On the inside, things happen more clearly — there is food and fuel and writing. These questions and more are explored by the science of English.

English lets us do things.

(vector_black fuel)

Physicists are the bad boys of the scientific world. They are its rock stars and its politicians. Stephen Hawking is their Elvis and their UN Secretary General rolled into one. All things are simply applied physics, or so they claim.

(vector_black applies physics)

The most outrageously famous and wealthy among us, eclectic though they might be, all share one common trait. They are all secretly Astronomers. The science of Astronomy has long been dismissed by most literary circles as “boring,” but only becuase they don’t want you to realize that Astronomy is responsible for banana bread and several varieties of pastry. Eventually we will all have our own deep space telescopes.

(vector_black didn’t go home)

The science of Medicine enhances our capabilities. Scientists of Medicine make better lovers and better chefs. Medicine makes for a better newspaper. Daily we are blessed by its Medical touch.

Medicine and Geology are opposites.

(vector_black is outside)

There are terrible things lying just beneath the surface and wonderful things just beneath the terrible things and neutral things just beneath those. Like the layers of an onion, Geology allows us to unravel the mysteries of our world.

(vector_black wants you to be happy)

I’ve started playing World of Warcraft again against my better judgment. The endgame is one big waste of time, designed specifically to string players along with the smallest possibility of reward lying in wait at the end of each massive time investment as they continue to pay their monthly fees. Leveling alts only leads to the endgame again, an endgame in which the honor system, which greatly reduces the effectiveness of alts, plays a prominent role. Yet here I am, LFGing, farming, pking, and fighting with mages and priests over the fattest of the l00tz.

When you’re spending between five and eight hours a day in Azeroth (I wish that wasn’t a conservative figure), it doesn’t leave all that much time for, well, anything. Except for dinging, gratsing, and pointing out that Blizzard’s design staff is, like, totally inept and stuff.

I’ve graduated from college now with a nice and shiny English degree. As a proud member of the “real” world, so far I have spent a week and a half with my parents and spent an unhealthy amount of time flipping 1s and 0s in some server farm in Florida. The beta servers were in Florida. I’ll just assume the retail servers are in Florida rather than Irvine too. They’re probably not though. The point, however, remains the same.

The point: I suck; World of Warcraft sucks.

Other things that suck: too many to list. So I won’t bother.

That new crunchwrap surpreme at Taco Bell, though. That’s about as far from sucking as one can get. For those of you not in the know, and God bless you for that, and for those of you too lazy and/or unable to click the link above and find the pertinent information therein (future generations, this is you), the CWS is a tostada – corn tostada shell, ground beef, lettuce, tomatoes, and nacho cheese, of all things – stuffed into a tortilla which is then grilled on the Grilled Stuft grilling machine. I know, settle down. It’s as awesome as it sounds. It is the perfect representation of the cheap white Americanized commaless Mexican food that goes just great with some Del Scorcho hot sauce and a Mexican pizza on the side. It is a symbol. It is Gatsby’s green light across the water. It is perfect. God willing, our children will never know a day when the CWS does not exist. And the future, that magical world of tomorrow, will look back on these simple days as good. Better than what had come before, but not as good as what was to come. Crunchwrap supreme. It has nacho cheese.

I ate one of these.

Then I came home and I five-maned Stratholme. LFG 5-man Strath, I typed. And Vaalt and Shirfan, noble defenders of all things right, were quick to heed my call. We picked up some crap warrior and a brilliant mage, the kind of mage who makes you forget your own mother, and five-maned the hell out of that instance. We died on the MASSIVE WAVE OF DEATH following Ramstein. But we killed that ugly sucker, and Vaalt/PopcornChicken/Geoff Frazier and I got our new ring.

I out-rolled a druid for my new cloak earlier in the week. The Beast in URBS dropped it. Shirfan and Vaalt were there then too.

At some point between these two doings, I watched The Great Escape on AMC. The Wizard of Oz was on TMC at the time. I watched it because Major Zero/Tom mentions it in Metal Gear Solid 3, and I thought that by watching it I would somehow accrue (I just used that word) a greater understanding of the game. I didn’t, but the movie was pretty good. The teevee told me that if I liked the Great Escape I should watch some movie on Friday, but I won’t. I refuse.

I also refuse to stop playing Meteos, which arrived and which I play. It’s fun, and I don’t believe the game-destroying ‘crazy scratching’ method actually destroys the game. In fact, I don’t believe it does much of anything. I haven’t played Lumines (someday, he tells himself), so I can’t chime in on which one is better and thus confirm or condemn my own console purchases, as well as the console purchases of others, based on a single game. Such is life. Meteos is a hell of a lot of fun though. Wish I knew someone else with a DS and the game to compete against.

I’m a lonely boy in a lonely world.

But I have you, Internet, don’t I?

The toaster in my kitchen is plated with shiny chrome and features sleek streamlining. It has tiny LEDs that blink brightly. The style of its design is called Retro Future. It’s what the future would have looked like if it had happened in the past.

(vector_black is hypergolic with atmospheric nitrogen)