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Friday Night, and I'm being a loser and staying in. Studying as usual.
Well let's see. In the past week I managed to watch 3 movies.

Hell Boy: Mediocre at best, CG and costumes were pretty crappy, and the plot didn't really go anywhere.

Jersey Girl: Being a fan of Kevin Smith's oeuvre, a huge fan of his seminal work, Clerks, and still well aware of the gradual decline in every subsequent movie I wasn't anticipating Jersey Girl to be phenomenal, but at least mildly humorous movie if perhaps a bit self-indulgent(like Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back). Holy shit was I wrong. What a terrible movie. The first 30 seconds were funny. Where none of the main actors were present. Then it all went down from there. I want my two hours back. I was sitting there the whole time thinking "Boy this is just a big gag, maybe a flashback leading up to the funny part" But by the time the credits rolled I knew I had been duped. This was one of those movies where it was made under the pretense that if you throw enough big names at a terrible script it has to be good. Negative Ghostrider, the pattern is definitely full. Kick Kevin Smith in the junk for me next time you see him.
I'm not bitter.

The Incredibles: Saw this up in Pittsburgh with (my now sugar-mama) Lara at the crazy super-mega-ultraplex at the Waterfront. Good plot, good characters, funny, overall a good movie. Could have used a little more full frontal nudity, but I guess I'll survive. Plus it had the star wars episode 3 preview. I'm sure it'll be a let down like the others but the preview looked amazing.

School is going well, 4 weeks left including thanksgiving break or the "Jason sleeping for 10 hours a day" break. I have no idea how i'm going to recall all the info for my finals. Each test we've had previously was comparable to an undergrad final. So this will be like a final of finals.
Crikey.

Halloween was awesome. I went to Athens, OH with Lara and met the fam. Watched the Grudge (another bad movie...dammit!) and proceeded to go to a Jesse Jackson/Michael Moore love-in. I voted for Kerry, but damn, Moore's a douchebag, albeit, a funny, charismatic douchebag, but still a douchebag nonetheless. Anyways onto more apolitical stuff, The Athens Halloween Block Partytm is one of, if not the largest Halloween party in the country. It's basically what I imagined Mardi Gras to be like, but with more hot 80's Icons and fewer beads.

I got a member of this all female group of Kiss impersonators to strike a pose, kinda scary:



Adult Swim... nuf said:



This ones funny because first off, the entirely original "Sexy Firefighters" looking pretty damn drunk, then the dude in the prison jumpsuit yelling at the lady in forefront who appears to be cowering:



Human Beer Pong Table. Genius! and bonus points for the fonz pose:



Totally overplayed, but still funny, everytime I see it. I just got the urge to yell Okay! Whaat! every time i saw someone impersonating Lil Jon:



Just kinda a good idea of the scale of this (take note of the guy in the browns jersey with the sign that says, "will suck dick for 3rd string job") :


Better quit while i'm ahead.
Good update, eh?

Cheers,

Jason

Currently Listening: Talib Kweli - Joy

Well per Lara's request here's a somewhat early monthly update:

Fall is here and I'm trapped indoors. Well this month hasn't seen much change from the last one. Just lots of studying with the occasional roadtrip to Pittsburgh thrown in to add some excitement to my life.
Anatomy's been a lot of work, but it's really interesting. We're working on the head and neck region at the moment which is the most complex anatomical segment of the course. We're even issued a skull to learn all the foramen (holes) as well as the different bones, sutures, and processes on the skull.
Intro to Patient Care has been the most useful class. We're learning basic patient interviewing skills as well as physical exam skills. The kind of stuff that I'm gonna be using everyday. We're all really bad at it at the moment. But everyone's expectations have been fairly low which isn't surprising considering most of us are 5 months out of undergrad, we've all learned very quickly to preface any interaction with patients with a handy disclaimer"hello, my name is such-and-such, i'm a first year medical student...." The patient interview is a really difficult skill and I think that'll take the longest to master effectively. We shall see.
Biochemistry is horrible.
Cell Biology has been fairly interesting. It's fairly complicated material, but the professor, Dr. Fiish, actually creates his own illustrations that dumb it down for us med students. Plus he does microbrewing, so he's cool in my book.
There hopefully I've managed to bore you with all my classes.
Well i've now been vegan for 2 years. Apparently it won't kill me.
I've also since found out that in my absence my A-section brothers in Flint have managed to recruit 31 new members, effectively tripling the number of active members. Nice work guys. I guess I was the one holding you back.

Cheers.
Jason

Currently Listening: The Smiths - How Soon is Now?
Current Onion Headline: "Nation's Elderly Hit Hard By Closing Automatic Doors"

Well I've made it through a little over a month of medical school now. All i've got to say is wow. Really interesting stuff that we're getting, but then again we're also getting so overloaded that at times it becomes hard to stay interested. In anatomy we just finished up with the upper extremity (fancy speak for "arm") and now we're studying the thorax and learning about the heart, lungs, and all that fun stuff.
Had a nice labor day break up in pittsburgh, though i did nowhere near the studying that i needed to do. Even managed to swing by the parents for a few hours on the way back down to Huntington.
Um...Hurricane Frances sucks. We're getting some wicked rain now, I think it's been raining non stop for over 48 hours now and it should continue for a while too. My running path is currently underwater since it follows a stream. So hopefully I'll get to do some river fording in the Tercel.
Okay, back to biochemistry.
Cheers.
Jason

Currently Listening: "The View" - Modest Mouse
Current Onion Headline (In Brief) - "Emeril Bams Groupie"

Yo. Long break from the website. And there'll probably be another long one before i update this. Since I've last posted, i've finished up Organic Chemistry 2 in Calvin College(Grand Rapids, MI) which was the most hellish month of class ever. My worthless sack of a lab partner helped make it even better - after doing 90% of the work I gave it to him to hand it in after I'd left for WV and he managed to hand it in 4 days late. Anyways, I've since moved down to Huntington, WV where this monday I started my week of orientation at Marshall School of Medicine. Next monday classes begin. I'm living on the 2nd floor of a 4th year med student's house. While he's on clinical rotations in California I'll get the joint to myself. So that's going well. Orientation has been a huge pain, I was so anxious to get started on real work and we ended up going over paperwork and introductions and award ceremonies and motivational talks for the whole week. Oh well, at least we get free food. My last weekend of freedom for a while is coming up, time to figure out what i'm gonna do during it. Anyways, I hope everything is going well with everyone in PA/MI. I've yet to outgrow AIM so drop me a line and let me know how it's going sometime.
Cheers.
Jason

Current Songs:
"Rocky Raccoon" - Beatles
"Another Morning Stoner" - And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead

Current Onion Topic: Kerry Unveils One-Point Plan For Better America - the removal of George W. Bush from the White House. (HA)

Wow, wasn't that anti-climactic? Since Saturday I've been a college graduate, but i'm still overwhelmed with schoolwork and will be for over a month (ignoring the fact that I've got 4 more years of school). This weekend was absolutely phenomenal though. Finally got to see my parents after 6 months. They took me to Qdoba, which was cool, few things beat Qdoba, but free Qdoba is definitely one of them. Lara flew in for the weekend too, which was great, but unfortunately had to occupy herself while I studied for all my Saturday Finals. There is something really cool about handing in your last final and walking out of school. And proceeding to go to a hole in the wall bar before graduation. A bunch of brothers came to graduation too, so I had a rockin cheering section to play me across the stage. Hrmm...what else. Gearing up to get out of Flint for the last time. Oddly enough I think i'm gonna miss it in a way. At the very least i've grown accustomed to it. I know where everything is, I know what streets to avoid, and just when I'd found a place to get really good pita and hummus, I gotta move out. Oh well, hopefully Huntington has hummus too.

Cheers,
Jason

Currently Listening: "Nothingsevergonnastandinmyway"-Wilco

It's official. School sucks. Projects suck. The weather sucks.
I'm going to keep this short because I have to get back to studying for a test, but i figured i'd just do another brief update while taking a break from Machine Design.



Basically, i've got about 9800 different things i have to do between now and next saturday. And so I end up having to rank them based on importance, due date, and effect on my grade if I don't do them. It's a lot of fun. I never thought that my very last week and a half at Kettering would be so hectic, but it will be. I seem to remember old guys getting drunk their entire last week here. Damn old guys. I think I had single solitary beer Saturday night. So at least I've got that going for me. Which is nice.
Enough bitching. More studying.
Hopefuly I'll make it to Pittsburgh this weekend.

Currently Listening: Promise Ring "Why did we ever meet" (I get on Emo kicks late at night)
Current Onion Headlne: "Nancy Reagan available at 82"

Well, here I sit back in Flint after an awesome, long, lazy weekend in Pittsburgh with Lara. And now I get to enjoy going back to the daily grind in Flint for a few more weeks. Here's a shot of my drive into Pittsburgh, Its so cool coming around the bend and seeing the city open up like this:

Got to catch up with the Snyders too which was fun. Their new place is really nice. Though moving a couch up the stairs was less than ideal, but not too bad. Made a complete ass of myself playing pool really badly with Zack. You ever play pool at an hourly rate? And how it's cheaper than paying per game? Not at the speed I play. The regulars even shook their head at our table on the way out.
3 weeks left till gradumatation and subsequent de-Flintification. I'll have to do some sort of detox or something.
Rents are aboot to move into the new place near Clarksburg, WVa. Guess who gets to help move?? What with all my crazy classes, it'll be my first trip "home" since christmas. Though at this point my built in "I'm Home Compass" thing is all messed up, so i don't really know if it'll feel like home or not. That's all for now, I hope everyone else had a great weekend. Have fun getting back to normal if you haven't already. And if you're reading this and live in the area and want to hang out sometime let me know, cause my time in Flint is growing shorter and busier.

Cheers,

Currently Listening: "Leslie Anne Levine" - The Decemberists

Well, i'm sitting here procrastinating on my paper that i've been working on for about a week now. I've got about 3 1/2 hours left to write it, but i needed a break, so I thought I'd go check out some current eventage on cnn.com. except that I was subjected to this absolutely hilarious picture:



Actually it was hilarious like a week ago when every major news site showed a picture of a different gas station with the same Arm, Leg, First Born sign covering up the prices of gas. Now it's just stupid. i gotta wonder if some asshole is just putting them up so that they can be used as the stock picture for "When Gas Prices Skyrocket". I think ideally what they should have a picture of is someone in a small POS econobox sticking his head out the window and laughing at all the SUV enthusiasts racking up a $50+ bill at the gas station to fill up. But yeah, back to those assholes with the "funny" signs. I'm gonna kick 'em in the nuts.

Moral; if you wanna be funny, be original. Otherwise, get kicked in the nuts by me.

Um yeah, besides that, I worked on my research paper all weekend and hated life. And now i'm preparing to hate life even more because I'm not going to be sleeping much tonight.
Well anyways. I hope you all had a good weekend.

Cheers.

Currently Listening: The Bad Plus - Neptune

Well, after my short break where i only had 5 classes, i'm back up to 6 classes with the start of O-chem over at the Jr. High this week. So yeah, academically speaking life sucks. I'm also writing a paper regarding the leadership qualities of both John Kerry and George Bush. They're both just a bunch of douchebags and it angers me that either party would waste such exorbitant ammounts of money to campaign for and support these people. Why can't we get a candidate who's not going to tax the hell out of us and at the same time manage to not shove his morals down our throats? Yeah, it's probably as likely as the ascension of a leprechaun to the presidency. Oh well, i think that personal freedoms are more important than economic freedoms and the like, so it looks like i'm going to have to side with the dumbocrats on this one.


Hrmm...well that was fun, I hope you all enjoyed my grossly uninformed political opinion.

So on another topic, I managed to get vaccinated for chicken pox today, which in and of itself is a crappy $70 dollar proposition for literally 5 seconds of work; and I didn't even get a band-aid out of it, but additionally, to get there i had to drive all over parts of flint that i'd never seen and don't really plan to go back to anytime soon. I bitch about Flint all the time, and that's only after seeing the fairly decent part we live in around the school. I drove past Dayton Ave, MLK blvd, and a sign that actually said "Illegal Drug Area: Loitering Prohibited", where's a camera when you need one?
I think of all the cool signs that have been "found" thru the years here and I think that would be the coolest one of all. Only problem being that to "find" it you'd have to go out there at night, and I don't think i'd want to drive thru that area at night, much less get out of my car with a screwdriver and a stepladder in order to "find" the sign off ot the post it's mounted on.
But i guess on the brighter side, at least now I know where to go to get my drugs.


Uh yeah, that's enough for one night, now that ive got this picture thing figured out, expect a more interesting site. I probably went a little crazy today, but oh well.
Cheers

Currently Listening: Jayhawks - Bad Time

sweet jeebus, i've got pictures now!
A sleeping Daisy. What's new?

Life is good. It's May and Flint is finally starting to recover from winter. So it's been a lot nicer to run. School sucks per usual, but i managed a brief respite in Iowa for Zack's wedding. Congrats buddy. Hrmmm..well not much else, just anxiously awaiting the weekend.
Cheers

Currently Listening To: Deftones - "Feticiera"

Well, it's April, and it's nice outside, which means more distractions from schoolwork, amongst other things. With the awesome weather I've actually managed to run a lot, i'm aiming to run a marathon in a year, in the hopes that it will motivate me to run more. So far(4 weeks now) it seems to be working. I've been managing 5-6 runs per week. Oddly running thru flint isn't as bad as most would think. Besides the occasional used prophylactic, hypodermic needle, and broken Crown Royal or Bud Ice bottles, the runs have been's fairly safe. I haven't been shot at yet, and i haven't been mugged, so at least i've got that going for me. Though it's probably because I run through the suburban island near flint. Surprisingly I've been fairly studious. I guess i have to be, i've got 24 credits at the moment. I get to see all the other normal school people about to graduate and i've still got a solid 2 months. argh. Can't wait to get outta flint. This summer I'll be in Grand Rapids, Mich, going to Calvin College for a month long super fast O Chem 2 class. Oh yeah, i'm a b-section student for the term, that's kinda interesting, it's a little different than a-section, b-section seems to be a little less studious, so that's cool for me, cause that means i don't change at all and my grades should go up, though we shall see.
Oh yeah, here's my classes:
Energy Systems - Interesting lab and class, good prof, an assload of work on the stupid reports though.
Machine Design - Holy crap, what the hell is going on here?
Crash Safety - awesome class, we get to relearn dynamics and then apply it to crash safety
Plays of Shakespeare-holy crap, don't even get me started
Senior Seminar - Interesting debates, but I don't have time for a class like this
Gen Chem 2 - that's over next week, and then O Chem 1 starts up, going until June(I hate life)

Nothin else up here, life is boring, but for once that's good. Also: coffee rules
Cheers

Currently Listening: Macgregor - Kung Fu
Currently: Not reading

What's happened since Feb 10? quite a bit. Big news is that I'm going to Marshall University, barring any unforseen fuck-ups on my part. Looks like i'll be taking Ochem 1 at Carmen Ainsworth in Flint, come may. And then classes over the summer out in Grand Rapids.
Work experiments went pretty well, we're finally done with the cadaveric part of the research. Now I get to look at a bunch of data. Arghh....
Went to see battle of the bands at KU, one of the cooler things i've done that was Kettering sponsored. Blanket Party was pretty freakin good, I mean how could they be bad; they've got a song describing how Crayola crayons are responsible for 3rd world sweat shops.
Jensen's wedding was pretty fun. My first Lambda Chi wedding, magic carpet ride is a lot of fun with a crap load of brothers. Surprisingly, open bars are also fun.
Charity Valet was also fun, I managed to at least get to ride in a Ferrari. And then drive a crapload of luxury SUV's that made me actually appreciate my tercel.
Colds really suck, i thought i was done with this one, but then it got worse again. So I went from going to the gym 6 days/week to not at all cause, with any ammount of exertion i start coughing fits. I hate life.
Cheers

Currently Listening: Grateful Dead - Sugaree
Currently: Drinking Chiraz

More of the same from Flinttown...Work Class Workout Sleep with a little internet slacking occasionally fitting in somewhere.

No word from Marshall University yet... dammit!!

Seen somewhere: Flint; Our Crackwhores can Beat Up Your Crackwhores.
Ah, Flint, I will miss you...

Um..Music Recoms..Well Let's see here.........The Books are really good, kinda electronic/pop rock, good irregardless of my crappy genre-making-up........... Belle And Sebastian - At first I thought they really sucked, but at the behest of a fan, i gave them another listen...not too bad, kinda reminds me of 60's pop, kinda sappy, but that's good sometimes, it's also probably really good listening for the stoners out there. anyways......Atmosphere, I heard Trying to Build a Balance on MTV2 and liked it, the rest of their stuff is pretty good too, plain hip-hop..................... Idlewild, really good shit, Scottish Rock...................... Incubus' new album is also pretty good. The first track(also the single) alone just gets ya goin..........Um, that's all I got for now, that was kinda fun, maybe I should regularly do this. Haha, as if I regularly do anything....well anyways, feel free to ridicule me for my choices in music, just remember, I"m always right.

Now that my 22nd year is complete, I feel I should address something that I've learned over the years in order to help increase the overall pool of knowledge but my sleep-deprived brain couldn't think up anything entertaining enough to put here.. and rather than let down my loyal readership, i'll just end it here.
Cheers

Currently Listening: Belle and Sebastian- The Rollercoaster Ride
Currently: Smelling like Glue