Sunday, October 24, 2004

A week ago I was in New York, riding the subway, seeing shows, crammed in a hotel room with 10 other people, eating cheap (yet amazingly good) pizza, walking around aimlessly at 2AM, catching taxis, being carded, looking up at flashing lights and tickers in Times Square, riding the Staten Island ferry, and watching a guy desecrate a toilet bowl with a half rotten banana. Now I'm back in Harrisonburg. Needless to say, it's not quite as exciting as my trip to New York. Which as awesome. It's a trip like that that makes me hate the fact that memories fade and erode over time. I want to hold on to every minute I was there, capture it in words or pictures, keep it with me forever. But I know that a couple of years from now the trip will be a blur, a few frames that flash for a moment and then shrivel away. They'll become another lost dream that I can only remember as I forget it.

Ok, enough of the deep stuff. I need sleep, but I don't want to sleep just yet. Therefore, rambles and run on sentences are bound to ensue. Consider yourself warned.

I have lots of new music. Tsunami Bomb, Fluf, Sondre Lerche, Drag the River, Chad Rex, Jimmy Eat World, Elliott Smith... All good stuff (I assume), but I haven't had the time to listen to them in the past week. School (namely reading) has been taking a huge chunk of my time. I feel like all I do anymore is read. Sometimes I think it's killing my soul. It's not that the reading is horribly bad, it's just time consumming. I miss being able to sit down, pop in a CD, and crank out a few math problems in 10 minutes and that's that. Now, I know I made a vow when I first started this thing to not bitch about my life, and I think I've done a pretty good job with that. But fuck it, it's 3 in the morning. I'm tired. So I'm gonna bitch about being an English major since it's been bothering me. Not that I doubt my desire to continue with English, I just feel discouraged since a few of my previous English classes are pretty much null and void now that I've declared Secondary Education as my minor. Whatever.

It was so nice to be able to go away. For five days I forgot about my life as it is. For five days I had freedom, I had independence. For five days I was the happiest I've been in a year. And then it was taken away and repalced with... this. In high school, everyone always tells you that college is the best four years of your life. And it is, probably. It's just depressing to think that, from here on out, your life will go downhill. And what am I doing with this time? Fucking it away. Fuck. Listen to me. I need to stop this self-pity shit.

The election is coming up very very soon. I don't know what I'll do if Bush gets re-elected, but screaming, shouting, and swearing are all at the top of that list. It's not like Kerry is going to change everything, (though I've gained lots of respect for the man since the debates) but he's bound to be better than Bush. And if you've seen Fahrenheit 9/11 (which I hope you have), then you're bound to feel that Bush shouldn't be allowed to be president at all. It's like when you read the official rules for a contest, and one line is always, "family or friends of employees of (insert company) may not enter," it should be like that with Bush. He should be disqualified from being president due to all of his crazy ties with the bin Ladens. So vote. Please. And tell other people to vote. If you can get just two people to vote, and then those two people tell two other people to vote... It's like the principle in that Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt movie. What was it called? Pay it Forward? I forget. But it's like that. We can make a difference. So let's take the opportunity to do something about it.

Ha. Me preaching about taking an opportunity and doing something about it. Since I'm the expert on that subject.

We picked out pumpkins today. With Halloween being a week away, we're getting in the spirit (Ha! Spirit? Halloween?) by decorating our townhouse and carving pumpkins and all that stuff. I'm trying my best to get into the grove, but it's not happening. I feel so old and stupid when I think that I'll never enjoy Halloween the same as I did when I was 8 or so and went as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, but that's really what I think sometimes. It doesn't help when assholes steal decorations you have planted outside. But we saw that coming, so it wasn't quite as big of a deal. Still, people are real jerks sometimes.

Yes! Uplifting, optimistic... These are both words to describe my awesome entry! Actually, if I continue using these exclamation points, then maybe I can mask these not so happy thoughts! There we go, problem solved!

Something cool did happen this week, though, and that was this: Through the radio station, I got to listen to an advanced copy of Strung Out's "Exile in Oblivion" album, which doesn't come out until November 2nd. That was really awesome. Especially since it's a good album. I haven't decided if it's better than "An American Paradox" or "Twisted by Design," but it's definitely really good. Lots of catchy tunes, and the guitars are, of course, awesome. It's not nearly as hard or disturbing as the awful cover art makes it look. So I would recommend picking it up. Maybe you can reward yourself after you vote by purchasing some fine music. Yeah, that'd work.

Also, I saw Races to April tonight. That always helps. "Kill the Lights" live is a cathartic experience.

I want to be happy all the time. I want to make someone else happy all the time. I want to stop writing sappy entries in this blog. Truthfully, I think some people were meant to be alone. Have a nice day!

Monday, October 18, 2004

It's time for the great book update! Yes, I've read more books for class and I have this to say about them: In the Heart of the Heart of the Country by William Gass is officially the worst book I've ever read. For a while it was the Color Purple. This semester it was Excellent Women. But Gass' book surpasses them all by being completely incoherent trash from page one to page whatever. It's five short stories, none of them with any redeeming value except possibly the first 30 pages or so of the first story. Awful. Awful. And then there was Herzog by Saul Bellow which was an enjoyable book, really very slow in places, about a guy who writes a lot of letters to people that he never sends because his wife divorced him. Then he gets over it and stops writing letters. It's more entertaining than that, but at about 400 pages it's really slow until the end, and even then it's pretty slow. Not getting my seal of recommendation either. However, this book I'm reading now, Them, by Joyce Carol Oates, is extremely good so far (89 pages in) and is the first book since the first book we read this semester that I've actually wanted to keep reading. So after I post this I'll go read until midnight.

My cable works. Danny worked some magic on a little splitter in a closet and bam, TV. This has served to remind me how much TV sucks.

I was sure going into the playoffs that it would be the Cardinals and the Yankees in the Series. At this point, I'm still pretty sure it'll be the Yankees, because God hates the Red Sox, but the NL is tough. I'm amazed that wild card Houston is keeping up with St. Louis, but I can only assume it's a fluke and that in the next two games the ridiculous Cardinal lineup will come to life and score hundreds of runs. I have to root for the Cards because I feel they're the only team who can put up a fight against the Yankees, and like any God-fearing red-blooded American male, I hate the Yankees. Laura likes the Yankees. I can't believe that. But sometimes we have to accept these things and move on.

I'm no longer driving the Audi. If I had all the money put in it, I'd have simply taken a metal baseball bat and a chainsaw and whatever other tools of destruction I could find and taken out 3000 bucks worth of agression on the cursed piece of shit. But since Dad had all the money in it, someone's getting a tax write off when it gets given to charity, though if the charity knew what they had coming to them, they wouldn't accept it. It'll probably blow up killing lots of little children or something. It's the devil's car. Now I'm driving a Civic, which isn't nearly as nice as the Audi, but it runs, making it infinitely nicer than the Audi. I salvaged my stereo out of the old Audi though, so one of these days I'll have a CD player in the Civic, and that will be very nice, because the radio blows ass. Except sometimes for the college station, which has played Lagwagon, Strung Out, Atmosphere, The Postal Service, Elliott Smith, and lots of other stuff that you don't expect to hear on the radio. So that's where I keep it. 90.5, KCSU.

Tomorrow the new Me First and Elliott Smith CDs come out. While some people have a problem with Best Buy (and I do too because their customer service is balls) I will be purchasing the CDs there because time has shown that my local independent shop gets CDs late and expensive, whereas Best Buy gets them on time and on sale. One of these days Metroid Prime 2 will come out and I will buy that and play it nonstop until Resident Evil 4 comes out, at which point I will resign from the human race in order to play that game without break until I die of hunger.

Lots of good looking scary movies coming out, most importantly Saw, which looks freaky as shit. Hopefully I'll get to go see that this weekend. I saw Ghost in the Shell 2 down at an independent movie theater in Boulder on... Saturday. I have no clue what the hell happened in that movie, much like after four viewing of the first Ghost in the Shell I have very little idea what happened, but it was fantastic visually and for that alone I think everyone should go see it on the big screen. My 8 bucks was spent on amazing eye candy, and that's fine with me. Maybe when it comes out on DVD I'll watch it a few more times to figure out what the story is.

Cam and I went and saw Against Me! on Friday. It was awesome. Against Me! is awesome. The first band, True North, was boring verging on bad, but they only played like 25 minutes so I didn't get violent. The Blood Brothers were surprisingly good after a few songs when I forgave the singers' ridiculously high voices (especially the blond) and spastic gay dance moves. They put on a good show, and when the brunette sung in a normal voice and the blond screamed, it actually sounded pretty good. And they had a few damn good songs in there where they slowed down and actually played music. And Against Me! killed. Of note, they played The Disco Before the Breakdown for the first time in the four times I've seen them, they had one new song I'd never heard before which was quite good. But there were some notable absences in their set (which was the longest set they've played), including the awesome electric Unsubstantiated Rumors and the other new songs they've played before. But it was a good set. Except for the crowd jumping on stage during the traditional closer We Laugh at Danger and making the band not be able to sing the song. But it was a good time. Then we rode in the HOV lane on the way home, which is this crazy little deal that runs between incoming traffic and outgoing(?) traffic and just goes straight when the highway turns. So we probably saved like a million minutes taking that. Then we passed a bad accident which was cool. That was a good night. We got from south of Denver to Fort Collins in like 45 minutes it seems like because Cam drives like a madman.

The shower door broke today when I got out. Now we can't get in. I told the landlord to get his/her ass over here and fix it, but they were like "nuh uh, we'll take our sweet time." So hopefully they come tomorrow. Otherwise I'll have to go shower with Cam, and I doubt he'll appreciate that (or at least he won't admit it). And that's all.