1/10/02 9:31pm Having sworn fealty, must I spend my life in servitude? Bottom line, I'm getting off of this train as soon as I can. My own arrogance kicked my ass a few weeks ago, and I should probably check it at the door like a reasonable person, but what if there's nothing left when it's gone? Eh? What then? Yeah, everyone's got problems. You have problem?! I should probably get back on a reasonable sleep schedule, or something... two more nights in my capital city.

1/9/02 10:23pm Right, this is one of those drifting kind of entries, you know how it is, I'm still home, or something like that, and today I saw nearly all of the people I had known... it wasn't even that long ago, but too much has changed. Yeah, way too much... I don't know where I am or if I am at all, like the little black mage reminded us, "how can you prove that you exist?" I belong somewhere else, I guess... would I still be alone? Wanted: female, blue in color. Must know everything there is to know about the universe except for the stuff that I don't know.

1/6/02 10:34pm Well, I suppose it's a new year now, but it doesn't make a difference one way or the other to me. For now, I'm home, although in a week I'll be back out doing battle in Buffalo... time has this relentless quality about it, that's the way it goes. Meanwhile, enjoying my days here at home, doing nothing and loving it.

12/24/01 11:24pm Whoa, Christmas. This is the eighteenth one in the series... Christmas is one of those times during the year where I stop and think about stuff... you know, this is another year of my life that's gone by, what kind of person am I now? Same as always... welp, Merry Christmas to you and yours, and a Happy belated Hannukah, a Festive Festivus, a Joyous Kwanzaa, and a Somber Ramadan.

12/20/01 6:50pm You know those nightmares you had when you were a kid, you know, the ones where you're in school and everything goes horribly wrong? You spill your milk all over yourself or show up without any clothes on or God knows what... I lived one of those nightmares today. Bard has an 8:30AM final in Calculus. Bard doesn't really study the night before, Bard figures he's alright. Bard wakes up at 8:45AM and shouts an obscenity that is heard throughout the dorm, throws on some jeans and shoes, grabs the TI-89 and sprints to the science building where the test is being held. Bard pokes his head in to see the priest who teaches the math class, makes feeble attempt at sympathy bid by indicating that he's not wearing any socks. Entirety of math class and people that Bard doesn't know laugh in Bard's face. Bard sits in the frontmost chair in the room, you know, the chair that has it's own row, the chair where they put the bad kid in elementary school, the chair next to the teacher's desk... Bard is handed a thick packet full of calculus problems and is told that he's losing five dollars. Bard thinks the priest wants five bucks to let Bard take the test, priest actually is telling Bard that a five dollar bill is hanging out of his pocket. Bard opens the test packet and tears through calculus problems, subsequently forgetting all of his knowledge of calculus, including but not limited to: definition of the derivative, integrals, related rate problems, tangents to a curve, and Riemann sums. Bard learns that the test is out of 200 points after taking the test, Bard figures that Bard got an 80. Bard goes from the highest grade in class to a clunking B+, contingent on the mercifulness of one (1) nice old priest. Yeah, this is one for the books. On the plus side, I went out to eat twice today and finished all of my Christmas shopping. Home is just around the corner...

12/9/01 4:02pm Sunday is eternally ruined by the day that comes after it... this weekend was pretty good, though. Now it's just a bit of trivial homework between me and the end of the semester. Finals are a trivial matter... that is to say, if I knew the stuff before, it's not like I'm going to forget it next week. Still no snow... it's snowing in Albany. Fantastic.

12/4/01 1:41pm Right, so it's December and there still hasn't been so much as a flake of snow in Buffalo. The locals insist that it's on the way, but now I'm getting skeptical. Less than two weeks of classes left this semester, then finals week, then I'm out of here... it's a good feeling, and things are wrapping up pretty well. Meanwhile, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, well, everywhere except outside... c'est la vie.

11/26/01 1:03pm Welp, Bard's Homepage has found a new home at Asteroid Blues, a site run by my esteemed colleague Mark Staufenberg. I'm back in Buffalo now after Thanksgiving break, which went well, but I never really have much to complain about anyway. Only three more weeks of classes are between me and the end of the semester, and then "finals week," what a joke. I have a good amount of work to do, but I think I'm out of the firestorm. Greenman only has room to assign like two more papers, biology lab with everyone's least favorite troll is coming to an end... the only big thing is chemistry, but I have ways of dealing with that (ve have vays of mekkink you talk). Remember, the only good shoe is an old shoe.

11/17/01 5:52pm So this is the morning... the all-nighter last night was successful, and I was able to coherently register for classes at 9am on a Saturday morning before crashing into a daytime... sleep... period thing. I have a band concert tonight at 7, I'm looking forward to it, it should be pretty decent. In any event, there are only two days of school this week, and I'm very much looking forward to a lack of biology lab. This is quality right here... on Tuesday I'll be on a train for Syracuse, and Tuesday night, my grandparents' couch... oh man. This battle is almost over, and then I only have three weeks left after I heal up this weekend. Good deal.

11/13/01 9:48pm This is a journey, this is an adventure, this is real. Where the hell am I going? I'm going into the future, but that's already been written a hundred times over by now. The real uncertainty lies in the past, the things we don't know about ourselves and other people. Where did I come from? Who am I? I should have solved these problems in seventh grade or something, not here, not now. I'm standing on the banks of a dream, what kind of dream is this (cobras!!!)? This is a reference, these are experiences. I need to finish my work, I can sleep next week or something. Yeah, maybe I'll see you next week, and I don't even know who you are.

11/10/01 10:35pm They're killing this planet. I was somewhere in the back of a Saturn, seven people instead of five... it wasn't really warm or cold out, it just was, one of those ambiguous November days, the leaves had all fallen in anticipation of a winter that might never arrive. There I was, out on the freeway, inundated with images, corporate images, billboards flashing and clawing their way into view, violently saturating the landscape, enough to cleave the freeway from itself. The Saturn was no good at taking curves, and in the delirium from the lights, the thundering of the baseline for some hideous rap piece, if rap can indeed be referred to as music --- I supposed it was all a matter of personal preference. Looking around the cab I could see nothing but people, no, elements of people, so-and-so's back and shirt and so-and-so's hair and voices going to and fro in a conversation I wanted no part of, a whole mass of existence at sixty-eight miles an hour, as far as I could figure. Closing my eyes, I realized that the experience belonged to me, it would forever be in my past... how would time judge my actions?
I didn't bother to give the directions, I assumed the driver had things figured out, and I was, for my part, slowly being destroyed, failing against the barrage of sound and light, the constant flux of images --- I looked out through the glass and bore witness to the march of four, five, six... a row of electrical towers, metal goliaths looming over the landscape, and I knew at that moment that we are destroying ourselves, and I could do nothing but fear for my own life, I had no sympathy towards the system whatsoever.
Presently, I realized, the vehicle had come to a stop in some concrete installation, hundreds of others like it surrounded me, the inhuman metal and glass reflecting the fluorescent light across an infinite number of angles, I may as well have shut down. Looking towards the apparent destination, a shopping mall, I noticed a stairwell, or what looked to be a stairwell, but in front of it, a tan, prefabricated cement wall, plain as anything, and about eight feet up a glowing red exit sign. At first I knew that the sign referred to the stairwell, but that would seem unreasonable, because the stairwell only led up into the garage --- could the exit be the cement itself? I reasoned against it, but still it drew me in, I was intrigued by the idea that I could indeed pass through the physical into another world entirely... I found myself touching the wall, the wall was indeed solid, but perhaps only because I knew it absolutely to be solid and nothing more, I must not have had the capacity for anything else. The people I was with had left the building into the November night, and they realized that I had strayed, they appeared amused, nothing more. I do not stray for the amusement of others.
Passing through the entryway of the main building, I found myself in a horrible situation, the veritable lair of society's ills, suddenly on an escalator, pulled upwards into an inconstant ocean of someone's sinister view of humanity, the hopes of authentic beings existing around me crushed completely. I could scarcely think, everything burned inside me, the need to inform someone, but indeed, who would listen to some eccentric child who can't bear to be like everyone else... did I think that I was better than them? Do they understand what they've done? They're killing this planet.

11/07/01 10:43pm Whoa, November. Disc 2 has come and gone, that's right, that means it's time for me to get an airship, among other things. Stuff is good out west... I found this place within walking distance that's almost Gateway-esque, greek food, shaky service, only cleaner... good stuff. I've been there three times this week. In other news, next week will be a veritable hell on earth if I don't get my act together and write these goddamn papers which are all due in rapid succession (four 1,000 word papers due, one every day except Thursday on which I have a lab to hand in anyway), yeah this is going to be just great. I'm making a second trip down to the soup kitchen today... pep band theoretically starts tomorrow, and I have a concert band thing next week... I need to get a bowtie, pronto. Still, things are good, what with my ginger ale, slinky, rain stick, and half-finished outline on cyanide-resistant respiration pathways in plants. A good time will be had by all.

10/04/01 8:29pm End of Disc 1. I'm going back home for the weekend, so that should be fun. Until then, I'm still the captain of this ship, the good ship Highwind. All I need to do is pack, plug some calculus, and write a letter to my chemistry professor. It's a good life. The pyramid of pop is finished, and they're building a few more tiers now. I've got a lot more ginger ale to down, I guess. It rained a little bit today, but a little rain never hurt anything. They can break the gondola, but it's all just a scheme to get the Keystone out of Byron's mog-type hands. You recieved the [Keystone]! Well, that's the way it goes. I mean, after all, atoms are mostly empty space.

9/23/01 7:24pm Nobody here but us chickens... or chicken wing eaters. Sunday is a peculiar day. At least my room is clean, my bed is made, my clothes are folded and away, I have a cup of Earl Grey (hot), I added two pop cans to the pyramid, and I have a rain stick. Yeah, at least I have that. What a good existence... I need to finish my biology lab. It feels like I've been down this particular road before, though... osmosis? What the hell is that?

9/18/01 12:52pm There's no way to know what might have been. Here I sit, I can do no other... Dasein is an entity which does not just occur among other entities. Rather, it is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is an issue for it. Where have I been, where am I now, and where am I going? I'm not really quite sure. What I do know is that I'm going to play trombone tonight for the first time in weeks. It's been far too long. Somewhere over the Green Mountains, the Berkshires, the Taconics... the Helderbergs? That's where I belong... not here, not this place. This is where I learn things outside of learning. This is the ivory tower and the desolate battleground combined. There is no safe haven, there is no threat. This is existence.

9/11/01 8:20pm I guess that it's appropriate that I mark time here... today was hell. I don't know what to think, what to believe... all I know is that the World Trade Center exists nowhere beyond my own memories, and then tens of thousands of lives have been lost for no morally sound reason. Band rehearsal was cancelled... I needed to play today, most of all. I went to two services today, one at two o'clock and one at seven. The president of the college gave a speech about the tragedy and his own response to it... he was asked why he didn't close down Canisius for the day. His explanation was that the goal of terrorism is to get us to deviate from business as usual, and that the only way to overcome acts of evil is by declaring that it all ends with yourself. Evil, he says, triumphed today, but it will not triumph through us. I agree very much with his words... like Anne used to misquote, if we slide over and accept fate, it's bound to be a powerful thing. Here's to the fight, here's to the commitment, the will, the desire to exist in this time of uncertainty. This isn't over yet.

9/7/01 4:24pm And thusly the first week ended, and it was good. If you're going to be in the Buffalo area and you'd like to be a contestant on "Who Wants to be a College Student" starring Bard, don't hesitate to call. Regis Philbin is going down. I need a drink.

9/3/01 9:51pm I think that there's something to be said for sleeping upside down in a cheese bus in the company of people you've only known for a couple of days... sitting in the grass outside, getting a tall mug full of earl grey and a shortbread cookie downtown... this is a very strange experience. I think I'm enjoying it. Yeah...

9/2/01 8:37am Woke up after my second night here at Canisius. Adjusting has been an interesting experience... I got to see the South Park movie last night though, so that was pretty cool. Today there's a service project, which I'm actually looking forward to. I was, after all, a member of the Order of the Arrow, hehe...

8/31/01 1:30pm Well, I live in Buffalo now. It's kind of like Albany, except now I have to share a room... and there's a subway here. Right... this is pretty easy right now... my family is in some hotel, and I'm... well... having a great time. E-mails with contact info will go out to people shortly, probably. Anyhow... what a good place.

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