The Stars That Usher Evening Rose

For people who have gotten themselves a good college education the people in the media can be really fucking stupid sometimes. I realize that their job is to inform the public of what is going on in the world but there are things that are definitely better left unsaid. The media also loves the negative. They will give you the negative side to almost every story but then most of the time leave out the rest of the truth. This inturns leads to bad rumors starting and things to happen that should never happen. Perfect example is the mini gas crisis the country had due to Hurricane Katrina. There was absolutely no reason for any gas station anywhere in this country (with the exception of those areas right there where the storm came on sure from people evacuating) that should have run out of gas. Yet gas stations around the country especially here in the southeast were running out of gas and gas prices jumped much higher than they should have. In my opinion 95% of this was the fault of the media telling people about all the oil drilling planets that were shut down because of the Hurricane and how that would cause a drop in the supply in oil to our areas. But none of them or almost none of them told you the rest of the story which. Now today and the last few days and probably for days in the future the media is doing it all over again. Talking about all the oil drilling plants closing down and the oil refineries in Houston that have had to close down because of Hurricane Rita. They talk about how this will cause a drop in supply and the amount of oil refined in our future. They are also talking about how this could cause a temporary rise in prices. This is again starting to cause another gas crisis. Already in towns south of Asheville there are several gas stations running out of gas and reports of gas stations with long lines. Again I blame 95% of these on the media. If they had just kept their mouths shut or would just tell the whole truth like few of them are doing then we wouldn't be having these problems. They are not telling people that there is plenty of gas out there and that there is actually a surplus in oil currently that is waiting to be refined. So this whole rumor about oil and gas shortages that started with Katrina is nothing but a bunch of bullshit that would have never started spreading if the media had been smart. Gas prices would not have made as big of a jump with Katrina and wouldn't make as big of a jump this time around. And because the media is too stupid we had and now have again people (who aren't much smarter than the media) freaking out when there is no need for it. Ok I am done ranting now.

I figured I should go ahead and post. I was holding off on posting waiting for Michael to post about the weekend in Charlotte and then link himself to me like he claimed he was going to do. But that was over two weeks ago now so he has had plenty of time.

Over these past two weeks it seems all I have been doing is studying. Feels like I have had a test almost every day. For example I had one Monday, I had one last Friday, had a quiz the Tuesday before that. I have a test tomorrow and I have a test next Monday. So instead of having the normal hell week I have been having a hell month. Not that I should have expected much different from this semester. Though despite the torture things have been going fairly well. Only class I am not comfortably passing right now is Calc. II. Not that is much of a surprise either. So far Physics has still been coming to me a lot easier than I expected it to. I have been able to do almost all the homeworks with little or no trouble and the test we had in there Friday my only question is whether I aced it or not as I am positive I passed it.

To give myself a break from all the homework and studying the last two weekends I decided to go to the movies. I went and saw "The Skeleton Key" the first weekend and "The Brothers Grimm" last weekend. Both were decent movies but nether were great. I think I liked "The Brothers Grimm" more because it was a little weirder than the other one was. Also speaking of movies I was talking to my sister about how the blockbuster up here half the time doesn't have the movies I am looking for and I had mentioned to her how Michael had suggested that maybe I should look into joining on of those movie sites like Netflix that mail you movies you want in the mail and you watch them and send them back. Well Cathy is a member of Blockbusters version of that and I asked her if she thought it was worth the money. Instead of saying yes or no she offered to me instead that I could use her account to rent movies and she would send them to me. So I jumped at that opportunity and so now I have a basically free supply of movies to watch.

Also going back to my Aunt Claudia, who was hit by Hurricane Katrina, it seems my predictions were right on the money. She has been down to her place in Pass Christian, MS a few times and the news is not good. Her shop, which was about two blocks from the Gulf was pretty much completely destroyed. Her house on the other hand was left standing but that was almost the extent of the good news. During the Hurricane her house was totally submerged over the roof with water. Her house is 17 feet above sea level so you figure in the height of the house your looking at atleast 30 foot storm surge. The house is ruined along with pretty much everything inside. The one good thing was that all her breakable things in her goodie cabinet survived somehow. They believe that when the water filled the house that they just floated up and then when the water went back down the things just slowly floated back down again. The strange thing is the found the cabinet upside down. The top portion of the cabinet was on the bottom and the bottom part was on the top. I haven't heard whether she plans to rebuild or not. She would have to rebuild the shop and tear down and rebuild the house if she does. If any other news comes I will post.

I figure I have been putting this post off long enough. I have been telling myself since I got back here on Monday that I need to post about this weekend, so now I finally shall.

Overall this weekend was a really good weekend. I arrived at Cathy's place Thursday around 7:30pm or so. Michael arrived around 11:30pm that same night. Michael and I were not sure what time we wanted to leave that morning to head over to Ozzfest so we got on the computer to check out who the early bands were and to see if they were any good. After spending a couple hours on the computer checking them over we decided that none of the early second stage bands were worth our time so we decided to get up at 11am and get out the door around noon, which was probably a good thing as it was 3am in the morning at the time.

11am Friday morning came with a dog jumping in my face waking me up. I laid in bed a minute then got up and got ready to go. But we ended up wasting a bunch of time and not getting out the door until about 12:30pm or so. We had no problem finding the Version Wireless amphitheater and getting a parking space. When we got there A Dozen Furies was on 2nd stage. We did not see them though as we took this time to walk around the place to see what kind of shops and all were around. After looking around we headed back over to the 2nd Stage just as Mastodon took the stage. We started walking around the outer edges looking at the other shops around that stage and I found one selling Ozzfest 2005 shirts for $25 so I bought one. We continued to make our way around and eventually found ourselves in the PS2 tent to get out of the sun. We still had a clear view of the stage from there so we just hung out in there playing some video games while keeping an eye on the stage. After Mastodon finished the band As I Lay Dying took the stage. Following their set the band Killswitch Engage took the stage and about half way through their set Michael and I left the PS2 tent to go watch them. Once Killswitch Engage finished their show Michael and I made our way over to the opposite side of the stage and went and set up against a fence in the shade waiting for Rob Zombie to take the stage. While waiting my mom called which it was the first time in almost two weeks since I had last talked to my parents since they were on that Alaskan Cruise. Finally Rob Zombie took the stage and put on a pretty good show, even brought out a video camera and supposedly video taped the crowd and himself while singing a song. Michael and I had a hard time getting over the image change as the new one just doesn't fit him like the old one did. Following Rob Zombie Michael wanted to go wonder around shops some more but I said that I wanted to hurry up to the main stage just in case In Flames really did take the stage five minutes after Rob Zombie finished like the set times online said they would. Michael was skeptical and thought that there would be more time despite what the set times said but I insisted and he agreed so we started making our way up the stairs towards the main stage were we started hearing music. At first we figured there was no way it could be In Flames yet. At first I figured it was just some of that music they played in between bands but I realized that it was way to load to be that. Finally reaching the top of the stairs it became apparent that In Flames had not started five minutes after Rob Zombie but had actually started before Rob Zombie even finished. Well that pissed me off because In Flames was one of the main bands I wanted to see and only ended up getting to see half their set. After In Flames finished Michael and I headed out to get something to drink. Just as we got back to sit down Black Label Society took the stage. Overall I was somewhat disappointed with them. After Black Label Society the band Shadows Fall took the stage and after about a song and a half Michael and I were not that impressed so we decided to go get another drink and to get something to eat. While standing in line for food my friend Tim Taube called me about the following day, which I will go into more detail about later. After getting off the phone with him and standing in line for what seemed like forever we headed back to sit down. Almost as soon as we got there Mudvayne took the stage. Overall they were not bad, I am not a real fan of that band but they do have some decent songs and I did enjoy them more than I had either Shadows Fall or BLS. After Mudvayne finished we laid down waiting for Velvet Revolver to take the stage. While waiting Cathy returned my call from earlier as I was trying to find out if she had heard anything new from our Aunt who was hit by the hurricane. She hadn't. Finally 35 minutes later Velvet Revolver took the stage and put on an ok show. After the first song though it seemed to become a strip fest up there or something as half the band members started losing their shirts. Not that this should have surprised me as the lead singer can't keep his shirt on. Once they finished Michael and I headed off to get something to drink again and then came back and moved more towards the center and tried to line our selves up with stairs to give us a better exit and to give us a better view of the stage for Black Sabbath. After a few minutes Black Sabbath took the stage and played for just over an hour. Out of all the main stage bands that I got to see their whole sets of I have to say that I enjoyed Black Sabbath the most. Course that's why they were headlining. I also have to admit I actually enjoyed Ozzy more with Sabbath than when I saw him by himself. After Black Sabbath finished we headed back out down the stairs and out to the car. Overall I really enjoyed the concert as a whole. Then again I have only been to one concert were I didn't enjoy it so I am not hard to satisfy. Once in the car we started to make our way out. I called my friend Tim back like I told him I was going to and he invited us to met him and some of his friends at a Sports Bar in downtown Charlotte called Stool Pigeons. I asked Michael if he wanted to go and he wasn't sure at first be eventually decided why not. So they gave us directions and we met them at the bar. We got there showed our ID's walked in and found Tim and his friends sitting up at the bar. We went through the whole introductions thing and then starting talking and somewhat catching up on things. Tim then ordered Michael and I Bud Lights. We reluctantly took them as neither Michael or I are big fans of regular beers. But, we both drank them. After I finished mine I ordered a Smirnoff Ice which was more expensive but more my taste. It even tasted better than usual since I had the regular beer before it. Around 1am or so Tim's girlfriend said she wanted to go dancing so we decided to break off there and Tim, his girlfriend and a few other of his friends headed off to a dance club while Michael and I along with two other guys decided to call it a night since we had an early wake up call the following morning. With some help from the other guys we found our way back to the interstate and headed back to Cathy's. Since all we had to eat since our Poptarts for breakfast was those fries we wanted to get something to eat. We went over to a shopping center near Cathy's place that had a 24 hour McDonald's and picked up some food and took it over to Cathy's to eat it. We got back to her house around 1:45am that morning and in bed about 30 minutes later.

Saturday morning it started early, 8am early. I got up got dressed and then got Michael up. I then called Tim to see if he was up and where we were meeting and he told me to call back when we left and he would tell us exactly were to me them. So Michael and I got some breakfast and headed out the door. I called Tim back and he told us to meet him at the BP off exit 36 on I-77. Michael and I arrived at the BP at 9:30am and waited a few minutes when I got a call from Tim and he met us there at the BP and told me to follow him to the McDonald's next door. At the McDonald's Tim and his girlfriend got something to eat. While there some of his other friends who were going with us starting coming in and getting something quick to eat as well. From there we hit the road and headed out to the lake. I had to borrow a swim suit from Tim since my only swim suit is in Orlando. We headed out on there 18 foot sport boat where Tim and his friend Brian went wakeboarding. They decided that the water was too rough to continue to wakeboard so we headed back to the dock and picked up their big three person water tube. Me, Michael, and Tim started out on the tube. Me on the left, Michael on the right and Tim in the middle. It started out easy enough as we pulled out away from the docks but once we got out deeper in the lake they really laid it to us. Going over our own waves caused by our wake trying to get us up in the air and moving back and forth trying to throw us off. Finally we hit a big wave that shot us way up in the air and I heard Tim scream and knew he had fallen off and then I looked down and saw just how high we were and then we hit and I face planted into the tube which hurt. The boat slowed down to make a turn to go get Tim and I looked over and realized that Michael was gone and had fallen off too. This gave me a feeling of accomplishment knowing I held on when the other two could not. They got back on and we continued on again until Michael fell off again when we hit some more air this time he bounced off the tube and flopped into the water. So we went around to pick him up. Tim found it funny how Michael fell off the tube and did an imitation of him. They got back on the raft and this time we continued along and again lost Tim. We picked him back up and continued on again this time Michael fell half off the tube basically only hanging on by the handles and Tim tried to pull him back up on the raft as we continued to speed along. Michael was able to get back on and we continued on and we again lost someone but I don't remember if it was Michael or Tim. At this point my arms were killing me from holding on so tight to the handles and I did not know how much longer I was going to be able to hold on. Finally after another couple minutes we made this one fast turn that pushed Tim into me which was all my arms could take and I lost grip and flew off the tube with Tim right in toe and he actually landed on top of me as we hit the water. Tim asked me if I was alright and I said that I was fine. He asked me if I wanted to continue which I did but I knew there was no way in hell that I was going to be able to hold on anymore so I told him that I was done and made my way back to the boat were I preceded to flop like a fish onto the boat which Brian seem to find amusing. But at that point I felt like mush. But I was really impressed with myself that I only fell off the one time despite the air time and beating we took and that was only because I could no longer hold on. Michael and Tim stayed on the raft and Tim's girlfriend took my place. Tim and his girlfriend kept trying to push each other off and his girlfriend kept winning. After a while Michael feel off one last time and decided to call it quits for the same reason I had in that his arms just could not take anymore abuse. After the rest of the group got their turns we headed back to the dock. When we got back we hung out for a few minutes while Tim's dad started a controlled brush fire to clean up some of the trash off their property. From there we got back on the boat and headed to a restaurant there on the lake to get some lunch. Tim told us some cool stories of some times he got busted for underage drinking and once when the campus police thought someone had been murdered in his room. From there we got back on the boat and brought out two of the smaller single person tubes. Tim and this other girl Jenny started out on the tubes. This was fun to watch as they would really get some air off of those things and many times Jenny flipped out of hers sometimes in some pretty dramatic ways. After she got out Michael got in and he took some spills as well but after about the third spill he called it quits and Tim's girlfriend headed out next. After she took her share of spills she quit and we pulled in the extra tube and just let Tim go at it. I decided not to go out because I did not want to get wet again because we did not have enough towels to cover my car seats for both Michael and I. After trashing Tim up pretty good we head back to the dock since Brian had to leave for a wedding. The rest of us decided to call it a day as well so we packed everything up and closed the boat up. I gave Tim his extra swimsuit back and we said our good-byes and made our way out. Michael and I followed Tim back to the main road since we didn't know how to get there and from there we headed our separate ways. My sister Cathy called and told us to meet them at a Steak 'N Shake there in town. So we met her and her kids, Jeralyn and Jillian, along with our cousin Renee and her two kids there. We ate and then everyone headed back to Cathys for a little bit. After a half hour or so everyone left. Cathy, Michael and I went upstairs and watched the movie "Sin City" since Cathy had not seen it. After that we got some snacks real quick and then headed to bed.

The next morning we got up and had a quick breakfast. We then just sat around for a while before heading to Jeralyn's house before heading out to Applebees to get some lunch. Same people as at Steak 'N Shake with the addition of my step niece Nikki all met up this time. After taking almost two hours to eat and talk I mentioned that Me, Michael and William should go go-cart racing. So after eating we headed over to the mall and went go-cart racing at the sports park there. We did two races. The first race William won out of the three of us but that was mostly due to the fact that I got stuck on the outside on three different occasions which shuffled me back and I was never able to recover. The second race though I dominated. I started second and fairly quickly moved into the lead. Michael hung around in second but I slowly pulled away from him and eventually started lapping traffic. The first race William finish 1st, I finished 2nd and Michael finished 3rd out of the three of us. The second race I finished 1st, Michael finished 2nd and William finished 3rd. From there we headed back to Cathy's place. At 7pm William and I started watching the Nextel Cup race while Cathy, Michael and Jacqueline watched "Hot Chick" and "Whose Line Is It Anyway" upstairs. Cathy ordered some pizza for us to eat for dinner since William, Jacqueline and I were hungry. After the race ended William and I played PS2 for a while and then headed up to bed around 2am.

Monday morning came and I got up around 10:45am. William was still asleep on the floor, and no one else was home and the dog was in its cage. So I figured they had gone out for donuts so I started watching TV. After about twenty minutes the rest of them came back with as I had figured Krispy Kreme glazed donuts. So we had that for breakfast. After that Jacqueline had a friend come over and they along with Cathy went to the pool. They wanted me to go to so Michael, William, and I went to Wal-Mart to see if we could find me a cheap swimsuit but could not find one that fit me so we went down to Old Navy to see if we could find one there. Again we found nothing so I gave up and this time we headed over to Barnes & Noble to see if we could find the book that Michaels name supposedly showed up in. After a very small bit a searching we found the book and his name. We all thought that was pretty cool. From there we kind of wondered around looking at other books before finally leaving and heading back to the house. Once back I got online to check my e-mail to find that I had gotten an e-mail about some test coming up in my Calc. II class that I knew nothing about and from the way the e-mail sounded to me it had me worried the test was going to be Tuesday. The e-mail did say we could make a cheat sheet so I planned on taking full advantage of that. After a while Cathy returned and started making us some dinner. We at dinner just after 4pm and after eating I packed up my car so I would be ready to go. After packing up the car we played three rounds of Rummi-kub before I had to leave. So we put the game up and I headed out the door at 5:45pm. I got back to campus around 7:15pm or so and unpacked the car. I then called Cathy and my parents to let them know I made it back to the school. At this point I got things ready to head up to the math lab to go try and study and make that cheat sheet to try and get as ready as I could for a possible test that following day. So I walked all they way up to the math lab only to find it had closed. This was not good as all I could do now was just try and study on my own and make that cheat sheet as best as I could. While looking through my notes I found a note I had written stating that the test was going to be this Tuesday I then knew I was fucked. After working for about two and half hours I decided to call it quits and head to bed.

The next morning I got up went and got breakfast and headed off to the test. Got the test and though it wasn't as hard as I expected I still doubt I passed it and in the end my cheat sheet ended up only helping me with only one of the problems. Friday I will probably see what the damage was. But, on the good side if the rest of the test are like this one and assuming I get enough study time I feel more confident I can pass those and hopefully pass the class.

Well that is it I guess. This post took me almost 2 hours to type up so you better read it and enjoy it because my fingers hurt now. And Michael if I had to suffer you have to suffer so don't you copout and just send a link to me or something or I might have to come kick your ass. :P Plus I know there is stuff I probably forgot.