School's over.

Yippee.

This leaves me more "Bryan time", which I will proceed to squander by spreading myself even more thin than I already am. What a surprise.

My grades are a reflection of the amount of work I put in this semester. This is a polite way of saying THEY ABSOLUTELY SUCK. Well, compared to my unattainable standards, that is. 2 A's, a B, and a B- with two more coming in. Please don't write to me saying "That's not that bad" or "This is the first semester you're taking 18 credits, so don't be upset" because I don't really want to hear it. Sorry if that sounds mean, but it's the truth.

We have a show tomorrow at 1 PM. It's at the Local 7 in Farmingdale. It should be fun. I'm a little nervous about it. We had an awesome rehearsal Tuesday night and I wanted to leave it at that. Instead, we got together again Wednesday night and it still went well, but it was missing that "God, we're going to kill on Saturday" vibe. I'm sure it'll be fine. A lot of the people I work with whom I really want to come can't, so I'm kind of upset about that. It's rare that we actually get an all-ages show (and one that's not in a total dive), so that's that, but it'll still be cool.

On paper, Kevin Millwood for Johnny Estrada (snicker) looks like the worst trade in the history of Major League Baseball. Watch Estrada become the best player in history because the Braves always do crap like this. And mark my words - even with Tom Glavine, Mike Stanton, and Cliff Floyd, the Mets will STILL go nowhere without a core group of players. Andrew and I discussed this earlier. When they made the World Series in 2000, they had a core - Piazza, Ventura, Leiter, Alfonzo, and Franco. Guys who had played together before, knew each other, and kept the locker room upbeat. Now, they've got a new outfield every damn season. How can you build any season-to-season consistency when you've got such a high turnover rate? Last season's roster featured something like 9 guys (and that's being generous) from that NL Championship team of 2000. It's a shame. The Mets are the New York Rangers of hockey.

Speaking of hockey, someone tell the Islanders to stop worrying about "getting Yashin going" and instead bolster the confidence of those guys who ARE going! Asham, Blake, and Isbister are all having career years. So what do they do? Scratch Asham and keep screwing with the lineup to find a guy who can "play with Yashin". The guy's one of the best centers in the NHL, you'd think anyone could play with him. And get Kvasha out of here, pronto.

I feel such glee in watching the Lakers self-destruct.

I got the CD of a band called The Descent this week. One of the kids I work with plays guitar for the band, so that's one thing going for them. Another thing in their favor is that their music is REALLY good. You would never believe that these guys are still in high school. Check them out at www.thedescentrock.com. Prepare to be seriously impressed.

I'm compiling a list of my beliefs into a work called "The Tenets of Bergism". Indeed, the time has come for a change. And yes, Jason, I'm stealing this name and entire premise from you, but we'll ignore that.

It's sad that Christians don't give a shit about their religion. They go to Church twice a year, if that, consistently fly in the face of their religion, rarely embracing it. It seems like they get nothing out of it. Meanwhile, you've got Muslim guys strapping bombs to themselves so that they can die for their God. Not that that's the right way to do it, of course, but at least they're dedicated. No Christian would EVER be so committed to their cause that they'd do such a thing. The same goes for white people and their race. There is no affinity between whites, not that there really should be. However, look at people of other races and the pride they take in their homeland, language, and rituals. On the other hand, you've got white people who couldn't give a shit about anything.

Why can't uptight Congress people take a joke? I think Trent Lott's "offensive comments" were taken entirely out of context and exploited by the national media. Again, what a shocker. It reminds me of the time that Fuzzy Zoeller got in all kinds of trouble with sponsors and the PGA for jokingly stating that Tiger Woods shouldn't serve fried chicken and collard greens at the Masters. If Tiger was in the same room, he would have laughed. Instead, the media made this whole Tiger vs. Fuzzy feud up that was totally imagined and Fuzzy lost all kinds of money. This is basically the same thing. I doubt any Blacks were SERIOUSLY offended by these remarks. I don't think they should be. Something tells me this whole thing was more politics than anything else. Similar to the way that the Senate voted strictly down the party line in the impeachment vote of Clinton, this might have been an attempt to shake up the general balance of power in Congress. Then again, I could be completely wrong.

With the economy in such sorry shape, George W. should not be the Yahoo Man of the Year. I think the only person who supports bombing Iraq is George W. Bush. And if I'm going to get drafted and get killed, every fucking person in America should be convinced that this is the right thing to do. It's funny that America is the most powerful country in the world, yet these little countries like Iraq and Afghanistan continue to be smarter than us and force us to consume all of our energy on the "War on Terror." How about the war on my family having no money, you prick.

I spent $1000 on Christmas gifts for everyone, so if you don't like what you got, tough fucking luck. And I didn't keep any receipts, so too bad.

Word of the day: Niggardly. Meaning, cheap. Like all the idiot customers at ShopRite.

Good night.

I just realized that I threw out the Newsday where Corpsicle was mentioned. I would like to perform a hundred violent acts upon myself at this point. But they'd probably really hurt, so I won't. God, I'm pissed.

Good night again.

I haven't posted to this thing in like two weeks. I'm sure you're all heartbroken. But I wanted to write something in here because I felt it was the right thing to do in spite of the fact that I should be in bed - school starts in seven short hours.

I really have pretty much nothing to say. The Game 4 of the Mets-Diamondbacks 1999 NLDS is on MSG and I'm kinda paying attention to it. Those were the days - the days when the Mets didn't SUCK. When they had more than three guys that weren't high-priced free agents. When they WON BASEBALL GAMES. When I gave a damn. I'm not as into baseball as I was, say, two months ago. That's mostly because of the strike, and only partly because of the Mets' piss-poor play. My new adopted AL favorite, the Red Sox, fell out of the race with the hated Yankees long ago. Which leaves me to root for the A's and Twins, just so Allan H. "Bud" Selig can go commit suicide after the Series ends.

My football picks for this weekend sucked a big dick. I got 8 out of 16 games right, which blows, and I lost in the "Knockout" league we're doing at work. If I lose in that again, I'm out $25. So expect me to be out $25 by next Monday night.

It sucks - I've felt really creative recently, but haven't had the time to come up with anything that's cool. I found an old little guitar amp and I'm in love with it - it gives this really old school punk sound, but it also sounds like it could have been played on a 70's classic rock record. It's hard to explain, but I HAVE to find a bigger amp that sounds exactly like this one so that we can play shows with it. If I can do this, it'll solve another huge problem with the band. See, Doug and I have the EXACT SAME AMP and we can never tell whose is whose. I have some sort of stain on the top of mine, which is the only discernable difference. It's kind of funny, actually. But I have fun playing guitar now, which means I haven't written any stories or any other fun stuff recently, because I'm not talented enough to be creative in more than one forum at any time.

Cleaning my room means that I've found some awesome old CD's that I hadn't listened to in a while. I (finally) found ...And Justice For All, along with my Police greatest hits CD that Jason and I have been looking for obsessively for over a year now. I also found some old punk "classics" - a Bad Religion CD (Against the Grain) and two TSOL CD's. TSOL was one of the awesomest punk bands ever, and nobody even realizes it. They eventually morphed into a bad hair metal band, but that's forgivable. Joe Wood rules regardless. Those CD's are pretty cool. Even more amazing, THEY DON'T SKIP! Even the CD's I take care of skip, so that's kind of funny.

It's almost time for Pratt's series-ending homer. It's awesome that they are playing the radio broadcast rather than the regular TV announcers (I'd imagine that it was an ESPN game or something that they couldn't use the announcers for) because now I get to hear Gary Cohen do that really high-pitched "IT'S OUTTA HERE!!!!!!! OUTTA HERE!!!!!!!!!" thing that Andrew and I love so much. Had Ralph Kiner called that one, he probably would have called it a "EOWWEWEHWEOFHEWOFNWEFP".

Good night.

School is back in session.

The Fall 2002 semester at Hofstra is looking to be a complete bitch - aren't they all. I'm taking 18 credits, six classes, which I've never done before. They're all business classes, too (except for Ethics), so every textbook costs more than I make in a week. At least I have Fridays off, something else I've never had in my previous six college semesters. My classes are alright - Economics is Economics, but the teacher seems pretty cool. Marketing is always fun. Management should be okay since the subject is pretty interesting, and my teacher is awesome - she seems adept at making bad puns. Finance is probably going to be difficult and annoying. Ethics is looking like it might actually be an awesome class. Of course, ask me how it is in a month. Statistics, believe it or not, is going to be the hardest of any class I'm taking. It sounds lame, but it's the truth. See, its pre-requisite is the "Intro to Statistics" class, and I never really took it. I took a similar class at Nassau, but that was in the Spring 2000 semester, back when I was a freshman. So, of course, I forgot everything. We had homework, a "refresher" to everyone else, but to me, a very challenging assignment that I'm completely lost on. Ugh.

I finally cleaned my room. I've got plans for this baby. It should be interesting to see if I actually go through with these plans, or if I just say "Fuck it" and leave it the way it is out of laziness. If things go as planned, it will be like a totally different room.

I guess I should go to bed so that I can get to school by 7:30 to download my notes for my Marketing class. I don't have a printer or a zip drive so I can't do it here, it sucks. Oh well. Good night.

Hey - again. I still don't know if people read this or not. If you do, tell me, I guess. If not, then you don't.

So today has kinda blown. We're not playing a hockey game tonight because we missed the playoffs. To be honest, I could use the break. We had two shows last week, an exhausting hockey game, SummerSlam on Sunday, and work every other day in between. I'm pretty beat. However, I did have plans for today that were not realized, such as cleaning my room and car. One of these days, I promise. Just not today. I basically did nothing today except go out and grab Wendy's for dinner. Mom's not home since Grandma is getting operated on as we speak. Hope that goes well.

So I haven't gotten any phone calls today from friends or anything, which kinda bugs me, but I'm not going to kill myself over it. It's times like this when I wish people weren't away at school. Oh well. I'll live off of NFL 2K3, which I'm STILL not done reviewing. I also picked up Madden '94 and I think Madden '93, but I really don't remember. Both together cost $.85, so it was a good deal. Haven't played either one yet, though. This is the kind of night where I'd normally whip out the guitar and write stuff, but I'm honestly too tired to do even that. So maybe I'll go to bed early or something. I don't know. In any event, I'm rambling here, so I'm off to do nothing elsewhere.

I decided to skip baseball today. I don't seem to have much energy and with shows today and tomorrow, I need to conserve as much as possible. I feel really badly since today was the last baseball of the summer. I will get over it, though. I hope.

I have to go get some lunch now. I'm not sure what to get. And I also think the band dinner, if at all, will take place on Friday. Cory wants to see me after "baseball". She doesn't know yet that I'm not going to baseball. She's currently watching "All My Children". So I'm not allowed to call her while that show is on. It's not like it's even that good or anything. Then again, no one is allowed to call me during the Jets, Islanders, or wrestling, so I really can't complain.

I wonder if anybody actually reads this. If you do, sorry for wasting your time. If you don't, then fuck you. I can really say whatever I want to people who don't read this, since they're not reading this. Go kill yourselves, all of you who ignore captconjunction.blogspot.com or whatever it is.

Lunchtime. Later.

Somebody needs to die.

Yes, that's right. Somebody needs to die, and they need to die NOW. Preferably a member of the New England Patriots. I just got done spanking them in NFL 2K3, but they are little bitches and had to make life hard on me. So, of course, I ran up the score on them (well, as much as I could). They told me to take a knee. Fuck that! I say, let's throw the hail mary one more time. Then I go for the field goal which I, of course, miss because I suck. God do I hate myself sometimes. So I "only" beat them by 15. That's not good enough for me. They deserved to face a much worse fate. On the plus side, I did injure one of their players, but it was only one player. I wanted to see 45 stretchers taking 45 Patriots off into the hospital to die.

Somebody still needs to die.

I think I've decided that I'm the world's biggest loser. I think I've got a pretty good case, too. I'm 20 years old, I don't really do anything, I sleep with a teddy bear, I have like three friends, and my main claims to fame are the band that nobody cares about and the video game reviews that suck AND nobody cares about. So, if they ever have a "Loser Olympics", would you all do me a favor and sponsor me? Actually, wouldn't you have to NOT sponsor me, because that would make me even more pathetic? I don't know.

So I want to do this whole band dinner thing either tomorrow or Friday. Probably Friday, since Cory gave me crap about it for tomorrow. I think I could cure AIDS and someone would still be mad at me for some reason. But Friday is our last show of the summer and I want it to be special. It already will be, for reasons you may or may not know. And if you don't know, I'm not telling. So come!

Reluctantly, I go to bed. I hate you. Somebody needs to die. Good night.

We lost last night. It was a heck of a game, though. Now I know what people mean when they say that you step up your game for the playoffs. That might have been one of the most tense and physically taxing hours of my life. Wow. So we're on the outside looking in, depending on how the "Chiefs" did last night. If they lost, we are in the playoffs. But if they won, I think we're out. It's all bullshit, though, because one game was forfeited just because the league felt like being a bunch of dickheads. They succeeded. Fuck them.

I've got work at 3. I REALLY don't want to go. This morning has been really good, and I know tonight's going to blow just because the day has to even out somehow. Eight and a half hours of ringing up old cheap women. I hate my job so much, but nobody else will hire me. I don't really blame them, either. So I'm stuck at stupid ShopRite until God has mercy upon my soul and finds me a new job or gets me fired.

Oh, yeah. I'm really tired.

We have two shows this week. Thursday is at this place called the Union Square Lounge. I think it's at 9:30. It should be fun. Friday we're at "The Courthouse", where Corpsicle will be found guilty of rocking the place!! Or something like that. I hate my "gift" of wordplay, as it alienates most everybody. Except my friends. Thanks to you both.

I have to go to the bank before work. So let me go there. Bye.

Hi. So it's currently Tuesday at 11:25 AM. Which means it's been quite a while since I posted in this thing. Not that anyone actually reads this, myself included.

I'm pretty hungry. Is this White Castle time? I don't know. See, I'm obligated to eat at White Castle today. Why? It's Tuesday. We have a hockey game tonight, and the past two Tuesdays I've eaten White Castle. We've won both games. I'm a bit superstitious, so that explains that one. I actually have to go to the driving range at 1 today, so that should be nice, provided my back doesn't crap out on me like it has all last week. I got hit from behind last Tuesday at hockey and it's hurt like a bitch since then. I had to call in sick to work yesterday as a result - first time in 32 months. It's okay now, though. I hope.

I'm very insecure about my writing. I'm working on two things for 411 now - one is the pro/con column called "Kombat!" that I do with John Meehan, a very nice guy as well as a huge Beatles fan. That's just about done. It's pretty good, except it's not. I told you I was insecure. It's actually really good. I just think it could be a lot better. The other thing I'm working on is a review for NFL 2K3 for Playstation 2. Now THIS is a steaming pile of crap. It's really terrible. It COULD be good, but at this point it's terrible and I'm putting off work on it until I have time to be ashamed of myself. Speaking of all this writing stuff, the guitar isn't a very good friend anymore and everything I come up with on there is bad. We have band practice at 4 and I suck and hopefully, it will go well. The last thing I wrote here sucked, too.

So we're coming up on the one-year anniversary of 9/11 and suddenly, everyone cares again. This behavior is maddening, somewhat sickening, and, of course, very typically American. See, we don't care about anything unless we're TOLD it's okay to do so. And, in this case, being told amounts to media coverage, magazine "specials", and merchandise relating to the tragedy that, of course, some fatcat is making a profit off of. That's why you'll never see me with a "United We Stand" bumper sticker or anything like that. Hell, the thing affected me in a very powerful way, as it did many other people. I guess it didn't affect those people who feel the need to make money off of it. Those are the people that deserve to die, NOT innocent people who just happened to work in this (once) very tall building on a Tuesday morning. And on October 11, how many American flags did you see on cars? Not too many. Why? Because we stopped caring, of course. Americans are lazy bastards and have short attention spans. It might have been "cool" to be patriotic in September, but by October it was back to being stupid again.

Now baseball wants to go in strike in the middle of all this. The American pastime gives a big "fuck you" to America at a time when it could probably use it. I give a big "fuck you" to everybody involved, but let's backtrack for a bit. Does anybody remember September 21, 2001? If you're a baseball fan in New York, you might. It was the night of the first baseball game in New York since those events took place. Mets vs. Braves, always a huge draw, helped fill the place. I had tickets, but I couldn't go because my parents were worried about the security issue. Well, we missed one of the most emotional nights in baseball history, one that helped us to "heal" in a sense. The World Series helped us to heal, as well. And now, Major League Baseball could do it again, only the players aren't making enough money and they need to go on strike. Well FUCK THAT. Go on strike. Hope you enjoy playing your games in empty stadiums, because that's what you're looking at when you come back - IF you come back. Because I'm not.

Now it's 11:43 AM and I've still done nothing. Later.