This week was nice, mostly in that it felt unconventional and strange but also in that I didn't spend the majority of it alone, and even had a lot of fun exercising.
Like I said, unconventional and strange.
I wrote this poem for English. It was supposed to be a free verse, but isn't.
( Inside, Below, and Above )
There is way too much crap happening this week, like a math test on Wednesday and an impending release date for the newspaper for which the Flipside pages have not even been started, in addition to the normal crap which normally takes up too much time. I'm starting to not care about what gets done and what doesn't, which I guess is senioritis, seeing as we've only got six weeks or so left. This year has gone by fast.
Oh, yeah, I got a Facebook profile. MySpace got a little too ad-heavy, so I figured it was time to immigrate and cause the same problem at Facebook.
Next weekend's events are confusing to me. Will someone explain them? I have to write another poem now.
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The mouse feels like a brick in my hand. Likewise, the keyboard is almost totally foreign to my touch, and I keep mistyping things and going back to fix them.
Kauai was pretty awesome, though I don't think that comes as any surprise. The week went by like a shot, probably because my dad packed in a million things to do. Our place didn't have a TV, and I don't know if anybody has figured this out yet, but TV fucking sucks. I read through three books by the time I got back, started a fourth (Frank Herbert's Dune, though inevitably I gave up on it temporarily as dense sci-fi isn't really suited to places like Hawaii), though didn't do any homework the whole time. Gonna have to do that tonight. I feel really behind now but... I also don't care. I feel like some sort of curtain has lifted for me, and I don't feel like wasting any time. To me it seems justifiable to just let everything else just sit until I'm ready for it.
Went hiking, kayaking (which I should do more often), snorkeling, swimming, and primarily just sat on the beach outside our place reading or writing something. The place we stayed was nice, though I quickly learned that the guests staying in the room near to us in the building were going to be a problem, their toddler-aged daughter knowing only one word and shrieking for the rest. They left before we did, and to replace them came some twenty-somethings from the East Coast, New Jersey I think, who spent the first night blindingly drunk and the others in a kind of hangover-induced, perpetual silence. Seems like the people on the island were pretty sick of tourists by the time we got there, too, since a lot of places had their spring break a week before ours. There was this really cool coffee shop though, called Java Kai in the little town of Hanalei near where I was staying - I ended up buying at least ten ice coffees just because they had music like Thievery Corporation in their CD player and really nice places to sit and look at the mountains. We were supposed to go on a boat trip to the Na Pali Coast on Monday, which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in the world... I saw the tip of it doing a little bit of the eleven-mile hike that leads there, and it looked fantastic. This swell came through and the company had to cancel the trip.
Hate airplanes... on my flight home, the only thing to do was watch "Miss Potter" and I wanted to walk out it was so terrible. Night flights really blow when you're tired and you can't sleep, I just caught up on that before coming online for the first time in more than a week. I hate the internet too, I think. I might become a Luddite, only I'm really lazy and can't be bothered to write stuff down longhand.
Gonna do some homework. I'll be back at school tomorrow.
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Today I was playing Wii Boxing with my nephew, and he was trying to knock out a computer opponent that looked exactly like Jesus. Quite perceptively, he told me that the reason he couldn't knock him out, and the reason why he kept getting back up, was because today is Easter. He's a smart kid.
I wrote another story, it's behind this link:
( Jim the Bum )
Gonna leave for Kauai tomorrow night, I'll be back for school on Thursday of next week.
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I'm exceedingly pleased that there is only a minimum day of school between me and spring break, along with all of the great stuff that's going to entail, like Easter dinner, Kauai, and everything else. So pleased, in fact, that I was inspired to write a story about a landlord who eats his tenants when they don't pay their rent. Joy!
( Room and Board )
I've been pretty happy lately. I think it's just because of the weather and the fact that my college plans are pretty much set now, and that everything is just going right for some reason. School is going by really quickly, graduation is coming up fast. That's pretty exciting, too. I'm glad that I'm going to get to study writing in college, and that it's going to be a new experience, and that I'm going to meet new people. That surprises me, but in an uncharacteristically pleasing way.
Just as a side note, anyone who is a fan of Aqua Teen Hunger Force or Mr. Show (or both, as it is for a few of you) show check out the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters site and click on the link that says "I Love Movies," 'cause it's a video of Bob Odenkirk as a film critic asking Dana Synder (the voice of Master Shake) some questions about the movie. It's hilarious.
Since I'm not probably not going to post anything else for a while, I'm just going to wish an all-around happy Spring Break to everyone, and I hope you do a lot of cool stuff with cool people. If nothing else, see the ATHF movie 'cause it's coming out on Friday the 13th and it's going to be awesome.
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You know your life has gone down the tube when you feel proud of a spreadsheet
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Things will be so much better when they become more unexpected.
Or worse. The unexpected part will make everything worth it, though.
I'm kinda worried that I'll be just as surrounded by the same types of pieces of shit that I loathe at college that I have been at high school. Inevitably there will be annoying people, especially since there are people at Santa Cruz that already annoy me just from reading their shit in the newspaper... I need to give people more of a chance sometimes, but seriously, that naive, militant, misguided spirit of rebellion and alternativeness in general really ticks me off.
Spring is awesome, Sonoma County looks so sick when all of the flowers are blooming... my allergies are kicking my ass, though...
I'm going to Kauai for Spring Break, that's going to be so cool, I loved Maui last time I was there and Kauai sounds even prettier from what I've heard.
I've written plenty of things in the various interims/times of not posting here, I think I'm going to keep them to myself for a while so I can polish them up a bit. I've got to have a portfolio/collection of stories for the writing concentration at Santa Cruz, so I've got to get some stuff together anyway.
A little bit more than two months until high school graduation. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!
Does anyone know when UC San Diego is announcing admissions decisions?
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I hope Rube Goldberg is burning in Hell
I got into Santa Cruz
I want school to be over
and that's all.
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I went into this furniture store today, and I realized something about them that I've never really noticed before: they're the perfect place to live. Think about it. You'd never get sick of your furniture, because anytime you do, you can just move to another side of the store and sit on a new couch. It's decked out with the nicest HDTVs, because, well, they're trying to sell entertainment centers. Perfect. Not only that, but they've got video games set up in this place so that kids won't get bored. Score there, too. And because this was some grand opening event, they had this concession stand set up with a ton of shitty food to eat right in the middle of the store. You could barricade yourself in there for hours and never get bored. Plenty of beds, plenty of styles to choose from... it's fantastic.
Do you ever see people walking around, doing their day to day stuff, and just wonder what's going on in their minds? What sort of incomprehensible force is driving their activity, their wants, their thoughts and feelings? How they came to be doing the same thing as you, in the same place as you, at the same time as you? It's amazing to think about if you find yourself at all inclined to.
Imagine living in Queensland right now. They've got a drought so bad that they've had to resort to drinking waste water. Or in Lebanon. The people in Beirut can't go outside at night right now because of the revolt that's going on. The fertility rate for Japanese women is about one child per mother, slowly dropping - they just saw their third outbreak of the bird flu over there, and scientists are worried that it's going to mutate into a form that would make humans susceptible. Meanwhile, Stateside, what's going on? Well, we're protesting the Iraq war. The people here aren't really in it, since if we were we'd be over there or they'd be over here. Obviously we're affected, but only indirectly due to a loved one's involvement. So what else is there. American Idol, I guess. We're so wonderfully oblivious to the shitty stuff that's going on around us. Anything that doesn't immediately affect our well-being is out of sight and out of mind. Bad shit can't happen to us, because, well, it just doesn't. Nothing really shitty, mind you. Not revolt, or drinking sewage.
I'm including myself in that accusation, since all I can really seem to think about during the day is how cool living in a furniture store would be, or which video game I want to play next, or what movie I want to see, or what story would be cool to write if I made the time (which I have plenty of, but am too lazy to acknowledge with anything even remotely straining).
Do you ever get sick of living weekend to weekend? I don't. I think it's great. The worst day of the week is Sunday, not because it's actually bad but because it's so damn bittersweet. You can sleep in, but eventually, you've got to do some homework, and then that's it. Show's over until next Friday night. It sucks. That's where I'm at right now, the end of Sunday night, coming into Monday with the knowledge that I've got to go to school and pretend to learn stuff and be around shallow, empty people who would love to shit all over my sundae.
Solitude and escapism work well together for me because I can be so blissfully ignorant and entertained. I don't care that all the shit I think up isn't real, there's no one around to tell me otherwise so it doesn't matter.
Gonna go lay down and listen to Miles Davis play the trumpet. He's dead, you know. Immortality is celebrity, in my honest opinion.
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I can already tell I'm going to have a hell of a time dealing with the UC system for four years... somehow they "misplaced" my SAT Subject Test scores and are "investigating" where they went. And then I'm supposed to want to go to their schools... to, of all things, learn. They don't have a course for not losing shit apparently. Now I have to wait and see if they can dig them up, otherwise I'm gonna have to shell out another twenty bucks that I don't even have to get them resent.
I know, my life is so hard.
I got a Wii last weekend... it's sweet. Totally worth waking up at 4 A.M. on Sunday for. Wii boxing is making me like Rocky VIII, and I can already tell Zelda is going to occupy about 95% of this weekend. I should get a couple more controllers and have a big Wii Sports tournament. I'll be the talk of the town!
It's weird to drudge up old memories, so that's why I don't. Or try not to, at least. But sometimes they're forced on you and you have to realize that you were an idiot at one point, and it's a bittersweet sort of feeling. It's good to know you've grown, but then again it's disheartening to know that you were once more foolish than you'd thought at the time. At least you forget after a while.
I like staring off into space. Not space like, space... well, I guess that's cool too, but it's not what I mean. What I mean is just sitting in a desk at school looking at the ceiling or the wall or maybe even your shoe. School goes by so much faster when you don't acknowledge its existence.
I'm just rambling now. Isn't that annoying to read, someone admitting that they're rambling? I'd rather they ramble.
Aqua Teen Hunger Force... ASSEMBLE!
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( Henry and Nothing )
I think the days I like best are the ones in which I do least. There's something in simple inactivity, or just unplanned, spontaneous days off that have an appeal which no other day can amount to. I've never understood why people feel the need to constantly be "out," as though they've attained some sort of status by surrounding themselves with other bored people. I'd much rather be bored alone.
Things are pretty okay, it was my mom's birthday on Friday so my family went to dinner and had some cake afterward. Tomorrow I'm going to hang out with Luke I think, go fishing or something. That's pretty much the extent of current affairs.
I really want to see Pan's Labyrinth, it's playing at the Rialto next Friday and it looks like the best movie ever.
That's pretty much it I guess.
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( Meeting Saint Peter )
Wrote a new story... dunno what prompted it. Every time I feel compelled to write something, I never know how it's going to turn out. I sit down to write one thing, and it comes out another. It's almost as though I'm not even writing, just watching things happen in front of me. So, a story about a guy waking up on a train (which I tried to write a few weeks ago, though it took place on a subway for some reason and, if developed further, could be the exact opposite of this story) and it turned out as a guy going to Heaven. It's more interesting to me that way, I suppose, then figuring it all out in my head and trying to wrestle it on paper. Concepts work fine like that, but when it comes to actually creating it, there's nothing more satisfying than just letting it find its own way onto the page.
It's also 2 A.M., and I'm not sure what significance the late night has to me writing stories but I can't seem to get anything to come out until after midnight.
I'm glad it's the weekend, I'm glad I don't really have much planned, and I'm glad that I can go to sleep now that I'm finished with this.
Goodnight.
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I always find myself sitting in really normal situations bored out of my mind and wondering what if some other condition was met that would make the situation funnier or more interesting. My first impulse is to use that to write a story or something, but I invariably forget and end up writing things off the top of my head instead of using things that I pick out of the day to day stuff. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not, maybe I should carry around a notebook or something and have more reason to keep to myself while I sit back and write crap down.
Like, at this Financial Aid meeting tonight, the people doing the presentation were using PowerPoint, so they had a projector hooked up to their laptop. The trouble is, as neat as having that available to people during presentations is, they're always plagued by the same problems. At first, they can't get them to work, so instead of looking like some tech savvy individual, the person has to bang on the projector like a monkey until the thing finally starts up. Then they have to find fifteen dictionaries to stack underneath it so that they can prop it up to the right height. And once all that crap is over, the slides start and you realize how utterly pointless it all was because the only thing on the slides are pictures of either really generic people acting out what's written down or some cheesy clipart. And then, at the end, there is always this final slide that says "Good luck!" or "Thanks for listening!" that the person just totally disregards and uses to say their goodbyes to instead of explaining like the rest of them.
So basically, during this time where the woman is trying to get the projector to work, I'm setting this scene in my head of a meeting room, filled with business people in ties and suits all seated around a table waiting for one guy to give a PowerPoint presentation. The guy is trying to hook it up but he can't figure out how to use it, so he just starts pressing buttons and the whole time all of these random pictures from his hard drive pop up on the screen. Pictures of his dog, his vacation to Bermuda, this really cool dirtbike he wants... maybe some porn if you want to go the coarse route. And the whole time he's trying to do his presentation, so he's explaining each slide as it comes up.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that I have trouble paying attention to anything but my brain. I like my brain though, so that really doesn't bother me at all.
Thanks for listening!!!!1
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Not much is going on.
I finished reading Pinball today, which was pretty good for the most part. Linker gave it to me along with a few other books, which I haven't really had time to even look at yet. I've got plenty to read though, and that's always good. It was full of all of this kinky sex stuff, at least half of it was detailed descriptions of sex clubs and the goings-on within. Kind of a strange book to get from a teacher.
The weeks approaching Christmas vacation are always the hardest to sit through, maybe even harder than the last weeks of the school year. You can tell that everyone is gearing up for the holidays and wanting to be elsewhere, and for some reason the mental vacancy of most people unites everyone in a common dislike of present surroundings. Maybe I'm the only one to notice that.
Hearing about James Kim was kind of upsetting, I remember watching him on The Screen Savers when TechTV was still around and hearing him on a couple of tech podcasts. It's a little disheartening to see so many people using his death as a reason to promote wilderness survival. I'm not saying having those skills is a bad thing, but it seems a little disrespectful anyway. The guy died trying to save his family, and people are trying to blame MapQuest just cause he had a career in technology. Not to mention it's so close to Christmas, and his daughters are going to have to grow up without a dad, and argh... it's just really sad.
I'm trying to be a more pleasant person than I have been before after noticing how unpleasant some people can be. There's nothing wrong with being nice, and whereas some time ago I took pride in being a sniggering, self-righteous, and arrogant anonymous-comment posting asshole, I'm now starting to see the virtues in taking the people around me as they are and not having unrealistic expectations of people, nor a will to change them. Sometimes it's better to just keep to yourself if you're unhappy with something.
Man, I want a Wii so bad.
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You did what you could for more than a week to make sure your family would be survive, and even though in your brave and valiant efforts you were not able to find help, know that your wife and children made it out alive. You will be missed.
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I don't usually take the time out of what I'm doing to create an whole journal entry praising a book that we're being forced to read in English class but... I have to say it.
Heart of Darkness is mindblowingly amazing.
How could you not like it? Seriously. Ten pages into the book he talks about a Danish skipper being impaled by a little kid because he's arguing about an unfair trade of hens with the tribal chief.
I'm sitting there with the book on my lap, genuinely and ferverently hightlighting everything on the pages I see that I think is important, and I get to the bottom of them and look at the page again and it's almost totally light blue from my marker.
Books are so much better than people.
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What the fuck is with this week? It's like every overconfident, snide, spoiled little shit has found some way to piss me off at every turn. I'm sick of everything at this point. It happens a lot and sometimes it's really amusing to notice for people, but Jesus Christ. I've been genuinely and incessantly annoyed for the past five days and I'm tired of it.
Maybe there are times in life when you're just supposed to hit someone in the nose because that's how it is. It doesn't matter what it looks like to other people, it's doesn't matter what they feel like after, all that matters is your fist connecting with their nose. The nose of every loud and obnoxious chatterbox in Journalism, all of those pieces of shit who sit around thinking of ways to make themselves look better than everyone else, every person I have to constantly humor because they won't shut up and I'm not man enough to tell them to. Every little thing is getting to me and it's adding up and I'm reaching some breaking point.
God damn. This 24-year-old college grad we had for a substitute in Physics, and his ridiculous air of superiority as he essentially sits there reading a skateboarding magazine, like he's babysitting a room full of kids. "I'm just here to get the paycheck," he says, "I don't wan't to be a teacher. I studied Journalism in college." That's where your fucking dreams go. Fourth period Physics, all over again. Except this time, you'll feel better 'cause you've got another seven years on the rest of the kids in the class. The bell rings, this fuck turns out the lights while I'm trying to finish up my work and when I'm still packing up to get out he says, "Hurry up, I've got to go take a piss."
There's no goddamn respect anywhere. People are so full of themselves, all they do is this self-serving macho bullshit. It's driving me up the wall.
It's that whole phoniness thing, the narcissism, the superficiality, the goddamn hypocrisy of everything.
And you know what? It makes me lonely. At the end of the day, thinking about how much I hate these people I see everyday I keep envisioning this person who is just right and that I can be with so I won't be alone. And I hate that part the worst, because it isn't real. I can bitch about the rest of it all I want and it won't bring me any closer to someone else who actually understands. It's like life is this annoying thing I do in between being alone, and the roles I play in them are totally different. I can't be yourself when there are so many other people around you trying to be someone else. I just get confused.
And I see all of these bitter adults, all of these people around me who are supposed to be shaping my future or something, and I'm obviously learning from example because that's what I'm turning into. A bitter adult. And I so desperately want to be something else. I want to be something other than bitter, maybe even something other than an adult. I just want to be and I don't want this bullshit cynicism, but what else do you make out of it all.
Honestly.
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This.
Needless to say, the boredom that can often come with a vacation has set in, while the tryptophan from today's meal has, unfortunately, not.
Happy Thanksgiving, or what's left of it, anyway.
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