A Writer's Lament

The Infamous Exploding Whale.

2008-05-01T01:35:00.000-07:00

2006-10-03T06:18:00.000-07:00

Schools punishing kids for what they say online.
Critics say policies that extend to posts from home computers are unconstitutional.

A growing number of school officials in the Indianapolis area are trying to punish students for Internet commentary they deem inappropriate -- including postings on home computers -- drawing outrage from teens and free-speech advocates...

One student has been expelled at one school, another suspended. One school district has warned students they are legally responsible for postings; another will vote on a similar policy this month.

"Kids look at the Internet as today's restroom wall," said Steve Dillon, director of student services for Carmel Clay Schools. "They need to learn that some things are not acceptable anywhere."

This is my upsetting than I think anybody knows. You see overprotective teachers with their heads full of censorship and "decency," while I see the seeds of total control over free speech. This sort of blindfolding the youth from innapropriate material is everywhere, especially in high schools, but not allowing them to be innapropriate outside of high school is asking to eliminate the one freedom I revelled in during my adolescence. What happens when kids don't even know what innapropriate material is anymore? I'll tell you what: nothing ever being funny.

Prompted 10 Minute Play (Revised)

2006-09-22T00:54:00.000-07:00

The original draft I had read in class was a bit too vulgar in language so I rephrased some statements for those not easily offended over profane military jargon and homophobic slurs. Better this way anyway, more solid.

GUY-RAQ

__________

A 10 Minute Play I Accidentally Wrote
for the Prompt

by

Travis Curran

Cast of Characters

Jeremy Thompson: A young soldier, serving his second month in Iraq.

Mark Fuller: A fresh-off-the-plane new recruit.

Mechanic: An Army Engineers Corp mechanic.

Scene

A highway headed south from Baghdad, Iraq. Just above the Kuwait border.

Time

The Not-Too-Distant Future,
Circa 2006

Act I

Scene 1

SETTING: A jeep is pulled off to the side of a dusty road. There are no visible plants or trees. There is a pale cyclorama as a backdrop.

AT RISE: We hear the failing sounds of a loud engine as the lights come up. JEREMY and MARK are sitting in the Jeep. JEREMY is behind the wheel. It’s the middle of the afternoon and the sun is beating down upon them.

JEREMY
Motherfucker.

(JEREMY punches steering wheel)

MARK
What happened?

JEREMY
We’re out of fucking gas, that’s what.

MARK
But how?

JEREMY
I don’t know, but I find it kind of odd considering how we refilled the tank right before leaving Baghdad two hours ago.

MARK
I know, I filled the tank myself.

JEREMY
And yet here we are. Out of gas.

MARK
(exiting the Jeep)
No way, man. I definitely filled the tank.

(MARK goes to the upstage side of the Jeep, and opens the gas cap.)

Do you have, like, a big stick or something?

JEREMY
Yeah, right here, in my back pocket. Hold on, let me get it for you.

MARK
Wait, is it there? Quick, you should check. Because, you know, it might have gone up your ass.

JEREMY
Shut up

(JEREMY gets out of the Jeep, and pops the hood open and begins searching around inside.)

MARK
I don’t know if it’s in there, man. But I’m still betting it’s up your ass.

JEREMY
I said shut up. You're so annoying.

(JEREMY takes out the oil dip stick, wipes it clean off his pants and throws it at MARK.)

There you go.

MARK
Ow. Stop.

(MARK puts the dipstick in the gas tank, while JEREMY sits on the hood, staring off into the distance and wipes sweat from his brow. There is a mild pause.)

MARK
Ha Ha! Check it out, completely covered in gas. I told you I filled it up.

JEREMY (snidely)
(walking over to MARK and looking at the dipstick.)
Well, how about that.

MARK
I knew I had filled it up.

JEREMY
Will you shut up while I figure out what’s wrong with this piece of shit Jeep?

MARK
I was right there, unscrewing the cap, removing the nozzle. Inserting it...

JEREMY
I said shut up!

(JEREMY begins taking off his rifle and helmet and setting them down beside the wheel. He gets down onto his back and crawls under the Jeep. There is a pause.)

MARK
What’re you doing?

(Another pause.)

You know what it could be?

JEREMY
Mark, the more you speak to me, the more I realize how if you were to die, I’d never have to hear you again. And nobody would hear you die out here in this nice, big, vast desert. If you were to just, say, I don't know, eat a grenade...why, I could blame it all on a roadside bomb, now couldn’t I? Then nobody would have to listen to your stupid questions ever again.

(MARK does not reply)

I mean, I'm not gonna kill you or anything... (murmured, almost an apology)

(A beat passes, and MARK walks about ten feet away from the Jeep and sits down by himself, staring off.)

Hey, I’m gonna get on the radio and hail a mechanic to come out. It won’t set us back too bad on time.

(JEREMY crawls out from under Jeep and enters the drivers seat. He speaks over a handheld radio unit.)

Yankee Echo Foxtrot, this is J18, do you copy?

(We can’t hear the muffled response)

I’m about 100 to 125 klicks south-south-west of Hotel Charlie. We’ve got some car trouble, over.

(Another crackled radio response)

Copy that, Foxtrot. J18, over and out.

(JEREMY gets out of the Jeep, looks over to MARK, who has not moved. Picks up rifle and hops on top of the Jeep’s hood.)

Well, on the bright side, I can get some much needed target practice.

(He aims rifle out towards audience, never resting on anyone. He ends up panning over to MARK. He hesitates there, then shoulders his rifle. Another beat.)

JEREMY
Too bad there ain't nothing to shoot.

(A pause of awkward silence.)

MARK
OW! JESUS CHRIST GOD DAMN IT OWWW!

(MARK recoils in excruciating pain, rolling on his back.)

JEREMY
(rushing over)
What?! What happened!?

MARK
Oh my shit! Something...Something bit me!

JEREMY

(looks around for a second, then jumps back.)

Holy shit! A scorpion! A huge fucking scorpion!

MARK
Oh fuck! Get it away from me! Oh my God, it's huge! And black! And sharp!

(JEREMY drags MARK back to the Jeep and kneels down beside him.)

MARK
OOOOOOOwwwwwwwww.

JEREMY
Oh, man. It must’ve stung you, man.

MARK
That means there’s poison in me! Holy shit, I’m gonna die. Am I gonna die? Should I call my parents?

JEREMY
No, man! You won’t, you can’t... die.

(voice cracks in fear)

Please, please don’t die!

MARK
No! No! I’m gonna fucking die! Oh man, you have to suck the poison out. You’ve got to suck the poison out!

JEREMY
It's OK, I know!(proudly) I’m a boy scout. OK, OK. I can do this... Where’d it sting you?

MARK
(rolls over)
On my butt, dude. Quick, quick...I’m...getting...dizzy.

JEREMY
Oh shit! Oh shit! Is...is there any other way, man? I don’t...I don’t think I can suck on your ass.

MARK
JUST SUCK IT OUT!

JEREMY (breaking down)
I'M JUST NOT GAY, OK?! That was only that one summer at Boy Scout camp and then once again the next summer but it never happened again! When Mom and Dad asked about the incident in the football locker room my junior year, I lied! I lied straight to their faces! I swore I wasn’t... But I’m just a hollow sham...and I don’t care how cute your butt is or how I catch myself staring at it, I really just can’t...

MARK
Hmmmm...Everything...fuzzy. So comfy...and warm...where’s the light going? So...so many lights...falling like stars...

JEREMY
Don't go, Mark! Don't go! There's so much more I have to say! Oh, hell.

(JEREMY bends down and sucks over the wound on MARK’s butt.)

MARK
I’m getting...kisses?

(JEREMY keeps at it.)

Wha...what’s going...on? Where am I?

(JEREMY pulls off and spits out over his shoulder. He keeps spitting.)

JEREMY
Achh, that tastes like death and ass.

MARK
Hey, I'm here...the Jeep? ...Jeremy?

JEREMY
Mark?

MARK
I’m...I’m alive.

JEREMY
Mark!

MARK
It worked! I’m alive! I’m alive!

(They embrace each other, laughing with joy. MARK pulls away and looks at JEREMY.)

Jeremy, I heard everything you said...

JEREMY
It’s the honest truth. I love you. I love you more than I love this war. It took sucking scorpion poison out of a bleeding hole in your buttocks for me to realize that, but I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.

MARK
Oh...Oh, my.

(He pulls JEREMY towards him and passionately kisses him. They hold each other, making out for a beat. Then a MECHANIC enters.)

MECHANIC
You guys need a mechan...oh, whoa. Um...Hey, hey. Uh...yeah. You guys are...uh...making out.

(Pause.)

So... that your guys's Jeep?

(They continue making out)

What the hell, man.

(unzips his coveralls revealling his chest)

Let’s do this.

(Jumps towards them as...)

(BLACKOUT)

(THE END)

A Monologue by Me

2006-09-13T12:42:00.000-07:00

Well, for starters, if there’s one major problem with me, it’s my memory. It’s really out of whack. Never works the way I want it to. Name any person in the room, or anybody I know for that matter, and I’ll be able to remember exactly where and when I met them. Not always to the date, but usually I’ve got the full story down. I know what you first said to me, what I was thinking at the time, and what was going on. It’s more accurate if it’s a pretty girl. Now ask me what I was did last Wednesday, and you’ll lose me. What did I have for breakfast? Not too sure. Give me a second. I need some time to think. It will get weirder sometimes. I can recite the names of every teacher I’ve ever had, but spelling Wednesday is still a challenge. Whenever I think of a funeral procession, and try to recall how the tune goes, the only thing that comes to mind is the Imperial March, without fail. Even if I just heard it.

But you know, maybe that’s just how it should be done. What’s wrong with adding some style to your funeral. The Imperial March blazing triumphantly as your coffin is carried through the graveyard. That’s the kind of drama I want when I die. Hell, I’d even have the men dressed up as stormtroopers. Those costumes have got to be around somewhere. Why not just theme the whole damn thing. Put it all in your will. No one’s going to argue, and let’s be honest here, who doesn’t love Star Wars. Pre-order everything and have them delivered the day before. My mom and dad can be Han and Leia. Some weird uncle gets the Chewbacca costume. Grandpa is Obi-Wan Kenobi (from A New Hope, not the first three episodes). He kinda looks like Sir Alec Guiness anyway. Someone could be Lando, or the Emperor, or even Greedo if he’s cool with getting shot (and my dad would have definitely shot first). Just imagine the facial expression your best friend will make when he opens up the packaging and its Boba Fett’s armor. Jetpack and everything. If that were to happen to me, the first three words that would come to my mind would be: “Best. Funeral. Ever.” People would probably be happy I died. Wouldn’t you? If you were invited. Which you would be.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’d feel guilty if everybody just got depressed. But you know there would be some young second-cousin stuck up girl who is just miserable that she has to sit there in her gigantic paper-maché mask of some random alien extra character who has a strange name nobody really knows except huge geeks like me. But you know what, she’s alive, I’m dead. This is my show, not hers. That some young second cousin can deal with it. She can’t say no. Imagine the rift you could create between the family between members who are OK with a Star Wars themed funeral, and those who refuse to participate. Some controversy to spice up the mourning process.

The wake would definitely be closed casket (and set in the Mos Eisley Cantina), but here’s why. Beforehand, I’ll have a projector installed in the coffin. It will be pointed up at the wall. And there, projected before the crowd, will be the ghostly image of me, dressed in full Jedi robes, standing next to Yoda, Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker. Gazing down upon everybody, smiling with approval, so happy that I have finally returned to the Force. So thankful that everyone came and got all dressed up. If seeing that would not make your eyes moisten up a bit, then I don’t know what you’re doing at my funeral. You clearly don’t miss me that much.

Ah, A Blog!

2006-08-29T09:17:00.000-07:00

I had almost completely forgetten this thing's existence over the course of the summer. What a shame. Poor little blog.

Ha, blogs. "Blog" is everyone's new favorite word now. It's on news sites. It's on Apple commercials. (We are all controlled by Apple and the Media) Everyone's got one, and if they don't, then they don't matter. Not to sound too pretentious or anything, but I totally had a blog before this whole new fad took over. Except we didn't call them blogs, they were "journals" or "diaries" or "way less cool things." I wasn't very proud of it. Less proud than I am of my MySpace. And MySpace really sucks. When American civilization crumbles to dust underneath the sands of time, future historians will accredit the downfall to MySpace. Or just the Internet in general.

Imagine if there were no Internet. It's not an easy thing to do.

If presented with a working A) Time Machine, B) Magic Lamp, or C) Birthday Wish, I think my top priority would be along the lines of: starting my life over from the beginning of high school and focus most of my learning efforts on Wilderness Survival (and losing my virginity sooner). 'Cause, dude, that's got to come in handy someday. If electricity were to mysteriously fail on us, I want to still be on top of things and not scavenging around the Urban Wasteland like the majority of our population will be. Utterly helpless without their cell phones, automobiles, money, and so on. It'd be chaos. But I wouldn't be affected. I'd be trapping and cooking the few remaining animals on this planet and building shelter and surviving to live on another day and be there to see what will come next.

That got a bit out there. My bad. Anyways, I think I'll blog more. I'll be writing a lot these next two semesters, and I'll always need a fallback place for my really bad/weird/innapropriate ideas.

Peace,
TC

Holy Shit!

2006-07-26T11:56:00.000-07:00

I have a blog! Crazy! Totally forgot there. Spaced, I guess.

Once I'm not in a job that requires 24 hour attention of children in the middle of the woods with limited Internet access, I will maybe keep this up some. Maybe.

Fun Fact: I'm learning Russian.

A Russian Lesson:

ya gavaru niemnoshka paruskie
I barely speak Russian.

Acting I, Final Scene

2006-04-13T18:00:00.000-07:00

THE AUDITION

CHARACTERS:
Travis Curran - young, aspiring actor; wiseass
Nick Cyr - older experienced actor; pompous

SCENE:
The green room for Hamlet auditions. Travis is sitting in one of the chairs patiently. There is another chair, and a stool at center.

Nick enters and sit. There are moments of silence as each actor reads and prepares their scripts.

TRAVIS
So...hey, man, what’re you doing?

NICK
Hm? Excuse me?

TRAVIS
What’s your monologue?

NICK
What’s it to you?

TRAVIS
Sorry, man. Just, you know, attempting some friendly conversation.

NICK
Sorry, just didn’t know we were friends.

TRAVIS [under his breath]
Sheesh, dick.

NICK
Excuse me?

TRAVIS
Oh nothing, nothing at all.

NICK
Well, if you have to know I’m doing Lines 56 through 70, Act Three, Scene One...

A silent moment passes.

You know...the “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy...

TRAVIS
Oh yeah, oh yeah, I knew... Hey, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you deliver a little bit of that right now, to me. Yeah, how about it? You know, I can critique you.

NICK
You? Critique...me?

TRAVIS
What? Scared? Dude, I will critique the shit out of you.

NICK
Really? Oh really? Allrighty then. Take some notes, you might learn something

Nick stands and walks to center. He delivers the “To Be or Not to Be” speech.

NICK
Wait, hold on a second....Did you just hear something? I just heard a bell. Yeah, I hear a bell ringing, because I just took you to school.

TRAVIS
Oh, reeeally. Well, then. We’ll see who’s teaching who right now. I’ve got five George Washingtons right here, and they all tell me that you won’t be able to place this piece I’m going to show you right here.

Travis stands and places five one dollar bills on the stool.

NICK
Ha ha, well you know what? My buddy Lincoln here is telling me that I will. Lines, scene and act.

TRAVIS [worried]
Okay then.

Travis stands up and delivers Rosencrantz’s speech to Claudius, lines 12-24, Scene III, Act III
After it’s over, Nick claps slowly

NICK
Act three, Scene three, Lines 12 through 24. Rosencrantz to Claudius.

Nick stands, and slowly walks to the stool and takes the money. Travis is speechless.

NICK
Why hello, Mr. Washington. Oh look! You brought your friend Mr. Washington. And his twin brother George!

TRAVIS
Allright, allright. You’re good. Is that what you want to hear? Will that satisfy you, Mr. Shakespeare? Look, just because I don’t sit down and study every single piece he’s ever written just to make myself look better in front of people, doesn’t mean I’m not a good actor.

NICK
Oh yeah, well what makes you a good actor?

TRAVIS
Natural talent, that’s all.

NICK
Natural talent?? Oh mean, like, the actor’s flare or something? Listen, once you’re through with your freshmen year you’ll realize what it takes to act here.

TRAVIS
Oh yeah, what?

NICK
It’s all practice that’s all. You’ll learn, through time.

TRAVIS
I call bullshit. I don’t think you’re any better at acting than I am. I’ve been to a couple of auditions here already. It’s all about the director. Nobody’s a “good” actor.

NICK
Are you trying to challenge me?

TRAVIS
Do you want a challenge?

NICK
If it’ll get you to shut up and sit down, surely I’ll challenge you.

TRAVIS
Know any sonnets?

NICK
Ha. Do I know any sonnets? Are you asking for a ... Sonnet-Off?

TRAVIS
I think that’s what it’s coming down to.

NICK
All leading up to this, eh?

Nick stands up and stretchs out a bit. Travis rolls up both sleeves.

TRAVIS
Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who goes first?

NICK
Let’s do this.

They rock, paper, scissor and Travis loses.

NICK
Tough luck.

They say nothing. Solemnly, they walk center and turn back to back. They take six steps out and slowly turn to face each other. Nick clears his throat. He speaks the first two lines of his sonnet and takes a step forward. Travis instantly counters with the next two lines of his own sonnet, and steps forward. This continues as they get closer and closer and louder and louder. At the end of both sonnets Nick shoves Travis back violently. Travis shoves Nick. Fight Scene occurs.

VOICE FROM OFFSTAGE
Number 13? Number 13, you’re being called on?

NICK
Oh crap, that’s me.

TRAVIS [panting]
Oh...hey, man....good luck, man.

NICK
Yeah, thanks...you too man.

TRAVIS
No problem. Break a leg.

NICK
Allright, man. See you later.

Nick leaves and Travis sits

END.

Ten Minute (underdeveloped, unfinished)

2006-04-10T17:24:00.000-07:00

Curtain Rises.

A row of two desks. There is a copy machine on a table up center stage. JACK and DIANE are sitting at their desks, typing on laptops. Their coats are draped over their chairs.

JACK
Diane?

Diane does not respond.

JACK
Diane?

DIANE
Yeah, Jack?

JACK
Say, I was thinking...What are you doing after work today?

DIANE
Pilates.

JACK
What? What are those?

DIANE
Aerobics.

JACK
Oh, well. Um, what are you doing after that?

DIANE
Shopping.

JACK
Shopping for what?

DIANE
Groceries, Jack.

JACK
Oh, yeah. Those. Um, cool. Yeah, that’s cool. Say...I was wondering...

DIANE
Apricots!
JACK
What?!

DIANE
Oh, apricots. I had forgotten. I need to pick some up for dinner. I’m having company tonight.

JACK (worried)
Oh, really? Um...who is that?

DIANE
My sister, and her family. They’re visiting.

JACK
From where?

DIANE
Spain. Jack, why are you asking all these questions? It’s starting to creep me out..

JACK
I’m sorry! I mean, I didn’t mean to. I was just...oh, you know, I was just trying to ask you...if, um, you wanted to...

NAOMI enters and walks to the copy machine, JACK shuts up. NAOMI begins to make copies. GUY enters from other side of stage, and walks straight up to NAOMI.

GUY
Hey there, Naomi. Aren’t you looking extra-pretty today.

NAOMI
Oh hey, Guy. Gosh, thanks. I really didn’t do anything special (obviously flattered)

GUY
No, no, don’t be modest. Are you going someplace special tonight?

NAOMI
Umm, no. Not really, just a regular night...

GUY
That won’t do at all. I’ll tell you what Naomi, at about 7:00 I’ll be outside your door and we’ll go someplace really nice for dinner. Maybe Roscetti’s, or that new Greek place. Your choice, but it better be very expensive, because I want all the rich and fancy peoples’ jaws to hit the floor when they see how pretty this gorgeous girl they’ve never met before is tonight.

NAOMI (melting)
Oh...wow...

GUY
Try not to keep too busy, alright? I know I won’t. I don’t even know how I’m going to get any work done, I’ll be so anxious about seeing you tonight. Ciao.

GUY and NAOMI exit. JACK looks disgusted.

JACK
God, I hate that guy.

DIANE
What guy?

JACK
Guy.

DIANE
Who, Guy?

JACK
Yeah, Guy! Mr. Suave. Mr. Casanova. Mr. Let-Me-Bless-You-With-The-Golden-Rays-of-My-Attention-Span.

DIANE
What, he was just being a nice guy, asking Naomi out.

JACK
But he’s our Boss.

DIANE
So, Naomi’s a slut.

JACK
Isn’t that sexual harassment or something? The way he just throws his pheromones around like a lasso. I mean, what if Naomi didn’t want to go to dinner with him? What if she didn’t want to be all swept off her feet. What if she had turned him down? Why wasn’t he scared? I don’t get it...

(pause)

DIANE
Don’t get what?

JACK
Oh, nothing. Nevermind. (goes back to typing).

DIANE
Wait, what is it? What don’t you get?

JACK
Nothing! Nothing at all. I.. uh.. nothing. I was just a bit confused, for um, a second, but uh, nevermind. Figured it out. Yeah.

DIANE
What did you figure out?

JACK does not respond, looks around nervously.

DIANE
Jack? Jack? Is something wrong?

DIANE gets up from her desk and tries to peek over the wall. JACK sees this and jumps out of his chair, grabbing some papers from the desk.

JACK
Got to make some copies, that’s all. Copy-making. Making copies.

DIANE
What’s bothering you, Jack. You seem upset.

JACK
I’m not upset.

DIANE
Okay..

DIANE goes back to her work. So does JACK. They both sit for a while.

JACK (checking his watch)
Well, another productive workday under the belt.

DIANE
Yup. Well, I’ll be seeing you.

JACK stands up, shuts his laptop and puts on his coat. DIANE starts sorting through papers. JACK walks forward to the copy machine and looks back to DIANE.

JACK
Goodnight, Diane.

DIANE
Goodnight, Jack. See you tomorrow.

JACK
Yeah, see ya..

JACK starts walking offstage. He pauses right before stepping off. He stands there a beat, then turns and walks back a bit. DIANE is done sorting papers, and shuts her laptop. JACK turns back offstage, but doesn’t move, muttering to himself. DIANE puts on her jacket and walks up to the copy machine, she does not see JACK. JACK turns back and sees her. DIANE turns and starts walking offstage, away from JACK.

JACK
Diane?

DIANE stops, turns around. As she does, lights and music change to signify a transition into a DREAM STATE.

JACK
Um..Diane. I know you’re busy tonight, but tomorrow. Tomorrow night. Could I take you out to dinner? Nowhere fancy, just a restaurant. With dinner. With me.

DIANE (overwhelmed)
Jack.. I’d love to.

JACK
Sorry, I was really nervous before. That was what was bothering me. I come to work every day with you, and I haven’t been able to say anything besides our usual time-filling conversations. I can’t do that anymore, Diane. I’m crazy about you.

DIANE
Jack, this is surreal! I never imagined you’d ever be saying these words to me, but I’ve spent all my life waiting for someone to say them. Deep down inside, I was always hoping it’d be you who would. I’m madly in love with you. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted in a man. I used to go to sleep crying because I never thought I’d have the strength to tell you, but now, here you are, telling me exactly what I wanted to hear.

JACK
I can’t believe this is happening.

DIANE
Neither can I, but I have to, because it is.

They get closer.

JACK
This is possibly the happiest day of my life.

Jack’s cell phone rings, he answers it.

JACK
Hello? Hello, Mom? (beat) Oh my God, Mom. Are you serious? (to Diane) My abusive grandfather just died! And left all his money to me! I’m rich! Wait. Wait, what Mom? (beat) You’re buying me a house in the Bahamas, the President was just impeached, and my old dog Rush just came back to life??!! (to Diane) Rush is alive again! Wait? What? THE RED SOX WON THE WORLD SERIES AGAIN??? Wait...wait, what Mom? You’re...you’re here? You’re here!

An old lady with a cell phone stands up from her seat at the front of the house and goes up onstage.

JACK
Mom!

DIANE
Mom!

MOM goes over to Jack and hands him a tiny box and whispers in his ear. JACK looks incredibly surprised. MOM turns JACK around and pushes him towards DIANE. MOM runs offstage.

JACK
Diane.

DIANE
Yes, Jack?

JACK goes down on one knee, and holds the little box forward.

JACK
Diane, will you marry me? (he opens the box)

DIANE
Oh my God...YES! Yes, yes, yes!!

They embrace. “We Are The Champions” or some other victorious 80’s pop song begins playing. Applause! Cheering!

Punk Rock Musical

2006-04-06T15:34:00.000-07:00

[So I started to write this musical about the corporate control over punk rock, and how the genre and ideas have been skewd by pop culture and et cetera. I only got to the first stage directions and opening of the play. A band would actually play live onstage though, making it a real performance. There would be a number of performances by bands in different subgenres of punk rock. The characters would meet a representative of a Record Company, maybe a short five-minutes-of-fame, then get screwed over. Social commentary on the youth of today, and analysis of pop culture, perhaps.]

Curtain Up

The stage is dark, the sound of radio static slowly fades in. (rock ballad about punk rock vs. corporate music). The static builds and builds to a very loud point, then cuts out. As it cuts out, the lights come up. There is an explosion of music as the ska band onstage begins playing, in a choreographed rock show performance, the song “Get Us Off the Air” The set is not unlike a gritty club stage. The band is dressed as traditional Rude Boys in three piece suits and other dress clothes.

Film Noir (beginning)

2006-04-06T15:28:00.000-07:00

She walked into the door. I could smell by her perfume she was trouble.
She walked right up to my desk and out came that same old line:

“Mister, I need your help.”

Before speaking I lit up another cigarette. She had come all this way, she could wait.
I slowly exhaled, looked up at her from under the brim of my cap, and said,

“Honey, you ain’t kiddin”

Her voice sounded like she had just been crying.

“No, Mister, You gotta understand, my husband...”

Husband. Go figure.

“...my husband, he’s dissapeared. He’s been gone two days, and I just know that he, he might be in trouble.”

I’d heard this same old song too many times, and my ears were getting a bit sick of it. People come to me when they're scared. Scared their wife is cheating on them. Scared their new boss is in the Mob. Scared their daughter will never come home. Scared of life. Scared to be happy. Blah, blah, blah. It all started to sound the same to me. This was my job, and they paid me to do it.

Science Fiction, Work-In-Progress

2006-04-06T15:03:00.000-07:00

I set up the basic foundation for a science fiction story dish. Prepped with this "Fleshing Out the Universe." Add equal parts Characters and Plot. Two cups of Action, one cup Drama, two tablespoons of Comedy. Mix. Develop. Serve poured over Philosophic Undertones, and sprinkle on Current Events Ties for appeal. Presto!

OUR FUTURE is an extremely industrial society, run by corporations, the Companies, which everyone works for. If you don’t work for them, you’re essentially homeless. Government has been completely consumed by these Companies, the CEO’s being as powerful as presidents. The police are bands of Riot-police-esque thugs, with simple SWAT tactics in combat. They maintain the “peace” or whatever it is the Companies want. The UHGs regularly skirmish with, and defeat, these mandatory patrols. There are different levels of intensity with these soldier-police, a large group of them being powerful enough to crush a basic mob or riot situation.

Each town is devoted to a certain Company, the citizens working in Factories or Mills, at extremely low pay and harsh conditions, manufacturing the Company’s products. The men and women that don’t work in the Factories and Mills, work for the Company directly: office-jobs, paper-pushers. There is a hierarchy of careers ranging from Bossmans to Managers to Board Members to Administrators (key powerful position) and then a range of Advisors, Directors, and Executives, then finally the CEO. If you don’t have a job, then you don’t have money, therefore no home. The Homeless gather in groups in Slums or Shantytowns, and they have even begun farming what little soil they can find unpolluted in order to survive.

One Company is for Power, i.e. electricity through means of coal burning, wind power, dams (much is run on steam?). One Company is agriculture with mile-long greenhouses manufacturing artificial vegetables, genetically altered ofcourse, and basic cattle poultry meat plants. Feeding the nation of worker-peoples, Blue collar galore. One Company owns Mills for Clothing, Furniture, and other “Accessories.” Another runs the soldier-police Patrols, manufacturing their weapons, armor and vehicles, also sells "home security products."

The Companies are evil (besides for obvious class reasons) is how it’s almost complete authoritarian control in government’s place. Due to almost complete urbanization of the planet and mass population problems, there is a strictly enforced policy/law of standards on reproduction. A couple was allowed a child only after a certain amount of years of being legally wed. (“weddings”, while retaining the title of the ceremony, is a 100% legal affair, no longer with any religious ties whatsoever.) After a lengthy waiting period, a second child becomes an option, with certain standards being met. Before marriage, Employees must regularly take contraceptives. Children outside of wedlock is illegal. Children outside of the Population Control Policy is illegal. Part of the policy is there is a mandatory monthly population census. If the population numbers have reached over the monthly quota, a squad of soldier-police thugs is sent to the Slums and poorer areas of town, killing the Unemployed. These raids are infrequent, due to the Unemployed’s tendencies to not include their illegal children in the census, but devastating. (the UHGs frequently attack these raids)

All of the “Employees” and “Company Men” are absolutely atheistic, believing only in science and technology, Darwinism, evolutionism, etc.. Giving them a sort of survival of the fittest attitude towards the Unemployed/Homeless, who believe there is a God, ensuring their survival and that the meek shall inherit the Earth. The UHGs are also religious, some in a zealous fashion.

The UHGs are extremely proficient with Urban Warfare, and they’re own brutal form of Martial Arts. They have also acquired salvage weapons and are absolutely deadly with them. They organize in separate cells, sometimes the cells coordinating together, in acts of revolution against the Companies, through means of vandalism, thievery, dissent and sometimes straight out war. This “terrorism” is broadcasted among the civilian Company Men as absolute evil. The regular Employees regard the UHGs as no less than demons or freaks, trying to spread their foul religion and political beliefs (autonomous government, anarchy, socialism, some communist, etc.)

New Purpose

2006-04-06T14:49:00.000-07:00

Since attempts to regularly update, promote, manage, or even write anything clever here have really all pitifully failed, I've decided to reform this blog into something less dissapointing but still awkwardly personal to me (hopefully less than Livejournal). I'm going to just start "dumping" in here. I titled this blog A Writer's Lament since I thought this site would just be a source of excess waste writing that I didn't use in anything else. Since there never really was an "anything else," I'm just sort of going to put all of my half-developed/-written/-assed works into here.

Why? So you, the Internet viewer, can read them and steal my ideas. Then I'll hire an army of attorneys to sue your pants off, shovelling out obscure copyright infringment and defamation laws and other stinky legal mumbo-jumbo and just spread it all over your face. Then take all of your money. So I can succeed instead of you. That's why. Got a problem with that? No. Didn't think so. Chump.

Ten Seconds.

2006-01-20T06:58:00.000-08:00

Curtain Rises.

Ten seconds go by.

Curtain Falls.

Curtain Rises.

Man in House Right Audience Front Row sits up and shouts to his left.

MAN
So, what did you think?

Woman in House Left Audience Middle Row looks back at him.

WOMAN
I liked it. A bit short, but I liked it.

A Second Man sitting to the Back Row of the House Center replies.

SECOND MAN
But what was the point of it? Nothing happened.

WOMAN
Maybe that was the point.

SECOND MAN
My kneejerk reaction is that to having my time wasted.

FIRST MAN
But it was only ten seconds. That’s barely noticeable.

SECOND MAN
It’s noticeable when I’m staring at a stage, expecting a play, waiting for something to happen. It seemed like a long time then.

WOMAN
What did you do in those ten seconds?

SECOND MAN
Felt a bit uncomfortable as the anticipation grew.

FIRST MAN
I really wasn’t paying attention. My thoughts were elsewhere.

WOMAN
Where’s elsewhere?

FIRST MAN
Nowhere, really. I just lost focus.

WOMAN (standing up)
It took you ten seconds to lose interest?

FIRST MAN (standing)
Less, actually.

SECOND MAN (standing)
That’s ridiculous.

FIRST MAN
You’re ridiculous.

SECOND MAN
How?

FIRST MAN
The play only goes on for ten seconds before you tear it open and dig inside for a meaning. That kills it, and whatever thought the writer put into it.

SECOND MAN
What meaning? That obviously intended to be meaningless, and don’t accredit the writer with this, the director is the one who made the real decisions with this.

WOMAN
There were no decisions. The curtain went up, then down.

SECOND MAN
The director’s the reason nothing else happened. You could have the directions for the curtain in the script, but there’d be so much room for the director to add to it that by not making any decisions to change that, he did.

FIRST MAN
But he didn’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable. I think his intentions were somewhere along the lines to provoke a conversation like this, and it’s remarkable that we’re putting so much thought into a play without actors, instead of watching some bland plotline unfold in uninteresting directions and after it’s over just sort of mumble about it to the people beside us or out in the lobby while we leave.

WOMAN
Are you an actor?

FIRST MAN
I don’t see how that’s relevant, but yes, I am.

WOMAN
I’m curious about how seeing a play without anyone on stage acting was from your perspective.

FIRST MAN
No different than any other play really.

WOMAN
Is it scarier to act right now, without being onstage and not having that...stage presence.

FIRST MAN
You’re accusing me of acting right now? I don’t deny it, since you are too, simply by being present and talking in front of people. Sometimes even without talking. You’re thinking about what you’re going to say and making decisions about how you’re going to say it, and I think that there’s little difference there, besides it not being scripted. Though it does seem separate from being up there (He gestures to the stage) on a stage, under lights, in costume, and all that.

SECOND MAN
On the stage, you’re aware of the audience watching you and they are aware of you performing for them and they are sure solid facts. That is not always the same when you’re not on the stage.

WOMAN
People’s interests and the effort in your performances vary.

FIRST MAN
I see. Well, I still liked the piece. I can take it and accept it as it was, since it did nothing to bother me or upset me, and I don’t think my being an actor has anything to do with it.

SECOND MAN
Or maybe it’s because with nobody on stage to compare yourself to, you did not feel threatened or envious of their talent.

WOMAN
Or maybe with nobody on stage you did not recognize another actor you knew from outside the play, thus you did not watch him or her and compare their performance to performances they had done in the past, or juxtapose their character to their actual personality, entirely destroying what they were trying to achieve by pretending to be somebody else in a some scripted story.

FIRST MAN
You can “Or Maybe” all you like, and you might be right that I did not do those things because there were no actors onstage, but I’ll never know that or not, since it didn’t happen.

First Man sits down.

WOMAN (sits down)
It's always something.

SECOND MAN (sits down)
Nothing happens.

Curtain Falls.

Christmas Eve Dinner

2006-01-08T12:29:00.000-08:00

Tonight was Christmas Eve.

It was such a strange step into the lives of another family. Almost a completely different culture, all of them brought up differently than I was. The first part of the evening was awkward and uncomfortable for me. I was a newcomer, a stranger, to this separate life of a man not too unlike myself, but at the same time different. I watched him in a environment he was more used to. The house was large, decorative with foreign arts, old with time but new with money. There was my Step-Grandmother, his Grandmother, who was very old but not old enough to be left out of any discussion or social event. She laughed a lot, and told us stories of “then.” At one point, later one, after the awkwardness had passed and I had had some wine, she told us a story set in 1955. The others in the room laughed with my brother and I, asking us if we remembered back then. It was funny for them, because it was before they were born, like it was for us. I had a brief wine-coated daydream in which I was much older and joking about the 60’s and 70’s, never having lived then but being closer to them than the other younger folks around me. She was a nice old lady.

He reacted differently around the brothers, and they him. My Step-Uncles were tall, large men. Both of them were older than him, and I spent a good portion of the night trying to see if it showed or not. He would not joke with them like he would with his mother, well, not until he had drank some at least. They both had respectable jobs and seemed very in control of their finances. One of them, the younger one, had recently bought a boat. The older one, a postman, bought him a very fancy leatherbound Captain’s Log for it. When it was unwrapped, my Stepdad mentioned that it was very “classy.” He had gotten him a DVD of a stand-up comedian. I would watch him around his brothers, and he often would be quiet, and not look at them, and seemed to be thinking on something. Or he was not thinking, and just sitting, and being there while everyone talked and exchanged gifts around him. The odd moment was when he got a gift from my Step-Grandmother. It was a check for 2,000 dollars. Neither of the brothers received gifts like this, and when he unwrapped it, looked it over, then showed my mother, it was his brothers’ turn to grow quiet. My Step-Uncles looked down, not at anything, they seemed to be thinking of something as he thanked my Step-Grandmother, telling her he did not know what to say, and that he might start to cry. I was still uncomfortable and quiet then, so after observing it all I started to question as I always do in my mind. What did my Step-Uncles think of their younger brother, who had left the big house where they all lived in Bath, gone out to a small rural community, marrying a poor schoolteacher with two sons. I had not brought his past into consideration, his clouded and foggy past that they must know so well as part of their family story. As always, I did not draw any conclusions about the gift and my Step-Uncles’ reactions. On the car ride home, my mother discussed with him how it was so good of his mother, since the mortgage was coming up and had to be paid.

Later in the evening, during the dinner meal when I had a couple glasses of wine behind my mother’s back and struck up conversation with the older Step-Uncle with my brother, I kept having the daydream/flashforwards to when I was older and my mother was the old lady at the table that the two sons ran around and did everything for. Would he be there? Where would my Dad be? I was going to drive down to see him tomorrow, but it was not really something I could bring up in conversation with him. I wondered if my brother would be the successful one, or if I would. Would both of us be unsuccessful poor adults, pursuing careers centering around arts and lack of public interest (like my mother’s pottery)? Would our Christmas Eve dinner be in a big dining room rich house, or a cold kitchen farm house that our mother bought and never was able to sell after fixing up moderately. Which one of us would bring our wife? It was sad, but I sincerely thought upon and realized that I would probably not be married early in my “adult life.”
The future was too complicated for the evening. Around the dinner table, trading stories and eating the desserts and drinking the wine. I told the story of how I totalled his truck the day he married my mother, four hours after they had left on the honeymoon. I usually focus on the part when I crash, but in the atmosphere of his family, I instead detailed out the phone call I made the night after to their hotel room, explaining to a drunk Step-Dad how I had done the one thing he had warned me against doing right when they left. Don’t get in any trouble, he had said. His family liked that one. They brought up how my Step-Grandmother had crashed the family car only weeks after getting her license and she had never driven a car since. I guess considering the time and setting of the event, it was likely. I mentioned off-handedly how high the insurance had gotten after, and how I had the option of turning in my license, getting off my mother’s insurance and saving her a lot of money. My Step-Uncle, the older one, confirmed that I had not done that, and then my mother cut in saying that that was actually something that we “were going to discuss later at a different time.” It took me a couple seconds, but I caught up and realized she wanted me to do that, turn in my license and save her and my Step-Dad lots of money. I remembered on the car ride home that maybe they did not need that anymore, with the gift from my Step-Grandmother, but decided against bringing it up. I then retreated into an inner-tangent about how people do not always vocalize what they are thinking, myself especially.

I’ve been realizing recently that I tend to think people are more like me than they actually are. Everybody gets self-conscious and makes stupid mistakes like I do. Everyone gets over-analytical about everything, they just don’t talk about it with other people so everyone assumes whatever they want about that person. It gets to the point that I truly have no idea what other people think of me. I have no way telling what anybody really thinks of anything...really. It makes me feel lost and confused, and my perspective on life feels a little bit younger than everybody else’s. All-in-all, not in a conclusive sense, but a generalizing sense, it was all far too much thought to be having for a half-drunk reflective typing onto a word document on my laptop during the long ride home.

At one point, before the dinner and wine and relaxing, when they were passing out their gifts, I had a moment. My mother got a “staple-less stapler” and no one knew how it worked or really questioned it at all, but my brother and I took it out of it’s packaging, aside from the group and studied it. We figured out how it punctured a small flap of paper and folded it back and pushed it up into a small incision it made, like a stitch or something. It was then, while they were exchanging their guilty thank you’s and half-embarassed your welcome’s, that I realized my brother and I had this one curiosity for how things work in common, and that was true of both of us. The only other thing I’ve ever been able to realize about who I am, is that I’ll never be able to know who I am. Maybe that one moment there disproved that. Maybe.

2006

2006-01-02T06:46:00.000-08:00

Dear Online Journal,

Sorry I haven't kept up in a while. Nothing too new or exciting to mention I guess. Which would explain my writing now. New and exciting things. Vacation is essentially over as far as visiting home is concerned. I'm leaving my hometown today and heading back to the Gorhamside of U.S.M. for some intense weeks of manual labor, grocery shopping and wasting my endless free time in an empty dormitory on a deserted campus. It will be bearable though, thanks to some excellent Christmas gifts, which include but are not limited to:
A brand new Digital Camera
Wireless Internet (via an Airport Extreme Card)
A Coffeemaker
$30 on Amazon.com (which was spent on Books, Videogames, and Music.)
A Jadetree
A Half-Broken Record Player

and
Lots and lots of Socks.

Yes. These are good things. This past week has not been pretty good though, but also very good depending on what you're looking for, I guess. I've concluded I need to write more. Yes. I need to write more. It'll be difficult, now that I've become a complete camera whore. But that's okay. I think everybody has a photographic side to them.

I'm going to try and form some new habits. Like financial management. I've already gotten a good foot on waking up earlier (7:00 a.m. - ish) and I'm seriously cutting back on my dairy intake. I'd also like to speak a lot less than I do. Maybe learn a new skill as well. I'd also like to get in shape, but that usually never happens after the umpteenth million times I set myself that goal. I think I need to understand myself better before I try and understand people. I think primarily that people need to understand people more.

Films I Saw This Vacation and Enjoyed Immensely:

- King Kong
- The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.
- Kingdom of Heaven
- Cinderella Man
- Family Guy, the Movie: The Untold Story of Stewie Griffin.
- Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
- Casablanca

Time for some last minute visits, and then packing up the car. Good day.

Sincerely, Me.

Current Mood: complacent.
Current Music: 3rd planet, Modest Mouse.

Available for Purchase

2005-12-16T09:58:00.000-08:00

So I wrote a novel in one month.

You can order it here and depending on your shipping methods, get it before Christmas.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

My First Short Play

2005-12-15T21:10:00.000-08:00

...

Curtain Rises

The stage is dark. A bright spotlight comes on, illuminating a Man standing centerstage.

MAN (wincing)

Ah! Jesus, that's bright! Turn that off.

Spolight goes out. The stage is completely dark again.

MAN (relieved)

Ah. Jesus. Now this is dark.

The Man hops off the stage into the house.

MAN

Thank you, Jesus.

The Man walks up an aisle to an open seat and sits down.

Curtain falls.

(written after 33 hours of no sleep.)

possible titles include, but are not limited to:
Lightboard Operator.
Jesus Nightlight.
ONSTAGE and OFFSTAGE.
Spotlight and Nolight.
Sometimes When We Talk, He Will Listen.
LIGHT/DARK.

I prefer, at the moment:

Lightboard Operator.

When I was Seven.

2005-12-08T18:01:00.000-08:00

Enter Newmarket, New Hampshire.

We first lived in a duplex with some friends of my parents. The guy was named T.O. and I can't remember what his wife's name was. They were both very nice to us kids. It was halfway up a hill in the middle of town. Church Street, if you ever go there. At the bottom of Church Street was, suprise, a church. Between the church and my house were a parking lot (where I learned to ride my bike, but never actually rode one without training wheels until a couple years later) and a small building that may have been an apartment complex. If it was, in one of the ground floor apartments lived our friends Jaime and Joseph. Fletcher and I visited them a lot, and they visited us. Our mothers would swap turns babysitting us. One night while they were over playing with us, Jaime had an epileptic seizure. (Jaime is the RA on the 4th floor of my dorm now). It was very frightening. Across the street from us was an empty dirt space that was used as a parking lot. At the other side of that was a large house where a Laotian family lived. Newmarket had a very high Laotian population. My mother would baby-sit the little boy that lived there. I think his name was Ricky.

Newmarket was a very small town, but I was an even smaller child, so it seemed very very large. Near and behind the church were the park and Lamprey River (named such for the lamprey eels that lived in it. I only saw these once, and they were dead and on the ground after the river flooded one time). Geese lived on the river, and we would frequently make trips down the hill to the park with bread for the geese. Once in a while, there would be swans. Swans are very beautiful creatures, but also very aggressive and dangerous. I was trying to feed one once that was floating a bit offshore and a man warned me not to, because it would attack and me and try to drown me. The geese never liked the swans.

Nearby the park, along the river, was a place called Joyce's. Joyce's made the best damn pancakes you'll ever have. Blueberry, Apple, Chocolate, with whip cream, with nuts, with natural maple syrup. Whatever it was, they had it, and it was amazing. Breakfast at Joyce's was a special treat. Also along the river, and one of Newmarket's claims to fame, were these large large mills. I believe they made something that wasn't paper.

I started elementary school while in that house. I'll save elementary school for another installment. I also moved into different houses twice while in Newmarket, but that is also another entry. For right now, I'd like to discuss the most important aspect of Newmarket, New Hampshire to me, at that time in my life:

The Playground.

The playground at the Newmarket Elementary School was a phenomenon of which I had never seen, and may never see again. Even to this day, looking back on it, it was the fucking coolest playground to have ever been built. Let me break it down for you.

The Whale - It was a slide, it was a swing set, it was a jungle gym. It was a gigantic wooden construction that was a whale. Inside it's head area, was a little space. The ramp started there, then went back at a slight incline to the tail. It then turned and came back to the top of the head. At the top of the head, was the slide. A metal three-kid-wide slide that was the Whale's mouth. The top of his mouth was wooden, and he had rubber eyes. The edges of everything dangerous was covered with this soft red-pink rubber. The tail of the whale were too rope swings, made of the same soft rubber. There were tires to stand on, huge tires. Branching off from the head were two tire swings. At the very tip of the tail was a small place you could stand and there was one of those long chains with round handholds every two or three feet and you could swing like a monkey from cross it to the....

Tire Pyramid - It was exactly what it sounds like. A bunch of tires, somehow connected to make a pyramid, it was very high. Inside there was an extra large tire suspended in the middle, like a second story. I loved that thing. I can't remember exactly how tall it was, but it must have been as tall as a regular classroom, if not more. And right nearby it was ...

Random Tire and Wood Constructions - These were giant tractor tires half-buried in the sand forming multiple contructions to play on. One was just a row of these tires you could crawl through like tunnel. Another was the tires arranged like a chair and a wood platform for the seat. There were balance beams (not off the ground) of wood and rubber and tire outlining the perimeter of the playground, making it possible to cross from the whale to the other side of the playground, where rested the...

Castle - It was a exactly that. A castle of wood with rubber lining. It had a ground floor, stairs to the top floor, where there were rubber poles to slide down on. There was a courtyard in the back, surrounded by benches of wood and tire. It was the site for many imagination games and make-believe stories. Behind it were the woods, where we would also play (within sight range of the teacher) and when it snowed we'd slide down a semi-hill that was there. The Castle was really like a castle, and it's kingdom was the playground. It ruled over the pyramid, whale, and...

Swing-Set - Since the playground designers really dug the whole tire-rubber-wood scheme, the swing set was just that. The seats were rubber, the frame wood and tall. One of the swings was actually this failed prototype of a swing made by cutting away part of a tire so I child could sit in it and swing. It was great. We'd have contests, swinging and jumping off them. I loved swinging more than any part of the playground. The swings were me. I'd get as high as I could and jump, and not worry about landing, because the ground was covered in soft, beautiful...

Sand - No mulch, no wood chips, no asphault. Sand. The playground was perfect because it was just one giant sandbox. No one got hurt. It was always warm. It was brilliant.

I grew up on that playground.

It's all gone now. Replaced with plastic, steel and mulch.

I can never think of good titles these days..

2005-12-08T17:34:00.000-08:00

Current Music:

Explosions in the Sky.
Streelight Manifesto.
Colin Hay.

Pandora is amazing. Everyone use it.

Current Mood:

Rather unnerved since November ended. Still working sluggishly on formatting the novel to be printed, via LuLu.com. Very contemplative and feeling lonely more often. Uncertain of a lot of things, most everything. Possibly going through some sort of change I won't realize until much later, looking back on it.

Might start another writing project soon.

(I've also begun writing in my livejournal again and it's gross)

Done, and Done.

2005-12-01T09:41:00.000-08:00

available for purchase soon.

I'll Make a Real Post After This is Over...

2005-11-20T14:26:00.000-08:00

Positive. Focused. Caffeinated.

2005-11-14T18:11:00.000-08:00

Hot fucking damn. I just passed the half-way mark for NaNoWriMo.

I am now 26,530 in to my novel.

At this point, I can see it finishing. I am excited by this. I don't want to say too much about it, but I can tell that the next half is going to be fun and messy to write. The play is over, so there is lots of time to put to this now, when I'm not avoiding homework. Good stuff.

let's get INTERACTIVE:
You can track my progress.

Back to typing. Now.

People are Pissed Off.

2005-11-10T12:40:00.000-08:00

So I guess I haven't been paying attention enough to the news, but apparently serious shit is going down in France.

Terrorists, Wars, Tsunamis, Hurricanes, Riots...

Time to call my schizophrenic great-aunt and ask her when she thought the world was ending and convince her to turn on the TV and reconsider it. But then again she never turns that on since the Government will melt her brain with it. I'll still call her though, to give her something to discuss with the sea-monkies.

I Have Fourteen Minutes and 59 Seconds Left

2005-11-07T17:13:00.000-08:00

Once a long time ago, I went to a summer camp as a child. I had a counselor at the summer camp named Ben Folstein. He was basically the coolest guy ever and I considered him my mentor for a long time. Well, the man has become a renegade filmmaker, and gone done created a website of epic proportions.

* * * *

Once a long time ago, I helped Ben Folstein out in a short independent film he was making.

"Attack of the Fisher Cat."

Check it.

What a Great Use of Lots of Money.

2005-11-07T16:41:00.000-08:00

"WILL A CLOCK THAT WORKS FLAWLESSLY FOR 10,000 YEARS BECOME THE GREATEST WONDER OF THE WORLD?"

Everything about this clock is deeply unusual. For example, while nearly every mechanical clock made in the last millennium consists of a series of propelled gears, this one uses a stack of mechanical binary computers capable of singling out one moment in 3.65 million days. Like other clocks, this one can track seconds, hours, days, and years. Unlike any other clock, this one is being constructed to keep track of leap centuries, the orbits of the six innermost planets in our solar system, even the ultraslow wobbles of Earth's axis.

Made of stone and steel, it is more sculpture than machine. And, like all fine timepieces, it is outrageously expensive. No one will reveal even an approximate price tag, but a multibillionaire financed its construction, and it seems likely that shallower pockets would not have sufficed.

So this crazy rich dude, Danny Hillis, who creates supercomputers out of tinker toys for fun, has designed this super-clock that will be 60 feet tall, embedded in a mountain in Nevada and use solely Bronze Age technology, and it will run for 10,000 years. Longer than the pyramids have existed. Longer than humankind has even been around yet. Crafted so you could tell the exact time of day, even if you do not use our current measurements of time, since it tracks the locations and rotation of our neighboring planets.

Pretty fucking crazy.

Pretty fucking amazing.

Crazy Crazy Crazy.

2005-11-06T11:29:00.000-08:00

Things have been genuinely nuts as of late. NaNoWriMo has started and is almost a week over. I've managed to keep up with the 1700 words a day, but still find myself needing to write every night. I've got 9,755 words down. I need 10,500 by the end of tonight. I'm beginning to understand NaNoWriMo's motto of "No plot? No problem!"
Unfortunately I don't have a lot of confidence in what I'm writing, abandoning all sense of quality. So I'm basically taking a month-long shit into a Word document that if ever does get published via the Internet then I'll promptly set fire to and hopefully feel some sense of reward. I've really only been keeping up thanks to large quantities of caffeine. Sometimes other chemicals will enter the mix, but it's really caffeine that hasn't left my bloodstream since the beginning of November. 4:00 a.m. is my new bedtime. The Burnham Lounge has become my new night-time stomping grounds. It's getting rough, it's getting tough...it's fun.

Also, the show, Arms and the Man is up. Come and see it if you'd like, but you won't see me. I'm hiding up in a tiny room all by myself on the balcony playing with electrical equipment that control when large sounds happen. It's pretty cool. My only real important cues are in Act I, so Act II and III I can watch the show, or do yoga or pilates or something. I'm just kidding. I don't know any yoga or pilates. I need to play more ukulele, come to think of it. The Mountain Goats make me want to do that.

Some very odd things that have happened recently:

After a tech rehearsal last week I came into my building to find my brother and two of our better friends ever, Chris and Ben. They gave me a suprise visit which was all good and nice and we hung out and they met some cool college people and then we went to the mall to do nothing in particular, felt like losers, came back to campus and smoked some cigars and they left. Pleasant. I go inside and the fellows at the front desk are playing an original Ninentendo Entertainment System on a TV they set up on the counter. It was Super Mario 3, nonetheless. David C. Clark was there and we all started talking about the first time video games entered our lives. I mentioned "I remember the very first time I got a Super Nintendo, and Super Maro Land." and then one of the guys at the desk, who I only really see there, and have never really met, looks to me and says "So do I, because I had an epileptic seizure at your house."
Wait.
Stop.
What?
The other guys laugh, but I have a minor episode. Wait, I say, hold on. Only one person has ever had an epileptic seizure at my house, and that was when I was seven and living in Newmarket, New Hampshire, and our friends Jaime and Joseph were over because my mother babysat them and their mother would babysit us, and we were playing video games and Jaime had a seizure and scared us all pretty badly... and I WAS FUCKING SEVEN. THAT WAS A LONG TIME AGO.
I just stared at him in disbelief and fell to my knees and bit my hat. "You're Jaime" I said. "Yeah, I am." he replied.
Holy shit.
One of my ancient childhood friends from the Lost Vaults of Time when I lived in New Hampshire....is an R.A. on the 4th floor. A little mindfuck right there.

So I got randomly IMed the other day. This happens to us all on occasion. A strange screenname masking the anonymous person who randomly wants to chat, how and why they have your screenname a mystery. On this occasion it was some girl using her ex-boyfriend's screenname who thought my screenname was funny. I was riding the caffeine wave and feeling good about things so I did not mind talking to her. We did some sleuthing and discovered why her ex-boyfriend had my screenname. About three or so years ago, I randomly met a girl through livejournal at a Saves the Day concert. We talked online for a while, figured out that she knew my cousin Mitchell pretty well, the stopped talking. It was awfully random and so was this.
The random girl then told me she was going to go soon, but I could call her if I wanted to since she was going to be bored for a while. I wasn't quite about to go that far into getting to know a random somebody, so I told her I didn't have long distance and asked where she was . She said "Sabattus," where my cousin Mitchell and Kristen live. I said I had cousins out there and she asked who. So I said "Mitchell Waterman," and she just said "Oh my God." Her name was Molly. That's when I put it all together. She was Molly Waterman, Mitchell's cousin, my cousin through marriage. We knew each other when we were younger, at holiday reunions and stuff. My brother and I would go to visit our Aunt Cathy and Uncle Pete, and they would have Molly over too. It was so freakish and bizarre. So she called me on her cell phone and we freaked out together about how small the whole fucking world is getting these days.

I told you. Craziness.
I'm also not shaving for the month of November, so I fear I'm starting to look crazy too.

Ahh! Back to novel-writing!

A Successful Costume.

2005-10-30T18:43:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday Night. Portland, ME. The Apartment of Nathan Amadon.

Halloween Party.

So all I hear all day is "Are you going to the party?" or "What are you going to be tonight? Tonight? The party! The party at Nate's!" I never officially received an invite but attained confirmation that my presence would be accepted and welcomed, if not desired already. This made me feel obliged to attend. Dress up, Find a Ride, Drink my Eyes Out, Find a Way back Home. I've spent few nights with lesser goals. There were a couple issues that compromised my imbibing of alcohol till my eyes were removed, such as my duty to wake up and go to a tech rehearsal at 9:00 a.m. EST the next day. It was going to be a risk, but one I was willing to run. Consumption control was demanded. I was ready to roll with this.

My costume, bee tee double you, consisted exclusively of pretty wings, a bow and arrow and adult diapers. Cupid. I decided to go as Cupid. I had the rest of the day to prepare my get-up.

A quick routine chilly walk to Hannaford's and twelve dollars and ninety-five cents later, and I had myself a twenty pack of Small/Medium Depend Underwear. Adult diapers. I also bought a bag of imitation crab meat, but that was not costume-related. Got back to good ol' 266 Andrews and test-drove a pair. Snug, comfortable and secure. But showed off way too much... me. It then took about eight more layers of adult diaper before I felt comfortably concealed.

So off we departed for Portland. The party was pretty happenin' by the time we got there. There were some issues though, such as the fact that I only knew about four of the thirty plus people there. I stuck around the other USM fellows and was prompted to change into my costume. I declothed to reveal my diaper, wings and brandished my bow and arrow of Love. My friends liked it, but the majority of the drunk strangers at the party did not so much. They acted rather offended/disgusted/confused/upset. It was even suggested to me I put my clothes back on. Shamed. I did so. And found my way to a cauldron of free jello shots.

Some great costumes there: Nate's roommate as an exact depiction of Hellboy. Miss Kate Law as Catharine the Great. The best was none other than the host himself, Nate Amadon, in a spot-on Hunter S. Thompson get-up. Straight out of Fear and Loathing. Brilliantly done.

Long story shortened, after a considerable amount of alcohol I took my clothes back off. I also felt more comfortable with the arrival of more people I knew, such as jessemiajackandykrisiankatecoreymichaelalindsay. They all liked my costume. The mass of strangers, now significantly more intoxicated, did as well. I made some new friends. Revelled with some old ones. Bummed some beers off of them. Shot some young lovers with imaginary arrows. Reached a fair-weathered level of drunk and was not sad to depart when we did. The ride home was a bit blurry. I think the alcohol in all the previously digested jello was being assimilated at that point.

I made it to bed and was able to wake up the next morning in time for rehearsal.

All in all, a good darned time for a theatre major to have a couple nights before All Hallow's Eve.

Pictures to come, after the jump.

Survey, Revised.

2005-10-25T07:29:00.000-07:00

revised to increase interest and decrease lame
shamelessly stolen from: Ian Carlsen

Do yourselves a favor and just stop reading now.

I HURT: when the ACTF respondent picked on me during the critique.
I LOVE: listening to my music wherever I go.
I HATE: my lack of confidence.
I FEAR: the day after college graduation.
I HOPE: I get cast in the Student Written One Acts.
I FEEL: lonely sometimes in the morning.
I HIDE: from large social gatherings.
I DRIVE: correction: used to drive a 1988 Mercury Tracer.
I MISS: warm summer days and having more friends on-campus.
I NEED: to find my Workshop portfolio...somehow.
I THINK: i want to write a 10 min. for the 10 Minute Festival.

1. What do you most like about your body?: My hands.
2. And least?: My feet.
3. How many fillings do you have?: Four.
4. Do you think you're good looking?: Not very often.
5. Do other people often tell you that you're good looking? Sometimes.
6. Do you look like any celebrities?: Maybe Bon Jovi?

---

2. What was the last song you listened to?:
"Sunken-Eyed Girl" by Mike Doughty.

4. What song would you say sums you up?
"Aside" by The Weakerthans.
5. What's your favorite local band?
El Grande (opened for The Toasters).
6. What was the last show you attended?
The Toasters.
7. What was the greatest show you've ever been to?
Against Me! and Murder By Death @ The Station.
10. What is the most musically involved you have ever been?
I once was in a "band" and this band even had "practices" and once even played at a "show" and recorded an "album" on one of the band member's "computers". And that's about it.
12. What is your favorite band t-shirt?:
The Toasters one is pretty sweet but doesn't beat my black-and-pink Against Me! one.
13. What musician would you like to hang out with for a day?:
John Samson, of The Weakerthans.
14. What musician would you like to be in love with you for a day?
Regina Spektor. Hands down.
18. Punk rock, hip hop or heavy metal?:
I'm very into punk rock, the energy and messages are great, but I've never complained about a little hip-hop now and then. Del or Aesop or Saul, and such.
20. Name 5 flawless albums:
Weezer, Self-Titled. Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd. Let Go, Nada Surf. Left And Leaving, The Weakerthans. Reinventing Axl Rose, Against Me!.
23. What is your favorite movie soundtrack?
Grosse Point Blank if I recall
24. What was your last musical "phase" before you wisened up?:
uggh. I don't even know...somewhere far away near the land of the Backstreet Boys..
25. What's the crappiest CD/record/etc. you've ever bought?:
Nelly's Country Grammar, perhaps. That, or Natalie Imbruglia, but I did not buy that, it was a gift.

Told you so.

National Novel Writing Month.

2005-10-21T10:31:00.000-07:00

November.

Along this page's sidebar, there is a new addition in the "Sites I Support" section.

This November, I will be participating in NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month). The goal is from November 1st, 12:00:01 am until November 30th, 11:59:59 pm, I must write a novel consisting, for the most part, of 50,000+ words. This is no easy thing. Ask my friend Jake Christie, who valiantly accomplished such a feat last November successfully with flying colors and such. He wrote "The Angel Del Oro" (now available for purchase). I've read The Angel and it's quite a read. Action. Adventure. It's sitting on my bookshelf right now, in fact. Jake lent it to me and I totally accidentally kept it all summer. Sorry for punking your book, man.

Anyways, I'm prepping myself to get some serious writing down. I'm also going to be operating the soundboard for Arms and the Man, my school's next Mainstage production, during this time. I'm sure a sleu of other things will come up too, that shall impede my progress. I'm going to invest a lot of money into Red Bull and maybe not sleep ever, but one way or another, I'm giving this thing my best shot.

It starts in 8 days. And I have some ideas.

Ideas I am not fully confident in, through and through.

Idea Number One. (working title: Copping Jake's Style)

An action/adventure novel based on your average-joe protagonist in extraordinary circumstances. He is accidentally mistaken for an agent of a secret organization and is delivered a package of highly valued materials that he must deliver, protect and keep his skin while he's at it. I have book called 101 Things to Do Before You Die, which is essentially that. A list of exciting, bizarre things to accomplish. In this story, I'd like the main character to do all of them as he goes along. Exciting? Suspenseful? Retarded? I don't know. The goal here is not to write a "good" novel, just a novel that has 50,000 words in it.

Idea Number Two. (copping Chris's Style)

I would feel guilty about this one. It would essentially be about college dorm life and the fucked up crazy social webs and situations that people get caught in. All while the world is ending. It would be very character-based, going in depth into histories and perceptions. It would be taking a lot out of my real life here, in Robie-Andrews. There would be an underlying theme of the degradation of communication in our current digital age. And the world would be ending entirely as the book progresses. Tsunamis, Earthquakes, Ice Caps Melting, Extinction, dayaftertomorrow THE WORKS. It would all be happening outside of the drama of the college campus. The protagonist will be a strong female character, but it will focus primarily on all the characters as a whole. I won't base the characters directly off of people I know, but bits and pieces of real life experience exaggerated and embodied fictionally will piece them together.
The unfortunate part is that this is slightly similar to a play done by Mr. Gyngell, and I hate to seem like a complete tool ripoff ass. They're different, for I'll include far more characters than four and it'll be a novel and not a staged production. It'd be fun to write, and easier than anything else. Once again, that's what this is about. Quantity over Quality.

50,000 words. Got to get it done.

Somehow...

(An Aside)

2005-10-21T05:39:00.000-07:00

24 times now, by the way.

(except when you read this, it will be 25)

Nervous.

2005-10-19T20:11:00.000-07:00

Show opens tomorrow (to a select audience).

Then the real deal.

If you all don't come, I'll cry.

And that's that.

Under Milk Wood.

2005-10-16T19:14:00.000-07:00

This poster would be totally sweet, if only it were correct or accurate in any way.

The times are actually:
Oct. 21st, 7:30 pm.
Oct. 22nd, 2:00 pm and 7:30 pm
Oct. 23rd, 2:00 pm.

Students: $5.00
Adults: $7.00
Seniors: $5.00

Call for Reservations: (207) 780-5151

USM Gorham Campus, Lab Theatre.

...and basically everybody should come see it.

Trendster

2005-10-13T05:06:00.000-07:00

I've recently taken to some activity that I'm not entirely proud of...

No, I speak not of corrupting the temple of my body with sexual intercourse, nor smoking copious amounts of marijuana, nor even downloading some of the finest artsy-fartsy porn the Internet can offer for my viewing recreational pleasure...(none of these things have happened in a long long time).
Instead, I find myself sitting in front of my computer, fingers on the keyboard, Safari booted up and firing away, my wallet open on the desk almost in shame, my debit card naked from it's neat paper sheath and sitting bare on the wood table, almost quivering from the onslaught onto it's personal being that will inevitably ensue...
Yes. I've been SHOPPING ON THE INTERNET!!

Yup. I'm there. I'm hip. I'm jive. Keeping with the times. Growing the ages. Rolling with the punches.
BEING A COMPLETE TRENDY HIPSTER FUCK.

Sorry, that rape of my bank account thing was a bit creepy...

Anyways, it's true. I've been punching digits and addresses and filling orders out and such. I never thought I'd see the day...
It all really started last year when I bought my roommate some bitching pint glasses from our favorite webcomic and the purchase went through and turned out successful. I hadn't really done anything since then, until these past few weeks. I, once upon a time, in my livejournal days, held a contest. The goal was everyone would submit links to teeshirts for sale online and I'd buy the one I liked best. The winner was from a site, Threadless.com, and was probably the coolest design ever. But I refrained from purchasing it, frightened by identity theft and just overuse of my debit card in general. Things have changed though...

The way Threadless works is:
People will submit their designs via a special photoshop format and it will be posted onto the site. The design then would be rated on a 1 to 5 scale by the viewers and depending on it's score compared to the other running designs, it would become part of the Threadless catalog. Then it would be printed in a variety of sizes, colors and styles and available for purchase via the World-Wide-Inter-Web. Their catalog is huge and jampacked with the indiest, artsyest stuff you've ever seen. I've already purchased two shirts from them: Put Pieces Together to Make a Peace, and Calling Home. They were sent to me successfully for a decent price and I was very very happy with the whole transaction.

So I decided to join the Street Team. If I take pictures of me wearing their shirts, I can post them on the site for reduced prices on other purchases. Awesome. And my parents called yesterday. My $250 refund check has arrived and is being deposited tomorrow/today. Awesome. And so now, A Fathom Farewell is soon to be mine.

Awesome.

Eww...shopping...

The design that won my contest has gone out of print, but I put in a request for a reprint. It'll only happen if enough people request it, but I'm hoping.

Two Things.

2005-10-09T22:35:00.000-07:00

1.

Have you noticed how just about everybody these days says "I'm not going to lie" before or after a statement or comment on something referring to their opinion of it. It used to be just one of those sayings some people used rather infrequently, like tagging "that's all I'm saying" on the end of something, but now it's just elevated to the status of the "your mom" joke, which is hardly even a joke anymore than a knee-jerk dry remark, (your mom was hardly a joke last night). I use it just that much too, and am not trying to set myself apart from anyone here, but I've noticed and (I'm not gonna lie) I don't think I approve.
After a while of long thought on the matter, it seems to be okay. People admitting that they won't lie about how they feel is/should be something positive. I'm a steadfast believer that honesty is the best policy, and that everybody needs to be more honest and direct these days. Then again, isn't admitting your not going to lie just saying that you are very capable of lying in that situation, even though you didn't/aren't? I don't know if that's enough to warrant my newfound dislike of hearing "I'm not gonna lie" so much, despite my consistent use of it. Maybe it's just my subconscious rejection of new widespread trends, like Napoleon Dynamite quotes (I hate this, and am glad it has waned) or theatre kids having Avenue Q singalongs (I hate this, even though it's not widespread). I'm not even sure if I'm getting at anything here...

I don't know, people just have been saying it a lot, and people lie too much.
That's all I'm saying.

2.

I recently broke 1,000 page views from this site. It snuck past me and I'm at about 1,037 now, but I'm still pretty pumped about it. See the white number on the bottom left corner? That's StatCounter and lets me know how many people load this page and neat information like that. I KNOW WHO YOU ARE. ALL OF YOU. Well...not exactly. Just your IP addresses. Anyway, it's totally rad and here is some fun information to make the big 1K hit count:

75% of visits are less than 5 seconds in length. This can be attributed to lack of updates, or just people finding this link somewhere, coming here, realizing what this site is, and then promptly leaving, without even having taken off their coat or being given the tour. Rude, but I don't want to judge.
One visit from the UK lasted over the course of one day.
The largest amount of returning visits for one person is 75. He/she go to Bates College, uses Microsoft Internet Explorer and I have no idea who it is. None.
The second is 41, and from Buckfield. Stop stalking me.
Elizabeth Malmer is a girl in my philosophy class and I have never spoken to her. She has visited 15 times though, and also uses Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Jake Christie has visited 16 times. He uses Mozilla Firefox. He's also funnier than me.
People never find my site through a search engine.
There are three other sites titled "A Writer's Lament." I can change the title of my blog but not the web address. I can deal with it.
This site has an average of 6 returning visitors a week...

...and that is enough to make this site feel appreciated. I should do more actual writing than just pointing out funny links to things or making bulleted lists of stuff...

But whatever. At least it's not one of those LoserJournals, that's all I'm saying.

There's Just No Getting Around It

2005-10-04T21:34:00.000-07:00

I just really wish I was Spiderman, that's all.

The Fight for Food!

2005-10-03T06:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday. Sunday. It was about 2:00ish and I had just risen from my sacred extra time in bed that I live for nowadays. I was hungry but in no hurry, after showering and dressing and such. I headed for a walk down to the cafeteria, noticing the extraordinarily warm weather after "the summer's" recent demise. Unfortunately, the cafeteria was close between the hours of 12:00 and 4:00 on weekends. I thought this ridiculous, since young men as myself need to eat and my meal plan is a costly 1,550 dollars. My pockets were lined with some extra cash, so I decided to head down to the local supermarket, a Hannaford's, and see what I could scrummage.
The walk was about ten to fifteen minutes at a leisurely pace, with my headphones playing the latest illegally downloaded selections from my music library. At the supermarket, I casually milled about, viewing and comparing and deciding. I only wanted a lunch, and not any sort of bulk materials largely packaged to be forgotten about in my fridge or closet. I carefully settled with some pre-made sandwiches from the deli, some muffins from the bakery and a large bottle of Juicey Juice (sooo good). I made friendly conversation with the register-dude, a friend of mine from classes, and was on my way.
Back in the sunlit sanctuary of my dorm room, I reclined in the leather recliner and ate my lunch. Delicious, nutritious and well worth it. All thoughts of the greasy, poorly-cooked campus food were eradicated from my mind, thankfully. I did not have to deal with one over-age slow-responding staff member or wait in any sort of line to get my food. That night, my quality lunch sat healthfully in my stomach until broken down and assimilated into my body. No gastric distress. No bowel catastrophe.

This got me to thinking. $1,550 dollars of mine go to my school so a catering service known as Aramark can fill my stomach with artificial butter, grease and the most-poorly-cooked staple foods you could even imagine. Everyone on campus accepts the fact the food ridiculously sucks and later that night it will revisit them during some private time with the toilet, except it'll smell worse the second time. I'm no doctor but the body shouldn't process food to poop in less than an hour.
We all complain. But we all still eat.

An Aramark facts sheet will tell you a meal at school costs approximately $7.00
My Hannaford-bought lunch came to $7.42 (and I didn't even eat my second muffin).

Revelation. I never want to eat here again. I bring this up to my roommate over our breakfast of undercooked eggs and ketchup. It's then, from him, I learn that you actually can not cancel your meal plan or get any sort of refund. My dismay at learning this information can not be expressed by mere text.

So plans were set in motion. Next semester, with time freed up from less classes and no theatre productions, my roommate and I are going to bring Aramark down. Petitions, Protests, Slander, Dissent. I refuse to have my money wasted like this.
FUN FACT: Aramark bought new waffle-irons that makes waffles have the imprint of "USM" in the center.

Fuck you, Aramark. I'm not going to take this sitting down (on a toilet, for half an hour).

P.S. That whole mastinence thing is sort of over now, after seven whole days. What the hell was I doing that for?

This is kinda an emergency.

2005-09-30T18:48:00.000-07:00

My friend sent me this link ... saying it was really important.

Really important.

Really important and really frightening.

Read it now.

...

Yeah.

That important.

.but then I read the date at the top of the article.

Update.

2005-09-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

Day Five over.
This is getting rough.

Self-Abuse, a new project.

2005-09-26T11:18:00.000-07:00

I'm a fan of projects. Not the elementary-school-make-a-poster-with-each-letter-a-different-color projects. But fun things to do for the sole purpose of "seeing what would happen" or any other alternative reasons.

My new project is called Mastinence.

I'm abstaining from masturbation for as long as possible.

It's a test of willpower really. How long, do you ask, before I give in to the temptations of ejaculation? What are the consequences? Why would anyone want to do that? Is it religious? Is there a prize? The answers to these, I do not know. I relish the absurdity.

I've gone a day and a half now. I'm looking around for one of those internet clock timer thingies to put on here. Let me know if you find one.

New Font!

2005-09-21T05:08:00.000-07:00

Enter: Georgia.

Hope it's easier to read.

This Semester... My Semester.

2005-09-20T09:25:00.000-07:00

MAT 105D. Math for Quantitative Punching Myself in the Face.

I've never liked math. Never. Not once has doing math ever been an enjoyable or pleasant experience. All this course does is remind me of that. It's the lowest level math class before breaching the "special needs" gap, and it's required. Our first class we covered rounding up and down. The next chapter was on Venn diagrams. Today, we entered the realm of Logic, where we discern whether statements like: "Bruce Springsteen is a U.S. President" are true or not, and how to make them true.

(correct answer: add a "not")

I hate this class.

PHI 103E. Human Alienation: The Study of Awkward Silences and Apathy.

I like philosophy. It's very interesting to me. It just isn't interesting to anybody else in the University of Southern Maine though, particularly the students in my class, who number so greatly there aren't enough seats (or windows!!) for anyone to be comfortable. I've never been taught philosophy, and my professor doesn't seem too bad at it, but he's having difficulty connecting with kids who'd rather binge drink while watching ESPN than politely debate the finer points of Plato's Republic.

THE 150H. Play (Anal)ysis...

is only moderately annoying since there's a lot of homework involved but other than that it's fine. Just a theater class with theater people in it. Professor's handwriting is tough to decipher at times, but nothing I can't tolerate. I am the Master of Tolerence!

THE 230. Designing Things That The Performer Won't Read In To.

This class has been rather fun so far. It's full of fun theater kids and the projects are always interesting to see. Some people slave all week to create a piece of art that masterfully blends technology with nature but is actually a huge metaphor for their struggle for independence from their mother and the loss of their innocence...and other students get drunk the night before class and write songs about losing their virginity that they perform for class on their ukulele. That brings me to the major problem with this class: It's on a friday! Same time as all my other classes, one less day of the weekend. They can't take my Thursday nights away from me. They can't, and they won't.

THE 233. Lighting Intense Labor.

This class is fun as well. Two hours of working with the lights and cables and technology that make the stage look pretty. A lot of hands-on experience teaching which I totally dig, and after this class I'll know enough to work as an Electrician for workstudy. The only issues so far have been on occasion we'll have class on SATURDAY starting at 9:00 AM and ending around 4:00 PM when we're doing a full hang for a show. It's ridiculous. Just ridiculous.
Ridiculous.

THE 131. Theatre WorkShop.

Last year this class was basically the equivalent of Theatre Homeroom. All the theatre majors would gather in the theater and socialize, then the professor would take role and give theatre-related announcements, if anyone had any announcements they would stand up and give them, and then that'd basically be it. After every show there was a critique where everyone in the show would sit onstage and everyone else would ask questions or tell them what they liked or didn't like. Credit is based loosely off attendance and whether or not you worked on a production. It was all very fun.
This year, there's a new professor in town, and she's making it out to be some sort of actual "class" where we do things like update our theatre resumes, establish professionalism, make portfolios, etc. I'll just be having none of that. It'll become an intricate chessgame between me and the professors in charge, but I'll outwit them in the end, and prove to be the victor.
...
..
I just forgot what I was going on about. Sorry. I like this class.

Don't Give Me that Do-Goody-Good Bullshit.

2005-09-14T20:32:00.000-07:00

Mad Props, Shout-outs, and Et Cetera to Sallie Mae for hooking a brotha up with a sweet unsubsidized loan WHICH I just endorsed today and was informed by the Student Billing Offices that I'd be receiving a pretty refund check.

Now I am not a wealthy man in any respect (save with knowledge, happiness and a good heart), so this refund check will be vitally important to helping relieve me of a portion of my financial strain, such as my autoinsurance bill. I could be extra-conservative and place it into my bank account until the dark and fear-filled days six months after my college career has ended and I find myself, to my dismay, owning Sallie May 8,000 units (maybe more) of hard cold American cash.
But no.
Not I.

I'm so fucking terrible when it comes to managing my finances. My tendencies to disregard the significance of currency in my life leave my wallet vacant and debit card worried. If I ever have cash on me, I toss it off on whims lighter than pollen in the air of a dawning end-of-summer day. You need some extra cash for {insert whatever here}? Sure thing, no problem, I'll spot you. You can pay me back later, but I, and you, will probably forget. Whatever. Yeah sure I'll have make my order a large. I'm not sure if I'm that hungry, but you never know. The price is only a little bit higher. Just a little bit. Meh.

This is all very typical.

BUT RECENTLY I've viewed a couple of items for sale that makes the subconcious of my psyche recall all those subliminal advertising tricks I thought I may have learned to avoid...right? Do I really need that? Well...it would be nice...etc. And it makes me want to consider trying to possibly think about putting an effort into saving some money for them? Yeah, that'd be cool. These are those things:

THE THINGS (that i want to buy when enough money is saved):

SHOES.
The Blackspot "Unswoosher" Sneaker V2. 100% Hemp. Recycled Tire Rubber Tread. Made in a Sweat-shop Free Union Factory. Totally cool look. Created by the Black Spot Anti-Corporation. For roughly 100 bucks... Ouch. That's a lot for a pair of shoes. They sound like they'd last though, and I currently have a lack-of-good-shoes situation. My stolen bowling shoes will not survive this winter. I'm not entirely sure how trustworthy this company is to their anticorporate claims. What if they don't fit? I'm scared of ordering offline... but damn those are some good-lookin' shoes.
Price: $95.00 + $14.00 shipping (from Canada) = $109.00 USD
MP3 PLAYER.
I know, I know, I know. iPods are trendy, silly-looking, overpriced and easily outdated...but can you just check out how fricking small this is? Ridiculous. I have issues though: something that small will be easily lost/damaged/stolen/dissapeared. It also has the same capacity of a Mini. I own a Mini. My mother bought it for me for Christmas and it's been nice reliable and slightly shameful to visibly wear in public, but hey, it's like any gift sweater...you may not look that great in it but you still wear it just the same. This Nano thinger though...It's be pretty fucking cool to have. Holds photos...14 hour battery life...small enough to hide in just about any body cavity imaginable. It's not likely I'll actually dish out the cash to buy it (I'd sell my Mini, but it won't go for much, now being prehistoric technology) but it's still fun to look at and pretend.
Price: $249.00 USD.
DIGITAL CAMERA.
I like this idea a lot. I don't know much about digicams at all though, so I could make some bad choices. I asked a respected source for a relatively cheap decent camera and he pointed me at the Fuji FinePix A330. It is small, affordable, and looks like fun. It has 3.2 megapixels...and I don't know what that means on how nice my pictures will look...but I really just want to take photodocumentaries of adventures or maybe even some artsy fartsy pictures of pretty things up close or slow-shutter-speed no-flash shots of lights at night. To be honest, I really really just want an account on Flickr. We'll see.
Price: approx. $150.00 USD
.

P.S. Anyone like the Floyd reference Title? Eh? Eh? Eh?
I'm sorry.

Panhandler (unrevised)

2005-09-14T05:41:00.000-07:00

written for my Play Analysis course, the assignment was to narratize and create a story out of a small interaction between people.

THE SCENE: A young man is sitting on the curb of a street in downtown Portland with a backpack on. He is wearing worn jeans, an old band t-shirt and has multiple piercings on his face. Moderately overweight but with dignity and hair cut short enough to see his scalp, he has a pair of large round headphones slung around his neck. A couple walk past him, hand in hand. As they pass he says “Spare some change for a traveling kid” almost to himself without making eye-contact. The couple both say their I’m Sorry’s and keep walking.

MY SCENE: It had been pretty cold last night, so he walked down to the wharf and slept on the back of a big expensive boat, wrapped uncomfortably but manageably in a rug he found on the dock nearby. He woke early to seagulls and the chill morning air. The sky was pale and opaque, anxious for the sun to rise. His stomach reminded him how unsatisfactory last night’s dinner of two Iced Honeybuns he bought at a Seven Eleven with the change he made that day. He had kindly asked the clerk if he could hang out in there for the night, possibly lie down and sleep somewhere out in the back. The clerk said something about policy through his thick Arabic accent. It was around 3:30 am at that point, so he headed to the docks as a last resort but it turned out to be all right.
Mark Hotz had been traveling for a couple months now…was it months? He didn’t always know the date anymore, much less the time. He had hawked his watch in Portsmouth, New Hampshire one day when he hadn’t made any change for food. His sojourn had started in Hoboken, New Jersey. He was originally a student at N.Y.U. studying film. After a full year he decided that it didn’t really suit him. Since the first grade at Hoboken Elementary, Mark had been living a life of routine and plan. His mother was always keeping calendars and schedules, making sure they both knew exactly what would be going on every minute of his future and there would be nothing either of them would be unprepared for. After the surge of independence one feels after being out in college for the first time, Mark decided he was through being perpetually in anticipation of the next step in his life. He wanted out of the structured and planned life that was built around him. He wanted spontaneity, he wanted to be unprepared, he wanted to never know what the next day would bring. Mark wanted freedom.
That was all it took to bring Mark back home to Jersey one last time, during his April vacation. He packed a backpack and began to walk, one foot in front of the other, away from home. His only real target was Montreal, Canada. He knew a couple people there. If he couldn’t find them it wouldn’t be too bad though. It’s not really about the destination. He hitchhiked most of the time, he rode a bus once after getting some cash from a pawnshop for some of his books, some CD’s and his leather wallet. He tried to not eat a lot, to save on money, which he usually got from working people on the street or selling off his remaining possessions. He would sleep wherever he could. Sometimes there would be homeless shelters, sometimes he’d find parks. He’d only slept in an alley twice, because it had started raining too hard to keep looking. He’d made it as far as Portland, but he was in a spot of trouble here. There weren’t really any major cities close enough to hitchhike too. North of Portland, he only knew about Bangor, and nobody seemed to want to go to Bangor. He decided to stick around for a couple of days and see if the situation improved. He was scared he’d have to hawk off his CD player, his one luxury he didn’t think he could live without, in order to buy a bus ticket to Canada. For now, he would just keep begging a bit to keep his hunger in check and maybe find a warmer place to sleep.
After leaving the boat and the rug behind, Mark walked into a Denny’s around six-ish to catch the early morning crowd. He refused to be seated and waited until some people left there table before swiftly moving to it and grabbing what they had not eaten. The staff at this Denny’s must have been used to this and caught him with half a pancake in his mouth and kicked him out. At least he had finished the hashbrowns in time. He wandered the streets for a bit, looking for more early-morning joints, but had no luck. He walked down Exchange Street and found a nice little park. The sun had come up so he lied down and took a nap on the warm grass. He’d learned to find alternate uses for everything, in this case his backpack became a pillow. In his backpack he had another pair of jeans (the pair he was wearing still had a couple more days in them) which could cushion any hard sharp areas he decided to lay on for the night. There was his CD player with headphones and spare batteries, and the barest minimum of albums that he painfully chose and decided he needed to keep with him. He had a short hunting knife, a lighter, four dollars and sixty seven cents, an empty water bottle, and two books: “Rule of the Bone” by Russell Banks, and everyone lonesome traveler’s Bible, “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac. Mark picked himself up and walked up the street a ways. He sat down by the curb and turned on his CD player and lifted his headphones to his ears.
Halfway through Track 11 Mark saw two people walking up the street. He was starting to get that hungry feeling again and thought he’d better start soon before it got late again. He took off his headphones and waited for them to get close. It was a man and woman, holding hands and smiling and talking to each other. The girl was shorter than he and had long curly brown hair. The guy had scrawny little arms and unkempt long blonde hair. As they walked past, Mark adverted his eyes and said loud enough for them to hear:
“Spare change for a traveling kid,” and he trailed off after that.
“I’m sorry, I wish I did,” said the guy quickly, almost as if he had prepared what he was going to say before he even reached Mark.
“Nope, sorry,” the girl said with him at the same time. As they walked on past but not out of earshot, he could hear the girl say to the guy:
“Honestly, what’s spare about my change? Money I worked for…”
“It’s not about money…” the guy responded and then their conversation faded too faint to hear down the street.
It wasn’t about begging for money. It wasn’t about giving money away. It was about being a generous person. It was about recognizing another person as a living breathing human being who would like some help, and only if it wouldn’t trouble you, and not seeing them as some broken cog in a machine called “Capitalism” or a native of local tribe called “Poverty.” It’s not like we’re Untouchable, it’s just that our lives are different than yours, just like yours is different from everybody else’s. People make choices, some good and some bad and either way you’re going down your own separate path in life. Forgive me, thought Mark, if something that is important to me is not important to you. You can keep to your family, your home, your school, your job, your cars, your auto-insurance bills, your mortgage rate, your designer shoes, your full and complete and successful lives. I’ll never look at you funny for it. I’ll just do whatever it takes to make me happy, and to me, that means doing what I want to do, making my own decisions and living the way that I choose to. That’s all it takes for me, these days. I do get hungry sometimes, so if you’re feeling happy enough to help me be happy, then could you spare me some change? It’d be really nice, and you could bet your full and happy life I’d do it for you.

Number Thirteen. Category: Miscellanius.

2005-09-11T22:26:00.000-07:00

This summer I purchased Richard Hawthorne's 101 Things to Do Before You Die, a marvellous little handbook that is exactly that. Complete with forms to be filled for each acheivement and gold stars. It's really quite cool. I've completed about four of the 101 things already (#3. Win an Award, #9. Learn an Instrument, #15. Stage Dive or Crowd Surf, and #83. Skinny Dip at Midnight), but after some advanced research cough google I am one step closer to adorning a page with a Gold Star sticker...

Number Thirteen: Meet Someone With Your Own Name.

It'd be most difficult to find Travis Curran Beta ( I am Alpha) because a bunch of other people are looking for him too who he does not want to find him. When the coppers do catch him, he might be the easiest to find since I could always visit the Placer County Jail (helping me accomplish #53. Complete a Coast-to-Coast Road Trip Across America). But then again if he's smart at all, which I'd hope someone sharing my full name would be, then he'd be well aware he's on Placer County's Top Twenty Most Wanted List and would be nowhere near Placer County, California.

Travis Curran Gamma, also in California, actually goes by the full name "Travis Curran Talley" so I am not positive if he counts. He holds a nice job as the Recruiting Manager for the Los Angeles Chapter of Risk and Insurance Management Society Inc. The site gives his full contact info, including phone, fax and email address. He does not seem too tough to hunt down and arrange a meeting with.

Travis Curran Delta is a student at Kansas State College, but, it appears here that he is studying abroad in Prague, Czech Republic. I've always wanted to check Prague out. Good excuse for potential Eurotrip? I think so. (That would also help me complete #36. Visit Every Country).

Travis Curran Epsilon goes to UC Davis and plays ultimate frisbee for them. But I found that here, he played for the "Dogs", and here, he played for a team called "Trouser Fiesta". What an awesome title for anything. He seems like a pretty cool dude. UC Davis is also in California. Weird, huh?

Travis Curran Iota is a little boy. He is the son of Dean and Shannon Curran, who own the Curran Cattle Company in Saskatchewan, Canada. They'd be totally cool to visit, since I like Canada's farmlands and while I'm there, I could Milk a Cow (#47).

And finally, we come to the most famous Travis Curran out there...Travis Curran Kappa. If you were ever so inclined to google my first and last name, there would be about upwards to fifty sites in reference to this fellow here. He plays Men's Tennis for University of Toledo. He's pretty good too. I get envious of his website percentage...but yours truly is the next existing Travis Curran on the Google Search Results page for my old highschool band Brackett and the Drill Bits. I designed the website years ago in an Advanced Communications class. Good times. Anyways, Toledo's in Ohio, and an easy stop on any road trip to make. And I'd probably have to travel in a van to do it...(#97. Live Out of a Van).

I almost made a joke about finding all these people and killing them, then making a Highlander "There can only be one!!" reference and ending the update on a mediocrely funny joke, but then one of these peoples or someone close to them may find this site and take it as a serious death threat and sue me or something crazy like that and I don't think that'd be very funny at all in the end.

Ouch.

2005-09-07T23:19:00.000-07:00

The Anti-Rape Female Condom

The State of 2nd Andrews Address

2005-09-06T19:15:00.000-07:00

In the 2004-2005 season at the University of Southern Maine, the second floor on the Andrews side of the Robie-Andrews Residence Hall was a floor that could not be rivalled. You could smell marijiuana just by entering through the hallway door. The floor of the bathroom was always covered in water and other liquids. There was someone drinking every night. It was just an ideal archetypal college setting. The residents were either music, theater or media studies majors with not a lot of real work to do and a whole lot of free time on their hands. Thursday nights were reasons for living.

I was more than excited to be living on 2nd Andrews again for my second year at USM. My floor was the floor to be living on. What's more? My roommate, Corey Anderson, happened to be quite beneficial in last year's room selection process. He and his exorbitant amount of credits helped us snipe one of the best rooms in the building. It's on the corner of the building, meaning three windows. Bunk beds to save space. Two roomy closets. Adequate electric outlet placement. Linoleum floors. Three overhead water sprinklers. White walls. The only real fault is the center ceiling-mounted fluorescent light had an epileptic-seizure inducing inconsistent blinking. But that was all really, and nothing some desk and floor lamps couldn't remedy. This year, as far as Residential Life was concerned, was looking pretty fuckin' rad on my part.

Alas, if all good things could last.

I was ill-prepared for this year's freshmen onslaught onto my beloved homestead. My best hypothesis at the moment is that the generation gap between mine and the next has either grown larger or faster, and these kids are straight out of a high school I recognize far too well. Middle America High's fresh new crop of graduates include all the stereotypes I spent my secondary education days pretending didn't exist. "Jocks", "Nerds" and the "Popular Girls" now live in the building an editorial from the Free Press campus paper referred to as "the art-fag dorm." Out my door, I hear echoes in the hall of kids chatting on cellphones with Monday Night football in the background. Walking down the stairs to the lobby, I pass packs of cookie-cutter magazine blondes with their short shorts and solid color designer tops tightly pressed over their perky B-cups. It's just feeling more and more highschool to me.

Luckily, these problems are going to work themselves out eventually. Personalities change and people grow up, and soon these n00bz will realize what college, and 2nd Andrews, and meeting my pretentious expectations, is all about. There are a number of saving graces, in the form of returning residents from last year other than myself, such as Pont & Despres in the same room, Chris Sand is present, along with half of the old Geek Quad. Two of my old high school alumni have moved onto the floor, as well as a fellow named Tim who attended my elementary school a very many years ago in a small town called Newmarket, New Hampshire.

I think I'll be feeling much better after the first Thirsty Thursday.

It is the second day of school, after all...

Brief Bulleted List of Things that are Thoroughly Bumming Me Out:

2005-09-01T10:11:00.000-07:00

Summer is ending.

Coolest. Religion. Ever.

2005-08-24T13:33:00.000-07:00

In my normal website cruisings, I stumbled upon a link from one of my favorite webcomics, Nothing Nice to Say, to an article in Wikipedia. I read the article and linked around for a bit to see what was up with it. My discoveries caused me great excitement. You see, as it turns out, the entire Universe was actually created by a FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER!

FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTERISM
a.k.a. "Pastafarianism"

It's this giant satire of the "Intelligent Design" argument and I highly suggest looking into it here (the originating letter and website). How bad can a religion be where recommended prayer attire is standard pirate regalia, there's promise of a Beer Volcano in heaven, and every friday is declared a religious holiday.

I'm looking to convert as soon as I can.

DILEMMA

2005-08-24T11:43:00.000-07:00

Sometimes in life, there comes time for a decision to be made. Important decisions that can shape the rest of your life. One of these moments has come upon me right now, and I'm doing my normal uncertain hesitating indecisive spastic fidgeting thing. And what better outlet for such a thing than my blog?
I know, I know ... this is sort of livejournally. But feedback from the 2+ people that read this would be appreciated. Ready, kids?! We're about to get interactive!!!

The Situation:

In the past year, I managed to get myself into two car accidents, within two months of each other. The first was an actual "accident" and the result was an absolutely totalled truck and a completely unharmed Travis (my stepfather's truck, the day he married my mother, long story, I'll tell you over tea sometime). The second was just a bad idea that had an unfortunate consequence. Anyways, I've been forking over about $150 dollars a month since to my parents. Recently, they've confronted me and told me to consider one of two options:

OPTION 1: Turn in my license.

I'd get taken off my parent's insurance, no longer have to pay bills, but I'd lose my ability to drive. In order to get my license back, I'd have to retake the test. I wouldn't have bills so I could keep my money and save it to paying off more important things, like college bills...or paying back my loans...or a new pair of shoes. Or something. I won't be having a car this year, and I could just take the bus into Portland if I ever needed to. Driving is not a necessity for me at college.

but then there's...

OPTION 2: Keep my license.

This would enable me to drive if the chance ever came up. It's a good standard form of photo I.D. (though I do have a State ID too). You never know when I might need to drive someplace/for someone/etc. And I did work very hard to get my license, and it'd be a real pain in the ass to get it back. It would fit my spontaneous adventure-going nature to have it on hand. Bills are a real bitch though. Sheesh, these moments suck.

Cast your vote immediately.
The Moral of Today's Post is: There's no shame in asking for help with your problems.

The Fairy Tale of My Summer.

2005-08-15T20:17:00.000-07:00

Everytime I'm online now, I'm bumrushed with instant messages from people who haven't talked to me since May. I really went off the radar at camp. Everyone wants to know the down and low with what's been up with me this summer. It's flattering, to say the least. I haven't felt this popular since...hmmm...fifth grade maybe. Unfortunately, spinning the same yarn gets tedious. I've made the executive decision to no longer repeat myself over and over again with each inquiry and instead refer them to this page here. Shameless blog-promotion (more hits!).

Anyways,

Once Upon a Time a young man named Travis worked at a summer camp in Maine. He was the counselor of a cabin. Four children lived in that cabin, and they were all very well-behaved. Travis edited the camp's newspaper, wrote and directed the camp play The Mohican Man with help from his good friend Pat, taught children how to sail, and helped out a bit with the boxing program. It was a very fun summer. There was a newspaper out every Sunday, the play was a sucess, and he got his own corner during the camp's annual Fight Night. During his time off, he went on adventures, to all-night diners, bought a lot of things, and met a pretty British girl named Michelle who worked nearby. Unfortunately, camp ended and Travis was sad. Fortunately, he still had a couple of weeks of summer left before he had to return to college. He spent most of his time seeing Michelle and even went WHITEWATER RAFTING (If you have not done this, go out and do this right now). Travis is very happy now despite the summer's end approaching. How is he supposed to enjoy himself if he all he does is worry about what comes next?

The End.

Status: Alive!

2005-08-15T09:37:00.000-07:00

It's true, I've returned from the depths of summer camp and have resituated myself in my family household, locked away in the verdant and barely reachable Waterford, Maine. I can now return to writing my thoughts on a meaningless website read by nobody. Awesome.

Nineteen.

2005-06-09T05:21:00.000-07:00

If being 18 was the best year of my life, I would not be suprised. I would be sad though, because that would mean that this summer would not be all that great, and right now it is looking to be TOTALLY RAD. The bunk list is completed and I have an amalgam of awesome campers in my bunk, and the staff this year are going to redefine the terms "camp spirit", "awesome" and "fun" and any crazy combinations of those terms. In fact, it seems that so much stuff is going to be happening each and every day, night off and day off that I want to record it all. Had I the technology, it would not be unlikely for me to update this every day, with complete detailed recollections on just one day and the adventures, hilarity and Travocity encapsulated within.
Oh, wait...

I do have the technology. There's a staff computer! It's always hogged by the Russian kitchen staff and not very fast, but it's still there and my dream of a Summer Camp Blog could make the hefty leap from my imagination to reality!
But it's not entirely a good idea. It would mean taking time out of every day to update, when I should be doing either:

A) counselor duties,
B) adventures
or C) WEIGHTLIFTING!

Okay, that right there was just a flat-out lie. I never weightlift. I'm the skinniest goddamn man on the planet. If I were to shave my head and get a major tan, you'd confuse me for a starving Somalian child...but then I could get money from charity's and free food and stuff...and just right there I thought up the absolute worst scam idea ever...Moving on, it would also be bad if I wrote about something really terrible that happened at Camp and people read about it on this and there would be SCANDAL, TREACHERY, LAWSUITS and just miserable BADNESS. Ah, wait. Only about three people read this. I'm safe...for now.
I'll just never mention the name of the camp. Plan.

I have a couple of goals for this summer, and they're serious goals, not just an excuse to make another bulleted list. But I made a bulleted list. I can't lie, I like'em. But seriously, these are serious goals:

GOALS

Become "fairly" competent at playing the ukelele.
Learn and utilize as much British slang as possible. (Accent optional).
Overcome my phobia-esque fear of deep water and squishy lake bottoms.
Never drink any liquid with an alcoholic proof of three digits ever again. [ATTENTION WORLD: Alcohol is bad for you.]
Learn how to fight with a spear and/or buy a knife.

I'd be a happy man if just one was achieved. I have a ridiculous sunburn right now. I tried putting lotion on my back but naturally I couldn't cover my whole back so everything except this small area that was the only place I could reach is burned. I never get sunburned, but now I am, and this sucks. Must be karma. My spirit's former life before mine must've been a real dick or something, or as the English would call he/she/it/her, a real "wanker", or "tosser", or "bloody git."

See, already on my way with Goal Number Two. The counselors from the UK are helping me out. I'm also learning random words in Russian, such as how to say "yes", "leeches," "anchor" and "i love you."

Anyways, I'll write again soon. Promise.
Hugs and Kisses,
Travis H. Curran.

Why aren't you people watching this?

2005-06-09T04:53:00.000-07:00

Like you have anything better to do with yourself at 12:30 a.m. (or "Midnight Thirty" for our Maine readers). Next time you've got an insomniatic fit but the thought of watching late-night TV that isn't Adult Swim makes you cry in despair, try tuning into the The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on CBS every weeknight 12:35AM ET/PT.

Why? Because it's fucking hilarious, that's why. Craig Ferguson played Mr. Wick on the Drew Carey Show back in the day, and he's not really English or stupid. He's actually Scottish and really really funny. And stupid. But stupid in a really really funny way. So check him out, because this dude is a funny man, and you ALL want to be entertained at 12:35 a.m.

Reflections on Being 18.

2005-06-06T20:14:00.000-07:00

Since today is my last day, and I seem to really enjoy making bulleted lists, here is this, in no sense of order whatsoever:

Things I Did:

Graduated high school.
Attending my first year of college.
Got my license.
Broke up with my girlfriend of 10 months.
Learned how to drink responsibly.
Lost my virginity.
Asked a girl for her number (the first time ever).
Broke the law a bunch of times.
Kissed a man onstage.
Bought a ukelele.
Got mononucleosis.
Discovered Achewood.
Adventured a lot.
Saw Apollo Sunshine in concert many times.
Saw Against Me! with Murder By Death in concert.
Stole bowling shoes.
Learned how to manage my finances some.
Read lots of good books.
Saw lots of good movies.
Learned a lot about other people.
Learned a lot about my Self.

Things I Didn't Do:

Vote in the election (I had mono and it didn't matter).
Reach Nirvana.
Get better at guitar.
Watch much TV.
Backflips, of any kind.
Impress women.
Taxes.

Stuff That Happened:

I rolled my stepfather's truck over the same day he married my mother, two hours after they left for their honeymoon. The truck was absolutely totalled, I was physically fine. Mentally, it took me a while to recover.
I had an epiphany of sorts sitting in a mobile home in a trailer park in the middle of the night, the only one left awake after a party, and I was drinking rum & coke but not drunk.
Had another moment: standing barefoot on top of a roof of my friend Ian's apartment building staring out into the foggy Portland lights and it was raining and I was drinking some and talking with people I respected about everything and nothing.
Was in the play Lysistrata, by Aristophanes, as the Male Slave, got to wear a phallus and imply that I was having sex with the Female Slave backstage. Was later in a 10-minute play How Not to Tell Your Best Friend You Slept With His Wife, by Jake Christie, as the man telling his best friend he slept with his wife in all the wrong ways, as in, really vulgar straightforward hilarious ways.
Made some really great friends in the Theater Department and some even better ones just in my building. Expanded my social horizons. Liked my roomates my first semester, didn't my second. Grew even closer to my friends from high school. Met a whole range of people from all sorts of backgrounds and cultures and learned some things about diversity, individuality and human beings in general. Became less socially introverted and felt more comfortable meeting new people.
I started writing again and becoming less self-concious about it.
I started thinking about life differently. Accepting others for who they were. I got a lot less judgemental. I saw my life for how it is, but didn't transcend it and reach some sort of higher state of being or anything, just sort of accepted it. Nothing has really changed about me, but I'm definitely a different person than I was the year before this. And, hopefully, I'll be a different person next year.

Ultimately, I:

Grew up.

Summer.

2005-06-03T13:47:00.000-07:00

Nothing interesting going on to write about? Nay! My recent lack of posting is primarily due to an ABUNDANCE of interesting things going on. I've started working @ my summer job, but only part-time for the time being. I'll move in soon though. I'm getting good pay for basic maintenance work with fun and hilarious company. But tonight, I have no plans and no car. So I'm slowing down a bit from my roller-coaster-ride lifestyle to check my email, read some webcomics and update my blog. Being a geek is the life, man.

In speaking of Geekdom, I'm sorting of having some kind of relapse to it. I used to be as nerdy as they came, back in my day. The Days of Elementary/Middle/most-of-High School(s). I sort of phased out of it when I became more of a hippie-hipster theater major at college. I still did some geeky things, but it wasn't like "Hey, I'm not popular at all because of these loser-like habits." Now, I'm not talking down about losers. I've been one, for a long long time, and part of me still is one. I've never been very popular and I do things the popular kids think is geeky. Besides getting picked on, harassed, and never having female attention, I thought being a "loser" was a pretty rad thing. In fact, my transition wasn't too radical, the hipster-theater-guy genre of personality being in the same spectrum as the geek-nerd-dork-loser. More chicks though, definitely more chicks.

Anyways, the point I'm getting at is I've noticed some cycling back to the nerd and out of the hipster. I found myself reading comic books for at least an hour yesterday. I had some hard-core video-gameage with my brother a couple nights ago too. I even picked up and read an obscure novel set in the Star Wars universe before I went to sleep this past week. These are just the physical symptoms, while mentally I've been sensing a weakness in my self-esteem, -confidence, -image, and other self- stuff too...like feeling self-conscious even. I even got a bit angsty when thinking about how I can't figure out women. That's not entirely true though, I pretty much have both women and men figured out, but that's a rant for another day. I was just feeling a bit sour and depressed about the results. It was brief. I did not cry.

This isn't a bad thing. My Inner Geek reawakening. It's good, a flux in my personality. Perhaps it's like the recipe of character traits that composes me are being altered, mixing and mashing and possibly, by the end of the summer, I might have grown some. As a person.

By the way, it is absolutely so beautiful out right now it BLOWS MY MIND,
so stop sitting at your computer reading this right now, get the hell outside, and breath for a while. It's quite... ... it's not quite anything... It is just Quite.

That is all,
Sincerely,
Travis H. Curran. Supreme Chancellor of Rad. HCF4L.

(P.S. I will do my best to update more before vanishing from the face of the Earth for nine weeks. This happens to me every summer, and it is kinda sad, but it is definitely worth it to me and is a very important part of my life. Thanks for understanding.)

A Couple Role Models / Idols / Personal Heroes (real and fictitious)

2005-05-29T12:55:00.000-07:00

Andy Kaufman.
Artie, The Strongest Man...In The World
Jello Biafra.
Lloyd Dobler.
Roast Beef.
Pauly Shore.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
and
Wile E. Coyote.

Some sort of Inter-Net-Blog-Tag

2005-05-29T11:50:00.000-07:00

Jake just "tagged" me with this survey. My first response was "Balls!" but then I read the survey and remembered surveys are really kinda fun to fill out, and switched my stance on the subject to "Neat!"
Here it is:

1) Total number of films I own on DVD / Video
My guess for DVD's would be nearing twenty, and I've got about seven on VHS.

2) The last film I bought:
Two today at Bullmoose Music: The Life Aquatic, and Masters of Shaolin: Breathing Fire, The Young Tiger and Snake & Crane Secret. (kung-fu classics).

3) Last film I watched:
It wasn't quite a film, but I watched a succession of episodes of The Adventures of Pete & Pete.

4) Five films that I watch a lot or that mean a lot to me (in noparticular order):
Fight Club
Holy God Damn Mind Fuck. This movie taught me how cool movies can be, and how much one movie can totally warp my perspective of cinema after seeing it. Most movies just don't compare to how hard I liked Fight Club. Sure, it has a freaky cult following, sure people argue the book was better. You know what I say? WHATEVER. This movie rocked and rolled me, and is possibly one of the greatest book-to-movie transitions OF ALL TIME. That's right, I'm that passionate.
Bitch.

Braveheart
Totally awesome. Totally epic. I hearted Mel Gibson so strongly for this masterpiece. Still gives me goosebumps. Straight truth.

Office Space
This movie speaks to my heart and soul. Not just through the comedy gold packed into, but it's deeper message speaking out against the corporate-business work world of our country fills my rebellious free spirit of laziness with pure glee.

American Beauty
Kevin Spacey. Sam Mendes. Pure brilliance, captured on film.

Orange County
Despite popular opinion, this movie actually rocks. Colin Hanks may not be as cool as his dad, but I totally dug the struggling writer plot, hilarious misadventure, Jack Black, Harold-Ramis-cameo, and happy resolution. Seriously, folks. It ain't as dumb as it looks. Rent. This. Film.

5) Tag 5 people and have them put this in their journal: [like anyone of these people actually read this -ed.]
Gyngell
Kace-Face
Owen
...
um...Annie...
and
Christopher. Yes. I know he reads this. He does. Ofcourse he does. ...

Yes. Good Day.

StatCounter, God Bless

2005-05-28T12:24:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the beauty of websites such as StatCounter, it's been brought to my attention that my blog has been viewed over 100 times! Whoa!

In celebration, here are some facts:

- My blog has had 55 "first time visitors" and 28 "returning visitors"
- My blog reached the highest number of "returning vistors" in one day on Thursday, May 26th 2005. There were 7.
- 80% of my blog's visitors spend less than 5 seconds on the site.
- 11% of my blog's visitors spend over an hour on the site.
- All of my visitor's came from a "referring link" (the only two I know about are in my AIM profile and on Jake's Blog).
- 93 of all my visitors are from the United States, but there are only single visitors from Australia, the Russian Federation, Canada, the United Kingdom and Switzerland. (I know only one person from Switzerland: Owen)
- My second largest "returning visitor" has visited my site 6 times and is from Bates College. I do not know who it is. I have his IP address and know he uses Windows XP though.
- My first largest "returning visitor" is from the Midcoast area. I think I know who it is.

I now will try and figure out how to configure my User Stats into My Profile.

After I do my laundry.

DID YOU KNOW?: There is a "comment" option on my blog!

Maine Time is Cooler than Your Time.

2005-05-27T14:01:00.000-07:00

This is really quite neat.

Whereas

The State of Maine lies wholly between 66° and 71° west longitude and it is the only state in the Union thus situated.

Resolved

The State of Maine shall have its own time zone to be known as Maine Time, which shall be four and one-half hours west of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT -04:30)

Maine Time is now:

5:28 PM, Friday, May 27, 2005
5:28 PM, Friday, May 27, 2005

I Love Bulleted Lists

2005-05-26T20:32:00.000-07:00

AWESOME THINGS:

Getting a check for $318.50 for 35 hours I don't remember working from the Theatre Department.
Getting another check in the same envelope for $29.75 for 3.5 hours which I remember working.
Getting another check for $250 for doing pre-camp work from my summer camp.
Getting $20 in a Birthday Card from my grandmother.
The Ability to Pay Off Bills finally.
Regina Spektor will be playing a free show at the Bullmoose Music Warehouse in Scarborough, June 5th (or so Kacy tells me, I can't find any info online).
Mindless Self Indulgence is playing at the State Theatre on June 4th. I plan to go with Trenton and Sukeforth.
My birthday is June 7th.

and possibly cooler than them all...

I downloaded Number Munchers!. You can get it HERE, not before downloading an emulator from HERE (I recommend DOSBox, which works fine on my Home PC, but you should choose whatever works best for you and your operating system).

I'm becoming a Math GOD!

Poetry, a Sign of Boredom.

2005-05-25T20:55:00.000-07:00

I've posted once a day for the past five days.
I've done THE MATH:
Summer = Free time = Writing + DSL connection to The Internet = Blogging.

I climbed Mt. Tirem today. It took about ten to fifteen minutes. Excellent view though. I could see my house, Bear Mountain, Bear Pond, Hawk Mountain and Pleasant Mountain, home of Shawnee Peak Ski Resort. It was raining. It's been raining all this past week, and will continue raining all this next week.

As an example of my wasted time on the Inter-Net, here's some pure mindless drivel that leaked from my concious thought moments ago, like drool from a corner of the mouth of a sleeping fat kid in front of his television set. All hand still in his Cheese Puffs bad. All TV being the only light on in the room. All loud snoring over the boring infomercials on late at night.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
1,2,3 Haikus for Rain
by Travis H. Curran
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Rain, rain, won't you stay
Make the days all wet and grey
Please don't flood my house.

Rain, rain, you're so great
In you, I dance and make out
Like in movie scenes.

Rain, rain, just don't stay
Forty days and forty nights
I don't have an Ark.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Ode to Hoodie
by Travis H. Curran
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Navy blue, with
logo on breast
University of Southern Maine
My hoodie, you're the best.
You keep me warm when
I am chill.
You wipe things up
that I spill.
Every stain, every rip, every tear
Is a story, that I wear.
That weird piece of tape on my back
The weird hole by the neck
That time I used you to hold my bowl of really hot spaghetti
that I had burned in the microwave.
I'm going to throw the spaghetti out now
but it's stain will stay on your wrist.

You are my skin that won't heal.
You are my body that won't feel.
I've written my name on your tag
because I love you,
...You marvellous rag.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I may adjust the end part with the spaghetti to something more serious, like about being with me through hard times and cliche stuff like that, but I really did just burn spaghetti in the microwave and felt I had to share.

Thanks for listening, you kool kats. *bongo-drum fill*
Peace out, and keep it real. *group of people all snap their fingers*

For once, I am not mad at feminism.

2005-05-24T19:35:00.000-07:00

Ladies, and Gentlemen,
Both of you
Pay close attention, for I have found

THIS!!!

"Men making a mess with their ejaculate is seen as unavoidable, normal, and is never questioned. It is even idolized in adult movies. Men can ejaculate on the face, in the mouth, and on and in the body of their partner and it is seen as normal. If a woman gets her body fluids on her partner that is another story, she has made a dirty mess. This is an interesting double standard. If a man can cover his partner with his body fluids, a woman should be able to do the same."

-----------

"Before a woman can learn to ejaculate, enjoy ejaculating, and enjoy sex in general she must accept her bodily fluids as normal. She must not question the nature or quantity of her wetness, be it sweat, vaginal lubrication, menses, ejaculate, or urine. These fluids are a normal and natural part of women's lives. There is nothing that is inherently bad about them. A woman cannot allow herself to ejaculate and experience potentially earth-shattering orgasms if she cannot let go when the pressure or urge to ejaculate arises. Ladies, give yourself permission to get wet and messy. Give yourself permission to have fun and enjoy sex."

-----------

"As a result of the taboos concerning female body fluids, the main motivation behind the studies into female ejaculation appears to be the determination of whether or not the expelled fluid is urine... Why this great importance over the exact nature of this fluid squirting from women's bodies? Does it really matter whether it is urine or ejaculate? If a woman gets a thrill out of squirting urine at the moment of orgasm, are we to say she has a problem? Do we mean to take this pleasure away from her? If a woman squirts urine at the moment of orgasm, let her, if she ejaculates uncontrollably, so be it! It is not our place to judge a woman's sexual pleasure."

From the book A New View of a Woman's Body
Copyright 1981, The Federation of Feminist Women's Health Centers
Illustrated By: Suzann Gage, L Ac, RNC, NP

I'm not a pervert. I just believe in Equal Rights for Women.

The Best Picture of Me On the Internet

2005-05-24T13:22:00.000-07:00

Click to Enlarge.

I'm on the right.

He is Bobby Byrd, of How's Your News? and is famous.

Her name is iSabelle and don't judge us.

2005-05-23T15:05:00.000-07:00

GOOD EVENING INTER-NET WORLD. TONIGHT I AM COME TO YOU THROUGH MY iBOOK. THIS IS THE FIRST TIME MY iBOOK HAS BEEN ONLINE SINCE COLLEGE GOT OUT. I AM PLEASED WITH THIS.

Since I have a crush on Safari. Fastest web-browser ever. Not as flashy and fancy and user-friendly as Mozilla Firefox, which I still hold a candle for, but it's seriously my favorite Application on my Hard Drive right now. So sleek and quick and neat. My home PC unit still rocks the Fox like a straight-up playa, so I can get my fix of playing around with the fun extensions. A nice set up.
What I need badly now is the Airport Wireless hardware for my iBook, so I don't have to worry about messy cables, or setting up accounts with local area servers or any of that nonsense. Just find a pretty Wi-fi server and go with the flow. I don't have anywhere near the wallet for the Airport Base Station but it's a possible future investment. Distant future,

So I hear it's the new "thing" to name your Hard Drive. Is this true? Does a Hard Drive need personality? By what criteria should you name it? I'm not sure I quite get it, but I've renamed the "Macintosh HD" icon on my Desktop to be: Macintizzle H-Dizzle.
You know, something to get started with. Maybe I'll give it a personal real name, like Jeremy, or something, and refer to my iBook as "Jeremy" from then on. Would that be weird? What if it were a girl's name, and I were to pretend to be in a relationship with it?
Okay. That is weird.

I mean, I love my iBook just as much as the next Mac junkie would. I've been slowly converted to the Apple religion since owning it. I'm even starting to get some tech-geek stuff down. Not too much though, I'm not ashamed to admit to running to more OSX-savvy friends for tech support.

One thing I don't like about my iBook would be the keyboard. It's too easy to break the keys. Within hours of owning my iBook, I got a finger underneath the "T" key during some intensive typing and it's been loose and on the verge of snapping off since. The letters on the keys also rub off with time. Seriously, my "L" is only a portion of the bottom line and my "O" looks like a retarded "C". Ridiculous. The other letters are holding up though.
Another thing would be the casing. Pretty, white, reflective. All surface appeal. After months of owning my lovely laptop, the casing has stains and smudges that are difficult to remove, the screen is always dusty or marked somehow. After too many dings and scratches and such, I may just go with Corey Anderson's plan with his laptop and just modge-podge it straight to hell.

I haven't gotten to that point though. Not yet. iSabelle and I will be just fine together for the time being. I love iSabelle and don't want her to change. Not yet.

Parting gift: Possibly the funniest god damn Achewood strip both in and out of context.

Tonight.

2005-05-22T00:24:00.000-07:00

My stepfather told me I could have a beer tonight. My mother disagreed but he persisted and she gave. I instead had a Diet Coke, though. I like the taste for some reason unrelated to unhealthy sugar-substitutes. He's gone to bed now, and the twelve-pack of Heineken sits on the counter. Only one is missing. He told me I could have one. Heineken's are tasty. Better tasting than Diet Coke. He was pretty drunk when he told me I could have one. He's gone to bed now. I'm thirsty.

What the hell. I've added up the facts and decided to have one.

So now I'm in front of my home computer, about to drink some imported lager beer, my brother behind me being the God of Halo 2 he is, and myself writing on my internet blog that StatCounter tells me the majority of people who've been to this site spend less than five seconds viewing. This only means to me that I shouldn't have to worry about impressing anybody with the content here. I am a writer. This is my lament.
(the title of my blog makes sense to me right now).

I spent most of today in a car seat. I slept and read. I visited relatives I haven't seen in decades and won't see for at least a decade more. It was my grandmother's birthday. She is 80. I spent most of the time at the party watching movies on cable, inventing a secret handshake with my brother, and not thinking about what a scary number 80 is.
I'm 19 in two weeks.
My dad and his girlfriend wanted to drive down the coast on the way back from Bangor. I slept on the way to Camden, but Dad woke me up when we got there. I saw a pretty mountain behind a harbor filled with large beautiful schooners. It was raining. Fletcher and I walked down the pier a bit, looking at the boats. I heard Camden was really pretty and I agree. I want to go back and see it again sometime soon.

Dad forgot that Camden was very far away from anything he could recognize or know the way to, so we took a bit longer than expecting getting to Portland. It kept raining, and I read a good chunk of Siddhartha while listening to a randomized selection of songs from The Mountain Goats, The Decemberists, Iron & Wine and The Weakerthans. The book made me think a lot, and I was able to see passing glances of the Maine Coast out my rain-streaked window. It was very dark though. Almost like I was having a bad dream about the coast. It wasn't so bad though. I've always liked the rain.

Fuck, this bottle cap isn't a twist-off.

Siddhartha made me think about a lot. Like why people value material possesions so much, and how just one man can change his lifestyle drastically so many times in his life. How do people really understand themselves? How important is money, or sex? What do you really accomplish in life? [Travis finds a bottle-opener] There's a lot of questions out there. Siddhartha, in the book, hasn't answered too many of them yet. I was really scared that he was going to stay with Kamaswami and living like that, and it would end in tragedy. I had gotten so wrapped up in reading I had forgotten all the pages that still lay before me. I liked Kamala, and hope he sees her again. I was really glad he saw Govinda again. I'll read more before going to bed I think.

an excerpt from Siddhartha:

"My dear Kamala," said Siddhartha, "when I came to you im your grove I made the first step. It was my intention to learn about love from the most beautiful woman. From the moment I made that resolution I also knew that I would execute it. I knew that ou would help me; I knew it from your first glance at the entrance to the grove."
"And if I had not wanted?"
"But you did want. Listen, Kamala, when you throw a stone into the water, it finds the quickest way to the bottom of the water. It is the same when Siddhartha has an aim, a goal. Siddhartha does nothing; he waits, he thinks, he fasts, but he goes through the affairs of the world like the stone through the water, without doing anything, without bestirring himself; he is drawn and lets himself fall. He is drawn by his goal, for he does not allow anything to enter his mind which opposes his goal. That is what Siddhartha learned from the Samanas. It is what fools call magic and what they think is caused by demons. Nothing is caused by demons; there are no demons. Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goal, if can think, wait and fast."
Kamala listened to him. She loved his voice, she loved the look in his eyes.
"Perhaps it is as you say, my friend," she said softly, "and perhaps it is also because Siddhartha is a handsome man, because his glance pleases women, that he is lucky."
Siddhartha kissed her and said good-bye. "May it be so, my teacher. May my glance always please you, may good fortune always come to me from you!"

Fletcher had some temporary tatooes of the Fantastic Four logo, for the upcoming movie. The movie looks exciting and fun, and by no means "good" at all. No quality, just a fun time at the movies. Explosions, scantily clad women, stupid jokes. I'm pumped. Fletcher and I made up super-powers for each other, after we put the tatooes on our biceps. I'd have the ability to convert my body into electricity, and I could enter and control all electrically-powered devices, like Electro from the Spiderman comics. Fletcher wanted to be Sandman, but before deciding on that, he thought about being Skunkman. Like Chucky, from that episode of Rugrats. We're both pretty big dorks.

It's late. Heineken is tasty. Fletcher wants the Internet, so he can pwnzzorz teh n00bz and be teh l33t on Halo 2. I've seen him do it. I'm going to go read some. I hope it rains more tomorrow.
Goodnight, Internet.

[this blog entry brought to you in the style of Christopher Onstad, Genius and Cartoonist.]

2005-05-21T00:46:00.000-07:00

The Experience:
I went to a rock concert, and had an absolutely spectacular time.

The Last Time This Happened:
Over the college year, I'd primarily only gone only to Apollo Sunshine concerts with Erik, my roommate. Apollo Sunshine is a rock band out of Boston, and they are literally mind-blowing. Please listen to them. Scratch that, see them. It is a life-changing experience. The actual last concert I went and saw though was State Radio at Plymouth State College. How's Your News and Throwback opened. Chad, of State Radio, formerly of Dispatch, is also part of How's Your News and writes their music. How's Your News? is a band of mentally and physically challenged people of varying ages and disabilities. They all sing, only one of them plays an instrument, which is Jeremy, who is better at drums than most non-retarded people I know. (How's Your News?, aside from being a good band, are also a man-on-the-street news show, who attended both parties National Conventions, interviewed John McCain, Michael Moore and Senator John Kerry.) The concert was awesome. The audience loved How's Your News? a lot and State Radio even more. I had a great time.

But Yet, Today:
I went to The Station in Portland to see Murder by Death and Against Me!. I went with Kacy Woodworth, Benjamin Crockett, and Kristen Onos. Kacy paid for me to get in. I saw a bunch of people I knew, including the Mysterious Cute Girl I met at Gay Prom. Cosades, a band featuring Chris Boivan on drums, opened. Chris Boivan is great on drums, and lived in my residence hall. After Cosades, Murder by Death played. I got as close as I could to the stage but it was very crowded. I had a decent view though. Murder by Death's name is misleading, for they are not heavy metal or obnoxiously loud or evil at all. They are really pretty mellow if you listen to their albums. They have a cellist, and she is beautiful, and plays beautifully. Their set was quite awesome and louder and more rocking than I had thought it would have been, but I'm not complaining. Some stupid kids moshed. When they were finished, I got as close to the stage as I could, since it was not very high and I desperately needed to see Against Me! as close as I could. I got to a decent place amongst other tightly-packed bodies that swayed and listed like a ship in the wind. I was sweating gallons before they even took the stage, and when they did, there was a mighty surge in the sea of people around me and I was pressed into a firmly locked location next to this large strong dude with an attitude.
Against Me!'s set was fucking awe-striking. If you do not know their sound, they are by my own definition the coolest thing to happen to punk rock since The Dead Kennedies. I sang, scream, shouted, and breathed as heavily as I could when I wasn't singing, screaming or shouting. It was difficult maintaining my spot, but luckily I sort of hung on to the strong asshole dude when he pushed himself to the front. At one point, I left my leech-like stance on the guy and ended up one body away from the barrier in front of the band. I could reach and touch Andrew, the bassist. Thomas was screaming almost directly into my face. As they began "Pints of Guiness Make You Strong" I just about lost control of myself, and whilst screaming the lyrics with all my heart and soul, I may have spat on him. Andrew, I'm sorry. Forgive me please.
After my stint at the front of the madness, I dropped back a bit and ended up in the pit. Mosh pits can be kinda fun in an outrageous goofy way, so I did my part, but ended up helping someone up, getting knocked over, and having my genitalia stepped on. Not cool. I hauled myself to the bathroom to take a damage report and hydrate some. Everything was in it's right place and I didn't pee blood, so I returned to the concert. I found Kacy sitting on the countertop thing along the side next to the stage somewhat and I moved to her. I was covered from head to toe in my own and many other's sweat and body odor, so I cleared a path not unlike Moses with the Red Sea. Kacy was a happy girl sitting up high with a great view and singing with her soul. I jumped up to sit on the counter next to her and hit my head on a hanging glass lampshade light thingy, and it shattered. I could hardly feel it, my adrenaline and senses were so distorted and ruptured. No blood though. I recharged a bit, then hopped back down into the mess of people for the end of their set. Naturally, they came back. They encored with some new song I hadn't heard, and then "Walking is Still Honest" and I went nuts.
(I saw some girl half-crowd surf and land headfirst in the pit. I grabbed her shoulders and some other fellow helped me get her on her feet. She commenced dancing and singing immediately, showing she was okay. That's when I noticed it was Kacy.)
After the end, I went outside to find it hinting at rain slightly. I cooled down, talked to some peers, looked for some people but didn't find them, found some other people, my ride, and we left. My shirt was drenched, so I took it off and put on my dirty USM hoody. We stopped at Friendly's. Kacy and Kristen had ice-cream, Ben had some sandwich and let me have his waffle-fries and I had some water too. I manned the I-pizzle and DJed a bit on the way home. I got in at about 12:30 and revelled in the experience.

How is it Different to Attend a Concert, Now vs. Then:
I was a lot less excited at the State Radio show, but still danced a bunch, only Erik wasn't there to be an asshole about it. There weren't any retards, and I didn't get a free shirt, and the nonexistant retards didn't sign the shirt I didn't get. I sang a lot though, and felt pretty cool afterwards both times. I'd also like to think I'm a lot cooler of a person now than I was then though, despite the short amount of time. My coolness matures quickly, I think. ...

What I am Going to Do Tomorrow:
Tomorrow is sort of today now, so today, I'll sleep. Wake up, be driven to meet my Dad somewhere in the Lewiston/Auburn area, be driven by him to see my grandmother in Bangor, and sleep on the way there, probably with my minni-I-pizzy. See my grandmother, talk about how I made Dean's List and about the play I was in, joke with my brother when the 'rents aren't paying attention, then drive back, and sleep on the way as well.
Tomorrow Night: Open and Free, like a bird, and the wind.

[Onstad totally did it cooler.]

Zen and the Art of Travis Rambling

2005-05-20T11:26:00.000-07:00

Now most people would look down on a college student on summer vacation returning to his high school to sit in on classes, flirt with girls, and have intellectual discussions. But not me. I learned some things yesterday, and if it's the price I must pay for expanding my mind, I'd gladly be called a loser.

I woke up early, running on two hours of sleep and more caffeine than the healthy amount that should be taken. Drove in to the school with Job, who was moderately pissed at me for not washing the dishes the night before. At school, I saw some old friends and socialized a bit, but quickly had to dodge some administrative figures and make my way to the classroom of Hank Burns' Advanced Placement English course. I never took AP English my senior year, even though it was accredited as the class to take your senior year. I, instead and not by choice, took a lower-level course which actually had a reading list I really was excited for. Unfortunately, my classmates were zombies who never heard of "class discussion" or the "art of discourse." I ended up meeting Hank Burns and befriending him to the point where I would eat lunch with him and some students from his class, dubbed "AP Lunch." I ended up reading all the AP English books and discussing them with Hank during lunch and I impressed him enough to have him invite me to sit in on some AP English classes.

I hated the classes. The "discussion" consisted of people sharing thoughts, others shooting those thoughts down and berrating them, then only to pitch their own opinionated ideas and have others disagree. It was more disagreement than discourse and it made me uncomfortable.

But now, being the ultra-cool graduate I am, I can return to school and sit in on an AP class of kids who are not exactly my peers but still intelligent people, and actually talk, debate and learn something. This is what I've done over the past vacations I've had and this is what I did yesterday.

The class had just read Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse. I haven't read this book, so I stole it after the class was over. I won't detail everything that took place within the two class periods I sat through, then the three lunch periods following, but I'll summarize what I took with me from them:

The concept of Self can be divided into two basic parts: A and B, I'll call them for now.
A is your rational thought process, the part of you that thinks, monitors, evaluates, calculates, understands, worries, critiques, etc. It's your Mind. Frued's Super-Ego. Knowledge. The example used in class was when you are playing a sport, it's the tiny voice in your head that tells you to focus, concentrate, not to mess up, and will in most cases make you mess up.
B is what you feel and experience. It's your senses, your emotions, your basic instincts, your gut feelings. It's the Body. Frued's Id. Wisdom. It's the part of you that knows basic pleasures and understands what you morally feel is right and wrong. The example in class was the person playing the sport not needing to think about it and just doing it well, naturally.
Ofcourse not everyone plays sports, but it applies to most things we do, like math, dancing, writing, driving, even lovemaking. A and B are both in your head and sometimes one's in control and sometimes the other is. Then there are those moments when everything just gells and you understand. Your mind subconsciously figures out what needs to be figured out, and is clear and your body does what you need to do to and it's practically instinctual. You make the perfect pitch, you solve the difficult equation, you find exactly the right words to write, or say. You understand.

This is: C. The combination of A and B. The Moment of Zen, according to Buddhists.
I termed things using Freud's super-ego and id, which does make sense but not in the context of one person using C to do something, but more in the context of one person thinks and lives is his Ego (C) being his balance of A and B. We're always in a state of C, but it's based on degrees determined by the balance of A and B. When you're spending too much time thinking, and muddling yourself with confusion, you're a bit too A. When you're spending too much time doing, and making rash decisions without considering consequences, you're a bit too B. You need to reach the C, the Middle Path, both Yin and Yang.

You could label A and B in any context you'd like, be it philosophy, psychology, religion, or even the left and right sides of our brains. Wherever I look, I can see two seperate sides to most things, and the middle which is difficult to reach. I'm not pretending to be Buddhist or anything of that sort, just taking it all into consideration and thinking it through.

In today's society, in America's culture, we are all too A-based. We are all pressured to focus on the preparation of the next step of our lives. Be it our careers, our education, etc. We all constantly have something to worry about in our future, and there's no time to relax and be happy. Ofcourse, it's part of our nature to worry, to be A, so it's not like we're ever going to find true happiness, or absolute certainty in anything. These days though, everything's too extroverted, and there's not enough introversion.

Okay, nevermind. I stopped making sense to me. I need more B in my life and less A though, to help me find C. Hopefully, this book can help.

Dizzle Vizzle in da Hizzle, Y'all.

2005-05-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

Imagine the neurons in your brain that fire up with electricity when your brain makes connections and is working very fast cause a bright flash of light. Now picture the non-stop fireworks grand finale going on inside of my head as I was sitting in the theater watching Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Let's go even further. Pretend every flash of light, every wattage of brain activity travelling through my neurons, created the sensation of a full-blown orgasm to the tenth power. Yup. I was feeling that too. Everywhere.

Being the tremendous Star Wars fanatic that I am, I had a suspicion that this movie could not have gone wrong for me. I knew how the story was going to go, because I've already seen the sequel to this film somewhere in the range of 250-300 times. I knew which characters were going to live, which characters were going to die, etc. Some might say the movie was ruined for me already, but to these some, I say nay. I wanted to see these events transpire, I wanted to know how some of things happened that I knew would happen. In fact, my life may have been a long torturous existence filled with despair if I did not see this closing chapter that transitioned into one of the greatest movie trilogy's I've ever known.

Unfortunately, no movie is ever perfect. Neither was this one.

___________________________________
WARNING: SPOILERS
___________________________________

The Wookies.: I was flipping out when I first heard the Jedi Council just mention Kashyyyk. When I saw the first Wookie we all see, Tarfful, boarding a ship with Yoda, I almost crapped my pants. Then the battle on Kashyyyk, with the Wookies fighting alongside the Clone Army against the Seperatist's Droid Army, I was close to tears. We saw some Wookies being badass, some shots fired, and then BANG. Cut to next scene. I was so totally blue-ballsed with the Wookies. I wanted more badass Wookie action, and I didn't get to see it. I wanted them to be badder than bad, and it just didn't happen.
Chewbacca.: SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN IN THIS MOVIE. Don't get me wrong, I was happy to see him. He was standing around with Tarfful, looking important. It was cool to see him give Yoda a piggy-back ride. It was cool to hear Yoda say his name. But that summed up his involvment with this film. He was pointless. Wait, nevermind. His point was to make me ask "Hold on, if Chewbacca is an important part of Wookie Government or something, then how does he meet up with Han Solo in the very-near-future and decide to start illegally smuggling things across the galaxy with him?" George just wanted him to make people happy to see him and little else. Totally pointless to me.
Yoda.: I was pleased Lucas's choice to turn Yoda from comic relief into wise mentor in the first trilogy, then to complete badass Jedi in the newer movies. He's a totally awesome character, and he knocked two of the Emperor's Elite Guards unconscious just by shrugging. But Goddammit Lucas, does he have to say every goddamn thing backwards? Watch Empire again. No, no he doesn't. His dialogue just got fucking ridiculous in this film. And you would think the fight between the Galaxy's two most powerful users of the Force would have lasted a bit longer. It was still mad impressive though.
Mace Windu.: Mace Windu is played Samuel L. Jackson. That has to tell you something right there. Samuel L. Jackson requested to have his character's lightsaber be purple. There's something else right there too. Mace Windu is second in command of the Jedi Order, under Yoda. With all this in mind, it's pretty obvious that Mace Windu must be one ill Jedi motherfucker. Given, he was going up against the Dark Lord of the Sith, but still...with three other Jedi, I was in high hopes of an amazingly cool battle royal. I wanted more, once again. Come on! He's Sammy LJ! Let him at least put up a fight.
General Grievous.: I was very impressed with this villian. Dooku was old, and while kinda creepy, still unintimidating. Maul was pretty badass, but he was also in Episode I and that dragged him down. They got it right with Grievous. A hunched cyborg with a cape and a bad cough that is the General of the Droid Army, has badass droid bodyguards, and likes to kill Jedi. He also has four arms, wields four lightsabers and is scarier than Darth Vader. He almost killed Obi-wan. He was pretty fucking cool.
Padme Amidala.: Why does she always have to dress weird? Did you see what she was wearing in bed with Anakin? Did you see what she was wearing while she was pregnant? Natalie, honey, I love you, but what exactly was going on there? She looked prettiest when she was dead.
Darth Vader.: He was only suited for a brief amount of the movie, but I think something could have been better. His whole Frankenstein-walk-screaming-"Noooo!" thing would have been much cooler if he didn't do it at all. If I were George Lucas, and I wish I was about once a day, I would have just made him ask about Padme, and in response, not say anything. Just crush everything around him with the Force and kill all the droids and people around him. When I saw the first movies, it was my understanding that everything human and moral in Vader had been destroyed by the Dark Side, that is, until Luke cries like a girl and changes his mind. When he screamed like that, it ruined the dark, silent, cold killer I knew Vader was going to be.
Anakin Skywalker vs. Obi-wan Kenobi.: Loved it. Every second of it. Want to see it again. Now.

I loved this movie. It was spectacular. The cinematography, the choreography, the plot development. It blew me away. These were just a couple of things that jerked my disbelief out of suspension, along with the dialogue, but I wasn't expecting too much there.
My friends and I drove two hours to get to the theater, bought our tickets and waited four hours till the clock struck 12:01 and it began. It was damn worth it, believe you me.

I'm going to see it again. No doubt about it.

List and Notes.

2005-05-16T19:05:00.000-07:00

A List of Things I've Accepted That I'll Never Be Good At:

Maintaining financial stability.
Opening child-safety locks on medicine bottles.
Basketball.
Impressing women.
All mathematics above long-division.
Taxes.
Starting and maintaining a wood-stove fire.
Finishing a work of art.
Deep-sea diving.
Not embarassing myself.
Taking initiative.
Living up to my expectations.

This just in: I need to take out an 8,000 dollar Student Loan for next year. Fantastic.

note to self: Don't worry about debt until after college. And have a happy carefree summer.

Noted.

Honesty's Absence in our Culture.

2005-05-16T11:43:00.000-07:00

In my short time home, I've managed to find one of my long lost companions, Aaron Gomez, a jovial Puerto-Rican fellow who spent all last year in Alaska with his father. Aaron and I don't really go way back, but back far enough. We work at the same summer camp and have shared many an awesome adventure. Once upon a time we wrote scripts for three episodes of a sitcom that thankfully have been lost in time, but we shall perhaps collaborate again, once I get the green light from the camp director to write the play for the summer.

This is not about him though. It's about the tail-end of a movie I watched when I went to his house to find him. He and his (rather cute) cousin were watching Liar, Liar on the television on some cable network. That was unfortunate because they edited out some great content, but it was fortunate I saw it, because it really is a nicely done movie and not just a generic watch-Jim-Carrey-do-stupid-things movie. Anyways, onwards...

How honest are you? Think about it. I'm willing to bet you've lied within the past twenty-four hours, if not two hours. People these days just lie a lot. I do it too. I lie to convenience myself, and what I believe to be conveniencing others, from either a harsh brutal truth or an awkward embarassing one. Sometimes, I lie without ever having too, because I've conditioned myself so. I don't know about all of you, but that depresses me something awful.

So what can I do about this? Is there anything I could do to help myself and others to lead more honest lives? In these past few months I've realized that being honest and straightforward is really not as difficult as I made it out to be. It's actually kind of rewarding, to know that you stepped forward and let the truth stand beside you, erasing all the dark murky icky feelings that are buried deep within when you know that you've kept from being honest for the sake of yourself or even others.

I tend to write on myself a lot. To-Do lists, or things I need to remember. Sharpie, or any kind of (non-toxic, so shut up about ink poisoning) markers of any colors. I don't have much to write down now, these carefree days at home, where plans are made on a whim and schedules are mere abstractions.

I think I might keep tally marks along my wrist-forearm of how many times I lie in a day. I won't tell anyone, the few that actually read this won't be affected or could interfere. Maybe I'll suprise myself by how many, or how few, marks I'll make. This might get messy.

Your/(My) Homework: Find a cooler plan to make people more honest.

Another cool idea from a movie: Pay It Forward.

I'd like to try that one too someday, but these days, there aren't too many incredibly nice things I could do for somebody. I'm limited to mowing my lawn and paying gas money.

And on a different note: I hate the concept of money.
more on that later....maybe....

I was reminded of my heterosexuality.

2005-05-14T16:12:00.000-07:00

As of yesterday, I am no longer a resident of Robie-Andrews Hall at the Gorham Campus of the University of Southern Maine. I've relocated to a discreet inconspicuous farmhouse hidden away in the hills of Waterford, ME. And frankly, it makes me sad. I miss my floor incredibly. My home is there, not here. Here, a desolate area where great distances must be travelled to take part in adventures (and gas prices suck assballs hard), but there, adventure could be found at every turn of the hallways. So many different people, teenagers and young adults, all living and thriving within the same walls. Like an ant-farm almost, except that is a depressing metaphor, and Robie-Andrews is/was a very happy place. For me, at least. Anyways, I am home now, and in need of some adventure to make this day worth something to me.

BUT I had an adventure yesterday. And, ofcourse, I'm sharing it:

After quickly packing and exiting my beloved haven, myself and the three compadres of mine that came to fetch me, Ben, Chris, and Travis (Trav #2, for I am Trav #1), and I headed to the Maine Mall. We had plans to meet someone there and had time to kill.

(Sidenote: on leaving my hall, a fellow on the floor called Pont presented me with a Nalgene bottle as a going-away present. The contents of the bottle, only filled a quarter of the way up, where what he said to be "Ice 101 mixed with orange something". "Ice 101", for those who are not alcoholics or college students, is 101-proof Peppermint Schnapps. I've never had it before, but it did not taste very strong. It, in fact, tasted delicious. I wasn't going to be driving at any point on my journey and would not actually arrive home until the next day. I made the executive decision to drink it all on the way to the mall.)

At the mall, we did some typical wandering and stopped by some routinely visited stores, such as Spencer's Gifts, Brookstone, KB Toys, Electronics Boutique, etc. I was feeling in quite a good mood, and enjoying myself immensly, to the amusement of my friends. The euphoric effect on my brain wore off while eating some McDonald's in the food court and conversing with some adolescents who were going to their high school prom later that evening.
At this point, I'd like to reveal that the reason we were at the mall was to meet several people I went to high school with, who, with us, were all going to attend the Outright Gay Prom at the Holiday Inn in Portland. Outright is a social community that puts on events for the Gay/Straight/Bisexual/Transexual/Etc. kids in Maine. It's pretty cool. I'm 100% heterosexual and 0% homophobic and 100% comfortable going to this event, as were my friends. Except Nate, who was taking his boyfriend.
But first, we ate.

We went to Bangkok, Thai foods. At least, I believe it was called that. We had to take our shoes off to sit down and Nate knew everything on the menu. Naturally, I was poor-ass broke. So were my comrades. Kaitlynn was nice enough to order some Fried Calamari, which she kindly shared with me. I met Nate's boyfriend, Nate, (ha), who talked to me about the reasons for his dress. Societal boundaries created comfort zones for people, where in their own seperate groups they felt more accepted. Some people rejected these boundaries and would dress however they wanted, but for people like Nate & Nate, they felt more accepted and comfortable dressing in typical "gay fashion", just as how not all African Americans dressed "ghetto" but most did, because they felt more comfortable that way. People feel most comfortable when they feel understood. Ofcourse, no one's understoof. My personal example in this case would be that I think my appearance gives off the "college student hipster" look, so I think people define me as that upon seeing me. I don't know that for certain, but it's my best guess. I'm comfortable being categorized as that. Okay, stupid tangent, back to story.

After dining, we walked through the Portland streets to the Holiday Inn. I had only one dollar to donate to the Outright representatives at the door, but I gave them my name and address (you had to sign in for them to mark your hands) and told them I supported their group and appreciated their postive influence on our local Maine community. Not quite in those words though. The room where it was being held looked frighteningly like the venue for both my prom experiences from high school. The dance floor, the lights, the dining tables, the refreshments. The only difference was instead all of the clique-y ignorant airheads of my graduating class dancing and milling about, there were a multitude of people who you would feel guilty about staring at if you saw them on the street. Overweight girls making out. Guys in flamboyant dresses. Piercings, tattoos, crazy "punk rock" hairstyles. Kids who were definitely treated differently then the other kids they went to high school with.

The first thing I immediately noticed was how comfortable everyone was. No one felt awkward or insecure at all about their image or appearance, possibly due to the fact there were people there taking the same image to the extreme. I saw some people who were still going to my high school and we sat down. I was introduced to a pre-op M2F transexual named Matthew or Sarah "whichever you are most comfortable with" he informed me. I, in jest, referred to him as "Sarathew" but I don't think it amused him, so I apologized. He said it was fine, since he still had a penis and predominantly male features it was understandable for people to think his desire to be a female as half-hearted or shallow.
I was quickly swept to the dance floor then by Kaitlynn, who demanded a "straight boy" to dance with. I'm not always comfortable about dancing around people, especially to hip-hop, but considering the crowd I decided to squelch my inhibitions. I like to dance. I had fun. Ben and Chris and Travis joined and I remarked to myself about how this prom was so much cooler than the one my school had put on. A couple of outrightly homosexual fellows began to dance with Chris and Ben, but they were cool about it and the fellows got the picture that they were straight soon enough. I noticed and eyed some pretty girls I saw all dancing with each other, but their sexual stance was up in the air, since they were at Gay Prom.

The DJ, a stocky woman with short bleached hair, then announced this next song as her graduating classes prom theme from way back, and the music switched from popular hip-hip/rap/r'n'b, to Limp Bizkit's "It's Just One of those Days". The crowd appreciated this. While I hold Fred Durst no higher than most leeches and ticks, I still promptly banged my head, threw up the horns, and jumped up and down like a lunatic. One of the girls I had been eyeing joined in. A mosh pit formed on the dance floor. This was to be expected of nu-metal-heads and normally I don't approve, but I considered this event an exception and jumped in. I played air guitar, did the "running man" and made several comical poses, as the group of fat girls with spiked hair and tall dudes with long hair all jumped up and down around me pushing each other. After the song, the pretty girl approached me and shook my hand without saying anything. I shook, but then began to perform an elaborate secret handshake of mine I only keep with certain people. She liked it, we practiced a few times, without saying anything, then resumed dancing with our seperate groups of friends.
Now usually, I am not the most forward guy in the world. Actually, I will never ever be the most forward guy in the world. I wouldn't even be more than half-way between the most forward guy in the world and the least forward guy in the world, I am so not forward at all. But tonight, I decided to raise my rank. A slow song began, and I searched for the pretty girl. I approached her, still not saying anything, and offered my hand. We did the secret handshake. I asked her name, which was "Averil" and then asked if she were here with another girl. She laughed and said she and her friends were straight, but here with their homosexual friends. "Same here. Awesome. Would you like to dance?" I asked. She warmly accepted the proposal.

I introduced my friends to her friends, and she introduced her friends to my friends. We all danced to together and laughed and acted generally silly. Then she dropped the proverbial bomb. We were discussing musical tastes, and so far all we had covered was that we had both seen Saves the Day in concert. Then she asked:
"Hey, do you like Against Me!?"

My jaw dropped. I fell to my knees. My eyes widened to an unbelievable stare. Angels sang. Fireworks went off. I'm pretty sure I flat-lined for a little bit too.

(Sidenote: Against Me! is a self-proclaimed "anarcho folk-punk" abnd out of Florida. Think Dropkick Murphies, except not Irish and more raw. I've loved this group since my junior year of high school when I read Nothing Nice to Say and Mitch Clem gave them his highest review. Their first album "Reinventing Axl Rose" has changed punk rock for me forever. I saw them in concert at the Avalon Ballroom in Boston. They opened for Anti-Flag. In my opinion, Anti-Flag had nothing on them. All-in-all, Against Me! has never dropped from my top-five favorite bands of all time.)

Averil could have told me she murdered and ate children after telling that, and I still would have proposed to marry her. Luckily, I didn't propose. That would have been weird.
Averil and I danced and talked some more, and my buddies could definitely see the interest blossoming like a flower. Ah, springtime is great. After the dance ended, we asked what they were doing after. They had no plans. Denny's? Yes. We drove them to Denny's. The car was kind of full from all of my belongings, but we made two trips.

Ladies and Gentlemen, my friends and I picked up chicks at Gay Prom. Straight chicks.

Denny's went well, I got a free meal because the silly people working thought it was my birthday and I'm a bad person. Chris drove the girls home but his car broke down on the way back, so we waited around for Trav2's dad to show and drive us back. I got all my stuff out and home luckily. It was an interesting night. Averil seems like a really neat girl, but shes lives faraways and I'm not entirely sure she's interested in me at all. Mais c'est la vie, oui? Well...more c'est ma vie.

I like ma vie though, especially when neat stuff like this happens.

Blog: Noun and Verb.

2005-05-11T20:41:00.000-07:00

These "weblogs" have been getting pretty popular within the year(s), and frankly, I approve. I think it's putting Internet space to some good use, by letting everybody contribute, create and share. I'm no judge on the quality of a "blog", but through observation I've deduced that at least most blogs are created for one, or more, of the following purposes:

A journal/diary-esque recounting of the author's day, complete with their bias and feelings on different subjects important to them, like their social life, along with their current mood and music.
An outlet for an author's artwork, creative writing, novels, poetry, fanfiction, etc.
A political forum and/or soap box platform, where the author gives his views on current "hot" topics in politics and world news.

These blog "types" range in quality and can be very diverse in nature. You could find interesting political blogs, such as Crooks and Liars, which is a hella liberal blog site that uses video clips and diagnostics and stuff. Then sort of crappy ones, presenting only one view and full of shameless self-promotion (Michael, I'm looking right at you). There's also neat novels in blog-form, like this one, and even this one. I think that is an awesome way to write a book if you do not have any publishing resources and want people to read it (by linking them). This may be my favorite type of blog so far. The type of blog most people know though, are the typically angst-ridden personal websites popular among teens and pre-teens across the country, so people can read exactly how they're feeling and hopefully in some way feel sorry for them and give them the meager attention they crave...though this does not always happen though.

This later type of blog are mostly used through websites such as Livejournal.com, Myspace.com, Xanga.com and The Open Diary. There're a bunch more, but I definitely don't feel like linking to all of them.

I'm not going to lie. I own a blog. You're reading it, yeah, yeah, I know. But in the past, I kept a couple of blogs of ... ill repute. As far as type goes, they fit the first category. They were all very lame. I say "all" because I switched sites a lot, alternating between different journals with different changes in my life. I am now, hopefully for a cathartic effect, cataloging all my past blogs (in chronological order):

Free Open Diary: T'was my first blogging experience. My sophomore year in high school. It was a lame and sad time of my life. I created it because my girlfriend at the time had one, the reason need not go further than that. Thank God Almighty, that due to not writing in it after a couple or so months, it was deleted and expired, and no one may ever read it's contents (I wrote poetry. Enough said).
Blurty #1: I wasn't quite so much an emo-nerd-loser-boy in this one, but I was still very angsty. My writing had only improved incrementally, and I still posted song lyrics. I made a few stabs at writing fictional material, but they went unnoticed. It was basically my rants and raves about my horrid days in highschool. I look back for nostalgic laughs and chuckles, but I don't recommend it to anyone.
Blurty #2: A short-lived side project based on the fact I attempted to fast myself from sleep for a couple of days. The attempt failed, but I did not tell my friends about this new blog on the side of my main Blurty account. It taught me the value of writing for myself, which ironically is the reason people wrote in "journals" or "diaries" back in the days of old anyways. Fancy that.
LiveJournal #1: I switched from the simple, young, naive Blurty to the wide, wicked and lame world of Livejournal, because all of my friends did. It was also prompted by a crush on a cute girl that I ended up being magnificent friends with, but I don't blame her for the addiction that followed. I posted a lot, primarily about the transition from my senior year in high school to the first semester of my freshmen year in college. My writing style began changing, because I had a surge of reading and writing in that time of my life. You can actually read along and mark the entries I've made where I start becoming a new and different person than I was in high school. Quite interesting stuff...if you were to ever do a document on me. I don't think you should do that though. That would kind of creep me out.
Blogger #1: I decided it'd be a fun idea to try out Blogger. I had found it accidentally over the Internet, searching for other blogging sites. Most of the discoveries were pretty lame, but this site was a diamond in the rough. I started the blog with the premise to try and record everything I could remember from my childhood on. Unfortunately, that is a lot. And I am very very lazy. So the plan fell through. I'll delete it someday.
Livejournal #2: After breaking up with my girlfriend in the dusk of my first semester at college, I decided I wanted a new livejournal aimed more towards my friends at USM. I also didn't want my ex reading about all the details of my life. She found it anyways, but whatever. New developments: I started to use pictures much more, and I started using it as a bulletin board for events I was attending or putting on, such as concerts or parties taking place in my dorm room. I had a fun time with it, it became less emotional and angsty and more casual and fun. I ended it recently...because I've made the grand switch to:
Blogger #2 !!!: That's right. I just linked to the site you're already on, reading this. This is my newest blog. I'm trying to keep it based on the "writing for myself" principle, mainly due to the fact many people will not read this consistently when they find it. But hey, whatever. If people don't read it, I still get the joy of writing and taking up precious space on the Internet. If people do read it, well, I hope they're entertained. I really enjoy the Blogger format, and hope to keep this one for a long time.
The Future ???: Who knows what the future ever holds? Maybe I'll get really cool, and find a way to get my own site. That would be really fancy. But I'd have to figure out things like real coding, HTML, servers, hosting, browsers, and all the shit like that. I'm not quite that much of a geek. Not just yet. But hey....only time can tell!

That was fun. I hope nobody actually reads those though. Embarassment to it's perhaps highest degree.

Whatever...I'm over it.

But Didn't We All Already Know This...

2005-05-09T22:14:00.000-07:00

Paris Hilton is Kind of Retarded

Paris Hilton, on Blogs:

Q: Do you read what's written about you? Do you pick up the tabloids?

HILTON: I don't read any of it. I just look at the pictures to see what I was wearing last week and if it was cute.

Q: Do you read blogs?

HILTON: What's that?

Q: Um, they're these things on the Internet where people write about news and stuff.

HILTON: No, I don't really read anything on the Internet except my AOL mail. I don't like people who sit on computers all day long and write about people they don't know anything about.

Q: Paris, you just described my job.

(Her publicist, Rob Shuter, laughs.)

Q: What did you want to be when you were a little girl?

HILTON: A veterinarian, but then I realized I could just buy a bunch of animals.

I, for one, love sitting around on my computer all day writing about people. Especially when I don't know anything about them. Regardless if the esteemed Ms. Hilton approves.

P.S. This entry is jacking Jake Christie's style a lot.

and to that I saw "imitation is the finest form of flattery".

and "it's okay to defend myself with cliche's".

that too.

Three Things.

2005-05-08T14:19:00.000-07:00

These are three things about the concert I recently saw at Catharine McAuley High School
(a Catholic all-girls high school).

ONE

I think there's a percentage of men who find appeal in girls who are Catholic. Now, now, not the stereotypical "catholic school girl" image with all the matching uniforms and plaid skirts. The religion itself is attractive, because you can tell these girls have been conditioned and educated to be set against evil vile things like talking to boys, holding hands at a young age, flirting, or anything else like that. Some men get the image that they are just full of pent-up sexual agression or have some sort of innonence to them that the stereotypical macho man would love to corrupt and defile.
Well...not me. I don't like Catholicism in the least bit, and a girl must be mighty special for me to see past her devout Catholic beliefs. I hold no truck with men who oggle the school girls who gather and giggle in groups before class. To me, they're pretty ignorant and frankly too young for any sort of fantasy to even begin to form. With that said, on to:

TWO

It was the strangest venue I'd ever been in. It was an auditorium, with a thrust stage and seating around. There was some space between the seats and the stage, but hardly anyone was standing there so we sat. I got to kick back in comfortable seats for this show, when normally I'd be standing in close proximity to other kids uncomfortably, no one moving save for some head nods or the mosh pit shenanigans. This wasn't so much of a Rock Show as it was a Rock Showcase, being specially presented to me. I had also imbibed in drugs beforehand, but not a lot. It was going to be a cool show.
The first band was Cosades.
The guitarist was a fat geeky dude in a tie-dye teeshirt. The bassist was a skinny guy with the "bassist" look and moves. The lead singer-guitarist looked like an immature Kurt Cobain clone who could possibly still be in high school. The drummer I knew. He was known as Boivan and he was the largest pothead in my building, possibly the whole campus. They seemed very unprofessional and immature. They had ten minute long breaks between each song since they only had one tuner (and couldn't tune by ear) and the lead singer would talk to the scene kids in the audience and plug his CD and next show. It's fine to plug your CD or whatever, but in between every song? It was like a highschool band.

that is...until they played.

They rocked. Pure and simple. It was this crazy bizarre rock, with some messed up raunchy vocals, but their sound was really tight. I totally dug it. Boivan was crazy on drums. His facial expressions alone made the show an awesome experience. They were a weird cool rock sound that I hadn't heard before. Blew me away, practically.
I didn't really understand their fanbase. Jake Simcock, ex-founder of Muscle City (you know, before it sucked) was there, but that could also be because it was put on by NE Booking which he works for now I guess. I was having a hard time placing the other kids in the crowd, since I hadn't been to any local shows recently, but I think they were Scenesters. I normally don't like elitist scene kid assholes but these guys were odd. One dude was practically the only guy in the room standing and he was dancing around a bit, basically looking like a total tool to me, but I don't hate on anyone for just dancing. He later got onstage and played along with a drumstick and a jamblock and then a macaraca. I didn't quite understand him, or the kids there, but they all left right after the set was over.

It was pretty weird to me. The fanbase, the band, everything except the music. The music was pretty fucking cool. If the other members of the band besides Boivan were a bit more professional, they would've been a lot cooler. Regardless, it's going to be sweet to see them open for Against Me! and Murder by Death.

THREE

Vague Valentine played after. This is a good point to explain the second half of the audience of the show, which ties into part one of this whole deal: the Catholic school girls. There were seperate mobs of them, and they were all there to see Vague Valentine. When the band hit the stage, Ben asked everyone to stand up and crowd the stage, so naturally they all did. I was feeling in a good mood after the last band, so I did too. At one point in the show, after Ben prompted them, they all began to dance crazily. The hip-hop kind of dancing. Dirty dancing. These were Catholic school girls too. Singing along with every word. It was a bit too much for me and I had to sit down.
anyways...the music.
I've only heard Vague play mainly acoustic sets, in the Burnham Lounge or coffeehouses, etc. Their one electric performance I saw, the first set I've seen of theirs, prompted me to buy their CD. I accidentally bought the wrong band's CD, U-turn, who opened for them. U-turn is a very lame Christian rap-rock group, who is not worth paying three bucks an album for. It was an accident. Moving on, I liked it. I like their acoustic stuff a whole lot, and at this concert, their electric was even better.
Honestly, when did VV turn into an honest-to-God (ha, Catholic high school) rock band? They rocked like a rock band. Ben Burgess acted like a rock band frontman should. He had funny dance moves. He soloed. He introduced all the band members during their solos. He prompted the audience to dance. He gave pauses for the audience to sing along. He worked the crowd like a Rock God. It was brilliant. His whole band had a rock band appeal. I danced along like I dance at every rock show I go to. The audience loved them.

It was just a damn shame the audience were only Catholic school girls, and a couple stoned kids who were friends with the band. I felt pretty guilty about that, but Ben knows I appreciate him. In heart.

We went out for Granny's Burritos and Coldstone Ice Cream, neither of these places I purchased anything in, the poor college student I am. But it was cool.

IT'S ALIVE!!! AAALLLLIIIVVVEEE!!! (still)

2005-05-08T13:11:00.000-07:00

So I've decided I'm going to start writing in this again. Several months later.

and Jake Christie is to blame.