It makes me think of war time – maybe someone that’s wounded or knocked out and thinking of a poem during his private peace in the midst of the battle.

There will be more of these little creations to come. We’ll see where they take me. Or where I take them. …wait, who’s leading this thing?

via gizmag

A conversation, like dancing, has some rules, although I’ve never seen them stated anywhere. The objective of conversation is to entertain or inform the other person while not using up all of the talking time. A big part of how you entertain another person is by listening and giving your attention. Ideally, your own enjoyment from conversation comes from the other person doing his or her job of being interesting. If you are entertaining yourself at the other person’s expense, you’re doing it wrong.

You might think that everyone on earth understands what a conversation is and how to engage in one. My observation is that no more than a quarter of the population has that understanding.

I think of it as a friendly tennis match. There is no attempt to score a point or win a match. There is merely the enjoyment of each other’s company, an open-ended engagement that should and does lead nowhere, and an eagerness to play. This facet of behavior – playing – is in many ways, as I argue in Intimations Pursued, the highest expression of human freedom. It is also the highest expression of civility. We need more of it. And the blogosphere – at its best – achieves this.

via The Rules Of Conversation – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.

I start out in a bar drinking with the other soccer teammates. We have the champion game tomorrow against a really tough team and after looking at a wall of posters of ourselves (which were actually soccer players in the Champions League) we decide to train and run all night so we’ll be ready for the game.

We all bolt out of the bar and start running. At night. In the snow. I move ahead of the pack and start to cross a pedestrian bridge. Two cocker spaniels with wings fly up to me. The first scares me so I hit it with a book on the head, but then end up petting them as the hover next to me.

I keep running and go into a building and up some stairs. I see a guy I know who’s sitting on the floor and reading saying he knows something about me as I run past. Looking for my room, I turn around and see 3 girls walking toward me. I ask if they know where my room is and they say yes, it’s upstairs. They say I always get drunk and think I’m in my room when I’m actually in their room. I have a flashback to sometime, I guess, when I was drunk in their room. The room is full of water and we’re swimming, and I’m with 4/5 ginormous turtles (their flippers are bigger than my body) who are treading water like a human with their heads sticking up and their mouths open showing their teeth (which are akin to a sea lion).

Then I wake.

There is, however, a surly group of locals who are adamantly against what we do. They hate the designs, the materials, etc., and make it a personal issue. I think they have too much time on their hands and just despise change in general. If they could see the state the houses are in before (nearly falling over, vegetation growing over the house and sometimes inside it, poor previous additions sometimes without even wall studs!, etc.) then I think there would be less complaints about us restoring them.

Anyways, I love the idea of restoring things and decided to look up the word. Words fascinate me and this one is just one of the many. Here’s what Webster says:

Main Entry: ren·o·vate

Etymology: Latin renovatus, past participle of renovare, from re- + novare to make new, from novus new

1 : to restore to a former better state (as by cleaning, repairing, or rebuilding)

2 : to restore to life, vigor, or activity : revive <the church was renovated by a new ecumenical spirit>

I love that – “to restore life, vigor, or activity”. And I love that the sample sentence includes the church because renovating is such a Christian idea. As Christians, each of us has been renovated and made new. We were fallen sinners who were dead, but Christ came and renovated us – He restored life, vigor, and activity to us. This is what it means when Christ says that he came so that we may have life and have it to the fullest.

Things that are renovated have a history to them. There’s the first stage or design; then a metamorphosis changing it into something similar but different. Traditional that’s reinvented. I like the purity of things that have undergone the metamorphosis but don’t find them as interesting; and I’d argue that they don’t have as much history. Take a building, for example; or a city. If a city never renovated or changed anything then it would just be old. But the more it changes and is renovated and developed, the more it shows a snap-shot of that specific time throughout the complete timeline of the building. You can’t see how old something is unless you have something new to compare it to.

This poem was written by my friend and recently published on Linebreak.

Jeepney to Anini-y

BY JOHN SCHELLHASE

We heard the fish there cursive through the coral,
That starfish prowl the boulders, that seaweed
would flay the salty diorama, and like a quarrel
dissolving, the shore-world would go to bed.
We heard the stars would paint a glassy mural
Across both sky and waves. We heard the thread
of each star’s light would weave into a laurel
that rests upon the island’s bowing head.

We’re folded in the jeep with chicken crates,
children, and ancient men with smiles like crusts.
I put my headphones in. The music greets
the stench and heat, like light a door its never
entered. The coastline gleams. Even the dust
is silent now. I want to live forever.

With Christopher Nolan directing (who did the latest and greatest Batman movies), this is sure to follow suit. And ever since Leonardo DiCaprio was in Gangs of New York and The Departed, I think it’s okay for guys to like his movies.

Halo: Reach

Release Date: September 14, 2010

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Call of Duty: Black Ops

Release Date: November 9, 2010

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Fable 3

Release date: December 30, 2010

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Bulletstorm

Release Date: February 22, 2011

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Gears of War 3

Release Date: April 5, 2011

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What games are you looking forward to?