I can’t really say why, but sometimes memories confront me. I was once a creature of nostalgia, frittering away many hours thinking about decisions I’ve made, sometimes life itself. Lately though, that once defining characteristic of inner exploration has been absent. Why? Who knows. Truthfully it doesn’t matter. It’s not hours of pointless contemplation I really want - just the truth.

Ah, but what a wonderful weekend it was.

Fresh from the elation that my story had made it to the papers, I’d driven off to see Jen in the wonderful Chicago suburbs. I didn’t realize just how wonderful these suburbs were until Saturday afternoon, when we drove up to Schaumburg for some overdue shenanigans. There, I experienced my first taste of Chipotle, and many grueling hours of zombie killing, and DDR at Gameworks. I found Chipotle a very tasty diversion, and Gameworks an immersive one. We arrived at Gameworks around 7 pm, where we met up with Ryan and crew; we didn’t make it out until after 12:30 am.

Well, now I’m famous. Looks like the article I’ve been waiting for, for the past three weeks, has finally been churned out of the Quad City Times. Props to the author of the article, Kelly Steuck, whom I work with at TownNews.com.

Never thought I’d be in the paper for anything but my obituary in 287 years, but this certainly works! Better yet, it’s great exposure for the QC DDR group I started about a year ago. It’s hard to build a community with no machine, so hopefully this article will herald a deluge of interest. Of course, when and if Miller Time Bowling finally gets the new machine, it’ll be even easier! Ryan tells me they’re close, and are applying pressure to their game supplier to get them the machine, so it’s only a matter of time.

Before I get to the “story”, I’d like to say that it was inspired by a post on Kuro5hin.org a kind of moderated internet commune where this story was posted about the history of the American school system as written by a former New York Teacher Of The Year. You can find the text of the book on John Taylor Gatto’s site. Whoever submitted the story to Kuro5hin couldn’t fully relate the idea of Leviathan, so I helped him out. So, here we go…

What, you mean my housewarming was over on Monday and I’m just now doing the writeup? Quiet you! If I needed that kind of criticism, I’d raise Sam Kinison from the dead and ask him to insult me for an hour. Yes, I’m a lazy, dirty, and evil man - but be that as it may, the party was great!