"1441" #01

I do quite a bit of talking before these kinds of things now, don’t I? Unfortunately for you (unless you like my pre-body ranting), you get me introducing you every week to “1441’s” “chapters!”

This week you’ll be meeting someone new, and he is the narrator. I’m honestly not good at introducing introductions, so enjoy:

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My Room // Today, 5:26am

Holy fucking hell, I keep forgetting to turn off my alarm clock. Three weeks of it waking me up at 5:26am for a job I don’t even have anymore is bound to drive me insane. That’s not just a random time I pulled out of my ass and my clock isn’t just messing with me by choosing an obscure time on its own.

I’m fascinated by numbers and I could live just trying to figure out patterns, but I’m especially fascinated by the number 13. For some reason, the number is closely associated with bad luck, but for me it has been the one number I can count on. 5:26 is simply five plus two plus six, which equals 13. It’s been called my favorite number by my friends, though I wouldn’t personally call it that myself.

5:26am gave me the amount of time I needed to get ready for work, browse the internet, eat breakfast with my mom, and pick up some coffee if I chose to before I arrived at work or school with a few minutes to spare. Seeing as it’s summer, my alarm clock’s sole purpose was to wake me up for work.

But I really don’t want to think about that job anymore. It just angers me. I’m trying to be zen again, so this is the last of it that you’ll be hearing from me.

Because I could always sit in my room alone after I came home from school, I essentially had a life of solitude. I’d just do my homework, watch TV, play videogames, surf the internet, and read some books; really anything that would keep me from making any actual face-to-face contact with people.

I mean, yeah, I’d go outside and play soccer with the other boys on the block when I was younger and friends would come over to my house just as often as I would go over to theirs, but I’ve found some kind of strange comfort in having my own place in the world where I could be alone when I wanted to be.

And honestly, this has been a nice week, a nice month, and a nice life at certain moments.

Going back to that last thought, that seemed like the end of a suicide note. I’m not suicidal at all, not even depressed really. I’m just a quiet, reserved observer.

But truthfully, leading up to high school, even I begin to think of myself as a shut in. I’m just not that much of a people person. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I came out of the shell that was my room that I met some of the most important people of my life. I was exposed to a word of new things including books, music, and movies.

I’d like to think of myself as a reliable person, always going out of my way to help anyone that needed help, especially my friends and family. Eventually I began to take notice to the fact that people were taking advantage of my instinctive need to help.

Once people caught word that I was leaving Chicago to go to school elsewhere, they started being nice and wanted to help me out with everything. And it wasn’t the sick kind where you’re checking in on someone to make sure they didn’t vomit facedown into their pillow while they’re sleeping, but the kind of nice that usually results in knowing someone has a couple of months left on Earth.

Honestly, I got fed up with it. All I did was send off that Intent to Enroll Form, not find out that my kidneys had shut down and needed a transplant. I don’t get it, really. I never turned heads, no one paid much attention to me, and that’s the way I expected it to always be. I let all the attention get to me and I just exploded. Just as easy as it was to walk around the corner to mail that form, I pissed off a lot of friends.

Nothing in my life is as expected and never can be anticipated. Leaving somewhere else is my chance to take control of my own life. I’m going to have to go downstairs and cook one last breakfast for my mom before I leave to the east coast tomorrow morning. One last day to actually fix the bonds I’ve broken with amazing people.

Besides, I don’t like loose ends or cliffhangers.

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Ooh, isn’t he mysterious? He apparently has quite the history that keeps chasing him. “1441” #2 will be up next week, October 13th!

[Twitter: @LeetAmerico; Formspring: LeetAmerico]

TMoIB, Part II: Loveline, Comcast: America’s Worst Company, Obama in NBA Shorts

I’m doing it again. I swear I’ll cut back on playing Halo: Reach as it’s affecting my blogging. I have an idea! I should write about Reach just to get it out of my system. That sounds like a good idea. That is almost asking for a “future blogging ideas” tag, but I’m [currently] too lazy to even tag this post at all.

Time be wastin’ on Web Wednesday so let’s start this shit! Two Months of Internet Business, Part II!

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Loveline and the After Disaster: I can’t even describe Loveline because words can’t do this radio show justice. Listeners from the United States and some parts of Canada call in to Dr. Drew, Psycho Mike, and the guest(s) of the night with their problems and questions about their sex lives, receiving advice and tips from the show’s hosts and guests. For the After Disaster, Dr. Drew and Psycho Mike sit out the weekly after show which is essentially Loveline with more stories and some occasional swears but also highly recommend, btw.

Check out the Loveline live stream (or the alternate stream if the main one doesn’t work) from Sunday nights to Thursday nights at roughly 12:50am ET/9:50pm PT for the preshow discussions with the main show starting 10 minutes later on the hour for two hours, with the Loveline After Disaster post show going on for an hour afterwards on Thursday nights at 3:05am ET/12:05am PT.

Comcast and the Golden Poo: Though I would argue that AT&T is the worst company out there, apparently people think Comcast is even worse than AT&T. Too bad, considering AT&T likes to give non-golden poo to its customers.

Obama …in shorts? President Obamarama and Joe Biden are going to be playable characters latest NBA Jam along with their competition in the 2008 Presidential Election, Sarah Palin and John McCain, buuuuuut NBA Jam also includes a few others that will help settle almost 20 years of political rivalries… through basketball.

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I wonder how long I can go calling this “Two Months of Internet Business” because it’ll become three months once we hit November. Gotta sleep on that.

Coming up next is the first “1441” chapter. After reading this and that, you can contact me @LeetAmerico or drop a question for me in the Formspring box to the right.

On the Menu: Week of October 03, 2010 – Using that indie program called Microsoft Word

Well, that was a very productive first week back. Thank you, Halo: Reach and primetime television.

For laughs, I have a little game that I’ll play …with myself. Every time I decide to skip something that I said I’ll post, I’ll add a plus sign to the end of it. Publicly exposing my failure is bound to motive me to post something up eventually.

My Formspring box in right pane is now public, meaning you don’t have to log in to ask me a question. Fancy shmancy!

Something I forgot to mention last week about that Disqus comment box is that it’s practically just a one click log-in if you frequent Yahoo, Twitter, or OpenID. If you’re logged in to any of those three sites that are linked to your Disqus account, bam, you’re logged in. Good for lazy people like me.

Other than my OTM post, I made an astonishing one post and said something about happenings on the internet.

Now for a list of what I’ll probably fail at posting this week:

•    On the Menu: Week of October 03, 2010 – Using that indie program called Microsoft Word
•    Media Monday // 2010: The Rise and Fall of Great TV [+]
•    Transit Tuesday // A True CTA “Ay” Story [+]
•    Web Wednesday // TMoIB, Part II
•    Wednesday Writing // “1441” #01 [+]
•    Throwback Thursday // Grand Theft Auto IV [+]
•    Free Friday // One of the Worst Weekends of My Life, Part I of I [++]

And that’s what’s supposed to happen this week. Tweet me @LeetAmerico, drop me a line on Formspring or in the Formspring box on the right pane if you need anything.

P.S. I’ve been using Microsoft Word from post number one of this blog, I just needed a title.

TMoIB, Part I: Settlers of Catan, the Bed Intruder Song, Pokémon Movie!

Busy, BUSY day so this one is going up a little bit late… I’m going to spend a few weeks trying to catch up with all the interesting things I found around the internet that I’ve missed in the past two months during my hiatus WHILE continuing to share new things I’ve found.

I’m also trying to see if I can write this in 15 minutes. (I’m trying to refrain from breaking into the Pokémon theme song…)

Here we go! Two Months of Internet Business, Part I!

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Surface Catan: Remember how I was talking about ideas for a Settlers of Catan movie a couple of months back? Sure you do. Well, a version of the game using a Microsoft Surface has been in development and should be ready for the public (that can afford to have a Surface) sometime soon! I really wanted a Microsoft Surface before, and I definitely want one now.




Hide your kids, hide your wife: This is oooooold now, but so was me waiting to post this up. It needs no introduction really. Ladies and gents, The Bed Intruder song:





I wanna be the best, like no one ever was: Dammit, I did it. I posted a line from the Pokémon theme song. I was soooo close to not doing it but before I knew it, I was already typing it. Oh well. A live action trailer to a fan-made Pokémon movie was posted onto YouTube on Monday of last week and honestly, as a fan of the first couple of Pokémon generations as a kid, I loved this trailer. I thought it was very loyal to the original story while taking a darker look at the world of Pokémon. Here’s an interview with the cast/crew if you get interested in the trailer.

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Well, that took exactly 20 minutes. Not bad. Expect more old stuff with new stuff next Wednesday, along with “1441,” because I’m generous like that.

Two interesting things happened during the writing of this blog: 1) I added "Pokémon" to Microsoft Word's dictionary because that red squiggly line annoys me and 2) my friend found out I have a blog and asked if I have a hit list with him on it. Not yet, Bootl3g (or Bootles), but I'll create the tags just for you. :P

Other than that, you know the drill: Tweet me @LeetAmerico or drop a question for me in the Formspring box to the right.

On the Menu: Week of September 26, 2010 – Disqus this Fall Blog Catalog!

lul, apparently I was planning to blog the week of August 8th (the week after my last CTA story), but we were having rolling blackouts as I was trying to post anything up so I ended up giving up. It’s a cute little post. I still have it lying around and I totally forgot about it. Good ol’ Chicago summer. Never disappoints … Oh, wait, it does. Maybe I’ll post it up someday so I don’t feel like it was written for nothing.

But, over time with a bit of trial and error, I managed to get us a Disqus comment box because, really, I love feedback. I like knowing how I’m doing (or not doing) with anything. So go ahead and use it, no registration for Disqus required, though it would be a perk for you because other websites around the internets (like Mashable) also use Disqus, and you’re able to share a single account to comment on them. What scares me is that you have a thumb down button to mindfuck me with. I feel like I opened Pandora’s Box with this addition. The huge perk is that I’ll be more able to keep track of your comments more efficiently instead of backtracking to each post one by one.

By the way, for the next 14 weeks there WILL be at least one blog post because I will be posting up a little something that I’m writing. “1441” will be posted up from October 6th to December 29th of this year. 13 weeks, 13 chapters, 3 complete months. I’m not at liberty to disclose the meaning of the number 1441, but you’re going to have to check it out 9 days from now if you want to know more about it.

And now what’s on the menu for the week:

•    On the Menu: Week of September 26, 2010 – Disqus this Fall Blog Catalog!
•    Transit Tuesday // A True CTA “Ay” Story
•    Web Wednesday // Settlers of Catan, the Bed Intruder, Two Months of Internet Business
•    Throwback Thursday // Grand Theft Auto IV
•    Free Friday // One of the Worst Weekends of My Life, Part I of I

There you go. That’s what’s happening this week. Now let’s see how many of those I actually do end up posting. You’re free to make estimates in the Disqus comment section below. (Shyeah, I’m still pimping that awesome new Disqus box.)

As I’m posting this up, I just realized I hadn’t tagged my posts in a while. I’ll get on that… eventually.