FallingMarc

Not to mention a strong right forearm and possible carpal tunnel. M

Yes, this weekend was indeed groovy. If only I would have spent the night... doh... M

0:7:3 Mmm... good weekend for one on which I had not planned to skydive at all until the last minute! First Twin Otter jumps(Skydive Illinois was a blast! You people rock!), first kiss pass (thanks Sunshine ), and first tube dive (woohoo for Val's 200th). If only the wind hadn't picked up today... I feel great regardless...

Yes. Today was... what's the word? Oh yeah... FUCKING AWESOME... Weather rocked... got 5 kickass skydives in... got to meet Sunshine, Vallerina, and Andyman, finally nailed my sit, and I owe tons of beer... what a great day! ARRGH I wish I could have stayed, I don't want to be at home... Very Happy Marc

Unfortunately I'll only be able to make it for the day Saturday and come home that night... but it ought to be a blast nonetheless! M

I'm not a demon baby... it's well known that all demon babies have red eyes, and as you can see, I wear contacts. And we'll have to see what happens tomorrow, won't we... hehehe... M after a 3 hour nap

All the talk about stapling things got(perfect) me thinking. So I took(perfect) a pencil, and put(perfect) it in the stapler, and stapled(perfect) it. And lo and behold(I love that phrase), it was stapled(perfect passive). I would attach(present active subjunctive) a picture, but I can't(present active indicative), so just take(imperative) my word for it. This stapled pencil is(present) the coolest thing I have done(1st person singular perfect active indicative) all week. Wow... I just realized, "defenestration" is "noitartsenefed" backwards! What were the odds of THAT? 6:30- Sun is coming up, maintenance staff has arrived. Still an hour and a half before sleep takes over. I'm considering the possibilities of running out the front door screaming, but I think the only way to pull it off with any success would be to either keep running and screaming for a long time, say, until I reached Utah, or to immediately run into a sign or parked car or something, and injure myself. Neither way sounds that much fun, so I guess I'll just sit here. It's quiet in here. A little too quiet. Damn, I was hoping I would get attacked by Indians or something. A good brawl would wake me up. COFFEE! The cafeteria is open! They put out COFFEE! I'll be right back! HEE HEE HEE WOOHOOOO, HAHAHAHA!!! Ok, I'm back. The kitchen staff can piss off. They brought out the coffee pot but it's empty. Grr. 7:10- She shows up! Paul follows, but decides to play pool across the room for a while... wow, thanks! And, life is good again... M

Careful with that hermaphrodite, dude. You don't want to get any chi on you. Aaaaaand... loo loo loo loo. I do believe I just crossed the point of no return. The bridge is crossed, so stand and watch it burn. Quick, what broadway musical? Speaking of musicals, what's the deal with "Cats"? Come on! It's a bunch of people in cat costumes jumping around, singing songs! And they're not even good songs! I mean, I like Andrew Lloyd Weber and all, but this is not his finest work. Now, a musical about dogs, I can see. You could even call it "Dogs". Or not, call it whatever the hell you want. Marc is tired and frustrated! Warning! Do not mix sexual frustration and low-altitude sickness with sleep deprivation! Especially not with finals coming up! I just tried for about 10 minutes to come up with a limerick. I failed. Have you ever stapled anything to any part of your body? I accidentally stapled two fingers together once. I was absentmindedly playing with a stapler, and had it open, then grabbed the front of it with my first two fingers over the part where the staple comes out and closed it hard enough to, well, staple myself. It was disturbing in that I found it way more fascinating than painful. My fingers were stapled together, and I thought it was cool. No. More than that. It WAS cool. I hope I never spawn a demon baby. M

Background- I got about 5 hours of sleep last night. I also usually try to get some decent rest before doing this midnight-8 am shift, however, today my roommate's girlfriend came over. She is the loudest person I have ever met, which is wierd, because I swear she can't weigh more than 90 pounds, and she's about 5' 4". Well anyway, I can already tell that I am unprepared to sit here for another 4 and a half hours with nothing going on around me. Tonight should be fun. 3:25- The big screen across the lobby is showing golf highlights from this week. I am struck by the realization that my golf score would be much lower if I just picked up the ball and put it in the hole. I wonder why nobody ever thought of this? 3:30- Funny how, after wasting all sorts of time "waiting for the perfect moment," you can completely miss the entire opportunity. I will never understand how to deal with women. Maybe tomorrow will be better. 3:36- I just heard perhaps one of the loudest belches ever recorded. I'm in the lobby, there's a computer lab behind me, followed by a small lobby outside the elevators, and I heard a belch clearly coming out of one of the elevators. Impressive, young Skywalker. 3:38- I just realized I'm updating this thing at an alarming rate. Maybe it's all the caffiene I downed in order not to pass out. 3:39- But if that's the case, I'm gonna crash in a half hour. 3:40- Thinking about skydiving now 3:40:06- Thinking about boobies now 3:40:10- Thinking about skydiving again 3:40:12- Thinking about skydiving and boobies at the same time 4:00- Scratch that earlier comment about women, she might come visit. 4:04- No, hold on, maybe not. And if she does, Paul will be with her. Dammit. Ok, they went to high school together, they're friends, and I know she's not interested in him, but I also know that he wants her. She's too damn nice... 5:20- Throwing a football around the lobby with my boss. I can't sleep because I'm on the clock. He can't sleep because, well, because he's a psycho. Therefore... if I become psycho... and give up sleep... I can be the boss. I'll try it. BOY HOWDY do I need a skydive. And now I'm writing Time breeds boredom, and in turn Dumb things are written Pull out the guitar Try to write songs, but they too are dumb. What the hell. Wow! I just realized that I'm writing haiku, but they're stupid. My deep thought for the night: Never try to be artistic when you're tired and loopy. For that matter, never try to be artistic. If the art doesn't come to be on its own, you can't force it. I've been readin Zen Guitar. I think this is suprisingly one of the more coherent Ruminations I've done. Maybe if I post it, then do an update in a half hour or so once the last bit of caffiene is dumped out of my bloodstream, things will make less sense, and you can all relax. Then again, maybe I'm just too out of it to tell what makes sense and what doesn't. Either way, posting time is drawing near! Prepare to post! AAH! Marcneedstoskydive

::gets quiet::

Haiku and boobies Some of my favorite things Oh, add skydiving

Hahaha... you'd probably be safer than me trying to do it, I'm afraid Jason might try to make the nickname "missile boy" stick... M

I was told today that I make my haiku wrong Five, seven, five, no. Less hard and fast rules But I don't really care now. A revelation.

I, uh... didn't spend the money on a shirt quite yet... I could speak in haiku, I suppose, but you'd be suprised how few people notice when you do that. How about this, I'll be wearing pants, a shirt, and a rig. If I end up doing RW, I'll wear an RW suit too. That should set me apart from the crowd.

Ok, so who all is going to be in Morris on Saturday? I'll be showing up around 10 or 11, but I've never been there before, so the only person I'll recognize will be Tomas.

Just a minor point, as I know many of you will see this as meaningless and irrelevant... but the Roman Catholic Church teaches that contraception *is* a sin *because* it denies that potential child a chance, in addition to the whole "God created sex to give us a way to reproduce" thing... I'm going to have to digest some of the rest of this for a while and get back to it. This is awesome... Marc

Then so be it. I would rather have that belief imposed on someone, that they might have to carry a baby to term, or that they might not harvest fetal cells, than know that those people are imposing *their* beliefs on all the babies that get killed. Marc

There's a difference between culturing T-cells, and concieving a new life. Of course not. I said "killing one life in order to help another is generally a bad thing". If you look hard enough you can find an exeption to just about anything. I'm arguing that it is morally wrong to create a life, just for the purpose of killing it. This would be a life perfectly capable of growing up and becoming a human being, as opposed to one that is already, as you said, brain-dead. Marc

See, I can't even think of it that way. Like you said, I value liberty, in the sense that those embryos should be free to have a chance to survive. Once there is a life growing, it ceases to be a matter of "the family's freedom" or the "woman's choice about her own body". At that point it becomes a matter of that baby's freedom to live. Pro-choice people like to think that pro-lifers are actually "anti-choice". But I don't care what some woman does to her own body. It's just not her body alone anymore, once conception happens. Along the same lines, it's wrong to take away an embryo's chance to live, just to use its cells. Nobody has a right to make that choice. Oops, did I bring up abortion? Sorry... these issues overlap so much... Marc

I can, but not many people are on from midnight to 8 am... and nobody comes in after 3 or 4. Ahh, the lonely life of a dorm security worker. They don't even give me a gun!

HA! I think this is one of the best threads I've been a part of. Civil, good natured debate can be a wonderful thing. However, I think I saw something by Quade up a ways about "having to go jump today," for which I will never be able to forgive him, as it is 75 and sunny here, and I'm stuck on the ground until saturday. Either way, thanks for the discussion everyone... Marc

Just when you thought it was safe to go on the forums.... ...they thought it was gone, never to return... ...but they were wrong, because tomorrow night brings.... RUMINATIONS IV: The Return to Boredom! SEE! A bored skydiver stuck at a desk, alone with a computer for 8 hours, with no real work to do SEE! Random insights into the mind of Marc Mallette as he tries to entertain himself at the computer with NO PORN SEE! What happens when Marc DOES fall asleep on the keyboard, and posts it You'll laugh! You'll cry! You probably won't laugh, actually. All coming to a post near you... tomorrow night!

All major pet peeves of mine,,,, one of my biggest,,, though,,,, is people's tendency to pluralize thing's by using an apostrophe "s". That's a conjunction or a possessive,,,, those aren't plural's! Dammit... And Don't Get Me Started On People Who Capitalize Every Word They Write! Grammar Nazi Marc

Ok, last post for the night before I have to be productive. Synthesizing stem cells is one thing. Taking stem cells from adults is fine. But destroying an entire human life, even an embryonic one, just for its tissue is something entirely different. I see nothing ethically wrong with using stem cells to help people. I only have a problem with the destruction of life. A cloned life may have my exact DNA, it may have taken its material directly from me; it is still a life, however. I cannot condone killing it for any reason. Blue skies, Marc

One time I got two emails forwarded to me in the same day, with all those identical quotes, except edited to fit one's political party... one of them attributed them all to George W., the other one attributed them all to Al Gore. And they say the internet is good because we can be better informed! M