Through Glass, Darkly

Blog Changes.

2010-06-06T04:26:00.002-05:00

I've added a few widgets and other little tweaks to make it easier for readers to stay updated as well as helping the readers communicate with me and the rest of the visitors.

The most obvious is the status bar that's always visible at the bottom of the page. This will allow a more public way to follow the blog as well as making discussions more visible. My hope is that it'll be an easy way for readers to ask me questions, share their thoughts, and tell me what they'd like to see happen on the blog. I'd like it to evolve into a way for readers and visitors to easily discuss with each other as well.

At the very bottom of the blog (below the last visible post and above the footer image) is an option to subscribe to a newsletter that will be sent to your email detailing new content on the blog as soon as it's updated. It'll provide more information than the standard Blogspot subscription notice and will be specifically written by me.

The sidebar on the right of the page has also gotten a couple of neat widgets. The first is my Twitter feed that shows my most recent tweets as well as providing a link to follow me directly. Below that is the stylistically obtuse "Share" widget that will allow you to share the site on Twitter or Facebook. I'm hoping to figure out a way to make that particular widget blend with the site's design better but, until then, it will have to stick out like a pecker at a strip bar (gotta love Southern metaphors). Maybe that contrast will draw the eye and promote some word-of-mouth to get going!

That's all the tweaks for now. If there's something you'd like to see or something that you don't like that I've added, let me know in the status bar at the bottom of the page or in the comments of this post. I'll see what I can do as far as adding site elements goes but removing these additions will be pretty easy. They're entirely opt-in though, so don't feel as if I'm forcing you to give up information that you'd rather not share with my limited readership.

Looking for a new apartment?

2010-01-31T16:51:00.005-06:00

If you're in the market for a change in your abode, might I recommend Apartment Ninjas? If you're here in ATX they've got the tools to find great deals on Austin apartments like the ones at 21 and Rio or any of the other West Campus apartments. Need more incentive? Use the Ninjas to locate a place and then list them as your referrer on your lease and get a $150 rebate to sweeten the deal.

Format change coming.

2009-12-11T22:58:00.002-06:00

Since I just got a MacBook Pro I now have access to iWeb and thought I'd mess around with it for this blog. Expect some major revisions to come soon. Hell, I may even start posting on here once I do so. Don't hold your breath though.

I've got a new addiction.

2009-06-10T20:48:00.003-05:00

I always thought everyone was blowing smoke out their ass when they said the real sugar cokes are better than the normal ones until I drank one of these Mexican ones. It's amazing. It's the same, but different. Like a bed with new sheets, it's what you've been enjoying this whole time, but so much more comfortable. I need to see if I can start buying these in bulk before I have to open a line of credit at that gas station that sells bongs.

Anyways, I submitted some of my poems to a magazine a few weeks ago. No word yet on whether they've been accepted or not but I'm pretty hopeful. If they do get published, it's $300 minimum in my pocket. That'd be nice. Oh yeah, and being published would be nice too, I suppose.

Speaking of money, it's nice to finally have some. No more having to decide whether I want Ramen or Cheerios for dinner.

I heard Ray Akins got into trouble for something. Apparently him and Eddie Shauberger had some shady dealings or something. I don't really care about him anymore since he made his blog private a few months or weeks or whatever ago. OH WELL.

So I'm back in Liberty for the summer. I'm pretty damn bored. You might've figured that out by the fact that I'm making a blog post about Coke and shit. I don't even have my motorcycle since I didn't have a way to bring it home when I left. I'll probably go up this weekend and get it, though. I want to ride it back to Liberty but I'd need somebody to drive my truck back as well.

I want to spend some time in a foreign country. Like a month or something. Brazil would be dope but I don't know Portuguese. Ireland's up in my list too. I should find out their drinking age since a trip to Ireland without booze is like going to Amsterdam and not visiting a "tea" shop.

Amsterdam would be nice too.

I changed my desktop again.

2009-04-28T22:55:00.004-05:00

I shouldn't surf hungry.

2009-04-07T11:43:00.002-05:00

http://bonniewalton.com/

A former long-time neighbor's website, home to some of the most delicious-looking things this side of ecstacy. Check her out and tell her I sent ya.

On an unrelated note, I think I've got enough finished poems that I'm finally comfortable with sending some out to publishers so stay tuned to see how that turns out.

I'm Twittering now.

2009-02-21T19:13:00.004-06:00

So you might get more updates from me there. If you're really that desperate.

I'll just post the link since it's changed.

https://twitter.com/JohnOdum

Ray Akins.

2009-02-03T21:22:00.002-06:00

The Liberty Dispatch.

I don't even know where to start. Having a conservative Republican blog is one thing, and isn't anything that would spark my ire; this borders on libel. Now whether any of what Mr. Akins is saying is true or not is really only known to himself and the accused but what bothers me is how cocksure Mr. Akins is of himself, despite the fact that he offers little to no evidence to back up his outrageous allegations. His slack-jawed legion of commenters spout nothing but racism and ignorance in their ill-contrived and grammatically fetid responses. Many of Akins' posts seem to be cut and pasted from other sources, with Mr. Akins simply bolding statements that irk him. This post was even entirely lifted from another website, here. Akins offers up no citations, no honorable mention, not even a nod and claims the entire piece as his own work. I've posted my own responses to some of his blog columns but they have yet to appear, which leads me to think they've been stricken from the record by a man who sees my dissension as a threat or, more likely, just the typical hippie rhetoric from a pinko-Commie, pot-smoking, long-haired college student.

Ray Akins scares the shit out of me. Not for what he's said or done, but for the astounding number of people who seem to blindly agree with him.

Taken from another site, applied here with slight changes.

2009-01-27T23:02:00.002-06:00

So I'm running out of beverages that are not beer. I don't know whether that says I drink too much Coke or if it means I'm not drinking enough beer. In either case, I will be drinking more beer. Hooray, beer! (Red Stripe commercials were the ****. Why don't they come on anymore? My favorite was when the guy opened the door to another dimension or some **** and Mr. Red Stripe came out and said: Boo, scary room of evil! Hooray, beer! That one always made me larf uncontrollably. Re-dick.) I suppose I could drink more water, but then I'd have to put it in a glass with ice and all that jazz, then wait for it to get cool. Eff that shiz. Beer is cold now.

So my favorite bookstore is apparently going out of business, the ****s. And wouldn't you know it's before I could get my ****ing rebate that they gave out on your tenth book. They did have a sale where everything was 30% off but by the time I got there, all the good stuff was gone. Damn litsnatchers. So I managed to snag a book of O. Henry stories (My 11th grade English teacher loves his stuff and we're tight like that so I thought I'd check him out) for about tree fiddy (It was about that time I noticed the clerk checking me out was about eight stories tall and was a crustacean from the Plesozoic era) and another one of Cormac McCarthy's novels (Blood Meridian) to add to my growing number of books written by guys named Cormac McCarthy.

If you didn't get the reference in that last paragraph, it was from South Park. It was the one where Cartman goes to the optometrist and Chef's parents come to town (You remember Chef. Big black guy. Wore a chef's hat. Turned into this guy on his last episode:
)
and keep talking about how the Loch Ness monster (From here forward: Nessie) has been trying to swindle them out of "tree fiddy" ($3.50) for years now. Some of Nessie's schemes are quite elaborate, going as far as dressing as a girl scout to trick Chef's poor, near-senile parents. The voices of Chef's parents are what kills me, though, especially his mother. I wish that episode would come on right now.

Is it bad that I get most of my news from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert? I mean, they can't be all bad; Jon Stewart's had Jimmy ****in' Carter on his show, like, a dozen times. Oh, and The Onion. Their article about the spider eggs that hatched in Bush's brain was riveting and insightful.

I really wish I had HBO so I could see The Flight of the Conchords' new season instead of having to wait for the DVD release like I did last season. I need my quirky Kiwi fix.

So I went to dinner with some friends of mine tonight and one of them took my leftovers from me. It was half a freakin' burger. The worst part is, it wasn't even for her, but some other person whose name I can't remember/never heard/don't care about. Stupid jerk should've come to dinner with us if he/she wanted food.

I'm also excited about Demetri Martin's new show. I hope to Klein it doesn't suck.

I have discovered that, despite me forgetting it existed, Red vs. Blue has soldiered on and produced about a bazillion DVDs which will take me more time than I'd like to procure. If I wasn't so against torrenting/too lazy to learn how to torrent, I'd just do that.

I didn't vote in this election, by the way. I missed early voting on campus and was too lazy to drive home to do it with all the other masses. I feel bad about it because this was my first opportunity to vote but, then again, my guy won so who gives a flying ****? <----That word? Bird. Let me pose a question to all of you. Who has the better rhetoric class this semester: Me, with the rhetoric of southern rock or my friend, with the rhetoric of comic books. Most of my course involves listening to some of my favorite music. However, The Watchmen is one of his required texts. I think that's pretty damn awesome in its own right.

If you're wondering why this is so long: Why the hell not? It's a guest post; how often am I going to get this kind of chance? I need to make the most of it.

Anyways, back on/off-topic.

I love Kevin Hart but Comedy Central is apparently just recognizing the short little man's brilliance. He's one of my favorite comedians and they're just now giving him an hour special, a buttload of time after his first, half-hour special.

Well, I think that about covers it. In summation: more beer, fewer bookstores, Nessie, fake news, New Zealand, stolen meat, Important Things, RvB, Communism, Rockomics, carpe postem, redirect, grown little man, wrap-up, my post was better than Hunter's, goodbye.

Here's the site.
It probably won't make much sense at all.
Also, my name is Ninety on said website.

Guilty Pleasures

2008-12-01T23:14:00.003-06:00

The Princess Bride.

Sara Bareilles.

Imogen Heap.

The Donnas.

Brad Paisley's rediculous guitars.

Amadou & Mariam.

Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Esquire magazine.

Every single Victoria's Secret model (Actually, I have no guilt about that.)

Horror stories.

Anne Hathaway.

Eye-catching ties.

Chocolate News

Katt Williams

Comic Books

Folding@Home

My ever-changing desktop

Update:

2008-10-28T23:45:00.002-05:00

Halloween Friday. Ajax costume complete. I'm probably going to freeze to death but it'll be worth it. Speaking of, it's getting cold as balls here in ATX and riding down the highway in what seem to me to be sub-zero temperatures is no fun at all when you're on a motorcycle. I had to go out and buy a balaclava and some thermal underwear since I don't have time to fiddle-faddle with my chaps in the mornings and am too insecure to leave them in my saddlebags while I go to class. Since I can't seem to stop rambling about motorcycle-related issues, Alex needs a bath. There's a place down the road that washes cars but I don't know if I trust them with her. Idiots would probably end up laying her on the asphalt. Plus, I doubt they'd get in all the nooks and crannies.

And I'm up while the dawn is breaking, even though my heart is aching. I should be drinking a toast to absent friends instead of these comedians.
-Elvis Costello

Grrr....

2008-08-28T21:20:00.004-05:00

I really want to dress up this Halloween as Ajax from The Warriors. If you haven't seen that movie, I highly recommend it. Unfortunately, it's a bit of a cult phenomena so every shop I've checked out is absolutely devoid of anything Warriors-related and I lack the skills to make my own costume. I wonder if I could get my mother to embroider the logo. That would probably be cheaper than buying a costume but might not turn out so well. I could go as one of the Furies but that's overdone and doesn't look nearly as cool.

In other news, I've officially started my college career. Two days under my belt and so far I'm liking what I'm seeing. Classes are interesting. My psych teacher swears like a sailor and seems pretty funny and interesting and appears to actually want to teach us, despite the enormous class size. My physics prof looks like he could be sitting with the class and has a tenuous grasp of the English language so understanding his directions in the lab might get a little hairy but he's pretty nice and friendly. I'm on the fence about my journalism class. While the coursework is pretty much what I was expecting and even hoping for somewhat, the class is very large and the professor (at least from my initial impression) is a bit uncharismatic. But we've only had one class so I'll reserve judgment for later. I'm going to love my 'Philosophy of the Theatre' class. There are only about twenty or so kids in it, everything we're reading interests me, we get to go see productions around town for free, and the professor is dean of undergraduate studies. We meet in his office. I also have a sneaking suspicion that he was the judge for one-act that kept us from going to state. I don't think so because I remember that guy having white hair and prof does not. Maybe he uses Just for Men? Also, we're reading Bacchae by Euripides. Guess who translated it. If you guessed the professor himself, you'd be correct. Turns out he's published quite a few translations, novels, and such. I guess that's to be expected of a man in such a prominent position.

As I used to say when I was being potty-trained:
I'm done.

Austin

2008-06-26T11:05:00.003-05:00

I love it. Town, school, culture; all of it. I'm here for orientation right now and it's just great. Honestly, there's too much stuff for me to see and do still so I can't really focus on making this blog eloquent or even interesting. I'm going to grab something to eat. Later.

Here it comes...

2008-05-26T22:59:00.002-05:00

My last day in high school is upon me. I'm excited about the future but there are people here that I'm truly going to miss and it is more than a slight pain to know that I'll never see a good number of them ever again. Friends I've had since I could walk, ones I've just recently grown close to, people I wish I knew better than I do; with a few exceptions, they will all pass out of my life. But I, too, will go away from them. They're leaving me as much as I'm leaving them.

I don't know whether that thought is comforting or not.

To all of you who know me, which I assume is most everyone reading this, I just want to let you know that I'm going to miss you.

For a while, at least. I can't make promises for any period of time after that.

I love this poem.

2008-05-19T15:50:00.002-05:00

Kissing and Horrid Strife by D.H. Lawrence

I have been defeated and dragged down by pain
and worsted by the evil world-soul of today.

But still I know that life is for delight
and for bliss
as now when the tiny wavelets of the sea
tip the morning light on edge, and spill it with delight
to show how inexhaustible it is:

And life is for delight, and bliss
like now when the white sun kisses the sea
and plays with the wavelets like a panther playing with its cubs
cuffing them with soft paws,
and blows that are caresses,
kisses of the soft-balled paws, where the talons are.

And life is for dread,
for doom that darkens, and the Sunderers
that sunder us from each other,
that strip us and destroy us and break us down
as the tall foxgloves and the mulleins and mallows
are torn down by dismembering autumn
till not a vestige is left, and black winter has no trace
of any such flowers;
and yet the roots below the blackness are intact:
the Thunderers and the Sunderers have their term,
their limit, their thus far and no further.

Life is for kissing and for horrid strife.
Life is for the angels and the Sunderers.
Life is for the daimons and the demons,
those that put honey on our lips, and those that put salt.
But life is not
for the dead vanity of knowing better, nor the blank
cold comfort of superiority, nor silly
conceit of being immune,
nor puerility of contradictions
like saying snow is black, or desire is evil.

Life is for kissing and for horrid strife,
the angels and the Sunderers.
And perhaps in unknown Death we perhaps shall know
Oneness and poised immunity.
But why then should we die while we can live ?
And while we live
the kissing and communing cannot cease
nor yet the striving and the horrid strife.

My Vice-Principal..

2008-05-06T13:30:00.002-05:00

...just came into my class, talked to the substitute teacher, sat down, picked up my teacher's guitar, and started playing. If you knew this man, you'd know why I'm so dumbfounded.

This is probably one of the strangest things I've seen in high school.

The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows

2008-04-22T13:38:00.003-05:00

Senior prom is this weekend and the faculty at school is just pounding their propaganda into our heads. It's only Tuesday and I can't begin to tell you how many stories have been told to us about "the day after". Even now as I am writing this blog, my teacher pulled all of us aside and started preaching his gospel to us. It's touching almost to see how much these people care about us when most of us wouldn't give them a second thought.

I haven't been drunk since before my sixteenth birthday. I've had alcohol in these past two years but never enough to give me anything more than a slight buzz. I can't honestly say what it was that made me quit drinking like I used to; I didn't have a car wreck, I didn't knock some girl up, I didn't get arrested, and I didn't pass out in a parking lot. Maybe I just grew up.

I'm still on the fence about what I'm going to do in the next few months. All this talk of prom and graduation and finality has me pondering my next steps. I hope to cross a few things off my bucket list and maybe dig up some fire I buried a long time ago. I want to throw rocks at the moon and write my name in the stars.

As Buster "Rant" Casey once said: "We won't never be as young as we is tonight."

Idle thoughts.

2008-04-20T19:06:00.001-05:00

So much of life is spent searching. Everything we say and do and think is just a means to an end. Even Buddhist monks only relinquish everything in order to reach Enlightenment, Nirvana. What would happen if, one day, you were given everything you could ever desire? What then? Would you finally be content and settle down to enjoy you newfound wealth? No. Contentness would lead to complacency would lead to idleness would lead to boredom. Suddenly, all the treasures of the world would be worthless in your eyes. Longing would swell in your breast once more as you set out on a journey to find something new. Such is the curse of man. Always hungry, never satiated. What if the curse was broken, though? What if mankind suddenly valued his neighbor's welfare more than his own? Would the world truly be a better place? Or would this idyllic community become corrupted as well? Can a balance ever be struck?

The Paths We Take.

2008-03-14T14:05:00.000-05:00

Every day I wonder about the chances I've let slip by.
I think on how things might be different if I'd only taken an extra step.
Would I be satisfied with this new outcome or would it only cause more grief?
That's the rub of life; we can never know what never happened.

I'm going to leap tonight.
I don't care where I land.

3 Cheers for Recognition

2008-03-13T14:07:00.002-05:00

I wrote an article for a local news magazine recently. It's about GPS systems if that's your thing. I'm hoping they ask me to do some more work for them since this is what I plan to do with the rest of my life. Hopefully I can build up a respectable portfolio before I leave for college.

Now, if only they'd publish some of my fiction...

Regarding the banners.

2008-03-13T13:49:00.003-05:00

In case anyone was wondering who's all in the banners;

Top Banner L2R
Troy Sanders - Mastodon
Schecter C-1 Hellraiser
Alex Varkatzas - Atreyu
KSM Model 358
Dave Mustaine - Megadeth

Bottom Banner
Paul Reed Smith Custom 24 body with an Epiphone John Lennon acoustic neck/headstock.

Ryan Meche...

2008-03-13T08:53:00.003-05:00

...is nearly deaf. I'm sitting here talking to him right now and he can't hear a word I'm saying.

What a jerk.

Ryan...

2008-03-13T08:14:00.000-05:00

...your blog will never be as cool as mine.

And everybody else: check out the new banners at the top and bottom of the page. I've been working on them for a little while.

First off...

2008-03-12T14:13:00.000-05:00

...let me just say that I'm only doing this because I'm bored out of my mind in Video Production today so I thought I'd finally create a blog on this doohickey. I'm thinking of creating an actual website, though, so be on the lookout for that one of these days.