Liquid Nonsense

Apparently my scholastic achievements are good enough to get me into Eta Kappa Nu, the Electrical and Computer Engineering Honors Society. I guess when the time to put the list came together my name got on there somehow, despite the fact I'm taking one pseudo-class this semester.

I wouldn't be sitting here so bemused by this except for all the work I did with Tau Beta Pi (the comprehensive Engineering Honors Society), which is substantially larger than EKN. Did I also mention I was chairman of the public outreach committee my first year or that I sat on the engineering college council meetings as the TBP representative? Or the fact that I was chapter president for '04-'05? Possibly even that I've been a voting delegate to the national convention or that I've argued in front of a 500 person assembly to alter organizational bylaws? Let's also not forget all the events I helped put together or the legal battles I fought for on behalf of the organization when ASU tried brow-beating me with the Buckley Amendment with regard to new members.

Let me just say that I had a rather busy year running the show and being a lot of places. I don't particularly want to be involved with another society, but I very well may show up for the free food. 'Cause that's really what being in an engineering honors society is all about: the free food.

The last several days have been pretty interesting in terms of entertainment. On Thursday Heidi called me up and let me know that she had acquired tickets to a sneak preview of Flyboys on behalf of the Phoenix Film Society. It sounded like a pleasant deviation from the normal Thursday night activities and I had the free time... Wow, what a horrible dog-shit movie. Let me be clear: I didn't walk into that movie expecting it to be good. I walked into that movie with roughly the same expectations I have whenever I walk into a movie that I wasn't particularly interested in. It failed to meet even those. Not only are the main characters disinteresting, but they have no plot arcs either. Really only the peripheral characters have any sense of depth. Disappointing. As much as I'd love to discuss plot, I have a policy against posting plot spoilers. Rest assured though, the plot sucked as well. Even the eye candy was sub-par. As much as I think James Franco is hot, there wasn't even partial nudity (at least that I can remember). Also, apparently Jean Reno is the only man on Earth capable of playing a Frenchman. According to IMDB he isn't even French.

Over the weekend Phil and I went to go see "Another Gay Movie." I didn't walk into this one with high expectations either, and surprisingly enough it turned out to be pretty good. Let me contextualize that: it's good in the same sense that "Not Another Team Movie", "Scary Movie", and "American Pie" were good movies. Really stupid plots, but they manage to make you laugh so you leave without the sense that you have been cheated. The other thing we did not realize about this movie until we were buying tickets was that it was rated NC-17. Both Phil and I agreed this was the first time either of us had seen an NC-17 film in theater. I won't go into any of the details here, but the movie is definitely not for the faint of heart. If you removed the full frontal male nudity and sex scenes from this movie you would possibly trim off about 20 minutes as well as a substantial amount of plot. There's not really a lot of eye candy in this film unless you happen to really enjoy hairless smaller-figured men (read as: twink). Matthew Rush (Probably not work safe) had a pretty humorous cameo appearance that I enjoyed.

In preparation for some photo stuff I want to start working on I've started learning how to do some of the neater tricks in Photoshop. Particularly giving images more of an impression of fine art than just being photo realistic. I'm going to keep playing with it and maybe one day I'll be halfway decent at it (samples are available in the Flickr gallery at the moment). While I'm on it, I believe all my pictures are finally up on Flickr. There's currently some 295 images up there in 15 sets.

Lastly, my yellow brick of a phone has finally decided it no longer wishes to cooperate with me. It has faithfully served me for somewhere in the neighborhood of 3+ years. When I purchased it I was still somewhat actively skating (and falling) and told the sales people that I wanted something that could take a substantial beating and keep on working. They sold me the Motorola i58sr. The selling point that hooked me was the fact it meets all military grade specifications on shock resistance, water resistance, and dust/sand resistance. Ever since I got that phone I never wanted to upgrade because every time I pick up a phone today I just take one look at it and go "Wow, this is a piece of shit." Of course, that's because my previous phone was rubber gripped and included fully accessible GPS, not just the faux GPS most phones give for emergency services. Enter the Motorola i580. Essentially the upgrade to my previous phone in a smaller more compact and flip version. All the same military specifications and robustness with a higher resolution screen and a few other bells and whistles. So when my phone decided to finally stop taking a charge completely and this one JUST became available I took it as a sign. RIP i58sr, your services have not been forgotten and your tasks have been taken up by the new generation of hardcore phones.

The ultimate problem with me hosting things on my own hardware is that implicit long periods of downtime are inevitable. For instance, me hosting my own photo gallery is a recipe for disaster because that means I have to keep a computer running as a web server and offer up my own bandwidth to make it available. So I bit the bullet (well, not really) and got a Flickr account. I'm sneaking pictures up when I can.

My Flickr Sets

I ordered a colorimeter last night for calibrating my monitors and laptop for optimal quality. I suspect I'm going to end up re-uploading a lot of these once I have them properly color corrected. Mostly because I am that big of a dork.

The following are the sets that should be up soon:

Memorial Day weekend
Fetish prom
Las Vegas trip
Misc. from Tempe
China (though I have so many from China it will be broken down into regions)

I'm also attempting to start various photo projects on the side. As those come to fruition I'll be putting pieces up as well.

Dear Gay HQ,

Another year is coming to a close and I realize it is time for me to make sure my membership is still valid. I know that I am terrible with paperwork, so I wanted to make sure that I take care of this early on. I also know there have been a few times in the past where my membership has come into question because I have not earned enough rainbow points in the year. Though this may sound silly, I am quite fond of the discount we receive at Barnes & Noble as well as the fabulous "member's club" shopping at various malls across America, and would like to reaffirm that my membership is in strong standing.

I feel that the following items more than sufficiently qualify my membership for renewal, if not access for the elite member's "Flame" card:

I have spent more money on underwear in the last year than I have in the first 23 years of my life. The collection includes choices from 2(x)ist, Aussie Bum, Ginch Gonch, Under Armor, Body Glove, and Calvin Klein. I would like to point extra attention to my low-rise "weiner eater" series briefs that I am quite fond of. Also, my ass looks amazing in my graphite floral low-rise briefs from Aussie Bum. This is partially narcissism, but mostly fact.

I know what a topiary is. I can identify one, I can use the word in a sentence, and once long ago I sold them.

As far as I can tell, I am the only student at my yoga studio with a bright orange yoga mat with little yellow flowers on it. I am currently on a quest to find a matching speedo.

I enjoy dick. Other people's. A lot.

If you talk about Sean Cody or Corbin Fisher, I know you are not referring to some southern good ol' boys from Alabama.

My array of personal grooming products is stellar. One bottle contains a mixture of sea salt, lemon, seaweed, Scottish sea water, lime juice, coconut oil, and vanilla- the other contains an amazing concoction of creamed coconut and Vetivert Oil; I refer to them both as shampoo. My conditioner is an all natural blend of Cocoa butter, avocado extract, fresh figs, fresh bananas, fresh passion fruit, ylang ylang oil, cyrpus oil, sandalwood oil, and lastly chlorophyll. My hair is amazing. I prefer a facial scrub composed of both fine & course sea salts, grapefruit juice, lime extract, avocado butter, coconut fat, lime oil, seaweed, and violet leaf. For cleaning the entire body the current selection is "Flying Fox" made from honey, jasmine absolute, ylang ylang oil, cypress, and palmarossa. Last, but certainly not least, is my facial moisturizer constructed from lavender honey water, linseed, aloe vera, cold pressed almond oil, cocoa butter, fresh wheatgrass, shea butter, African marigold oil, tangerine, and sandalwood. I don't look like a hippie, but I probably smell like an exceptionally clean one. Honorable mentions: my vanilla mango shaving cream and American Crew hair forming gel.

Related to a previous point, my pr0n will not fit on a single DVD. It will not fit on several for that matter. To date, my contributions back to my fellow man very likely exceed 50 gigabytes.

I enjoy musicals. I have even seen Les Miserables twice. Once at the London Palace Theater, and once at Gammage.

I know the difference between Navajo White, Eggshell, Off white, and Cream. For that matter, I also know the differences between Burgundy, Maroon, Sangria, and Wine. I own several shirts with coloring from the second set.

If questioned on the street I will lie, but I definitely know all the words to Gloria Gaynor's "I will survive," and in my native habitat (read as: when alone) will sing along rather loudly.

Clearly this list could continue on for quite a while, but I feel these highlight points are sufficient. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to my new membership card arriving in the mail shortly.

Sincerely,

Chris

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Dear Mr. Grasso,

In response to a discussion from earlier, you asked what the fundamental unit and decay rate of "cute" was. I have brought this ever so important question to my team of scientists and we have arrived at the following formulation.

We need a starting point, and classical Newtonian physics and calculus should provide such a grounding. Firstly, consider the relationship between distance, velocity, and acceleration. From calculus we know that these are related to one another via differential and integral calculus. That is to say that velocity is the integral of distance, and acceleration is the integral of velocity.

Consider the following: we start with the base unit of a Helen. 1 Helen is the amount of beauty necessary to launch a 1,000 standard, soldier-carrying Greek ships to battle. My scientists tell me that since 1 Helen is the amount of beauty NECESSARY to launch those ships, whereas cute is the application of beauty, thus being it's integral. Therefore, we shall adopt the unit of 1 Cuddle (henceforth written as C not to be confused with Coloumbs) being defined as a 1 Helen per second. This unit would be extremely large in most cases, and thus when referring to other people we adopt expressions such as "that person is exerting at least 36 micro-Cuddles of cute on that guy."

Since we are aiming for analogues to classical physics, we must extend this unit once more to have a third level integral. Since we would then essentially talking about the "rate of change of cute." I feel the appropriately named unit, since we are referring to the rate of change of cute, is the Keg (K, not to be confused with Kelvins). Thus, 1 Keg is 1 Cuddle per second, or rather, 1 Keg is 1 Helen per second, per second.

While the names have not been thoroughly decided upon, I feel they are good transitional titles. We propose a further investigative study into the human threshold of cuddles per second as 1 Keg, as defined above, is most likely fatal. We are all looking forward to further analysis.

All the best,

Professor Dr.

Very nearly a year ago I set out on a mission of self-exploration and change to develop, and more fully integrate, things into my life I didn't have time for in college. When I look back on my college experience it was a very positive experience, but it was also exceptionally time consuming. I partially suspect that my minor apprehension at diving back into the Master's program immediately is because I've started to become accustomed to having time to think, reflect, and develop things that are not quite so rooted in hard science. Honestly, I've developed an amateur interest in photography that's coming along rather well. A year ago my pictures sucked, and now I feel they're semi-passable. At the very least they don't make me look like a complete tool. I've gone to China to get my black belt. That was a personal milestone I had been working on when I could for the last 7 years. Three (or was it four now?) weeks ago I started doing Bikram Yoga. Yoga isn't quite like any other workout I've ever done, but the sense of body awareness is remarkably similar and just as effective in terms of physical catharsis. Actually, I'd say it's a lot more mood enhancing since it is essentially the same concept of "moving meditation" that I've done in Tai Chi. There's been substantially more reading and writing going on in my spare time. I've finished several books this year and I've been more actively journaling various thoughts and responses on paper for several months. Last, but certainly not least, I've even had an active healthy relationship going for eight months now with Phil. I have definitely gotten used to spending a few nights a week, and a couple mornings, with my boyfriend.

Let it be known that these are all Good things. I can just feel the forces of change moving on the inside and it's kinda weird. It's the sensation that if I were to talk to myself a year ago that I would recognize myself and certainly be able to relate, but present-me would be looking at identity related issues radically different and I'm sure there would be some disagreements, if not outright incredulity.

A year ago I was a full time student at ASU working as an intern. My classes included: American Religious Traditions, Statistics/Probability for Engineers, Geology Lecture and Lab, and History of Math. The only non-Geeky course is the religions one, and honestly the only reason I took that was because the University said I had to. I would grab a short dinner a few times a week with friends, but otherwise time was fairly restricted. My martial arts involvement was scaled back and the only way I was able to workout at all was a 1.75 hour window I had on T/Th in the middle of the afternoon plus Saturdays. I was also living with Clemens at the time and making various plans for grad school on the other side of the country. I also tried to set aside time for various things related to sexuality whether it be dating or chatting up guys.

Present. I am enrolled as a student at ASU as a fluke because I need three credits correctly counted so everyone can officially agree that I have indeed graduated. I am now a full-time software engineer for a prominent web company. My time outside of work is divided up between the martial arts, yoga, and working out. My physical activity is obviously substantially higher. Also, I have become even more of a Luddite now then I was as a computer science major, and I seldom do anything related to my computer outside of work, with the major of exception of occasional gaming and Photoshop. Speaking of Photoshop, I now take pictures of things. Quite a few pictures of things actually since I wanted to be more of a photographer. My plans for graduate school have changed several times over the last 10 months since CMU didn't have an opening on the team I wanted, but was it *really* the team I wanted to be on? On this particular matter I feel like some dubious wizard from the game Heidi and I have jokingly discussed several times has cast "Hellish Introspection Lvl. 10" on me.

These are the lingering questions that past-me and present-me will have to ponder on:

Why was I so driven toward graduate school? I still want to go, and I still want to be Dr. Badass, but is that path in computer science? Is that course that will lead to just my amusement, or also my satisfaction? Given my personality it's hard to tell at times.

Do I have any reasonable grasp of my sexuality? I don't think anyone has described me as shy in the last 7 years, but there are regions of apprehension in my own mind I don't understand. I believe, and engage, in hooking up. Why does my comfort level shift with this depending on the day? In high school I would have said absolutely not. In early college I would have said highly suspect. In later college I probably would have said "not for me, but I support you" Now I simply say "why not?" The same can be said for my outlook on several psychoactive compounds.

Why is it that I suspect I will have problems with things, and then I do them and realize that I not only don't have a problem, but I can thrive? I'm not shy, and I'm not particularly reserved but I don't draw a lot of attention to myself either. After a decent workout I am totally willing to walk around in a tank top and my board shorts hanging off my ass with a cocky smirk. A year ago that would have made me exceptionally self-conscious....I think. I'm not sure 'cause I didn't do it. I do it now and I feel great. What's the relationship there?

Why has the Zen/Taoist part of my personality asserted itself with a vengeance? A year ago I tried to stay busy and I would periodically remind myself of the expression "Eat when hungry, sleep when tired." Now I'm living this attitude. Why am I far less compelled to accomplish tasks set before me by others or live up to expectations other people set forth? It isn't that I don't aspire to great things, it's just I'm starting to see great things in my day to day life. Why do I no longer feel compelled in any meaningful way to achieve "success" in a societal sense?

I used to have what I thought was a great idea for a tattoo that I never acted on. It was a wing-like shape over my right shoulder blade composed of many smaller symbols. I never officially decided on the symbols I would use, but using the white space where the symbols weren't, I was going to outline the kanji for "stain." It's a beautiful character, but kanji tattoos are risky and extremely difficult to pull off even despite the fact I've studied Japanese and have been to Japan. The general idea was that the stain of experience is the force that teaches you how to fly. It's also the inherent duality of expressing the concept of stain in white space. What's worse: being stained with the innocence of never doing anything outlandish, or being stained with having done everything including what many will look down upon? I felt it was rather symbolic of the concept "Good experience grows in bad experience." We have to fuck up occasionally in life and have these periods of inward gazing. They suck, they leave you drained, and they tend to leave you feeling inert.

Right now I just chalk it up to the death throes of the person you were and the values you used to place emphasis on. Change is good, but sometimes it leaves you with growing pains.