Announcing two new exciting blog options!

Hello readers and followers of Isoceleria! It's been a fun six years blogging here, but it's time for a change of focus in my blogging enterprises. In an effort to blog more concretely about cohesive topics, I've decided to start two new blogs.

The first, Ludi Berkeley, is dedicated to gaming in pretty much any form--video, roleplaying, and especially board. It will feature reviews, commentary, anecdotes, and analysis of mechanics, and it's a collaboration between me and a few other gamer friends.

The other blog, Burdell Cellars, is a log of my winemaking exploits with a couple of friends. We're completely new to home winemaking, but we're scientists and novice wine snobs, so we're enthusiastically documenting the process.

If either of those topics are your scene, check out the new blogs! I'm not entirely shutting down Isoceleria, either, but don't be surprised if I post less frequently so I can focus more on the new blogs.

Supporting Documents to the Agenda

Firstly, I apologize for lack of posts and generally being unavailable lately. Training will soon be over, and then things will proceed to a more regular and intuitive schedule.

Now, I have two documents. The first is a throwback to the days of middle and early high school, when email/journal quizzes were something of a phenomenon. I, at one time, took the liberty of compiling as many of these as I could find into one huge quiz. An "uber-quiz," if you will. While not intended to provide a complete (or even serious, at times) portrait of the Author, it's got enough truth to surprise and enough lies to amuse. It has been added to the sidebar, as well as being available here.

The second is an essay concerning the nature of morality, good, and evil in the video game Earthbound. If you've never played the game, it may not make a great deal of sense, and if you've got a problem with citing Wikipedia as a legimate resource, then just pretend I found the books that Wikipedia cites rather than have taken the convenient route of getting the same information from the internet. This essay can be found here.


Currently listening: "Soul Meets Body," Death Cab for Cutie

What's in a Name?

At this point, I would do well to describe the rather curious-sounding moniker "Isoceleria." Yes, that's as in "isoceles triangle," and no, that's nowhere as geeky as it sounds. Rather, this is at once a satire on the Freemasons and tribute to a guy I played in an orchestra with once who had a head shaped like an isoceles triangle. Now, upon hearing this, some people did not believe me. They simply did not think that a person could have a head that was triangle-shaped. A few did believe, though, and thus was born Isoceleria.

The Isocelerian Society, or Isoceleria for short, was made up of three factions: the Lodge (the political wing), the Cuneorum (the military), and the Elucidated Brethren (the mystical wing, and a dozen cool points if you can tell me where that reference is from). We had cool titles, like "Super-Excellent 181st-Degree Master of the Isocelerian Lodge" and "Most Highly Exalted Knight Protector of the Cuneorum" and "Grand Spymaster of the Elucidated Inscribed Circle" and "Transcendent Architect of the Divine Pyramids." In fact, the first three belonged to my friend Andrew, me, and another friend Nicole, and we formed the Anointed Tribunal of Witnesses to the Sacred Figurehead, those who had seen (witnessed) Him With The Triangular Head. The remaining members of the Society were those who had not witnessed but still believed.

Come to think of it, we even had a prophet. Andrew and I randomly IMed a guy who, on a single airplane flight that very day, had seen a man with a triangular head and had a dream where he was asked to join a secret society.

The Isoceleria of old was a place where believers could come to contemplate the Three Mystic Rituals. Let the new Isoceleria be a place where thinkers can come to contemplate their opinions.

Hi, my name is Matt...

...and I've decided to start a blog."

"Hi, Matt."

...wait, this isn't "I've decided to start a blog" anonymous? Ah well. I'm still Matt, and I've still decided to start a blog. Truth is, I've been threatening to do that for several months. Inspiration credits go to: (first and foremost) a couple of friends from Mock Trial, Dennis and Alex, who were toying around with the idea of Alex starting a blog when we were somewhere between Georgia Tech and Memphis. To my knowledge, Alex has not started a blog. If she does, read hers instead of this one because Alex is cooler than I am anyway. Better yet, read hers in addition to mine, because apparently she's going to have things like fashion commentary, something I fear my blog will sorely lack.

Also, inspiration credit goes to Andrew, with whom I made a short-lived fake blog a couple of years ago, also named after the Isocelerian Society (Hail the Triangle). To every holier-than-thou activist (you know, the ones that actually use words like "blogosphere" and take themselves seriously). To Orson Scott Card, who runs a "review of everything" that is usually very entertaining and insightful (even though he liked King Kong). And lastly, to every emo high school kid who ever kept a Livejournal or similar, loaded with cryptic posts about their feelings of love or suchlike nonsense.

This isn't to say I "don't believe in love." Not believing in an emotion does not make much sense. I do, however, object to 15-year-olds who issue proclamations of love.

Introduce myself? Not a bad idea, though most of the people reading this probably know me pretty well anyway. Oh, tangent: this blog is not for me to post things going on in my life. If something particularly amusing or thought-provoking comes up, sure, it'll be there. The point here is more for me to post my thoughts and ideas and opinions and reviews of all manner of things.

Do not ever allow me to post song lyrics here that supposedly relate to my feelings.

Anyway, my name's Matt Pavlovich. I go to Georgia Tech, and am about to start my second semester. Thanks to that blessing from Jesus known as AP credit, I'm technically a sophomore. (Not having to take General Chem or Calc 1 = amazing.) Tech is not really that hard, as of yet. I'm sure when I get to classes like "Thermodynamics II" and "Unit process principles" I'll change my story. Now at this point, you might be thinking, "Wait a second! This is a blog, and he hasn't mentioned politics yet!" True. If you're curious about my political views, I have a few of those, thanks for asking. They might appear at some point, but again that's not the point.

I'll probably say more stuff about myself as it becomes relevant.

Something kind of cool just happened to me. When I typed "foremost" a little while ago, I accidentally typed "forment." Now, I know what "format" and "ferment" and even "foment" mean, but "forment" really seems like it should be a word, and it probably doesn't mean "promote the makeup and layout of an object by an organic chemical change." As it turns out, "forment" is not a word. But "formant" is. It has to do with the resonance forming the characteristic phonetic quality of a speech sound, usually a vowel. So I learned a new word by a typo.