Drew Yates

My friends know that I have a somewhat controversial opinion of religion. I originally planned that religion would be a major topic of my blog. I think now that I will gracefully excuse myself from this public debate (for now) with this quote:

Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under foot and turn to attack you. –Jesus, Matthew 7:6

I’m browsing Craigslist to find a new place to live this fall. One post looks really cool. An artist work-study community in an old school building? Cool! I mean, I don’t introduce myself as artist, but this sounds like fun.

So I figure I’d check the place out before calling the landlord.

Wow, am I glad I did that.

This building was in one of the worst neighborhoods in Columbus. I don’t mean off-campus bad. I mean half the houses had vacancy notices and street thugs were giving me the evil-eye bad. Yes, there are worse neighborhoods in Columbus. It doesn’t matter. This one was bad.

But maybe the artists who lived there were cool? Nope. Burnout losers. The few residents I met seemed nice enough when I finally found them. They were having a little cookout in the back with a few guys and I was invited. Cool. I ran to the store and bought some hotdogs and buns to share.

The cookout was lame. A pack of 12-year-old ghetto kids spotted our food and swooped in for the kill. The residents whined at the kids to go home. The kids, of course, ignored them.

But what about the art? Yah, what about it. Strange, but as much as these guys called themselves artists, I didn’t see any art. Nobody wanted to show me any of their art. Nobody wanted to show me anyone else art. Nobody wanted to talk about art. Nobody seemed to even know if and where there was any art in the entire building at all. I tried to get somebody, anybody, to talk about some of their projects. Nothing. (unless you count some crazy old man ranting about baseball salaries)

Now, I’m not big into the artist community, but I know how hacker-type people work. Hackers love to make things. Accidentally slip that you are even vaguely interested in their work and brace yourself for a torrent. These guys? This was like trying to wring water out of stones.

Oh well. I’m disappointed, but somewhat encouraged. And by encouraged, I mean disgusted, disenchanted, and pissed. But that’s is what really gets me to start ambitious new projects. We’ll call it “passion.”

At least there’s always good ol’ Deviant Art.

Problem: I still seem to care about getting good grades. This can only mean one thing: more recklessness + apathy needed.

It’s a proven fact that badasses are geniuses but GPA is for nerds. After being kicked out of a class and blowing off my quantum physics final, I thought I had achieved that sweet spot of rebellious apathy and caustic wit (which, if you’re 22, are easily interchangeable with intelligence.)

But, what’s this? Anxiety while waiting for OSU’s shitty student database to choke out my summer quarter grades? No. That shit is for after that 4-pack of Red Bull and I start drawing on the walls of my apartment.

But it was anxiety. Apparently I haven’t quite shaken that healthy nerd perfectionism that scored me Validictorian at Midwest public high school and my subsequent rejection from MIT admissions because I didn’t know dick.

The good news is that I got an A in the only class I took this quarter worth the money Ohio pays to keep me in school: “Computer Science 741: Advanced Operating Systems.” I learned from another professor that the guy who teaches this class is an experimental particle physicist who does this every summer “for fun, without compensation.” I guess particle physics gets boring when the weather is hot. Prof. John W. Heimaster, if you ever read this: you are the man.

None of my other grades have been posted yet. There should be a clever ending to this, but there’s nothing clever about the post-quarter Toledo visit to see The Parents. Have you ever been to Toledo? Exactly.

Edit: I got a 3.18 for the quarter, one A and the rest B’s.

Making this theme perfect has taken forever. Further, since I really don’t feel like messing around with somebody else’s PHP code to get my theme into wordpress, the procrastination pressure has inspired about 10-15 little essays / posts. Some of them are half way decent, so I hope that somebody will think that they’re interesting.

I was going to say “I hope they kick the blog off to a good start” but really, that doesn’t matter much. This website is going to be here forever, and I’m going to keep writing here for the next 60+ years. So what’s a few months over decades?