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Too lazy to write about the Saturday night adventure of ghost hunting for the Unlocked shoot. Instead, read about it on Pat’s Blog. And you thought I wrote a lot on my blog.

Around 1AM, things were finally winding down at IUSTV, and I was getting ready to go home. G calls me, and apparently a frat house on North Jordan was on fire. Great. So I call Pat back, who left a minute or so prior, and Elliot and I grab a camera pack and hop in Pat’s Jeep. We’re on IUSTV news special assignment.

It was freezing. I had gloves and a coat, but it was SO COLD. Long story short, the vacant Sigma Alpha Epsilon frat house was on fire. When we got there, there were huge amounts of smoke coming out of the house, and a bunch of fire trucks, police, and spectators. IUSTV News Team assemble! Pat did the reporting, I did camera, and Elliot found some people to interview. I hadn’t actually worked camera in a long time, and I have to admit it was fun. The “journalist rush of excitement” was also there, although by the end of our 45 minute stint outside, I was cold, tired, and didn’t want to be there anymore. I’m no journalist, I’m a producer.

It was cool however, to see who else was out there. The IDS (school paper) had photographers and reporters on the scene around the same time as us. They have obviously done this in the past. We’re not journalists, but we’re TV at least. The IDS’ printing date is midnight, so they already missed the chance to get this in Thursdays paper. It will be in Friday’s paper (it’s already online though). IUSTV will be running the video footage package on the Thursday evening news update, so in that respect, we might have a bit of a head start. We’ll swing by the IDS office in the afternoon to see what kind of partnership we can work out. Maybe they’ll want to direct people to watch us to see footage. Maybe they won’t.

It was a long, funny day, much like that of a sitcom. Mainly because I was with Pat for a few hours, and I don’t know how he gets into some of these situations. I’ll elaborate later probably, but I was challenged to a lightsaber duel in the mall, Pat left his business card for a (likely) 16 year old girl, and then this whole fire thing. All this on my day off. I’m going to sleep!

It’s been a while since I posted, I have noticed. Anyways, it’s been a somewhat busy last few weeks, although not too bad. IUSTV picked up a few new members in the past week…actually over 80 to be exact. All this during a time that the university is freaked out about low student involvement on campus. Bahaha. New staff has since been sorted into teams, oriented, and have started working on their teams. Things actually seem to be going smoothly around the station, which is AWESOME. I’m pretty happy with everything at the station right now. If only I can hurry and get this off-campus fiber connection finished soon.

I also found out that I didn’t get an interview with JET, the program I was planning on going to Japan with. I applied for the CIR position, which stands for Coordinator for International Relations, and (not to sound arrogant, seriously) I was pretty sure I would get in. I didn’t even get an interview. Not just me, but none of the people I know who applied for CIR got interviews either. WTF Embassy of Japan?! I was almost sure that everyone I know (we’re all pretty qualified) would get interviews. At the very least, I was half right. Everyone who applied for the JET’s ALT (assistant language teacher) position that I know got an interview, which is awesome. I’m counting on everyone getting in so I have somewhere to crash when I’m jobless and wandering in Japan. Ah well, no JET for me. I accepted that a day or two after getting the letter, so I’m not really that bummed about it. I still have ways to get into Japan, I just have to think of a scheme. Heck, I don’t know if I’m even going to go to Japan, although it sounds like a pretty good idea to me. I should probably actually figure out what I’m going to do after graduation…

Time for me to get dorky for a minute. Hibiki ended in Japan and the ending was pretty much ruined. Poorly done plot resolutions, stupid ending overall, blah blah blah. Ah well, it was a good series overall. I also finally saw the Hibiki movie, which came out in Japan like a few weeks after I left this summer. Typical Kamen Rider movie: cool to watch but pretty weak story wise. Half of the reason I watch it is just for the cool designs and fights anyway, so I was happy. I’ve watched it twice so far and will probably watch it many more times. The 3 main oni are in it, and since it’s set in feudal times, the new 5 movie-only oni are a little cheesier. Their weapons include a triangle, a gong, a blowgun flute, and a pair of cymbals. Yes, it sounds so lame. Anyway, with Hibiki over, of course the following week the new Kamen Rider started. Japan really keeps up on these things, don’t they. On your right there, please see the new show for ’06, Kamen Rider Kabuto. Looks cool; I’ve already seen the first episode and it reminds me a lot of Faiz. I’ll likely (OK, surely) be watching this whole series as well.

Wow so I thought I would only get dorky for 1 paragraph, but then I forgot that I actually started an entire new dorky club. Since Joey (from IUSTV, not my brother) and I wanted to watch Godzilla Final Wars on a big screen like in a classroom projector or something, I went ahead and started an entire IU student organization for this. Yes, we are now an officially registered IU club, with a constitution and everything. I was also able to reserve a classroom (TV245) for a 4 hour block every Friday until the end of the semester. The group is The Giant Organism-caused Destruction and Zoological Interest and Learning Liaisons Association, or the G.O.D.Z.I.L.L.A. Club for short. Awesome? Yes. Overdone? Maybe slightly. Expect much movie watching and video game playing being done in the Telecom building every Friday from here on.

Saturday morning I had to wake up around 7AM, which was 2 hours or so after I went to sleep. Why would I break my seeming 1-month or longer streak of waking up really really late? To get IUSTV funding for next year, and hopefully more, that’s why! Brian and I had the Committe for Fee Review hearing (CFR) in the Union at 9AM sharp. Without boring my blog-fans (ha, HA) too much with the details, we have to present to this committee of students how much money IUSTV needs for next year, and why. It’s based on a system of student activity fees, which everyone at IU has to pay. This fee is split up among a whole bunch of different organizations, departments, etc on campus, and that’s how a lot of places are funded. IUSTV currently gets 64 cents. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s 64 cents per student per semester, which means this year we got about $54,000.000. Quite a nice chunk of change. We proposed increasing that to a dollar (so that we would get almost $75,000.00) for next year. We’ll see how that turns out in a month or two. Recommendations go from the CFR to the school’s dean to the chancellor (I guess provost now, since the whole chain of command just got overhauled), then to the Board of Trustees who make the final call.

Enough of that. After the hearing, ate breakfast at the Village Deli on Kirkwood, which I’ve only been to once before with TomSOB. I had the world’s largest breakfast burrito I think, and it was awesome. Afterwards I goofed around at home and at the office until the evening, went to sleep finally, and got up later for some TAIKO fun! That’s right, I bought the Taiko game for PS2. Nick brought his drum over and we played for a few hours. Seriously, one of the most fun games ever I think. It’s like DDR, but you play a Japanese-style drum. It’s a lot more fun than I’m making it out to be. I also have about 5 Japanese versions of the game, all with different songs, so the $30 I paid for the American game and drum controller was well worth it I think (yes, I actually bought a real PS2 game! miracle!

Quick deep thought for the night: have you ever thought about your family reading your blog? I’m not talking about your family right now. I’m talking about your family about 20 or 30 years from now. Considering that everything on the internet is pretty much archived or saved somewhere indefinitely, and internet indexing is becoming more sophisticated and powerful all the time (I mean, come on, look at Google compared to Yahoo from a few years ago), by the time we’re old and have families, it will probably be just a button press away to find anything and everything pertaining to you from anytime after the early 1990’s. This includes blog entries people. Your blog is public on the internet, which means whether you know it or not, it’s been saved and archived in a whole bunch of computers all over the world. Saved means it is/will be indexed, and viewable later on. Even much later.

I don’t know where I’m going with this thought, but it popped into my head earlier tonight when I was driving home. My blog is pretty boring and more just like something I use to keep track of what I do. Most likely, I’ll have a family and kids and stuff one day (as will most of you), so just wait for the day that they go “Hey, I found your blog from when you were in college. Were you seriously that much of a dork?” My kids won’t probably really ask that, because I’ll still be watching Kamen Rider and playing video games whether they like it or not, and the answer will be obvious. So in any case, in the ironic event that my kids are reading this exact blog post sometime in the year 202x (haha, like in Megaman), then HI KIDS BE GOOD MAKE ME SOME COOKIES.

Yeah, now all of you reading this are thinking about this concept, aren’t you? Thinking about what you’ve written, posted, alluded to, and saying to yourself in GOB fashion “I’ve made a huge mistake.” Not to make you paranoid or anything at all. I have given your mind a jumpstart and at least for a little bit, and you’re starting to think like I do: completely random and absolutely genius. I think of stuff like this all the time; welcome to the jungle. I’m joking, I’m not that arrogant.

I really want to play some Taiko right now, since I successfully obtained Japanese version 6 which just came out last month. It has a bunch of (obviously) current songs, like the Gorie song, Numa Numa (haha yes of internet fame), Matsuken Samba III, and even the gay ending theme to Magiranger. I’m afraid of waking and pissing off the neighbors below and next to me, considering its 2AM and I would be beating on a plastic drum in my living room. I guess I’ll just keep watching Detective Conan like I’ve been doing for the past hour (it’s a Special!). GOODNIGHT FUTURE KIDS LETS GO FOR A RIDE IN THE HOVER CAR TOMORROW.

CFR Presentation tomorrow morning at 9AM (on a Saturday!). I have to wake up at 7 or so… this is going to be painful.

As I was brushing my teeth a minute ago, thinking of what to write in my blog tonight, I realized I write a lot of the same stuff. Oh well. It’s been a busy week, even though I only had two finals. I pretty much put in full hour days at IUSTV everyday this week except for Wednesday, and I had a pretty good amount of “big” stuff to deal with. Had a meeting to settle some differences between two staff members, had a complaint calling SCAP (which we don’t even produce, only broadcast) racist, had another student group try and threaten us (poorly), and had to finish the document that gets us our funding. Alicia (and now Thoms) might be right; maybe I’m a workaholic. OK, no, I’m not, and I’m not agreeing with them. I work because I have to, and because it’s usually fun for me. Especially after getting the e-mail threat on Thursday evening, I can’t get over how awesome we are. IUSTV really is one of the best organizations or departments on campus, hands down. OK let’s stop the gloating.

My schedule for today was as follows: slept from 4:30AM to 9AM, working on the Fee Review document both before and after. I did that until around noon, when I took a shower and went to Ashton. All I had to do was take down a bulletin board and then take it and a bunch of other wall hangings to Read by 1. Easy, right? GOOD LORD NO. The board that I had to take down had about 8 screws holding it into the wall. I didn’t have time (or the foresight) to drop by Read and get our electric drill/screwdriver, so I was doing it by hand with a regular Craftsman driver. Each of the screws, in addition to being old and stuck pretty hard, were about 5 inches long. When you’re trying to unscrew a screw that long from a wall by hand, it sucks.

I finally get all the stuff loaded into my car and head over the Read. I was about 5 minutes late, and Casey and the RPS maintanance guy were already there. The maintanance guy who was to help hang stuff on the walls for us, was old as a fossil and must have had serious respiratory problems. I felt bad because I thought he was going to pass out or hock up a wallaby. He did finally get everything done, and it looks good. I guess I can’t complain. I spoke with him a bit before he left, and he was actually a nice guy, despite seeing pretty gruff and on-the-brink-of-death when I first got there. He’s 77 and already retired, so he just runs around part time. Jeez.

Met with Casey and some other staff members to talk about the threatening e-mail we got. Not a big deal; some people just don’t’ get it. Enough about that. After that I was working on the Fee Review stuff forever. Until about 4:30 to be exact. 12 copies of the final document were due in the Dean’s office by 5PM. Printing 12 copies of a 30 page document takes a lot longer than I somehow anticipated, so I was using the office printer as well as both the printers in the somewhat nearby Read computer lab. Then I got everything together and drove as fast as I could through campus. I parked completely illegally with my DP (next to the sundial) and seriously like ran as fast as I could to the Dean’s office. 5:10PM, 10 minutes after the deadline, the building is dark and not a soul is around. Great. I was freaking out at that point. I was knocking on doors, hoping for some evidence of human life. I wanted to fall to my knees and yell “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” but decided against it.

I did some e-mailing and found out that only 3 organizations actually got their materials in on time. I’m not sure what happened, but at least I think I’ll be fine dropping them off first thing Monday morning. After that whole fiasco I came back home and had about an hour to cram for my D301 exam. This was the class that I finished the term paper in 1 night in Minneapolis and got an A-, so I wasn’t too concerned about it at all. Also I was exhausted from the entire day so I didn’t care too much either. I think I got what I needed, though.

Got dinner and watched TV with Nick and Brian for a few hours; it was good to finally relax. Apparently Nickelodeon Gak is back in stores, only it’s more liquidy now and thus not as fun. High prank possibilities I think, though. Nick bought some at Target. Also we text messaged a bunch of people from his phone with the message “I like bukkake.” Fun night.