Tuesday, December 26, 2006

"Catch it on a bad day and you'll be jumping a rift..."

On a daily basis how many delusions do we put ourselves through? How many risks do we avaoid because there's no reward, really.

I'm so frusterated with simple things that really shouldn't bother me at all. I'm annoyed by things I should take as acts of goodwill because I've written them off before they've even begun.

There's so many thing started and left...unfinished.

We all want things to ultimately be less complicated then theya ctually are. We want the simple things in lives that, we are told, are the same thigns everyone else wants.

A shelter, clothes, food, if you're lucky a companion.

Sometimes I'm not sure I really want nay of these things at all.

You can't go home again. These words are true.

There's this whole burgeoning....thing..in front of me. I"m a little nervous about it because it's life altering, life changing even, but I'm happy to possibly engage in it.

My father is a nomad. Never happy in any place for any long amoutn of time. I equate this with a lack of fullfillment in his life and emotions, professional, physical, and psychological levels. I tend towards these tendencies bt only on a mental level.

Two years is a long time. I NEED to now do something...else.

Whether it's a wish fulfillment of a previous act already started and not completed, or something completely new and unadulterated.

I feel restless. Most of the itme I feel restless.

I need a Bonnie for my Clyde. A creative partner. Someone who understands and can analyse the things I do.

Or maybe I don't need anyone at all.

I'm so tired of thinking I'm on the same page with someone only later to find out we were reading different books. It's disheartening and not a way to fulfill any loss of...whatever.

"Cash in your chips son. Your'e gonna need them to get all the way over to the other side..."

Currently listening:
Hip Hop Is Dead
By Nas
Release date: By 19 December, 2006

Monday, December 18, 2006

"If timing is everything then I have nothing."

I hate this.

Natural isn't a state of being.

Things move too fast or too slow or on completely different tracks altogether and never ever at at natural pace.

The nature of us as people is to be anything but natural.

We are all always three steps behind or ten steps ahead.

Every action or inaction, response or non response, whether people are aware of it or not, has a reaction, if not in acutual movement then in thought.

Whatever, I'm over it. (Or am I?)

I think too much and I hate it.

Currently listening:

Becoming X
By Sneaker Pimps
Release date: By 25 February, 1997

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

"Be very quiet and maybe you won't scare them away."

Crash.

I like the word. It has so many menaings and so much relevence to, well really, everything.

Some might point out the fact that I both love this wrd and identify with it at the same time makes me some kind of masochist. I don't agree.

I feel like, sometimes at least, any part of anything I'm involved in eventually gets to a crash point, a point where all the tension and anxiety of said thng, realtionship, person, situation, what have you, builds to this crescendo that ends either bery loudly or very quietly, emotionally or physically, into a sort of crash.

The subject of fear of rejection has been approached before. But on a deeper level...

Sometimes I feel like I want everything to crash, to fall apart, to collapse on itself.

I suppose part of it is because the natural next step in a situation like that would be to start over from scratch...which is really refreshing in a way I suppose.

I've got all these things right now that are these various states of being, limbo realy, that are not anywhere close to being finished.

Funny things is, I've gotten this recent fire under my ass, for whatever reason, to finish, carry on or at least try to begin the process of compleeing these balls in the air.

Resolutions, especially New Years ones, are pointless and meaningless because no one ever follows through on them.

There's so many things to resolve. BUt I have resolve to resolve these things so all situations are resolved.

What?

That's not even true. I've been tending toward avoidence a lot.

Timing is the thing that kills me most. I feel like I have the worst timing in the world. It's almost a bad luck equation that I can't avoid. Which I then blame for my lack of completion. But it's all so much more complicated than that.

Isn't it?

So the key I suppose is to motivate myself to do the things I want to do. I'm trying. I'm trying to change a lot of sum-odd years of procrastinating and not finishing things in a relatively short amount of time.

Without therapy.

How great is it to wake up and want to be somewhere completely different and know that a few words, a little push in the right direction will maybe get you a little closer to your goals. (Which then, funny enough, present a whole bunch of new goals for you to have to accomplish.)

Baby steps. Baby steps.

Perhaps, just maybe, I'll learn all this soon.

Like tomorrow.

Hey, it's a process I know. You try changing habits of thirty years in a month.

At least I'm trying.

Right?

Currently listening:

Actions & Indications
By Seaweed
Release date: By 12 January, 1999

Saturday, December 02, 2006

"Why do you always do that thing you do with the feelings?"

It seems, over the last week, I've developed this, probably bordering on unhealthy, ridiculous obsession with one Polly Jean Harvey.

When I was probably around 19 or 20, one of the last shows I attended with my friend Mike before we kind of lost touch with each other was a show she played at Avalon. She wore bright red lipstick, her hair flowed down her back and she had this tight pink catsuit on. It seemed like most of the night she was singing directly to me or Mike the entire night (and actually more to Mike than me for which to this day I am eternally jealous). She is the ultimate showwoman knowing exactly what it takes to perform and entrance the crowd. To this day, there have been few shows that were more special than the one I witnessed from the first row that night.

I am not one to get these ridiculous and completely unrealistic crushes with celebrities for those exact stated previous reasons in this sentence. But every once in a while....

Polly Jean Harvey is, by my own high standards, perfect.

I've tried try to listen to other music, but it genrally all ends up coming back to her.

I feel inspired.

And happy.

And bleeding.

On another note, patience is really not something I've ever been good with. Came back and hit me in the face this week a couple of times.

It's really a quality that I am lacking and have to learn.

Quickly. (And cue laughter here Aaron Sorkin...)

And on one other note....

(This being in all actuallity a note or letter if you will...)

Dear Paris Hilton and Britney Spears,

Please start wearing panties. None of us want to see where undoubtedly countless other men have been before. Plus, Britney has that C-section scar. And that's not sexy. Men want sexy.

As a matter of fact....start wearing pants too.

The kind that leave everything to the imagination.

Exclusively.

Sincerely,
The Public

Side note to Lindsey Lohan - Keep doing what you've been doing. Wear as little as possible actually. At the very least, it makes of laugh because we are all fully aware your not that naive, and it doesn't make us men want to throw up. Also, if your not going to stop drinking completely, what's the point of going to AA. Stop fooling yourself.

Currently listening:

Rid Of Me
By PJ Harvey
Release date: By 30 June, 1992

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

"Scenes From The Class Struggle In Cambridge, Massachusetts."

It's been a while.

I fucking hate that song.

You can define ambition in so many ways. Or maybe you can only defiine it one way.

Haven't quite figured that one out yet myself.

Ambition is not sitting back waiting for things to happen to you. It's taking the proverbial bull by the horns and doing things for yourself.

Wasn't that the base of a Pointer Sisters song?

I digress.

Chinua Achebe once wrote a novel called "Things Fall Apart". It was based around the English colonization of Africa and how it affected the native peoples of said land that was to be colonized. The title comes from a line in a William Butler Yeats poem entitles "The Second Coming" about the deconstruction...or better yet end of Christianity that was thought to be coming, at least by Yeats.

The title is so powerful. Maybe I relate too well.

At it's core, not only the story but the poem, kidn of express that a true peak of perfection, or a constant feeling of good will, of seredipitous perfection can never last.

In the end, things fall apart.

Everything falls apart. Our hopes and dreams, our relationships, or lives. Everything falls apart.

The exciting part is the build up to everything actually falling apart.

I suppose some pleasure can also be found in rebuilding that which has collapsed.

Everything old is new again.

Another saying with incredible significance in all our lives.

It hink what's painful in the end, to us all, is that we never truly ever know what we really want. Because once we have it, we all seem to do something to make it go away.

Some people say to find true peace it needs to be found within one's self first.

Bullshit.

We never really find that "peace" we're looking for because we're always looking for the bigger and better thing on the other side of that wall. No matter what it is to make us satisfied (job, relationship, friendship, happiness.)

We're imperfect creatures, human beings. There's an almost unquenchable thirst (for knowledge, items, possesions, friendship, love, money) that never seems to be staisfied. But interstingly enough, we are also cowardly at times, in that we avoid what we want most because we are afraid that utimately, we will lose that thing that we most want.

It's completely irrational and makes no sense.

How does any of this rambling connect to anything?

I guess I'm not really sure. I'm still trying to figure that part out.

Defeatist attitudes take away some of the idealism, but makes us become more realistic.

I'm not even sure I believe that. Life is not black and white.

Why do I see so much gray?

I don't want anything that I want because I'm just going to lose it anyways.

I don't know that I believe that either.

Mostly, I just don't know.

Currently listening:

Dry
By PJ Harvey
Release date: By 30 June, 1992

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Be careful what you wish for, bucko...

Kevin Federline's new nick name is Fed-Ex.

For some reason this is insanely funny to me and I laugh uncontrollably every time I see him on TV now.

He supposedly found out about his pending divorce via text messgae.

What a fucking loser.

How do you fuck THAT up?

(I mean all he had to do was like....nothing. Sit at home and play with his kids and wait for his billionaire wife to get home.)

Asshole.

Currently listening:





S/T
By The Evens
Release date: By 08 March, 2005

Monday, October 23, 2006

"You ruined Christmas."

I'm over it.

Again.

I have other things to focus on now.

Currently listening:






Time's Up
By Living Colour
Release date: By 28 August, 1990

Thursday, October 19, 2006

"Starring Keith Olberman as The Voice Of Reason"

"And lastly, as promised, a Special Comment tonight on the signing of the Military Commissions Act and the loss of Habeas Corpus.

We have lived as if in a trance.

We have lived… as people in fear.

And now — our rights and our freedoms in peril — we slowly awake to learn that we have been afraid… of the wrong thing.Therefore, tonight, have we truly become, the inheritors of our American legacy.

For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering: A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.

We have been here before — and we have been here before led here — by men better and wiser and nobler than George W. Bush.

We have been here when President John Adams insisted that the Alien and Sedition Acts were necessary to save American lives — only to watch him use those Acts to jail newspaper editors.

American newspaper editors, in American jails, for things they wrote, about America.

We have been here, when President Woodrow Wilson insisted that the Espionage Act was necessary to save American lives — only to watch him use that Act to prosecute 2,000 Americans, especially those he disparaged as "Hyphenated Americans," most of whom were guilty only of advocating peace in a time of war.

American public speakers, in American jails, for things they said, about America.

And we have been here when President Franklin D. Roosevelt insisted that Executive Order 9-0-6-6 was necessary to save American lives — only to watch him use that Order to imprison and pauperize 110-thousand Americans…While his man-in-charge…General DeWitt, told Congress: "It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen — he is still a Japanese."

American citizens, in American camps, for something they neither wrote nor said nor did — but for the choices they or their ancestors had made, about coming to America.

Each of these actions was undertaken for the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons. And each, was a betrayal of that for which the President who advocated them, claimed to be fighting.

Adams and his party were swept from office, and the Alien and Sedition Acts erased.

Many of the very people Wilson silenced, survived him, and……one of them even ran to succeed him, and got 900-thousand votes… though his Presidential campaign was conducted entirely… from his jail cell.

And Roosevelt's internment of the Japanese was not merely the worst blight on his record, but it would necessitate a formal apology from the government of the United States, to the citizens of the United States, whose lives it ruined.

The most vital… the most urgent… the most inescapable of reasons.

In times of fright, we have been, only human. We have let Roosevelt's "fear of fear itself" overtake us. We have listened to the little voice inside that has said "the wolf is at the door; this will be temporary; this will be precise; this too shall pass." We have accepted, that the only way to stop the terrorists, is to let the government become just a little bit like the terrorists. Just the way we once accepted that the only way to stop the Soviets, was to let the government become just a little bit like the Soviets.
Or substitute… the Japanese.
Or the Germans.
Or the Socialists.
Or the Anarchists.
Or the Immigrants.
Or the British.
Or the Aliens.

The most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And, always, always… wrong.

"With the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?"

Wise words. And ironic ones, Mr. Bush. Your own, of course, yesterday, in signing the Military Commissions Act. You spoke so much more than you know, Sir.

Sadly — of course — the distance of history will recognize that the threat this generation of Americans needed to take seriously… was you. We have a long and painful history of ignoring the prophecy attributed to Benjamin Franklin that "those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." But even within this history, we have not before codified, the poisoning of Habeas Corpus, that wellspring of protection from which all essential liberties flow.

You, sir, have now befouled that spring.

You, sir, have now given us chaos and called it order.

You, sir, have now imposed subjugation and called it freedom.

For the most vital… the most urgent… the most inescapable of reasons.

And — again, Mr. Bush — all of them, wrong.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has said it is unacceptable to compare anything this country has ever done, to anything the terrorists have ever done.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has insisted again that "the United States does not torture. It's against our laws and it's against our values" and who has said it with a straight face while the pictures from Abu Ghraib Prison and the stories of Waterboarding figuratively fade in and out, around him.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who may now, if he so decides, declare not merely any non-American citizens "Unlawful Enemy Combatants" and ship them somewhere — anywhere — but may now, if he so decides, declare you an "Unlawful Enemy Combatant" and ship you somewhere - anywhere.

And if you think this, hyperbole or hysteria… ask the newspaper editors when John Adams was President, or the pacifists when Woodrow Wilson was President, or the Japanese at Manzanar when Franklin Roosevelt was President.

And if you somehow think Habeas Corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an "unlawful enemy combatant" — exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this Attorney General is going to help you?

This President now has his blank check. He lied to get it. He lied as he received it. Is there any reason to even hope, he has not lied about how he intends to use it, nor who he intends to use it against?

"These military commissions will provide a fair trial," you told us yesterday, Mr. Bush. "In which the accused are presumed innocent, have access to an attorney, and can hear all the evidence against them."

'Presumed innocent,' Mr. Bush?

The very piece of paper you signed as you said that, allows for the detainees to be abused up to the point just before they sustain "serious mental and physical trauma" in the hope of getting them to incriminate themselves, and may no longer even invoke The Geneva Conventions in their own defense.

'Access to an attorney,' Mr. Bush?

Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift said on this program, Sir, and to the Supreme Court, that he was only granted access to his detainee defendant, on the promise that the detainee would plead guilty.

'Hearing all the evidence,' Mr. Bush?

The Military Commissions act specifically permits the introduction of classified evidence not made available to the defense.

Your words are lies, Sir. They are lies, that imperil us all.

"One of the terrorists believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks," …you told us yesterday… "said he hoped the attacks would be the beginning of the end of America."

That terrorist, sir, could only hope. Not his actions, nor the actions of a ceaseless line of terrorists (real or imagined), could measure up to what you have wrought.

Habeas Corpus? Gone.

The Geneva Conventions? Optional.

The Moral Force we shined outwards to the world as an eternal beacon, and inwards at ourselves as an eternal protection? Snuffed out.

These things you have done, Mr. Bush… they would be "the beginning of the end of America."

And did it even occur to you once sir — somewhere in amidst those eight separate, gruesome, intentional, terroristic invocations of the horrors of 9/11 — that with only a little further shift in this world we now know — just a touch more repudiation of all of that for which our patriots died —Did it ever occur to you once, that in just 27 months and two days from now when you leave office, some irresponsible future President and a "competent tribunal" of lackeys would be entitled, by the actions of your own hand, to declare the status of "Unlawful Enemy Combatant" for… and convene a Military Commission to try… not John Walker Lindh, but George Walker Bush?

For the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And doubtless, sir, all of them — as always — wrong."

Someone had to say it. Mr. Olberman said better than any of us good try to.

Currently listening:

Coward
By Made Out Of Babies
Release date: By 5 September, 2006

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Smile, you're on candid camera.

It's pitch black outside at five twenty three am on a Sunday morning. The still of the crisp morning air translates to the quietness of the enviornment I'm sitting in. The only loud thing is the blinking antenna light at the top of the Prudential Center which I can see from my bedroom clear as day as I look out my window.

Insomnia is the worst when it's for nothing and everything at the same time.

I'm thinking where will I be this time next year? Where will any of us be?

I think about waiting. I think about how people never feel the same way you do at the same time you do.

I think about things that are said that are taken in jest, weren't always intended to be taken in jest, whther the sayer complimented what they said with "i'm just joking" or not.

I think about the constant barrage of media speculation, and mostly spin, about how there's an inherently oxymoronic view in what we're told to look up to and what the reality actually is. Everyday, more and more, it's proven there are no more heroes left in the world. Just spin doctors who try to portray the mediocre as the good.

I think about how I could go running along the Chrales right now to clear my mind just because I can.

I think about the week coming up and the show one week from yesterday and with so many things going on will people even realy show up?

I think about a cute girl I met today and the random conversation we engaged in. And how it will never go any further than that.

I think about how anytime I feel like I can be delibrate and truly savor things building slowly , instead, it turns out, I'm suddenly in the midsts of a race for attention that I will undoubtedly eventually lose to a craftier, quicker competitor, whether I even know who this person is or not.

I think about that feeling I have in my gut that tells me I'm never happy in any one place for too long before I feel the need to nomadically move on to somewhere else. I inherited this feeling from my father.

I think about what happens when you have a temporary block in your creativity and what one can do to unblock said clog. It's only temporary, (these things usually are) but it's not less frustrating. Much like your issues with women right now.

I think about, what if one million dollars fell in my lap tomorrow, and how that would allow so many things to come to light.

I think about where we are in the world in perspective to other people and how we are viewed from the other side of the world.

I think about how I would like to go to Australia someday with whatever girl I marry.

I think about a thing I wrote about five years ago about a Nine Inch Nails song and the eventually consequences of said piece. (Things coming to fruition is in the mind of the beholder.)

I think about how we are censored everyday in our words and actions because of the opinions of those around us. I can't understand why we allow this mental slavery to continue.

I think about how most people in middle america can only be so enlightened to equate naked bodies and stories about sex with porngraphy because they can't handle and aren't mature enough to deal with sex in an adult way. This will be passed down from generation to generation, with no head way being made. In these small towns and communities, sex will always be the dirty taboo thing they make it.

I think about how silly controversies are made in this country by scared people who can't face themselves and hold too much shame, so they have to pass this shame on to other people.

I think about ex-girlfriends and what they are doing now. All of them. If I was hit by a bus tomorrow, would the realize what they missed? Do I realize what I missed?

I think about being alone and whether or not others are alone right now like me.

I think about the fact that despite what we want, it's never actually about what we want, no matter how right we make it in our heads.

I think about happily ever afters that will never be.

Some say I think too much.

Sometimes, I don't think I think enough.

Currently listening:

The Downward Spiral (Deluxe Edition)
By Nine Inch Nails
Release date: By 23 November, 2004

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Fuck you, I like Grade.

Words were meant.
Games were played.
Things were bought.
Honesty was lost.
Cash was spent.
Time was cost.
Hearts were broken.
Thoughts were wronged.
Things were said.
Peace was made.
Feelings were unaccounted.
Meanings were misconstrued.
Births were witnessed.
Weddings were malinged.
Lies were hidden.
Smiles were feigned.
Lips were sealed.
Shame was left.
Eyes were worried.
Heads were ached.
Pasts were unearthed.
Faces were touched.
Kisses were stolen.
Dreams were deferred.
Beds were lain.
Sighs were loved.
Futures were taken.
Words were said.

You can't take it back.
You can't take them back.

Is it done?
Or is it undone?

What else can I say?

It can't be like before if we make it better than before.

Currently listening:

Headfirst Straight To Hell
By Grade
Release date: By 21 August, 2001

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Karma is something trying to tell you something when you least want to hear it.

"Who are you, girl?"


Yesterday I spent almost an hour and a half writing out this huge analyzation of my fear of commitiment and how it relates back to life working in circles and how this actual fear is an acceptance of my fear of rejection and a rejection of my fear of success blah blah blah...

I hit "publish post" and the work web server reset and I lost the whole fucking thing, and it made me realize how transient words are until they "aren't". I mean, you know that feeling of feeling defeated after you had just poured everything you had for the last hour into this thing that you were writing that was so good and right and, despite it's long rambling nature, amde sense at the time you wrote it?

And then it's just gone.

Poof.

Like a magician who fucked up the magic trick and is standing there embarrassed cause that thing he made dissappear? Yeah, he can't get it back.

The problem then becomes do you rewrite what you had or do you take it as a hint that it either wasn't worth posting for others to read, or even more cosmically, it was never meant to be posted or read in the first place. It wasn't "God's grand scheme" for that particular piece of writing, as it were.

Now I'm talking about words as if they're living, breathing, animate objects.

But aren't they?

"So why not simply re-write what you wrote?"

Because it's not that simple, my dear friends. You see there was somehting special, unique even, to those words that were written at that time in that place. Time erodes away at the meaning until you can only grasp at the whisps of what the original intent of said words were.

It's kind of like that really intense dream you had that leaves you with this knotty feeling in your stomach, but as the minutes tick away after you open your eyes, you can't remember any details about the dream (except the feelings it left you with) and all you do have left is that feeling. That feeling is like the cliff note to the dream, but no matter how hard you try to force the memories, they won't come.

The moment has passed.

So, I'm left with a quandry of trying to equate this analogy to some stuff that's going on in my life right now. Is it even analogous really? I don't know. But I see a pattern forming. And even if I say or anyone else says that it's different this time, I probably know deep down it's not.

And as much as I want something more than a cliff note lying in my stomach or my head, all the warning signs are there that this is aiming up to be exactly the same thing. Same outline and sketch, different person coloring.

Maybe I am...masochistic?

Maybe it is a need to be comfortable with rejection, so despite my implicit fear of it, it is where I am cofortable and where i tread that line bewteen "being rejected" and "not really being rejected".

Which in all reality, is just kind of being.

Which is static after a while, which I hate. Static.

And meanwhile I have the reality of some sort of minor success kind of smiling me in the face and I'm so scared of this other thing (over here, not the other thing over there that I'm told "is really different this time", but is it really?) being successful, that I subconciously try to think of ways to make it a failure. I sabotage a possible success before it has a chance to be successful, sometimes fully realizing that my actions that would immediately lead to some sort of grand destruction I could have avoided and wished I had but I didn't.

Why do I always do that?

Confusing more so to me, (on so many ridiculously complex leverls, you have no idea), then even you dear reader, although you wonder how can that be?

One person told me recently I worry too much. This could be equated with the fact that I think too much about stuff too.

What stuff? You name it and I'll overanalyze to next Tuesday, "give meself an ulcer", and then decided ultimately the best thing is to just keep it all inside. It's external because I share with a very scared few people but it's internalized until I'm almost sick about.

Of this I am really aware, as it is my nature.

Some people would say it's sick. It's a neurosis. I don't see it neccessarily like that.

Acute hypersisnsitivity to everything. I might agree. But does that make me a bad person. DOes being thoughtful, and introspective, and aware, and yes, even empathic...are those all bad qualities?

Being obsessive and complusive tends to run in the family a bit.

But I'm comfortbale in that I know I do this. Realization is the first step to healing isn't it? But what if I don't feel like I have anything the needs healing.

Part of me says I am this way.

Deal or no deal.

Pas or no pas.

So anyways, bottom line being, I don't know where this goes from here. If it was that easy I wouldn't type all this out and go over it later with a fine tooth comb.

(Such is in my nature, as the way I am, to do.)

And there's nothing stopping me from yelling out "Stop, this isn't what I want. THIS is what I want and it should work thusly."

Except there is.

SO why can't I be truly one hundred percent honest. Why can't peope be one hundred percent honest with me?

When I say "what do you want me to say?". it isn't just to mimic the common phrasiology of the time when these things happen.

I think part of me is saying, tell me what you want me to say and I'll say it.

But also, the rebel in me says fuck that. You don't get that satisfaction. Not from a place of revenge, but from a place of defense.

Life isn't a fairy tale, or even a moderate box office grossing romantic comedy. Life is difficult and scary and confusing and if your lucky, you get everything you want and you end up happily ever after, even if not for a couple of weeks.

If your not, you end up lonely and dead and wishing you had done things different in your life. You wish you hadn't followed those cycles, or you at least did something, anything, to break that cylce. You would wish you had done something that pulled everybody out of the cycle, took the girl in your arms, kissed her, and rode of into the....no no no...that shit just never, ever, ever happens.

Ever.

Just how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?








The world may never know.



Currently listening:

S/T
By Queens Of The Stone Age
Release date: By 22 September, 1998

Sunday, October 01, 2006

...And then the coach pulled me out of the game.

I don't get it.

I feel...
duped
tricked
scammed
clowned
fractured
foolish
and stupid.

For more than just the standard everyday reasons.

How many times can I fall for this shit?

Currently listening:





Songs To Fan The Flames Of Discontent
By Refused
Release date: By 7 June, 1996

Monday, September 18, 2006

Crushes are meant to break hearts. It's inherent in meaning.

Yearbooks equal crushed dreams and broken crushes.

That's what I just learned.

I can count seven, eight, maybe even nine major crushes I had in high school simply by flipping through the class pictures of the Haverhill High School class 0f 2004.

(Don't worry, this isn't some sort blast through the past of every girl that ever rejected. Nick Hornsby and Stephen Frears both translated that to the creen way better than I'll ever be able to through words on here.)

Really more than anything it's humorous to me to think back to that time.

I was never a very popular person (at least in my own eyes) and seemed to always get the comments from my mom's friends about what a handsome boy I was. No offense to the friends of the family but, this is something you want to hear from the hot blond captain of the cheerleading team, not you mom's mid age friends.

Fuck that, you don't want to hear that from the captain of the cheerleading team. You just want her to make out with you in that uniform.

(Before any of my female feminist friends call me on any of this, we all have these fantasies. Adn it seems to me today, the first thing, aside from an initial physical attraction, that attracts me to a girl these days is more so her ability to hold a conversation with me more than anything else. So you can calm down now. These are all the thoughts of a fifteen/sixteen year old boy.)

The younger I was, the more brave I was. As I got older, I either got smart enough to know that none of these girls I had crushes on would ever go out with me, or I just got afraid of being rejected again. But it's all funny nonetheless. Because all of this would lead me to where I am now.

I remember the first girl. Sixth grade shop class. We were making spice racks. It was a double period. And i was turned down probably a good fifty times before I gave up. But she was blonde and at that moment in my young life the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. I'm not even sure how clumsily I went about it, but it must have been clumsily enough that detracted something. We would pretend we were The Breakfast Club and I was the nerd. And the nerd, at the End of The Breakfast Club, gets to write the letter. He doesn't end up with a love interest at the edn of the movie.

Next girl was a brunette. Learned the crazy logic of the female mind from this one. Went to elemntary school with her in a different town. She moved to our town. Third, forth grade you chase the girls around the school yard, but you certainly don't think anything of girls. Fast forward to the seventh grade dance (incidently the dance I remeber making friends with Ben Goldbaum because I could recite more than "One" by Metallica as a compositon by said band) and this girl, when asked for a dnace by yours truly says, you never danced with me when we went to the old school together. At first I feel bad until I realize...we were in third grade..we didn't have dances. Girls are crazy.

I think I gave up for a little while after that.

Sophomore year. The most beuatiful girl I've evr seen walks into class. Blond hair, gorgeous smile. And she'll want nothing to do with me. She's a football cheerleader, i'm in the band...it's romance never meant to be . Sam Spade monlogues run through my head. I'm not even sure anyone even knew I had a crush on that one. What would be the point of telling? Way out of my league.

Junior year, I get an idea. I will sneak notes into this girls locker and warm the little cockles of my heart. The previous summer this girl sees me at summer time (This is my third year in English with her) an strikes up a conversation with me like we've been long friends forever. My heart instantly melts. It takes me eighteen some odd months to come up with a plan. So I start leaving notes in her locker, anonymous notes of really bad poetry that today I know is bad but couldn't tell you what I wrote back then (probably much influenced however by the fact that I'm reading "It" by Stephen King at the time, and one of the main sub-pots invloves someone giving secret love notes blah blah blah i digress...) but it was probably cheesy and really bad. Your hair is like flowers yadd yadd yadda. Then one day, way after school, as I have dropped another not in her locker, her best friend happens around the corner right after me committing my anoymous crime. I immediately stop leaving notes, and to this day I'm not sure if the friend (who I also developed a crush on...next story...be patient) told her and they put two and two together, but the blond tall girl I had a crush on..never really treated me the same way again...at least in my own guilty paranoid mindtrip.

Senior year, we're taping the schools TV show. I'm there every week not for the school credit or to learn about the exciting world of TV production, but just to be close to this incredible funny and smart girl who hosts the show. Jesus, I mean that's why everyone was there. Who didn't have a crush on her? She had everything, brains, looks...the ultimate girl for dudes our age. (Except one of the co-hosts. I'm still pretty sure there was something incredibly unhealthy about is Paula Abdul obsession from the seventh grade and...well...i don't know. If he turned out to be gay at our next reunion I wouldn't be surprised. Although some people might say the same thing about me and I 'm fully heterosexual so you never know. I digress again...) The special thig about this crush is it was something I didn't want to give away. It was sepcial because whether she new the attention she gave us was making us short of breath and all dopey, it didn't matter. We liked it. And it was that innocense that was key.

Fast forward a few months. The most gorgeous underclassmen I have ever seen in my life walks past me and starts singing in chorus class like an angel. My friend and I work out a deal where he will ask his huge crush to the prom if I ask mine. I find out she has just broken up with her boyfriend. (This may actually be entirely fictional, but it's how I'm remebering it now...anyways...) I don't know if I'm stupid or self-destructive but a day before I'm goign to ask this girl to the prom one of my best friends finds out her boyfriend can't go. So I offer to take my friend, even though my sights are set on this vison of heaven. My friend says yes. Shit. I done fucked up. Or maybe I was afraid and it was my sub-concious way to keep myself from being rejected. Either way, I went with my friend...another could of would of should of flown with the wind. (Interesting sidenote to this story, a couple of years later I was working with this paticular crushes sister and she came in and one of the women I worked with said she thought I was going to pass out. So apprently, even two years later, certainc rushes can overtake you with out reason or warning.)

So I'm in college. Dating here and there. And again, this beautiful girl walks onto my staff fro the summer. And she's in the process of breaking up with her boyfriend. And one night she comes home from a wedding after locking herself out of her room. And I'm on duty. So it's two am in the morning and 100 degrees out and she looks phenominal and i'm in my boxers and a t shirt. And I open the door and am breathless...she looks amazing. And so I go get my kesy and think about what I should say when I come back, and I decided to tell her how incredible she looks. And so she goes and gets her key and comes back to the room. And we chat for a while and she tells me about the wedding and then strangely seems uncomfortable towards the end of our conversation. The following is the conversation I have with myself when I lay back down:

"Wow, she looked really beautiful tonight."

"That w as really cool that we got to talk."

"She kind of rushed the end of that conversation."

Then sheer terror enters my heart as I realize what I was wearing when talking to her.

"Shit...was my dick hanging out of my boxers while I was talking to her?"

To to understand my embarrasment you had to understand 1)how incredibly hot this girl was and 2) the direct relation of her hotness to the laughter coming out of my friends mouths when I related the story. My friends swore they would not relay any of this information back to the source who I now was embarrased to even look at.

One week after the semester starts, this girl walks up to me and says there's nothig to be embarrased about, she didn't see anything. Strike twelve.

So anyways, this went off in way more of a direction then I intedned. But i guess my point is, crushes lead to not only a special place where things are exciting and secret and special but also a palce of laughter and misunderstanding and confusion. I wouldn't have it any other way though because it's a lsoely unique exeprience everytime you have a crush, whtehr it's enacted on some way or not. And it's always inifnitely better in your head then it could ever be in real life, but aren't things always better and more exciting that way.

I crush a lot. I'm always amazed on a daily basis at the new things that can cause a crush, from intellegnce to looks to je ne sai qua. I've got several crushes right now. Christ, I've developed crushes out of no where on girls I haven't seen for five years that I went to school with for eight years. I may have reacted to any all or some of them in the wrong way at this point. And no matter how much I might think I'm embarrassed by the way I deal with these things, I increasingly find in my short life thus far, that I'm not at all embarrassed or ashamed when people find this stuff out either volunarily or involuntarily.

And while some of the magic might be lost when the crush is revealed, what replaces it is flattery. And flattery may just be that spark that turns the crush into a bomb.

Or at least us hopeless romantics can always hope right?

Currently listening:

S/T
By Auf Der Maur
Release date: By 1 June, 2004

Thursday, September 14, 2006

"The cheap seats are boring. Go sit over there."

Thirty is the new twenty.

There's a world of difference between knowing what you want to do and actually dong what you want to do. Why are we satisfied to stay in a world that pays the bills but gives us no emotional or intellectual satisfaction?

It's a rhetorical question.

Things that tend to pay the bills, for the most part, unless your extremely lucky, are diametrically opposed to things that willl motivate you intellectually and emotionally.

But at least the bills are paid right?

Well most of them anyways. The one's that matter.

Let's go back to something I said a second ago though. Is it luck to be able to be emotionally and intellctually stimulated by the work you get paid for? Is it drive? Is it those that are truly successful and happy in what they are doing less lazy then the rest of this with dreams and aspirations.

No. It's not solely drive. And luck pays a part in everybody's life, loves and outcomes.

A little bit of every success is being in the right place at the right time.

There's a fine line that I don't feel like I've found yet somewhere out there. Because there's no lack of passion, that's for sure. It's not for lack of passion for the things I want to do that success has avoided me thus far.

And really what is success?

I guess I equate succes with being fundamental hapy and enthused about getting up every day and tackling exactly what it is you want to do.

But i think it might be something more than that to. Because you don't just look for success in your professional life. You look for it in your personal life I suppose to.

Bottom line is, I feel restless right now. Not neccessarily unhappy, but static.

I hate static.

And maybe it's just a temporary feeling that will fade next week. Because I certainly don't feel static in every aspect of my life. Just certain aspects.

I never want to say checkmate or have checkmate said to me and have it ring with any real resonance, you know?

I have a list. Lots of us do. Right not it's not corporeal. It's constantly changing. But it exists.

The problem is there are so many things we can't just wake up tomorrow and do. No matter how bad we want to.

Just like we can't always wake up and have the person we want next to us there. Forget whether there's a relationship (physical or otherwise) there or not, it's just not possibly for eveything you want to be there when you want it to be. Life doesn't work that way.

Bottom line is i'm really restless right now...almost recklessly so. I'm not doing what I want to be doing most of the time, I'm not waking up next to who I want to wake up next to most of the time, I'm not taking the steps right now to get my self to that next place I want to be.

And it's fucking killing me because maybe, just maybe, a part of me i afraid of changing from the static, comfortable life I'm living in right now.

Even though I hate being static.

Shit's gotta change.

Currently listening:






Source Tags & Codes
By ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead
Release date: By 26 February, 2002

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Pianissimo

"So what are you gonna do kid?

Are you going to sit around, wondering what could have been, crying over the last great love of your life? Are you going to sit back wondering and dreaming about what could have been while time passes you by? Are you gonna stifle that passion with a look and a wink? Are you gonna take it, whatever is thrown at you, with out so much of a whimper? Are you gonna stay static in a world that moves around you, wishing you could have back yesterday? Are you gonna look in the mirror, reciting lines from a movie that's far past being in vogue, thinking that they meant something to the no one you're reciting to? Are you gonna make a dinner for one beside a piano that plays it's tune with no soul behind the music being made? Are you gonna let passion die without a fight or a word of truth? Are you gonna be the person so sorry that everone's sorry for you? Are you gonna keep listening to what everyone else would do in your situation? Are you gonna hold back for that one last chance even though it's the wrong thing to do? Are you gonna wait for that last breath, that last carress?

Or are you gonna go out there and usher in change? Are you gonna add electricity to thing thing that's causing that battery to run low? Are you going to stop fading and do something to make that meaningless motionless thing that surrounds you dissapate and start anew? Are you gonna take that dame by the hand and let her know not if but when? Are you gonna stop shedding tears and start s preading smiles?Are you gonna suck the life out of death? Are you gonna stop reading up and start acting on? Are you gonna stop making and start fucking? Are you gonna show confidence with out saying your confident? Are you gonna start running the whole race? Are you gonna look fear in the eye and tell it your all out of it? Are you going to stop pretending and start caring? Are you gonna stab that motherfucker through the heart and lick the blade clean? Are you gonna leave her dead in the snow and get on the plane and not look back?

What are you gonna do kid? What are you gonna do?"

Currently listening:





World's Apart
By ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead
Release date: By 25 January, 2005

Friday, September 01, 2006

With something he's been aching to tell you the whole time...

Perceptions of our own realities being what they may....

I can't help but think my attempts at being "friendly" are batted down on multiple fronts by the notion that I might be disingenious to the way i feel about things and people. Nothing could honestly be further from the truth.

(This being said , sometime in life we're hit with the most ridiculous bout of a lack of sens e in what to do, it would seem the subtext then seems that were are unsure and playing games. Let me say, that this is in fact not true. Times ten.)

No one likes games, me least of all. As a matter of fact, resolution as of this morning when I woke up late...no more games.

You know that line in that movie you saw, the one that reminds you of real life but....isn't? There's not much more to it then that. So basically we go through life confused. All of us. Every last single fucking person.

You think you know what the rest of them out there are thinking but really it's just a juxtaposition of your own thoughts and feelings forced onto someone you could really not possibly know less about. So you sit and think and wonder and over think and over analyze and work everything back and forth in your mind four million ways to Tuesday.

(Incidently, while I appreciate the advice I am given, we both know I will never listen to it. Suffice to say, throwing your arms up in frustration maybe be the only option you have left.)

I think my problem then becomes, while truly trying to analyse eveything that's going on right now right down to the nth degree, (Because that's what I do...analyse and analyse until i'm sick....i can't just ever let things be...my mom's says it's my curse) i find there's a disconnect to my life and my process of thought...maybe I'm not the only one, but I feel like I am:

1)I am happy for those who are happy around me only until the point that I realise they have what I want but for some phantom reason cannot obtain. It's at this point I secretly wish for a crash-and-burn (not really becasue these are dear friends but that devil on my shoulder sometimes wants to snicker. We all have that devil, and thankfully we are all able to shoo him away when he whispers these thoughts into our heads.) The reason I can't obtain what other s have are multiple in scope but really boils down to one word: fear.

2)I have too many temptations surrounding me with not enough time and not enoufgh patience to wait. And yet I want to wait for these things that I semeingly don't have enough time to devote to. And because of that I give the impression of a need to rush into these things, which inturns chases these things away. Also at the abck of my mind is the thought that my reaction to their interation is thus that I maybe subconciously chase them away. BUt this all leads back to the fact that these things are all done because I'm afraid if I don't react in some way, any way, then these things will move on with out me.

(An interesting digression from the above hypothesis is this it now occurs to me that all the above statement, be it good or bad, can be directly related to issues I have with certain "other" people in my life. While I'm not wholly a believer in the works of Feud, I do believe that certain elemtns of what he said abotu a relationship between a child and his parent, especially in developmental years, has some sort of significant relation to the relations that child forms later in life, be they stunted (meaning short and messy and cut off), or over developed (meaning obsessive.)

In any case my lack at being able to develop any of the skills needed to fucntion properly in the parameters of all that is lead me the the above dilemas.

3) (and this is the most important one making it the final thought that's running through my brain right now...so pay attention) We live in a world of natural paradox. We live in world where we are told to be honest, to share our feelings, to always tell the truth but then are not only given examples in the world of the exact opposite of that, but are then also discouraged by others actions when we do so. Is it possible for any of us to truly be honest, even given a connotation or subtext of what we are saying, and taken at our word.

So I'm left with the uneasy and queasy feeling that I'm right back where I started from the beginning. I'm not sure at all of what to say to who because, worse then the rejection of any idea I might throw out, is the fact that it won't illicit any reaction. (This is in fact only half true. The greatest fear is still definitely no rwactiona t all. Running a close second is the fact that rejection will come back. And I don't just dislike rejection, I'm, admittedly so now, scared shitless of it. Evidence of this can be seen by the multitude of half started/half finished things in my life - from actual creative projects to relationships - that I have every intention of finshing, giving closure to but haven't been able to quite get to yet, despite the known fact of a feeling of elation I will feel once these things are ended. This fear is as irrational as a fear of heights or to furry animals. I know this. I thought I had understood and come to grips with some of this last year, but fear always rears her ugly head when you least suspect it.)

A wise man probably once said there is truth in all that is said (despite the amount of times you tell a person afterwards that your jopking. Despinte how infitisately small the turht in those words may be...it still rings with some resonence be it smirk or lauch or smile or tear...because it illicits a reaction of some sort.) Reaction is truth.

I can only illicit a responce from a reaction. If there is no reaction, that leaves us all in a sort of quandry, doesn't it.

Response should illicit reaction which in turn should illicit response.

Et cetera.

So what does happen if there's no reaction? What are you supposed to respond too?
Should every reaction illict some sort of response? Even if it's negative?

And don't even get me started about feelings.

Currently listening :





Wrongville
By Sweet Diesel
Release date: By 07 October, 1997

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Absence makes the heart explode...

You've got that person.
You know who they are.
The affect you. People don't generally affect you.
You could usually give a fuck.
But for some reason this person does something different.
Makes you think.
Makes you over analyze.
Makes you dream the dreams you can barely remember.
Makes you wonder.
Makes you unsure.
You can't ignore it because you care to much what they think.
Somethings just can't be helped.
Funny thing is, thoughts, like feelings, and dreams, have minds of their own.
Can't be helped, can't be stopped.
You can't go home again.
You don't want to.
You wonder how the first fight was the last fight.
Things are weird but in that good way?
Self actualization is overrated.
Stop thinking.
Don't do.
You don't know what else to say.
Saying nothing will always be better than staying honest.
You feel stupid.
You don't even want things how they were
(They could probably be better than that.)
Everybody has that person.
You just saw her five minutes ago.
At 12:55.


Sleep and me just aren't fucking cooperating tonight.

Currently listening :





Lullabies To Paralyze
By Queens Of The Stone Age
Release date: By 22 March, 2005

Thursday, August 24, 2006

If you don't like me stop looking this way....

I hadn't bought comics in like three months before today.

On my way I decided to walk down Newbury Street, to the Arlington stop to take in the beautiful early evening. What I realized on this walk might surprise you.

As the piercing screams of Chris Cornell's vocals and the wails of Kim Thayil's guitars blocked out the words of people around me staring, I realized I really don't like most people. Especially the people walking down Newbury Street.

It's not that I'm an unfriendly person, or someone who stands in judgement of other people. It's just that most people suck. Oxymorninc I know, but let me explain.

I'm also not a violent person, but I'd really just like to pop a few people right in the face. Just because of the smug looks they wear on their face. Smug is an ugly word. It's an even uglier countenance to wear.

Most people who walk down Newbury Street give you the knowing glance. The glance that says somehow they are better than you. That their 200 dollar t-shirt somehow gives them more worth, mor eintellegence than the shirt your wearing.

I would be more than happy to be friends with most people I meet. But most people won't take the time. But...I digress.

In general people are full oif themselves. They are slaves to the fashions that theya re told to wear, the music they are directed to listen to, and the make up they are sold on wearing. They look down on all others with disdain because material is more important than personal. To them.

Which is most people.

Fuck that.

Kim Thayil could give a fuck. And so could I.

The only people I want to know are people who want to know me.

I am such not a fan of materialism. Not to say I don't own things (we all own things because we like them or we wouldn't buy them) and like the things I own. I just don't think any of those things are more important than someone i meet eyes with walking down the street. And they certainly aren't imporant enough to care if I have them or not. I enjoy having things, I just don't need them.

Which most people seem to forget.

Look, I work in fashion industry now, I know what and how important "look" is to the industry.

It doesn't mean I place it's importance over the personality of another person.

Sure it's a oxymornic juxtapose world to live in. But you can't fuck if you don't fight.

While I'm rambling, I'd just like to say....when everything is going somewhat copasetic in your life some thing comes along to fuck up everything and rearrange what your were thinking previously.

How is it possible one person goes and fucks up your perception of everyfuckingthing. Then you're right back where you started.

Stupid. Should have never opened your fucking mouth. Or at the very least should have never typed on your fucking keyboard.

To those two I owe apologies, you know who you are. I can't help it. Even If I might have fucked up a good thing. My intension was to stay on the slightly straight and narrow. I mean that's what "dating's" all about.

Fuck you Corey Glover. (Cryptic but meaningful as an acosutic ballad blues song goes.)

I'm not saying anything else.

or as R.A. The Rugged Man would say...."I signed to Jive records and fucked up the whole shit...."

Fucker.

Currently listening :





Badmotorfinger
By Soundgarden
Release date: By 24 September, 1991

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Lies and how I learned to be Un-American....

Yesterday, the news with bombarded with stories about how gas was going to go up five to fifteen cents a gallon ans stay that high for a while to come. They followed this up by all sorts of "experts" urging people not to panic and run the the gas station to fill up their cars before the price hike.

Result: Gas stations filled with people filling up their cars all over the place yesterday trying to beat that gas hike.

This morning on the news, the EPA and other sources came out and said "Oh wait, the second biggest oil manufacturer in the country...them shutting down for a month or so. Yeah that's going to have little to no effect on raising gas prices, contrary to previous reports."

Shoddy reporting on the media's part (this information could have been gathered from other sources yesterday morning, but NO contrary opinions were presented in the news reports I saw yesterday on the local AND national news coverage in the morning whatsoever) or Big Brother Oil laughing at all of us again for the umpteenth time in the last seven years (not to mention the fact that again they completely manipulated the media into selling even more gas for them and provided themselves an out "We told people not to run out and get gas")?

You decide.

I, personally, can't wait for 2008. Maybe when we finally elect a new president we can have gas come down from the 4 dollars a gallon it will undoubtedly be by then.

Currently listening :





CVA
By Paint It Black
Release date: By 29 July, 2003

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Teeing off when you don't even play golf.

I'm tired.

Tired of this.

Tired of that.

Tired of people promising and not delivering.

Tired of people who re-live the past and no you can't go home again.

Tired of being interested when it only lasts for a glimpse.

Tired of yelling and screaming.

Tired of not sleeping. Well.

Tired of staying up for nothing.

Tired of waitng for repsonses from people who will never answer.

Tired of the old way things used to be.

Tired of hot summers and patterns that seemingly never end.

Tired of being alone.

Tired of being around people.

Tired of the way that people complain about life and do nothing to fix it.

Tired of you.

Tired of me.

Tired of people who mean well but will never change.

Tired of people carbon copying the greatest thing they saw or heard yesterday.

Tired of the bags under my eyes.

Tired of being lulled into a great conversation with no follow up.

Tired of being jaded.

Tired of being eternally at the wrong time and place.

Tired of wrong times and places.

Tired of waiting for tomorrow and something better.

Tired of waiitng for "the next thing".

Tired of chasing after people who stopped talking for no reason known to me.

I'm tired of being tired.

Currently listening :

Initiation
By theSTART
Release date: By 24 August, 2004

Sunday, July 23, 2006

They just don't make sitcom stars like they used to.

Fuck you, Conrad Bain.
Fuck you, Todd Bridges.
Fuck you, Dana Plato.
Fuck you, Gary Coleman.
Fuck you, Charlotte McRae.
Fuck you, Mindy Cohn.
Fuck you, Kim Fields.
Fuck you, Nancy McKeon.
Fuck you, Cloris Leachman.
Fuck you, Jimmy Walker.
Fuck you, John Amos.
Fuck you, Joyce DeWitt.
Fuck you, Ted Knight.
Fuck you, Gavin McLeod.
Fuck you, Rene Auberjonouis.
Fuck you, Robert Guilliume.
Fuck you, Billy Crystal.
Fuck you, Richard Mulligan.
Fuck you, Kristy McNichol.
Fuck you, Bob Denver.
Fuck you, Alan Mchale Jr.
Fuck you, Redd Foxx.
Fuck you, Grady Wilson.
Fuck you, Sherman Helmsley.
Fuck you, Fred "Rerun" Berry.
Fuck you, Anna Marie Horsford.
Fuck you, Emmanuel Lewis.
To be continued......

Currently listening :

Prone Mortal Form/Innocents
By Only Living Witness
Release date: By 27 June, 2006

Thursday, July 13, 2006

If we're not talking, then why are we still here?

If you don't let yourself become involved, you can't be dissapointed with the outcome.

Keep telling yourself that kid, and you'll end up on top.

Mother. Fucker.

Currently listening :

Wolverine Blues
By Entombed
Release date: By 10 September, 1996

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Your brother looks like a hooker too.

So Stolen Bike Crusade started back in 2000. November to be more exact. December 8, 2000 was out very first show (after which we began the long, winding path of new members) on what is now WUML, and what was then WJUL, guests of the show that will always be "Live From The Fallout Shelter". It was a new endevour that we all had hopes for, but that most of all we did because it was fun and we liked to create music. Be the music good or bad, (and you talk to those of us from the early days we would probably discuss the older songs as....underdeveloped seems a fair word) we were creayting and having fun and that was the important part.
It's now June of 2006. This makes the band officially my longest relationship in my still short life. It's astounding that through the breakups (one of which fueled half of the first SBC record, the other major relationship having fueled almost exclusively another two years of music after that) with female sin my life, even when it has at times seemed t be on life support, this band has been the most solid, rocksteady thing I've had.

Someone asked me earlier this week, as I am now also a member of Bury the Needle, which band I liked more. THis is honestly and wholly an unfair question for many reasons. Mostly though because really when you create music with other people, the outcome of that creation realy can be attributed to your children. You don't play favorites with your children. Certainly at certain times, becaus eof the ways the songs make you feel, you may be more fond of something in one song then another, but goinbg back listening to old songs today, I realized, warts and all, I'm proud that SBC was able to create these thigns that, at least in some people we've heard from, creates a visceral feeling that is hard to explain but involes emotion and thanks from the part of the listener.

You work hard over that period of time to craft these things. And over time I know I've learned and become a much better singer and lyricist. But at the end of the day all the becomes important are the end product you produce, and how you interpret that end product when youa ttempt to recreate it live.

People often ask when is it the right time to give up...break up the band so to speak. We're in the enviable positon in this band that we are all friends (mind you friends who sometimes lose touch with each other over a period time because smetimes communication is just hard to come by), and nt only friends but people who seem to connect when we get in a room. ALthough we haven't practiced in almost seven months, haven't played a show in six, and probably haven't all been in a room togethe rin at least a couple months, when we get togetehr and practice, it's like home again. The songs fit like a snug glove....the commeradirie and inside jokes begin again in an instant. And it makes you feel good again.

People talk about this elusive "rock star dream". It's all bullshit and none of it means anything. The record industry has deteriorated to a point where it's next to impossible to have a hit anything anymore. So all you do is expose your music to as many people as possible and hope it graps on to a few. You mentally move on at a certain point but realization of reality and actually doing what youw ant to do are completely non-exclusive.

I see bands now who hype themselves up and think they're going to live this rock star dream, get signed to a major label, be on the cover of rolling stone, get their own Gucci ad and it makes me sad. Because these are the people who have forgotten what the music meant. IT's not about who can help witht he most shows, it's not about banner ads, it's not about photo shoots and who produced your new album to make it all sqeaky clean and compressed sounding. IT's about playing the music...it's about people hearing the music. People who don't want to be press whores don't seek it out.

I recently heard Iggor (new spelling) Cavalera describe that he was leaving Speltura because he had lost the fire. That's incredibly disheartening to hear a founding member of one of your favorite bands has lost the fire to create anymore. Frightening because if it can happen to him, it can happen to anybody.

Which brings me full circle. Novermber of 2000 to July of 2006. Bigger bands lasted half that long. And while I can't predict the future or what will happen, I can say that one thing practice tonight taught me was that I haven't lost any fire. As a matter of fact I have more fire to do more things, if anything. facets of all the bands I love the different facets and ways I can express myself differently through the stylistic changes of each the band sI'm in. It makes each wholly unique, but not in a way that I have to think about...not in a way where I have to conciously change. It all happens organically. If I could be in 12 bands right now I would for that reason alone.

3 will just have to do for now.

Currently listening :

The Sufferer and the Witness
By Rise Against
Release date: By 04 July, 2006

Saturday, July 01, 2006

"For those I love I will sacrifice..."

These shorts were sacrificed tonight for the greater good of rock and roll.

Never jump up on a stool when in homemade shorts and playing the rock music. People may unfairly mark you an exhibitionist.

Currently listening :

To Live & Die In New York City
By Indecision
Release date: By 22 July, 2000

Monday, June 26, 2006

"Say another word and I'll cut your fucking throat..."

We stay silent.
We keep quiet.
We stay silent about the way we actually feel.
We keep quiet to avoid the drama involved in the situation saying something would cause.
We stay silent about the way the world falls around us.
We keep quiet and hope it will all get better.
We stay silent even though something tells us inside to be loud.
We keep quiet to hope it will all go away.
We stay silent because we're told we should.
We keep quiet and wish we had said something meaningful when it happened.
We stay silent because we're embarrassed.
We keep quiet until the storm passes.
We stay silent and hope that they're thinking what we're thinking.
We keep quiet knowing that you don't live here anymore.
We stay silent for a lack of words.
We keep quiet because we're simply stricken speechless.
We stay silent hoping we'll get another chance someday.
We keep quiet because it wouldn't do any good anyways.
We stay silent because there's strength there.
We keep quiet because we've said all we could say.
We stay silent and wonder what happens if we tell the truth.
We keep quiet because the truth never sets you free.
We stay silent because beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
We keep quiet because you can't capture beauty, you can only behold it.
We stay silent when there's nothing else to say.
We keep quiet despite there's plenty to say.
We stay silent because timing isn't our thing.
We keep quiet because we just missed the opportunity.
We stay silent when we're shocked.
We keep quiet to shock.
We stay silent but to apologize for our past transgressions.
We keep quiet when we're not really sorry at all.
We stay silent to avoid.
We keep quiet to avoid.
We stay silent when what we want to say is what you don't want to hear.
We keep quiet to make things easier for you.
We stay silent even though everything tells us to shout.
We keep quiet to avoid embarrassing ourselves to others.
We stay silent because life is not a movie.
We keep quiet because there is no happily every after.
We stay silent when we want to give advice.
We keep quiet because no one wants our advice.
We stay silent, saying more then we could say with words.
We keep quiet because we like it better that way.
We stay silent and we keep quiet.
And it's making us lose our fucking minds.

Currently listening :

Fantastic Planet
By Failure
Release date: By 13 August, 1996

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Elvis has left the building and so have the Cash Money Millionaires...

Somepeoplebelievewethinkwithasingleconciousnessbutthisisn't
trueaswelivelifewithfreewillandtheabilitytobeindependantas
aresultofwhowearebredwhichistobredwithotherswhoarelike
usbutnotexactlylikethoseweareattractedtoarethepeoplewe
mostlikenourslevestowhowemaywanttobehereorawayis
somethingthatcausesthoughttobewithoutremorseforwhatwe
sayforthisiswhatisonourmindsforlifelibertyandthepursuitof
happinessisreallyjustaloadofbullshittoswallowuntilthenext
peopletellusorexcusemeguideusinthewayweshouldthinkforthe
nextfouryearsyou'vegivenupallrightsasihavereadthemtoyou
thepeopleofthiscountryshouldwakeupandunderstandexactly
what'sbeingtoldtoyouastherestofusallsitbackandrelaxandwaitfor
thenextmomentwhenweunderstandexactlywhatissiadtous
becauseit'sdifficultenougtobeone'selfbyone'selfwheninreality
allanybodyreallyneedsistolightenupandallwecanhopeforbefore
wedieisonegoodfuck......

Currently listening :





Mo'Mega
By Mr. Lif
Release date: By 13 June, 2006

Monday, June 12, 2006

Pace yourself...it looks to be a long ride....and never talk to strangers...

I'll share whatever you need to share. Self-confidence is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The sun means it's summer which almost rhymes with things I don't think about. If you're a soldier your fucked in as much as your screwed. Follow and don't question. I've got a revolution and you're meant to ride it with me. I'll sink as far as you'll let me. Loose lips sink ships and all, but I have nothing more to say. Be quiet, close your eyes and take a kiss on the lips, because it's the last thing you may ever truly "feel". I've got this thing that's telling me things could get real complicated soon. The next statement contains this false positive. I'm holding back things that come to the brim of your conciousness. Don't say the following things because i'm not listening anymore. "You're great but it's never gonna work out between us." "Age ain't nothing but a number." "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer." "Don't you think I'm attractive?"

Stop telling me what's good for me and everyone else. Just stop and do something, anything. I don't need anymore friends. But I'm feeling a need for a few more enemies.

Currently listening :





Us and Them
By Godflesh
Release date: By 22 June, 1999

Sunday, June 11, 2006

They won't be more equal than we are. Not on my watch. (Goverment is a fucking idiot pt. 1)

Millions of people are dying for reason that are directly related to our actions not only in the middle east but as a result of our fiscal and personal responsibities, foremost in our own country, but also world wide and our lawmakers and President are most concerned with fining broadcasters more money per incident of indecency over the PUBLIC airwaves (for which i will talk about more at some other point, because believe it or not we are being extorted in as much as the mob extorts it's chosen business for their own protection) and trying to fucking pass an AMENDMENT to the BILL OF RIGHTS that bans gay marriage.
WHAT?
So not only would this contradict ebvery amendment made, including the bill of rights, but essentially paves the ways to strip homosexuals of their human rights in the future in this country. Drastic you might say? BUt look at how slowly our first amendment rights have been stripped away over the last 6 years through the politics of making us not only afraid to speak our minds freely but to inform ourselves of the outside world. (You need no bigger example of this than a recent Henry Rollins story I heard where he was pulled aside for a simple BOOK he was reading to inform him more on the state of terrorism in our world. And while true it was in Australia where he was confronted, they are in this state of fear following what America has thrown out there. All this and at least in Australia they confront you and ask you about what your reading. In the good old U.S.A they'd simply keep a file on you until they had enough info to simply McCarthy your ass into jail......but I digress.) YOur saying what does all this have to do with anything? Well, our government has found that the fear campaign has worked so well against the "war" on terrorism, that they are adopting it towards their other agendas as well.
"Homosexuals threaten the normal american lifestyle." These are the phrases they use. Idiots like Rick Santorum would have you believe that homsexuals are proliferating the good wholesomeness of our country. I say fuck that.
The reason our country is like that is because it's afraid of the word sex and anything conencted to it. And as a result we become, as I've stated earlier, the laughing state of the united states. It always comes back to sex.
Most people don't want to see peopel displaying their affection for each other out in public. I know I don't, be it straight ot gay. This doesn't make it an obscene act or something dirty. It simply makes it something I don't need to see. The sacrity of what happens between you and another person and how you show that to each other it between you too. IT doesn't mean that we can't be EDUCATED on this stuff in the right enviornment, nor does it mean it can't be talked about or discussed, but it doesn't need to be demonstrated. And really this is why people laugh at us as a country, and until we get over these pre-occupations and problems with sexuality that we will never been seen as anything more than giggling 14 yearolds in the school yard.
Because we refuse to accept homosexuality as something that exists in our society, the only option we give people that we ignore is to force us to see that they are there. Homosexuality is not going away, it's not a phase, it's not an anomoly. It exists and people still ignore it as if it will go away if they do.
Because we can't deal with the reality that for some people, the person of their same sex is who theya re attracted to. And what more, we expect them to understand our heterosexual attractions as if it's not as foreign a concept to them as homsoexulaity might be to us. (What's worse is at the edn of the day it's not that hard to understand. Some guys are attracted to other guys, just like some men are attracted to women exclusivly with big breasts and large booties. I don't see what the big deal is. Anyways...)
So, this leeds to the argument of what causes homosexuality. Because if it's a choice...blah blah blah...deviant behavior...blah blah blah. I am firmly of the belief that it is fully genetic, and while there's no absolute evidence as of yet, genetticists are getting closer and closer to solving this puzzle. SO if homosexulaity is then genetic, you CAN'T change it. IT exists and we have to accept it as something that exists. I am one to believe that given a choice between a life of acceptence and relative ease and a life of hatred and harshness, one would opt for the former and not the latter, unless you were a sado-masichist. So why would someone choose to be gay, if life would be so much easier if they were staright.
But really it runs even deeper than this. Because you can't ask someone to change what they are inside. Some people consider it sacrilegde to compare the civil rights movement to gay rights, but how is it any different. Being the child of mixed races, I've felt prejudice and racisim my entire life, uniquely from black and white people. I see my struggle (to which, at 30 years of age, at least sitting in my apartment in Cambridge, I can say there have been stides made in the last thirty years....) not much different than hat of homosexuals to be accepted.
Because we as a society are so upfuckingtight about sexuality, we can't just let it go. Homosexual people are just like us. making them no less capabable of having a normal family, raising children , having menaingful realtionships and staying married more consistently then staright people can in this day and age. Homosexuals aren't pedophiles or sexual deviants, there people who are attracted to people of the same se. And for as much as people say they don't care what people do in their wbedrooms, there are a whole lot of 'Buts' generally associated to those types of statements. And those same people who say sexuality should be an issue, make it an issue. It's the same old politician double speak we hear from everything from the Iraq war to the price of gas in our country.
The best part of the word homophobia is the entymology of the word...literally meaning "The fear of gays." The great thing about fears is that they can be overcome with understanding. I'm not saying we will evr understand what it is to be gay, just as a man will never know what it's lie to be a womana or a caucasian will never know what it is to be a african american or vise versa. But we can understand and sympathisize with where any person different is going through. How hard is that to fucking undertsand? How hard is it to have empathy for another set of people? We had it for all the people who died on 9/11 and as a result of the gross mis-mamangement that went on in New Orleans.
Unfortunately we live in a country that's largely conceived in the mind of middle america and the religious right. And they are SO busy judging every one else and forgetting that, (not that i'm a bible thumper, but ratehr using their own logic), if you look at your own beliefs, we ALL sin. SO your sins of judging other people are no worse than the "Supposed" sins the gay people are committing. People like this are SO aftraid to look in the mirror and take account of themselves, they worry about everybody else far too much. The syaing i belive is "Lest he throw the last stone be without sin." or something like that. Well accorindg to the might writers of the bible, none of us are without sin. SO there.
We live in a country that refuses to take action on soemthing until unneccesary things happen. Mathew Sheppard had to die before we culd look at gay's civil rights as an issue thata ctually had to be addressed. And even then has anything really been done, aside from a little attention and people saying "well, he was living in sin."
Judge lest you be judged yourself.
The saddest thing is that we even have to make these disticntions at all (no less four seperate times in our own Constitution already (the actually document it self, the 14th amendment, 15th amendment, and the 19th amendment) whent he document itself is clear enough already. Essentially this amendment, if ever passed (this is the second time it's been attempted within the last six times and it will probably be attemtped a couple more times before King George is out of office) will start a slippery slope towards a sort of cultural apartheid in our country. And it's not a slope easliy climbed back up.
It's time to stop being the epople who stand by while this fight goe on in front of us. It's time for us to stand up and say something. And all it takes is to say "This is rdiculous. I'm not going to stand for one more person in this country to be treated as less than a person." All it takes is one word, that we've grown increasingly and disturbingly more accustomed to saying in our complacentcy. The same kind of complacentcy that allowed a person like Matthew Sheppard to be murdered.

No.

Currently listening :





Radioactivist
By Red Tape
Release date: By 10 February, 2004

Saturday, June 10, 2006

The good ones always get away 5 minutes before you're ready to invest...

...and they're always available 5 minutes after you've spent the rest of your money.

Viscerally, getting ready to walk up steps that lead to the beginning of the end of your naturally born life. You don't get nervous but your heart does increasing ever so slightly above it's normal pace as if to tell you it likes this feeling so don't fuck it up. Looking around furiously, lording over all infront of you you wait to begin. Your intsrument in your hand, the swirling cacophony behind you beginning to build, you are centered and comfortable. You start to accept and become. It doesn't take long to make your decisions. Your different now, brash, outgoing, loud, violent and playful. All the things your intorverted self is not, at least not at this magnitude. You look at the people in front of you and make a snap judgment, if there is no reaction you will make them have one. If there is a reaction, you will enhance it, testing the mettle of the member in front of you. Your eyes lock most prominently with those you engage themselves in what is going on. Your eyes lock and you share something passionate and life fulfilling and the same words that come out of your mouth are also comeing out of there's, trancelike. Selfishly, you're always hoping there's at least one girl to share this experience with. They always deserve the most attention. But the people who shirk back surprised, they deserve even more. You lose sense of everything that goes on as your insides empty out on the PA. Someone who is usually such a hygenic person could care less that he is now glistening on your brow ready to trade sweat with anyone who dares brush upon you. You are lost in yourself but found by the people around you. It never last longer then 30 minutes and you're spent, having first thought about who you locked eyes with, and who you want to discuss this connection with after. Then you think about who "gets it". You prepare to thank these people for sharing in this experience with you. And as your chest heaves from the workout, you take a swig of water, a swig of beer, and know this is home. This is where you always want to be. Because nothing will ever be as important.

Currently listening :





Youth Are Getting Restless: Live in Amsterdam
By Bad Brains
Release date: By 10 May, 1990