linoleum bookmark

I stayed up too late last night reading Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkaesh.

Forest recommended it to me and it’s without a doubt one of the best books I’ve read. I’m only about 100 pages in but I literally couldn’t put it down. I haven’t been this entranced since Dragon Age.

Reading is one of my favorite things to do, so it’s hard for me understand people that don’t enjoy it. When people tell me they don’t enjoy reading I automatically dislike them a little. It’s not intentional, it’s merely that I cannot imagine how a person could feel fulfilled without reading.

Without question I will basically always choose a book over the movie (except The Notebook. Sparks – you fool. Reading your books makes me want to take out an eyeball.) Nothing is more relaxing then curling up and becoming truly lost in another world …

Alas now it’s time to shower and become a presentable human being. I have errands and tasks to do tonight that I honestly would ditch out on if I didn’t love Shannon.

masquerade

I announce now that this post will be a victory to some that read it. I am not a complex person despite my desire to be one. It seems more often then not that others have be figured out quiet easily, while I haven’t at all.

People can change. It’s a matter of whether they want to change and if they do, how much?

Without question I endlessly preach of my hatred for relationships. The problem is, whenever I meet someone and begin to have the slightest bit of interest in I automatically imagine what it would be like to be in a relationship with them. Usually I quickly come to the conclusion that it is far from logical and I move on. Then there are the instances where I start to wonder (which is the problem) what one might be like with such an individual. This is where everything goes terribly wrong.

One of the things I am best at is sabotaging myself in any type of romantic relationship.

It is better to fail before it ever happens, then risk getting hurt. It’s that simple I feel like.

I claim to others, and worse off myself that I don’t need relationships, I don’t need people – I am indeed an island.

Something I’ve never been good at is moderation and self regulation. I am careless by nature and reckless. I don’t have a lot of concern for myself. I have common sense, but I use it only enough so that I keep myself from being hurt and thus hurting my immediate family. If this makes sense …

Lately it has come to my attention my constant need for self validation. Is it wrong to want to be liked? Or am I wanting to be liked for the wrong reasons?

Most importantly I suppose is my lack of deviant nature. I am a deviant person, we all are … I believe, but I have the intense desire to follow rules set by those around me.

Rebelling against the faceless masses or corporations is entirely different then standing up to someone that I know. I bend to their will – always. I remember a certain instance where my mom had grounded me, I was 20 years old. I screamed that she had no actual power/control over me and that I could do whatever I wanted. Nevertheless I obeyed her. I seek the approval of those I care about so deeply that it sometimes puts me in situations that I shouldn’t be in.

I hate saying no to people that I care about. I want to make them happy and people that do know me sometimes take advantage of this. Whether they know it or not.

My problem really lies in the fact that I either like or dislike someone. There really is no in between which is funny because I have found many people view me the same way. Wait -is this just the norm? Is there no gray?

If someone has broken through my shield and gained my trust I will trust them until the end, no matter how they lie or betray or lead me astray. The problem being – sometimes I don’t choose very good people. As a matter of fact, sometimes I pick the worst people … I pick someone that exploits my weakness.

My only defense is to me cold and hard. To ignore others and return to my usual way of life that somehow cycles back through me blindly ignoring my feelings for others and concentrating on more important things – school or a career.

Movies portray that when it comes down to it, if you don’t have a family and people that care about you then your world, your life is ultimately useless.

I am torn by this concept. I believe a career is enough to fulfill your life if you balance it with the love and support of a few close people. What I disdain is the American Ideal of a house, a dog and 2.5 children. A family need no be made of such things, that is the idea I shun.

The concept that to have a fulfilled life you must have love – I believe. That it be romantic love – I do not. Romantic love is fleeting and subject to interpretation. Friendship is usually unconditional.

Obviously romantic love and friendship should over lap I realize. Of course I think that is far easier said then done. Of course there are many people I know that have achieved this and for them I am truly happy.

Really I want to believe that I am different when I am not. I want to think that something separates me from other people – something makes me original. Small individual traits aside, I am not very different from anyone else.

Tyler Durden comes to mind.

So how does one come to full grasp that you are generally unimportant and irrelevant in the whole of things?

Is that why people believe in God? They need so desperately to be loved by someone and thought special they create this foreign and unknown sovereign being to love and protect and console them?

I will not resort to such a weakness despite my emotional instability.

Now I stand here unmasked. My true origins known. My inner secret unraveled. I am as ordinary as everyone else … and to realize that is the ever lasting feeling of an ego crushed beneath the realization that I only matter in the here and now, and even so … I matter very little as a whole.

america

Right now I’m watching “On Board Air Force One” on the National Geographic channel.

I always hear people talk about remembering the exact place they were when something happened. Like when Kennedy was shot or something like that. I guess for my generation and anyone alive right now – that would have been September 11.

Honestly, I wish I’d understood it better when it happened. I have a paper from the day after.

My bed was against left wall (if you’re standing in my room facing the door) and my mom ran in and woke me up. I’d just started high school, I was a freshman. I ran into the living room and stood and watched, I saw the second tower fall on the news.

It’s rare that I really voice my political views on here – but I feel like if any time is right, it’s now. What better time then the present?

I did not vote for Obama. I am not a democrat, but this doesn’t make me a full republican. I did vote for McCain.

Woman, lend me fi’ dollas.

showered.

perfumed.

wearing make up.

… the question is, do i say “fuck it all” and wear sweats to school?

life is hard.

[SNAP] [CLICK] [CHEESE]

I am completely in love with Christine Kessler’s work. She’s brilliant. Besides any job that allows you stare at gorgeous girls with rad hair is perfectly fine with me.

Perry Gallagher is another fantastic photographer if you’re looking for the same genre.

… but of course, it wouldn’t be right to not mention my FAVORITE photographer ever, Peter Kim. It’s not even me trying to suck up, he’s the most talented photographer I’ve ever had the opportunity to meet in person. It’s sickening how good he is.

Hell, I would just like to take some nice shots with my kodak disposable, is that so much to ask!?

diffuse

“i hope the impression that fits the empty parts still exists.”

I’ve realized that even though I’ve only been in class for about two weeks I’ve started to analyze my life and those around me. We’re starting with the basics of criminality, how a large majority of career criminals begin offending at very young ages.

Looking back at my own childhood I have to say it was rather uneventful. I don’t remember a lot from Florida. I know that I loved this button my dad brought home from the hospital and that I loved keyboards. I would type away … or smash the keys is more accurate, for what seemed at the time to be long increments of times.

I remember a lot more from from LO. Learning how to swim, being bitten by a goose down at the boat docks behind the house. Danny knocking my front teeth out with the hockey puck, learning to ride my bike that I refused to ride with the handle bars it came with. Getting my roller skate stuck in Danny’s brand new hockey net and having to be cut out of it. The nail going into my knee, driving Sunny Moon around in my little Flinstone style car (where your feet make you move.)

—

In the year I’ve had this WordPress I think there’s only been one time when I truly wrote exactly everything I felt. The rest of the time I filter my thoughts and feelings. There’s nothing worse then making oneself vulnerable.

I think I truly stopped admitting my feelings after someone told me that no matter how things are for me, they’re always worse for someone else. That stuck with me. That made me realize how insignificant my problems really are. I took this mentality for pain as well. No matter how bad the pain is, it will pass. It’s merely a matter of understanding this in the moment.

—

I will eternally be grateful to Evan for making me watch this movie. It’s one of the best films I’ve ever seen. I don’t agree with anything that occurs within the plot of course – love is never enough and in the end – everything ends a tragedy.

Without a doubt I will be the first to admit that I am cowardly when it comes to relationships and feelings… but I learned very young that love is not enough. It will never be enough.

If love were enough I wouldn’t have walked away. Where do you draw the line at love and self preservation? Or is that the point – that there is no line for love. You sacrifice even yourself for it? “You jump, I jump”

The point is, I’d never jump.

Most people say this is because I haven’t found the right person. What if I did? What if I fucked it up? You can only get so many chances.

So what do you choose? Do you fulfill the destiny you have set for yourself, or do you bend?

I rarely commit to things. But when you choose a path, you choose a character trait. You cannot change it. Yes people, characters evolve and morph … but you must stay true to what you have chosen.

Is it weird that I remember exactly when I stopped believing in God? I even know what the room smelled like. I remember asking him to help me. He didn’t … was it to make me stronger? Is that why we endure such things?

The lies that spread of his kindness and mercy, then why would he allow children to feel such things?

—

Maggie is the first toy that I didn’t name after myself. I named her after Uncle Ronnie’s dog, Maggie. She’s a cabbage patch doll, almost a year old then I am. I took her everywhere, she was my life. I have only let one person other then my mom hold her and sleep with her.

—

You once chewed the head off your stuffed dinosaur. I bought you a giant one to replace it and dared you to try it on that one.

Nothing makes me feel more guilty then knowing how happy you make me. I feel like I am betraying a promise I made to myself (and silently and secretly to them) to never care about anyone that way again. Ironically, I know you don’t care… so I don’t know why I do.

Sometimes I feel like I still care about you, but I know it’s not you now. It was you then. I love something that doesn’t exist. I love a fantasy that was never actually real, but this form of ideal creation dreamed up by the naive and love drenched girl.

“…it just seems like what once you really felt is only back again, yet diluted this time”

short pants

Checking my mail for what must have been the (insert large but not comical numeric amount) time today I saw that Gmail has new advanced settings.

Hell I was happy when I learned that you could set your background to be the weather of a certain location. I chose Key West, I like to think that deep down I am in fact an optimist.

Last night I had a dream that this kid I went to High School with discovered the genetic code for “hotness” mind you it consisted of squiggle lines and bubbly little drawings … in my dream I was quite impressed.

So I know it was created a great long time ago, Gmail’s anti-drunk e-mail feature but I have to wonder – does anyone really use it? I think something like that would be far more useful on Myspace, Facebook, Twitter … anything that easily allows drunk people the ability to communicate with masses.

Wait, through my extensive three minute research there is no longer such a thing as Google Goggles. Well that just butters my biscuits.

Speaking of food I used Bobby Flay’s recipe for chicken parmesan tonight – entirely delicious. I used … wait. No, I shall not give away the family secret. You see I didn’t follow the recipe exactly. No no, I … deviated from the norm, the instructions.

Did you know children that start to show aggression and anti-social behavior before age three are far more likely to be delinquents? What was that movie … who was telling me? Wait is not a movie and the person was my Dad. He was telling me at lunch the other day about an old episode of Frasier where Dr. Crane told a caller that he was either severely damaged emotionally and mentally and need to be institutionalized or he was a first year psychology student. The more I learn in school and mind you tomorrow will only make it day four, the more I have started to examine myself.

So much for that 10:00 p.m. bed time.

upper left hand corner

The “single friend” is usually the role I fill for my friends. It’s almost like violating a social norm when I’m not.

Being the single friend has a lot of perks. A lot. It’s like giving me a license to do whatever the fuck I want and I don’t have to answer to anyone (except my mom … hey, I live at home.)

As the single friend I can always be counted on be the last minute date to events (preferably open bar events), I am the ultimate wing man (though I am NOT the undiscriminating friend (listen to Stephen Lynch’s “Big Fat Friend”) and it is socially acceptable for me to show up places looking like ass because I did God only knows what the night prior.

The best way I can think to explain being a single person is Hugh Grant’s movie, About a Boy.

“I am an island. I am bloody Ibiza!” says Grant’s character Will.

I do indeed like to think of myself as an island … also that movie is amazing because they kill a duck with a loaf of bread. Don’t get me wrong, I love animals, but any movie that makes that funny – is grade A material in my book.

Perhaps the only negative thing about being the single friend is need to always remain single out of duty. The responsibility (and perks) are hard to let go of. How can I guiltlessly go on three day benders knowing there’s a boyfriend sitting alone at (his) home wondering why I’m not texting back. No I’m not with other boys, I’m passed out in my on my floor with my pants on backwards.

A good single friend is always there for the friends in relationships (constantly reminding them of what they are missing by being in a relationship), they are always there for the friends freshly out of relationships to console and reassure the newly heartbroken that relationships are indeed the most evil of evils possible. Single friends have the ultimate black book for the rest of their friends…

Sure more often then not we (single friends) go home and sleep alone, but that’s part of the joy of being single. Besides, I like a lot of room when I sleep and oftentimes another person would get in my way.

Thus whenever someone comes along that makes me question my quest for ultimate single-ness I take pause. Is this person really worth giving up everything I have earned and worked for and slaved away for?

Anyone that has kept up with me knows that earlier this fall I was in a relationship but for those that know of the details (cryptic right?), it was hardly a real relationship. It was not by any standards usual or healthy.

So we’ll go back to the relationship prior to that. The relationship that lasted too long for the wrong reasons. Then again, do relationships ever last too long for the right reasons?

That relationship wasn’t a bad one, he wasn’t a bad person by any means. We merely failed to see eye to eye on anything really, had different life goals and dreams and with the exception of our love for pizza and video games we hadn’t much in common.

Merely taking those two into account, it is obvious why I wouldn’t want to leap into anything now. Especially when it is a new year … oh to start a new year single. It just sounds so fresh and exciting. The possibilities … the parties!

Some of my friends (both in and not in relationships) have asked me if I find this fulfilling … well, it took me a long time but I came to realize it is not about quantity, it is about quality. Just because you can buy in bulk doesn’t mean that you should. At the time buying eight loaves of bread (i love bread) might sound like a mighty find idea. Then once your two or three loaves in you realize that you don’t even like this bread to begin with.

… but enough with such metaphors.

child/monster

Sometimes I feel that everything I have to say can be summed up in 140 characters, or less.

Yesterday I met a man who told me that the worst thing he has ever done was stomp baby birds to death when he was seven years old. He removed the nest from the tree in his yard and one by one smashed their brains beneath his feet. He asked me what the worst thing I’ve ever done is, it wasn’t even close.

only guy in town

Does the theme of Bioshock scream Heroin Hero to anyone else?

South Park's Heroin Hero

Screen shot from Bioshock

Oh and the whole concept that Big Daddy’s protect little sisters … and you have to save little girls. Pedo Bear much?

Unsure of who Pedo Bear is? Google him, immediately!