly everyone to tears. Holding and rocking these babies to sleep, babies who are too young to even understand where they are or why they're there. It's terrible. And they have nothing. Nothing at all. I played with a little boy on the small playground behind the compound, the only part of the outside world they get to explore. The ground was covered in broken glass and the playground is built on Astroturf and tar, not ideal materials for the hot, Honduran sun. We sat under the jungle gym in the shade and talked. He asked me about my parents, my family, and if I liked them. I reluctantly opened up to him, feeling almost like bragging, talking about my family with this poor orphan. I sat there realizing all that I had, and took for granted every day. The things he's never even dreamed of having, I expect to have. He grabbed my hand and made me promise to come back and visit him again. I will. "Que quieres?" I asked him what he wanted, if I could bring him anything back. He looked up at me and said.. shoes. All I want is some shoes. Of all the things, this poor kid asked me for shoes, just so he wouldn't burn and cut his feet on the playground.

I fully intend to bring him a pair of shoes. Him and the rest of the orphanage. I decided to start a shoe drive at school, placing boxes for people to toss old shoes they don't wear anymore. Shoes those children would love to have.

If you have a week to spare, please, go to Honduras. Seek out a SHH group on your campus, or start one yourself. I promise you will love every minute of it. It's one week out of your life to help these villagers for a lifetime. You won't regret it.

Women Are Like Elevators...

... and no, before all you feminists accuse me of being derogatory toward women and calling the Tampax Brigade, on me... let me explain.

Women are like elevators in the sense that, I, and the rest of the male population, will most likely never fully understand how they work. In the lobby the other night, I called an elevator, then proceeded to wait and watch as... none of them came to the first floor. One particular elevator rested comfortably on the second floor, and mocked me as it refused to move. Finally, the elevator from the tenth floor lazily made its way to pick me up. Much like the paths airplanes take to reach their final destination, elevators go the most roundabout way to complete a task.

Similarly, women have no rhyme or reason to the way they operate. Women are loose... cannons, which could also be classified as bipolar disorder. Due to the fact that one minute they may act perfectly fine, the next she will be unleashing World War III upon you for leaving the toilet seat up... once. They also may all be CIA agents according to their adept use of lies and deception. The way they weasel information out of you and twist and convolute your sentences to back you in a corner would be admired by the best at Langley.

- "Where were you??" "What were you doing??"

- "Babe, I told you, I was out with Taylor and Jack."

- "TAYLOR, huh? Is that your new fucking slut?"

- "Uh, babe, Taylor's a guy..."

-"Uh-huh, sure he is, what the fuck Brad -- cheating on me, I can't believe you."

- "What the hell Ali, I was out with the guys, you know this... I'd never cheat on you."

- "Oh so you thought about it?!"

- "What?! No!"

- "Whatever Brad, I'm done... have fun with Taylor."

- ".... he's a guy..."

Most importantly, girls are very judgemental. From the acne on your face to the clothes on your back, girls will pick apart every aspect of every person. If your shirt doesn't match, your make-up is done wrong, or your shoes are tied with bunny rabbit ears instead of loop-de-loop, you can expect to feel your ears begin to burn.

On that topic, girl's are incredibly picky. Not that standards are wrong, but sometimes being picky results in accepting everything that's left. In a recent New York Times article, they interviewed single ladies out and about on a typical Chapel Hill night about the 60%/40% distribution of females to males on campus. Without unnecessary name dropping, the interviewed female revealed that "Out of that 40 percent, there are maybe 20 percent that we would consider, and out of those 20, 10 have girlfriends, so all the girls are fighting over that other 10 percent." The article goes on to relate that, because of these numbers, females on campus feel the need to sleep around with multiple guys, on the first night out together, in order to lock said guy down before another girl swoops in for the kill. Futhermore, due to the lack of men and multitude of women, the girls tend to let slide when their boyfriends cheat on them, because "if you don't let it slide, you don't have a boyfriend." Granted, the women who were interviewed were sowhority girls (if you don't like the nickname, don't play up the stereotype) and maybe their choices wouldn't be so slim if they didn't feel the elitism that comes with sororities and fraternities, and disregard those on campus who aren't affiliated with Greek life.

Judging from the statistics of the article, only one member of my 6 person living arrangement has the opportunity to find love on campus. Perhaps I should transfer? Any suggestions?

Damn women.

How 'bout that ride in....?

Guess that's why they call it Sin City.. *nervous chuckle*

OK, so I didn't go to Vegas, I went to NYC and I have to say... it was quite the experience. I've been putting off writing because I have to find an elegant and entertaining way to relay my adventures in New York. I wouldn't want to disappoint my adoring fans. Surprisingly, I think this is going to be the hardest post to write. So with some nudging from a friend, *ahem* AJ, and without further adieu, I give you... A Southerner's Tail: Dylan Goes North. (Gahd, the atrocious things I reference. And if you don't get that reference, you should go back to kindergarten. P.S. Tail is, indeed, spelled correctly.)

1300 hours: Step off the plane in Newark, New Jersey. Temperature: 27 degrees (WTF, Blogspot? Can't make a degree symbol?) Intercepted by AJ at Terminal A. Destination: White Castle. Yes, I took a trip up north... to visit White Castle. Judge me if you will but, it was worth every dollar I paid for plane tickets. After four sliders and a chocolate shake, I boarded the plane and headed home. The End.

Calm down... just kidding.

Next morning we took off into the city early. Taking the train and subway into Newark and NYC. If you like Chinese food and hate spending a lot of money, a.k.a. most Americans, do yourself a favor and go to Chinatown. For less than $20, you can feed a small militia. No joke, a posse of Stormtroopers were actually at the table beside us. After buying some counterfeit goods and hearing "tank 'oo come again" (too racist?) more times than I could count, we toured Madam Tussuad's wax museum. Some figures were really good. Some were... frighteningly bad. Apparently Harrison Ford is 24, red-headed, and judging from his small stature, hardly capable of cracking a whip or making the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs. Best part of the museum? Watching a small Asian girl pose with Brad and Angelina. How many kids is that now.... 9?

Walking through the New York streets, I actually heard people yelling from their cars at other drivers. Flying profanities. "Fuck you, you fucking fuck!" "Move you're ass you fucking piece of shit." It was very colorful. And it made my day. I seriously thought they only did that in movies. It even made me wanna adopt a New York accent because, I don't think cussing is as frowned upon if you sound like you're from Brooklyn. So I decided to try it out.

*Walking 7th Ave, bumping shoulders with a New Yorker*

Me: " 'eyy watch where yous goin' you fuck! Wassamaddawitchu?!"

New Yorker: "You're not from around here, are you"

Me: *sigh-- looks at ground* "... no."

We killed time until we saw a play at 8. Unfortunately, during the killing time period, I got distracted by all the bright lights, and wandered away. Lost in New York, I did the only thing I knew to do. I rented a room at the Plaza Hotel, played inside Duncan's Toy Chest.. er, FAO Schwarz, and made friends with the pigeon lady in Central Park. Uhm, excuse me a moment. *murmurs* Wait, what's that? Wrong movie? Oh.. Home Alone 2? Right. Sorry. They won't press charges? Good. So my producers tell me I didn't get lost. That was just the dream I had while I savored the most heavenly piece of cheesecake I've ever tasted, courtesy of Junior's in Times Square. You know what... forget Chinatown. Just have the cheesecake. And save room for dessert.

All of New Years Eve was spent standing in Times Square. Literally. Standing. For 12 hours. I think I'd have cracked if it weren't for Gameboys, bagel sandwiches, the couple from Wisconsin, and the beautiful Aspenites - Amanda, Andrea and Connie (shameless name dropping). And here I thought the French were assholes... huh. Throughout the 12 hours, I finished a whole song of 99 Bottles of Beer -- scratch that off my bucket list -- heard "Empire State of Mind" more times than I ever wanted to, and realized I apparently need to learn the lyrics to Rent's "Seasons of Love" because every person in New York knew the words but me. I managed to just blurt out LOVE! at all the right moments. Then... it was time. 1 minute. 30 seconds. 15. Countdown from 10 as the ball drops anddd.... it's over. The End. For real this time. Let's go home. 12 hours for a ten second ball drop. And you know what?

It was worth every second of it.

Happy New Year

P.S. Blogspot doesn't know how to format spaces between paragraphs.

P.S.S. I'm too lazy to figure out how to fix it.

Merry Christmas, you filthy animal!

... and a Happy New Year.

I realize that greeting is a little early. Call me ambitious. That's actually the last thing you should call me. Judging from my frequent updates, I'd wager I won't have another update until next year, so the greeting is timely. That's quite exciting. Since this is a new blog, 6 total posts in December (my first and only month of blogging so far), I'll be opening up a new header in the sidebar... 2010! with a sub heading of January. Just another notch in my belt. I'm gunna try to have at least one post in each month, just so judging by the sidebar... I'll look really active.

Christmas! The festival of lights!... no,wait.. that's Hannukah. Joyous Kwanzaa? What ever you choose... have a good one. Unfortunately, Santa doesn't stop at the houses of 20 year olds anymore. What gives Santa?? Now you're just being lazy. Alas, no waking up at dawn to run downstairs and survey the bounty that Santa had delivered. Hmm.. now that I think about it, Santa's been on a slow demise over the past few years. When I was young, Santa arranged his presents all neat under the tree, then, it was more like he punt kicked them under the there. Haha this year, there's none under there at all. Could be because the last family that enjoyed opening presents... ended up like this--

Would you like that gift wrapped?

On to New Year's, I'm taking a step out of the south and heading up to "dirty Jerz" for a few days, then heading into NY and Time Square for New Year's Eve. First time being north of NC. They may send me back home, who knows. I'm actually gunna ride on a subway. I've never been to a subway before without leaving with a sandwich. I'm also gunna attempt to visit all the tourist-y places, without standing out like a tourist... You never wanna look like a tourist. But, my Brooklyn accent's filling out fairly well, so I may blend in.

I'll let you know...

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned...

The "Next Blog" feature does NOT function the way I'd like. It should give me a random blog each time, you know, to open my horizons and let me find something interesting I would like to follow. Right? Doesn't that seem logical? Instead, the first blog it lands me on... all of the other's themes follow suit. Plus, they're all random topics that, I really don't think could possibly be entertaining to anyone.

First string of "Next Blog" hits: Family Blogs. Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure your family is just as sweet and cute and perfect as everyone else, but I honestly don't care to read about how many times your toddler took a shit today.

Second string of "Next Blog" hits: Blogs in Foreign Languages. I think this one speaks for itself.

Third string of "Next Blog" hits: Religion. I'm a college student. I have religious nut jobs shoving theology down my throat every day I walk through campus."Would you like to sign up for our small study group?" "Bless your filthy heart!" "Turn or Burn!" "Donate to our church?" "YOU'RE GOING TO HELL!" I'm a Christian. I know my religion. What I don't know is why people feel the need to force feed it to me. And I don't need to see it on blogs either. I have it covered.

While I'm on a roll, let me put this out there as well...

What kind of prestigious degree from an Ivy League school does one need to work at Domino's? Last night's attempt of late night pizza was one huge clusterfuck that involved 6 pizzas, 20 bucks, and the district manager. First of all, Domino's pizza sauce is sub par to say the least, so we opted for white sauce. The garlic/Parmesan sauce instead of tomato based. It's much better, trust me. So my suite mate ordered "white sauce" on all our pizzas, but Mr. Magna Cum Laude from the University of Domino's Pizza heard "light sauce" instead. Therefore, not only did we still get red sauce on our pizza, we got very little red sauce on our pizzas.

My suite mate calls Domino's back, very politely, I might add, and informs them that we ordered white instead of red sauce. The lady on the phone replied that she was very sorry for the mix up and would make us 3 fresh pizzas and send them out. 3 more pizzas? The night just became worthwhile. Around 40 minutes later, Domino's calls to say they will be here shortly and to bring the other pizzas back outside. Wait. You never said you wanted the other pizzas back? Regardless of the fact that we ate said pizzas while we waited for the new ones, we could have very well thrown them away as well. Some prior notice that you were looking to get the first delivery back would have been appreciated.

Now we have a problem. This is just too much for Domino's to handle by itself, so they have to call the district manager. At 2:30 in the morning. The manager calls, questioning and interrogating us as if we'd just tried to make off with The Crown Jewels, backing us into corners, trying to weasel information out of us. Look lady, we just wanted some damn pizza. Your store screwed up the order, offered to send us new pizzas, we accepted. This should not have turned into such an ordeal. So after 30 minutes of corporate phone calls, we're left high and dry; hungry with shitty pizzas. All because Luigi couldn't differentiate "white" from "light." I'm just glad he didn't take that job with the Stock Exchange. "Did he say 'buy' or 'sell'...? Ah, shit."