A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup

Listen Up!
Yeah, I hate being sick. I somehow caught ANOTHER cold/flu/something over the weekend (it's not the reason why I missed last week's post, that was because I was relaxing over spring break). But yeah, I hate being sore everywhere, not wanting to get up, feeling like I want to hurl, and everything else. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it....
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Overall though I had a good spring break! I was able to just lounge around the house nude until anyone got home, and it's always fun to just be free, lol. Seriously though, sorry about the image that I just put in your head of a bare 270lb me making macaroni and cheese, and I had a great summer break. I caught up on a lot of sleep debt I'd built up, and really was able to intensify my job search, speaking of which...
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I'M STILL UNEMPLOYED! WTF!? Seriously, I must have answered 2 and a half dozen craigslist postings and put in 5 online applications to different major stores, and even after checking back and going to some of them and asking the hiring manager for an update, I STILL haven't gotten any calls. I'm going to call up my uncle once again and get him to hire me back at Shoprite, because I really need to start saving money for all the things I want to do this summer, NOW.
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As for my summer plans, let me outline them real quick. First, the IJA convention is happening in North Carolina this year, so I can easily drive down and have a blast, especially seeing as how there's not going to e a WJF until 2010. That's one week of July, and for the month of August is my REALLY ambitious plan. I want to move down to Texas to live (ONLY FOR THE MONTH OF AUGUST) with one of my juggling friends who's got a new house and is looking for other jugglers to fill it up and help split the cost. I'm really iffy about whether this will happe n or not, but the reason is that I want to see what it's like to live on my own away from my parents for a while. The longest time I've ever spent away from them was the last two WJF conventions, and they both lasted under a week, so I have no idea what it'd be like to support myself long term, and I want to try it out.
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Daily Life:
So I said already that spring break was awesome, I got to hang out nude. I didn't really go anywhere or do anything, and my time spent at college has just been, meh. Though I did hit a breakthrough with Tech.MCC recently, all thanks to JerseyCowboy. He basically came in one day a few weeks ago and shook up the club by calling for more organization and progress on projects. Everyone listened, and now we've got a massive project on it's way, and that is the Lego Robotics project. Basically, the club is going to buy a lego Mindstorms kit and use it to learn about programming, autonomy in programming, and general engineering. It's a great project, and hopefully we'll get it working soon, because I love it, and so does the rest of the club.

Other than that though, things have been a bit quiet and boring, so here's a nice story for you to watch and listen to:


Juggle This:
Ok, so I've had a few breakthroughs in new tricks since the last post, the most noteworthy one if a QUALIFY of a 5 BALL MILLS! Woo! I've also done a new one high tw low variation with clubs, broken my 5 ring full reverse record, flashed a 6 ring flat front reverse with rings, and broken my 6 ring record! I'm actually a bit amazed at how much I'm still improving considering how little practice I've been getting recently. However, I have also continued training Jacob (TheRisingIris) and he is DEFINITELY getting better. I let him borrow a set of my clubs over spring break and tomorrow I'll see what he's managed to learn on his own, he's getting good enough now that he can experiment and find tricks without me showing him (makes me so proud :P ) So yeah.

As for me though, I've got Juggle This coming up in two weeks, and I've been pretty set in my decision, that now I have 16gb worth of total SD card memory and a wonderful HD camera, that I'll be producing a convention video when I go. Of course my problem is, as usually with convention videos, how will I have fun at the con and still get all the footage I want/need, how long with the finished video be, what will be in the video, etc. All this stuff that makes a convention video hard to do... I know for a fact I'll be recording more of the Renegade performances and putting them up as well! And speaking of renegade....

I REALLY want to do something for this years Juggle This Renegade show, but I still have no idea what to do. I got the idea from Michael Karas to do a parody of JoJ, and I think that's a great premise, but turning it into a routine of some sort is driving me mad. I've come up with a REALLY stupid, but somehow still hard, trick that I want to do, I'm not sure the response it'll get though. I've also thought about who I could do a collaborative routine of some sort with or serious tricks I can do, and I was thinking about doing my arm-club-balance-flips on the renegade show or for best trick, because it's a really hard trick that I've got nailed down pretty well, and that's fairly unique, so I still don't know..... If you've got any ideas for what I should do, please don't hesitate to suggest something!

Now, I was also asked recently by someone what's going on with Jugglers On Juggling. Well, to be blunt, I think that season 3 is over. Why? I have simply run out of good ideas for things I think I am knowledgeable enough with to contribute to, and so I think that if I did any more topics, I would be making stuff up and speaking out of my ass, which is something I want to avoid at ALL costs. Basically, Season 3 of JoJ was all about me informing other jugglers about what subjects I knew more about than the average juggler. I think, unless I make an episode about siteswaps, that I've pretty much run dry on things I know better than most jugglers. So looking back on Season 3, I think it was a great success. I improved the format by leaps and bounds, made up a recording method that's easy to edit and record and leads to good results, and I've gained some respect from people who used to hate it. Basically I've learned from Season 3, and for Season 4, I want to try something different. I want to change the format again. I'm looking to try interview type format, where I bring on other jugglers and have a recorded debate about subjects, such as sport vs art, tricks vs numbers, basically all the classic juggling debates. Me on one mic and another juggler with an opposing viewpoint on the other mic, going back and forth trying to prove each others point. I think that'd make for an intellectually stimulating podcast...

A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150

Listen Up!
So last week I didn't write a post because I had a MASSIVE flu hit me right on Sunday. I was sore, I couldn't breathe well, I couldn't do a lot of stuff, and on Monday I was just way too far gone to write anything. SO sorry for that, but hopefully now you're pissed off at the Church of Later day Saints for the shit they're spreading.
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TechMCC has finally hit a stride. I can't thank JT McGuire enough for what he did. Basically, he came in two weeks ago, and suddenly saw exactly where our problem was and why the meetings haven't been as good as they can be. They were not organized at all, and we really had no serious projects we were working on, or even meeting ideas that were anything other than ideas. He shook it up, kicked my ass into gear, and now we're really striving forward with two big projects featuring robotics and alternative operating systems. We're still a little short on quick projects to do while we're setting up the big projects, but we are dozens of times better right now than we were the weeks before.
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My job search, man, I really hate talking about this, because everything I've done so far has failed. NOONE is hiring ANYONE. The latest thing I've done is applied for a job with the US Census on Friday. I'm calling them back tomorrow to see where things stand, but I've already taken the basic civil skills test and passed with ease, so I'm really thinkling things will work well here, but after so many bad leads, I'm not getting my hopes up.
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Daily Life:
So I've noticed something recently, and that is that I'm getting a lot more political. I did a bit of thinking about this recently, and I think it's a good thing, because a lot of my close friends that I have talked politics and psychology with have said that I am "very profound for my age". However, I think I've got a bit of a problem in that I can't think psychology or politics when I'm alone, because I've said in earlier posts, I don't have the ability to believe that anything I think is wrong. In other words, I can't debate a point or idea by myself because I'll have one thought, assume it's correct, and run with it until I decide to do research. I always need to have someone with me to debate and bounce things off of, because they could see the errors in my thoughts and bring them up. It's a bit interesting for me, and I come up with a lot of interesting ideas because of it.

Now, this change isn't just in how often I talk politics, but in how often I get pissed off. I used to be (up to about 5 months ago), the most lax guy you'd ever meet. I wouldn't get pissed off over anything unless your idiocy directly affected me. I guess that's still the case, but that now I'm seeing as to how many more cases there are. I used to be pretty lax about things like the death penalty and the war on drugs. Then I started thinkign about most of them (well, actually I began watching Penn and Teller's Bullshit! )but either way, I started realizing how many stupid things are done by stupid people that directly affect me. The death penalty for instance, I used to say "Eh, if the person wants to kill the murderer, I'm fine with that. It will never directly affect me because I'm never going to commit a murder." Then I did some thinking and realized, ok, well what about the innocent people on death row and all the complexities of how prosecution is entirely hell-bent on winning and especially how once you kill and innocent person, you can't undo it. Then I thought, "Well what if I was framed for a murder? I'd MUCH rather spend life in prison and still have the ability to decide when I want to die instead of being killed off." And now I'm against the death penalty.

Mostly what I think has changed is two things. One ifs my ability to expand and see how direct certain things can affect me, which I already just gave an example of with the death penalty, and also I have grown to become a skeptic. I'm INTENSELY grateful for both. I love being a skeptic now, because I will notice things that I wouldn't have noticed before, and be more sure of my decisions. A great example of this was the last time I went to the dentist for a cleaning about 2 months ago. When I was about to go home from the cleaning, the dentist who did the final check handed me a flier and asked if I'd want him to do "a simple procedure to check for gum cancer". I immediately was skeptical, and as such, I looked at the flier for the ONE THING that would make me possibly consider spending the extra 60 bucks to "Shine a harmless light against my gums to highlight potentially cancerous areas". I looked for the number of people in America that had gum cancer. I saw nothing about what my odds of having it were, not even how many reported cases there were last year or whatever. I asked the dentist these same questions about what exactly my odds of having it are, and how many cases there were. As soon as I heard him say he didn't know, I turned down the procedure, checked out, and walked right out the front door, 60 bucks still in my pocket and my gums feeling fine. Careless? maybe, but I'm not going to spend money on protection that I have no idea whether I NEED or not. That's just one of my life ideas now. It's like charging a guy in a padded cell who's given 3 liquid meals a day life insurance in case he dies from an accident. IT'S POINTLESS AND A WASTE OF MONEY.

So I figured I'd just let everyone who reads this know about that little change in my personality, because it really has been a while since I was deep and personal here on my blog. I really don't like being pissed off about things, but I still wouldn't trade in my newfound clarity and depth of thought for ignorant bliss any day. Because now, I can notice the problems, which is the first step in correcting problems...

Juggle This:
So being sick last week, I couldn't do all that much juggling practice. As such, I'm rusty as hell, and can feel it whenever I pick up a ball, ring, or club. HOWEVER! Today I found a few magical things that should be wonderful for my juggling work in the near future! I heard from a friend that our local Office Depot was closing also (the circuit city a block and a half away already closed up), and that there was a ton of great stuff there. I decided to go there today on my way to the most useless class ever. What did I find? absolutely nothing worth buying in terms of products, but there were two pieces of furniture and equipment from the store that I could NOT pass up. One was a basic metal bin that was used to hold random things on display, it's about a foot by a foot in it's area, but it's about 2 and a half feet deep and elevated so the rim of the basket is about 4 feet off the ground. I saw it, and instantly thought, "PROP RACK!" I now have a nice looking rack to hold props in when I'm performing! The clubs go inside the rack, the balls will either sit on the bottom or in a bag off the side, and the rings will hang off a metal hook on the side. I'll post pics of it in the next blog maybe.

But the better thing I found, was that they sold metal poster displays. Sounds lame right? Uh, remember my ideas for the Picture Frame Routine? Well I FINALLY have the stand I need AND a non-breakable metal frame that I can unbolt and use on it's own! After years of thought and bad equipment, I can finally finish the routine and make a video for it! Yes, I just said a video for it! Now that I can finish the routine,I will be premiering it sometime around Juggle This or later depending on how it goes.

Speaking of Juggle This, I'm planning to perform something in the Renegade Show, and I may record another convention video because I haven't in a while. So expect to see me runnign around with my HD camera gathering footage and then doing something stupid and humiliating on stage at Renegade!

A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150

Ok, I wasn't going to make a blog post because I am sick as hell with a nasty Flu this week, but I just found this online and this has just made me more pissed off than anything in the past YEAR AND A HALF. It's actually WORSE for me than Prop 8 passing. (copied directly from RPTRCLUB , all credit to them for finding this steaming pile called a letter!)



From Box Turtle Bulletin, via Joe.My.God.:

In a private email sent out to LDS members of at least one ward in Illinois, church members are being encouraged to call their representative to voice their opposition to the bill, which would provide same-sex couples with recognition and limited protections under Illinois law. But the official LDS-sanctioned email to members is loaded with much of the same misinformation that was present in the campaign against California’s Proposition 8.

A trusted source sent me a copy of that email, authorized by Bishop Chris Church, of the Nauvoo, Illinois 3rd Ward, which was sent out by that web site’s ward administrator:

This message has been authorized for sending by Bishop Church.

The Civil Union Bill (HB 2234) has been scheduled for a hearing in the Youth and Family Committee this week on Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 9:00 a.m. in Springfield. If the bill is voted out of committee, it becomes eligible for a vote before the full Illinois House of Representatives. This bill will legalize civil unions in the state of Illinois, and will treat such civil unions with the same legal obligations, responsibilities, protections and benefits as are afforded within marriage. In other words, civil unions will be different in name only from marriage. As has already been seen in Massachusetts, this will empower the public schools to begin teaching this lifestyle to our young children regardless of parental requests otherwise. It will also create grounds for rewriting all social mores; the current push in Massachusetts is to recognize and legalize all transgender rights (An individual in Massachusetts can now change their drivers license to the gender they believe themselves to be, regardless of actual gender, which means that confused men and women are now legally entering one another’s bathrooms and locker rooms. What kind of a safety issue is this for our children?). Furthermore, while the bill legalizes civil unions, it will be used in the courts to show discrimination and will ultimately lead to court mandated same-sex marriages.

To help defeat this bill, please call your state representative and state senator and ask that they support traditional marriage and vote against the civil unions bill. If you are unsure who your legislators are, please see the link at the end of this email.

Also, please take a moment and call the following members of the Youth and Family Committee to encourage them to vote no on this bill. We need 4 votes to keep it from passing out of the committee. And - as always, please pass this on to all who believe in protecting our families and our children. If you are interested in attending the hearing, it will be held on Thursday, March 5th at 9:00 a.m. in Springfield in Room 122B of the Capitol Building (I can give you directions to the Capitol Building if needed).

Members of the Youth and Family Committee:
Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago) (Greg Harris is also the sponsor of this bill, but he needs to hear your opposition to this bill)
Chairperson
217-782-3835

Rep. LaShawn K. Ford (D-Chicago)
Vice-Chairperson
217-782-5962

Rep. Mike Fortner (R-West Chicago)
Republican Spokesperson
217-782-1653

Rep. William D. Burns (D-Chicago)
217-782-2023

Rep. Michael P. McAuliffe (R-Chicago)
217-782-8182

Rep. Al Riley (D-Matteson)
217-558-1007

Rep. Dave Winters (R-Rockford)
217-782-0455

Directions for identifying your legislators:
You can use the following link to identify your state legislators and their contact information: http://www.elections.il.gov/ DistrictLocator/ SelectSearchType.aspx? NavLink=1 (and enter your 9 digit zip code). If this link doesn’t work, you can use the general link www.ilga.gov and then click on ” legislator lookup” near the bottom of the page, then click on “by zip+4″. Type in your zip code, and you’ll see a list of your legislators. You want your state senator and state representative as they will be the ones voting on the bill.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Sister Combs.

So, marriage is a sacred institution. But they won't even let not-equal civil unions through the door?

Remind me why I have to be nice to these people?

What? It isn't enough that the fuckers won and made gays unable to enter into a legal "marriage" but now they don't even want this to go on so much that they completely MAKE UP SHIT like how teachers will be required to teach about gay marriage (uh, hello, THEY'RE LEGALLY BOUND TO NOT EVEN TEACH ABOUT STRAIGHT MARRIAGE!), and how PEOPLE WILL BE FORCED INTO GAY CIVIL UNIONS!? WHERE THE FUCK DID THEY GET THE BALLS TO THINK THAT PEOPLE WILL ACCEPT THAT KIND OF FUCKING BULLSHIT! NO REALLY, I HAVE TO GO SLAP THEM IN THE FACE NOW. IT'S THE ONLY THING THAT WILL MAKE ME FEEL BETTER AFTER READING THESE FUCKING CONSERVATIVE, BOGITED, MYOPIC, SELF RIGHTEOUS, "I'M BETTER THAN YOU SO YOU SHOULD ALL ACT ACCORDING TO MY RULES AND BELIEFS", FUCKING ASSHOLE-CUNT-BITCHES!