old pics strike deep chords.

The Cake is a Lie
The locks on my residence room

My Viking Oath

Nesting Geese May Bite - a sign I found on campus (not quite old, but still amusing)

sedimental value.

I used to think that large words and fancy turns of phrase were prime elements of good prose. I threw big, somewhat obscure words around in hopes of making my writings more appeasing to the inner muse. My textualized thoughts assumed a texture not unlike that of a rock quarry. Rough meaning chiseled into the stony face of language that bears our communications. The verbosity pimples the ground with boulders, impressive in their own right - in scope perhaps, but the disconnectivity and illusory grandeur do nothing for coherency and intelligence. Impassive blocks of text placed adjacent in hopes that a pattern will array itself before me - a tarot of my own creation. In the end, they are simply xenocrysts in the magmatic dregs of my writing.

My post methodology is rather haphazard, as most stem from a meandering stream of consciousness. (Or is that redundant, seeing as all fluids will assume a meandering flow given enough time) It would probably be in my best interest as well as to any who might choose to read my drivel if I took a more rigorous approach to constructing a post. Right now process is akin to the maturation of a river, from a straight shooting stream to a doddering old mucker with a vast floodplain, levees boxing it in, yazoos shooting every which way with absolutely no connection to primary course of things and stagnant ox-bow lakes. The only thing that can help is a total uplift or a lowering of the base level - which results in ruts being further emphasized but in the end you'll have a straighter path - but a longer thalweg. The waters are muddied and the analogies suck like a mudhole. Natural, but inefficient and ultimately this is bad practice. This reminds me of a quote from one of the pixel art forums I frequent and I paraphrase, 'a rough gem is worth more than polished garbage'. One of the basic lessons throughout my Computer Science courses is to plan first - abstraction without obfuscation, and concision with completion. I feel that my writing could be vastly improved if I but made an attempt to plan beforehand (assuming I have something worthwhile to write about and not just some self-pitying abasement of my skills.

At least my life has stopped picking up like some thrice-cursed Katamari. The end of a term always wash up the flotsam that is the course which has run aground of poor planning and other ineptitudes on the part of the professors. The calm after the storm.

Placid waters make for good reflections.