The Intrinsic Properties of Ramen: A Digression

Ramen is delicious and not exactly nutritious, and I love it. It's the stereotypical poor apartment dweller and or college student staple meal. It's simple and quick to make, tastes great, and costs like a dollar for twenty of the things. You can get them in styrofoam cups or packages of the noodles and flavoring. You can get them in all kinds of flavors, each unique (sort of) and wonderfully tasty for some incredible reason. My two personal favorite brands are Maruchan and Cup Noodle, with the former making primarily the packaged noodles and well, if you can't guess what Cup Noodle does I might as well just stop writing this now. But since I'm writing this in real time and not actually talking to anyone I'm going to assume you're not an idiot and continue anyways!

In all reality ramen is great pretty much any time of the year, though for me it is particularly great in winter. It's for the same reason one doesn't really have hot chocolate all that often in the summertime, or hot soup for that matter, which is a much more valid comparison I guess seeing as how they're practically the same thing BUT WHATEVER. I was cold, so I turned on the heat in the room (which I'm still not entirely sure if it actually works or not) and heated up a cup of noodles and am as of this writing enjoying it. I might make more after, I might not. You never know with these kind of things.

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It's 3 AM. And. I want to go to bed.

Some call it evoking William Shatner, I call it having a damn good time. For whatever inane reason I find it particularly amusing to quote music in speech rather than in any lyrical fashion. Most would agree with me when I say it is almost never acceptable to burst into song when that song is anything by Linkin Park, though to be honest unless you happen to be living in a musical most people find it completely unacceptable to burst into any song anywhere. However, more than once have I been able to get away with simply uttering the words "I tried so hard and got so far, but in the end, it doesn't even matter" in some sort of social situation. Most often people look at me and either groan or grin, as these are my peers and they know exactly what I'm saying, for better or for worse. The real fun is when there are also those of the second party, the ones that have no clue what the hell I'm saying, are also present.

In a way it's almost meant to mock whatever we're saying; a way to laugh at the things we grew up with and how silly and inane all of it really is. People saying how good they want to get at something, and retorting with the phrase that you, quite simply, "want to be the very best, like no one ever was." (guitar riffs following said phrase are optional) At the same time it's a way to embrace that which was our youth; how many children of the current generation can honestly say that they've seen shows like Doug, or have ever seen Fred back when he actually thought neckerchiefs were cool? These are dying breeds, though to be fair not all of them actually deserve to live. I wish I had something to link to that sentence, but even though this post will be going up sometime this afternoon I really am writing this at 3 in the morning.

Regardless, it's something I've been doing for a while now, and you should too, even if you don't believe the bullshit I came up with to justify doing it. Or you should at least try it once, decide if you like it or not. Take it out on a nice date, maybe see a movie or something. From there you can decide if you truly want to pursue a relationship with this joke, or if perhaps you simply want to be friends, even though your true intent is to slowly drop out of this joke's life for good, realizing that that you weren't meant to be, you're not each other's type, or simply that you were obviously really really drunk when asked it out and it was one of those mistakes you hope to never make again only realize when you're 50 and alone that your whole life was spent repeating that process until you were simply a shell of yourself who never truly made a connection with a joke either because none could ever match up in your mind to that one joke that got away or because you were too afraid of opening yourself up to the possibility of sharing your life with a joke and instead simply used them once for your own personal pleasure and then threw it away, just like those crappy toys that come with the kids meals at fast food restaurants.

What the hell is wrong with me.

Where I've Been

So once again I've failed to keep myself writing and updating the blog, which is upsetting because I love to write about whatever. Lately I've been suffering from the potent combination of writer's block, lack of time, and a general proclivity towards laziness. Believe it or not, the writer's block is the biggest killer out of the three for me.  I talk with friends all the time, saying "Give me a topic! I need to write! Anything! Please!", begging for any sort of topic they can throw at me, only to receive relatively shitty ones anyways because when you tell a friend to tell you to write about quite literally anything some of the worst ideas often come to mind.

Despite all this, I've actually got quite a few good ideas that I want to write about, such as that short story I mentioned on my Facebook status a while back, things I really want to write about. This is where the three plagues to my writing start to intertwine into a devious concoction of creative-thought-process sedative. I may have a good idea, but often I can't come up with a good way to word my thoughts, or I may not have taken any notes down when the topic was fresh in my mind and I have since forgotten what I wanted to say. Half the time I lack the time to actually pursue these ideas and really get to work on them, and the other half I'm simply too lazy for said pursuits.

Basically I'm shitty at being consistent, even with myself.

(Be warned, ye who enter here, for thar be a horrible beast known to some as a "wall 'o text" lurking behind this here jump, possessed by the wretched musings and whining of the one known as "The Grand Warlock of the Intertubes" "the author,")

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(The Awakening of) Fort Champion

Anyone that knows me and has stayed up to any particularly late hour of the night knows I go through a few phases as the morning creeps ever so slowly closer towards the unconscious world. I have a cynical phase, a barely awake phase, and then right between the hours of three and five past midnight I become really really goofy. It was during such a time that a grand idea emerged, a plan for a visionary new developmental project that would shock the whole world to it's very core, only with no negative repercussions on the actual earth's core so we don't have to go and make another shitty movie like The Core. No....no, this, this would be better than all that. This would be a modern marvel of engineering and architecture and would most likely get it's own episode on the History Channel show Modern Marvels.

We would build a fort.

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A Kingdom for Kieflings

I've been playing a lot of Magic lately, and have only recently gotten back into the swing of things in WoW, so naturally my gaming schedule was starting to get pretty limited what with the whole being in college business. Then I have a little conversation with a friend of mine about getting a game called A Kingdom for Keflings, some sort of Xbox Live Arcade game or something. He told me that the game was absolutely astounding, equivalent to reaching the highest echelons of Valhalla and drinking the finest ambrosia mead out of the skulls of your fallen enemies. Well, not really, but he did say it was so good I probably wouldn't even have time to play Magic anymore because I was too busy playing this game. I have never had any form of mead and I figure something that is supposedly the drink of the gods would be enough to convince anyone.

I decided to make the purchase and quickly hopped onto Xbox Live to do so. After much confusion and many attempts to figure out exactly how to get things set up (why oh why do I always forget to bring my Xbox headset from home!), I had the game downloaded and ready to play. At least, if I knew what the hell I was doing.

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Why I Can't Update the Blog Regularly, or I Can Summarize My Thoughts in a Single Facebook Update

So. I really like writing for my blog, I really do. It's sort of like a journal that I never kept, only I'm older and can speak (type?) a bit more eloquently and I would have more to write about than my favorite Pokemon card (probably either my holographic Charizard or that Japanese Arcanine my older brother gave me) or all the different spells of Harry Potter, not that I wouldn't write about those either here, mind you.

The only real problem here is that, while I have a ton of ideas for things to write about, most of it I can sum up by updating my Facebook status. It might just be because I've grown accustomed to using status updates more and more like what Twitter is used for, though I still refuse to get a Twitter. No matter the cause, though, I've found myself attempting to write a post for about a half hour only to realize I could more appropriately convey my thoughts and opinions on said topic in about a sentence or two on Facebook.

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I Love Taking All of the Naps

There's nothing quite like a nice long nap that makes you feel soo good (and in the case of anyone with medium to long hair, mess it up soo bad). Being a college student now, I'm beginning to attempt to master the art of napping at available times. Today I had my first class at 8 A.M, which all things considered really shouldn't be too bad. Many working adults have to wake up earlier, and I had to wake up waaaay earlier to get to high school on time. And yet, there's something about waking up at 8 that's truly devastating. The fact that I regularly stay up until 12 or 1 and that my other day in my two day rotation of classes doesn't start until noon probably doesn't help either.

I barely managed to stay awake in class, but that's completely alright because I know most of the stuff we were discussing today anyways. I came back to my room, opened the window to let some air in, dropped my stuff and jumped on the bed and never looked back. Here I am a bit more than two hours later, feeling awesome, and having another hour before I have to head to class.

Glorious.

(Also, I promise I'm not trying to have a naming scheme or anything, these things just keep popping into my head like that)

All of the Origins

For my first post I think I'll do a little bit of explaining, namely the title of the blog. If any of you are still following me at this point, you may be wondering "What exactly does 'All of the Blog' mean? 'Cos I'm pretty sure you can't have only 'some' of a blog. That'd just be silly." Now I know none of you are actually thinking that, but if you were, that'd be freaking awesome! That would either make me a mind reader, or a person that can instill thoughts into your brain ala Broseph Stalin or something. Either way! I am now here to explain this mystery to you!

As best I can remember the first instance of the "all of the" happenings was this year around March, during the Massachusetts High School Drama Guild Festival. Our school, Westford Acadamy (which is a PUBLIC school, by the way), was hosting this particular round, meaning it could have been prelims or semis, I really don't know. I was being a goofball in general and was having people write on my arm in sharpie, which is usually not a good idea, but I thought it was fantastic anyways. I told one of my friends to draw and or write something awesome, but she was distraught and didn't know what to do, so naturally I had to come up with something. In the end I told her to draw one of our other friends, one such dubious character known only as "Craig," taking ALL of the naps.

And so she did.

From there on in it was and shall forever remain a rolling joke, the "all of the jokes" joke. Whenever you have to go do something, or go drink something, or go win something, bear in mind that forever you won't simply be doing SOME of the stuff or drinking SOME of the drink or even winning SOME of the game, but instead ALL of it.

Now go forth readers, and make ALL of the jokes!

ED: After consulting with THE Craig from the sacred "all of the jokes" origin story, I was actually completely wrong! Go figure. The actual "all of the jokes" joke started about a month prior to the story I told, in New York City, on a bus. A parent commented on how she had way more trash bags than could be imagined, to which Craig replied "I dunno, I can imagine a LOT of trash bags." Being the person that I am, I naturally had to butt in with the comment "ALL the trashbags," after which I assume many "all of the jokes" jokes were made. So in truth the origin story I originally wrote was in fact simply one of the first spreadings of the "all of the jokes" joke. Carry on!

Here We Make All of the Posts

Hello everyone, and welcome to All of the Blog! Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Joe Alden, and I'm a freshman at Keene State College and I plan to major in Tech Theatre. I managed to net a scholarship for it (and now that I mention it I totally forgot to bring my portfolio back from home to show the tech director) so I guess I'm pretty good at it! I'm you're pretty average geek and or nerd or what have you; I enjoy video games, play some Magic when I get the chance, make stupid internet meme jokes, and so on. I enjoy all sorts of music, love the outdoors, and I like to play frisbee a lot. Most people (and usually animals too) seem to like me instinctively, but I absolutely hate people. Not like people I know or chances are anyone that would actually read this, but people. You know who I'm talking about. But that's more about me that you never cared to hear, so let's move on!

All of the Blog is the successor to my previous blog, The Edge of Insanity. I was absolutely lousy at updating that blog since I never really found time to make any posts, and I never had an interesting enough life to post about. But then I thought "Wait a second, I'm a college kid now!" and foolishly went along and made this travesty. Here's to hoping this one sucks a bit less!

Like my last blog, All of the Blog is about pretty much anything I want to post about. It is purely for my entertainment, and if anyone else should find some amusement in reading this, well props to them. Because it is for me and me exclusively (but open to the gaping maw that is the internet) it won't be updated at all periodically, but instead, *gasp* sporadically! I'll post anything I damn well please, but you're welcome to comment on it all and tell me how much I suck and that I should stop writing. It won't work of course but I'll be glad to hear from you regardless!

And so here we go, onward to great, or maybe even terrible, horrible, things! Welcome to both you and I to All of the Blog, and don't let the door hit you on the way out!