#4 is done.

That's right, I just memorized The Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. What have YOU done today? Here... Totally from memory... No cheating:

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrents shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

So there! Take that. Also I had to look up the word redress because its in the First Amendment and I didn't exactly understand what it was saying: "and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." It means compensation.

So I've got to head to work now, but I have my Bill of Rights in my pocket and I'll try and knock out #5 on the clock today... but its a long one. Did I ever mention that our forefathers are illiterate? No, seriously... Look up the Bill of Rights. The first two paragraphs don't have a single period in them. I have to write a paper comparing and contrasting the Illinois Bill of Rights vs. the US Bill of Rights and you better believe that I'm mentioning the horrible punctuation in the US one. I don't care if my teacher likes it or not, sometimes these things just need to be said.

In Memory

My first memory of my Aunt Marilyn wasn't that many years ago. She came over from California when my grandma (her sister) was sick with cancer. I had got to know her a little then, but not a lot. The fact that we had barely met never phased her when it came to her hounding me to fly out to California to visit, which we eventually did 4 or so years ago for spring break in college. She not only gave four of us use of her home and food, but she made us take her car as well. She ran a day care in her house so during the week she was too busy to go anywhere anyways (or so she claimed). She even bought us tickets to Sea World and frequently took us out to dinner. It was one of the best Spring Breaks any college kid could ever hope for.

After that Spring, it didn't take long before she decided that I needed to come back out and bring all my friends again. What I didn't realize is that she was telling Jamie the same thing. Last year it got to the point where she was actually going to buy my plane ticket to get us out there so I gathered up Ro and Phil and we went to Cali... and separately, Jamie and Scott had already gotten their tickets as well. Well, I didn't let her buy my ticket, but she did buy us a rental car for the week... and took us out to dinner and a ton of other things we didn't deserve.

Great-Aunt Marilyn always gave all of herself to everyone else, us, her family, her daycare kids and parents. She was stubborn as hell, you just try talking her out of doing something for you and she'll pull the "I'm old and can do whatever I want" card. The most basic thing I could say about Aunt Marilyn is that she was happy. I think she lived her life the best way she knew how to live it. She always had family up, My cousin Kit and her daughter, my mom and her friends, not to mention all the family that's in California. She went on cruises (just a year ago she went to Alaska). Her grandchildren would come over every morning before school to eat breakfast and finish homework there. She did everything how she wanted and when she wanted and there wasn't a single person in this world who could "TELL" her to do anything.

In my opinion, that's why she never told a single person what was wrong. For the last 5 or 6 years she's been living with cancer, and its more than likely true that she's known for a long, long time. My aunt is retired now, but she was a palliative (hospice) care nurse. It was the terminally ill that she took care of... she would move in with patients and try to ease their passing. She had seen real sickness, and family suffering, and the effects of treatments all before. Although I doubt that she expected it to happen so suddenly, without a chance to say goodbye, I don't know if she would have changed it. She wouldn't want to be remembered as bedridden and sick. She wanted to live her life and do all she wanted to do and be with family and friends and be happy... and that's exactly what she did. So no one knew, she didn't take any treatments so she wasn't tied to the hospitals and constantly sick from the kemo. In the end she did what she wanted, exactly what she would have done regardless of if anyone knew or not. This way we didn't see her suffering, and she didn't see us. Marilyn Baze is a great woman and I know she's still happy... she's with her sister now.




Our mind thinks of death.
Our heart thinks of life
Our soul thinks of Immortality.

- By: Sri Chinmoy

Class Breakdown

So I had class on Monday and Tuesday... and it went something like this:

Mon: 6-9:30 RESEARCH DESIGN
A LOT of reading in this class. Actually that's a pretty accurate theme for both of my classes. I'm reading a lot. But this class specifically: 90% of the grade is based on a research paper. So this might be a bit... challenging. What am I going to learn to research this semester? I haven't the slightest. But it is wierd to start thinking that instead of writing papers where I am summerizing other people's conclusions and research, I'll be doing my own. Wierd...

Tues: 2-5:30 CIVIL RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES
I'll probably really like this class. Teacher seems very interesting and yet this is going to be pretty hard as well. He's giving us two weeks to memorize the Bill of Rights verbatim. It makes sense... I don't like to admit that because that means I have to do it, but it does. When people argue about your rights and whatnot they always say "The First Amendment says ______" and most of the time they really don't know what it says. So in two weeks I'll be given a blank piece of paper and have to write it down word-for-word. I don't think that the original writers could even do that... so suck it Madison.

I've got BOOKS to finish this week for both classes as well as papers due within 3 weeks. Who was that guy that said Grad school was easy? Is there a guy? Did I dream up that guy? If he's real, he needs to be punched in the face.

Oh yeah, and as a side note: 24 days until Springfield is smoke free.


For anyone who liked the ImprovEverywhere Best Buy Takeover will like this. The Home Depot Slow Mo... The freeze frame is the best.

Pearls of Wisdom

No, that's not a new necklace for my character on World of Warcraft... although I could use a good +8 Wisdom modifier these days. One day when they make the "Sayings of Rob French" book, these will be some of the first few gems:

• Anyone who believes themselves to know everything, is an idiot.

I've always attributed this to both supervisors, fellow employees, customers and customers' computer friends whom they make me speak to over thier damnable cell phones. I've later discovered that Socrates stole this idea from me. He often said that his wisdom was limited to an awareness of his own ignorance. I say that he's an idea thief.

• There is no future, only tomorrow.

When people say that they're worried about the future, or what they're going to do, or that they can't wait to get ________ finished with, they should be shaken. At every point in your life you're constantly trying to get to the next. It'll all be better in Junior High, I can't wait to graduate High School, Once I finish college I can start my life, I really just need this promotion/new job, Get Married, Have Kids, Need a Raise, New Car, House, Family Vacation, Retirement... Give it up and just live your life.



I had a third, and I think I jotted it down in my notebook in class last night. Although I appear to have left my bookbag in my car so looks like its just those two for now.
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For Ro's birthday I restored a picture of her mom for her and got her a new frame for it. I know that my mom wanted to see it, so here it is:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RO!!!

Happy Birthday Ro!!!

We're at Kris's apartment now.
Going out in a bit.
They're all playing Guitar Hero in the other room.
Figured I couldn't start slacking already after just posting.
So here's my post.

Happy Birthday Ro!!!

Simply Not Noteworthy

All this time, nothing's really been going on:

I'm on the 3rd book of the Ender's Game Series.
Ro and I played World of Warcraft last night.
Ro's been homeless the last week or so.
I found out Best Buy owed me money (never gave me a raise) so I have back pay coming.
Went to the Fair and had Fair Food.
Mom had neck surgery.
Yesterday I had $1200 cash in my pocket.
Still no word on when the Nintendo will come out. (thanks Scott Smith!)
Ro's Birthday is Saturday, and our anniversary on the 5th.
Lady at the bank thought I was married.

So yeah, nothing to post about. All is forgiven, right?

They're EVERYWHERE!! There's no stopping them!!!

No, I'm not talking about zombies... I'm talking about something far worse. They keep coming and coming and even after getting rid of each and every one of them, they come right back... completely undetered. They smell and they're unsightly. Actually they do sound a bit like zombies - but they're not, they're dirty dishes.

I HATE DOING DISHES!!!

True story: Sometimes in my apartment, I'll be hungry. And I think, I've got plenty food in the fridge, and enough time to cook a nice meal but then I'll have to do the dishes afterwards. After this realization I would often go next door to the Chinese Buffet instead. My food is better, but I don't have to do dishes there. Ro didnt' believe me when I told her this story, but its true and it used to happen a lot (back when I was still spending money). I need one of these.

Speaking of Ro, she does my dishes when she's over. I don't ask her too, and she'll often take over once I start - this is reason #142 why I love her. She's the greatest.

But yeah, dishes really are like zombies. I think that should be a chapter in the book... Zombie Dishes. I'll have to look into that. But for now something completely different... (or not)

It takes a village

Why is it that in movies, there's always this whole village of warriors that are killed and there's ONE survivor who must set things right. Just once I'd like to see the whole village be resilliant enough to survive and take on the bad guys. I'm thinking like a village of African Warriors who take on, lets say, Shanghi. Seriously, a movie where an entire village of warrior/assassians take out a major city? I'd see that.

A comic for Guitar Hero fans.



Its important to be able to tell the difference between one type of zombie and another. The only true zombie that we need to worry about is, of course, the viral one. The other "zombie" is the one that is caused by black voodoo magik (wikilink). Here's how you can tell you're dealing with the real deal zombie and not one of the braindead knock offs produced by the Haitian Zombie Powder? Easy:

• Voodoo zombies show emotion.
• Voodoo zombies exhibit some thought processes.
• Voodoo zombies feel pain.
• Voodoo zombies recognize their surroundings.
• Voodoo zombies can be controlled.

The Best Buy Shuffle

So management gets on us sometimes about being in "our zone" and not "socializing with other employees" and not "hitting on the customers" and other ridculous things like that. A few of us, ok the guy from the camera section and I, like to do a little dance to celebrate our rebellion every now and then. We have the "Out of our zone" Dance that we do quite often for example.

Today I had a very short day at work... only 4.5 hours. I went in at 9:15 and left at 12:45. To those of you who are good at math, may realize that didn't quite add up. I was having a bad math day. At almost 1 o'clock I had a manager try to tell me to do something when i told him that I was supposed to be off the clock and I didn't have to listen to him any more. I very hurriedly clocked out and did my "You can't make me do anything 'cause I'm off the clock" dance in front of him and taunted him all the while. He told me he was going to physically harm me outside. I said, "We'll see about that, NEXT time I'm on the clock."

So yeah, after making a big scene about working 15 minutes over and my production upon leaving, imagine my suprise with what came next. Ro was very excited/suprised to see me home so EARLY... excuse me, what? That's right, she said early. She said my schedule said I was supposed to be at work another 35 minutes. Ooops.

I think I need a "HA! I just left Best Buy an hour early" Dance. That manager really is going to beat me...

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Zombies posess no hand-eye or complex motor control. Ladders are beyond them, stairs can be a challenge. Balance Beams are straight out. So when you're running from the zombie, you may think to yourself - "Self, climbing that tree seems like a good idea. That zombie will never climb up here and get me." This is true, but that zombie is going to be much more patient than you when it turns to the waiting game.

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*** NEW UPDATED AND INSYNC VIDEO CLIP!!! ***

It was a good day.

I woke up at about 11 am, and had to run some errands today. So I went to UIS and picked up my books ($166) for my classes this semester. Then I got my parking pass renewed so I didn't have a repeat of last year. I also got my student ID (hey only a year late) and I dropped off my financial aid info. Only thing I have left to do is go online and cancel my UIS insurance seeing that The Buy has got me covered.

Then Ro came over, she's going to be here for THREE WHOLE DAYS!! (I'm excited.) Ro and I had a good time - she learned to swim today. She pretty much knew how to already, but now she knows she knows (it makes sense, trust me). Now we're working on diving, and we'll finish up on that lesson tomorrow afternoon (I work until 1:00).

Tonight we visited our friend Anna who was working at Target (Tar-shae). To polish it all off we went to my friend Sandra's house for about an hour. Ro was a trooper, expecially since she had to be at work before 5 am this morning, she's sound asleep right now of course. I love her.

Today was a good day.