Zombified Beer Run Disco Bash from kevinyezbick on Vimeo.

As you can hear – Will Ferrel was there. I still have red paint on my face.

From Anne’s party earlier this year.

Sadly, this went on for three more hours.

(You may notice I’ve changed the default theme — to the Agregado theme. I hope to make it my own soon.)

Staff day is now yesterday – and we managed to turn it into some good times. As you may have noted from my twitter feed – we went to the Library Sports Pub & Grill afterwards and had a little afterparty – and then I came home to my new MacBook.

Today it’s off to the 3:55 Tigers game vs. the New York Mets — and I’ll be sitting in the Tiger’s Den for the first time with pops. Can’t wait to try out the new camera there and see what kind of quality shots I can get.

Soon will come the attempts at installing Ubuntu – and the next stress item on the list is creating the Blogs & Beyond class for the library. Also – updating the resume for two recently posted positions in Georgia.

Lunch time.

You may recall that Voinovich expressed his concerns on Bolton during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearings, only to send the nomination to the Senate Floor for the Up and Down vote.

Voinovich voiced worry for the direction of this country, noting the costs in human life, as well as the continuing costs and financial burden of the wars we are fighting – and the plummeting opinions of our friends and allies around the world.

Having a spine and refusing to toe the party line – cheers to Voinovich.

Someone should really buff down those edges.

Things have been quiet around here lately because things have not been around here lately. These things are namely me. (I suppose I could argue that things haven’t been around me lately, but can one be a moving centrifugal unit? Wouldn’t that create a world of chaos where all other sentient beings thrown into this plenitude of existence are constantly pushing against each other’s opposing space bubbles? I suppose…brings to mind monads…and the world is chaos…but I have managed to digress sans elegance.)

What I mean to say is that I recently spent the week between my last final and the beginning of grad school in the state of Georgia — and the week escaped me. I couldn’t stop it. The damn thing spun too fast. If ever I was centrifugal it was in relation to last week.

There were many happy moments of music, drinking, experiments in child psychology, and an incredible, phenemonal dinner of delirium that won’t be soon forgotten.

Then, all of a sudden, I was eating a Jumbo Chicken Burrito, sipping Sangria and saying my goodbyes on 05.05.05.

Yet this time I was ready to go. Not because I don’t love my friends. Not because I was anxious to get back. Rather it was because I didn’t belong there.

This dawned on me darkly while driving somewhere between the eighth and tenth hour of the return trip. I’ve been trying to sort it out since — sketching it out in my little black book in the hopes of turning it into some resplendent piece — but it has managed to remain somewhat grizzled.

There’s probably a reason for that — and I should just get down what I’ve gathered so far — and allow you to make your own inferences into why I might have arrived at this supposition.

There is a town in Georgia that lies on the map approximately halfway to Atlanta from Athens, and, thus, approximately halfway to Athens from Atlanta. That town is called, for some odd reason, Between. It is neither here, nor there. It just is. And perhaps that is where I should go for to do my living.

From what I can recall – the day of my awakening was brilliant. Nearly perfect. Blue skies, sunshine, not too hot, not cold at all. The kind of day that sickens people if they are forced to watch it pass from the interiors of some personal Bastille. A day of romantic romanticizing, jubilant jollies and dreamy daydreams – all of which can be accomplished without the presence of such a day, but prosper in an environment that fosters such fancy.

In plain speak, it was a perfect day for thinking.

As I drove along, crossing into the eighth hour of a planned 11 hour drive, I was getting plenty of thinking done. There were certainly distractions to be had. NPR’s Day to Day was flowing from the stereo, other cars were around to be avoided, the Ohio landscape was stretching out to the horizon – but the day was just too bright to be ignored. Too damn cheery. The day was becoming an intrusion. It was the antithesis of my own feelings.

Wrapped in that sunshine, my arms extended onto the steering wheel, my feet pressing and releasing the gas and brake pedals with no real harmony, my body began to disappear – and I began to sink. I sank into myself, I suppose — and the brightness of the world seemed to pour down into my blackness, two streams spilling into a great vacuous shell. From my vantage point I was able to observe the deluge from its two entry points merge and fall, spilling down from above, the light of the cars and land and sky and world segueing into dissolution. (I wonder now whether this is the same point at which another’s intuition and/or empathy begins to fail.) Perhaps the most marvelous part of all was to watch as my own reactions rose into the light, manifesting themselves as something akin to flitting butterflies.

Watching those golden Lepidoptera rise to the mouths of the cave meant that I had become something of a third party to the whole process. It was the first feeling of comfort that I had felt in quite some time. I was alone — with great distances not only between myself and others, but between myself and my self. There was none of that charge of expectation, that electrical energy that surrounds one when in familiar places. That energy was now a cradling wind of reality that billowed about in the cavernous depths – touching everything without selection.

Perhaps this distinct disconnect, this self-awareness is the aim of meditation. But the immediate difference is that in meditation one is attempting to control thought. Here I was simply observing – almost being struck by thoughts, much like the bugs meeting their timely ends on the grill of my Ford Focus.

And what thoughts come? What surfaces out into the world and eventually overtakes me – from either the week past or from conjectures of what is to come?

There is a recognition that I had lost a lot of what I had taken with me when I first moved. I had forgotten details about certain people – certain mannerisms had managed to recede into what they should be — nothing worth remembering. Certain frailties in relationships — or even relationships that had managed to mingle themselves among those ugly little beasties -grudges- had all scattered and run for cover once I had escaped their area of communion. Since my return they had on occasion come out to remind me of their existence — but upon realizing that they were no longer relevant – simply shrank away in shame. Those are the details I had lost — and with that realization – a particularly amazing member of the legions of golden lepidotera flitted by with this quote emblazoned upon its wings:

“The devil is in the details.”

The quote brought me closer to the surface long enough to hear Ridley Scott on NPR declare that, “Someone once said God is in the details.”

There were moments in the week when I was hit with those sudden remembrances of lost details: some which certainly should not have been forgotten – but losing many of them had made life just a bit sweeter. Could it have been selective memory? I can’t say. But to be in a situation where they suddenly drift in and distort the picture of reality you are struggling with is disconcerting to say the least.

In the end, standing there at the bottom of that cave as my body drove for Michigan, I came to a realization that seemed rather timely:

I am neither here, nor am I yet there. I am in between. I am constantly between. Upon leaving Atlanta, it was to begin school, and upon beginning school it is to get a job, and constantly there will be something to set at either end — so that I may remain between. Always between.

So…
That’s that. I’m gonna be setting up another blog as a repository concerned with class notes and whatnot — stuff not likely to be of interest to very many. I’ll drop a link along the way once it’s done. I can’t be sure how much time I’ll be spending here…Although I do have a couple humorous moments from the first day of class that would be better suited here. All business there — all funny funny here.

This past weekend was a fun one – and as I have the day off today – I have made it a productive one – regaining lost hours by sleeping into the afternoon and lounging around in my pjs…

I headed up to Comer, Georgia – about an hour and a half from Atlanta – and participated in a farm party that stupified the senses. A moonwalk reaffirmed the progression of time – as it only took a few bounces to wind me. A bonfire raged into the night sky – and a keg of Killians kept Kevin kooky. Rachel and Steven are getting ready to move to Colorado, Mana was in town from NYC, and Star and Steven were each celebrating their birthdays. Saw lots of old friends and met plenty of new folks…A good time was had by all – and I managed to keep most of my friendships intact.

digerati

the meaning of zeitgeist. or the pronunciation. The first time I saw it was on Flickr.

boxing party.

kerning. [via bluishORANGE]

The “Internets” teach me so much — and yet make me feel so stupid.

Why exactly is Bush addressing them next week? Is this an annual thing done by each leader, or is this something different?

At the beginning of each regular session, the Assembly holds a general debate, often addressed by heads of state and government, in which Member States express their views on the most presssing international issues.

(But then that leads me to wonder which countries are allowed to have speakers? What is the procedure?)

In light of Kofi’s questioning the legality of the invasion of Iraq (not that anyone’s taking that seriously, perhaps the answer to many of these questions, including the next one), why is he (Bush) even being allowed to address a congregation he has no faith in? Is it a call and response situation or will the words likely ring hollow in a hall of bemused attendees? How can anybody in that situation sit comfortably and listen to a man who refused to listen to them? How likely is it that either party involved is going to check their pride and come to some sort of solution? Why do I bother imagining these questions when I am so irrelevant to the entire chain of events? Is there a degree of Kevin Bacon that leads me into that Assembly? Shouldn’t I be doing something more productive – like finishing this chapter on the evolution of the database? Is it weird that I perceive the sentence “And this property of the relational data model, explored in depth in the next chapter, became the source of a real database revolution.” to be extremely profound? That it makes me want to get to the next chapter so that I, too, can become a part of this revolution? I must. I must continue to turn the pages of history so that I myself may learn from it, compiling the raw facts and processing them into information — as better data leads to better information which leads to better decisions. That, my friends, is what the revolution is all about. Needless to say – it will not be televised.

Related: General Assembly FAQs

UofM’s Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library
Documents Center – A UN Depository Library – scroll down to UN

The Press Gaggle: Kobe Beef?

Disclaimer: This has been a post and edit production. All statements and their containing paragraphs are not considered concrete until exploration has either been exhausted or exhausted me. Please keep your arms and legs inside the blog at all times. Thank you and please continue to enjoy your stay at Yezbick.com.

The other big upload of the day is this 2mb movie that features a short snippet of Elise’s quartet from the graduation party. Those in the know will be able to scan the crowd and recognize many faces. Those of you outta the loop will have to settle for the limited notations on the photos in the Flickr. I tried my darndest to get that movie file size down to a reasonable amount. I’m astounded that Myerk was able to shrink wrap his drummer movie into a mere 500 kb. Wish I had that kind of power.

I should be a little more attentive to content around here in the coming days. I was distracted a little by the struggles for a more cohesive form and perhaps the hours of rearranging divs and ids was what set off the headache in the first place. Rather disheartening that I took all the time to set up that photo page and upload the scripts to create automatic galleries before I decided to give Flickr a try. There is so much cruft, so many broken links on this site that have been indexed since I made the switch over to .php from html. A simple htaccess redirect would change all that — but I haven’t a clue how to manage that yet.

Went to the library and picked up XML in a Nutshell, The Essential Guide to RF and Wireless and The Cybrarian’s Manual in an effort to become the consummate geek in the shortest amount of time. I figure that while I’ve got the behavioral aspects down, I’ve still got quite a bit of the technical side to catch up to. It’s amazing how much easier it is to read these books with their larger font as opposed to the 8pt font in my Proust book which has sat mostly undisturbed the past few weeks at my bedside…

Well — I best be on to the geekdom building…TO THE WINDOWWWWW TO THE WALL!!!!

corrected at 1:27…