CLASSIC LIBBY #1: Fotokiosk

(like i do twice a year, i've decided to reboot the ol' blog. But right now i'm too lazy to come up with new material...so without any further ado, please enjoy a post from my old Myspace blog, this one from October 2006.)

Guten Hausfraukartoffeln ins Kino, mein gewurstbraten. Komm Heraus, nun...

For those of you playing at home, I'm pretty sure I just said "Good housewife-potatoes in the movie theater, my birth-sausage..." in German. Yeah, don't read too much into that one. On with the blog...

As most of my blogs these days begin, I was working the 'Greens this morning in the photo department, when this old dude with a cane saunters near my counter. At first, I didn't pay him much mind, seeing as how there was no possible way this guy didn't have like twenty prescriptions to pick up, so I thought he could just settle all his business at the pharmacy. But then, he stopped right in front of the digital photo kiosk.

I have a confession to make. I always have a little crisis of conscience every time someone over 60 tries to use our kiosk. The older crowd (and there is no shortage of them at Walgreens) tends to get a little confused and disoriented whenever they encounter any technology in our store more complicated than, oh, say, a tin-can walkie-talkie. And since I am closest to the electronics, it's always me that has to explain what an MP3 player is, or why we don't carry typewriter parts anymore. And, depending on the person and the purchase, this can take anywhere from half a minute to half an HOUR. So, imagine my trepidation when an old folk takes his "Magic Picture Chip" and puts it in the most complicated piece of machinery he could EVER get himself tangled up in in-store. Basically, I'm left with the choice of quietly sneaking away or playing dead.

But this guy looked determined to use the kiosk, so I left him to his own devices for a little while, hanging around in case he had any questions. It took him five minutes poking around before he looked up at me and said "Excuse...Me...Sir?"

I went over to the kiosk and asked "How can I help you?" like a good little peon. I can't remember the exact phrasing of the sentence he said next, but I seem to recall it sounding something like this: "Was ist diesen hier meinen Pictures gemacht uber Heute Abent oder aber Nachtisch essen?"

It wasn't that bad, but it was pretty friggin German-ish. Now I really wished that I'd played dead because this is a 1-2 punch in the gut for me. An Old Dude AND a German? This guy's gonna take forever on hier, oops, here.

So, I did the only thing I could. I took ten minutes out of my day just to show this guy how to work the kiosk. I showed him everything. How to edit your pictures, remove red eye, order prints..."Just touch the picture right here...then touch the plus sign here" just like a patient mommy. I was getting pretty sick of this guy, so I just gave him the brushoff..."If you have any questions, I'll be here" and went back to my regularly scheduled photo business.

Then, a tiny miracle happened.

This old german dude really got into it, and I mean REALLY got into it. He was pretty much almost to the point of giggling every time he pushed a button on the screen. I went over to the kiosk again, and he smiled at me, then showed me what he had learned. "Touch it, und touch it" he'd say every time he selected a print to be made. "Touch it, und touch it." And I couldn't help but laugh a little too. After all, it was the first time I was filled with anything but HORROR when an old dude showed me how he "touches it."

I guess the moral of the story is, you KANN teach an old hund neue tricks.

And I wish an old German dude into all of YOUR lives...

What's Wrong With Me (Part Deux)

...and we're back. Weren't those commercials something? Anyway, on to bachelor #3.

Libby.

Libby is the personality I am the LEAST proud of. Unfortunately, he's also the one that's in control most of the time. Libby has one goal: To accomplish as little as possible while still technically being alive. Libby would like nothing more than to watch DVDs and play video games while stuffing his face full of junk food...literally all day. In order to maximize his "downtime," he uses the talents of the other four to cut corners on the aspects of life he does not find convenient. This means sabotaging the goals of the other four individuals rattling around inside me. Libby is selfish, rude, filthy, and unpleasant. Unfortunately, you've all run into Libby at some time in our history together, and I apologize. Libby is the reason my life is going nowhere, the reason every girl I've ever been romantically interested in has kept me at at least an arm's length. I hate Libby...and this is the reason my self-confidence levels aren't exactly through the roof. The biggest aspect of my life is a person I despise. Anyway, on to the other guys.

Nathaniel

First of all, just so you know, my name is not actually Nathaniel (I needed a fifth name, so sue me.) Nathaniel is devoutly religious, by which I mean he's got a fiery passion for the gospel...a CRAVING for God's word. Unfortunately, this is the aspect of my personality that shines through the LEAST in my daily life. Nathaniel spends most of his time looking around him in wonder at God's magnificent creation, trying to pick up on His hand in every little thing that happens in life. He knows how to handle problems...just take it to God in prayer and forget about it. Nathaniel would love to be a minister...to get up to the pulpit every sunday and share his love for God with an audience. He'd love to go to his congregation members in need and use God's word to help them out. To tend to the spiritual needs of a flock of fellow sinners...that'd be the way Nathaniel would prefer to live out his days, and this is the reason I spent three years in college for pre-theological studies at Immanuel Lutheran College. However, the other four amigos have made this all but impossible for him. Nate's no good talking to strangers (what use is a minister who's anxious going over to a member's house?) Nathan has a serious problem with authority (a real handicap when dealing with the straight-laced authority figures of Immanuel,) Libby's constantly asking "what's in it for me?" and he doesn't like the answers, and Amber wants only what's best for his future wife, and the life of a pastor's wife is not a glamourous one.

And, we have our last contender: Amber.

Amber is nothing but a hopeless romantic. His one duty is to fall in love, and when he does, he falls HARD. The thing about Amber is, he's constantly evolving. Not only in the matter of which girl to pursue, (although there has been a large number over the years,) but in his approach. In middle school and high school, the strategy was: Show the girl you love how much you love her, and she's got to love you, right??? It took him an embarrassingly long time to realize the fact that that's not how it works. It has only been recently that Amber has started giving his love to the girl of choice unconditionally. If Amber loves someone, what that entails is simply this: He is thinking of her all the time, literally from the time he wakes up till the time he goes to sleep, and occasionally in dreams between then. He wants what is best for her, and he will try to protect her from any harm that may befall her. He will do ANYTHING for the girl, to the extent of going to colombia just to get her a cup of coffee...not out of a sense of obligation, not because he expects something in return...simply because he loves her. There is literally no expectation, there are no conditions...Amber's love is a gift, not a trade-off. Unfortunately, most girls either can't comprehend that, or are very suspicious. If Amber gets in a relationship, he will do anything and everything possible to make the girl feel loved, and take care of her. However, the four other jackasses up in this brain have thus far made it IMPOSSIBLE for any girl to take me seriously as a potential boyfriend, so excepting a couple dubious rendesvous(es) from the past, I have stayed a single man for my entire life. Way to go, multiple personalities, way to go.

So that's my lives in a nutshell. I hope you enjoyed it.

What's Wrong With Me (part 1)

Welcome back to the blog.

Anyway, there's a couple topics that I wanted to write about, and I did start one blog about my academic situation, but I quickly realized that anyone who I haven't had serious, soul-baring conversations with (so, in other words, ANYONE) can't really understand where I'm coming from. Because the place that I'm coming from is a place called mild insanity. A specific form of mild insanity called "multiple personality disorder."

I don't have multiple personality disorder in the traditional sense. I don't have a one-personality-at-a-time limit. Instead, I have five separate people co-habiting my body all at the same time, four of whom I've known about for a while, one who just recently became his own guy. Depending on the situation, they're there in different concentrations, but they're always there at least in part, trying to steer me toward certain decisions. Would you like to meet them? Too bad, you're going to anyway.

Bachelor No. 1: Nate.

Nate is a quiet, bookish nerd...the classic antisocial butterfly. He enjoys writing, reading, drawing, music, film, puzzles and games, and really really REALLY hates everything else. Nate is no good in social situations, gets really uncomfortable, even around people he knows, and has basically no control over his bodily movements, leading him away from sports and parties, and toward any situation where he can be sitting alone. While this may seem like a snooze-fest, Nate's brain is anything but boring. His mind is constantly racing, full of previously acquired information, offbeat ideas, novel concepts, and snippets of dialogue. Nate really wants to go into creative writing at the university, because it's something he's actually really good at. His main problem is writer's block, which wouldn't be such a problem, but it's the other four dudes doing the blocking, so this happens quite a bit. You'd never know it from talking to him, but Nate's a friggin' genius. He's writing most of this blog, for instance. And he's the one that figured out that there are five of us rattling around in here.

2: Nathan

Nathan is a charismatic, confident, people person...who can occasionally be a bit of an a-hole. He loves to be the center of attention. Nathan steals all the jokes Nate has spent hours writing...and whenever words leave Nathan's mouth, they turn to gold. He can talk himself out of any situation, he can tell a story like you wouldn't believe, and he'd be able to wrap any chick around his little finger with words alone if the other four guys could stop distracting him, which they never will. Nathan is alarmingly direct. He never lies...NEVER...he wants to gain your unflinching trust, because someday he might have to tell a lie, and when that day comes he wants you to buy it wholeheartedly. Nathan would make an excellent politician, but that doesn't interest him. Instead, Nathan could see himself being a lawyer, but his real passion is the theatre. He excels at being in the spotlight, and acting is the best way to do that. He'd be willing to go back to school
for drama, then pursue it on the East or West coast. The problem with that plan is that Libby totally wrecked his body, Nate fills him with self-doubt, Nathaniel worries about the ethics of an acting career, and Amber is always in love with someone in town. More about the other three personalities soon---this is getting to be kind of a long post.

Plus, Nate knows cliffhangers can be a benefit, and Nathan loves the dramaticness of it all.

Brain Milkshakes Part 2

I've decided that compiling a coherent blog centered upon a single topic is just too taxing for me. So...another list of things I happen to be thinking about. Join me, won't you, in another tasty smoothie of my cerebral matter.

-TV ON DVD. I consider television to be something of a drug, and while I snorted my fair share of TV as a child, it's the concentrated, commercial-free, crack cocaine of TV (Full-season DVD sets) that I am truly addicted to. I'm balls deep in Smallville Season 7 right now; it's a show that I literally had not thought about since I finished Season 6 roughly a year ago. And though it's not as well-made or well-acted as, oh say, LOST or Heroes, I am simply enamored by this show that's essentially a soap opera with superpowers (let's call it a supe opera.) I just love the format, which is NOT something I can say for my next topic.

-TV ON TV. I just watched the season premiere of Bones on FOX, and let me tell you: Crap city. Partly because my cable doesn't have Fox HD, so I'm watching a crappy product, partly because I'm spoiled by the first three seasons of Bones, which I watched on my iPod or DVD absolutely commercial free, and I can't stand commercials anymore, partly because the episode actually dealt with a large deal of feces, but mostly (SPOILER ALERT for Bones fans who haven't seen season 3 yet) because one of my favorite characters on the show, Dr. Zack Addy, turned out to be the villain at the end of last season. I'm assuming he'll come back in a limited capacity, but for now the team just feels...incomplete. It was still a good episode; it was plenty funny, Sweets was still delightfully awkward, Booth was charming as ever...but a Zack-shaped hole is visible in the show's fabric. Oh well.

-MOVIES ON STAGE. Auditions for Disney's Beauty and the Beast are next week starting Monday. I haven't been really freaked out about auditions at ECCT before, but this one scares me. Mostly because I have NO desire to be in the chorus for this particular show (it's a grueling task involving heavy dancing and awkward costumes) but I have even LESS desire to sit out a show and wait four months until the next one. Plus, the last time they did Beauty was like two years ago, so the majority of the actors who were in it then are still around now, and most of them are willing to do it again. The cocky bastard in me thinks I could score a decent part, but that's a pretty small (albeit very loud) piece of the whole Libby puzzle.

-MUSIC ON CD. Last year there were no Libby's Christmas Albums. (For those of you who don't know, Libby's Christmas Album was a tradition involving three or four mix cd's I made each year from music I discovered that year, which I handed out as christmas gifts instead of a real present. Kind of like a even cheaper version of a fruitcake.) I've got two years worth of new music to fall back on, so theoretically they'd be better than ever. But would people even miss it if I didn't make them this year? Do people even listen to CDs in this age of the Pod? And would they even take the time to listen to them if I did give them out this year? Have they even listened to the ones I gave them? I guess the real question is, should I bother?

That's enough for tonight. I hope those savory synapses slaked your thirst for knowledge.

Brain Milkshakes...

So, it's been far too long since the last blog, and even though I don't have anything I necessarily need to say tonight, new content needs to happen, so...I'm just gonna take the contents of my brain, put 'em in a blender, hit frappe, and pour the resulting smoothie all over the place. Hope you enjoy.

-MONSTERS. This last week's Casting Of The Pod (check it out on iTunes) piqued my interest on the topic of monsters, specifically the "Montauk Monster." If you want to see something severely effed up, do a Google image search....blech.

-ROCK BAND. I have an unhealthy reliance on rhythm-based music video games. I've all but mastered guitar on Rock Band, and have been turning my attention toward the drums. Suffice it to say that if I took the time I spend on pretending to play music, and used that time to ACTUALLY LEARN TO PLAY A REAL INSTRUMENT, I'd be a world-famous musician of Hendrixian proportions. Oh well...

-SUMMER MOVIES. As of last week, I've seen a total of EIGHT films in theaters this summer. I'm pretty sure that's TWICE the amount of movies I've seen in the last two years put together. The real surprise is that I haven't been disappointed by a single one. The list, you say? All right.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Iron Man, Indiana Jones, Incredible Hulk, Wanted, Hellboy 2, Dark Knight, Pineapple Express...plus I really want to see Tropic Thunder before the summer's over. That's a ridiculous amount of movies, all of them ranging from good to awesome. Well done, Hollywood. You have almost renewed my faith in the corporate machine...

-CRAPPY AUGUST MOVIES. ...there's another side to the corporate machine, an UGLY side. There's a list there, too...House Bunny, Death Race, Mummy 3, Babylon A.D., College, and the worst transgressor of all, Disaster Movie...shudder... all these crappy movies have debuted in the last month. Other movies I could have put on this list (Traveling Pants, Mamma Mia) I can understand...they've got a target audience, and I'm okay with the fact that I'm not it. Just because it's not my cup of tea doesn't mean it sucks. But the movies on the list...aw man, there's no hell hot enough for them. This is why my faith in the corporate machine can never be truly saved.

-MENSTRUATION. Is it just me, or is it every woman in Eau Claire's period this week? Just a casual observation, but at the rate tampons and whatnot are being sold at the 'Greens this week, it seems like the whole dang town is on the rag. Then again, maybe we just have some good sales on feminine hygiene products this week.

And with that totally random thought, I end this completely pointless blog entry.

Love,
Nathan A. Libby.

Entertainment Junkie: Brand New

(Back when I thought this blog was gonna really take off, I instituted a feature called Entertainment Junkie, where I would talk about my favorite movies, books, tv shows, and music. I only wrote one so far, but now I'm trying to amend for my past lack of deeds. Aaaaaand...we're back in)


The band Brand New, like several of my most favoritest things, took a while for me to even like, let alone love. Let me set the stage here for the rocky first steps of my relationship with the band.

The year was 2003. I was on the prowl for some kickin' tunes (what we called music way back in Aught Three) to put on my third annual set of compilation CDs. Entitled Libby's Christmas Album, it was my genius way to get out of buying my closest friends real Christmas presents, but that's a topic for another blog. Anyway, I asked my friend Josh Stifter if he had any music to recommend to me. The band he brought up as his "favorite" at the time was Brand New. Now, if there's anything young Josh knew, it was music, so I figured it was a pretty solid choice. I headed to Best Buy and picked up their sophomore album, Deja Entendu. I listened to it once, INSTANTLY hated it, and put it on the "losers" side of the shelf with my Loudermilk album and my Weird Al CDs.

Why did I hate it? It was slow! It was depressing! It was weird! Most of all, it had no, that's ZERO, catchy songs I could easily put on my Christmas Album. (Ironically enough, three years later I put not one but TWO songs from that album on the 2006 Christmas Albums.) According to the Libby who was used to his Offsprings, his Sum 41s, his Goldfingers and Riddlin' Kidses....Brand New SUCKED!

Anyway, there it sat, next to such genius tracks as "EstrogenOxygenAchesInTheTeethAgain" for at least six months, without as much as a second listen.

Flash Forward to the spring of '04. Whichever girl I was chasing at the time had just rejected me, which is pretty much standard procedure in LibbyLand. I needed to sit down in my over-large office chair, pop in a classic feel-bad album, and do some quick wallowing before I purged the crappiness from my system. My usual feel-bad albums (Sister Hazel's "Fortress?" GREAT feel-bad album) were getting old. I needed something new. I remembered that I had some slow, depressing, weird music somewhere, and that seemed like just the ticket. So I pushed aside the Loudermilk album, turned Weird Al's judgmental eyes away, and blew the dust off of Deja Entendu. I gave it a listen.

It was like a dirty tarp had been lifted from my eyes. Everything I had hated about it turned
into my favorite things about it. Before it was too slow, now it was haunting. Before it was depressing, now it was heartfelt. Before it was weird, now it was inventive and original. Everything about the album, from the master craftsmanship of the lyrics, to the sheer talent of the guitar parts, made me just love the experience. Especially the lyrics, as well as the urgency of the vocals, struck a huge chord with me. I was a fan for life.

And this is all before the release of "The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me," the album I consider to be the most well-crafted musical undertaking in the last ten years. That album is so phenomenal, I can't even begin to describe it. You need to listen to it if you have not already.

In their three albums, Brand New has evolved their sound to the point of near-perfection. I can't wait to see what they come up with next. And that's all I have to say about that.

Of Things Spiritual

A conversation I had with my roommate yesterday has been dwelling on my mind, and I figured I'd blog it out. This one's probably not going to be that funny, but just bear with me.

We started talking about how "unspiritual" I am, how unenthusiastic I can be about the affairs of my church. The fact of the matter is, although I have a decent singing voice I choose not to be a part of the adult choir. Although I am an adult of sound mind and body, I am not a church voter. Although I am a young man, I am not in the church youth group. And on top of all that, I am forced by my work schedule to miss church a great deal of the time, averaging once or twice a month. Basically, I am a below average member of my church.

Why is that? Why do I choose not to take part in affairs of the church? I've got the Holy Spirit, same as the rest of the Holy Christian Church on earth. My faith has a firm foundation built upon the work Christ did on the cross to save me from damnation. That faith cannot be taken from me. I enjoy a rich prayer life, taking advantage multiple times daily of the gift of communication with my Lord. Why, then, do I not share my talents with church functions?

The fact of the matter is, I don't know. I do have a good idea, involving my laziness, but there's gotta be something else to it. I don't feel like I'm pulling my weight, doing all that I can on earth out of the love God put in my heart. But there's something keeping me from changing that. My sinful inner man feels that love for God isn't enough to take time away from my selfish lifestyle, and it's making the rest of me deeply ashamed. I pray that in time God grants me the strength to aid in the stewardship of His church.

As if this blog isn't rambling enough, it opens up other spiritual issues I have. My aimlessness in life, the total ignorance I have of God's divine Plan for me. My loneliness in life, the desire to be loved by a Christian woman NOT related to me. My impatience with others, the paradox that although I have a burning love for Christ I can't stand most of His people. I've been dwelling for a long time on my gross shortcomings as a child of God. How wonderful it is that a truly terrible, filthy being such as myself would be loved by God so much that He made His Son die to make me clean in His eyes. Praise the Lord!