Another high school story… I used to hang out with Brent a lot in high school (and in college). Friends of Clint these days might know him as “Mark’s older brother”, but back then Mark was simply “Brent‘s younger brother”. I’ve never met a pair of siblings I’ve hung out with more in my life.
Brent trying to be evil
I used to enjoy playing darts — I put dartboards on my door. When I wasn’t throwing knives into my door, or playing guitar, I was throwing darts into my dartboard.
This is the room it happened in :)
Brent and I invented a game that we called “Speed Darts”. You see, in order to alleviate the boredom of being a highschooler, one must increase risk.
in retrospect, Brent probably regrets playing
Here’s how you play: You throw a dart (or 2), then the second you are done throwing it, you go and pull the dart out of the dartboard, while the next player throws his dart (or 2).
Then, the 2nd player retrieves his dart(s), while you run back and throw your dart(s).
Basically, you are running up to a dart board and pulling a dart out WHILE darts are being thrown at the same board.
And how exciting and paranoid of a game this was!
me and Brent in front of the door we threw darts at
I never got darted, but I did eventually dart Brent. Twice.
Though I think one of the two times I darted him may have been in my front yard, and not related to the game.
Dreamt me & Carolyn & Brent were shopping at some shopping mall… When the loudspeakers announced that the Department Of Homeland Security said that civilians in this area were going to be in immediate danger. Brent was sleeping on some parking bench, so I went up and woke up him, abbreviating the situation into, “Brent, there’s a terrorist attack right now, get the fuck up!” or something to that effect.
We ran into a nearby business to take cover… But rather than going down into the basement, Carolyn ran upstairs into the very-windowy top level of a restaurant. I ran after her trying to stop her… “More ways to get shot up here!” …
Eventually we went back down and left the restaurant to find someplace that actually had a basement/shelter. But by that time, a helicopter had descended on the shopping plaza. I thought maybe it was DHS and it would give us helpful advice, but it started shooting at everyone. Carnage everywhere. People running in every direction.
At some point we were running away, and I think we went by a grocery store where everyone was in line to use a coupon or something. I think a girl from my high school named Betsy was in the line.
Then we get to this rural area, a bridge or similar structure all covered in kudzu/ivy. The helicopter is still chasing us. I see Carolyn go down. It shoots at me, and I gyrate my body around as if I’ve been shot, then go limp — because they were missing me, and I wanted to fake them out so they’d go to the next target. [Which could have been Carolyn, but what else can I do, they’re already shooting at me.]
The helicopter eventually decides its done with us and flies away. At this point I start yelling/crying about Carolyn being all shot up, but then she gets up and is fine. She faked it too! Yay!
So we’re driving down the road in our car, and this jet starts to come down in front of us to land in the highway. Do I hit the brakes immediately? No! We kind of keep tailing the jet, watching as it fishtails down the road. Seriously…. In real life you would want to give such a situation a wide berth to prevent explosion debris from going backward and hitting you! But I only back off once the jet falls on its side and kinda veers off to the side of the road. Really weird.
So we get out of our car. But the jet ends up transforming into a huge robot. Jetfire/Skyfire from Transformers? Well, it was maybe more like the transforming plane robot in movie The Returner. But anyway, we end up hiding from it, on the side of the road, in a ditch… Shades of hiding from the Nazgul in Lord Of The Rings. But it finds us.
I can’t remember if it turned out to be friendly or not. I think maybe it was friendly and cuddled a bit, but that may have been Carolyn.
“Dreams… They’re the hurricanes that wash the soulfilth from the superdome of our nightminds.”
– Xavier:Renegade Angel(more…)
We were in college, but our current ages — Brent was with Kim. He died.
I was hanging out at Happy House, but it was not ground level, was bright, it was daytime, and there was a computer in the main room , which I think is how I found out Brent had a heart attack. He may have been levitating up to the ceiling when that happened, but I wasn’t there so I don’t know how that works.
It was a weird mix of using the Virginia Tech modem pool to access Facebook. His page had been memorialized, but it wasn’t the same as Dirk‘s page in real life. And the page didn’t say he died. It just had a grey-background block of text at the top stating that he was not on this earthly realm or something like that.
Lots of fucking crying. Carolyn eventually came over and I had to break the news to her. Lots of fucking crying. Eventually woke up from the level of sorrow in the dream.
“Dreams… They’re the hurricanes that wash the soulfilth from the superdome of our nightminds.”
– Xavier:Renegade Angel(more…)
Today, 10 yrs ago, was an epic party at our house. Well, maybe not epic.. but more memorable than most! This was the party where John The Candien famously puked on our couch. He’s probably really tired of hearing about it, even 10 yrs later. But I wrote this post in 2009 so for me it’s only 7 yrs later. And he doesn’t do stuff like that these days. Anyway, here are some videos from the party 10 yrs ago today. They also show how our house looked before the addition; those rooms were small (not really; just small in comparison).
Here is a 10-minute montage of all our favorite slices of life from the party:
And here are the individual videos from the party:
#1: John’s first drink. Not much going on.
#2: John’s 4th drink.
#3: Various people talking about some fun New Orleans bar they couldn’t find their way back to. Listen for Dig-Dug in the background!
#4: People start noticing the camera. Wayne talks about a lost pack of cigarettes. The nature of the webcam is discussed (it’s record, not broadcasting). Becky suggests that we start playing Strip Poker soon:
#5: People play with our spinning-message-maker light/toy thingee:
#6-#7: Not much happens here, except for mingling. You can still hear Dig-Dug in the background:
#8-#10 are for friends only ;) Check my flickr if you’re a friend :)
#11: Various mingling. Clint explains to Britt that it’s recording, not broadcasting. Aaron starts playing with the camera around 2m50s. At 3m18s, you can see the software recording the party, and AE’s ex-girlfriend Tracy:
#12: At 2m10s, the camera gets shoved down somebody’s pants:
#13: John’s going dooowwwwn! Kipp, don’t encourage him! Things get interesting around 6m20s, when Jesse tells Carolyn, “John’s fucked up”, and Carolyn grabs his bottle, swigs it, then walks away with it. John The Candien looks disconcerted. “Noooo… Not the bottle!” Funny stuff :) But then look at 7m40s — Kipp picks John up and moves him to the couch that he later puked on. He got up, but for all I know he moved back to the couch at 11m30s because he didn’t want to be picked up again. And who picks somebody up anyway? Nice instincts (sarcasm) on everybody except Carolyn’s part:
#14: John is now out, and girls decide to put makeup on him:
#15: Finally, he pukes. But a cup was put in front of the camera, so you can really only see how people react to the whole thing:
#16: We all miss Samhain the cat, who made a brief 1-minute appearance before running away:
#17: Webcam voiceovers. Possibly the funniest on-camera moments:
#18: And then the webcam “optical illusion” of swallowing a huge cam (short):
This anecdote has to be one of the most socially embarrassing things I’ve ever seen happen to someone else.
So there we were, at the very last night Bound would ever be held at Bar Nun in D.C….
Typical flyer back then
It was a fun night. Bar Nun was one of the better venues Bound was ever held at, so a lot of people showed up for the final night at Bar Nun. I specifically remember [hopefully correctly] seeing our college friend Molly for the first time 4 years or so.
We were dressed up and everything… [Everybody was]…
Sleazy enough? Nice gut hangin' out there. This was before Carolyn became a redhead and then a blonde.
But then, the night ended, and the last song played.
You know how when you’re yelling loudly in a noisy bar, and the music suddenly cuts out, how it’s really embarrassing when everyone hears you yelling in an otherwise-quiet room?
Well this is what happened.
She was really screaming…
Yeah.. Kinda like that...
She was obviously an angry girl…
This has nothing to do with it, but is a good "angry girl" picture from my flickr.
And what was she screaming about? I don’t know. I think her relationship with this dude. She kept saying, “You’re so STAGNANT. STAGNANT. STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAG NANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNT.”
I mean, there was a point when she realized the entire club was basically listening to her because the music stopped… And she just kept on going.
Her very last “STAGNANNNNT” in particular was like 5 seconds long, at least. The longest STAGNANT I’ve ever head. She was fucking insane.
After being emasculated like that, dudeface probably felt like this afterward:
This guy was probably more embarassed than our cat Beavis (RIP) was.
At it turns out, Carolyn & I, Brent, Chris Hann3rs, Samantha & Sasha, some others, and the guy who got yelled at all walked to some afterhours party once the bar closed at 3AM.
The guy told me more about his relationship, or lack thereof, with the “Stagnant Yeller Girl”.
I forget the details, but I felt bad for him. Bad enough to remember it 10 years later.
It’s still a joke to this day. If a TV show isn’t quite living up to the luster of previous seasons, we might say, “This show is getting STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAG NANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNT.” I have a feeling this memory will never fade.
So, back in college, I lived in 1044 Pritchard Hall, with Brent I (Mark’s brother), from 1992-1993… And with Arlo G and Patrick I from 1993-1994.
Yes, those are Grateful Dead "Dead Bears" around my door.
Close-up of Dead Bears.
Now Pritchard Hall is a big dorm. At the time, it was the biggest non-military all-male dorm on the east coast, though it has since had to allow women in. It was big enough that there was actually a courtyard, so that people who lived in the inner loop could get a window. It was called The Pit, and various mischief commenced with it.
Pretty, pretty big... This is probably 10% of it.
For instance, there was Horn Boy. He would let off his horn…. brooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowp. Never long enough to get caught. I remember the last day of year one, and someone saying into The Pit, “I’m gonna miss you, horn boy.”
Horn Boy, like the trumpet in this picture, was invisible to onlookers.
Another thing we did was attach my pitch-shifter guitar pedal to Dan C’s P.A., and yell into the pit with pitch-shifted voices. I even heard them telling us once, “Yeah, there’s somebody with a P.A. out there.” Haha.
Guitar equipment for entertainment purposes? We did it way before Guitar Queero...
So, my second year at 1044 Pritchard (1993-1994), we had a new R.A. The R.A. from the first year was pretty cool. But this guy was a total pussy. I mean total. Like, he had trouble talking loud enough that you could even hear him. And he was a Christian. And he was small. And he did not have the personality of someone who would boss people around.
So at some point, we took my speakers, which were pretty large:
The speaker with the stickers on it was probably the one that was used.
And Mohamad O and I blasted the Scooby Doo theme song into the pit. With our lights off.
Actual window this happened from
We did this by each holding one of these huge speakers up to the window. BAM. A knock on our door.
Another pic of 1044 Pritchard, with its 1996-1997 occupants (strangers)
We freak out, since we were the guilty party, and it was also kind of weird that we had our light off, as if we were hiding.
Pussy R.A. (I don’t even remember his name) came to our door. “Now guys. We heard something like the Scooby Doo theme blasting into the pit here. We just wanted to make sure it wasn’t you.” I mean, VERY non-confrontational, non-committal, and still not quite loud enough to really HEAR him. He was laughably wussy, and just the kind of R.A. you want around if you want to do stupid shit.
Scooby Doo from the Cartoon Hall mural -- one of the few characters in the hall without a hit of acid drawn onto his tongue -- because he didn't have a visible tongue (click through to see all the acid-tongued cartoons)
We laughed our asses off, knowing that he didn’t have the balls to do anything about it. I mean, they couldn’t prove anything at that point anyway. But a real douche of an R.A. could still make things annoying.
Like the one we just called “Prick”. I believe he was a blonde douchebag of an R.A. on the second floor. I still remember Diane and I accidentally setting off the local fire alarm right outside his door, and her dropping her ID at the scene. And still, somehow, we were immune to any punishment.
I got away with a LOT in that dorm room. I also pretended to be an R.A. and pretended to bust other people in another dorm room.
Our 10 year marriage / 18 year dating anniversary actually happened 2 days ago, on the 10th. But our wedding reception happened on 2/12/2000 — 10 years ago. It was a pretty big reception, and was followed by an equally big party at our house that night. (There were a few hours in between the events for everyone to change, eat dinner, etc.)
A good hour of video was taken by our friend Tony T! I managed to get it converted to VHS, and later to AVI on the computer, and later to YouTube postings with YouTube’s stupid 10 minute limit requiring me to break it up into 20 parts of various sizes. Here are the videos — most of them peppered with youngest-cousin Todd being extremely annoying. Go past the jump to see the pics & vid! (more…)
I saw someone else post a month-by-month list of their favorite pictures from the year. What a good idea! I shall jump on that bandwagon, too. So here are some of my favorite pictures of 2009, month by month, all from my flickr (but NOT all taken by me).
I’ll try to keep it to 2-5 pictures a month.
I also will be including New Year’s Eve (2008->2009 transition) as it’s own month, since I usually don’t get my pictures up in a timely fashion.
Click any picture to follow through to my flickr, where it will be explained in much more detail. Or hover over the picture for a [very] brief summary. (more…)
This is one survey I’m going to do the hell out of, since this could easily be something that people write a blogpost about: What they experienced when they were 17. Since I can’t experience the events of a movie like 17 Again, I’ll just have to be content to try to remember my own 1991.
So I’m gonna answer the hell out of this survey. And include pictures. Of me when I was 17 / pictures taken around 1991.
Anyway, when I was 17, it was 1991. I was a sophomore and junior in high school. It was the year I received this for either my birthday or Christmas:
THE SURVEY
1. My favorite musician was: Probably Glenn Danzig, because he wrote the music for all The Misfits songs, and they were my favorite band. (Nowadays, it’s a tie between Misfits, Ween, and Atari Teenage Riot)
^ Wall of my room, 1991
2. My favorite song was: Hard to say, because I don’t really have favorite songs, in general. If I was asked this question today, it would be Atari Teenage Riot – Revolution Action.
Then:
Now:
3. My favorite subject was: A.P. Computer Science 1. Where else could I goof off, sometimes sleep, and end up getting college credit (after taking both years in high school)?
I got a 5 on the harder of 2 AP tests, which meant 7 credit hours and not having to deal with PASCAL at the Virginia Tech class that causes most C.S. majors to drop out. I thik it was the dreaded CS 1701. If I remember that number correctly, it’s the only specific college class number I remember — and it’s of a class I didn’t take.
4. My favorite teacher was: Mr. Linz. Hands down. One of 5 or so teachers I even remember from high school. He got sick and I never knew if he died, until recently, when someone commented on this picture, telling me Mr. Linz had published a book about overcoming his illness .
^ Me in Mr. Linz’s class. Photographer unknown.
5. I had a crush on: This person (picture below) who really caused me to hate people with uptight issues… But it was good, because she broke me bad enough to keep my hands off any woman until I ran into Carolyn, who I waited until early 1992 to start crushing on :)
6. Favorite food was: …and always shall be, tacos.
Even gummi tacos are pretty awesome:
7. My favorite hangout was: Definitely my room. With my my bunk bed, the tacky tropical-tree wallpaper that came with our house:
the carpet that was colored such that you could pour half a can of coke on the ground, leave it, and never notice:
(Yes, I poured sodas on my carpet many times to make my point)
and most of all, the fact that there was more privacy in my room than in most kid’s rooms:
No. We did not use it well.
8. I wished I could be: NO CLUE! I have always been quite content with being me. All I wanted to do was a job with computer programming.
9. My plans for the future were: At the beginning of 1991? Go to college and major in Computer Science. I also had always said I wouldn’t get married until I was 30… but I was off by 4 years and got married at 26.
At the end of 1991? My plans were along the lines of, “How do I start dating this Carolyn chick I know?”
10. My favorite TV show was: Twin Peaks. I came in near the end of its run, had no CLUE what the fuck was going on, and absolutely loved it!! Though it took me until 2007 to find it, propertly watch ALL of it in order (pilot, both seasons, Fire Walk With Me), and finally buy some Twin Peaks t-shirts:
11. I hated: I’m going to assume it was not having sex, as I lost my virginity in 1990, had a couple things not work out that year (see #5), and didn’t hook up with Carolyn until 1992.
(If this was 1990, it would be my parents not letting me go to The Undead show. If this was 1992, it would be having to be separated from Carolyn while at Virginia Tech. 1991? Not really so terrible, other than the usual horrible bullshit I always had to deal with.)
12. It was the year: I met Carolyn. And we know how that turned out.
Her first words to me were, “Are you Satan?” And mine to her were, “Are you Magic Mist?” That’s not exactly taken from the book of traditional romantic opening lines.
13. Best memory: Besides meeting Carolyn? Playing guitar/drums with Sam Watson in my room every day after school, until he moved to Mississippi:
…and in general: BBSing, and still quite happy to finally being able to drive (got license in 5/1990).
14. Worst memory: #5 (Nikki) and #12 (best friend moving away). The comedic answer would be the lesson of “The Secret Center Is PAIN”:
(Click through image for the story on why that makes sense.)
So, camping went well this weekend. We actually had 9 people, maybe a bit more than average. There were 11 total, but Jesselanie (Jesse + Melanie) did not stay for the night. Pictures of the trip are HERE. (more…)
(These came from a boring, hour-long bus ride to a school I now live near)
These are posted on my webpage (http://www.acm.vt.edu/~clint/haiku.htm). I’ve actually had random people email me to tell me that I am evil and the reason for the destruction of the moral fiber of the country. These people apparantly have less so-called “moral fiber” than myself, since I support free speech and they obviously don’t. Plus, people without sense of humor should be killed painfully. (And probably didn’t realize that last sentence was a joke either .)
These are the product of teenage angst, pent-up agression, and other ninth-grader difficulties, and do not necessarily reflect my current mindset. I wrote these in 1988 when I was 14. Keep that in mind.
Without any further hesitation, here are the “masterpieces”:
I saw a sad dog
On the roadside sleeping sound.
I kicked the fucker.
Suicidal boy
Stabbing himself with a knife.
You burn forever.
See all the dead bops
Their naked [or dead] bodies glist’ning
Necrophilia.
I hope you enjoyed these.
I made about 20 during that busride, but I forgot most of them.
Maybe some day I’ll find them and post them here. :)
Thanks to Brent Ingrebretsen for helping me remember the “bop” one.
(Since 1/24/1997, 2572 read the webpage version of this.)
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