the bodhisattva.

Where I can be found

2009-02-16T15:52:00.000-08:00

I switched blog hosts, with all apologies to Blogger, because I needed a better design. I can now be found here.

Totally baller

2009-02-13T22:33:00.000-08:00

My friend Mitch is obsessed with POS, an up-and-coming rapper from the nine-piece family of Doomtree (whom I saw back in July with Flobots). He and I both first heard of him on Subterranean. The video for Drumroll started to play and we just sat there, enthralled. This was rap like we'd never heard it before. Better, faster, stronger. And then, Mitch caught wind of the POS show at Kilby Court. Of course, not until after he'd gone insane and listened to every song accessible, read reviews on Pitchfork Media, read the Wikipedia articles and all the biographies he could find. He came to me through Messenger and said, "POS IS COMING TO KILBY." And I said, "Alright. Are you going?"

The answer was yes, yes he was. So the day came, and Andy and I went out to meet Mitch at the small garage venue, our bellies filled with Burger King fries and Coke. He said it was packed inside, filling up fast. This was so incredibly true it made my head hurt. When we got in, the crowd was already stacked to the door. I said to Andy, "I know we need to get in there, but I'm not that strong of stomach." I'd never seen Kilby so crowded. Not for my band or for any others. But eventually, we wrung through the phalanx to snag a spot about three heads back from the front, where sometimes, if you stood on tiptoes and looked through the shoulders, you could see the DJ.

It was insane. Mitch stood on one side of me, Andy's friend Harley stood on the other, and Andy stood behind, keeping both me and the camera safe. It started to get more and more crazy until Andy said he had to go to the bathroom. It's hard to find at Kilby, so I said I'd take him to it. We weaved our way back out and then through the thistles and thickets to the bathroom shack.

Well! Little did we know, there's a special sort of "green room" in that shack for when big performers come out, with NOT A BATHROOM taped onto the door. We happened to go into the shack at the same time as some college-age guys, who opened the door accidentally and then said, "Oh! Sorry, man. We're super stoked for the show." And then closed the door, and it became immediately clear that behind that door was him, POS, the man we'd all been waiting for. I took a seat on one of the couches in the shack while Andy went to the real bathroom. I was saying something to the college-age guy about the minivan seating upon which I was, when the NOT A BATHROOM door opened, and POS came out and just stood there. There was this awkward silence. None of us knew what to do. I thought for a minute he was going to flip out and ask us to leave. But then he started talking to this girl next to him, and then! and then! He turns to me and says, "I like your gold Lame shirt." "Thanks," I said, violently searching for something else to say in reply. "I like your bomb shirt." (He was wearing a shirt with a bomb on it.) "It's... the bomb." I said. The college-age kids moaned. "Puns!" They said. "I liked it." Laughed POS, and I melted into a puddle on the floor.

When we went back into the concert, I tackled Mitch, who had begged me to get something signed for him when he thought he couldn't come. "GUESS WHAT!" I yelled. "POS LIKES MY SHIRT." Mitch then hugged me big and gave me a high five that resounded throughout the room. As the show went on, the crowd started to push more and more into the back of us, and more and more people squeezed past, snickering later like, "Look how clever we are to get in front of these kids."

The show was awesome. Everyone was sweating and jamming, a religious experience of music and hipswinging, lights, beats, cheering. It finally ended after a gracious encore. Onstage, POS proclaimed that anybody who wanted one could get a high five from him right outside, next to the merch room. A flood of people spilled out, Mitch and all of us navigating towards where he might be, shouting in each other's ears how great it was. We were all so very thirsty. Then, we saw him again. He was standing right where he'd said he'd be. And he was taking pictures with people's camera phones, signing tickets, giving high fives and handshakes. He shook mine and Mitch's hands both.

And then, I dug out a poster from my bag, the only thing I had that I could think of to have signed, and I asked him to sign it. It was a Samson & Goliath poster for the upcoming show at Avalon. Mitch said to him, "She's in a band, too, it's really cool, uh, can you sign this?" And I'm sure POS was thinking to himself, "What the shit? What is this?" as he signed it. He handed it back and said, "See who else is playing?" and he laughed before signing somebody's shirt, while I stared down at the poster in my hand, which now said "and POS!" under the list of bands playing.

I went home that night giggly off of adrenaline and sleepiness. Andy and I, our ears ringing, couldn't tell how loud we were talking and so probably shouted every word we said. Then, when we got home, I showed my mom the poster, and told her about the shirt, and told her everything, while Andy sat and tried to figure out the Rubik's cube on my desk. That's how I want to end every night; blissful and excited, sharing conversation and stories, and nuzzling somebody's shoulder.

Wear it out

2009-02-10T22:40:00.001-08:00

I want everyone to know that things are okay. That they were okay, they are okay, and they will continue to be okay. My mom was telling me about a patient she had the other day who was having so much more trouble functioning now that she'd been diagnosed with scoliosis. She was talking about her weekly visits to the chiropractor, who magically makes her back pain disappear, but only so long as she continues those weekly visits, and my mom sat there and listened. Then, she told the woman, "Just remember that you were operating and living your life just fine before you knew of this lifelong condition."

And this is something I think all people should consider. Like, before you had your boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, you were fine on your own. You'll continue to be fine. I don't know, maybe I'm just trying to ratify or justify the way people act, so as not to become completely misanthropic. I'm getting awfully close. Situations with my peers continue to get worse every day. But now, thanks to my mother, I can always see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Things were okay. Things are okay. Things will be okay.

Babe I already miss you

2009-02-07T22:41:00.001-08:00

I really, really miss New York. I can't even explain how bad I want to go out there, even if it means paying for it (somehow) myself, and actually take it all in this time. As some of you may recall, my mom and I took a trip to New York two summers ago as a sort of "Fuck it, dude, let's go bowling" kind of moment. She was going stir crazy. I just wanted to go somewhere cool, put another notch on my belt, and get my lip pierced. But the first few days we were there, I was a hurricane of unpleasant emotion. I was convinced that everyone in New York hated me. I was overcome by the unfailing smell of bum pee. And I had decided, because of a false sense of security, that I didn't need to go to college. So when my mom demanded we hoof the twenty or so blocks down to the NYU campus, I yawned and asked when we could go back to the hotel. If this same thing were to happen now, I think my reaction would be something more like a kid in the world's biggest Lego store, being handed a chocolate fudge sundae by a Power Ranger, and then getting to kick a Power Ranger in the nuts.

Being that I'm older and wiser, and more likely to cream myself if given the chance to go back into Strand bookstore, I think I'm getting closer to feeling the way my mom did when she decided we were off.

I'd like it to be summer, most of all. I'd like it to be summer, so I could go on hipster photo walks with my friend David, and hang out outside, and play shows in Elan's backyard, which is so holy perfect for backyard shows. I want to walk barefoot in grass to get the mail and ride my bike down to the Trax, though if all goes according to plan, I won't have to, thanks to the Utah Department of Motor Vehicles.

The newest addition to the Brighton C. Metz tools of art company is a beautiful Pentax camera given to me as an early birthday present. This may not mean anything to a lot of people, but the depth of field is uhh-mazing. I wish I would have had it for the last wedding I attended. I also wish I would have had it for the Boy of Bark/Tedronai Project/Birdmonster show at Kilby, the photo projects I was assigned in last year's digital photography class, and of course, New York City. I'm excited to continue carrying it on my hip forever and ever, until I can no longer afford film for it, or, more likely, I accidentally knock into something and the lens shatters.

When I brought it to my grandparents' house this weekend, my grandpa took a good look at it and announced that he once had one just like it, back in Vietnam. (My grandfather's a Vietnam veteran. One of the stories about it is that he went out for his tour, and upon his return, found that his super super awesome red convertible was sold by his mom's boyfriend.) But, he said, when he came back, there was a thin layer of fungus growing around the lens and made it difficult to take pictures. Just imagine that, will you? You dig out your camera from your war backpack to find green fuzz ringing your camera's lens. It sounds like the most artsy thing that could ever happen to photography.

Today's title is brought to you by Andy, who showed me this song by the Kooks. It's really sweet, really British, and it fits in a vague kind of way. Just lately, all the things that have happened lately have struck. My great-grandma is dead. We're playing the Avalon. I'm almost sixteen years old. Jonney and I are no longer. It all feels pretty surreal, I guess. And I'm ready to go back to Union Square.

Short, but sweet

2009-02-01T22:28:00.000-08:00

Fortunately, I was too quick to judge the situation last night. It was around eight o' clock when Andy called my cellphone and asked, "Are you in Layton?" He was very distressed, as he had tried calling my house and my phone and nobody picked up. But, he explained, he still very much wanted to come over if that was alright, and I wasn't, you know, twenty miles away.

When I first started spending more time with Andy, I worried that he would turn out nothing like what I thought, and in a way, he did. I had always thought he'd be a little bit of a huge jerk once you got to know him. But as it turns out, he's incredibly nice. I actually had to ask him to stop apologizing about the rocky past we've had.

I just thought I'd let everyone know: Andy Widener is not a dick.

Sad

2009-01-31T18:07:00.000-08:00

It's official, I'm the greatest sad-sack to have ever lived.

I'm currently sitting in the middle of my floor wearing a sombrero, looking at the time and deciding I've been stood up, and listening to Violet Hill by Coldplay. The only things I'm missing are a Chai tea, a big bowl of ice cream, and tears streaming down my face. This promises to be a poor weekend.

Because of an all-the-fucking-time-seriously workshop my mom's been enrolled in, I've had to spend all day with my dad. Tomorrow, too. This workshop goes from the asscrack of dawn to the vaginal twitch of night, and the whole time is spent trying not to go crazy when he does irritating little things like rearrange on the plate the cookies I've been making since four o' clock, or use our bathroom without flushing the toilet, or stand around doing nothing when the space he is taking up could be so more easily used for something.

I know that this sounds harsh, but I cannot stand being alone with my father for this long. My mother is an excellent mediator between the two of us. I've been able to go on weeklong trips with him, as long as she's there, too. And when she isn't, well... I'm about to jump out the window and flee to Wyoming. And there's not even toilets in Wyoming! (sorry, Wyoming)

And I'm stuck at home for the rest of the night. I subconsciously do this thing where I set a certain time limit for people before I give up on them. Andy's was 7:10, and he isn't here. So I've leapt to the conclusion that I've just been stood up, and I can now proceed to strip off all my clothes and climb into bed with all the lights off, where I will cry and play Violet Hill about six hundred more times.

I sometimes wonder what kind of person I'll be when I actually have responsibilities. When I lost my job, I walked fast with tears streaming down my face all the way to my friend's house, where I proceeded to get high. When my cat died, I couldn't sleep for a week, since I kept waking up to cry. And when it became painfully obvious that my dad had no real plans to help me buy a car, a vital key in the chance of my employment, as I live twenty miles away from anything good, I couldn't speak one word of it without choking up.

This isn't to say that I cry constantly. It actually takes a lot to get the waterworks going, and so I wonder how I'll even deal with these things that make me bawl when there's so much more pressure on them, and when I have nobody to back me up and love me unconditionally, no matter how stupid I look with red eyes. Will I come off too strong trying to hide my pain? Will I be even worse, sobbing when a file is accidentally deleted or I sneeze and make a mistake? Or will I live, and learn, and become a strong, independent woman who only cries at her grandfather's funeral, because he was more of a father to her than her real father?

Maybe then, I'll look back on this petite teenager with "Lighten Up!" written on her hand, and I'll thank the Goddess that I got over that phase.

With the lights out

2009-01-26T22:42:00.000-08:00

This is a list of things I would like to do before I die. I will not now, nor ever refer to this as my Bucket List.

1. See the Green Ray.

2. Mourn for Jim Morrison.

3. Find what I need.

4. Give a eulogy.

5. Play the Knitting Factory.

6. Get published.

7. See everyone naked.

8. Make amends.

9. Live in New York.

10. Go away for a very long while.

11. Have a lunch and then make a movie with Wes Anderson.

12. Live like it's yesterday.

Chapter 27

2009-01-25T10:24:00.000-08:00

So, after seven months, Jonney and I are sort of not dating and sort of single.

The day I met him was the day after I decided to pursue Andy further was hopeless. I thought to myself, "Hey, maybe I'll be single for a while. I don't need a boyfriend to survive. Andy can suck my big black cock." Those may have been exact words, I'm not quite sure. I was saying all this to Stahulak, late at night, probably staring out my window and secretly hoping to see cars and skaters pass by. My street was empty.

The next afternoon, I met Jonney, and things were never the same ever again. Being with Jonney has been one of the best things to ever happen to me. I never thought much about Andy, except when I saw him at school, waiting for Stephanie, and even then I didn't think about him much. But then, we started talking again. We were friends on MySpace. We talked on Messenger.

And I realized that I still care about Andy a lot more than I should. I care what he thinks of me, and whether he's dying from frustration because there is no keyboard part in Breaking the Law (warning: this video contains very thin bar bending, which may make you laugh way hard.) and he's supposed to come up with one, and I care if he's coming over to hang out. I do care, and that I can't deny.

Which made me realize that I don't just care about him, I still have feelings for him, and I never got over him. It all spells pain for Jonney.

I had to make a choice between hurting him now by saying we take a break, or hurting him forever by staying, Jonney always thinking that I'm just doing it for his sake. So we took a break. There's about ten million things I need to sort out right now, it isn't just Andy. I need to figure out what work I'll need to start doing in a few short months to get scholarships, and in almost a month, I need to find a job. But a large part of it is Andy.

So, I don't know what the future holds. I guess it'll all come down to a few days, weeks maybe, and how much drama can be generated by the now tentative friendship between Andy and I. There'll be endless talks about this and that and how it's all my fault. And maybe at the end of this, we'll all just forget our harsh words and join forces in order to fight the giant dragon, Xthuzilla, who will most definitely threaten the local community center that we all so dearly love.

Catcher in the rye

2009-01-24T14:01:00.001-08:00

I feel a little bit like I've been shot in the arm, or something. It's a weird state of numbness that isn't necessarily the end of the world, just kind of, sort of, almost. Jonney and I are taking a break from our relationship. The last time I said that to somebody, I was on the phone for hours listening to him cry. But this time, it was so abrupt. I walked away and couldn't believe it'd just happened.

I'm not sure what to say right now. Jonney's in a lot of pain because of me, and I never wanted that to happen. He's been my best friend for months, always been helpful, and a great boyfriend. For now, I need to sort my shit out and get a better grip on my life.

America's great erection

2009-01-21T18:04:00.000-08:00

Don't get me wrong, I am ecstatic for a new turn in American politics. I look out at the horizon and have a newfound faith in my country. My country, the country that elected a black president, the country that abolished slavery and rose from an ashy period of smoke and fog to become one of the greatest world powers, for a while.

But I think Stephen Colbert noticed it best when last night, his show aired clips of what seemed like every political reporter asking, "Did you think that you would live to see this day?" Now that we've accomplished a great feat for our society, we can't stop rubbing our dicks over it.

I'm proud of my country and proud of this major step we've taken, but had Obama been a white man, I still would have supported him. After we'd all watched the inauguration from our desks, one of my teachers asked a black kid in the class how his parents were feeling, since they were alive for the Civil Rights movement. The kid said the both of them were supporting Obama just because he was black.

I agree with Obama's politics. I think he's a great guy and that he'll set our country back on the right track, since we're putting around miles and miles off course. And I think it's great that we've elected a black president. But we need to focus. Now isn't the time to look back on what grand things we've done, it's the time to be proactive and pull our hands out of our pants.

How I solve a problem

2009-01-16T22:23:00.000-08:00

By ignoring it until it becomes a festered wound, and then everyone demands I fix it. There's been a conflict for many moons now between me and another girl at school. She thinks it's my fault, since I "started" it, but I think it's hers, since she's extended it far longer than it ever, ever needed to be.

Anyway, today I got so sick of it all that I just broke down and wrote a pretty serious note, which probably will go over poorly. I mean, either she'll take it seriously or she'll tear it up and eat it.

But the point is that I tried, and no nobody else can ever say I haven't done anything about it.

New notebook

2009-01-10T22:49:00.000-08:00

Whenever I get a new notebook, it comes with this sense of excitement, like this new notebook could totally rock my world, and I wouldn't even know. There's a specific kind I like, this red three subject composition book. When I'm rich, I'm going to buy about thirty of them and keep them on a special shelf so I never run out.

I try not to overdose on notebooks, though. I try to only get them when I need them. My new notebook was completely warranted, as my backpack has disappeared from my house and it'll never be found ever again, so the only paper I have is in a fat, embarrassing binder (I once thought writing pseudo-wise comments like "God is Dead!" all over the place was really cool) and in my History notebook, which is for History notes and not Samson & Goliath songs.

We had a show tonight at the Tea Grotto. Lately, we've had a trend of people not showing up, leaving early, or something along those lines. We invite tons of friends, who say they'll come, and then last minute they cancel, or they have work, something came up, whatever. It's really nerve-racking. You stare at the door and nobody is coming in. There's five people sitting around, you can't tell if you should wait until more people show up, or just start the show. This may be the only audience you'll have all night. I'm not complaining, because we do end up having a good time, and we usually end up with something in our pockets, but it really makes me question who my "true" friends are.

There are people who can't come, and there are people who don't come. Matty couldn't make it because he was working all night. Tiffany couldn't come because she was miles away from anywhere. But there are people who say they'll go and give no word as to why they didn't. Half of you wants to get mad at them, not talk to them, blame them for not coming. The other half of you knows you shouldn't. And so you smile and say it's okay that they didn't make it. And the show was good. And you tell them that you had a really awesome time.

I can't wait until I don't have to promote at all. When somebody else can print out flyers, call everybody they know, do everything that Elan and I have to do ourselves. I can't wait until it'll be us everyone goes to see without being told just how and when to get there.

In other words, yes, I'm super stoked to have my new notebook.

Interlude at one a.m.

2009-01-04T00:22:00.000-08:00

So it's late, I'm tired, and I'm kind of burnt out already on this whole writing thing. Three things on my mind that are clouding my judgment;

1. I think there should be an organization, something like Alcoholics Anonymous, but for writers, and instead of finding God in order to heal your writing, you'd have to do the opposite, and find the bottle. Maybe that's what my writing needs, more booze.

2. I saw Jonney today, finally he got back from Minnesota. We jubilantly greeted each other in the practice room at WMCA where I was packing up my guitar from a lesson. He swooped in, and I, in a harpy-type voice, screeched "I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU IN FOREVER!" Like we didn't already know that. He has a new guitar and a new haircut, and it was cute to see him with his sunburn, which was like a red and peeling neckbeard. I felt sorry for it. When I kissed his neck, I made sure not to kiss his sunbeard, for even the gentle touch of a kiss can bring horror to a burnt and pinkened skin.

3. Lastly, there is this YouTube video that my English teacher's darling wife (whom I think is way pretty and it makes me jealous) posted on her blog, and I feel the need to share it, since I will never ever get the chorus out of my head. I present to you, Werewolf Bar Mitzvah.

Feeling fluish

2009-01-03T10:40:00.000-08:00

Here in Utah, a cloud of disarray and illness and malcontent has draped itself over the land, like a funeral shroud or smallpox blanket. Half the teenage population has passed into either a sickness or a break-up, and man is it causing chaos. My best friend woke up yesterday covered in mysterious vomit, and it wasn't until seconds later that she realized that vomit was hers, as another bout of now-not-so-mysterious vomit washed over her like a cloud of disarray and illness and malcontent.

Another friend of mine, two friends of mine, actually, broke up. I have not stopped hearing about it. And I don't mind hearing about it, per se, but I wish that broken up people could just go somewhere where nobody is, like Page, Arizona, and just sort through it there. Because I've broken up before, and it's not a pretty sight. Inevitably, you get sick of feeling sorry for yourself, but much after everybody else does. I love my friends. But there's a certain point at which you can't help them, and they so very much want you to.

I've been to Page, Arizona. It's a pretty comforting place.

As for me, I feel fine. I've been working on a screenplay* that I (of course) hope will be made into a movie, all so I can then screen it at the Broadway theatre, and send out special invitations that read, "You Are Cordially Invited to a Special Film Screening of This Movie's Title, a film by Wes Anderson and Brighton C. Metz. Dinner and Cocktails will follow." It's not about getting the movie made, or getting the money for it, of which there is probably none. It's about rubbing this story in your faces.

*The byline of my masthead, I feel I should specify, is meant to be a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the Starbucks hipster screenwriter, perpetually finishing up his work, publicly, so it's obvious that he is in fact a screenwriter, a hipster, and a drinker of high quality coffee from various world locales. My screenplay isn't even sort of done yet.

It's new year's, let's be glad

2008-12-31T23:46:00.000-08:00

Goodbye, 2008. I'm compelled to do one of those internet meme/quizzes about the past year, and though I know I've done nothing but brief posts and unsatisfying teases, this should be at least slightly informative as to what this blog may have missed.

1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before?

That's a pretty hefty question. I lost some friends over something I hope never to have to deal with ever again. I began writing a screenplay. I met Jonney Machtig, and that was pretty life-changing. I played Kilby Court with someone who is now one of my best friends. I became somewhat of a rockstar, at least in some people's minds, or at least, I hope so.

2. What are your New Year's resolutions?

I want to get a flat stomach, finish some of the things I've started, and convince my father that yes, I really want a car, and sorry I can't get a job yet, I'm only fifteen, but I've tried.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

My English teacher's wife did. Their baby is the cutest thing I think I've ever seen. Ever.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

My great-grandma, and Paul Newman.

5. What countries did you visit?

None, but 2009 seems to be a promising year. Thanks to EF Tours, my mom and I are finally getting a real chance to see Europe, which is like... the coolest thing ever.

6. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

May 26, the day Samson & Goliath played Kilby.

August 6, the day Jonney and I had the most awesome date.

August 26, the day school started, and the day my mom and I were rear-ended. It was the first car accident I can remember.

7. What was your biggest accomplishment of the year?

Getting over myself and moving on. There were a lot of things I kept holding onto, even as they got more and more prickly and poisonous, like some kind of ticking hand-prickler.

8. What was your biggest failure?

Probably, the failure to prevent myself from doing some really stupid things. Also, failing Chemistry.

9. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Eh, sort of. There was that really bad cold I had, and then my whole tartar-buildup thing with my gums, which ended in me clipping the flapping, loose bit of gum under my left bottom tooth, using a nail clipper.

10. What was the best thing you bought?

I'm tempted to say these pants, but... probably the Greek food I bought with Jonney on our first date. I seriously bought a beefteki, this gyro with beef, white sauce, and tomatoes, and I really ate it in front of this guy I was trying to look good for. Plus I smelled like Bengay, so I mean... It's pretty much a miracle he even asked me out again.

11. Whose behavior merited celebration?

God, there's so many people. My mom. She put up with me (and still does) when really, nobody should. I yelled at her for pretty much no reason, and she's still my pal. Really, Jonney merits like, some big ticker tape parade, because there's some times when I'm not fun to be around. And Barack Obama's behavior, just because he kept his cool, and I like that. For me, it's less about politics, and more about how the politicians compose themselves. But whatever.

12. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

My own, a lot of the time. Also, well, some of my friends' behaviors. People in love do irrational things. People out of love do even worse. And there's Andy.

13. Where did most of your money go?

As always, to my belly. Half to my belly, half to clothes.

14. What did you get really, really excited about?

So many things! Pretty much every gig we played, especially the ones where we actually made money, instead of losing it.

15. What song will always remind you of 2008?

Play With Fire, by the Rolling Stones. It's off the Darjeeling Limited soundtrack. I just got it, but it's such a good song for this year.

16. Compared to last year, you are:

Smarter, less creeped out by kissing in movies and television, older, taller, trying to be thinner, more of a perv, but also less of a dick.

17. What do you wish you'd done more of?

Well, I mostly wish I'd taken more chances. I played it safe a lot of the time, and I wish I'd done more work. When I got fired, it really messed with me. Now I'm really scared to be involved in a small business situation, which is a really, really bad thing. But yes, I do wish I could have done more work.

18. What do you wish you'd done less of?

Listening to people argue, and thinking I could help people, change the way they felt, and what not.

19. How will you spend Christmas?

I already spent it, being surprised by the way my family comes through, ending up pretty happy. It was a good Christmas, but the lead-up was very poor.

20. Did you fall in love in 2008?

I should say I did.

21. How many one-night stands?

None, actually. Though I did have one particular night that was pretty freaky, on a scale of one to sex. Not freaky as in "getting it freaky," but it was confusing.

22. What was your favorite TV program?

A toss-up between Scrubs and Project Runway, of course!

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't this time last year?

I learned that hate's a really strong word. But yes, I most certainly do dislike people whom I trusted pretty heavily with friendship around this time last year.

Ten ways I'm an old man

2008-12-30T16:47:00.000-08:00

1. I love watching the warm, familiar re-runs of shows from my past.

2. Sometimes I misplace things that are right in front of me.

3. I call the dog a little fucker when he escapes, with absolutely no shame.

4. I'm as stubborn as a mule.

5. I sleep until the sun comes up.

6. I grumble about the damned Intra-nets not working.

7. My teeth are extremely sensitive.

8. What? What's that you say?

9. I don't like it when people talk too loud in restaurants.

10. That Janeane Garofalo, she's a pretty girl. Too bad.

Whoa, womanize-yo!

2008-12-27T23:07:00.000-08:00

There are a few songs that get undeniably stuck in my head, whether they're good or not, like Love Lockdown by Kanye West and Womanizer by Britney Spears. I often wonder if I'll ever have a super catchy dancebeat song. Would it be played on an iPod commercial? Would, then, the song become a major hit and end up performed by children for Kidz Bop 34?

I'm currently working on a trillion different writing projects, and so my blog suffers.

Jonney and I have a special Christmas day

2008-12-23T10:44:00.000-08:00

Tonight, I'm baking an apple pie for my family's Christmas celebration. Usually, on school breaks, I spend a good deal of time sleeping, taking depressing baths, and baking. I make more cookies than the dog could ever want. But tonight, I am only making one apple pie. The rest of the night will be spent whining that I'm bored and I miss Jonney.

He's flying out to Minneapolis on Saturday for nearly a week, and last night was the last time I'll see him until his joyous return on the second. It was a good last night. We went to Lugano, a local Italian restaurant, and had fine Italian dinner. After that, we all bundled up into snowboard pants and coats, big gloves and hats, extra layers of sleeves and scarves, and drove in the most giant truck to the sledding park.

The sledding park is a very large park in the middle of Salt Lake City with this huge hill that, as you stand at the foot of it, looks like a snow-covered Ayers Rock. By which I mean straight up. On the sides of the hill, there are slower descents which people climb up to get to the peak. I only sledded down twice, both times with Jonney securing me from falling off the sled, and both times off the small and slow descent. The small and slow descent which nonetheless went long and fast.

At one point, Jonney and I were down near the bottom and started veering towards a thicket. I screeched, "STEER!" and Jonney pulled the rope to make the sled stop, the both of us tumbling off, laughing hysterically. "Steer where?" He asked later, and I told him the thicket was about to envelop us into its brown, stickly arms. He could steer any which way and we would have been safe.

But we had a wonderful time, sledding with Jonney's mom and her boyfriend. We had hot chocolate and watched other people sled in the terrible round discs, sliding out and spinning round and round, and then watched Jonney repeatedly hike up the hill with his snowboard on his back all to ride down the hill for perhaps fifteen seconds. He wore no coat, only gloves and a hat. When we piled in to the most giant truck to go home, he held out his arm and said, "Look! Feel how hot I am!" He wasn't at all hot. He was a clammy sort of lukewarm, and so I rubbed it with my warm hands, and snuggled up to him.

Later, we decided that this was the worst kind of day to have before not seeing each other. We should have had a boring day, where saying goodbye was almost easy. But no, we had a great day, and now I miss him already.

There is a smaller world out there than I'd thought

2008-12-20T20:44:00.000-08:00

I was completely oblivious to the fact that there are other people with blogs that go to my school. Also, I'm trying to be somebody cool, but I'm just this weird guy massaging my tiny penis, looking out the window when you get out of your car.

Slump

2008-12-20T09:36:00.000-08:00

I have had not a stitch of December. Three posts, maybe, in this month, all because of the choking effect a Utah winter has on me. The cold and the snow wrap around a person and squeeze until you can't feel your toes, and you're sitting there on the bus like Uma Thurman in the Pussywagon.

Jonney and I went to a birthday party yesterday and had more fun than was expected. I had this video that I made in Editing class, a faux movie trailer for The Crucible, making it seem like an action/suspense thriller. When Felicia asked for short film submissions to be shown, I gave her the trailer, and we all watched it on a very very very big screen, half drunk on dancing and adrenaline. I laughed. I clapped. I almost fell into a coma on the car ride back home.

Christmas presents have been nothing but work and more work. I've made cookie and brownie bags for my friends, worked on paintings for family, and procrastinated by saying I'm out of things. I honestly don't know how adults go about living. I have no job and I still can't begin to get shit together. I've been depressed more frequently lately, but it's environmental, not a condition. It's taken me a long time to get to that from two, three years ago, when I absolutely was convinced I had something wrong with me, not some things wrong with my life. I still haven't gotten to a place where I can lift myself out. It's like I'm stuck in a snowbank, and the only thing I can do is wait for it to melt.

So, I'm in this spot of creative failure. Instead of waiting, I'm trying to just keep digging out.

Hook, line, but mostly sinker

2008-12-10T19:55:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure, but I think I may be the most depressed I've been in quite some time. Last night, I sunk to a new low, where even the sad story of Sylvia Plath couldn't cheer me up, where I fell asleep fast and woke up incredibly slow. I'm not sure how depressed I am since even today, I could be happy. I laughed at things. I did my assignments silently and diligently. But I've felt full-body weak for days now. It feels like a struggle just to keep my eyelids open sometimes. Last Friday, I took three naps in one day, even going as far as to fall asleep on Mitch's shoulder. I feel extremely sad, almost like I'm in mourning.

I told my mom I didn't at all want to go to school tomorrow. When she asked why, I sighed and said I just didn't want to. It was hard enough to wake up today, let alone put on clothes, and shoes, and try to put the night behind me. I told her I just need a breather. Really, I just want to stay in bed all day. I want to sleep when I'm tired and drink peppermint tea. And I want to not take the bus for three hours. I want to not feel lonely and not feel angry, and I want to not care.

My mood is nose-diving. It's been a very long time since I had to use the tag "depression," but today I must.

Assault

2008-12-09T18:25:00.000-08:00

The verbal assault happened for nearly thirty minutes. There I was, "doing my part" and riding the Utah light rail system, when this kid boarded at the stop near the Library. He looked familiar at first, so I shot him a few looks to see if I knew him or not. But he kept shooting looks back. I thought maybe he was just in the same situation. It was awkward because I usually look around the train, watching people, and I couldn't. I had to stare out the window, all to avoid the piercing eyes of this kid.

He finally asked me something, and being that it was extremely cold, I had two hoods on over a pair of Skullcandy headphones. I hate that, I hate when people talk to me even though I have headphones on. I had no idea the horror about to begin. He said something, so I partially moved one of the headphone ears. Usually this is a move which suggests to the speaker that I'm not in for a long conversation, that I have only temporarily set my things aside for them. And it's not that this kid was being rude. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

So he says something, which I didn't hear, but pretend I did, and I worried I'd have to answer his question, until I saw that there was no question. He just kept going on. On, and on some more. The bits and pieces I heard were about how he liked Skullcandy headphones (personally, I believe them to be the best) but hated the earbuds they manufacture, because they were sharp, or something. Luckily for me, this kid was a very! animated! talker. Unluckily, he was a very animated talker.

I thought maybe he wouldn't be too bad. Like most people talking on public transportation, they say something until it becomes obvious you don't have anything to say, and then they go back to their own little world. I sat there and chuckled when he tried to be funny. Tried to be funny, by which I mean he really and honestly imitated the Carlos Mencia "retard voice." This was when I knew I had thrown myself into the belly of a very unforgiving beast.

He talked, and talked. He talked about the various digital accessories he'd had, his broken Nintendo DS, his broken iPod. I half-heartedly listened, in case he asked something, and when he did, I'd answer as shortly as possible. I sometimes would say things in reply, things like "Oh, my dad's like that, too." I was hoping he would take the hint, but he didn't. While searching around for other things to distract me, a woman across the row gave me a very understanding smile. She was saying "I'm sorry. I know how that feels." And I smiled back, silently thinking help.

When it came time for me to leave the train, I was displeased to find that this, too, was his stop. Oh no, thought I, what if he has to take the same bus as me, too? Still I had the headphones on and could only sort of hear the kid's words, but when he said he was taking a different bus, I heard it loud and clear.

The real jewel in the crown came right before he left. He said he went to the same high school as Diantha does now, a charter academy in the City known for its slapdash style of teaching. I asked him if he knew her, a Diantha Gourdin. He said yes, was she tall and had long hair? I said no, she was not that at all, she was... well last I saw her, a redhead, um, about my height and kind of chubby. He said oh yes, her, doesn't she go by Rage now? And I said no, that's not her either. Then he said, oh you mean, oh! yes! yes, I know her! she's nice, I call her Chameleon hair, last year she had a ton of hair colors. But Diantha didn't go to that school last year, and I didn't want any more of the back-and-forth who and what, so I just nodded again and let him get on his bus.

I should have just done that from the start.

Secrets

2008-12-07T10:39:00.000-08:00

I often peruse the PostSecret website, reading the secrets of others. After I actually recognized a secret, having heard the poster talk about it at work, I thought maybe if it were that easy, that simple, I could have a secret posted, too. I only sent one in. And it wasn't posted. It probably wasn't good enough, I thought. But now, I have a secret I'm dying to tell and I'm afraid to send it in. What if my deepest and darkest secret isn't good enough for the world to read? Hmm.

(By the way, I have realized I should check my redesigns on a Windows system as well as a Mac, since the new design looks fucking awful on this computer. It will be fixed soon.)

It was the worst christmas ever

2008-12-05T17:20:00.000-08:00

It was three or four years ago that my mom proposed the idea I put up my own Christmas tree in my room. It's small and faux, and usually I put up a string of lights and only that. But this Christmas, being in the most holiday of moods, I crafted a popcorn and cranberry garland. It took me all night. I needled my finger more than once with a tip full of cranberry acid. And still, I got it to be ten whole feet long.

The plan was for Jonney to pick me up from school and together, we'd come back to my house and build some sort of baked good. Then, he'd help put up the tiny tree and we would decorate it as a team. But he got into a snare of trouble this morning, and now, I'm home worrying about him while I step carefully around my words. See, I will admit that I was mad when he said he couldn't pick me up from school. And I'll admit that I am mad he can't come to any of my family's holiday celebrations. And I told him that I would be mad if he couldn't help with the tree at all. Currently, I'm putting all that aside and just trying to care for him.

I've been in this situation before, being the silent caretaker, and I'm willing to get into that pinhole again for Jonney. I know he needs me right now. But I've thought a lot about the past and I feel I probably should talk about it, as sort of a Christmas present to myself.

Though she will say differently, I spent a great amount of personal emotion on Diantha. So much that to this day, I think about her nearly all the time, and wonder what would have happened had I once again said I was sorry and pretended I was the one who did the wrong. I imagine she would have stayed at the school. The turmoil of friendship now, the partnership, wouldn't be, and the drastic changes wouldn't have been made. I do sometimes miss her. I miss the dynamic she and I had for a long time.

But, I am glad that stress is over. I'm glad I no longer have to soothe her mental aches and pains, struggle for support on the many days she spent absent, and put up with her opinions about my life. No more do I have to hear that I'm a slut for having a boyfriend. Nor do I have to feel the guilt of dependence. I remember a Samson & Goliath show where Diantha dragged herself out of an ached stupor to attend, made a stink the entire time, and then later proclaimed that our new song was about her. To this day, I introduce the song by saying, "If you think this song is about you, you're wrong." (Side note: The person the song is about never attends any Samson & Goliath shows. Thus, the introduction.) I didn't feel guilty for pulling her out of bed, I felt guilty for thinking I needed her there.

I can say with more confidence than ever that losing Diantha as a friend has put me on my own track. I've grown up since I stopped feeling like I was nothing without her. Maybe I wouldn't have pursued things with Jonney, and maybe I wouldn't be as happy as I am today. I'm happy enough to pass on happiness to others. Happy enough to be filled with Christmas excitement. Happy enough to bake a delicious apple pie!

Thanks, for nothing

2008-11-28T22:02:00.000-08:00

I feel obligated to write some sort of synopsis on how Jonney's encounter with my family was. It went swimmingly. Nothing too ridiculous happened, though the way my family was trying to integrate everyone together was both difficult and confusing. The whole set-up was sort of awkward. Usually, after a sup of the gathered feast, the aunts and uncles and grandparents all came together and played cards, and then a second sup would be had. This time, there were no cards! There was no second sup!

Because of this, Jonney and I thought to find somewhere to pick up some greasy, but filling, cheeseburgers. And of course, everywhere was closed. We went back to his house unsatisfied.

If I must give thanks for anything, I give thanks for the fact that I have a boyfriend willing to take me out to Wendy's when the night grows long in the tooth. And I give thanks for the little rabbits on the "Storytime" title card in Monty Python's Flying Circus. I also give thanks for families and friends, and for band members willing to practice on Black Fridays. Hurray, for all sorts of things.

Next he cleans the gutters

2008-11-27T00:03:00.000-08:00

Today, Jonney's coming to my family's Thanksgiving Supstravaganza, and he's not at all nervous, though I am sweating a rocket. I'm nervous for him. What kind of terrible questions will he be asked? How many family members will ask him what his favorite band is? Oh, God, what if they ask how serious we are? Oh, man!

He's the first boyfriend to ever meet my extended family. Before this, I've never had this long of a commitment, enough to think that I should really bring them for a celebration. Jonney and I have now been together for almost seven months. We both agree that this seems outrageous. July feels like it was last month. And when I think of what we've done together, it's even more silly. We watch movies and play guitar. We're best friends who go to dinner. We're best friends who kiss a lot. We're best friends... with benefits?

It's been seven months, and today he'll go and meet the larger portion of my family. He'll join the ranks of my father and uncle, my grandfather and great-uncle, being asked to return for other gatherings and, later, asked to replace the screen doors, or to help sort out the compost heap by the tomatoes.

It actually warmed my heart to hear my mother group Jonney with the other male spouses. I fell into a coma and saw into a fantastic future, where Jonney would be expected to accompany me, and my grandma would ask, "Is Jonney at work?" when he didn't. Today, this fantastic future begins. I'm nervous as all Hell nonetheless, but at least if the situation turns sour, I have an escape plan in Jonney's big red Jeep.

In which I get sick of all the shit comments

2008-11-23T12:32:00.000-08:00

I'm not a famous blogger and I don't pretend to be. Is that what you wanted to hear? With a few exceptions, every comment I get is somebody criticizing me for this or that, and I've really gotten tired of it. I even enabled comment moderation so I could see beforehand the prick comments and not have them posted where somebody (because yes, I do believe somebody reads this, or else there wouldn't be any comments at all) can see them. I know that that's what you dick commenters want; attention.

By writing about this, I acknowledge your existence. I acknowledge that you are there and have been there, and I don't care that inevitably, you will read this and feel some semblance of importance. But mark my words, I will only publish comments I feel are valid, and the comment I received today I felt was valid, though the sender was definitely projecting a rude undertone.

I don't mind if I stop getting comments completely, as long as these childish and stupid comments stop. It's not funny, and you're not impressing anyone.

Video killed the radio star

2008-11-19T22:16:00.000-08:00

I have this thing about vlogging, or, as it's more commonly explained, video logging. It's not that I hate it, per se. It's that I'm a blogging (in itself an overused portmanteau) purist. Blogging was invented so as to publicly share thoughts. At least with web logging, there's a way to edit and draft.

I'm sure you all remember that Leave Britney Alone guy. That was vlogging at its worst, and I've seen some terrible things out there. This man was very upset that Britney Spears continues to be noticed acting stupid. He emotionally made his plea for us, by which I mean you, to stop poking fun at the tired old popstar with one vehement cry; "Leave Britney alone!" The world linked to this man and his video up and down to next Sunday, and by then he was an American icon. Promptly after that, he disappeared. Had his words been written, considered, and worked over and over again, perhaps we would have remembered him further. Perhaps the people of the future, in their uniform tunics and named after letters, would have heard of Leave Britney Alone guy and his writing would become the next Odyssey.

However, he didn't write it. He shouted it over the channels of Youtube.

I'm not insinuating that this man is a vlogger. In fact, I've come to the conclusion that he was just an angry man with a blonde wig, non-waterproof mascara, and a camcorder. But it's the philosophy of the thing. Anybody can vlog. Anybody with an iMac or a webcam can release stupid video after stupid video about how Girl McLastname is fat, or how George Bush is like, soooo dumb. Even worse, there's a whole section of pee-water pool in the blogiverse (I made that one up myself!) where the political bloggers lie, and do we really need them to be less articulate, less planned?

In my eyes, there is a clear-cut hierarchy of shared opinion. At the bottom is journaling. Next to that is vlogging. As the list progresses, there's things like blogging and electronic comments, letters to the Editor and essays written for humor or to be part of the New Yorker. But undoubtedly, undeniably, the top is reserved for This American Life.

My mom's been listening to This American Life forever. I can remember long drives home from my grandma's house to the tune of Ira Glass's voice, or the similar voices of other writers. I can remember why I started paying attention, David Sedaris. Always I have held in high regard the programming on This American Life. This is past essay writing. This is past radio announcing. This is the two being put together in what must be a rehearsal nightmare, and the stories of people like me, who have had strange and terrible experiences that are almost unbelievable.

My English teacher recommended I try to put together a recent tale for submission into This American Life. He asked if I'd heard of it, said it was good fun, and linked me to a playable archive of every episode. "Of course," I wanted to cry, "of course I've heard of it!" But unfortunately, I was alone in my bedroom, and nobody would have been there to hear my exclamations besides the lowly lamps and bedsheets, which I don't entirely trust.

However, my English teacher is well aware of this web log. He has past commented upon it in a great fit of anonymity. He has even mentioned it in class, saying, "I'm trying not to give Brighton something to write about." Since then, I have always been cautious of what I write, thinking to myself, What Would M.A.T. Think, And Does He Know That His Initials Are Ridiculously Similar To His First Name? I say this because, in writing this post tonight, I hoped he would read it, and know that I too have indulged in This American Life, without me having to play awkward teenager and say it aloud.

But mostly I had hoped he wouldn't think I was partial to all types of logging, not video, nor rainforest.

Razzle, dazzle

2008-11-13T19:14:00.000-08:00

Last time I saw a calendar, it was Monday. I can't believe how quickly time has flown by. I end up getting caught in essays, and math studies, songs for band, and talent show practice, and on top of that I'm trying to plummet through Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. By this point of the week, all I want to do is kind of crawl up into a ball and sleep for fourteen hours.

Tomorrow, I'm playing at my school's talent show. As most my friends know, I'm one-half of a two-person band called Samson & Goliath. We've written a stretch of darker songs lately. Darker songs that can't be played in school, because of the line, "Killed a man in Mississippi, killed a man in West Missouri, etc." Plus, I didn't think I could handle the thought of playing one of our own songs, songs that I've written lyrically, songs that my best pal Elan and I have stressed over, in front of the most judgmental people on the planet.

But I changed my mind.

All because of the Hipsters at my school. The ones who listen to Wilco and Why? and Battles, and wear cowboy boots, and play instruments like post-rock bands do. One of the hipsters, Cesar, (which is pronounced Caesar, and not Say-zar) asked me if I played any musical instruments while I was waiting for the bus. I said yes, guitar and vocals and I write lyrics too and I guess I sort of sing but not really well why do you ask. He told me he'd seen the flyers for my band up around the school, could he have a demo. I said yes, and brought it the next day.

I was terrified he'd hate it. And hipsters, they're the worst when it comes to music. They're extremely particular. But he said today that he liked it a lot, gave some other criticism, and was on his merry way.

Because of this, I now must prove to my high school that I can be better than that demo. While I love how the demo turned out, I think I can feel it deep inside that we could have done better. These were our first songs. I'd be lying, though, if I said I wasn't nervous about showing off fresh product in front of kids who really could care less what shade of blue my hair is now. I'm very nervous. I think they'll probably tear me apart. So either I have to be completely mediocre, or I have to pull the talent out of my ass, and razzle/dazzle.

It's official

2008-11-06T21:15:00.001-08:00

Jonney and I now legally qualify as a long-term couple, as tonight we have crossed all boundaries of personal respect and secrecy and spoken of our deepest of sins: pooping. We shared our stories of terrible pooping occasions and now, there is no way he can ever leave me, ever, or else I'll have to cut out his tongue to keep that horrible, horrible day between us.

Unorganized list of weekend events

2008-11-04T16:47:00.000-08:00

1. Drew peed in a tree.

2. Jonney Quinn, Elan, Drew and I together got in a 30 MPH car crash and a. survived, b. had no damage to either vehicle, c. went home laughing, and d. felt fucking invincible.

3. We finished the demo, Hello by Samson & Goliath. Hear some songs by clicking on this.

4. Celebratory pizza and Italian cheese bread at Little Caesar's.

5. Jonney and I saw Changeling. It was good.

6. All my friends went, and got incredibly drunk.

7. My boyfriend went, and got deaf.

8. I had my first Big Mac.

9. It rained, and snowed, and snowed A LOT, and rained.

10. I hate Utah winter.

How Halloween was, and sleepwalking

2008-11-01T00:26:00.000-07:00

This is sleep-blogging. This is me trying to compose what I'm thinking and, in return, typing with my eyes closed. It's like the new mothers who blog one-handed. This week was the baby I birthed, and now I can only close my eyes and pray for sleep to take me before I have to write more. And more. And more. I will not end this nicely.

Today, Jonney Quinn (medicine woman) lost his hearing for a full half-hour. I cried in the bathroom while he just laughed and played guitar. He compared that to playing an electric keyboard with the sound off. I compared it to drawing blind, by which I don't mean contour. Samson & Goliath was in the middle of a show when it happened. He was doing guitar tech work for us when we looked over and saw that he was holding either side of his head and muttering. Emphatically, he said that he could not hear.

Jonney has fucked up hearing as it is, but he made it clear that he could not even hear from his good ear. He quickly left the building to see what the fuck it was that was wrong and returned with nothing. We concluded the show, and everybody mouthed to Jonney that that sucked, they were sorry, is he going to be okay, really sorry. I mouthed to him that I had to pee and then went to sputter in the bathroom.

The hearing came back, though. It came back violently. He described it as someone sticking a needle into his ear and then yanking it around. And we talked about how weird and tragic it was to not be able to hear anything. This is something I can't even imagine. If I lost my sight, I'd never get over it. Jonney was okay with the whole thing. Faced with the same situation, though, I would have probably killed myself. Everything I do is with my eyes, everything he does is with his ears.

Jonney and I spent a lot of time after that lying down and playing with each other's hair, sort of awkwardly savoring the sensory attributes of the other. Before the show, we had spent time doing much of the same, but we left that to pick up Brighton's First Big Mac, which was surprisingly delicious. Still, I don't plan on getting many more than the first.

The Samson & Goliath show itself was a roller coaster. Guitar trouble caused the entire show to be delayed. Instead of taking twenty minutes, the first act took an hour. By the time we went onstage, half the crowd had gone to their parties and engagements and we were playing to a select few, most of whom weren't even listening anyway. It was a huge departure from the normal thick crowd of our close friends who gather near to us and our microphones and listen and comment on our silly jokes. We felt less ready than (probably) ever before, but we still had a metric ton of fun.

We each made four! whole! dollars!

Mousy molly

2008-10-26T19:25:00.000-07:00

After a long hiatus from the land of cropped bangs, I have triumphantly returned. I know this sounds like a strange way to start a blog post. HEY WORLD, GUESS WHAT HAPPENED TO MY HAIR! It's a funny story. I was playing with Jonney Quinn's lighter, a Zippo, and forgot that fire comes out of lighters. And when you put fire near to flammable things, the fire spreads and does this weird thing called singing your low-hanging side bangs. The damage was hardly noticeable, but I took this as a sign. The fates have had enough of my hairstyle.

So tonight I put on Arcade Fire, and chopped off those stylish bangs. Now my bangs rise above my eyebrows and I feel that this is an irony, as just today I was too shy to sing in front of my family.

Have I ever mentioned before how much I am my grandfather's daughter? He and I are more similar than me and my dad. We're both artists and both introverts, and while he's a little whack in the head because of the War, I'm a little whack in the head from the War at Home, which I wish weren't a cliche, or else that phrase would seem really creative. We both get angry in a quick instant, from whence there is no return.

I mention this because I can always count on my grandpa to be on my team. When I was being pressured to sing today, I couldn't get the message through that I didn't want to. That I didn't feel like it (my anxieties rearing their pale faces). No matter what I said, the chorus of "please"s rose higher and higher. Finally, my grandpa said, "It's okay. She doesn't have her amplifier." Silently, I thanked the great divine being who decided that I could have somebody in the family looking out for me from, well, the rest of the family.

Whom I love very much. I love my family very much. But they're just so zany!!! Someone ought to turn this into a wacky ABC sitcom!

Sad man in a sombrero

2008-10-20T18:59:00.000-07:00

Today has probably been the worst day of this year. And I've had some bad days. Today is one of the days where I wish I could crawl into a small and dark hole, go to sleep, and maybe never wake up. At least, not for a long time. Finally I'm at home. Finally I can take off my shoes and put on the pajama pants with no shape and if I wanted to, cry.

I'm sick of people being mad at me, for one. It seems like there's always going to be somebody who thinks I've wronged them, and I thought I was a big enough person that I could just let it be. I guess I'm not that mature yet. Hmm. From the get-go I've understood that you can't please everyone all of the time. I came to terms with that and still wanted to be in the public eye for a career. But there's a difference. When unknown public egos call you dumb, or ugly, it stings less because they aren't trusted friends. When trusted friends call you dumb and ugly, it's like stepping on an angry hornet.

As a side note, I have the worst confidence. My intellect is one of the only things I'm confident in. I know I may not be the best guitarist, but at least I can think in enough of a stream to author this blog. I don't find myself at all pretty, but hey, at least I can probably weasel my way into some kind of college. Jonney's the one who's constantly trying to get me to renounce the church of self-depreciation. It's like a drug, though. Once you pop, you can't stop. Or is that Pringles? Same thing, really.

Anyway, I'm also sick of exerting myself. I'm sick of putting so much into so little to get nothing. I had a really bad day at guitar/band and really, the only good part was during the song I've been considering my last. I've worked on that song off-and-on for almost a year. That was the good part, that I didn't blow that to pieces. Other little things were what took me down. A bad day got worse, and it finally caught up to me.

Like everyone says, I'm done with the drama. It's so dramatic. Fuck, it's only high school. It's not the end of the world. And it's not like any of this is going to matter once we've all gone separate ways, and I am far from here, which I will be, unless my legs and arms are cut off (with my luck, a great possibility). I realized that Diantha was the literal Krazy glue that kept us all together. Now she's missing and all this pair loyalty has arisen. C and R never leave each other's side, M and C are actually related, B group-hops and always had, and M and J are all buddy buddy while they make fun of things just to show they can.

And they wonder why I run off at lunch to go joke with my soon-to-be History teacher. GAWD.

The worst part of all of it, I'd say, is just that I like all of them. They're all friends of mine and that's why this sucks. I had the worst day today, and now I'm lying hungry and alone in my bed. Topping the list of things I want to do: Hug somebody, anybody, who won't let go first no matter how long the hug has lasted.

Jumping the shark

2008-10-17T23:58:00.000-07:00

I have a side project called Ratfink, which is my simple and innocent escape from the rhythm of Samson & Goliath. I love S&G. I love it with all my dear little heart. But I now have something I can do from the comfort of my own desk chair when the idea strikes. It feels a little unsteady, though. Who knows how long this crap will last? Anyway, this is my way of promoting it. You can visit the "official" MySpace page by clicking anywhere on this sentence. When I write music for Ratfink, I feel like the kind of artist who walks barefoot over Oriental rugs in a small studio apartment. I feel like I live somewhere like Michigan. I feel like I have long black hair and short bangs, and maybe a name like Meredith Stalley. Hmm.

Because I can and will and you can't stop me meh

2008-10-13T15:15:00.001-07:00

I go to a charter school, where rules are lax and teachers go by their first names. This makes for a more friendly environment (which in my partial mindset I honestly tried to spell "enviurnmint") and makes it easier to be friends with your teachers. Like my soon-to-be history teacher, who officially qualifies as my bro. And my screenwriting teacher, who offers knucks to everybody. And also, my English teacher, to whom I have confided my darkest secret; this blog.

My English teacher also happens to know how dedicated I am to writing and literature in general, because it's obvious that I am one of those anomalies of people who actually cares. It's probably because I have on opinion on why I don't like Walt Whitman. It also could be that I asked when we would start writing essays again. Or hey, maybe it's the fact that I keep this blog. Which he very well may be reading right. now.

Today, in class, whilst being side-tracked, I was writing a song for my side-project and side-listening to my English teacher make an offhand comment about an Emperor. A naked Emperor. It's the story of the Emperor's new clothes (which aren't really clothes at all), and after a confused silence, one of the students asked what the hell he was talking about.

He went on a tangent, stopped, then said to the entire class, "I'm trying to give Brighton absolutely nothing to write about."

And look, I wrote about it anyway! I'm such a rebel!

Reasons

2008-10-11T23:58:00.000-07:00

He puts on Supertramp from time to time. Yeah, that Supertramp.

His face is covered in battle scars. "From the time I got stabbed with a pair of scissors."

He makes me want to live out that Corinne Bailey Rae music video.

He says things like, "Wake me up in seven minutes." Like I'm going to know when that is.

He has the eyebrows of a Russian tsar.

His teeth are fake, and he points this out.

He watches Raiders of the Lost Ark with me and doesn't care when I shout "WHAT."

He bought my favorite Hot Topic employee a cup of coffee just because he was tired.

He asks questions, answers them, and asks again. "Do I have a dollar? Yeah. Wait... do I? Yes."

He puts his hand on my knee when we go driving.

He's coming to our family's Thanksgiving.

He has a scar on his neck from getting shot bare with a paintball.

He lets me talk about this blog as if it were an acceptable means of self-expression.

He laughs loud and hard.

He's going deaf just like Beethoven did, but faster.

He talks like Skwisgaar Skwigelf when he says "I love you."

He can frustrate me.

He can depress me.

But he makes me smile, and he makes me laugh, and he makes me want to wake up to those thick eyebrows and those porcelain teeth and his scars upon scars, and it gives me hope for the future.

Across the pond

2008-10-08T22:11:00.000-07:00

Currently, I'm in the midst of the world's worst period, or close, but no cigar. I can faithfully say that I today have gone through five tampons, where as any other day I would go through just two or three. I look at this as Divinity punishing me. Punishing me, for wanting with every fiber of my being to be pregnant. But I don't especially feel like talking about that. Not when there is such! good! news! to be spoken of instead!

Good sir the Internet, who has two thumbs, speaks pidgeon French, and is going on an Educational tour of Europe with two of my favorite people? C'est moi!

It may be premature to talk about this trip, since we depart in the middle of July and last I checked, it was October, but I have to talk about this now. If I don't, I'll have to face the bitter revenge of trying to get excited. I mean, come on. Right now all I can think about is how fun it'll be to fly on a plane again. (I still love flying, despite the binding hold airport security clenches on air travel.) Also, luggage. I get excited about packing.

We'll be touring through Spain, France, and Italy. It's in part with a lovely group. Unfortunately, though, I have to look for companies who will sponsor me in this endeavor. As an artist, I'm pessimistic. As the author of a weblog, I'm looking up. I'll soon be figuring out how I could perhaps start a donations section, probably once we actually get our sponsorship savings account set up, and then I can pull in a few quarters or two.

I'll also be holding an art show, though that is especially premature to talk about. What we've imagined is a Spanish style setting, with Spanish food and flamenco guitar performed by mon cher, while I traipse around in a black dress and yellow pumps trying to convince people that my traditional pencil portraits are worth sending to Europe. For variety, you (assuming that you yourself will be there, arbitrary person) will also be able to scan through my abstract work and stencil work, hooray! This is one of the things I'm most nervous about.

I have never been over the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, I've never been technically out of the United States. My mom and I both are super ecstatic about this. It soon will become the focus of every thought in my head. I'll eat, drink, sleep Europe. I'll take Europe baths and burp up Europe after slurping my Europe soup. I'll dress Europe when it's dark and Europe outside.

So this is pretty big. Like all the other bloggers out there, I'll be able to finally add a touch of class to this cesspool I call a website. I guess now I'm legally required to buy a Nikon, have a precocious toddler, and drink coffee and be depressed sometimes and be writing a bunch of projects all at once and oh wait I already do a lot of that stuff.

Brainwashing

2008-10-05T12:19:00.000-07:00

I tried to visit the legendary Pussy Ranch (Diablo Cody's blog) today, and instead was lead to some webpage, which, I quote, "teach[es] you to enjoy a newfound relationship with the Lord and how to find freedom from sexual impurity." Seriously, if you go to pussyranch.net, you must be addicted to pornography, and therefore must need help from the Lord. Nice job, Internet. Nice job.

(For the record, I haven't been writing in as much length as usual because of a health concern, which I may end up writing about, or I may not. Apologies, but hey, at least I can still gather my waistskirts and talk about a gay-ass Christian website.)

Readathon

2008-10-01T16:28:00.000-07:00

Today we had a study in silence, a day of sedentary thought, a readathon. This was the most strict readathon in which I've ever participated. There was no pizza, or root beer. There was no music, or laptops. My English teacher meant business by this readathon.

Tangent; my English teacher is an astounding man. He recently had a baby with his beautiful wife, but even before that he was the kind of person one would want to make a documentary about. Instead of reading, say, a book of Ralph Waldo Emerson's work, he was reading a religious (eastern religion, not, um, the more popular one in Utah) text. A few times, my friends and I looked up to find him rocking back and forth or actually standing in yoga positions. My English teacher is like, totally awesome.

The rules of the readathon were very specific. No talking or sleeping was allowed, and because it was an exercise in discipline, only one emergency hall pass would be given. My friend Markie and I were about to explode, we had to pee so bad. It was a dash to the door once we recessed for lunch.

My English teacher had said that he wanted to launch us all into a meditative state by keeping us quiet. Like, a meditative state of self-inquiry, and that silent feel that usually comes over a person at the end of a silent night. I don't know about anybody else, but I definitely started feeling the effects by the end of the first half. It was a sort of clenching feel that I've had before, like I was out of words to say, or like I had come out of a long sleep. And then we had lunch, and I had to force myself back into the social grind. After that, it was right back to the reading.

Henry David Thoreau built a house in the middle of a park. It was there that he wrote Walden; Life in the Woods. He lived in his small cabin for two years and two months, in the eighteenth century, when most music was imagined or played by somebody else on the grand piano in the parlor. He lived alone, so even when he would break from his thoughts to eat a lunch, presumably of lake fish and cabbage, he was still alone with those same thoughts. And Walden is a book of postulates. In between flipping through encyclopedias and specialty non-fictions, Thoreau sat on his bed and rubbed his eyes. "You think too much," he thought to himself.

Or else, I like to think so.

Seventeen years ago today

2008-09-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

This boy was born. Happy birthday, Poncho.

Harlequin

2008-09-28T11:52:00.000-07:00

There's nothing I especially want to "get off my chest." There aren't any really funny stories I can tell. I'm feeling particularly burned out this week. So what can I do instead of my homework, a compelling blog entry, and anything productive? I can dick around on my miniature accordion. Expect a post tomorrow commemorating Jonathan Machtig's seventeenth birthday.

Filing a formal complaint

2008-09-21T10:05:00.000-07:00

Jonney has one of those voicemail messages that go, "Hello?" and then an interminable space wherein a person might say "Oh, hey! I had a que-" "Yeah, this is a voicemail." GOD DAMN IT. I hate those kind of messages. But even more than the intentionally misleading, I hate the voicemail recordings that say, "Hi, this is Matt," and then a pause just barely long enough to say "He-" before the real message kicks in. Nothing in this world makes me feel like more of an idiot, and I say this to you from my underwear, a big chair, unshaved legs, and the movie Beerfest.

You've got to wonder why that kid's still dating me.

Oh, that's right, it's because I don't have a misleading voicemail message.

It rocked me like a hurricane

2008-09-20T17:18:00.000-07:00

I guess I should be eating the harsh words I've said about people who give up blogging. One of the ticks on my blogroll came back on the fifteenth and oh, how I missed her. Oh, how she missed us. That's what blogging is, you know, some kind of communal clusterfuck of a love-hate relationship. When the readers are cruel, so are the writers. And so forth.

But I should be eating my words because I have come to realize in this past week how hard it can be to keep writing. . I'm one of those people, the people who likes to just write and write and write some more. I let myself get swamped, though, and I have to admit that I don't know if that'll stay the case for the next period of time.

Usually, at my school, the workload is very light, which remains true. There just isn't much homework to go around, and so usually, I have the hutspa, the moxie, if you will, to keep up this blog. And I'm sure you're all so glad of that, that I'm still here to tell you when I poop and what my breath smells like. My communal clusterfuck is all up in that shit. (a phrase on which you can quote me.) I have all the time in the world, usually, to tell stories about a five-foot-eleven hippie, and write playful songs about camping, and mess with font after font after font.

I hate to play the blame game, but it's totally my screenwriting teacher's fault. This screenplay I've been writing, based on The Dharma Bums, is taking a lot of that old writing jazz out of me. Instead, I've been pumping out short poems like:

"i wrote a letter to him but he didn't write back
weeks past oh well"

This is also my English teacher's fault, because we've hit the ground running by reading poetry, as the curriculum dictates. (as a side note, certain people in my class should stop complaining about the duration of the poetry study. It has nothing to do with my teacher or his teaching. But those people should just stop complaining anyway. Good Christ.) First it was Emily Dickinson and then Walt Whitman, two writers who I've never been particularly fond of, but accidentally weaseled their way into the writing of my own personal poetry. Damn you, Literature!

In between having to method act my way into knowing the Dharma Bum characters, writing poetry so oddly modeled after the dead poets, and waking up disoriented on the bus home, it would seem that my regular blog posting has suffered. I'm sorry, blog. I know I've done you wrong and I promise to make it up to you somehow.

10 things I hate about you

2008-09-15T19:33:00.000-07:00

So Jonney and I were sitting in his car, in the middle of a K-Mart parking lot, where he was instructing to me how to drive a manual transmission. "Push the clutch all the way down," He said. I pushed the clutch all the way down. "Now lightly press on the gas," He said. I took it up to about a four on the RPM gauge, which, if I heard correctly, goes in thousands. "No, lighter," He said. Withdraw! "A little bit more," He said. Press! And so it went for what seemed like forever until finally we settled on a peaceful hum. Then he put it in neutral and away we went, and I started screeching, "OH! OH! OH! OH!"

You see, for me, driving is an adventure that involves a lot of shifting, bending, and shrieking. The shifting because everyone I know drives manual. The bending because I'm too short to drive most cars. And the shrieking, because I don't like it when I'm not just a natural at something.

Then we drove to a church parking lot, and I actually took control. I later told Jonney that it seemed like we were going really fast. He chuckled. We were going about twelve miles an hour.

Updike was a travelin' man

2008-09-13T19:19:00.000-07:00

I still feel like I need an overhaul. Which is a bit hard to come by when you're turning into a real person anyway. Yeah, that's right, I'm getting my student I.D. soon, and soon after that (like hopefully the same day) I'll be going to go stand in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles for one million hours and get my permit. Do I honestly need a permit to be able to learn something? It's not a license, it's an excuse. Like some cop will pull me over for weaving when I try unsuccessfully to shift gears, and I'll just hold that up. Like that would somehow exempt me from paying a ticket.

But I've decided that I'm going to gauge my ears. I had to find some way to fit in at my school. As a side note, it's unfortunate that I go to a school for misfits, because the only way you can nonconform is by dressing up in your Hollister best or wearing a Jonas Brothers sweatshirt. Ironically, of course. Everyone smokes, everyone has gauges, and the chances of that girl actually having her natural hair color are about as likely as finding someone who's aggressively LDS. Who has two thumbs, speaks French, and has her natural hair color? C'est moi. I'm not going to do them big, not like That Eric Guy, or Austin McNeckBeard, or Tage And His Gauges, all nicknames I call them only in reference. I am, however, going to go bigger than those retarded spikes simply everyone has.

Maybe I'm going through piercing withdrawal. Ever since losing my labret, I've just felt... -sob- different. I know this post is hilariously uncharacteristic, and for that I apologize. I've just finished looking through this one girl's amazing pictures on flickr. If you look through them, too, you'll realize why I'm taking on ounces of her persona. She's one of those people you want to be, or at least dress like.

This is why I feel like I need a change. I should probably start breaking away from my form of wearing a band shirt, cuffed pants, and Chuck Taylors. But I'll always be a day late, and a dollar short. I've always found myself to be the kind of person who relies on the kindness of others. Jonney bought me a knit hat that would be perfect if I had dreadlocks. Everyone at school has at least a quarter paid off into this belly.

It's a problem.

I could either get a job or tell my mom's budget to go fuck itself. That's what sucks about being middle-class. We have the title of class, but the dollar amounts of people working in factory facilities. I'm reluctant to put that out into the ether. How embarrassing it is to gaze longingly into stores like American Apparel and, even worse, Urban Outfitters, knowing that I would use those flannel shirts for something better than anybody else. I would make it more unique than anyone could ever imagine!

Really, though? I look at the aspects of my future self and wonder if anything is going to be that unique about me. An art school graduate, with a blog, a graphic designer, driving a band van and playing acoustic guitar with a partner. And I just had to decide to get gauges! Oh, rattlesnakes!

Pathos

2008-09-10T20:21:00.000-07:00

They say opposites attract, which is half of the time true, and half of the time bullshit. In mine and Jonney's case, it's bullshit, because we have a splattering of similarities. Most of those are things like, "You like Iron Maiden? I like Iron Maiden, too! That's so metal!" and "Wait, you knew about that? Awesome!" But today, we let fly the floodgates and discovered that we both have a great number of neuroses. He can't stand people talking to him when he's working. I hate a waste of dishwasher space, meaning tupperware in the goddamn dishwasher, which we both decided was something incredibly unforgivable. Tupperware is easily hand-washed.

We discussed the idea of a clean space, a sort of oasis amongst even the most chaotic of places. His is the station where he records projects. Mine is a nine-by-eleven space on my desk.

And time passed, and then I realized we'd been talking for close on an hour, sitting on his back porch in the twilight. Things fly by so fast when I'm with Jonney that I think I just ought to never leave his house, ever. I could sleep in his big comfy bed. I said to him today, "You know what I want to do? Taco Bell." Where did we go? Taco Bell. I am in love with someone who will make Taco Bell trips with me, and refuse to get the food that won't give him a nosebleed. I said, "Maybe instead you should get like, the beans with cheese, or the fiesta potatoes." And he said no. He said no, and it was so cute. Then his nose started bleeding, and it was just as cute. Then I saw a video of him and his paintball team at work, and it was about as cute as a video of your fiancee eating cake as a child.

More importantly, though, I've been getting depressed like clockwork every third period. Like clockwork, I feel worthless and unimportant, and I go through the motions of writing assignments for Matt Thomas, trying to insert some kind of humor or little idiosyncrasy to preserve my uniqueness. But at least knowing that the strange and inane things that I do are a scrap of joy to Jonney, well, that makes it at least a little okay.

As long as he's cool with me making the bed three times a day, I'm cool with him power-slamming the microwave shut, and wearing a path in the kitchen floor from his pacing.

Lake effect kid

2008-09-07T20:30:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of plans for the future. Most of them are irrational, will be hard to accomplish, and brutal. But there are some plans that just are and have such flow in their being that I don't worry about them at all. The songs that are currently running through my head are Sistinas, Run to the Hills, Souvenirs, and Sweet Talk. Coincidence? I'm not in the mood to write tonight, but I just got a typewriter, and there's a lot of stories in this world. Let me embrace all your foolish flaws.

Morning, glory

2008-09-05T18:50:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I write to get the willies out. Sometimes I write to impress people. Other times, I write because I have an assignment due, because I am bored, or because I am trying to calm myself. I have done one of each today. I've written the outline of a screenplay, written poems for and about people in class... and I've written to try and quell the fears that even now are swashing up in my belly and making me feel very sick. This, however, is not one of those fears I can broadcast to the Internet. It's not a fear of spiders, for instance. A fear of spiders (which I do happen to have) would be appropriate to talk about over the Internet. What's up with them crazy arachnids, huh? Huh!?

Unfortunately, right now I feel like if I don't exercise a very strong will, my dinner might make a comeback all over this dingy white keyboard. I don't mind dirt. Stomach acid and bits of potatoes, I do.

Also unfortunately, I can't... stop... coughing. I took Dorothy out for a spin to conquer this daunting hill, my white whale, and I'm proud to admit that I have ascended the hill, but was a complete fool. I failed to calculate that after coasting past my house, I would have to ride back over the slighter hill up to my house from the street beneath it. I'm used to riding a mountain bike. I also failed to calculate how difficult it is for me to scale molehills, at any gear, on my dear road bike.

Fast forward ten minutes or so, and there I was lying face-flat on my bed with my heart thundering against my chest, legs, and forehead. I sounded like I was dying, literally. This is so totally uncool. I've said it once, I'll say it again. I feel like I'm going to vomit. The problem with this problem is that I can't tell if it's because of my foolish riding plan, or if it's because of some underlying condition that is forcing my stomach to swash about. Either way, I am unhappy. I am very unhappy.

Tonight, I am writing to get the willies out. To condemn my tummy and commend my bike for successfully kicking my ass once more. Tonight, I am writing because I feel very lost, very confused, and very, very frightened. One never knows what the future holds.

Political science

2008-09-03T20:09:00.000-07:00

I love Jonney, like, far too much. Today he and I had been sitting on his floor and we launched into a thick conversation about politics, the economy, and Barack Obama. We had this conversation because Jonney called me a Communist. He called me a Communist because I refuse to accept Wall-E into my world. Because it's a goddamn robot who can't talk.

"I'm a dialogue snob. Dialogue is important to me."

"There is dialogue, just between the fatass humans of Earth."

"So?"

"Well so the dialogue-less portion is only like thirty minutes long."

"To be honest with you, that's thirty minutes too much."

When we went to the video store to pick up some slapstick comedies, we looked about for a few minutes before finding the Onion Movie. Seriously, there's a movie about the Onion, and nobody told me.

Side note: When I was thinking of financial or workforce options to pursue while schooling in New York (fingers crossed) I realized that I could push to get an internship at the Onion. Maybe if I held onto the internship for long enough, I could even get a job there. Long hours at school, long hours at work, and deadlines abound. What doesn't sound like a fantasy in that?

I explained to Jonney my endearment to the Onion and we took the movie home. Not only was it awesome and hilarious, but I got to spend a full hour wrapped in his Lake-tanned arms, resting my head on his surprisingly sublime chest. Sometimes I'll have moments where I snap out of myself and realize just how much I love this guy. Moments where my fluttery soul patters up the wall and looks down at this couple on a sage-colored couch. I'm really, truly glad I met Jonney. Yeah, okay, pack of separate blogs all kept by Diantha, I say that about a lot of people. But those people aren't like Jonney. They don't pick me up from school and tousle my hair.

So finally, I've found someone else who agrees that while Obama can't change the world, he can guide America back to its former glory, and someone who would lay in bed with me on Sunday mornings watching the cooking shows. Okay, world, now I just need some good vegetarian recipes.

Change is in the air

2008-09-01T11:56:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a huge risk here by changing both my blog's name and domain, but it's done, and I'm keeping it. I meant to make this change for about a week now. In Zen Buddhism, a Bodhisattva means the "heroic-minded one of enlightenment." From Wikipedia, "The term Bodhisattva was used by the Buddha in the Pali Canon to refer to himself both in his previous lives and as a young man in his current life, prior to his enlightenment, in the period during which he was working towards his own liberation." And my good sir Internet, I do believe it's true that I have experienced an enlightenment. So welcome to the new administration.

Not just a bike, some sort of self-assurance

2008-08-30T22:25:00.000-07:00

You all remember that bike I was telling you about? The one that I found in my grandparents' basement in a total moment of God's Golden Glory? The one that I had big dreams about, the same way I find a new hat or a van and think of all the beautiful things I could do in them? That bike was scrubbed clean and pumped full, and then it was presented before me.

As beautiful as she was in the basement, she sparkled in the midday sun when my grandpa set it down on the concrete. She's cherry red with Benotto tape on the drop handles. I clambered on and shoved off and then it was like... it was like reading for the first time. Like finally recognizing the words without having to sound them out. I was shaky, since the bike was much thinner than any other bike I've ridden, but oh. Oh. Oh, it was love.

I had to bid her goodbye for the weekend and came back home to see her shining face in the garage. I was itching to take her for a spin, like meth addict itching, and then it started raining as if God himself were pouring out the bathtub in the clouds.

It rained because that bike belonged to God. God bought that bike in 1982 for Jesus to ride and when Jesus complained about it being a girl's bike, God sent it down to the basement never to be found again, until I noticed her out of the corner of my eye as the most beautiful bike on the planet. I named her Dorothy, she makes me want to actually get off my ass once in a while.

Her baby died, and she doesn't mean me

2008-08-28T18:11:00.000-07:00

I was talking to Andy about relationships. Life is like a dank forest, and being in a relationship is like being in the dank forest with somebody who has something to offer, like maybe a global positioning system or some wet naps. But then, that person decides they want to take their hike somewhere else. They leave and take their global positioning system with them, and then you're kind of just stuck in this dank forest, alone, with no idea what the shit you're going to do. You know there's that one point after a break up when you literally feel like you're just groping in the dark and stumbling, stumbling, stumbling. But out of that maybe you run into somebody else who's got a flashlight and plenty of canned milk, and they invite you to come along with them on a magical journey.

You can't disagree with me on this one.

I got into a car accident with my mom on the first day of school. Today we found out that our car is indeed totaled, although we could totally tell as we pulled it over to the side of the road that our poor little baby was dying. Quickly. The way it scraped, the way it couldn't accelerate, all signs of an absence of life. Now we have to get a new car and, as I type this, my dad's kind of being a dick about it. Saying how we don't have any money (we don't) and we'll have to "pre-screen" the sellers (we don't) and sounding as if he expects my mom to want some super fancy car. My mom doesn't want a super fancy car. She wants a small black car. Hey, aren't there quite a few of those? That's what I thought.

Just like every night has its dawn

2008-08-25T19:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm a sophomore now. And so far I haven't been openly antagonized, with a few exceptions, which is pretty different from when I started. I managed to explode soup. I found out Blogger is blocked on school computers now (my fault?). I also got in a car accident, met some girl who totally digs me unless she's being sarcastic, and have a pre-calculus class with seven other people in it.

So far, it's going good. The bad things, and by that I mean people, I'm not going to write about, because I'm not a dick. I was talking to Emily about her schism with the Fixie Kids. I mean, I wanted to know what I should do about this whole stupid sweater thing. Which, by the way, I don't even give a shit about anymore. Take your stupid sweater. But so I was talking to Emily, asking her what advice she would give when it came to matters like that, and her advice was simple. Don't write about it. She said her opinions of the people hadn't changed after the fact. Really, it just caused more drama than the issue was worth. So that's why I'm not going to write about the sweater. This isn't a game. You can't win, you can't lose. I'm not going to give you the post you want.

Look, I know I'm not a blogging icon. I know that probably only a handful of people read this blog. But that's not even the point of this blog. I do consider how I'd sound to other people, but I write to better understand (and remember, actually) things that have happened or ways that I've felt. After starting this blog, I was less depressed. Because of this blog, I write more frequently than I would have without it. I also write better essays.

So those comments from a very mean-spirited person stung, but not because I think they're right. I think that this person looks for a conflict. It's upsetting that I'm the one being targeted over and over. I'm not a cold-hearted person, I just cannot continue to let things like this bother me. Everything is bullshit, really. It's just high school. It's not the end of the world. It's not even the end of the summer.

I'm going to try harder this year, at being a better rounded person, at academics, and at being nice. I feel like I spent a lot of last year talking shit or stealing boyfriends, which is retarded. Seriously. I have made the phrase "Everything Is Bullshit" my mantra of the year. I think that's what'll really help me make it through.

Bombed

2008-08-24T00:48:00.000-07:00

Yes, I did get comment bombed. No, I'm not going to take any more comments down than I already have, because you'll see that there are twenty-five comments all from the same person, and I know who it is, and I know who they're with. There are twenty-five comments from the same person. And I'm leaving those comments for everyone to read.

The guitar hero theory

2008-08-23T11:02:00.000-07:00

Ever since Guitar Hero came out, I've had this theory regarding Guitar Hero skill. It's why I won't ever play the game. It's why I tend to shy away from boys claiming to be champions of both the six stringed instrument and the six buttoned instrument. This theory has been proved over, and over, and never once disproved. Why? Because I am right, and everyone knows it.

The theory is this: One who is skilled at guitar will fail at the game known as Guitar Hero. Conversely, one who is skilled at the game will fail at real guitar.

I first came in contact with an example of this when Justin, my boyfriend at the time, took out his Guitar Hero controller and proceeded to do extremely well at the Dragonforce song, Through the Fire and Flames. First of all, Guitar Hero is evil because it has made people actually hear this band. Dragonforce should not exist, period. But to remain to the point, Justin was good at Guitar Hero and honestly kind of sucked on bass guitar.

Then, I saw a video clip of Jack Black and other famous musicians (musicians who are famous for being good at composing and playing music) totally. Fucking. Bombing. On Guitar Hero. This video clip seemed to be the concurrent point to the previous example. People who are really good at guitar just can't seem to carry over their six-stringed, seventy-two-fretted talent to a plastic controller and six sticky buttons.

And then there was the best South Park episode ever, Guitar Queer-O, wherein Kyle and Stan get Guitar Hero famous, delve into the world of Band Breakup Hero, and then sample Heroin Hero. Unfortunately, there was no Rehab Hero, only a lot of Carry On Wayward Son. And that's all anyone would ever need. But this was the best South Park episode ever, because as Kyle and Stan were getting famous, Stan's dad was rocking out on an actual guitar, and then failing, standing half-naked and drunk in front of the television. The South Park creators agreed with me.

Time passed before I met the final nail in the coffin, Jonney, who is a fucking legend. I've seen him play many a time. I've heard him talk about the many technical aspects of guitar building. And wouldn't you know it? He sucks at Guitar Hero. CASE CLOSED!

Death and taxes and is that a fixie?

2008-08-21T20:55:00.000-07:00

I'm tired. But I can't just go to bed. I do this thing where I have to ration and plan out how and when I'm going to sleep, because it doesn't work as easily as "yawn! Oh, sleepytime!" And I don't have insomnia, either. I've known people with insomnia, and they're kind of dicks about it. "I couldn't sleep so I cried all night." "I couldn't sleep so I cut myself a bunch." "I couldn't sleep so I decided to text you one million fucking times asking how you were, what you were doing, and why you weren't answering." Yes, I stay up until way too late. No, it doesn't help to get ten texts in my ribcage because you can't sleep, either. So I'm tired but I still have probably two hours before I'll actually be able to turn in for the night.

I hate not being able to sleep. It's like the worst feeling ever, just lying there, knowing you're tired (or in my case, knowing I'm not tired) and not being able to do anything else. It's too late to get up and do anything worthwhile. Then, there I lie just spending time after time thinking about what I'm going to wear or some other scheme. It's like procrastinating on the easiest thing imaginable.

Today I had to wake up earlier than usual because of my great-grandma's funeral. (made me realize I want to have an awesome funeral, want to be cremated, and hate obituaries) It's probably a good thing, since in three days I have to wake up at six o' clock in the morning, and that's about six hours earlier than noon. Noon is when I wake up. And, oh yeah, I do happen to go to bed at three. Hmm. Three hours of sleep + chemistry first thing in the morning... AN A-PLUS PLAN!

I would be lying if I said I wanted to go back with absolutely no qualms. There's all the catty bitches, and I decided I was going to try and ace the year, and also there's the bike I'm taking off my grandpa's hands, on which I'm going to ride home.

It just so happens that my group of adolescophisticates (e.g. myself, Emily, and Stahulak) have tangoed with this other group of teenagers dubbed The Fixie Gang because they all ride fixed gear bikes, and are super serial about their fixed gear bikes. The ironic thing, though, is that my group also rely on bike transportation. We all ride road bikes as well. The argument isn't even about gears vs. gear. Come to think of it, I don't know what the argument is about. But Stahulak and a bunch of other boys I know all will go on for decades about how fixed gear bikes are ill-suited for riding in Salt Lake City. I wouldn't be able to ride a fixed gear because I'm lazy about biking. Even more lazy about learning how to be good at biking.

And since I don't know where gears on a bike actually are, I can't tell if this bike of my grandpa's is a fixie or not. Either way, I'm going to take it home and clean it up. I'll show it some love, since it's the color of a convertible. I'll give it a name because it has character. I'll probably ride it around the neighborhood once or twice, to get a feel for it. And then if somebody insults me for riding a fixed gear (or a non-fixed gear) I'll spit in their eye, tell them my bike is sensitive, and then proceed on my way home.

The beginning of snackstravaganza 2008

2008-08-17T21:39:00.000-07:00

So here I am at my grandma's with limited internet access and all the snacks the world can handle. I miss Jonney already, I'm kind of thinking my mom is going to kill herself in that cabin, and I'm staying in a room full of spiders and my grandpa's projects. But no, I'm not going to give up blogging. Never would I give up blogging. This week, though, this week will be the beginning of the snackstravaganza. So many fuckin' chips. I'll probably gain like fifteen pounds while I'm here. That's the downside of my diet, the Eat-Whatever-I-Want-But-Mostly-Crap diet. Anyway, yeah.

Like mariah carey in glitter

2008-08-16T19:07:00.000-07:00

I'm discouraged with blogging just because the only people who haven't seemed to stop and take a break are the loathsome, despicable, politic bloggers. Why, cruel world, why? Just when I started to need the kind words of others, everyone gets hit with writer's block and posts the same "taking a break from blogging" paragraph. We all get it. You're tired, and you're bored. So am I! No, really! I'm bored of listening to myself think, but, hey! It's not the end of the world. And I would never be able to stop authoring this blog just because it's the only way I remain a writer at all. I haven't written any poetry in forever, and would you really like to know why?

Well, because everything I write is either spiteful and acidic, or about murder.

Nonetheless, I chug on through my atrocity and try to find some semblance of the old me at the end of the tunnel. I want to know what's going on. But you, Internet, what do you want? Do you really want to know what I had for lunch, or that I'm trying madly to assemble an indie-punk band, or that I sort of detest the new hipsters and people who are painfully hip and people who press that painful hipness upon everyone else and cast aspersions on anybody not as painfully hip as them. I want to wear what I like, but seeing as I sometimes like things that are in style, I can't ever afford the things I like. Blogging, how painfully hip! At least it's cheap.

Once school starts, my writing will go one of two ways. Posts will either trickle down to a lazy pace, or the floodgates will crash open and I'll have two months' worth of posts tagged with "high school," "FUCK," and "depression." Neither you nor I want that to happen.

Speaking of depression, (segue) I realize that I haven't said much about being depressed lately. That's because for the most part, I haven't been. But I've had to analyze myself quite a few times this summer, which led me to realize that there are certain things and people I feel so awkward about that I completely avoid them.

My mom often asks why I show such discomfort with talking to her about my depression, when I can write about it on the Internet without a second thought. Um, maybe because the Internet doesn't discourage psychiatric medication. And maybe because the Internet didn't push me out of its vagina. And maybe because the Internet has four million faceless users at any given moment, and there's probably only one person out of all of those users who actually reads this blog. So yeah, I'm more comfortable with dicking around on the Internet than I am having to pretend to know what's wrong with me. Because there's not really even anything wrong with me. The doctors have said this.

Anyway, tomorrow night I'm leaving to go stay at my grandma's house for the week and while it won't be terrible, it's probably going to be boring when there's nothing going on. I had to buy a new dress and shoes for my great-grandma's funeral, and I still have to pack up my cat along with all my clothes for the week. In the same pillowcase. Because that's how I transport my feline.

So anyway this post has probably been a real show to everyone in the blogosphere that blogging should not continue. I apologize, and I hope to see you at BlogHer. I'm kidding, I would never have the money or popularity to go to BlogHer. But you should totally nominate Dharma Monsters for a Bloggie.

My custom van

2008-08-14T21:54:00.001-07:00

I have registration for school tomorrow, and I've been staying up until two o' clock every single morning this summer just because sleep is for the weak. I've been sleeping until two and waking up sometimes at noon, sometimes at one, building a very strong routine that is going to be tough as nails to break. Luckily, my Small Film School starts later than other schools. Unluckily, the ride home is long, and I started to rely on my in-car naps by the end of last year. Even then, it was cause for concern, not because of the havoc it was wreaking on my sleep schedule, but because I hope to be able to drive myself to and from school, and I don't want to fall asleep at the wheel. Can you imagine the terror? Barreling down the highway is a brown van with a wizard and band logo painted on the side, with a small girl asleep at the wheel, blasting bass beats from Belle & Sebastian, puffing exhaust fumes and coming to fuckin' get you.

My parents think I'm far too anxious to get my driver's license. I think I just don't want to end up one of those people who puts it off and puts it off, and eternally spends time as a passenger. I have thought this shit out. I have thought this shit out to the point of where I'm going to park at home and how I'm going to take naps in the back on particularly distressing days. I've already promised my friend Markie that we can take my van to the Maverik down the street to get the really, really good blue slushies. I have just about planned the design of the Samson & Goliath logo and spell-casting wizard that's supposed to be painted on the side window. I have decided what type of key fob I'll attach to my keys, so I won't lose them and so they'll jangle and shake as I drive.

If you believe in that The Secret bullshit (obviously I don't) this is probably enough evidence to convince you that I will be using the Law of Wishing Hard Enough to hope this van into existence. I need this van like Hayden Christensen needs acting lessons. This van would be useful for a multitude of causes. Band van. Nap machine. Transport to band practice, my grandma's house, and the store to buy milk and honey and unleavened challah bread.

I am a van person. Imagine one of your friends, one of your friends who doesn't have a car, and picture what vehicle they would drive. I would drive a van. I would never be homeless as long as I had a van. My school identity would not only be "that girl who wears sweater vests" but "that girl who wears sweater vests and drives a motherfucking van." A motherfucking van, which I would name something like Jenny or Randy, and it would be my baby.

And I love him

2008-08-14T00:33:00.000-07:00

He kisses my fingers.

He tickles my knee.

He listens to Maiden and Malmsteen and Cake.

He has a giant poster of Bob Marley above his silk-coverlet bed.

He has two cats that love the shit out of me.

He gave me a pedal to distort my guitar.

He ran up on stage to fix my amp's gain at a show.

He believes I can do anything.

He laughs like James Franco.

He smiles when he drives.

He'll take off his shirt if I ask politely.

He never wears closed-toe shoes.

He has magical fingers, take that as you will.

He kisses me at stoplights.

He has a wicked strong willpower.

He plays guitar like nobody else has, can, or ever will.

His mouth is often spicy with cinnamon gum.

His friends will find this and never let him live it down.

He is the cutest, most gentle soul I've ever met, and I love him.

I just heard a silent pause.

2008-08-12T23:26:00.000-07:00

I'm so sick of summer that I'm starting to revert to loving every minute of it. Now that I've found a reason to have free time, the time draws short, and I start to remember that, oh, shit! I have to make all of the plans I wanted to make for the rest of the summer this motherfucking week. Including making shirt prototypes, scheduling a photoshoot, and hanging out with Jonney before he and I both go our separate ways for the week of semi-vacation. He's going to a paintball tournament, and I'm being orphaned. Did I mention that I'm kind of totally loving on this kid? Yeah, I am. In any case, it's already Wednesday and I haven't even gone to buy any of the shirts I need. Time is running out.

It's a pretty distinct feeling, actually. Like sitting in an hourglass, watching the sand sift until you've gone half mad with boredom, and then all of a sudden you blink and realize your foot is an inch or two away from the vacuum swirling downward and away. I'm getting sucked into a vacuum that doesn't even exist.

I want to go back to school pretty badly, just not so soon. I feel like I must get this shirt business up and running before school starts. Nobody is cracking a whip against me to do so. On the one hand, it would be better to wait until I can cover the finances of three twenty-dollar shirts from American Apparel. But on the other, if I get the shop up quicker, I'll have more time to replenish those finances. Sigh. This is me thinking aloud, and it is totally boring to anybody besides me.

It's times like this I wish I could sort of just crawl into Jonney's arms and fall asleep. But the sand is slimming down, and I can't turn the hourglass over from within. Battering the walls with my tired and bruised body seems to be a failing operation.

Nothing's gonna change my world

2008-08-10T19:58:00.000-07:00

My great-grandma died yesterday, but she was the one to which we were never very close. She had been near to death for a long time, enough time for all of her things to be passed on and stored in my grandparents' living room, and believe me, they've been trying to get rid of it all since they got it. I didn't want the bad karma of taking anything. LIke, seriously, how weird would it be to have the belongings of someone who is still alive and hooked up to an oxygen machine? But I came home today from dinner with my grandparents and some extended family with some new necklaces and two pairs of gloves. And I'm going to be taking home one of my great grandma's quilts for the winter.

I still do feel kind of weird about it. I don't want to be that person, who claims possessions of other people once they've passed on, especially when they're not really things that are fantastic and need to be claimed.

For instance, there's this one recliner in my other great-grandma's house, and we are close to her, and when she passes on, I'm going to get that recliner. It's a fabulous recliner. But she's an insanely healthy woman, her only problem is memory loss, and there's no way she's going to be dying any time soon. It's a great recliner that I want to remember her by. As for the great-grandma who just died, I kind of just liked the kitsch of these necklaces and gloves. One pair is a pair of knit children's gloves that, get this, mustard yellow. Another pair are white kid gloves, like the actual kind one would wear in a marching band.

I kind of wish I could just get away from all this. I don't want to be a part of my great grandma's estate battle. Unfortunately, each member of my family is jet-setting off next week for a different location. My mother decided to run away to the mountains for a full week, to write and to be alone, and because of that my father is going home to Omaha while I stay at my grandparents' house. Our house will be empty but none of us will be together. And there's probably a chance that my mom won't come back.

Well, she says there isn't any sort of chance. But I worry, I worry hard. What if she does abandon me? That'll kind of totally suck. To be honest, I elected to go stay at my grandma's because I didn't want to spend a week alone with my dad. So if I don't want to stay a week alone with the man, then how could I live another three years with him? Exactly. My mom had better come back, or else I'm going to go fucking find her.

I'll set up the apparatus

2008-08-09T21:45:00.000-07:00

Ten things I should actually write about, but am too tired to do so:

1. The show went well.

2. I like Jonney a lot.

3. The olympics are crazy.

4. I was never really that serious about my own gymnastic career.

5. Sometimes I get so tired I think my body is trying to tell me something.

6. Russia and Georgia are at war.

7. I like Jonney a lot.

8. My dog won't shut up.

9. I'm sick of people being pretentious.

10. Would it be rude to steal someone's virginity?

I'm just too tired to even hope to write something comprehensible.

In anticipation

2008-08-08T21:13:00.000-07:00

I spent another day with Jonney, and let me propose this rhetorical question: Is it possible to be totally amazed by one person so much that you kind of wish you could just live with them and then you'd never have to awkwardly get out of their Jeep and not really want to leave? Yeah, that's totally rhetorical and non-specific.

I'm left speechless by Jonney's ability to be awesome and rad at everything. He solved my Rubik's cube (and I mean that literally, that's not like a euphemism for hot sex) in like three minutes. And he rocked out all these wicked riffs on guitar, both modern and classical. There is not one thing that could take my mind off of him right now. I can honestly say that today was another one of the awesome, incomparable days.

I don't know if I mentioned in the last post that I got two of my internet orders that day. Two! That's like, a probability equation that my feeble mind can't comprehend. Then today, I got my stuff from American Apparel, including the most comfortable pair of pants ever. These pants are never leaving my body. They're California fleece in this really muted army brown color, and that description doesn't do them justice. The insides are as soft as sunlight. The fit is so relaxed I just want to take a nap. I'll probably end up wearing these pants to bed in the winter and then just throwing on a shirt and jacket to go to school. These are the best pants.

Plus, we have a show at Cafe Marmalade tomorrow that hopefully won't suck. Sometimes I get really down on myself and I just want to be able to say things like "fuck it, we'll probably end up crashing" but I know I can't, because I'll start to believe it. Going into a show, I have to acknowledge that I'm going to work at it and that we will do well. That takes some of the stress out of it. If I can just tell myself that we are a technically sound band, then that's enough. All I have to do is put in my share of the energy and performance, and we're solid. Of course, we've never gotten to the point where we high-five in back before the show and yell, "WOLVERINES!" Though that would be a good idea. Nor have we gotten to the point where we say, "We changed people's lives tonight."

I mean, that's not really our goal. I don't think. It's not mine. I don't really want to change people's lives, but I want to become a part of it. Like, I don't need people to live for our music (unlike My Chemical Romance! -rimshot-), or follow us from city to city (unlike the Grateful Dead! -rimshot-) but I want people to hear us and then want to pass us on, like a good restaurant or mono. The day I can overhear someone say to a friend, "I hear Samson and Goliath has a show. Dude, you need to see them," that'll be the day I'll consider myself a success. Not when we get on the cover of a magazine or play Saturday Night Live, though both are goals, but the day people are talking about us, that's when we'll be successful to me.

So, in anticipation of tomorrow's show, this is me saying that I hope you'll be there, sharing with us all the good moments and the forgotten lyrics.

The best day ever.

2008-08-06T21:42:00.000-07:00

I promised I would give details and here they are. Jonney is great, in all sorts of ways. He and I discovered that we have almost everything in common. Today, we went to Yanni's, a local Greek restaurant, and then we took a trip up to Memory Grove park. Today was actually a really busy day. Not only did I have the best date ever, I got two of my online orders from their shipping plants and I am so so happy! A new vest, a new plaid shirt, and a new boy who's totally sweet and totally like, super rad. He smiles all the time. Really.

We met at WMCA last week. He was rockin' out on the piano with these crazy arpeggios, arpeggios I'd never even begun to hear before. I saw him through the window and, while I don't believe in love at first sight, he was undeniably cute. Plus he was throwing out them crazy arpeggios! It was back and forth and back and forth all day, him and I smiling at each other like kids do. Jonney later admitted that he was thinking about asking for my number all day. It was actually his cousin, David, who yelled to me that Jonney wanted it. From then on, we were texting. Yes, it was totally one of those stories. We got to know each other a lot, and he caught a lot of shit from his friends for liking a girl he had just barely met and texted.

He and I left WMCA today to go to greek lunch. Let me be the first to say that Jonney is a total gentleman. He took my heavy old guitar case and literally carried it all of the way out to his Jeep. It runs on dreams. Internet, have I yet convinced you that this kid is as good as it gets? He listens to pretty obscure bands that aren't obscure to me, like Scorpions (ROCK YOU LIKE A HURRICANE) and Muse and... get this. SUPERTRAMP. So there we were waiting at a stoplight shouting along, "Don't you look at my girlfriend! She's the only one I got!" And I looked over, and I was thinking to myself, how? How did I find this guy who listens to Supertramp and Iron Maiden?

He works at a preschool. Seriously, he works at a preschool.

We went to Memory Grove park and walked up a long path, then sat down on some steps and just talked for an hour. It was so sweet. And, actually, it was the first real date I'd been on. Trips to the movies and to people's houses definitely don't count. So, here comes this boy who blows in from Minneapolis, and totally brightens up my life. Those are the details.

Well, nevermind, I guess

2008-08-06T13:19:00.000-07:00

After sleeping on it and coming to a sort of revelation in my dream, I decided I was going to take Ilana's advice. Her father works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and, according to him, scholarships don't depend on what schooling program you get into, especially when it comes to a Fantastic International Baccalaureate Program such as the one at Strest, because there just aren't enough merits to go around.

I mainly didn't want to make the decision too quickly because my school is giving more Honors opportunities this year. Plus, I think I was mostly concerned about the amount of catty bitches that attend. It's almost a fashion school, minus a lot of the creativity. Oh if only Christian Siriano were running about, calling everyone hot tranny messes. It's better than some wide-hipped Junior screaming "bad hair cunt!" behind your back. At least Christian would be more expressive.

In other news, my back hurts. I have the CRAAAAMPS pretty bad. I also have a date tonight, and I'm going to have to take one, no, two! Tylenol just to stand up. Whine, whine. I hardly ever get cramps. I think I should therefore be allowed to complain.

A crisis

2008-08-05T18:32:00.000-07:00

Am I insane? Has the radiation from the desert finally soaked up in through my feet and driven into my brain? Yes, yes it probably has. I'm sort of torn right now because I'm thinking of changing schools back to Strest. Yeah, I don't know why. I made a list of the pro's and con's and I've seen the stack of AP Euro notecards Emily had to write for her class at Anonymous Christian High School, and for some reason, I'm like "why not me?" I guess it's just been too long since my tenure at private school.

I miss being challenged by school. I miss having classes that were kind of hard. And I've finally come to my senses and decided that hey, college does sound like a good idea. If I go back to the Fantastical International Baccalaureate Program, then I'll have a better chance of getting into the school I want. So... I don't know. My mom would love for me to go back. I don't need another person telling me it'll be hard. I know that.

I'm just too happy for words.

2008-08-05T00:17:00.000-07:00

You know how sometimes you might feel so happy and good that you just can't seem to find words to describe why? That's me right now. Nothing can break me down. Not Diantha, not Andy, nothing. For a long while I think I was in a slump. I think I was emotionally crippled, and physical therapy just barely got me moving again. The wheels are turning. The cogs are finally back in cognito. I'll write more someday soon. But for now, I'm just sort of basking in the glow of feeling good again.

And it's a good glow. It's the glow that comes from finding a grandpa's shirt that doesn't quite fit, but makes you feel like a million dollars. And the glow that comes from having confidence in an idea, one that you might actually be able to turn into something big. And the glow that comes from your band partner being home from Honduras. The glow that comes from venting out months of built-up feelings.

Most importantly, the glow that comes from meeting someone who you feel like you could talk to for hours. Somebody who has a great smile and says you've made their week. And maybe you really want to go to a Greek restaurant with them, because you feel like they can handle the sight of white sauce dripping down your chin and not be completely disgusted. Or maybe they would scoop it up with their finger and eat it themselves. Or maybe they'd sneak a little kiss on your cheek just to be a rebel.

Oh, man. Indescribable. So I'm going to tell you the details later, when I can splice them together into a sentence that doesn't run from here to Istanbul. His name is Jonney. And he's like, super fucking awesome.

An essay I found in my old folders.

2008-08-03T22:25:00.000-07:00

"I Am A Very Tall Man" by Brighton C. Metz

Why hello there, young child! Hello, small dog! Good morning, woman with tooth! Today is a fabulous day for strolling along this city street and gazing up into that jewel blue sky. Do you know how I know this? I know this, because I am a very tall man. Yes, you may have been deceived by the way I dress, but I can assure you that my height exceeds seventy-two inches. Though I carry myself with the utmost humility and I have never been one to brag, if you were to ask any medical professional whom I have visited for for a routine physical exam, they could easily tell you that I, indeed, am a very tall man.

Sometimes, while walking in the city, I will join an urban game of basketball and easily sink more baskets on average than my fellow players, all because of the few inches of advantage I have over the others. Many people have told me that I should pursue a professional career in basketball, though I have always graciously declined. Many have asked how tall my parents are. I always think this question a bit amusing, for bot my mother and father are under seventy-two inches tall. Can you imagine! Many people ask how tall the milkman was, which I find offensive, because our milkman, Sal, was a very short man. And I happen to be very tall.

When my girlfriend, Matilda, and I go camping, we often joke about how far I must lean over to gain entry into our mid-sized tent. In that then, I certainly do look like a giant! But I could never be on of those giants who threatens to grind bones to make flour, to use in the process of breadmaking, because I am a good-natured and charismatic person, who buys whole grain bread. I am also very tall. Matilda and I camp often, and while camping, we sometimes take a break from just lounging about the site to go on scenic hikes. There have been many occasions when I have to bend down nearly in half to avoid being swatted with a hanging branch. Being tall can sometimes be quite a lark.

Other times, being a very tall man is just frustrating. My roommates and I are in a constant struggle to find the right place to store our non-perishable goods, since the pantry's floor is a long way from my arms, and it has always been so much more convenient for me to store things in the cupboards. Things will be different when Matilda and I live together. Although she isn't as tall as me, being a very tall man, she is rather tall for a woman, something I find just perfect. She and I both agree that there is a certain discrimination against very tall people like us. Cars built nowadays are all the more difficult for very tall people to fit into. And forget about the fashion world. Everyone knows that the only clothes out there are made for petite individuals.

But I am pleasantly content with my life as a very tall man. I work as a stockroom assistant at our local Target store, an appropriate use for my height and strength. I also enjoy going to movies and sitting wherever I please, usually in front of someone whom I can't see behind the seats. Because I am a very tall man, I can do a lot of things most people can't. One of those things is reach. I am very good at reaching and snatching the last copy of books from the top row at the library. I am tall enough not to have to worry. If Matilda and I ever get married, and have children, you can be sure that they will also be very tall. When people ask them how tall their father is, I know that they will stand proud and tall, and reply that their father is a very tall man.

Czarina

2008-07-30T13:21:00.000-07:00

So I've been having more and more dreams lately about going back to school. This is how it always is. I am a person who likes school, and once it hits that one month mark, it starts to creep into my brain. Oh, the thought of Office Max sends rivulets through my spine. I love the Office Max! But my dreams haven't been about Office Max. You know, it wasn't just a dream of standing in front of the many aisles of the O-Max for hours on end, with limitless funds and a large duffel bag.

They've been dreams about biking in the early morning, and dreams about being able to actually shop for clothes, and this strange nightmare I had last night that Strest was a boarding school, and all I wanted to do was go to sleep.

I don't know if anybody else ever has those kind of dreams. Like, you're half awake and you're hallucinating all these events taking place in your room, right on your bed, and all you want to do is really sleep, and you keep wondering aloud to these hallucinations why they don't go mind their own business and let you rest.

But in my dream, I got on my bike and rode down to some 7-11 just to pee and buy some Sabritones puffed wheat snacks. The group of kids I used to hang out with were sitting beneath an overpass, and as I passed by, they were like, super mean for no reason. It was in the middle of the afternoon, but I just wanted to go back home to my boarding school bed and sleep. So I ignored them, and they followed me on Kawasaki bullet bikes. Suddenly, it was night time. I'd been riding around on my trail bike for what was probably dream-hours and they still were tailing me. Oh, the humanity.

My school starts on August twenty-fifth. That makes it a full twenty-seven days until I go back, and duuuude I'm totally stoked. I'm bored of summer. I'm bored of waking up to find the clock reads noon or even one o' fucking clock, because it makes me feel super guilty. But I've probably already written all of this. I have sumnesia. It's so hot I can't even remember my own writing.

Matt and me

2008-07-29T22:44:00.000-07:00

So I finally went to The Dark Knight, which was pretty good, but there was a ton of hype swirling like mist about the movie, which kind of gave it a lustrous sheen. I didn't see Batman Begins. Why, you ask in an accusatory tone? Because. I didn't see why I had to. I'm not a huge fan of Christian Bale, the movie seemed to be kind of lame, and everyone else went to see it. The same was the case with that Superman movie. (Superman = dick) But well, Heath Ledger gave his life for this movie. So it must have been good. Also, Matt said I had to go or else.

I'm sure everyone's already read a thousand gushing reviews of Dark Knight, so I'll spare the details. I will say though, that I found some moments in the movie especially comedic, moments wherein I was the only one chuckling.

Like I said, I'm not a huge fan of Christian Bale. I think most of his roles have been rich men who beat up on poor people. American Psycho, Batman, 3:10 to Yuma, and also as Thomas the Poor Shot in Pocahontas. Not technically a rich man, but he was beating up on people with little to no monetary money. Because Christian Bale has always portrayed some regular man on the verge of psychosis, I'm super super scared of him. If I met Christian Bale, I would probably pee. Not to mention he allegedly assaulted his circus dancer mother and his circus dancer's daughter sister. I fear that the only thing they did to set him off was have a better-looking business card than him.

Anyway, it was good to get out of the house. I'd taped moustaches on just about everything with a face. I've already properly bedecked my walls with art and atrocities. I don't think there's any room for anything else.

And, the funny thing is that even though I'm happy with it now, I've only got three more years left in this place. It's kind of weird to imagine the day I have to pack up all my things and leave. Like, how empty the walls will be, and how all the tack holes will be the only reminder, whatnot. Or, even stranger, what things will I leave, and what things will I take with? What a trip. Oh, sure, three years is a long time, but it's not like that moment's never going to come. This room has gone from being the place I sleep in to my room. I doubt that I'll be able to graffiti my walls in a dormitory.

It was good to get out of the house because I've had a hard day... well, a hard week... well... I've had a hard... It's been hard since I started what scrapings of a relationship me and this kid had. I kissed him, and I liked it. And then my brain went into overdrive and got me hooked on him, probably all on things I either made up or exaggerated. So I shouldn't have been surprised when things didn't work out. It was just a matter of time before things got to the state they're in now. This relation-shit has driven me halfway insane. It's torn me apart, and so I'm doing what anybody under altered mentality would do. I'm going cold turkey. I'm not going to call. Of course I'm still going to think about him, and of course I'm still going to feel the same, but I'm going to let time take its toll.

He's like a pack of cigarettes. And me? I'm just going to stop talking to cigarettes, and thinking that cigarettes care about me, and thinking that I can get cigarettes to spend time with me.

So I take solace in cigarettes' best friend, who also happens to be my best friend, who is a riot to be around and thusly, I went to see the new Batman movie with Matty. I can assure you that I'll be writing post after post about how much I miss cigarettes and how they make me feel. That'll be in between trips down memory lane and visits to cigarettes' old haunt. Sigh. How fun is it going to be to go back to school and the same room where I kissed cigarettes' sweet filter.

When Will It Be Over?

2008-07-25T21:31:00.000-07:00

Today, I went outside, looked up at the sun, and asked, "Aren't you tired yet?" The sun began to giggle, which then developed into a hearty belly laugh. Then the sun spit in my eye.

It's July 25th and I'm beginning to think that summer will never end. It's like we had winter for six months, two days of spring, and then summer came marching in with a big smile and a huge erection. Summer's been porking us in the ass ever since. It's just too damn hot. You can't walk outside without immediately feeling like you've gone into a volcano. A dry volcano, somehow, or maybe it's just so hot and pyroclastic that your skin is melting and it feels dry.

But! Our car finally got its air conditioning back. Oh yes, we have spent these two months driving from hence to thence with the windows rolled down and the fan blowing full blast. My dad told us that the process of fixing it would be very expensive, and would take a very long time, and so we waited. Then, the car was taken in this morning. It was back by noon. WHAT? IS THIS A JOKE? No! No it's not a joke! We've been waiting all this time just because everyone was too lazy to give a shit! The fuck, dude. The fuck.

Things have been so, so slow around here. Like molasses in January. It's been a tread of poetry nights, band practice, baths and podcasts, new mastheads, and visits to my grandma's house. Poetry night itself has slowed to almost a stop. So basically, if you live in Salt Lake and want to show up for a poetry reading, it's Cafe Marmalade (361 N. 300 W.) at nine thirty. We're running low on readers and guests, and it's doing WONDERS for morale. Can you hear my sarcasm?

It's unfortunate because I feel partially at fault. My first poetry night, it was very crowded, and populated with actual adult poets. Once I came along, so did more teenagers, and all the adult poets spread out to Cup of Joe's Saturday night open mic and various other spoils. I scare away the big boys, I guess, and I feel terrible.

But my head hurts. I want to go to sleep, or maybe eat some chicken noodle soup. It's starting to get to that point in the summer where I'm sick of everything I'm talented at, and even more sick of the things I'm bad at. I'm sick of having this endless time on my hands to write and draw. As for my EHS classes, I can't seem to find the motivation or the concentration to work on them. Instead of being mature and blaming myself, I blame the summer and the summer's fat dick slapping against my back.

Lady Luck

2008-07-24T00:43:00.000-07:00

It probably started when people started telling me how much I reminded them of Juno MacGuff in January of this year. But it could have started earlier. It could have started when I made the decision to be a dirty, dirty yuckmouth, and do the deed that teens aren't supposed to do but do anyway. It was my fault and Diablo Cody's.

I was, for the most part, in love with my boyfriend. I also read mommy blogs daily even though the parts about how joyous breastfeeding can be were mainly an article of boob massacre and less like, "oh, rad! I totally understand, what with the having experienced that twice." I read mommy blogs, because that's what there were. I like my friends' blogs, but I only had two blogger friends. (That sentence just defined what year I was born in, yikes.) But like I said, I was in love with my boyfriend to the extent that he and I were taking naps together after school and yes, we were intimate. It makes me sick to think of that, that word, the phrase, but that's the way it is. I can't just say "we got it on."

We had vague aspirations of marriage, very vague ones. As a timeline, he and I got together in December. Juno came out in January. I saw it in February, probably more towards the end, actually, the day before the Oscars. My birthday is in March. And then, this date is forever plastered in my brain, March 20th, the day I found out I wasn't pregnant.

I've thought long and hard about this. This subject, and this whole fiasco, and I'm not just writing it to spill the beans.

It started with Juno MacGuff and the resemblance between her and I. The fact that I loved the movie only exacerbated things, because I totally wanted to be Juno, minus the pregnancy, and when I started to get a little paranoid, that added against the charges. Here I was in love with this boy and possibly now carrying his embryonic sack of cells. And instead of freaking out and throwing myself down a stairway, half of me was kind of stoked.

I don't want to blame Juno or Knocked Up, because honestly, I love those movies. And I don't want to blame Heather Armstrong or Brenda Ponnay, I don't want to blame anyone. I think it's all due to how popular teen pregnancy has become. It's not as taboo as it used to be.

I remember when I overheard that quote, "I heard Celeste got pregnant and dropped out." That quote, which was said in such a nonchalant, offhand manner. Well, that's the way I felt. I felt like if I got pregnant, it would be no big deal. Everyone would deal with it and then it would be over, like a movie. Things would go back to normal, even my boobs and my vagina.

I was even a little disappointed to hear it when I wasn't pregnant. Yeah, relieved as shiiit, but just the slightest bit disappointed.

I guess that this is what would be my PostSecret entry. That I almost intentionally got myself knocked up for love and to be unique. That I for real felt ready to take it on, and even saw myself with a big pregnant belly. But I am so, so glad it didn't happen. My boyfriend and I broke up not long after, regardless of the fact that he would have stood by me. Regardless of the fact that I would have had his baby. It was typical. I can't imagine what might have happened, if we had gotten serious, but I took a long break from the triggers. Tonight was the first time I'd watched Juno since March. I was afraid of those feelings coming back.

I felt like it was time, though, to own up to what happened. And if I'm the only one who went through this, fine. But if not, I hope that those who've felt the same got out safe. I was lucky.

Dharma's First Blogiversary!

2008-07-21T12:39:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday, Dharma Monsters.

One year ago today I started this blog, following in the big footsteps of my blogging idols, Dooce and Owl Bling, and stirring with anxiety about my first year of high school. I had a vague case of hypochondria and was at that wily point in my life where every little thing could set me off. Not to say that I've drastically changed from that, in a year, but instead to say that at least now I can take a breath and let things go.

My first entry was about my period. (awesome) I gave a flimsy introduction about myself and the books I read, the things I believe, and offered this lovely quote: "My name's Brighton, I like cats and SUICIDE."

The next entries were sort of boring, though I will admit that the one about the FIRE OVEN was pretty exciting. This was written before I knew the magic of line breaks and thought that long paragraphs meant interesting ones!

Then

I bec

ame

E.E. Cummings.

Looking back through the archives, I've come to realize that Poetry night at Marmalade truly changed my life. Before, my only training in the poetry world was the regular, required reading. Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, a few dipping of my toes into Jim Morrison, but never something quite like the live poetry I got myself caught up in. Poetry night was the reason my writing (poetry, that is, there's no helping my essays) is the way it is now.

It's kind of awesome, though, that I've kept this blog for an entire year. A year of funny change, and high school, and that one time I spent a day with Kyler and came back walking funny, and Project Runway. A year of Shear Genius and poetry, and new friends and bookends.

To wrap up, I'd like to share a few of my favorite quotes from the past year.

"I think that when I closed my eyes, a Mack truck snuck up on me, and crushed my will to live."

"I am smart, I am optimistic and pessimistic, I am realistic, and I don't try to prove people wrong just for their reaction."

"There's poop on the keys!"

"Sometimes she'll yell at me like, 'Kyler, you're a bastard!' and I just say 'Oh yeah, well you're a dyke!' and she's like 'Oh, yeah, you've got me there.'"

"You have monkey hands. You have monkey hands that are small, therefore, I am going to play with them, because they are small, and like a monkey's."

So here's to you, little Dharma! Happy birthday, and I wish you many more.

The Odyssey, Part Two

2008-07-19T14:38:00.000-07:00

So at one point, this kid and his brother talk to their very-young-looking mom about beverages, and I knew that this was the golden opportunity to get back in my rightful spot. They dissipated. I moved in. Upon his return, I heard him telling his friend that I! stole! his! spot. I was like, "Sorry, kid, but that's your problem." It was a good spot. My version of concert etiquette is to be passively rude and terrible, because I can't be rude and terrible anywhere else. I mean, you can't be waiting in a line to get churros and then elbow someone in the face. That's not the way things are.

I didn't relent the spot, though somehow he did manage to stand in between me and his sweaty friend, and at that point I was just trying to dance kind of close to him so he'd give me some fucking space.

Doomtree finished, the lights went up, and everyone somehow knew that up next came Flobots. Which was super awesome. Flobots were rad. Did you know that the vocalist on Handlebars is the white guy, Johnny 5? I didn't. Everyone I've talked to knew. So, now, I sound racist for thinking it was the black guy, Brer Rabbit. (For real.) But anyway, dear God was it good, and after Handlebars, I wanted to leave. I said to my mom, "There's no way this can get any better." But she made us stay for the last song.

Then, we walked out to the parking lot, and all the cars were gone. A tow truck was parked and pulling up an old Porsche. A bald guy was standing there talking to the driver, a man was getting into his Porsche, a lesbian and her friend were arriving at the same time as us.

This situation soon escalated into a mob of shit. My mom and I were just thirsty. We seriously did not care, we just wanted something to fucking drink. Calls were frantically made as the tow driver suddenly didn't speak English and drove off, claiming not to know where the cars were being taken. The bald guy was arguing that the whole thing seemed shady, the lesbian was saying that if only we were in Murray city, she would have this taken care of, and all the people arriving were a mess, one girl shouting that she had to leave for eleven days and she couldn't keep her car in an impound to collect fines. All the numbers provided to find our cars led nowhere. Of course, my phone was out of minutes (fucking Virgin Mobile.) and Virgin was telling me to connect to a "live advisor" and everyone was so angry.

The police came, but to follow up on some fight that apparently happened, and the group of people besides my mom and I swamped over to complain that all this shit that was going down was SO NOT COOL.

Miraculously, we found out where the impound lot was, two blocks down from the Avalon. The police said they would meet us there, and we all began our pilgrimage to the lot. Our feet tired, our throats parched, clutching what little possessions we hadn't left in our cars, we walked. When we'd reached the lot, the tow driver was there and everyone let fly with the curse words. Somehow it became negotiated that he would let us get our personal belongings from our cars, and then we'd have one hour to get $254 dollars, cash, to pay him. Oh yes.

To make a long Homeric story short, we got the money by the grace of God (and with a lot of help from Matt) and we were out of the impound lot by 12:35. Really. We got to the Avalon at six-thirty, and left six hours later.

But it was so fucking worth it.

The Odyssey, Part One

2008-07-19T00:21:00.000-07:00

God. Damn. I got no wristband, but I got something better: a story.

First of all, neither Doomtree nor Self-Expression Music were of the nu-metal genre. Good. There are plenty of reasons to hate nu-metal, I won't go into that here. Doomtree was pretty rad, a group of five or so rappers and a DJ to spin them funkee beats, and I liked them, but it was disappointing that none of their members played an instrument. That's just my white-bread upbringing, I suppose. Though you're not technically a band if none of you play an instrument, you're a group, and semantics are as important as anything else.

Self-Expression Music was/is some... sort of... troubled youth program? Or at least, that's what we though. According to that link, it's like a conglomerate of rappers and "emcees" who... convey a... positive message? Um. Okay, moving on.

To say the least, my mom and I were vaguely bemused by the performance of Self-Expression Music, or SEM, as they abbreviate themselves. At first, we thought they were just a band (a real one) of misfits, thrown together by fate and circumstance. But as the various "emcees" spilled onto stage, my mom's guess at "troubled youth anti-drug program?" became more and more convincing. That's all I'll say about that.

When my mom and I got into the theater, we had the good fortune of getting to the front crowd quickly. We'd found a good spot, one where we could both see.

And then, the people in front of us saw their friend, motioned him over, AND HE WAS THIRTY FEET TALL.

Maybe it was that we were in a pretty perfect spot. Maybe it was the adrenaline of being at a show. Maybe it was the pent-up anger I'd felt from waiting in the will-call ticket line for twenty minutes, in the suicide sun. Or maybe it was just that I've spent my fifteen years of life being the little guy and being shit on. This thirty-foot-tall man stood directly in front of me, his many feet obstructing not part of the stage, but all of it, and I was overcome.

"NO FUCKING WAY." I said, over the din of rustling concert-goers. As it fell off of my lips I knew that it was louder than I'd meant it to be. And before I could turn to look away or even compose what was going on, the thirty-foot-man turned his thirty-foot-body and saw my mom and I, looking down from his mesospheric reach, and let us stand before him. I was totally stunned. One, because I didn't know I could say something loud enough, (or shout) that a man with his head in the most poorly understood layer of Earth's atmosphere could hear it. Two, because it actually did something good. Instead of this giant man turning and clocking me in the eyeball, he kindly stepped aside, understanding that his thirty feet of height allowed him greater visibility.

We thanked him, of course, though our voices probably sounded like those of mice as his ears were high up.

Because of this, we found ourselves behind another line of people, kids who'd gotten free tickets from a skatepark, somehow, and this was an okay place to be, albeit a Hollister-smelling one. I was behind a girl wearing a tank top and plenty of whatever perfume it is that Hollister wafts from its doors on hot days, next to a blonde boy maybe age twelve or thirteen, and in front of whom I suspect was a crackhead. He didn't touch me, though, so I suppose that's okay. Anyway, this blonde skater boy had a younger brother who was also blonde, and this little boy managed to finagle his way in front of me. I would have none of this!

So I waited, sometimes elbowing him or getting really, really, really close with my pungent-smelling arm held aloft, waving with the beat. If he couldn't smell the lack of deodorant on me, he couldn't smell anything.

As a side note, this concert hall was the most rank of concert halls. I say this having gone to Ministry, where absolutely everyone was drinking beer and smoking clove cigarettes. This concert was more rank than the goths and metalheads and their natural stink. This concert had in the air the wafting smell of teenage boys, white people, sweat, stuffy air constantly circulating out of one cheering person's mouth and into the nostrils of another, and then? Somebody lit up a joint.

Oh yes, the smoke curls caught in the kaleidoscope stage lights were produced by no smoke machine. Someone actually had the audacity (and I think it was more than one person, all in a group near the middle) to toke up in this tightly populated crowd. The crowd, which was about 50% minors. And this wasn't just cigarettes, I mean, cigarettes I don't care about, but seriously? You're going to go to a show sponsored by fucking The Truth About Tobacco, the anti-smoking drug lords, and you... Jesus. I say legalize marijuana so people won't do shit like that, all to feel rebellious. But whatever.

So anyway, this kid was standing in front of me and dancing OBNOXIOUSLY in such a way that it was actually making me uncomfortable. I can stand a lot of things. But this kid had an absence of rhythm and also was too short to be in my way, but not tall enough that I could genuinely be angry about him being there. I just had to wait for the opportune moment to take back my rightful place.

IN PART TWO, THE RECLAIMING, BRER RABBIT, AND A CAR GETS TOWED!

In Anticipation

2008-07-18T10:50:00.000-07:00

Tonight I'm going to the Flobots show at the Avalon, and I am super, super stoked. Not enough people know who Flobots are. Instead of linking to them, allow me to just scream this with the beating of my heart: I CAN RIDE MY BIKE WITH NO HANDLEBARS. NO HANDLEBARS. NO HANDLEBARS. Okay. See, you may know this song as the song that everyone dubs "overplayed" or "lame and addicting." I know this song as the song which pumps through my veins and is addicting, and makes me want to take over a nation with my bare hands, and maybe give birth to a baby.

I'm sure that when it comes time, years from now, to actually give birth to a baby, instead of some calming tranquil new age music, I'll put on a playlist of this song and Stronger, by Kanye West, and maybe a few Rage Against the Machine songs. I figure that it will be baby time. Give birth to a human time. And giving birth to a baby sounds like work.

Anyway, I'm going to Flobots tonight only for Flobots. You know, sometimes you'll see a show listing and say, "All of those are bands I am willing to attend." For example, Honda Civic Tour '07. I went for Fall Out Boy, but I went early for Cobra Starship and The Academy Is. (Technically, that was supposed to be an ellipses, but it was also the end of a sentence, and it would have looked like "The Academy Is...." and that's no good.) This show lists as Flobots, Doomtree, P.O.S, and Self-Expression Music. I don't know any of those bands. But, to judge a book by its cover, those sound like metal bands. Nu-metal bands. NU-METAL BANDS.

I guess we'll see what it ends up being. And whatever it is, I'll write about it on here. Like I said, I'm super stoked. I love Flobots. Maybe I'll somehow get a CD, or a shirt, or maybe even a concert wristband!

Speaking of which, does anybody else get upset when they go to a show and don't get a tag? I mean, I do. It makes me so sad. Sometimes, that's the only souvenir you get. I wore my HCT wristband for literally one year and then it fell off. It tore in half. Then, I tacked it to my wall. It's not that I'm like a pack-rat, it's that I like nostalgia. Rubik's Cube I've never solved! John F. Kerry presidential poster! Various vittles of homemade art! These are all things found in my room.

The first sentence you'll read out of my mouth on the Flobots recap is whether or not I got a wristband.

Amazing

2008-07-16T21:24:00.000-07:00

So I'm not going to lie. I miss Diantha, and I still care a lot about her. That's why it hurts to hear how much she hates me and how badly she thinks of me. I care about her, but I'm not going to be the one to apologize.

Why?

Because I've been fixing things and fixing things since we first became friends. She'll claim all she wants that she's the only one who puts forth effort, but I've been the one who again and again apologizes first, because I know she won't. And because I like our friendship to remain in tact.

But this time I feel like it's her deal. She's the one who burnt the bridge between us, and so she's the one who ought to fix it. I don't want my efforts to be spurned. So I think, why make the effort?

I'm not mad at her, per se, I'm just extremely hurt and, after seeing the things she's done tonight (really horrible things, not to me but to herself) I don't know what to do. I feel extremely saddened by all of this. I mean, I can take account for what contributions I made. And I'm willing to do that. I'm willing to look past Diantha's foibles and forgive her for what she's done, but I doubt she'll ever forgive me.

She hates me. And I don't like her a whole lot right now, either, but the thing is that I don't want her to think I don't care, or that I'm trying "to kill" her, or that I'm abandoning her. It's not that Keith is the only one who cares, it's that Keith is one of the only people she hasn't pushed away. I don't want to talk to her about serious things. I know she doesn't want to. But really, I can't muster it up to be dejected and spurned by her again.

So I'm open to things being better. I don't know if she is.

Don't Mess With My Ilana.

2008-07-14T23:43:00.000-07:00

So, here's the thing. Say what you will about Ilana Sivachenko. Just be forewarned that I will mess your shit up. I heart Ilana. I would wear proudly a shirt that says in big Impact font letters that I heart Ilana.

This is why it bugs the living Christ out of me when someone erroneously targets her in a MySpace firestorm just because they can. I won't name names, but I will say that this is nothing new in the case of the perpetrator. Ilana doesn't need your crap. So back the hell off. If it were me, I wouldn't be starting this. I would take this MySpace shit and swallow it down, swallow my pride, and let this continue. But this is where I draw the line. Just because this perpetrator is mad at me gives them no right to start something with my friends.

This perpetrator has no right to go on pushing people around, pretending that they are the only one ever to be hurt by anyone else. They have hurt all of us.

I know that to anybody outside of my social circle, this makes no sense. It's a pointless post to those of you who like to hear my poop stories. Also those of you who read just because you like to hear me talk about how depressed and sad I am because of this or that, bits and bobs about my silly little life. But it had to be said.

In other news, is anyone else peeing their pants over school starting again? I literally am counting the days, I think it's something like 45, though that's debatable depending on when school actually starts. I'm excited not to see my friends, but to go to my new! special! classes! like English 11 and Anatomy and Calculus! of all things. Why is this? Because I really do like to feel smart, and part of feeling smart involves me having advanced classes, requiring glasses, and having a blog.

Yes, Internet! I love my blog! I love my blog. I love that I can write what I think, I love that hardly anybody reads, I love that I have a specific URL that I can twist to my own tastes. And I love that I can take someone to task at a place they never visit, or at least, claim not to, and not have to worry about who's reading it.

Actually, I have less of a problem telling the Internet really gritty things about me than I do talking to my own mother. Why? Because my mom is like a friend, and the Internet is an expanse of cloudy ether. Nameless, faceless patrons passing by, that's what I think of the Internet. Maybe that's a common trait of my generation. (Thus breeding the whole "To Catch A Predator" and that so-called child pornography built upon camera photos of blurry genitalia) Maybe it's just a common trait of bloggers. Either way, Internet, here I am to bear out my soul and tell you things I can't say anywhere else:

DON'T FUCK WITH ILANA.

Full Circle Politics

2008-07-09T21:24:00.000-07:00

Today, I had the privilege of going to a special screening at the Tower Theater, of the Steven Greenstreet documentary, Killer at Large. I went as Matt's guest, so I paid absolutely nothing and got to wander aimlessly behind him as he shot viral footage of the crowd. He and Andy had interned on the movie (read: Matt "the Intern" Bray) and I can recall many occasions when I texted Matt to find he'd been up all night editing.

Editing sounds like the worst task in the history of tasks.

But, as it were, I sat in the audience, in the wee Tower Theater where you can hear each laugh and snicker, and looked back at the gathering when I got bored. At one part, where a liposuction is pictured, I noticed everyone covering their mouths and eyes, which is understandable, because liposuction is a hideous disgusting thing that can be good in some cases but seriously that shit's weak. Shiiiit's weeeeak. There was one part where everyone was laughing in chorus to the ridiculous tragedies of our modern society.

The real keynote reaction, though, was to the camera footage of George W. Bush's press conference and oh-hey-you-guys-are-here camera interactions.

I'm not going to disagree, our President has proven himself time and time again to be a goddamn dolt. And looking back, we're all pretty sure that we made a big uh-oh-spaghetti-oh when we decided that the best man for the job was the man we wanted to "sit down 'n' have a beer with." Which makes it all the more ironic that Utah is still regarded as a "red state," a morally Republican state, because of this particular reaction:

I looked back because the man and woman behind me were hurriedly whispering, "fuckin' administration!" and "what a dick!" and noticed that Matt and Andy were commenting, too. So were the people in front of us, and the people all around. I could barely hear the Presidential speech over the sound of the populus.

And I don't know if it was because of the Tower Theater's general audience (NPR-listening, Starbucks card-having yuppies) or just the way the film had depicted the government, but I know one thing: Even Utah is sick of George W. Bush. I do believe it's time for change, time for a Democrat in office, because, as some may not remember, the United States was attacked after George Bush had been elected. Interpret that as you will.

My point isn't that I know a thing or two about politics, believe me, I know nothing. But I mean, it was a real defining moment for me tonight to see how everyone in that crowd seethed with disapproval.

On a lighter note, I'm tremendously proud of my little boys and their good work, and I did enjoy the documentary itself, so good work, Steve Greenstreet.

The film definitely projected its message to me. In case you didn't click on the link to find out more (a news article about it can be found by clicking on this phrase.) the film is about obesity in America, what began the trend, what instigates it, and how it can be stopped. I realized that I take my own figure for granted. You know, I'm not fat. I know I'm not fat. I always thought that I had a regular metabolism. But now that I think about it, I eat a lot of fast food, I eat a lot of food in general, and I really don't exercise unless it's riding my bike a few blocks on short occasion, or walking all around the city on a lonely day. Maybe my metabolism is higher than I give it credit.

And this film really made me realize that I don't need to stop at a fast food restaurant when I'm hungry on the way to guitar practice, especially since money gets tighter and tighter each day. I can wait. So, thank you, Steven Greenstreet. Thank you for showing me the path.

Oh, and I really liked your jacket.

Third Attempt

2008-07-08T22:53:00.000-07:00

I really wanted to write a post tonight, I did. I felt like I needed to write something, and since I don't exactly feel like getting started on typing up my screenplay yet, I've been making attempt after attempt at writing something, something, and I keep losing interest. I've been losing interest in my own life, like I'm reading the blog of someone completely and utterly drab.

And I know why.

It's because what makes my life interesting are the things I don't want to talk about. Lately, anyway, that's what's making my summer worth living through.

I don't mean to leave such a beg for attention, but I still feel a bit sore. I don't want to say anything too quickly. Don't want to speak too soon. But I've got to say something so I can stop feeling terrible about my own writing.

My parents have been in a rough spot since last night, and... well, I'm not the kind of kid who would be especially broken up about it if my parents ended up getting a divorce. Sometimes it feels like we're a single-parent household already. Sometimes it doesn't, and I do enjoy my dad's presence and what he does for us, but I'm not devastated by their bickering.

Though it is getting more serious than it ever has been before. I've never seen them fight like this. They fought for a long time, and both of them came in to try and talk to me once it had partially blown over. I don't know what's going to happen. Neither do they.

But I think this is what's interrupting my equilibrium. I'm not upset, necessarily, I think it's just that the conflict of it all is making me a little on edge. I don't like hearing them fight, even when all they're doing is talking in fast, hushed tones. I don't like them trying to talk to me about it. And it's hard to write. Hard to get out the little happy songs I like to write, and the little rapid-fire poems I read at Marmalade on Tuesday nights. I just don't know anymore.

I don't want to talk to anyone about it. And I especially don't want to sound like I'm whining about my troubles, but seriously, that's what's up with me. And if all I write for the next little bit is "poop!" and "vagina!" at least you'll know why.

Oddball

2008-07-06T18:54:00.000-07:00

I'm really, really shy when it comes to boys I feel the strongest about. I spend a long time being a bumbling, sarcastic fool, one who says things like "indeed, good sir, dost thou wishest to reach second base this night?" I think that's the reason why a lot of people at school said that Juno reminded them of me. When I'm nervous, I resort to this tone of voice that brings out the hipster slang from behind my normal words. Though, ironically, my favorite words are "juxtapose," "mayhem," "imbibe," "senor," and "consistency," all words that most people would replace with "smashed together with," "crazy shit," "drink," "dude," and "sameness."

So, because I'm shy, I guess I usually let it fall upon the shoulders of somebody else to do my dirty work. I'm not the kind of girl who likes to make calls, because I never have much to say. But this is a bad thing. I'm the kind of girl who texts instead of talks, and makes brownies filled with love, and writes notes to say, "if you were being eaten by zombies, I would shoot you immediately so you wouldn't feel the pain of being a heartless zombie."

This quirky way of romance is ineffectual because I'm working against the odds. There's a boy I ~~am falling into the abyss of deep-seated love with~~ like, but he's got a girlfriend, and I sincerely have no idea what our relationship really is. So I'm kind of stuck in this limbo zone of having something smart up my sleeve, but being afraid to do anything about it because I don't want to get hurt.

What do I want?

I want a boy to rock out with when Livin' On A Prayer comes on. A boy who'll visit me at work and pinch my freckled cheeks when we've been out in the sun long enough for them to turn pink. A boy who won't mind me leaving up the armrest at the movie, so we can hold hands. A boy who'll be okay with my qualms about pooping.

I want a boy who will go to stupid superhero movies with me, let me drink a Diet Coke and only call me crazy once, take me to an indie show and hold my hand even though it's sweaty. And one who'll love my hair color no matter what it is, who'll laugh when I sneeze, who'll listen to the Doors all night, and who'll send me a text on his best friend's phone when he can't do it, just to say that if I were being eaten by zombies, he'd shoot me before I became one of them.

I want a boy who won't call every night, and won't put down the toilet seat, and will wear a shirt until it literally has soaked up the week's smell, and will tell me when my hair looks like somebody shot off a load into it because of the glue-based product I use. I want a boy who will take me to Wendy's on a date because I said that's what I wanted. A boy who'll make mistakes and know it, and ask me to forgive him.

But most of all, I want a boy who'll love me for all my peculiarities and make note of it when I use the word "saucy" to describe the look he's giving me.

Maybe I'm a real oddball for thinking that way.

A God Damn Robot Who Can't Talk

2008-07-05T11:16:00.000-07:00

Emily and I are talking about how Wall-E, the newest Pixar movie, is something neither of us are really interested in. "Wall-E looks heinously boring." she says. "Dude, fuckin'... fuckin'... fuckin' Ryan Ross could ask me to go see Wall-E with him right now, right now! and I would say no." I say.

Why?

Because a good half of the movie, the first half, doesn't have any dialogue. Only sound blips. When I first saw the preview for Wall-E, I thought in all seriousness that the movie was a full length film of an animated robot putting bras over his eyes, and shaking boxes, and gazing up into the night sky. I didn't want to sit through 177 minutes of that and the sound effect "waaaaaawwwweeeeee!" Which, I guess isn't entirely true, there's some sort of storyline. But honestly, Pixar? Honestly? A robot?

A god damn robot, who can't talk, besides "waaaaawwweeeee!" and "eeeeeeeyyeeve!" I'm sorry, but I'm not going to pay to go sit in that theater with your god damn robot and the entire city of Sandy's children, who will inevitably echo each "waaaaawwwweeeee!" in unison.

Pixar, I've grown out of the stage where I echo sound blips. I'm not going to go into a theater and shout the Wilhelm scream whenever I hear it. Good sirs, I am more advanced than that. Bring me a superhero movie with a cocky alcoholic star and he had better have some kind of stubble, dammit, he had better have some kind of stubble or moustache. I have grown past the period where I look doe-eyed at my parents and repeat the last joke seconds after it's told.

Who else is super, super stoked for Hancock?

Lay It Out

2008-07-05T00:44:00.000-07:00

David says my new layout is elegant.

I appreciate this because I am feeling minimalistic, conservatory, and solid. I am feeling like solid colors and what is black, white, and red all over. The Dharma. The Dharma is black and white, and red all over.

How does a patient escape straight upwards? ask the scientists of 12 Monkeys, which I am not asking, because if there's anything I remember about this movie, (not much) it's that this movie does the impossible. Bruce Willis, acting for real. Brad Pitt, acting the part of Tyler Durden but in a much more raw and egotistical way. I am watching people in plastic coats ask a sweaty man if he has seen the crazy-eyed Brad Pitt in the wrong year, deciding pointedly, pointing decidedly, that it's Cole's fault the year was wrong. He gets back into the plastic sleeve.

I just pulled a Box Elder bug from out of my shirt.

Earlier, when I was talking to Justin online, I felt a scrittling near my breast, and thought it was probably a Box Elder bug. That was pretty mortifying. But then, then I looked down to flick it away and what was it? It was my own breast playing tricks on me. DAMN YE, DEVIL'S TIT!

Anyway, if you have an opinion about it, do you like the new layout? Questions. Comments. Field them to the comment box you find in this general area.

I'm Pooped.

2008-07-04T15:19:00.000-07:00

I have a job now, which is all I can legally say about it, except for the following statement:

I'm tired!

But I do like doing my job, even when the day is long and dead.

A Horrible Story

2008-06-29T21:12:00.000-07:00

My mom and I were driving to the city today, and something terrible happened.

When you have a child, when they poop in the car, you change their diaper and clean up any residual mess that may have been caused. But that would be an exceptional poop. When you have a puppy with carsickness, you take him for a ride in the car and all the contents of his stomach go out either end.

Today, our puppy Jay Gatsby Carmichael pooped all over the backseat. Twice.

We were just about to our destination when I looked back to make sure he was doing okay. He was squatting over my mother's white regulations binder. Since we'd been driving up a hill, I assumed he was just trying to regain his balance. You know, because dogs have trouble standing up in the back of the car. Well I looked at my mom next to me, then looked back again, and there it was. Four brown logs of poop beneath his bowed legs. That's when we smelled it, like a flesh wound you don't feel until you see the blood seeping out of it.

"Oh God, Mom, he pooped!"

"Wha- Oh my God!"

We screeched to a halt at the curb, two blocks away from the destination, but neither of us cared. Scrambling out of the car like drowning rats, we escaped the wretched stench. I left my mom to battle the poop while I went to go pick up what I needed. It was the worst.

She somehow managed to make it so the car was tolerable, and we sped away. We were halfway home, on I-80 and halfway home, when I noticed Gatsby was freaking out. It looked like he was having a seizure. His big brown eyes looked back and forth and all over, and he shook from tip to tail. Then we smelled it again. This time, he'd pooped in two spots. So much poop, so much rancid poop.

My mom merged as fast as we could (not fast enough) and there we were at a grocery store parking lot. She ran in, all the cleaning products had been used on the first accident, while I sat and texted anyone I could because this? This was comedy gold. We spent almost a half hour in that parking lot, my mom cleaning and I feeling bad for doing nothing. But I'm not ready to be a mother. I'm not ready to clean up another person's poop. Or my own, for that matter. Either it goes in the toilet or it stays in your butt.

That's the difference between her and I. She cleans up the dog's poop with her bare hands and a dual combination of paper towels and Charmin wipes, and then she worries the entire way home about her poor sick baby boy. I sit on the hood of the car and spend the car ride with my nose out the wide open window.

The best part of the ordeal remains, as my mom holds up her keys. A look comes on her face.

"There's poop on my hands!"

"What?"

"Oh, there... there's poop on the keys!"

"Oh! Oh!"

"Hand me a wipe."

"Wait a minute, poop on the keys?"

"Yeah, hand me a wipe."

"How'd poop get on the keys?"

"I just... I don't know."

Velour

2008-06-26T11:39:00.000-07:00

I still get the feeling I'm not allowed to say anything without offending somebody, but I've got to take some kind of stand. At first, I didn't think I was ready. I thought the words would get all jumbled up and send the wrong message. After a lot of introspection and a pretty in-depth conversation with one of my objective friends, I think I know what to say.

My issue started in preschool. Like a lot of kids, I never liked being yelled at, by my parents or by somebody else's. Especially by somebody else's parents. I seem to recall this one episode in particular. I was very young, very small, and one of my preschoolmates kept yanking on my hair. Every day, yank yank yank. Monday, Tuesday, yank yank yank. It upset me. But I didn't tell my mom about it because I didn't want to get called a tattle-tale, a term which back then was worse than murderer. However, I did finally snap at the girl right as she was yank yank yanking on my hair, and she went crying to her father. He proceeded to yell at me like hair-yanking was completely acceptable.

Ever since then, I've had a negative stigma about people who feel it necessary to make their parents call me out. It happened again when I was ten, or eleven, I visited one of the neighborhood boy's houses to play on his swingset. It was the summer. One of my other neighborhood friends was with us, but left for some reason I don't remember. My mom came to pick me up and we left together. We were halfway down the sidewalk when that boy's mother came screaming after me. Instead of the boy himself politely asking me to help him clean up the mess that he made, his mother decided it was all my fault that there was a mess of backyard toys scattered about her backyard.

So let me be allowed to be traumatized by that.

And let me just make it clear that I'm not trying to pick a fight. I just need to get all this off my chest. I need to see it laid out on the page.

It makes me feel like a toddler again to have someone's parents call, and talk down to me. I know I'm not a grown-up. And I know that everyone I know thinks I'm just a bitch who tries to "sound smart." But at this point in my life, and yours, I think that you shouldn't be asking your parents to scare me into being nice to you.

I'm going to say something controversial here, something that everyone will find one day and will ruin my life, and say that I don't think you should argue to me that your life is hard, that you have crossed wires in your brain, and that because of that, I should give you special treatment. I treat people with the same amount of respect that I'm given, most of the time even more. And let me just say that I have my days. Nobody gives me any sympathy when I'm depressed.

Once again, I'm not trying to pick a fight.

I'm saying that I still care about Diantha, no matter how badly she treats me, but I care enough about her that I'm going to let her make her own decisions. If she wants to repair things with me, then that's up to her. So far, what I've seen is that she's turning to Frankie, probably going to her and gossiping about me. So that's the way it is.

I still care, I've just had enough of being talked down to, being called immature and self-centered, and getting my attempts shot down. My arms are open, but I've been hurt too many times to go running for a hug I'm probably not going to get.

Since Prince Was On Appalonia

2008-06-26T01:29:00.000-07:00

Everyone I know and love is either dying or dead.

First it was Tim Russert. And he died, and the world said, "what's this?" I heard the news about Russert's death on the news as almost an offhand remark. My mom and I were driving home, and the reporter on KRCL said, with an announcement of the time, that the host of Meet the Press had died of heart trouble.

While I will admit that I really had no connection to Tim Russert besides seeing him once in a Newsweek magazine, and consequently naming a Sim after him, I can say that George Carlin's death was one that really hit me.

I encountered George Carlin because his specials were always on HBO late at night, when I was up and looking for a chuckle. I liked him. And ironically, I'd never even seen his oh-so-famed piece, "Seven Words You Can't Say On Television." I'd seen other gems that made me wish this old chimpanzee man would come to town. He did, and I didn't go, because I just... I just didn't.

I'm in the mood to switch gears. My friend Mitch and I were talking about punk rock and how it gave us what we listen to now. Punk is dead. But punk honestly did something to the world. It was a big swill of alcohol that came over the wounds, and washed away all the junk that had built up. The wars, the psychedelia, punk came and brought this waving middle finger that really taught people how to say, "fuck you, I'm making this music because it's my music, and there's nothing you can do about it."

It was really what came after punk that began to ruin it. Kids taking punk's theory to mean that anarchy was a good idea, or that nobody was right. Punk taught us the lesson of rebellion, but it quickly became abused. Almost like, in a way, kicking a dead horse.

Punk is dead because there's nothing to protest nowadays. We live in a world where an American president can be hated by 75% of the country, and nobody is punished for hating him. We live in a world where the American people can look at a war we initiated, and say, "that was a mistake, and we need to stop it." Nobody wants to be a modern punk. Everybody wants to be the originator of something, some little thing that you can hold onto and say, "I made that."

I think memory should be enough of a little thing you created. I think memory is enough.

I Can Make Anything Not Sexy

2008-06-24T22:45:00.000-07:00

I was recently (and by recently I mean ten minutes ago) on the phone with a boy, whom I told, with no provocation at all, I was in no state of dress to be talking on the phone. He asked what that meant, and was there some sort of dress code for phone communication? I said no, I was just sort of sinning by being kind of not wearing a shirt because it was hot. I could hear the question mark through the output. So I went on.

"Well, I got home and it was hot. And I was wearing a long sleeved shirt, and it was hot. So I took it off. And I was wearing pants, which are like long sleeves for your legs. And it was hot. So I took those off, too. And now here I stand, in just an undershirt and my skivvies. You can probably hear my sin through the telephone."

BECAUSE I CAN MAKE ANYTHING UN-SEXY.

Had I felt up to snuff, I could have said something like, "my thighs were so hot and sweaty, I just couldn't stand it one... second... longerrrr." But no, not this girl. This girl dances around in hot pants to Use Me by Bill Withers. This girl talks on a 30-foot-cord wall phone from the seventies.

After I'd hung up, I figured I ought to throw on some kind of pants, just to make it more okay for me to shake my cinnamon bits around, and I had to climb over the baby gate at the top (not the foot; does that make it the head?) of the stairs. Now, I still wasn't wearing pants. Those were downstairs, chillin' with the other laundries, and having a laundry party.

So, there I was, this short little white girl from Layton, wearing polka dot panties and a white wifebeater. I'm sure there's some kind of fetish involving that. And I have to rodeo over this baby gate that, by the way, comes up to my waist, and I'm not wearing any pants, and I swing my leg over.

But my grounded foot makes this no-socks-all-day squeak as it pivots, ripping through the quiet like a record stopping in the middle of a goofball moment. I started giggling.

BECAUSE I CAN MAKE ANYTHING UN-SEXY.

And once I got over the gate, I hop-skipped down the stairs and rifled through a laundry basket full of my mother's underwear to pull out a pair of white, seventies-style basketball shorts. Which, were it a bit colder in the house, I would have worn with knee high tube socks. Then, I came back upstairs and looked through the fridge for a pickle.

Peduncle, The Small Benign Armpit Tumor

2008-06-22T21:54:00.000-07:00

I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this, but I have this thing in my armpit that happens to be a skin tag. Why am I embarrassed to admit it? Because skin tags are for fat people. Or at least, so I thought.

My first encounter with the fibroepithelial polyp was on Viva La Bam. Bam Margera's uncle, Don Vito, was shown sporting like fifteen of them under his armpit, all like testimonial flags to just how disgusting of a man Don Vito is. I had my little skin tag at this time, but I didn't think they were the same thing. After all, Vito's skin tags were... really, really, big. And mine is small. It's barely there at all, but it so totally is there, in case you thought maybe it had a chance to go away. No, no, no. It's still there. Just chilling.

The thing about skin tags is that they're tumors. Tumors that, though benign, still have nerves in them. I found that out the hard way when I was shaving my armpits and nicked Peduncle's surface. Ow. So because they have these nerves in them, you can't just cut them off yourself. You actually have to go into the doctor's, show them your little disgusting tumor, have them locally anesthetize it, and then they freeze it off, like a wart. (which, as an aside, are also tumors.) So if I want to get Peduncle taken the fuck off of me, I need to like, tell my parents that I want that to happen.

To be honest, I feel kind of weird saying to my parents, "Can we go to the doctor's so I can have this tumor frozen off of me?"

So I've named him, and he's probably going to stick around for a while longer. If you ever see me in public, being miraculously someone whom I don't know personally, please don't ask to see Peduncle. Because I will totally just whip up my sleeve and stick my armpit close to your face. I can't guarantee it won't be smelly.

Something Vaguely Lighthearted

2008-06-21T19:57:00.000-07:00

Before I got home today, and subsequently found out my best friend was in a critical state of crisis, I had this post in mind that was going to be somewhat lighthearted but still mention that I'm getting a whiff of that summer depression that sort of happens to everyone in varying degrees of bigness. Sort of like post-partum depression, except with less childbirth.

Everyone knows I've had my moments. My days wherein the stinky foot of depression is stepping on my vertebrae and making them snap, crackle, and pop. It slowed down once I got myself the hell out of The Stressful College Preparation Program, but it comes back to visit every now and again. I try not to talk about it as much anymore. I don't like to tell my friends when I'm depressed. Mostly, I just take all of that hurricane stuff and force it to make a drawing of God finding his laundry's shrunk. Part of the big epiphany I had last month was the realization that if I felt down, I didn't have to take everybody else down with me.

Oh, believe me, if I could, I'd get rid of my depression completely. But my theory is that when a person is introspective, depression is bound to rear its poopy head. This is because thinking about stuff is depressing. A lot of stuff is bad. And when an introspective person has an entire three months completely to themselves, can you guess what's going to happen? It starts with an in and ends with sanity.

This may sound strange, but yes, I have gotten sick of myself. I'll catch myself sometimes just thinking about how much of a nuisance I am. I get to wondering how anybody else deals with me. I'm not funny, I make ugly faces, and I'm terrified of abandonment. Sounds like fun!

So I'm just warning you, blog-o-sphere. There will be ramifications. Since there's still about two and a half months of summer vacation, you can expect more than a few posts about me being sad, bored, and caged in. Then again, that's perfectly normal, so why even mention it?

Overwhelmed

2008-06-21T15:44:00.000-07:00

Any of you reading this probably already know what's happened, but I feel like I have to put it into words, anyway. I got home today after going to my grandma's house. My phone had turned itself off, but when I turned it on, I had a text from David asking me if Diantha was okay. I didn't know Diantha wasn't okay. I got online, went directly to MySpace, and found a stream of bulletins written under her profile by her friend Chelsie.

Diantha almost died last night because she took every single one of her pills and washed it all down with a "large amount" of alcohol.

Diantha almost died last night.

Everyone has their own way of dealing with this kind of pain and stress. Mine is to listen to the best of Simon and Garfunkel, to worry endlessly, and to sweat. I'm doing all three of those things, trying to build up the courage to call her mom in hopes of finding out which hospital Diantha's staying at. I can't believe what's happened has.

I'm too scared to cry, but too upset to try and talk. I don't know what's going to happen, or how anyone will ever be able to get over this. This episode has caused a giant wave that's crashed over all of Diantha's friends, and now we're left to gaze out into the horizon, soaking wet, and hurt from head to toe. We're staring, trying to see her, but our eyes are blurred.

That's all I can bring myself to write right now.

Why Cheesecake is Called Cheesecake, Though It's Technically A Pie

2008-06-18T20:11:00.000-07:00

While watching a Good Eats episode about cheesecake:

Me: "Does anybody want to sample my cheese pie?"

Mom: "My favorite part is the crust!"

Some Things I Personally Would Like to Do Before I Die, Or At Least, Before It's Too Late and I Smell Like Mothballs

2008-06-16T18:45:00.000-07:00

1. Attend South by Southwest.

I'm not sure how fun this would actually be, but it's one of those things that I feel like I should do, since everyone besides me seems to have done so.

2. Wear a flamenco dress.

A flamenco dress looks fun to wear. I would wear one to the store to buy groceries.

3. Live in New York, Paris, and/or San Francisco.

If all goes according to plan, that third one might be more realistic than either of its predecessor's. Oh, California College of the Arts. Accept me, would you?

4. Write a song using an accordion and a corncob pipe.

Does this one sound too intricate/eccentric?

5. Attend a red carpet event.

This one is purposefully vague, because I have a sort of fear wherein writing about things with too much detail makes it so they won't happen. I heard Stephen King has the same philosophy.

6. Sail across the Atlantic ocean.

Ever since I saw Titanic, I've had this wacky dream to sail across the Atlantic. I don't really have a preference as to what kind of boat it is, as long as it's long enough for me to lay down in and has a covered quarters, but perhaps that isn't very logical, since boat travel is obsolete.

7. Speak at a BlogHer convention.

It's far-fetched, I know.

8. Have a son, name him Milo Anthony. optional: Have other son, name him Henry Bradbury.

This will probably not last as a thing I would like to do. Probably, by the time I'm actually growing a second human inside me, I'll be very much over these interesting names and instead opt for something like Tyler, Cole, or Dawson. Especially if I stay in Utah. Yipe!

9. Graduate college with a major in Illustration.

I don't know how to explain this one.

10. Visit all 50 states, or at least, the important ones.

This is part of me wanting to spend the better part of my youth touring as part of an indie-acoustic musical act. More things will involve this, I promise you.

11. Play on Saturday Night Live.

See, I told you.

12. Marry a man who provides for my life what I can't.

It will probably be a long, long time before this even begins to happen.

13. Have a Wikipedia page that is 89% accurate.

I'm one of those people who occasionally Googles themselves only to find my blog, which is sad and kind of tragic. One day I hope to find a few more links that don't belong to me.

14. Share lunch with one of my idols.

Most of them being deceased, this may prove to be difficult.

15. Find something wonderful in the mailbox.

I open up the mailbox one afternoon to find a stack of polaroids long forgotten, delightful old memories. Or to find a great deal on pizzas and a new Mazda.

Blogger Killed My Internet Browser

2008-06-15T20:33:00.000-07:00

I was merely attempting to edit a draft post, Blogger. No need to get all uppity in the heezy. I know what you're going through, I do. And I try my hardest to be understanding, Blogger, but sometimes you just want to pick a fight. Look into my eyes. This needs to stop right here. Do you hear me loud and distinct? For a long time, it was just you. Just you on your own to make every decision and take every path, but it's not about you anymore. It's about me. My needs!

If it weren't for you unexpectedly shutting down, I could have told the lovely people browsing through here whenever they will (hardly ever) about mine and Matt's excursion last night. Wouldn't you like to hear that story, too, Blogger? Wouldn't you like that?

So Matt and I, after my show last night at Marmalade, decided to go hang around the local outdoor galleria. The night was young. Outside, the air was that sticky hot that clings to the back of your neck and your knees and you can't do anyfuckingthing about it besides embrace that everyone is disgustingly sweaty right now. And we were at the local outdoor galleria, where everyone was disgustingly sweaty.

We walked from one end of the galleria to the other, then turned around, and halfway to the other end, we both sort of slowed down and asked of ourselves, "what are we doing again?" We asked this of ourselves, and then asked each other. The decision was made that both of us were really super in the mood to go eat cheap crap. So we got in Matt's car, drove to the Training Table (a Utah Original), but only after fishing through Matt's graduation cards for giftdollars.

At this point, I feel it necessary to specify that Elan and I made about seventy-five dollars last night purely on tips and five dollar demo CDs, of which we only sold five. You may now take a moment to do the math.

So, technically, I could have paid for both Matt and I. But I didn't want to. I just didn't feel like it. I felt like laying out this money and loose change in a semicircle on my floor and worshipping it. This was the first money we had made for playing original songs. -still loves saying that-

We were in Matt's car, on the way to the Training Table (a Utah Original), and we're listening to all these 80's hits and power ballads and possibly the only actual metal station in all of Utah, and I'm like "FUCK YEAH." Because it was just that hardcore. There I was in a sailor's hat and a striped, woven tank-tunic, my hair a-blowin' in the wind, and it was one of the coolest things I think I've ever done. I felt much cooler than I actually am.

The real cherry atop the night was this pretty little picture I'm going to paint for you: Matt and I, Matt in his Powell-Peralta shirt, in a silver Honda Civic. We climb into his car at eleven o' clock, p.m. and turn on the radio. Out blasts the very first bars of Bohemian Rhapsody. You know, the Queen song. We both exchange a look like "this could not get any fucking cooler." He cranks it up. We drive down the belt route, cool air rushing through the windows, and we're just singing it at the top of our goddamn lungs. His bestickered Civic was our Mirthmobile. He was Wayne, and I was Garth. And we fucking rocked it.

Moby by Andrew Pommier

2008-06-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

A few months ago (or maybe more like a year), my mom got me this book entitled "Concrete to Canvas: Skateboarders' Art," which I flipped through and set aside. The art in the book was great, it just didn't pertain to me. For one, I don't skateboard. For another, I'm still in that limbo period of all artists' lives where I can't really create anything without slapping on a humorous quote. (see: you can use me as a dildo) But that sort of shifted today, because I have nothing to do and no ideas for blog titles. I opened to a random page and surprise! I slipped, tripped, busted my lip, and fell in love. The page was featuring an artist named Andrew Pommier. That site is sort of broke right now, but in any case, you can still see how totally fucking rad that guy is.

So I took the title for today's post from a little sketch of his, a little sketch where a man in a whale suit smokes a cigarette. I know that description does it no good, but for fucking real, if I could have found a link to that goddamn Moby, I would have linked it to every word in this post.

And now to the actual content.

I'm in a sophomore slump, so to speak, when it comes to art. There was once a time when it was completely easy to just whip out my sketchbook and some watercolor paints and just go from there. Splatter this, dribble that, and I had an abstract piece I was proud of. Then, I sort of slowed down. I was taking a class at school that was CE Drawing. My train of thought was that I had to keep drawing to keep up, though according to my art teacher, I was already racing ahead of the pack.

I'd been doing silly little drawings like this and this and sometimes this, because I was bored. I spent a lot of time at Strest making drawings as such just to keep my sanity. When I came to The New School, and no longer felt so insane, I still did these little drawings to amuse my friends. Some of the drawings got to me in such a way that it was almost self-abuse. In retrospect, the image of one tiny freshman bent over a wooden desk, frantically scribbling the phrase, "This is ironic, somehow" on a line drawing of a rubber chicken, that image is really sad. This little kid is really fucked up.

And between producing two or three of those drawings a day, and working on meticulous drawing assignments, with near seas of gradient to be filled, somewhere I lost the more creative part of my art-persona. I mean, I suppose that the silly drawings were the creative manifest I was subsisting on. But that's only a vague thought. I mostly just miss the ability to do things that people actually really admired, that weren't copied from a picture pulled out of Vogue. In that style, I feel less like an artist and more like a student of art.

Maybe that's what education is, though. Maybe I have to find a medium where I can be both.

With 90% More Alzheimer's

2008-06-11T18:42:00.000-07:00

I put on my cardigan this morning and got a wicked whiff of the sleeve. The sleeve, which hooked its scent up through my nostril and tugged. This smell was the most beautiful smell I had smelled in a long time (approximately one week). It took me a little while to figure out what the scent was. I was sitting in my mom's car when I realized it was the scent my dad used to wear before we bought him some Burberry shit one Father's Day. That, and it sort of smelled like a chest I hugged one week ago.

Then, I was sitting in the lobby of my music conservatory, waiting. A boy walked past who went to SLAA with me for two or three years. Now, I'd seen this boy since. Every week, in fact, since November of last year, and more. I'd seen him. And I had never forgotten his name before because it was a smooth-sounding name, an alliteration. But as he walked past, I forgot his name entirely. I couldn't even remember the alliteration. I sat there, thinking, "Will? Noah? FUCK!" until my brain felt like it was going to collapse. Then it hit me. His name is Alec. I wasn't even anywhere close with the W names.

So either I really have spent too much time in an aerosol cloud, or I'm a victim of early-onset Alzheimer's. Which one is better?

And what explains the increasing frequency of rash behavior I've been feeling? One minute, I'm as happy as a tart, and the next, something like "she kept nagging me" is enough to set off the time bomb. I feel really, truly terrible about it. I don't want to be the kind of person who picks a fight, but I can't help it. I try with all my might not to become snappish. I try so hard that it hurts my hands. And then I make yet another person call me a childish bitch.

Honestly, I sometimes just want everyone to go away. Not because I'm angry at them, but because I'm angry at myself. I wish it were possible for me to have something to say. A doctor's note. Like, "With apologies to _______, I am having a particularly bad _______ episode. I love you. I will be back to normal in ____ hours." But I don't have that. I have a bad attitude, I guess. I have a problem that won't get identified, because I'm afraid of my friends (minus the s) with behavioral disorders thinking that I'm "stealing" it from them. Can someone actually steal a mood problem? I don't have anyone to ask anymore. Everybody's left me alone.

Fervor

2008-06-09T12:37:00.000-07:00

The day is so pretty that I'm going blind by the white light shining off my laptop. Yes, dear Internet, I write to you this day from the stoop in front of my door, a cool breeze blowing past at random, nature-intended intervals. The neighborhood is so quiet that the sounds of Gatsby howling and the salesman barking into his cellphone ring out like church bells. The color is intense. Sometimes it takes a real infusion of life to make you realize that, hey, that grass is actually green, and hey, those irises, though dead, are kind of a pretty shade of purple.

We have this sapling in our front yard that we planted one year, as a sort of Anniversary tree. I think we planted it the day of my parents' ten-year anniversary, but I don't remember exactly. Anyway, we have this sapling and it bends sort of crooked in its place. It hooks just the slightest left and has a little poof of green leaves at the top. In Springtime, it spurts all these delicate white flowers which inevitably disappear once the sun comes out. Honestly, I can't remember ever seeing the flowers go. The tree either has them or it doesn't.

And the sky, oh my God, the sky. It's so blue today. Staring up at it reminds me of the water in Hanauma Bay in Hawaii, so blue and clear that you can see the pebbles underfoot. That's where we went snorkeling. But the sky on this lovely day is so magnificently blue and flat, even the wisps of cloud seem dabbled on with a sponge.

The world is just awesome, to quote the latest Discovery channel commercial (the one with the singing, my favorite commercial on air these days) and it is awesome in every way. Have you ever stared at a shadow?

So here I am today, in a tube dress I bought in New York almost one year ago, feeling for the first time the warm kiss of the sun on my much-neglected shoulders. The breeze brings a sort of beachside chill to my skin and goddammit, it is just the most pleasant thing I think I've ever felt this year. I want to stay out here forever. I want this weather, and this post, to never end.

But, Internet, you and I both know that this is the closest thing Utah has to Spring, and it'll be over by the end of this month. Finally, pleasant weather comes along, and it comes after so many weeks of back and forth, back and forth. We were all wondering when the snow was going to stop. Pretty soon we'll all be thinking how fucking hot it feels outside, how we can't even take a breath of air without feeling like our blood is boiling. Ah, Utah. Why does anyone ever leave your pleasant groves?

In Which I Discuss Poop

2008-06-08T17:34:00.000-07:00

If anyone knows how much I hate poop, Internet, it's you. I hate poop with every fiber of my being. I hate pooping. I hate poop-making. I hate the idea that as I am eating, the food is becoming poop. I hate poop.

But in my family, it's sort of supposed to be like "poop happens, life goes on." LIFE DOES NOT GO ON AFTER POOP. What I'd give to be a person who lives with constipation. I would only poop half of the time that I poop now. Can you imagine that? Half of the time. That would free up at least an entire day for me to do whatever the crap I wanted! In the time I'd be pooping, I could draw a picture of a dinosaur. I could write a song. If I took five instances of pooping and instead didn't poop, I would have enough time to walk to the store, buy a soda pop, and come back!

As a side note: I read somewhere that the movie Cloverfield was actually supposed to have a real horror-movie title, but ended up keeping its shipped-to-theaters name because the trailer became so popular. I guess I think that's most funny because I've been reading IMDb for a while now, and a lot of movies have that shipped-to-theaters name, usually something like "Garden Huggers 2" or something.

Which makes me wonder, if production companies are worried about hustlers stealing movie reels, maybe they should ship them names under things that actually seem plausible. Not a stupid name like Cloverfield. But like, "Liberty" or somesuch. I don't know. I'm just saying.

What was I talking about? Poop? Jeez, why did I even start writing this post? I'm a terrible person.