Website Progression

I've really come down with the PTC (paid-to-click) bug lately.  After about 40 days of trying them out I've made a small amount of money, not too bad considering that you have to reinvest your earnings to make bigger amounts of money.

On NeoBux I had a sizable amount of money made through completing side tasks on CrowdFlower in addition to referrals and my own clicks.  I was trying to rent more referrals but after you become a premium member there's a weird system for obtaining them.  I got frustrated that I couldn't get any and used an express queue that costs almost twice as normal.  This wiped half of what I had at that point, which was only $40 total, but I had to extend the contracts of my referrals, which is eating up the pile I had accumulated.  Its a little deflating to see the amount I'd built up over the month disappear, but its a wonderful lesson.  I was suspecting I was growing too fast and this confirms it.  However, I've reached the cap for the lowest level of referrals and if I buy anymore its gonna cost a little more extra to buy and rent them, so I should just sit where I'm at and learn to manage my people properly.

Slightly dejected from my NeoBux experiments, I opened an account with Twickerz and I think I found a hidden gem.  Its consider legit and has been around for 2 years, but its relatively unknown.  Its very similar to NeoBux but there's a few tweaks to their system.  They have a premium system as well, but the lowest memberships cost $10 and $20, and you can jump in and start at whatever level you want.  Its recommended that you buy at least the lowest level if you wanna try it out for yourselves.

Twickers has plenty of ads to click in the course of the day, much more than NeoBux, and one gets points for every click that can be used to purchase account upgrades or even cash.  Twickerz has a variety of offers such as CrowdFlower tasks, surveys, and offers, but also has my personal favorite:  Virool videos.  Just click on the video links and you get a Twick Coin for letting it play to the end.  I just lower the volume and let them play since I do these PTC sites on a laptop while watching TV anyways.  Each Twick Coin is equal to half a penny, but it takes 30 days for the coins to validate and come to your account.  I've made almost $1.25 in Coin the last ten days, but have to wait for them trickle into my account.  Also of note is Twickerz Click Grid, a game of chance.  Members get 25-50 free clicks a day on a grid to try for prizes.  Other sites have these, but Twickerz seems to pay out more often than Clixsense and I've made 60 cents in the last 10 days, whereas I've never won anything but extra spin on other sites.  Is that really a prize when that's extra advertising clicks for the host?

These are just the bread and butter of Twickerz and is somewhat common among many PTC websites.  However, I've found a hidden gem on the site that I can't believe is real.  Twickerz allows users to invest money into ad shares for $10 each and generates a guaranteed $15 in 150 days.  While I'm unsure if this is a daily amount or equals 10 cents a day this is a very powerful product to get into.  Unlike referral renting, which Twickerz readily offers, there's no cost associated other than the original investment.  Referrals cost 20 cents to buy, but extending contracts and autopaying them costs money and its possible to lose money due to unproductive referrals.  Twickers is offering a 50% return on an investment which is unlike what I've seen from other PTC sites.  The drawback?  These can only be bought from your main account, meaning you have to actually generate $10 from the site before buying one.  With referrals, one can load money from Paypal onto an account and begin purchasing them, but Twickerz wants to ensure that only people who actively generate money have access to this wonderful offer.  If one chooses to try out Twickerz I highly suggest shooting for one of this Ad shares!  Already I've made it up to $3.00 on Twickerz in 10 days and am hoping to get some shares within the month.

My journey continues and I hope to keep everyone updated to my adventures into PTC land.  If you wanna try out Twickerz try signing up under me and we can discuss strategies to success:

http://www.twickerz.com/?ref=morteolx

Procrastinating For Fun and Profit

A few weeks ago I was preparing for Finals week and found myself talking to a German girl on Chat Roulette while avoiding my studies. Don't work, I ended up getting B's afterall.

 The girl I spoke with had stomach surgery and was laid up in a Romanian flat, she was in too much pain to do anything but couldn't fall asleep either. In a meandering conversation ranging from Transylvania and vampires to why Romanian men are evil she mentioned that she made money by stripping online and using pay-to-click websites. As a pudgy male slowly creeping into his middle-ages I was intrigued how this pay-to-click website thing worked. She mentioned a site called Neobux and I did some research to find out what it was. Apparently its the biggest site of this kind and has paid out money over the past 6 years with no complaints. I decided to register and give it a go to see how it all worked. All I needed was a Paypal account and a functioning e-mail account and I was set. I clicked few ads and made a few cents. Yippee.

The FAQs I read for the site basically said "Keep clicking ads and in about 3 weeks you'll have enough money to rent referrals and make residual income." I was fully prepared to do this but was clicking around the site and found an interesting button: mini jobs. This took me to a menu and there was a host of simple tasks that netted a few pennies each, much more than what the ads offered. One page tasked one to write answers to 4 or 5 questions for a penny. However, if the answers were adequate a bonus would be given. I plunged deep into a procrastination hole and filled out tons of these questions, mostly since this was more interesting than Physics or Anatomy notes. After filling out countless queries about where to found recipes and the common symptoms of various diseases I gave up and went to bed.

The next day my account balance was over $8.

Sure, its a small sum for a meaningful amount of work, but I have a laptop and a TV that plays Netflix, so its no deal for me to use both at once. Compared to the FAQs I was reading it felt like I was playing a game with cheat codes. I've managed to rack up a good deal of money in less than a month. I mention this to people at work and their eyes just glaze over, apparently this scheme only appeals to me. Yet I trudge on. 

***SHAMELESS PLUG AHEAD***

If you'd like to try this out go ahead and click on the banner at the top. If you don't have a Paypal account, or feel creeped out about giving to a random website, there's one on the left to Clixsense. Its a comparable site to Neobux but they can mail checks out to an address of your choosing. Just to be above the board, using my referral links helps me out. These sites are two of the oldest and most reliable sites of this kind I've found. As a bonus, if you refer me I'll be happy to chat with you about the sites and give a tip or two out. 

And if you don't wanna do it? Whatever. I'm kinda funny, keep on reading my stupid blog.

Lunch at Jenny Craig's

When I was in tenth grade I was basically a nerd in denial. I took a zero-hour chemistry course that was well before any sane person came to school. The class was full of Type-A students and seniors on the verge of dropping out. My lab table was the most diverse with a black kid named Marcus and a Korean named Jinn who were both skaters/sci-fi/anime geeks very similar to me. In between shoving thermometers into mystery liquids we'd talk about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dragon Ball, and video games. One day Jinn invited me to come over the his house to watch movies, whatever kids our age did. I went over on a Saturday, greeted by a Korean mom and a White dad, pretty typical stuff. We went to Jinn's room and something seemed a bit off. There were Dragon Ball wall scrolls, a set of Japanese action figures and the like, but there was some Sailor Moon posters and the room was a little too... pink? Jinn fired up his computer and showed me some ROMs he had and we talked about some manga he got from Asia when he visited some family members. Suddenly the door opened and the mother poked her head into the room.

"Jenny, I told you if you're having boys over you need to keep your door open."
"Sorry, Mom."

I can't remember if or what expression passed on my face in that moment. Jinn was Jenny? I heard the name 'Jenny Craig' thrown around at school a lot, but never in my chemistry class. People even TOLD ME I knew Jenny Craig, but I always pictured a chubby white girl and shrugged it off. But here I was, essentially meeting Jenny Craig for the first time. In her bedroom with Sailor Moon silently judging me. This was perhaps the first of several times where I felt like I was tricked into a date.

We ate some grilled cheese, watched some kind of movie in her room, and I'm not really sure when I left or how long I'd been there, but I never went out with Jenny Craig ever again.

The Water Bottle Squeeze Trick

All too often I get off of work late at night only hurry to my local coffee shop and lay some bullshit stories out for the poor guy running the counter. The Taylor kid suggested I write some crap online, embellish things, then $$$. I just remembered I had this blog where I bitched mostly about my Mother but hadn't updated it in a year. I don't know where the money comes in, but here's some tales of The Dude Named Vince.

I was routing around the back of the work fridge and found a bunch of water bottles I bought and left there a few months back. They piled up in the bottom tray and were ignored during fridge cleanings. I was really thirsty, so I grabbed a bottle and tried to twist off the cap to no avail. The things was bulging out, super pressurized, I would not come off. I gave it to a few people to try and open but nobody, not even a girl, could open it. A coworker, Michael, decided that releasing the pressure would make the task easier. He shoved a syringe into the side with an audible snap. The cap still wouldn't twist off but the stupid bottle was leaking now. I held the bottle sideways to prevent it from getting water all over my stuff and occasionally held the hole up to my face and squeezed a small stream of water out. Just hearing the sound, Michael commented that it made him want to take a piss. Walking around the office I kneeled next to Ludwig and whispered to him, "Do you know what it sounds like when I piss into peoples' mouths?" He made a face of disgust and gave me a dirty look. While looking him in the eye I squeezed the bottle into my open mouth, echoing the sound of peeing into a toilet. He was totally freaked out as I walked away to wander around the hospital a bit more.

Skittering Thoughts

I've been whining in the past about my lack of companionship, but recent event have come to light that I had forgot about until now. A girl or two have tried to hug me at work and I've had incidental brushes against various people lately. It seems I forgot how much I cringe when people touch me. I've somehow forgotten how much I hate to be touched, but its still there. All those little details about me I ignored when I melted away into the military are beginning to resurface, parts of myself I've hidden away for whatever reasons. Ever since I was young I shied away from physical contact, but I'd learned that telling people you don't want to be touched just caused them to want to tough you all the more. In a self-discovery phase in the hazy period around college I started to hug everyone I knew when saying hello. To conquer a fear of touching, I think. But then it was Air Force time, and they don't appreciate gay stuff like hugs in the armed forces. So hear I am. Nearly thirty and incredibly uptight whenever anyone comes to close to me.

A Fractured Summation Upon "Wholes and Holes"

Years ago in my lost and drunken odyssey after college I had a discussion with my ex-roommate and current friend Matt. I believe I wrote it down in a lost notebook, so please forgive me if I can't quite remember the details. "Wholes and Holes" was a sloppy pun relating two extreme type of people. Holes are people with a profound sense of lacking in their lives at a sub-conscious level. Being weak willed and needy they sought out their opposite, a 'whole person', to help fill the void in their souls. The total sum of one Whole and one Hole was half a person between two individuals. We concluded it was better to become a Whole person if one managed to avoid the empty Holes of the world. This conclusion was based upon the belief that such a thing as a 'Whole person' existed, which I now believe isn't so.

The Human Condition is horrible indeed and all people have holes within themselves that leads to a hunger for specific intangibles: Love, Respect, Adoration, Safety and Security, among others. The key is a need for the intangible, something one cannot hold or view. We can see through Maslow's Pyramid that as basic needs are met an individuals' attention scales up to the intangible. It can be argued that this hunger is the will that drives humans and these needs are the core of what it is to be human. What I once thought of as a Whole person, one essentially satiating every one of their needs, would be an unchanging, homeostatic state akin to death.

In essence, all living people are filled with an emptiness we are compelled to fill to relieve the tension caused by existence, this is the Human Condition as near as I can define it. The essential question an individual need ponder is the method one goes about filling their voids. Once I thought it foolish to depend upon others for our needs, but as communal creatures, to deny man's need to depend upon others is to deny his nature. All of us entered this world at our most vulnerable, the first first thing we require as newborns is Love at its most primal: food and body heat from our mothers' breast. Denying our reliance on others is equivalent to denying our most basic needs, and thus accepting our deaths.

Perhaps this 'lesson' is of a private sort, me just clearing the cobwebs between my ears. For the longest time I've hardened myself to others, striving to need no one but myself, to put no other before myself, but to that end I'm slowly becoming the male equivalent of a crone. Often it's been preached that seeking help is weak, but it's what we are meant to do. Perhaps the only thing left to consider is the method we choose to satisfy our appetites. That however plays into ethics and morality and is another matter entirely.

Just keep in mind: the living must hunger, and to be human is to suffer.

The Long, Melancholic Road Through Madness

I remember the first time I came to the realization that I was a very depressed person. It was in my old military days, studying a foreign language in the service of our country. A psychological screen on your profile was a total black mark on your profile, something to be avoided, and I pondered that for weeks before giving in to all the postings and briefings about depression we were made to sit through. I was falling behind in class. I was falling behind in physical training. I was growing sick within both body and soul. No one noticed, everyone was looking out for themselves and I was very good at masking myself due to the way I was raised. Growing up every look, every emotion was questioned until my natural face was blank. People think they're good at spotting liars and fakers, which makes them blind to it.

Taking the advice of the generic instructional videos and the monthly visit from the Chaplain I went to Chaplin Services to 'talk to someone who cares'. But I didn't have an appointment, so one was made and I came back in a week. He's busy today, may you come back next week? Week two after the breaking point and he was attending to urgent matters over a sick Airman. Week three or four, I forget how long it took, I walked out of his office slightly less depressed and infinitely more angered. I trudged on, making snide comments from back rows, studying nearly every waking moment under advisement from my superiors, all for the sake of... what?

They booted me from class while I was on bed rest from a mysterious illness. When I reported to grounds keeping duty and had my report card mailed to me, a B average. More sick call, confined to a small dorm room, and all I had was a small ball of hate growing inside me. I crafted 5-point letters railing against my school and instructors, petitioning my commanding officers about the indignation of my failure. I drank in my off-hours and unabashedly railed against people to the delight of others.

Sorrow and rage brewed in me like a slow venom, eating through my stomach and bowels. I had my way and was allowed to return to class, sicker, meaner. Anger and parasites brewed inside me as I sat through classes I'd already taken, but no one minded or cared. Argued with others needlessly and mocked people who didn't deserve it. I was vomiting constantly, but the clinic refused to acknowledge that anything was wrong. Perhaps the worst memory I harbor is nearly throwing up on the last woman I was intimate with, thoughts of love, of sex, permanently marred by the taste and burn of bile.

Like the Chaplin, I went to the clinic several times to seek help. This time I was called a liar and a faker for choosing such an unremarkable affliction. If my leg had hurt I'd receive vicodin and a free pass from afternoon exercise. Eventually I was given anti nausea pills whose side effects included chemical fueled nightmares. They stopped working and finally, when blood followed with the bile, I was seen by a doctor. The final medicant was essentially a pesticide. Reduced to a quivering, fevering mess I only slept with the door open, actually fearful of what would happen in my sleep. Purged of my ailment, the hate remained. It sat there, perhaps in the pit the bugs had burrowed into my stomach, festering and fermenting.

I flowed through the next years as in a stupor. Returning to Basic Training to learn how to fly? Nothing. Camping and mock torture in Survival School? Nothing. Being sent to Afghanistan, not fully trained? Nothing, both times.

I question where I'm at now. I feel empty and hollow, not quite the person I once was. Returning from the military to finish my education, those close to me comment how much I've changed with the passage of time. They say it like a compliment, as I maintain a blank face.

Finding a Home

It's been a rough few weeks with no real respite in sight, but spirits are high on prospects and anticipation.

I've ditched my current roommate and, despite a diminished budget, found and moved into an apartment of my own. My parents happened to be moving at the same time and gave me some much needed furniture and an afternoon's use of a rental van. Its been hard work but pretty rewarding considering it all. For the first time in nearly a decade I have a place I can call home. Aside from the military, which was never a home to me, I've been flopping out at various apparments and townhouses for eight years.

And now the school year begins. I have Junior-year meetings to bore through on my precious days off, while my High School Reunion is scheduled for October. Two drawbacks to that is I'm exactly where I was when High School ended a decade ago and the only people I would want to get it touch with at a reunion definately aren't going.

I suppose its my fault, I told most everyone in my classes I'd never see them again and only kept in contact with people I would actually hang out with in real life. I don't have the problem of fake ex-friends who still want life updates after half your life has passed without a word from them. I wonder if College reunions are anything like this? I know sure as shit I'm not going to my military reunion, even if I actually like alot of those guys.

So now the deal is hanging out with teenagers, not because I'm creepy (which I am), but because I've started my rounds in the lab sciences. Freshmen classes to the very last of them. I'll be taking Biology when I'm 30. Again.

But such is life. Wierd, complicated, and unwieldy.

So I'm a Monrning Person

I've been a morning person since highschool. I was a nerd who took zero-hour classes before anyone else was on campus and can't for the life of me sleep in, much less take a nap while the sun's out. Blame it on my sun sign (Leo) or my tropical genetics, but I'm a permanent Day Walker. So please forgive me when I drag ass when the sun goes down. I've been getting scheduled for evenings more at work, and it looks like the loads just going to increase. It's not that bad as a whole- the supervisors cut out before 4pm and there's an incentive bonus for it, but man am I a wuss. I don't even set my alarm clock cause there's no way in hell I'd oversleep, I'm usually passed out by (I'm guessing here) one or two in the morning. Luckily my classes won't be affected so whatever.

I don't know about other people but I swear the body and mind goes through a shift between the day time and the night time. It's like the weird, artsy parts of the brain fire more in the absence of the sun. Conversations seem alot better at night, whether or not wine and liquor are involved, but that's just me. It's just I can't get my goddamned work or study done when those parts of my brain fire. That and the droopy eyes and staring intensely at random things doesn't help my personality. Maybe I'll shut up and do something a bit more constructive.

A Dating Shtick

So I'm talking to a girl I've known since Jr. High, Stephanie, on Face Book and because its me it turns into a whiny bitch-fest. She hates her job, I hate being in college for too long. She broke up with an alcoholioc loser, I gave up on dating awhile ago. All this is thru IMs, so its like a two hour conversation. She finishes bitching about her friend-with-benefits and asks me out. I politely decline, saying I wouldn't mind hanging out sometime, but I'm thinking: "NOOOO! That's cheating!"

All the stuff I told her was pretty much the truth, most of it embarassing, but dating has nothing to do with the truth. It's all about guys lying to get into a girl's pants. It's in the refractory periods, when a guy's blood is rushing from one head to the other, that he can't keep his act straight and the lies unreveal, that the truth comes out. Girls, you want a guy to tell you the truth, fuck his brains out.

I just don't get dating: I think you're cute, so I spend money one you, because giving the money directly to you is prostitution and that's illegal. Eventually I knock you up, or you nag me into proposing, but eventually we break up cause we really hate each other. Who the hell invented this anyways?

Am I 10% Psycho?

I'm getting back into the swing of taking classes again and its hard. I'm one of those guys who can sit in class and stare out the window and get a 'B', or study my ass off for an 'A'. My goal's to go into the medical field so I gotta do the latter and its so hard, my motivation is close to zero unless I'm actively thinking about the future. Sadly 'Giving a Shit' is something you're born with.

Continuing on, I'm a psychology student. I developed an interest in the subject by looking through my grandmother's textbooks when I was growing up with her. When you think about it, everything we experience or do as humans are filtered through the brain, which made (and still does) me think this was the key to everything about people and would make it the most interesting and useful subject to study. I was lucky to meet people who felt this was a decade later in college (Matt King, I know you're out there!). Sadly this isn't the typical reason a college student elects to major in psychology, its because they think something's wrong with them and they want to break out the Diagnostic Manual to treat themselves with a little frontier medicine. While there were some serious people in the Psychology honors society, in general it was an actual pack of loonies.

Another decade later and I'm back in school and I can't help but wonder what's up with my head that's put me where I'm at now. It's no wonder, having an interest in medicine, psychology, and the executive bureaus I've been watching tons of House and Law & Order. With my difficulties with emotions I've began wondering if I'm a little psychotic. This isn't the dramatized psychosis of broadcast and cinema, but the more technical side involving brain processes.

I usually run on auto and let other people determine the tone of our relationship. People experience things differently as well as create, forget, and re-edit their memories of those experience. It can be unsettling to think that people you know not only don't think of you differently from how you think of them, but their memories of you and vice versa don't coincide.

I don't have a true grasp on some emotions and I'm aware of this. I tend to let others determine the nature of our relationship. This seems to be a bit weird to bounce around life, but its all I can do sometimes. Or maybe I'm normal and just need to stop self-diagnosing myself. It should be the first thing they teach these crazy psychology students.

Double booked

Location: Phoenix Metro Train
Time: 0800

I was called a week ago by a supervisor asking if I could work today and I jumped on the chance. I asked why the schedule wasn't updated the last time I worked and just got a shrug, but found out there were two people working at the slot. I guess since I was only seven minutes early and the other person was already there I lost out on it. Such bullshit.

Classes just started @ ASU and this kinda heralds back to my freshman year some odd years ago. I'm so glad I cut my classes down to four a semester and not working 40 hours a week. I ended up dropping out back then more for financial reasons than anything else, but my grades started suffering towards the end. My GPA dipped down to 3.2 and now its gonna bite me in the ass.

I just met with an advisor at the Honors College (biggest in the world, or so they boast) to ask some admissions questions.
Plus: there's no cap for how many transfer student they admit, unlike freshmen and sophmores.
Minus: you need a 3.6 GPA to be considered when their website claims 3.2 .

I'll have to wait until my grades come out and I'm shooting for straight A's for the whole Med school thing anyways, but its still a bit frustrating.
Two weeks probabld isn't a long enough time to judge, but if I keep getting slow hours @ work I'll have no problem juggling work and school. Between the GIBill and some loans I won't be too worried about money, but I'm still waiting for the checks to come in and these car repairs are eating into my budget (which is why I'm riding the train).

So, not such a funny post. I'm thinking about going into my Comedy fetish and spinning my fear of crowds and public speech into it. Be prepared for light chuckles.

Retarded Fight Club

We get quite a few volunteers at the hospital and we have a guy named Denny who comes in that's mentally handicapped. One of my co-workers asked why I avoided the guy and didn't like to be around him, so I told him.

When I was in elementary school I was freakishly tall. In 5th grade I was the third tallest student, about as tall as my mother and grandmother. No of my classmates messed with me and I'm way too timid to bully anyone, but I did have my share of fights. I don't know how it came about but someone told some of the special ed kids I was always making fun of them. These two kids, William and Byron, would try and jump me at recess. I usually tripped them or threw them into walls or playground equipment, but I developed a certain weariness of handicapped people.

The thing is I've spent much of my youth around retarded people. I grew up down the street from an assisted living home and had classes with a few of them. Still, I don't like being around them now. Its odd how the smaller animal parts of the brain can override our rational side.

Philosophical Insights From a Lame Guy

More posts with a cell phone? Yes!

I recently got hired at a hospital and pretty much the first day I wore my scrubs I got them filthy. This didn't happen during my shift however. This occurred about an hour after punching out at a (surprise) cafe. A guy in a wheelchair was outside yelling into a cell phone about being unable to date owing to his inablity to attain an erection. He basically screamed "No one can fuck me!" And threw his latte against a wall very close to my head before muttering an apology and wheeling off.

The milk and coffee came out in the wash, but the scene left me with a small impression: is that what 'love' boils down to this unfortunate man?

I never really understood the concept of Love, even though people throw the word around constantly. People are as likely to decry their love of chocolate as of another human, but it surely has a different meaning.

I was took up the Socratic mantle and asked tons of people to define the word love. Most people immeadiately describing the kind of love the crippled man craved, the kind of erotic love found between the legs of someone you're attracted to.

Was love merely a vestige of Man's mating habits? God's way of tricking rational beings to procreate?

Much like Socrates, people quickly grew angry when questioned about the foundations of their beliefs in Love and related topics and I had to drop the subject after a few rounds of "Why?"

In psychology I learned some of the foundations of attraction and bonding. How important neurotransmitters are to how we percieve others. Of how Man's rational mind doesn't kick in until after we make decisions. I peeled back this onion in my mind and none of this information satisfied my mind. In disecting the subject I seemed to have killed it.

Perhaps our lame friend was right, love just boils down to cold mechanics. But one can only hope for the illusion of something timeless and perfect that lasts forever and even if this is the little, white lie we tell ourselves to justify our actions and reactions, it is at the core of what being alive is all about. Man didn't build civilazation merely because he could, he did it to impress the ladies.

Dirty Confessions from a Cell Phone

A: Who goes to coffee shops on a Friday night?
Q: Old people and minors (guess who I am)

I just moved out of my parents house into my own apartment, mirroring my life roughly seven years ago ironically coinciding with the aforementioned High School Reunion. And tonight Jacob Grider (sp?) is performing at this shop, an old friend from Willis Jr High. Ah, life at its finest.

I've been feeling a bit lonely, Winter being the season we draw to others for warmth and comfort. Yes, even I who is so disinclined towards other seek the company of my own kinds, but I remain ever incompetent when dealing with other people.

I wish back for those times not so long ago when I was a phone call away from good times with decent people.

Of course seven years ago I was leaving for the military forever with no knowledge of the actual date. I passed some rediculous smart-people test and the Air Fore wanted my ass. They lost my paperwork a couple of times and sicced the sheriff's office on me when I tried to bilk out on them. All told it took 13 months from me signing up to me shipping out.

In that time I partied like a man with a death sentence. I drank myself into alcohol poisoning, dated a lesbian, dumped a cancer patient, sold porno online, solicited donations for the Republican Party, and flirted with public acts of poetry among other acts during my year in limbo. I was terribly shady during this time, going so far as proposing marriage to anything I could legally marry.

I didn't do certain things because of the military issue. I should have flirted a bit more with drugs, so I'd know what I'm missing, or maybe tried to have an actual relatioship with someone a cared for, instead of treating every girl like 'one last fling'.

I was a little too young when I began my college career, but I'm older now and its seldom in life we get a second chance to do things over. I'm re-starting college in six weeks with a totally blank slate. No friends, no family. Just me and my will.

Perhaps its the best lesson a man can learn.

Pitch: A Real Love Story

"Chasing Sophia"

A modern love story, sans romance, from a male point of view. We follow a young boy barely discovering the differences between boys and girls through adolescence to adulthood. After detailing various crushes, obsessions, and flings with several females before the protagonist comes to realize he's chasing a romanticized ideal and not an actual person. After a bout of despair and depression the man comes to terms with 'the many faced temptress' and comes to relate to women on a personal level, not based upon how they make him feel. The book's ending is vague and seemingly without conclusion.

Guaranteed to be rejected by both sexes, the piece will be most known by devout fans who argue about the female archetypes and religious undertones of the novel.

Its a Reunion

"Reunion" Korea Girl
Got a letter,
An invitation,
The day is here and its been ten years now,
And its time for a reunion.

Why would I spend more time,
With people that I hate,
And couldn't leave behind?
Would we dance,
make a toast,
For all the things you haven't done?
Oh joy, the thrills, so fun, fun.-

I remember the last days of my high school career. The slight sobering moments of honesty exchanged with six year casual acquaintances. I remember speaking with a girl that moved to Jr High around the same time as me about month or so before graduation. I was whining about being really shy and she commented that I mercilessly flirted and hit on anything that moved. After telling her I'd never see anyone in the room for the rest of my life and begin to ponder on this fundamental disconnect between me and her (what was her name, April or Heather?). Growing up in a strict Baptist family the three D's, drinking, dancing, and dating, were denied. I was grounded for a year for getting two C's in the 10th grade and was given a pager to instantly call Mom and Dad whenever paged. I didn't talk to my parents about ANYTHING.

In my mind, the chances of going on a date were zero (I even found out I was allowed to go to Prom way too late to find a date, so I didn't bother going). I never discussed such things to my classmates, it was highly embarrassing, so they drew their own conclusions from my carousing and carrying on. Running around with a bunch of stoners and carrying a pager probably didn't help my peers' perceptions, but that was before I ever thought about such things as my image.

Can't wait to see those guys once again, and maybe a second time in another ten years.

The Windows To My Soul Are Broken

It's a little extreme but I'm legally blind in one eye. It hovers around 20/400 in my right (your left) eye. Now that I'm in my late twenties my opposite eye has weakened to about 20/40, mostly because I refused to where glasses through most of my life. Oddly, my eyes are correct to about 20/15, so wearing glasses gives me a huge migraine. I can clearly see a the pores of your face and the general asymmetricity of everything. In my more melancholic youth I told my acquaintances that I chose not to wear glasses because I saw the ugliness and imperfection of the world surrounding me. That and the airbrushed images the media passes off as the norm has seriously impeded my ability to recognize the general beauty of people and the world around us.

Rightfully so, I find myself drawn into people through my other senses. I go crazy for girls with raspy voices. I'm always drawn to sick women, but the attraction seems to fade when they become well again. Perhaps I'm just a wolf going after the weakest of the pack.

Squeezing Hash Through a Sock

Hello, non-existant people.

The above title is totally misleading, unless you can somehow find meaning in it for yourselves. My name is mostly unimportant since I didn't choose it for myself. Instead, let me espouse my acomplishments rather than various accidents of birth. I'm a psychology student at Arizona State, which is perhaps the best explaination about my personality, as all psychology students are fundamentally insane (studying the innerworkings of the human mind is the method they use to find out why they're broken on the inside). I began college in 2000 and was conscripted into the military in 2003 in an unbelievable tale that I bother not retelling since no one will believe me. I spent 4 years learning afghani to route out terrorists and 1 year as a pharmacy technician, since domestic spying is illegal and I would require civilian employment upon exiting the military. My hobbies include reading, claiming to write, comedy, and other stuff that's very tedious to jot down at present.

I expect no one to actually read this post and with no expectations I can freely fail at this endeavor, as I've failed so many times before.

Sta makh sha peisha darkra.