My Birthday Wishlist 2008

How old am I? No, it's not rhetorical. Every time I'm asked that question, I always have to think about it for a second. All of the milestones have passed. I can vote, I can smoke, I can drink, I can rent cars. There's nothing left.

I celebrated the passing of my quarter-life crisis by buying a shiny red Kawasaki Ninja 650R. It's been about 5 years since I decided I wanted one, I think I can safely say that I thoroughly thought it out at this point.

So here's the wishlist.

The Allen would appreciate collection

Xbox 360 controller play and charge kit
Any Xbox 360 games
A wireless keyboard and mouse set
A new wallet (bi-fold with lots of card slots)
Final Fantasy Tactics for PSP
Books!

The Allen is a really good friend collection

An iphone
Playstation 3
Canon Digital Rebel SLR

The Allen saved my life once collection

Toshiba Regza 42" 1080p LCD
Dodge Viper

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Wow, I'm surprised that I can't come up with more stuff. Even now, I feel like I forced some of those things just to fill out the list.

Cheers everyone, here's to treading toward mid-life crisis with all of you beside me.

Time to goose the throttle

With a turn of the key, the starter is armed. Follow with a flick of a button and the engine growls to life, settling on a timid purr. The motorcycle welcomes me to another day. "Good day, Allen," It purrs rhythmically. "I assumed on such a crisp clear spring day, you'd want to go for a ride."

The racing jacket and pants still feel awkward. The multiple layer and strategically placed padding would ultimately save my bones, my skin and my life if things fell apart on the road, but alas, I still need to get used to them. I shift some padding to make it less distracting and hop on the bike.

Nothing separates me from the road except some metal and rubber in the form of a motorcycle. The wind caresses me, it feels more like an embrace than anything else. The exhaust and engine sing a duet with the wind, a song of roads still to travel, of speeds only a few dare explore.

I, unfortunately, am not one to do the exploring. To me, a bike ride is something to hold in respect. It represents a sort of freedom one could not have with a car.


I've had my bike license for five years now without an actual motorcycle. It's time to fix that problem.

A dream, in three parts.

I don't know the context of the dream, but like all dreams, it made sense at the time. I was trying to fit some object into a contain of soil (or bucket of sand). The actual objects are vague, but the feeling was like trying to plant a seedling or tree sapling in a large pot. The people with me kept insisting that it would fit in the pot, but we tried and tried and it wouldn't. Finally I told them we needed to dig out more of the stuff in the pot.

My friends from college eventually wandered by the area where I was trying to do this. They basically found me with a shovel trying to put something into a pot. For some reason, this was extremely awkward. They were all drinking and their beer cans were mixing into the stuff that I dug out of the pot.

I end up getting in a car with my mother. We're heading toward this dream's version of my girlfriend's house, which was really weird in itself, because in the dream, I know exactly where she lives and why I want to be there (i don't remember those outside of the dream, but my dream-mind was really confident in this info). For some reason, my girlfriend was a red-headed white girl. For some reason, I really need to be there before 7 pm.

My mom misses a turn that would take us directly to her house. Her reaction to my directions are very slow, she seems tired or drugged up. She ends up turning on to I-76 because she thinks that's the best way to turn back around. I'm concerned that she will miss the one and only exit that would put us where we need to be and get to my girlfriend's house on time.

I decide to kill time by reading a book or magazine, only to look up and find that my mom has fallen asleep at the wheel. She's run the car in the left lane off into the shoulder, and is mere seconds from crashing into the car in front of us. I tell her to wake up, she doesn't respond. I am forced to grab the wheel and yell "STOP!" at the same time. Only then does she respond, but her waking up causes more trouble than good. She eventually gains control and I take over driving.

I take the nearest exit, only to find myself being cut off by a stream of traffic in the direction I want to go in. I circle around this residential area and for some reason, I cut through this person's driveway, because I think it's a back road that leads to where I need to go. As I reach the back of the person's house, someone comes out, and it's oddly one of the featured guests on the Opie and Anthony show. I make a joke about him being a serial killer, because they often do that to this guy on the radio show. I suddenly fear for my life and want to drive away as quickly as possible.

In the end, I come across this lodge. It's like a clubhouse or bar. I no longer seem to be interested in getting to my dream-girlfriend's place. I don't know why I was there, but in my dream it made sense for me to stop in. An alien looking thing comes into the bar, it's hiding behind a door. It looks like a small green teletubby crossed with Geico's Gecko. The owner tells me that this alien boosts all the electronic signals in the area. The lodge's wifi can be accessed for miles outside of the place and the alien can steal all sorts of satellite television feeds.

And that's when I woke up.

You can find this dream, and many other's like it at Maybedreams.

How to become CEO

I had a conversation with a friend today about career paths and it's really interesting to thinka bout all the possible ways of becoming successful at a company. I graduated with a computer science degree, so there was really no variety in my job choices when it was time to look for a job. I could either be a web developer, software developer, applications developer, network developer, QA developer, or some other kind of developer.

But what about those people that graduated as political science majors, philosophy or library sciences? Let's play this out a bit. Let's say the goal is to become the CEO of a company. What skills would a library sciences major bring to the table?

I don't know the answer to that, I'm sure there's some Google app--in beta--that makes that organizational whiz irrelevant.

Could anyone, though, start from the bottom of the corporate food chain and eventually reach success? Or are there some paths that are just destined for failure?

Have I really said anything relevant in this blog post?

Those old jeans.

My favorite pair of jeans is so old, the left front pocket has a hole on the bottom that two fingers can fit through. I'd like to make a clever metaphor like: the tatter exposed hole to my leg represents the ripping away of youth and the beginning of a vulnerable and exposed adulthood. Or: the hole is symbolic of being time to let go of the past and looking toward a future pair of jeans.

Sadly, really all it means is that I will lose a lot of fuckin quarters if I keep tossing change into that pocket.

But: The loss of change through a tattered pocket has a deeper meaning. It's time to change my old ways and change into a new pair of jeans.

I really like the feel of old jeans. I feel like I earned the right to keep wearing them. It takes forever to break in a pair of jeans, and I believe this pair in particular has been with me through brake grease, oil spills, engine gunk, thunder storms, dirt trudging and drunken midnight oceanic escapades. How do you give up something like that?

Do consider: The tattered pocket brings to you an eventuality that missed opportunities are trickling away out of your grasp.

I've gone through and given up on so many new pairs of jeans. They're still stiff and when washed, they come out feeling even stiffer. I don't know how many times I'd have wear them before they are broken in to the same degree as this useless pocket pair of jeans.

Truth: The ripped pocket represents the tailor bill from the local dry cleaners as they do their magic, like modern day shamans on a wounded soul, repairing my pants to more youthful days.

My New Favorite Popstar

Is there already an Ashley Tisdale bandwagon? If so, let me jump on. If not, let's start one.

I assume there has to be, since Blender Magazine apparently named Ashley second hottest woman of Pop/R&B.

Most of you know, I'm not really a follower of music (posting about Ashley Tisdale probably proves that), but I stumbled across her when her song "He Said, She Said" played at the end of Bring It On: In It to Win It (Wow, I'm really not flattering myself in this post). What can I say, I liked the song and for some reason, I thought I recognized her from somewhere.

I couldn't find from what though, she's another Disney child star that's probably going to blow up in the next couple of years.

Anyway, enjoy the video.




This is what I post after two months? ICK.

My top ten movies of all time.

When talking about a movie that I enjoy, I often say "That movie is definitely in my top ten movies of all time." My friend Brian has been one of the only people to realize that I've said that for way more than ten movies. That really got me thinking, what are my favorite movies?

I tried to think of movies that were not just good movies, but so good that I have or will watch again. Not included in this list are any trilogies, since most trilogies are watchable, but not all the movies in a trilogy by themselves are good. Here's what I came up with (in no particular order):

Thank You For Smoking: Though I'm a big proponent of killing oneself slowly with cigarettes, that's not the main reason I like this movie. I like seeing persuasion in action, and this movie shows how ironically gullible people can be. The witty humor about how silly members of both sides of can be is right up my alley. And lastly, how could you not like a movie with J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson as B R?

Hard Candy: Chris Hansen seems meager compared to Ellen Page's role in this movie. Aside from the pedophilia topic, the acting and plot are great. The movie is set up in such a way where I really had trouble deciding who was protagonist and who was the antagonist in the movie. I'm still not quite sure.

The Shawshank Redemption: I think this movie is probably in everyone's top ten, so I won't bother going into it. I couldn't stop watching this movie. I was horrified, enthralled and sympathetic. I needed to see what would happen to the protagonist. It didn't disappoint.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail: I think this movie helped define my sense of humor. In fact, I want to watch it again just from typing this.

Saving Private Ryan: The first 30 minutes of the movie are so memorable and depict such realistic violence that I realized I never want to be in a war. It also turned me into a huge world war 2 buff and influenced an entire genre of video games (Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Company of Heroes).

Full Metal Jacket: Not only was the first half hilarious because of the insults R. Lee Ermey throws at Matthew Modine, but it was really just a well done sequence of scenes depicting a lifestyle that I don't want to be a part of.

Braveheart: I think this is another one of those movies that defined my life. Not to say that I want to be oppressed by England and fight a war, but come on, it's pretty much what LARPing is. Not that I LARP, but the whole idea of it fits well with fantasy. Plus it's a great story.

Love Actually: Though there are many movies that do the whole "Separate stories that somehow entwine" thing, like Crash, Babel and Magnolia, this was the first one I saw. Maybe it was because it was the holiday season, or maybe I saw it with someone special, but it's always stuck out in my mind. Plus the cast contains some of my favorite proper English speaking actors and actresses.

Dogma: I loved the dialog in this movie. Sure, the plotline is silly, but the all-star cast plays their roles very well. Kevin Smith also has a way of making people speak in an unnaturally elegant way that I wish more people on this world sounded like when they talked to each other. Remember guys, it's not a movie that bashes religion, it actually just calls it out, puts it on the table, and let's you be the final judge.

Battle Royale: If society ever did this, I feel like I would bring to the table a bunch of valuable survival tips. It's just a shocking movie that plays out like a video game. It's a lovely good time watching Japaneses teenage girls run around killing to survive.

Saved!: Poking fun of religion is always amusing, but even more so when Mandy Moore brings it over the top. Oh, and let's not forget about Macaulay Culkin, who I thought was going to make a comeback after this came out.