Look out world. I'm thinking about unveiling this bad boy ...

This little blog experiment has been semi-interesting so far. This is my third post and I've only told one person about it ... yet I haven't given her the web address. Anyway, I think I'll tell her and a couple other people the specific URL later on this week, and shortly thereafter the course of human history will be forever altered.

I'm just kidding, of course.

But maybe it's not such a joke. Since the supposed "course" of human nature is constantly shifting according to inscrutable cosmic whimsy, the opening of one seemingly-insignificant blog might in all actuality be every bit as significant as, say, what Matt Carlson eats for breakfast on April 23rd 2007, or a regrettable index finger muscle spasm on a vice-presidential hunting excursion, or a minute seismic shudder on Jupiter's Io. Who can say exactly which events inspire and were inspired by other events, and exactly which consequences, among the trillions of thinkable and unthinkable possibilities, can be reasonably tied to any random and seemingly insignificant action?

Anyhoo, that's the kind of writing that four beers can bring out of me, and hopefully we won't see any more amateur philosophy on this page. In fact, I think I'll start establishing governing rules for myself and this blog:

1. No attempts at deep philosophy, particularly when bourne out of insobriety of any sort.

2. Future postings should pertain centrally to my experiences overseas. The entire purpose of this blog is to keep interested friends updated as to my whereabouts and activities.

3. When possible, try to make haha. This means no whining, no outrage, no excessive sentimentality, no overt didacticism, no boring information of any kind unless such writings are vehicles toward greater haha. Whininess, rage, sentimentality, didacticism, and tedium are characteristics to which I'm prone, and I don't do any of them well. So I'll try to just stick to haha.

4. Go Broncos.

That's a good start.

About my upcoming trip, I'd currently place the odds of all my best-laid plans tragically falling apart at less than one percent. This whole thing is almost certainly going to happen, and I'm starting to get a little nervous (hence this evening's ale indulgences). The Japanese Consulate in Denver has received my Visa Application and, assuming my credit card isn't declined (inshallah), FedEx should deliver the package to the Intensive English Program sometime next week.

I've also been in contact with future co-workers at Kobe Kaisei College. Talk about useful correspondence! I learned that I need to pack several years worth of deodorant because they don't have that there. Without that particular piece of advice, I might've started some kind of international incident.

Tomorrow I'm going to Super Wal-Mart to look at luggage, then to a travel agency to check out prices for an open-return round-trip airline ticket from DIA to KIX airport in Osaka. These weekend outings would be fun, but the roads in Fort Collins are caked with snowy sludge and the temperature is unlikely to get much higher than 15 degrees.

So, until next time, please enjoy another CG masterpiece (in this sentence, I'm addressing blog readers that don't yet exist, heh heh). This piece is by Matt Cioffi, a superb artist who works in richly textured photorealism and anthropomorphized simians.