goodnight for tonight

Originally published at scott topic. You can comment here or there.

sorry if you can’t read my writing today. interpret it however you’d like

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3 days till I’ll be in New York.

Not permanently, mind you. A short trip. It’s a 2 day thing. Have to be back because one of my buddy’s wives wants him home early.

Can’t talk his way out of it.

I can’t imagine that right now.

I sometimes feel like there’s nothing I need more in this world than a serious relationship. But then there’s times when… i just don’t.

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I went to the eye doctor today. He was a new guy. I’m never going back. He was slow, rude, and seemed to lick his chops at the thought of having me come back for an unnecessary followup next week. Fuck. That.

I’ll be following up. With a real eye doctor.

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I realize I’m late (like 3 years late) getting on this bandwagon, but I’ve been watching a lot of Mad Men lately. All I know is that I need to buy more suits. And drink more cocktails. And live in a city. That show is great, seriously. Oh and despite what I said earlier, Christina Hendricks needs to marry me right now.

On a completely unrelated note, if this doesn’t make you laugh, then you need to drink more cocktails.

Originally published at scott topic. You can comment here or there.

I like when I sorta forget movie, and then putting it on I’m still able to kinda be surprised when things happen. Not the same surprise as the first time you see it, but still it’s not a movie you’re familiar enough with that you can recite every line. That just happened to me.

Vanilla Sky is one of the greatest movies ever. The ending is almost perfect and it gives me chills every time I see it. Sigur Rós singing The Nothing Song, some of my favorite lines ever.. it all comes together. I think this was when Tom Cruise peaked cuz it has been pretty much down hill since this.

David: Do you remember what you told me once? That every passing minute is a another chance to turn it all around.
Sofía: I’ll find you again.
David: I’ll see you in another life… when we are both cats.

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the more i listen to taylor, despite not being a huge fan of any country music with few exceptions, i find her and her songs to be ridiculously charming.

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I signed up for last.fm a few weeks back when they started the Xbox 360 preview program with the last.fm integration (friend me!). It’s pretty sweet as an internet radio thing, but after hooking it up with my local library I realized I’m embarrassingly obsessed with Breathe Carolina. Trying to deduce how this happened, I have come to the conclusion that a combination of catchy songs, very short songs (only one song on their first album is over 4 minutes), and the fact they’re on my ipod nano which i rarely change the music on, means that this band is ranked number one with a vengeance on my playlist. So now I have to listen to any band other than them to get them off first place.

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this week has been mostly awful. i’ll write something cryptic about it on a piece of paper and post it here some time. stuff just kept hitting me one after another. i mostly just crawled into a little hole to get away. the let downs continued even today. suffice to say, i did not go to philadelphia.

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i thought this was totally cheesy and cute. secondhand serenade is one of my favorite singers. the guy made this video in Microsoft Paint.

Originally published at scott topic. You can comment here or there.

Originally published at scott topic. You can comment here or there.

Originally published at scott topic. You can comment here or there.

Last week I went to see Paranormal Activity. It’s a low budget thriller about a couple who film (Blair Witch style) the strange things that happen in their house. It’s been circulating festivals for a couple years, trying to find a distributor. Finally Paramount picked it up, and did a limited release. Luckily, and surprisingly, State College was one of the towns that got to show it.

The theater in State College was doing midnight shows only, but I went on a Thursday night anyway with a friend from work, and found a packed house. They had sold out the screen they planned to show it in so they moved it into 2 other screens, both of which sold out as well.

The crowd was made up of several types. But was predominantly groups of 4 to 6 people, as though everybody wanted a large gang to ease their tensions. The hype for this movie had been getting outrageous, with people calling it the best horror film they’d ever seen, with nightmares for days afterward.

Let me say this: it was pretty damn scary.

Paranormal Activity was filmed on a $15k budget in the director’s own house, with a single camera. Yet the story is well written (despite some air-headed characters who should probably have called the cops and/or a priest about 20 nights earlier). It’s got one of the best build-ups I’ve ever seen in a horror film, with each night of their experiences getting progressively worse and worse as the activities get more intense.

I have been a horror fan for years and yet this is the first movie in a long time that gave me some honest-to-goodness creep-out moments. Unlike the grotesque torture of the Saw films or the shocks of a slasher, this film scares with realism, in that it feels much more tenable than most supernatural horror films.

It’s scary sure, but it’s fun. Everybody needs to go out and see this when it comes to your town.

Originally published at scott topic. You can comment here or there.

Batman, Rocky, Back to the Future, Star Wars, Superman. Even if you’re not a fan of marching bands, you gotta admit the Blue Band’s halftime show this past weekend kicked ass. The Rocky fight was awesome. And Vader? Are you kidding me? Sick!

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If you’ve never heard of Tucker Max, I’d recommend you check out his website. The guy is a hilarious asshole with a lot of great stories to tell. I saw this conversation regarding McDonald’s there:

SlingBlade: “I can only assume from your cavalier attitude that you have yet to partake of the wonderment that is the McGriddle. Let me enlighten you. What happens is the One True God grows them on trees in the Elysian Fields using a heretofore unused incantation. He then proceeds to magic them to your local eater where whatever ghetto Bastard cook your McDonald’s has rescued from welfare that week proceeds to wrap it in cellophane and pass it along to you, the fortunate consumer. You proceed to ingest this finery in the vain hope that your obviously over-matched taste buds can somehow grasp the delectable intricacies it is suddenly faced with. Is that egg? Why yes it is, and bacon too. But wait — they didn’t add … yes they did, yes they did indeed. They added cheese. And then, then my friends, they wrapped it in a sumptuous pancake bun! As your taste buds try to process that amazing piece of information, IT hits them…the syrup nugget. THE MOTHERFUCKING SYRUP NUGGET! It announces itself with a burst of confectionery grandiosity the likes of which your palate has never seen.”

SlingBlade: “If you EVER speak ill of the McGriddle again I will personally force-feed you one while I fuck you in the butt using the wrapper as a condom and then donkey punch you when the infused syrup nuggets explode in your mouth.”

Originally published at scott topic. You can comment here or there.

UPDATE (via Onward State): Dado found dead in stairwell by Steidle and Deike. Foul play not suspected, however alcohol was involved.
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A fire has been lit underneath Penn State and the entire community is mobilizing to search for a freshman who went missing this weekend. Joseph Dado was last seen on Sunday the 19th at 3:00 AM leaving the Fiji house on campus (Phi Gamma Delta). It’s one of the few fraternities at Penn State who still has a house that resides on the actual campus.

My first indication that something was going on was when I was heading to the far west of campus this afternoon to get a flu shot. Overhead, the whole time, a State Police helicopter was slowly flying around. It’s not totally abnormal for a helicopter to fly around Penn State, but usually it’s either for a football game, or to take photos of campus. As a freshman I got to fly in a helicopter flown by the Air Force for their ROTC recruiting efforts. (It was awesome, I nearly signed up.)

But later on, when cutting through the HUB to grab a drink, I realized this was no ordinary flyby. Inside the HUB were dozens of students with fliers showing a missing student. His photo was plastered around the building, and there was an article in the campus newspaper.

Onward State, a Penn State blog, has been updating all day. They’ve linked to a fast growing Facebook group, and noted that students and community members, led by the Interfraternity Council and the University Park Undergraduate Association, will be meeting tonight to organize search parties. The family has also put up a $10,000 reward for information.

it’s kinda scary, because there is a history of people going missing around here, such as Cindy Song and DA Ray Gricar, not to mention the legendary unsolved murder of Betsy Aardsma. I think everybody is hoping this was just some drunken misunderstanding and not as serious as it is fast becoming.

Originally published at scott topic. You can comment here or there.

The last couple weeks I’ve felt very busy, but I’m feeling finally that I’m somewhat involved with things at school again. Rather than sitting around doing nothing most evenings I’ve been doing karate. It’s good for me. I come home hurting, I am exhausted at times, but for a few hours, a couple nights a week my mind is focused, I’m able to shut off the outside world and focus on just this. I feel stronger physically. And there are some nice people in the club. I’m glad to do it. I still some nights just crave to come home and do nothing. But I’ve been trying my hardest to stick with it every class.

I went to the football game last weekend and it was fun. I’m glad it’s football season again, fall is the best time of year for a sports fan. I signed up for cable again, cuz it’s always frustrating when I have to miss Penn State games because I don’t have ESPN or something. I had canceled my cable maybe 9 months ago cuz I hadn’t been watching anything really, but I was time to change that.

So today the cable guy came. He hooked up the box and all, got it working… then when he left i undid all this connections and hooked it up how I wanted. haha.

I’ve been poking around on my new hundreds of tv stations for a while now. But there were two things I watched tonight that really sort of epitomized the two sides of me. For like 2 hours I watched UFC. Ultimate Fighting. Blood soaked fighters beating on each other. Perhaps it’s my recent resumption of karate training that let me enjoy MMA again, but I had a blast watching it.

But what did I find myself watching after that? Oxygen. The Notebook was on… It’s a good movie! It’s all about second chances. Who doesn’t wish for those now and again?

If there is an opposite to MMA I think the Notebook might be it.

Originally published at scott topic. You can comment here or there.

I totally was going to hit up the Tae Kwon Do class on campus today. And I totally had the wrong room. I show up a half hour before class and a Ballroom Dancing class is in full session in the room I thought I had to go to, with 100+ couples dancing salsa.

I always wanted to take that class. It’s actually the single most popular gen ed class on the Penn State campus. But I never had the combination of being an upper classman (to be able to schedule such a popular class) and having a girlfriend who attended Penn State at the same time. Sad, I know.

But Tae Kwon Do meets as a club and it’s open to staff like me. I’m not certain if I will do TKD or Tang Soo Do, my old school (which I’m hoping to hit up tomorrow night). But today I was all ready and willing to go do some front kicks in the dojang. And I got confused on the room. Gah!

But despite it all, today had a amazing freak autumn coolness to it. It almost smelled like fall, with the cool breeze on your skin and a comforting chill that I always associate to one autumn, many years ago… the most vivid, important and beautiful time of my life. Certain cool autumn winds take me there.

For a moment.

Originally published at scott topic. You can comment here or there.

I just listened through the newest All Time Low album, Nothing Personal and it’s really good. It’s straight up pop-punk, and so if you’ve hated pretty much every pop-punk album you’ve ever heard, you’ll despise the bubblegum that comes with this CD. But if you can get past that, it’s got some really catchy tunes. Definitely check it out! Two of the highlights (which aren’t singles yet, and I personally like better than either of the current singles) are the catchy “Sick Little Games” and the slower, essential ballad “Therapy”.

I’m sure eventually these videos will break, so be sure to check out the actual album (or listen on the All Time Low MySpace.)

4/5

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I’ve been playing around with some HDR photography, and it’s pretty fun. It’s amazing what sort of details are there to be captured. Here’s my best one so far:

See more of my photos at my Deviant Art page.

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I stumbled across this old collection of coffee ads by Jim Henson. They really make me want to drink Wilkins Coffee, which is apparently like the Grand Theft Auto of coffees.

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I went to the State College Spikes baseball game Friday night with my dad and my sister’s boyfriend, and it was a pretty good time… the Spikes killed the Auburn Doubledays, and afterwards there was a fireworks show! I recorded it, so check it out below!

what’s most impressive is that this is the small show, the big show is tomorrow night.

Originally published at scott topic. You can comment here or there.

Just in time for the Fourth of July is a video of a bright young man who had the genius idea to shoot a firework at his crotch. The explosion at the end is a nice touch!

I love how the dude is more worried about his car getting hit.

Originally published at scott topic. You can comment here or there.

you can disregard this, i just need a new post to test some stuff i’m working on in wordpress…