These Little Town Blues

Notes

2010-06-14T01:38:00.002-04:00

Just some brief notes:

I have a pretty packed day for the first part of tomorrow. I'm going to try to get up relatively early (I slept til like 1:30 today-- not even because I was tired), get a haircut, drive out to the Jackson Outlets and Six Flags to fill out some applications and figure out how to make some cream this summer, then head out to Liberty Oak to play some Ultimate-- something I haven't done in a long time and am excited to get back into.

I've started eating right again, and exercising a little bit also. It gives me something to work towards and some semblance of control over what's going on. Typically I couldn't really care less-- would rather just go with the flow-- but it's a time in which I need something like this.

I'm watching this show on Comedy Central and doing my laundry. The show is called Ugly American and it is stupid. The laundry is also stupid.

I'm finding it very difficult to keep myself occupied. Everything is foggy and without its usual brightness, brilliance. This is an essential challenge, however. It is a good thing I like playing Ultimate and getting haircuts I guess.

I started keeping a paper and ink journal while away (oh shit, I guess I should blog about that trip or something I dunno) and I really like it. Think I'll keep it up. It helps.

AAAAHHHHHHGHGHGHGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

I want a Droid. And a sampler. And a job.

I have some bad habits to address and remedy. It isn't going to happen immediately, but I'll do what I can when I can.

I have really really unbelievably warm friends.

2010-05-24T23:57:00.001-04:00

Well, off I trot to Washington for Sasquatch!

Mom and Dad think we're going to drive off of a canyon.

I sure hope we don't--

2010-05-07T02:45:00.003-04:00

When I despair I micromanage but I'm running out of internet and out of tongues and out of lines and out of time and if I could be the one who didn't wear ice the same number of nights fur, I would be.

2010-04-11T23:29:00.002-04:00

How do I even talk about these things that don't feel good?

Tunnelvision

2010-04-11T22:46:00.002-04:00

Taking an undeserved break from researching for my postmodernism presentation (due tomorrow) and final paper (due I forget), that's what I'm doing yep yep. I'm finding myself short on everything these days, not least of all time. There's a hypocrisy about the length of my fuse that I'm considering with a sort of resolved sadness; I can't take what I give a good amount of the time. My self-awareness somehow falls short of understanding how I am at times a pretty fucked-up friend, and bad habits are hard to uproot when they wear flowers on their heads.

MAN am I ever (sometimes) supremely envious of nihilists!

I fear that I see things with terrible sort of paranoid distortion. It makes it super hard to tell when something is something I should worry about and when something is something I'm only worried about because I'm worried I am supposed to be worrying about it.

What's with this nagging fear of obsolescence I've picked up recently? I feel I've moved on from the stage of psychosocial development that I was hung up on for, LIKE, forever and now I've entered one a whole lot scarier and its lousy and blah blah blah I'm still the narcissistic whelp I've always been don't fret about that!

My problem isn't that I can't see straight but that I can only see straight, like I have this autistic inability to focus on stimuli, positive or negative, from more than a handful of things. So while I'm busy biting my nails over some shit only I'm worried about I'm losing contact with the orbiting periphery.

And I wonder if, in a grand stroke of irony, all of this would go away if I chilled the fuck out and got my shit together. I just want to feel less sometimes, or figure out how to stop burning my hand on cooking fires.

2010-03-28T20:57:00.004-04:00

I don't post here much anymore for a variety of reasons. It feels both too public and permanent to be completely honest in-- and without honesty, the whole thing is bunk, isn't it? I wouldn't be surprised if this was the beginning of the end for blogger and me. Seems my personal thoughts, the ones I've enjoyed posting to see what people thought of them or what shape they took upon revisitation, are better suited for the margins of legal pads-- where they can remain in ink, spared the embarrassment of internet immortalization, and me their eventual betrayal.

I most often haven't words to excuse the fits of anxiety I'm sometimes prone to. They come in flash floods and dissipate with equal unpredictability. For any number of reasons, I seize up with terror, draw scenarios in the sand and cast the sample in concrete. Then I unhinge my jaws and swallow the whole thing in one, where it sits in my belly a stone-- its etchings enhanced by stomach acid.

Everything now feels like setup for the next season. What comes and goes when one ends?

But if I were to say anything here with clarity, it would be that I am desperately afraid.

Artax

2010-03-07T14:26:00.002-05:00

It's 51 degrees out, cloudless and blue, a Sunday made for walks past cafes, through grassy city squares down to the water where great barges crawl like they're just left to float where they do. Reminds me of Savannah, so practiced at formality it manages prim in 90% humidity.

I could use a parachute.

As March begins, it burrows inside me spinier than I expected, and I expected it to hurt terribly. Ironic that with the sun and the warmer weather, so [nearly] ending my hibernationesque retreat from myself, comes this month of rejection, change, and difficult decisions.

In the hollow part inside me, left by the wilting of a child's garden: wonder, amusement, trust, belief, faith-- I feel this detachment and loneliness pressing out like gas expanding within me, or dark water pushing at the sides of a pipe-- finding imperfections to gnaw at until it bursts.

I wonder if there exists a spring to water myself from.

Sometimes I get shakes when I realize I see things too romantically or fantastically. I worry that if I'm not good enough even at what I'm good at, well, what use is there for me? And losing the good things. And being stuck somewhere/here.

Will I be like Artax, overcome and doomed?

Wax cast

2010-02-15T19:48:00.003-05:00

2/12
I've got a wet rattlecough robbing me of sleep lately, as if I'm trying to get something out but can't. Sometimes words get stuck to my inner throatlining like the spikeball seeds we threw at each other as children did to sweaters. The cooperation of my stomach and lungs, tightening and, so, pushing up against disease is valiant, even heroic-- and in this grey time futile and impotent.

Winter is as it tends to be, lined with trees reaching feebly up like bronchi on burnt trachea fishing in lungfluid. I wonder about the relationship of snow and nicotine tar, about duality and sameness and irony and death. The panic of falling through a frozen laketop giving softly to the sad cold synapse failure of alcohol.

2/15
I have this recurring dream in which I'm in a play but don't know any of the lines I'm supposed to deliver. Last night I was watching the show and using the bathroom during intermission (after wandering accidentally into the ladies' room and running into a very unexpected Ramaperson). Then I was told to go onstage and was expected to take the role of a sort of scripted stage manager. There was a halfwall upstage that I could hide behind momentarily and glance at the script, but never for long enough to glean any lines. At some point a man rode by on a horse, said something, and delivered me a large fish. At another there was a giant green snake.

I wonder now, recollecting as I sit in a class that demands "what does it mean?" what business I had in this dreamspace. We take on different roles daily, momentarily, different masks for different performances. I'm painfully aware and, it seems, concerned less with how I am than how I appear to be. The great irony is the near universality and therefore nullification of any validity, any truth, to this obsession.

And then the words, how I can never seem to hook the right ones. The cottonmouth feeling of wordlessness and, so, silence. Improvisation as a method-- in dream a viable approach when in waking life I'm bound by this repeated cerebral assessment of possibilities and opposing vantages, forever in rehearsal.

It doesn't seem enough anymore to ask "who am I?" so much as "where am I under all this?"

The internet

2010-02-08T19:57:00.000-05:00

it's blowing up!

Numerology

2010-02-05T16:04:00.003-05:00

Something about winter makes me seize up with anxiety. I get worked up and then worked up about being worked up and then worked up worrying if my behavior is working someone else up. It's no way to be. Totally unnecessary but it feels inescapable.

The bullshit numerology books says I would do well to live near the ocean.

I want a sunny home that lets the light in, somewhere warm to build those four walls and adobe slabs.

WOO!

9, 10

2009-12-31T19:23:00.000-05:00

What do I have to say about 2009? I don’t know, man, it’s hard to go back to this time a year ago and see things the way I saw them, trace the trajectories through space and draw, with some acumen, anything notable or profound from the differences. It’s ridiculous to try and recall all of the things that shaped the moment I’m suspended in right now, do them the justice they so richly deserve, identify and thank them for delivering me here.

I rang in 2009 black-out smashed in Studio B, my point of recollection ending just before a long-line return to coat check but I have flashes of trying to remove my contact lenses in an abandoned upstairs bedroom of Dan’s Grandmother’s abandoned Staten Island home, fishing until my eyes bled only to realize I had already removed them. The next morning I was awoken by friends bearing a gallon of water and offering me half of their egg sandwich, which I graciously, and likely wordlessly, accepted. Friendship like you can’t put into words. Downstairs a Polish stranger was eating breakfast and drinking vodka at the stripped living room’s only table. We don’t know where he came from but no one seemed to mind. I drove us home and we recounted the night— peeing on some wall outside, expensive drinks, confusing rooms, crazy party people— listening to Abbey Road at a level barely audible.

The cold and white of winter saw me lower than I’d like to admit I go. I made a lot of mistakes and hurt a lot of feelings. I invented a lot of fictions and allowed myself a number of misunderstandings, spent a lot of time in paranoid semi-isolation. But it’s really not as dramatic as it sounds. I developed a bad jetskiing habit and wasn’t the most responsible with alcohol. But despite this, the friends that today I count among the finest anywhere (and I dare you to challenge me on it) provided a cushion of hands, pushing me back up, brushing me off, and shoving me back into the expanding chaos as if to whisper, “you are and will be better, friend.”

As the earth defrosted, I found my feet a cloud that would hold my weight. I did some of my best creative work and conducted some necessary distancing and re-proximation, an exercise, again, in realizing how wonderful the people around me are. It slowly became warm enough to uncocoon and, under a bed and in the morning springblue, tree bark or construction equipment underfoot, I met the most wonderful, beautiful girl by some inexact but, I’m convinced, divine circumstance. I spoke with less pretense and more humanity and began to understand some things.

Overseas, I moved in a surreal multiverse of literature and human interaction. I learned about philosophy and Mixed Martial Arts from intelligent, big-hearted artists and friends. I was cried on. I met a man who knows on Jesus Green and when he asked me who I am— I didn’t know. I had wine with distinguished scholars and waxed Ulysses with a Cambridge fellow whose favorite band is Talking Heads. James Joyce, Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus manifested themselves a [new] Trinity within me and made me wonder, then, what constitutes soul. I watched sunrise from both the top of Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh, and on an exhausted hike through a sleeping London. I very foolishly climbed on buildings.

Fall 2009 was, without question, the most difficult and magnificent semester I have had the privilege of enjoying. Academics were tough. But my delightful, wonderful, ever-understanding and hilarious group of friends expanded incredibly— like gravity did some weird vacuum thing and allowed all the awesome in the available universe to collect in late night, bathroom floor conversations, balcony sessions, and beer pong standoffs. Beautiful friends shared their beautiful friends and we all danced under a paper lantern moon with smiles wide enough to sail across, into the alabaster ghostmorning.

So now here we are, I guess. Another year older each but aged so much more, chipped at and built up by the people we’ve bounced off of and into. We’ve moved like tokens on a game board but the stakes feel unimportant. We’ve come to share squares with different pieces and I sure feel all the better for it. We see the game from a perspective we couldn’t have previously and, as we continue into 2010, that much more revealed will, I’m confident, be wonderous and new and exciting. This is a thrilling beginning and a chance to take inventory of that, of those, we’ve been blessed by, carried by, relied on, needed, trusted, been unjustly hurt (because we love them so) by, surprised by, reduced to tears (the laughing ones) by, felt more intimately.

Thank you all, Happy New Year, and all that. Cool, whatever.

Things that are scary

2009-12-20T21:58:00.002-05:00

1. My penultimate semester of college ends tomorrow.
2. My ultimate, final semester as an undergraduate begins shortly thereafter.
3. My graduate school applications have to be done by, like, Wednesday or something.
4. Graduate school applications.
4.5. Inevitable rejection.
5. The very idea of student teaching.
6. The future.
7. What am I doing?
8. That everything lately has been so so good lovely on lovely like peanut butter and jelly in a ziploc made personally, especially-- and I don't know if that I deal pretty well with change carries over into this space I've occupied, nestled into, hibernating.
9. Personal statements-- Who am I and why can't I manage two double-spaced pages on it?
10. The simultaneous inescapability and impossibility of being.
11. Bad habits.
12. Spiders.
13.

You so right

2009-10-31T16:23:00.002-04:00

It's hard lately to tell what I am and what I am not doing right. Even harder to tell or even begin to know what I am and what I am not. I want to be everything to everyone but I get all stretched over this impossible surface and start to rip. And I'm not even doing a very good job of it.

I have some bad habits and worse, there are probably some I'm unaware of.

But also, I wouldn't change a thing.

Such brief blogs

2009-10-15T21:04:00.003-04:00

I've been writing some songs again. It seems like every year I begin this project right around this time and abandon it just when I shouldn't. Perhaps this time I'll have the constitution. I'd like very much to put some sound in your ears.

Also, tumblr?

Blog more

2009-09-24T20:08:00.000-04:00

Give me something interesting to read.

Just some goals

2009-09-12T16:42:00.003-04:00

1. Make a concentrated effort not to blog while annoyed.
2. Forgive people for lying. They're probably just in the habit.
3. See more sunlight, do things in morning hours, be more productive, more awake.
4. Be a better friend and a better son.
5. Find a thing to fall in love with every day. Repeating things is okay.
6. Continue to work "I don't know" out of my life.
7. Be a student sometimes.
8. Don't worry so much about spreading myself too thin, I can be elastic if I allow it.
9. Read, write,
10. At the same time, appreciate everything around me that is so so good. I walk through blessed days lately. Maybe spend some time inventing words to share with the people I'm lucky to have arrived here, today, with.

Pisces

2009-08-31T16:02:00.003-04:00

& so summer ends.

It's different herenow, but not unfamiliar. Not uncomfortable. Someone changed the water in my tank and meanwhile I particled around the spare, a season without ornamentation, tasting the other side and returning having seen the filter in pieces to be cleaned. We bought it and built it and let it bubble and bubble until it might as easily have been wind. First, see it. Second, the sea. Let's be true communicators this year. We are of the holy.

Tumbling

2009-06-18T20:47:00.010-04:00

Some very brief highlights.

Grizzly Bear
Under the nearest lightning bug we pick at blades and speak like there isn't that human distance, like everything is simultaneous and close and these friends we've made are fingers. We fumble against each other as if by accident, but not.

Beastie Boys
I wonder if we're all thinking it when someone says, my god, this is so fucking awesome.

Phoenix
There's sugar in my shoes, or something. Rather than recall dances where my hands grappled themselves like comfortable strangers, I forget to be alone. I move because we all move and when I sing, we sing. The sound rolls and bounces us about, balloons bunched against a windy Sunday, and I consider between hey!s that this could be belonging.

Wilco
It's one of those guilts like, man I hope everyone is half as into this as I am, but when I can steal my face from the fury and chance it around I can't help but appreciate the reflected treetop pink in surrounding sunglasses, the blissful gathering calm and opening organ chords. And I wonder, if only for a moment, if this is back then. But as the clang and glide of guitars slip afternoon into evening our bodies are taken and those brown eyes dream and dream.

Band of Horses
All sun but a sliver cast by a lemonade umbrella, all sound and the dizzy of space, I am a lizard. There is a terrible local band playing a stage behind us, but if I turn my head this way and jab a cartilage earbud in I can just hear a shimmer through the trees. The seagreen is bed enough, the sky an expanse of time, music like its crackling over a homespun cassette and I am an X on a map, found.

Bonnaroo was an indescribable experience, among the greatest I've been blessed to share with beautiful friends ever. Returning is strangely like departing something more intimate than "real life," remembering like reflecting on a dream. I'll be back next year, come hell or adulthood.

My high streak continues into this, the latter weeks of June. Life has cradled me something tender and wonderful. The charge now is to just stay, just keep my head in this place-- this here now today you and me and us together, ethereal.

But I leave for Cambridge July 5. Mixed feelings. But those are for another post.

Anybody have anything they want me to write about? This felt good.

photos by Mike Locke

No, don't warn me

2009-06-05T02:34:00.006-04:00

I'm finding it difficult to look back on a time when I was this happy. Perhaps in the wonder of childhood, when everything was new. There are things to be said about this happiness, the circumstance and perspective, but this is summer. Hardly a time for retrospect.

I'm here, now. And part of the pleasure is refusing the times I wasn't here, now, intrusion into my head. Certainly, I flit from memory to memory like a bird between branches just like you do. But these days I'm noticing the time I'm wasting somewhere, some astral plane if I may, other than the momentous and beautiful present. And I'm really trying to quit it, the bounding from guilt to worry and back, because it doesn't mean anything real to me anymore. We have, perhaps, learned to live in this impossible multi-temporal state of "where will I be next year?" when honestly-- we'll be right here, in the forever-present, as we were. And this journey our minds make is a distraction from everything that is lovely and going on currently. "Currently." Like the river we move with.

All this time talk, so to foil myself: Bonnaroo in less than a week and I am excited.

2009-06-03T05:25:00.002-04:00

It's familiar, lying here while the morning blue peeks in, bird chirps between distant rolls of thunder-- and you, a fogless dream or a lucid memory, lovely as the sound that words make when we mean them.

Your Fictional Space 1

2009-05-17T17:25:00.008-04:00

Nightly

You wake to rain like a rhinocrash over a glass pane savannah, all river and dust, and the trees outside whistle and howl like great hairy creatures-- dancing in the discomoon night. Maybe this is the apocalypse, you, squinting so your eyes now full of crust whir like camera lenses, hope as you pull your knees far as they'll draw to your chest and twirl your feet to gather loosened covers. Loverless arms, fetal, Tyrannosaurus, cramp from an awkward hour or more's unsleep so you stretch them away, realizing only now how your fingers have tangled the sheets beneath your chin, dreamkneading like with dough or a knot worked out of the shoulder of an invisible someone. You clutch at a pillow that's fallen and pull it in to be surrogate. This is the sleeping hour and you are a stranger here, pulled from a life next to someone. If you try, you can run your fingers through that someone's hair and breathe in to try and name the shampoo it last used or the ocean into which it last plunged, laughing. You invent a color for it, and a texture. American Black Walnut, and the silkslip of a memory passing.

In the quiet desk lamplight, all ten fourth-grade fingers work the ragged spiral notebook edge from the letter, careful so only the perferated paper tears. And in deliberate print you skip lines so your reader can make no mistakes. You steal an envelope from your father's office, journeying the midnight halls in sockshuffles-- the ancient creaking panels unaroused by your weight. You need to stand on a chair to reach and stretch your naked arms up, balanced half by your toes on a quivering armrest and half by your hands in the stationary box. When you fold the letter you run first one than three fingers to crease it, pausing a wink's time to feel if it will shiver. And when its tucked in a textbook and backpacked for the following morning, its reader's name looped across the front, you wonder if you'll be the man tomorrow who'll leave it to be found. Or if you'll find it some time later, crumpled and ashamed, go momentarily blank and whisper

"Impossible."

You surprise yourself by speaking. The rhinos and creatures rage on but there are ghosts in the room. Squeezing your lover close, you hum against the panerattle and wind, braving your hands along an imaginary skin and feeling it rise and fall with life. You invent a name for the neck you lie your face against, wondering it crass to risk your mouth an invader of the thousand little neckhairs but imagining them twitching at your kiss, the shudder and sigh of reception.

Under a blanket not for warmth so much as sanctuary you drag the pad side of your toes along the ankles you're entwined with. The ocean breathes in and the seagull sky calls in stereo, birds catching thermal rushes up and squawking with delight before swooping low to pick dinner from the sand. All a rush of feather and beak, naturally survivalist-- and your hands are not slaves any longer. They draw runes on sandysmooth hipbones with imagination of their own, no art beyond the memory that yes, you were here and ah, how could I ever forget it? The ocean breathes out and someone stirs, turning toward you and drawing the blanket round both your shoulders with the gentle firmness of a wheel-work potter and you form to the touch. Grace, it speaks and the voice is at once the oceanflow nearing, is easy. Water laps over your toes and the whole beach slides microscopically inward, sinking-- as it does-- to the middle. And you wonder, chancing a glance to the north where the rhinoceros wait, if anything is ever a dream.

Green world

2009-05-09T21:56:00.002-04:00

Mark brings up a great point. If semester had ended a week ago, like I really really wanted it to, things would be awfully different. It's with a certain bitterness that I pack my odds and ends into boxes. A haphazard impatience like I'd be consciously anywhere but here because of what it means.

There's a lot to consider as the mornings become bearable and blue, as we pass on into summer and everything is soft and warm and strangely foreign.

2009-04-30T04:05:00.001-04:00

Never before have I felt so like Lear.

Wheels

2009-04-27T01:19:00.002-04:00

I try to avoid narcissistic writing. I feel like I've been down that road before, perhaps a few too many times. The charged posts, the reflective and emotional ones, are always the most embarrassing to look back on. Like whatever I was feeling at the time seems so ludicrous now, insignificant. But that's the nature of context, and if we don't write it who's to say we'll remember? And I think it entirely possible that the ability to relate to the various incarnations of oneself is as important as the gift of relating to other people.

It's a part of a writer's condition, I think, feeling drawn to immortalizing a gesture or moment to compile something of a self-portrait. People say writing is therapeutic and I don't disagree. We're all fishes glittering about without a clue who we are or what's going on or how we can establish a benchmark of normality to mark ourselves against-- so we write to enact this journey of self-identification. But it seems to me like the whole thing is largely masturbatory. Look at Bloom and Zeno, two of our favorite journeyers. Look even at Odysseus. Nobody really ends up anywhere. It's tragedy. Then, however, I think that maybe it's the craft-- the process-- of writing that defines the journey as much if not more so than its actual history. There's something to be said about the fiction in nonfiction, also. How we say and what we choose not to. And how it relates and interacts so violently with the cerebral practice of putting words to paper.

But anyway, I try to avoid narcissism. I try to avoid the livejournal voice. But without it all I've got are ideas, and what's the value in those? There's a void in my blog writing where I think voice belongs, but we're talking about quite a monster here. What voice does in writing, to me, is give a personality and chronology (humanity) to the text. Good fiction establishes persona with a compelling voice (through word choice, sentence construction, syntax, form, etc. etc. etc..) but personal essay, and let's be real-- that's what this is-- when it has a voice that is honest and endearing it requires a substantial sacrafice on the part of the essaysit. For a voice to be tangible and relatable and real there's some required vulnerability, some terrifying risk.

So if I am to write about my life, like I've done before, from a place of truth... well

it's going to take some work.

Also: everyone should read xkcd. Check it and feel some good vibes to start this week with.

Heaven is a truck

2009-04-23T23:44:00.003-04:00

You ever have an impossible feeling?

Like, this bit of pressure-- a surge or a pulse in the brain or the heart against the skull or ribcage when something that so desperately wants resolution can't possibly find it? A tic in every happy thought, a clause that despite your best intentions the thing you're after is just outside the realm of possibility?

Someone talk to me about reality.

About the fact that you'll never see me the way I see me. And maybe that's the best thing. That there are infinite incarnations of a personality that ebb and flux with the subjectivity of perception. Or about how when I say, "hey"-- you hear, "I'm judging," and what I really mean is "I love you. I would like nothing better than to love you." Because there isn't a truth we're working towards. Not in this lifetime. No collective can reach a universal truth, an objective conclusion about a personality or a sentiment or a sound or a feeling. We all move in different orbits, see things in slightly different shades. And the magical thing about that, about the 21st century human condition, is that none of us can possibly be wrong.

But then there are moments. Occasions of incredible consequence and potential in which whatever is going on up there suspends momentarily and allows a fleeting clarity. I don't what people call this-- but I think it friendship. And that there are people in this world I can share this with, I mean, it really qualifies everything, you know? It's the rarity that brings about the doubt and dark.

I wrote some poems today.

Had a conversation with a non-English speaking Italian poet about how we have simultaneous timelines, each of us. At any given moment, besides the "reality" I'm living in, I'm playing through thousands upon thousands of parallel, equally plausible, existences. There's a temporal thing that happens when we think like this, when we leave earth for split seconds to explore the universe like it can't be seen here, now. I enjoy the escape, the search,

the knowledge that I will come to no conclusion. I am, we are, Joycian. The lifetime of no 21st century intellect or poet or scholar will result in any conclusion beyond that we aren't quite there yet. There's a lot of ground for humanity to cover before the period of self-realization, before we as Arhants walk together. But of you, reader, I'll see you when we get there. The universe has a funny way of carrying the one.

Someone, please, let's talk about reality.

"Maybe it's just the nature of people having a little faith"

2009-04-17T16:48:00.003-04:00

It's another good day in a relatively good week. The window's open and I'm listening to this, smiling and warm. That link there is over a year old, but totally refreshing and wonderful to revisit.

It's the first midafternoon post from me in quite a while, and there isn't a whole lot to say other than that I like the shape things are taking. Everything the psuedopsychologists have to say about Spring and what it does has been pretty spot for me, far as I can tell. And it is quite possible that I couldn't ask for anything better right now. Sun and trees, pretty girls and happy faces.

Short post, this. More to establish a pace for getting this thing written on more frequenly than anything. You'll be hearing from me.

Noise

2009-04-12T01:43:00.004-04:00

I think it fine to say I've been hibernating.

Happy Easter, first of all. It was just before Christmas that we last spoke, dear internet, and the months between have had their share of ups and downs. The winter was dark and cold, and so perhaps was I. It was the best and worst of times.

I've been doing a lot of reading and a lot of thinking. Don't you wish you could sometimes just get a transcript of what's going on in your brain, the opposing voices with their commentary and song? It's possible that this is madness, but I believe it equally possible that this is simply the postmodern human condition: this obsession with place, placelessness and rejection of place as a reality at all. Because I'm living this life, right?, and I feel like there is somewhere a moment for me to arrive where I say, "Ah, here I am, isn't it beautiful." We think in context of this moment which may or may not exist (in the trajectory of time or whatever) but consider its subjectivity and instability of location. I mean, what kind of reference point is the present? Show me a guy who can say, "I just have to hold out 'til this moment and everything will make all kinds of sense." Seriously, show me. Maybe aging is just figuring out, "shit, I guess I'm where I'm gonna be. Might as well take a look around."

But I don't know about this postmodern brain'a mine. Of ours. We've got the immediate thoughts. The it is a beautiful day today thoughts. On top of that we have the internal monologue, the my it's a beautiful day today, just like on my seventh birthday when we had a dinosaur theme and a scavenger hunt that everyone won thoughts. This is all well and good. We should be able to think in different time streams, travel momentarily to other points in our chronology and return having retrieved information without being loosed from the concept of present.

Then there's this other track playing, and I don't know if generations before ours really had it. We've got this metanarrative thing that pans in and out sometimes. I don't really know how to write about it, but it's that chime that reminds you that you're leaving earth for a second, whether zoning out or remembering something or whatever, an acknowledgement of disconnect and a question of what it means that you're where you are mentally at this particular moment. Right NOW. It's a small feeling, this.

Society exists for very specific reasons I think. It gives us something to cling to, compare ourselves with. Normality is a relative point of reference that provides context to our selves, allowing an easy construction of self. It keeps us self-satisfied and, perhaps more importantly, busy considering the aethetics of everything. Qualifying in terms of amount or duration or size or achievement or title. This isn't bitterness, I think the purpose is of quite some substance.

But, really, fuck all that.

Maybe we're all particles bouncing off each other and very subtley altering by scientific variable the course of whatever, the universe or something, I don't know. Maybe we live and die and nobody gives a fuck. Maybe our collective mind is driving the species and there's something very terrible about what that says of us, and something amazing about what we can do. Maybe it's all bullshit. Maybe life renews or maybe it doesn't and it's all meaningless. Regardless, I think we're missing the damn point.

What I'm talking about is that when I touch you, and you're beautiful, and in that moment we're something, I feel this incredible electric calm.

And maybe that's the fucking point.

Perhaps heavy on the psuedo-philosophy, this feels good. This moment we're having now. Start a blog. I want to read it. This is an exciting time and somebody has to write it. Might as well be us, yes?

All my love,
Mike

Strange overtones

2008-12-22T02:37:00.002-05:00

For a while, I seemed to have rid myself of this. Late night meandering, a product of an inability to sleep. Its return, though, is at once peculiar and familiar-- like a loved one returning not quite changed but not quite as remembered. Such is the nature of my muse it seems, rising from the day's brainclutter and making just enough racket to make clearing my mind, and so sleeping, impossible. What changed? The college life maybe takes emphasis from introspection. So that when I could be thinking I'm instead too exhausted. Or else the internet provides too many distractions, piling page after page requiring inspection on top of one another-- the maintenance of that "second" life more pressing than writing about the primary one. But that doesn't make any sense. There are plenty of people with internet lives more extensive than mine that blog daily. This is a caper.

I now am forced to accept that I'm more than halfway done with my undergraduate education. Another semester is behind me and I'm that many months closer to being an adult and stuff. Am I better prepared? Is education actually happening? Are the decisions I'm making more mature and well-informed? [How] Am I different now. Let's talk about these things.

This was a strong semester for me academically. My basis for this statement is my belief that I hung more A's on the refrigerator than I have ever earned the right to previously. Also, I find myself remembering when my tests and quizzes are and even occasionally doing homework. I did not do these things in high school and even in the past two years do I remember sitting down to "clear your desks for the test" and thinking "fuck." So there's that. Because of the aforementioned's relationship to memory I will talk about that. I noticed this semester that I have a fairly poor one, save for regarding certain things (typically, that in which I have any interest). This means one of two things. One: my memory is going away. If this is true, bad looks. I should figure out what's making that happen and cut it out (aging included). Two: my memory was always terrible and I am only now self-aware enough to realize it. This would be good because only upon awareness of a problem can one remedy it, I feel. Exactly how I'd go about this remains a mystery.

I had a number of notable accomplishments this semester. Most memorable, perhaps, was learning to solve the Rubik's Cube. This probably seems silly and unimpressive to most, and it's hard to explain precisely why it is neither of those things. The thing about Rubik's Cube is that for the couple minutes or so you're solving it, you're transported to this deep and relaxing concentration-- meditation, I think, on a totally 70's feel-good level because "fuck yeah I can solve this thing! Just gimme a few... done!" And poof. Instant accomplishment. Ramen for your ego.

Music: David Byrne and Brian Eno
Mood: Giggly
Likeliness of Corrolation: High

I wrote a short story for Creative Writing about two guys getting lost in the desert. It's pretty alright and I hope to carry it over into next semester's Creative Writing Capstone as part of a series of short stories that compile a novel's story. Meaning, the stories will be largely independent in tone, voice, and point of view-- but will revolve around the development and maturation of a single group of people. This could come out really good or really bad. There's promise though, and that's enough for me. These are things that keep me from sleep. I'm struck by ideas for characters or ways to intertwine their stories, but in no shape to sit down and write the damn thing. So I think about it for an hour or two while simultaneously trying to find sleep and probably end up forgetting most of it. OR! Or I file it all somewhere deep in my brain to pull up the next time I'm tossing and turning-- forming a sort of unconscious revisionary system. Is it possible that my mind is that wild? It would be damn sweet.

[Too] Similar to this is my approach to music. This past semester also brough with it the composition and early stages of recording my first solo EP. Yeah yeah, everybody makes an EP-- shut up. I am, regardless, really [immaturely] excited about it. I have these songs and ideas for how to make them logical and substantial in the arc of a release. My biggest fear is that the entire endevour is a masturbatory attempt to prove to myself [everyone] that I have musical ability. If this is the case I'll end up with 30 minutes of dribble to put away in a drawer and avoid discussing with everyone I will have overeagerly given a copy. So your guess is as good as mine I suppose.

Writing this, realize I actually did some legitimate stuff with my time the past couple of months. This is a good feeling and I should try to make it habit.

So what of the future, friends? I think I should set some goals for next semester so that I can again experience reflection and wondering if they constitute accomplishment. Let's do this. In no particular order:

1. Finish EP. Like it. Hold listening/dance party. Play gigs. Conquer world.
2. Turn short story into novel thing. Be proud of it. Send it to places. Be the envy of all the children on the playground too unathletic to perform default recess activities.
3. Learn to skateboard.
4. Read mad books. (Tolstoy, London, Joyce[?])
5. Accidently find a new and unexpected hobby. (Devil sticks?)

That is a good list. Oh, shit.

6. Blog more.

Okay.

Man, I can't believe it's almost Christmas. When my parents used to say the season 'snuck up on them' I always thought "what the hell is wrong with you? It's CHRISTMAS. I've been counting down the days since motherfucking July." But now I guess I get it. I love the season though. Synthetic cheer and irritable consumerism. That isn't sarcasm. I am legitimately attracted, like so many people, to the Christmas aethetic. I love the lights and displays. The ridiculous theatre of it all. Call me crazy.

The other thing I love is that it's just about Oscar season, which means it's time for me to drag anyone willing to Red Bank and Manhattan to see artsy indie movies. Last night Eric and I went to see "Milk" and it was magnificent. I've had a man crush on Sean Penn ever since "Into the Wild" and his performance as Harvey Milk only confirmed my belief that he is top-tier. Before break is over I hope to have seen "Slumdog Millionaire," "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "Frost/Nixon," and "The Wrestler" so that when nominations come around I can arrogantly consider myself a faultless authority. Oh and I'll probably watch "The Dark Knight" a dozen or so times. I am not exaggerating.

As I feel this blog now qualifies as "long" I will stop writing. This felt good to do, and hopefully getting my thoughts down here will make sleep come easier. So good night, all.

Bomb the blogosphere,
Mike

For the enemy

2008-12-11T01:26:00.002-05:00

In absence of recent blogs, here is a paper I just wrote on King Lear. Lol.

For The Enemy

Edmund’s tragedy lies not within his decent to villainy. An Elizabethan audience would take no issue with a bastard opportunist as an antagonist, plagued by self-interest and a desire to be recognized similarly to his “legitimate” brother, acquiring land and power in an effort to bring upheaval to the social dictates that denied him Edgar’s life. However, sympathy awarded Edmund for his impossible situation, supposed desire for familial affection or last-minute stab at redemption in repenting his having doomed Cordelia is in my opinion misguided. My voice, however, is that of a 21st century “Post-Holden Caufield” reader. No longer does theatre, film, and literature revolve around the victory of social sustainability in which, though everyone is dead, Edgar is there to take up the crown and restore order to Britain. We are instead raised on Rocky, Rudy, and Eric Liddell of Chariots of Fire— men who acted against expectations to overcome various physical, social and moral tribulations, emerging victorious, and if not, all the better for having tried. For this reason, I find Edmund’s tragedy to be in his vehement dedication to his expected nature: the slighted bastard jealously seeking to get “one up” on his father and brother.

It is true that Edmund’s obsession can be attributed to Gloucester’s constant reference to his son’s illegitimacy, and that Edmund’s choice to act against his family is largely due to the expectation that, being a bastard, it is inherently engrained in his character. However, Edmund is at his weakest when he cries, “Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law/ My services are bound” (1.2.1-2) at the beginning of the play because he is destroying any possibility of independence or uncharacteristic achievement.

Edmund makes repeated reference to his nativity and nature— basing many of his calculated plays on what he perceives others to expect of him. “My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon’s Tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so it follows that I am rough and lecherous… My cue is villainous melancholy,” (1.2.139-148) he says, succumbing to a predetermined course instead of choosing a path. When composing the forged letter from Edgar Edmund concludes with the line, “If our father would sleep till I waked him, you should enjoy half his revenue for ever, and live the beloved of your brother, EDGAR” (1.2.55-57). The gesture of closing the false note as such suggests not only Edmund’s subscription to his predetermined nature, but his belief that Gloucester expects it of him. The letter is believable because it appeals to Gloucester’s perception of Edmund, but presents a shocking Edgar. Gloucester is fully prepared to believe in an Edmund greedy enough to be tempted by the revenue in question and jealous enough to desire the affections of his brother— even if it means betraying his father. That Edgar proposes this rebellion is shocking, but his appeal to Edmund for help is not. Edmund is perceptive enough to know this, and his choice to embrace it and use it as a vehicle is disappointing.

This practice of Edmund’s repeats itself at the beginning of the play’s second act in report of an invented dialogue with his brother. “’Thou unpossessing bastard,’” quotes Edmund of Edgar, “’dost thou think,/ If I would stand against thee, would the reposal/ Of any trust, virtue, or worth in thee/ Make thy words faithed? No.’” Again, Edmund is taking his “cue of villainous melancholy” and applying it to Gloucester’s expectation of his behavior. The phony dialogue is effectively phrased, as Gloucester knows it to be true— except, ironically, that in reality it isn’t. Typically he wouldn’t dream of believing his bastard son over his legitimate one, and it is Edmund’s knowledge of and play on this that allows Edmund to manipulate his father into doing so.

Throughout the play Edmund is motivated only to be a villainous bastard, to act as an illegitimate son would and become what he believes he is destined to become. He pursues Edgar’s land and power not because they motivate him, but because the desire to commit and be evil does. Likewise, he pursues the affections of Regan and Goneril, not because he is motivated by desire for their love but because they are instrumental in his self-inflicted purpose of being a monstrosity. Finally, when Edgar strikes him down and accuses him of costing Gloucester his eyes, Edmund cries, “Th’ hast spoken right, ‘tis true;/ The wheel is come full circle; I am here” (5.3.175-176). Fortune’s wheel, which has deposited Edmund back at the bottom he was born into, doubles as a representation of his journey— he hasn’t actually gone anywhere, but rather chased his tail instead of choosing to find any legitimate goal.

Even in death, Edmund returns to this theme: “I pant for life: some good I mean to do,/ despite of mine own nature” (5.3.264). Closing the first sentence during which he considers rebelling against his nature with the word itself suggests Edmund’s dishonesty, confirmed by his delay in saving Cordelia. And so he dies, having never desired anything deviating from that which he was born into and raised believing. To me, this is the greatest tragedy of Edmund— not his supposed loneliness or relentlessly criminal actions. Edmund, necessarily for the play, chooses to accept himself as a villain with no purpose but to advance himself as such and therefore denies himself a world of possibility.

Hard sun

2008-10-28T19:45:00.008-04:00

I realize, with terrible guilt, that I've only written 8 blog entries in all of 2008. This is irresponsible of me but I will make it up to you, dear readers.

I was just listening to my headphones, typing that intro when I noticed that I had a missed call from "Home." Wondering what was up (because my family will be seeing me on Monday as I'm going home to vote) I made my way downstairs and called back. So... my dad is flying south tomorrow morning to Florida to be with my grandfather. My grandma died today-- no sickness, no suffering, no hospital. Just reclined in a chair, maybe resting her eyes after finishing a book. And that's the way to go, I think.

It's weird to think of my dad flying down and not going with him. I feel called, or obligated-- like this is reunion of the Frederick Michael Stringers and I'm staying up north. I worry about the last impression I made. I hope my grandpa gets to see me at least another time. There isn't much family left.

And what do I do now? I guess I just keep on as usual. Write what I was going to write before the phone call.

Rest peacefully, Grandma Stringer.

I love you,
Mike

So I shaved my head yesterday. Please enjoy these pictures of the process:

Before (while dressed in 'guido' party swagger and clearly stolen from facebook):

The Process (thanks Mark, for shaving the back of my head and Sean for lending me your beard trimmer for use on my dome):

After!

A lot of people ask me why I decided to buzz all of my hair off. The reason is this. I wanted to do something different. Something wild, unexplained and unpredictable. I wanted to be in the moment, foolish and brave. Its the 'now' we forget too often, I forget too often. And all this 'now time' spent worrying about past and future is wasted. I don't want to do that anymore. I want to dive into projects and be excited about things. Do things that make people think I'm crazy-- just to fucking do them. To be there. Then. Now. So that's what I'm going to do.

My List:
~~Shave head~~
Spend weekend in woods, writing
Record EP
Finish "Caribou"
Write novel
Drive to California
See the American west

I'm sure I'll be adding to this list, but this is a nice foundation. It'll happen. It's got to.

Bomb the blogosphere,
Mike

Hello

2008-10-13T17:57:00.005-04:00

There are things, I think, that I'm ready to say.

On November 4th we are all going to take some small, or even large, slice of our time to cast a determination of which trajectory to set the world upon. I say "we all" out of the "how could we not" sentiment. How could we not take up whatever arms have been left to us and assume the responsibility of a people to participate? This is not a plea to fence sitters. This is not out of hope to nudge you, reader, blueside. I'm not, I pray, so disappointing.

Rather, this is out of resignation. Ours are shitty times. With so little advancement as a society in areas other than science and technology, we've come to that point where church and state are no longer enough to sustain us. We thirst. Even the internet, which gave voice to the consumer without corporate filter, is at risk of becoming yet another medium to be read and watched through a lens.

Cash rules everything around us.

We are renaissance men. Even with our computers and ipods and match.coms and airplanes. We are family men and, maybe the greatest tragedy, we are born outlined. We graduate high school, we graduate college, we get jobs or go to graduate school so as to deserve better jobs, we invest, we marry, we have children, we watch our children leave us, we retire, we move, we read and look out windows, we die. Where commas divide we laugh and cry and make terrible mistakes. We feel at once completed and absent. And we fall in love a hundred thousand times in hope of finding something that lasts. And we do.

But ours, I think, aren't times for renaissance men. We are so spoonfed instant happiness that we forget the majesty of joy. Or the adventure of its discovery. The people of the 21st century are a people who would crucify a Christ who could turn water into oil-- out of fear, perhaps, of what it could possibly mean. We put bullets in our heads because we don't have the dollar bills it costs to continue living.

Are we, then, a people of value?

I think there are only a handful-- maybe fifty, maybe 100-- years of thought and art left. Fewer of oil and government, at least as we know it now. Only a generation of years until our children take Amtrak cable cars to Wal-Mart University, learning NBC or CNN's brand of business or economics or mathematics or literature to become-- whatever.

But maybe not. Because we ARE renaissance men. And if I am to believe anything, I believe that as the wood yellows its roads diverge.

On November 4th we will go out and play our part. We will pass go. We will lose two hundred dollars to taxes or layoffs or natural disaster, but we will beat irregularly onward. Barack Obama promises change-- and my optomistic side hopes that it isn't just to stir whatever swims within us that appeals to the word-- but rather in recognition of the cusp on which we teeter. The end is not nigh. But something is.

The economy is temporary, administration is temporary, culture is temporary. Because humans, as adaptable as we are, lack the constitution for permanence. I believe, though, that in brevity is greatness made. In these snapshot lifespans we live is still there beauty. Even should it all collapse is there the company of brothers and the rapture of companionship.

So I go, and likely too shall you, to graduate college. To work and find passion in work, to mate and marry and know the ancient joy of raising children. To read while books still circulate and enjoy, maybe, the freedom to see the fringes of the country and love the fellows I meet. To write and teach the possibility of grace within the self. I am not victim but rather citizen. And it will be good. As it is.

I don't know how, and neither am I ready, to say goodbye.

So hello. Welcome.

Love always,
Mike

You enjoy myself

2008-08-25T00:02:00.004-04:00

So I bought the PS3.

There were a couple of factors that helped me arrive at this decision. They are as follows:
1. Price. A "decent" Playstation 3 is significantly less expensive than a "decent" Les Paul. This may be because I don't really know anything about what makes a game system a good one, and way too much about guitars.
2. I needed a DVD player anyway. Now, spending $500+ on a DVD player that also "plays some games or something" is very poor rationalization. But it also plays Blu-Ray! And be able to play Blu-Ray it shall-- even though I don't have a 1080p HDTV.
3. "Hey, wanna come to my room and play Madden/Call of Duty/Soul Calibur/Guitar Hero?" is definitely the new "Hey, wanna come over and watch a movie while I sit awkwardly close and try to unhook your bra without arousing suspicion?"
4. Metal Gear Solid 4. I hear it's pretty alight.
5. I'm a Fender guy at heart. Betraying Leo (Fender) by giving Les (Paul [Gibson]) some of my hard earned monies instead would eat me up inside. Though I suppose giving it instead of Sony isn't doing anything for anybody. Especially America.
6. Chris Scaffa. He isn't allowed to bring his PS3 up to school and I worry that separation from one for a prolonged period will emotionally and psychologically damage him. Aw, who am I kidding? This isn't a reason at all. Just a completely legitimate concern.
And there you have it. A collection of lazy, terrible excuses for buying the most expensive game system with the smallest library on the market. But I mean, Hey. Seriously. Metal Gear Solid 4. It's pretty alright, man.

So summer is coming to an end. I feel an obligation to sit back and reflect on everything that's happened in the past four months and present something universally identifying and insightful about it-- but I gotta be honest here, I'm coming up empty. What did I do this summer... I left for work every weekday morning at like 8:45 and got home too late to do anything other than establish some stage of undress before collapsing into bed. There I did my best to ninja around the Six Flags Great Adventure, avoiding the ever-watchful eye of higher-ups and create the illusion of working diligently. In reality I played a lot of Tekken and took a lot of naps.

No, that isn't completely fair. The aforementioned pretty accurately sums up my last week of work, but the time that proceeded my trip to Puerto Rico I actually wracked my brain pretty hard to come up with ways to motivate and inspire the employees under my leadership. Whether or not I was successful, the red-nametag life at Six Flags isn't one a person can sustain for too long, I think. Eventually the hopelessness of generating happiness and efficiency gets to everybody and they end up playing Tekken and avoiding the responsibility they so eagerly embraced only a few weeks previously. Now, don't get me wrong. I made more friends this summer than I have in any other I can remember-- my co-leads and supervisors made the job tolerable and time spent together outside work amazingly enjoyable. With the Regent Diner and various houses as stomping grounds, I've got some seriously bitchin' memories to look back on when I become miserly about potentially returning next summer.

...blah blah Six Flags blah blah...

Let's pause for a moment and talk about McCain and Obama's respective Vice Presidential candidate selections.

No, you're right. Let's not.

So what else did I do this summer? I dieted and worked out a lot. Now I could easily write an entry (or perhaps even two) detailing the specifics of my journey discovering the nuances of diets and dumbells and crunches and yogurt and supplements and motivation and lack of motivation and discouragement and body image and confidence and mistake and eventual results-- but I feel kind of awkward doing that. I realize this blog is about me and my life, but the subject just seems too narcissistic. Even for me. There is a story to tell though, so if you're legitimately interested drop me a line. We'll chat over an assortment of skinless grilled chicken, whey powder, fish oil, leafy greens and whole wheat whatever. And yogurt.

Speaking of yogurt, I got my wisdom teeth out. The procedure was just fine thanks to my new buddy Nitrous Oxide, but recovery was a bitch-- sure Vicodin calmed the pain, but it also made me want to just sit around and mope. So that wasn't cool. I'm still not allowed to eat certain things and I need to make sure I clean my gums thoroughly, lest food get trapped in there and grow alien-spider legs-- effectively "body snatching" me.

But anyway, more recently I started writing a new short story. This one's going to be longer than mine tend to be. I typically would now say "maybe I'll post some of it sometime" but never do, so I'll abstain and keep your expectations low. If you're itching for some spoilers, I've got these to offer you: Unlike most of my stories, which feature urban settings-- this one takes place in Wyoming. It's in first person. Like I tend to do, it abuses the present tense. It has a staggered timeline and doesn't necessarily move chronologically. There isn't any drug use and uhhh... only slight pervasive language.

Writing it is a trip, but one I'm enjoying.

Well, I'm beginning to lose focus so I guess I'll start wrapping this up. I'm excited to go back to school and see everybody-- hell, I'm even a little bit excited about my classes. I want the acoustic shows and special events and parties and creative opportunities that come along with a semester at Ramapo. So I guess I never did come up with anything insightful to say. It's all good, we got time for that.

I guess that about says it.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

Outta town, blowin' up

2008-08-03T23:11:00.003-04:00

Yeah, things done changed.

August, with a bullet. It's been a long time since I've written anything on the internet or elsewhere-- I guess because I've been working so much and pausing so little, a gesture saved for hesitance, because it isn't even that I haven't anything to say. So without further ado, let's recap my summer and cast a wary eye forward, remembering always the peripheral.

August, like the stick on the pink of my neck, I find myself a little rearranged. For better or for worse-- pragmatism alludes me sometimes. I am on the closing action of a crush, one that I let fold and dissipate into the past tense like too many others, inaction again my worst enemy. Meanwhile, I dawdle unnecessarily between the introduction and rising action of my newfound interest in fitness. And now I digress...

I find it interesting and strange and sometimes frightening how people grow and change at different speeds, bloom at different times and such. I'm gradually coming to the conclusion that I bloom late-- I tend to get into things, experience things, long after others have. Like my phases were put on standby by my youth and are only now rushing to catch up and prepare me for adulthood. If that's true, and I'll be damed if I know whether it is or not, maybe it's because we were always moving every 18 months or so between my second and seventh birthday. Maybe some reset button was hit every time I had to pack up and make new friends, get used to a new school, and shit like that. I'm young for my grade to begin with-- I think it's possible that my fast cars, fast women and fitness phase(s?) was(were?) put on hold, so I was still chillin' in a bean bag chair while everybody else was buying tubs of powdered whey and busting their asses for varsity letters. Of course, this could just be nonsense.

...but I digress. My listening habits of the summer have deviated strongly from the moody indie rock staples I've come to love lately, but I'm enjoying the more panoptic view of music. If I had a last.fm it would reveal that I've been listening to more 90's hip hop than anything else-- Wu-Tang Clan and all their solo efforts, Biggie, A Tribe Called Quest, Dre, and Outkast's criminally under appreciated Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik. Mix that in with The Raconteurs, Mother Hips, Gorillaz and Protest the Hero (a sick Canadian metal band) and you've got my summer soundtrack. As I type I'm listening to Tool-- happy to try to shed the pretense I've carried the past few years and enjoy music for what it is.

I leave for Puerto Rico Wednesday at like 3am to teach leadership and ceremonial performance. Hooray?

August, with the cinnamon tingle of September between ghost jacaranda breezes. I'm ready to go back to school. That is, I'm ready to live with three other guys and get into trouble and not have to worry about sneaking up the stairs so as not to arouse suspicion. That is, I'm ready to have some relatively carefree fun again. Finally. Some fresh air. I don't know what's to come this semester but I know I'm gonna hit it hard-- put as much of myself as I can into whatever it is I do and live it up. Live and breathe the dream. Rock me baby.

And now a question for the masses. At the end of this summer do I buy a Gibson Les Paul or a Playstation 3? Comment your vote.

Bomb the Blogosphere
and Happy August,
Mike

Bare your summer teeth

2008-05-28T21:40:00.002-04:00

If we're being honest here, and I like to think we are, there should be no reservation in keystroke. And so and so and so too much like I speak I lose it and begin again so if we're being honest here, and I hope to God we can be, there is always enough to say-- there is no reservation in fingerprick beyond the first so calculated-- and so beautifully like spring I haven't let my car windows up in days, even when it's raining, and I hope to God we can hold on because honestly, honestly, I think I believe it's okay to lose it and let it find itself because there is always, always, something to say. And that is enough for me.

If I could make a midyear resolution considering everything around and inside me thats shifted, it would be to trust more. As much in myself as anything. I found myself trying to explain to someone today how I feel uncomfortable in groups I'm unacquainted with and it occurred to me that I wasn't exactly telling the truth. I'm uncomfortable in groups I'm un-perfectly-acquainted with. What is it that makes me still shaky about people the umpteenth time I'm hanging out with them? That isn't natural. I think I have this fear of being unwelcome and unaware of it, a social burden or someone [I begrudgingly allude] Dane Cook would title "Brian." Ridiculous, yes. If only because a definitive characteristic of "Brian" is his unwelcome feeling of belonging and therefore inability to have written this paragraph. Oddly, reading this over and realizing the impossibility, by definition, of my being "that guy" is comforting. To a point. There is, as with all things, some comfortable medium alluding me here. So I make it my midyear resolution to accident upon it. Wish me luck there.

I started work a little over two weeks ago which, for those of you keeping score at home, comes to pretty much right after Spring semester ended. The absence of any breather between finals and 50+ hour work weeks is proving a little rough not so much on me physically or even mentally, but on my concept of summer and it's chronology. Like, I'm working 5 to 6 days a week and trying to grasp when my friends are around and when they're working or going on vacation or away to study abroad. And juggling work with all the stress and drama therein has been no cakewalk.

Speaking of work, to better myself as a Lead of Looney Tunes and the Justice League, I just attempted to get myself up to date on 70 years of the DC comics universe. It's impossible. I understand it no better than if I had just tried to put Calculus together via internet math team forums. Apparently there are multiple universes, but when DC gets confused they publish a series where some villain destroys these universes and everything is reverted to zero-- allowing DC to rewrite its own universe's history and fix all the paradoxes that dozens of publications per month creates. It's like a cold reboot when your computer hangs up. Kind of a cop-out, and very difficult to understand. Especially because apparently the superheroes are currently (yeah, May 08) going through another "crisis." So why am I bothering to read up on this when its all going to be rewritten again soon? I'm at a loss here.

Ignore all of the previous paragraph.

Well, its good to be writing again. I'm still working on that screenplay, maybe I'll post a page or two of it in here when I'm happy with it. We will have to see.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

Double dutching ropes

2008-05-11T01:15:00.002-04:00

in burning city summers.

I do wonder if anyone else is going through the same "halfway-through-college" crisis I am. I won't waste words with the "it was barely" and "seems like only" yesterdays but correlation between age and the speed of the passage of time is just... stupid. Stupid like the crushes I get at the ends of semesters that are nothing more than bad ideas and dramas waiting to happen. But I digress.

For you, I present this. A mixlist that sums my sophomore year up better than I ever could. Each of these songs has some connection to a day or an event or an emotional stroke, a firing of synapses and a majesty in relation.

I thought about providing explanation, but it occurs to me that trying to explain this would be impossible-- I can think of what makes these songs special, what people, and I think that's enough. There are inside selections here and if you wanted to ask, I'd answer.

1. "Stars" Hum
"She thinks she missed the train to mars, she's out back counting stars."

2. "Album of the Year" The Good Life
"She took me to her mother’s house outside of town where the stars hang down.
She said she’d never seen someone so lost, I said I’d never felt so found."

3. "Digital Love" Daft Punk
"Why don't you play the game?"

4. "The Ocean Breathes Salty" Modest Mouse
"And maybe we'll get lucky and we'll both grow old. Well I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I hope so. "

5. "15 Step" Radiohead
"Et cetera, et cetera."

6. "Can You Please Climb Out Your Window?" The Hold Steady, Bob Dylan cover for I'm Not There
"Why does he look so righteous while your face is so changed?"

7. "I Can Barely Breathe" Manchester Orchestra
"I watched the beauties, watched the fires and the fire burning beauty in their eyes."

8. "Westfall" Okkervil River
"When I was younger, handsomer and stronger, I felt like I could do anything."

9. C.R.E.A.M." Wu-Tang Clan
"I grew up in the crime side, New York Times side. Staying alive was no jive."

10. "Can't Stand It" Wilco
"Speakers speaking, speakers speaking, speaking in code."

11. "Nothing to You" Two Gallants
"But the lost cause of words walks away with my nerves 'cause I'm gay as a choir boy for you."

12. "Sweetest Girl" Wyclef Jean ft. Akon and Lil Wayne
"You don't know not to lay low 'cause 25 to life is no joke."

13. "You Get What You Give" The New Radicals"
"Wake up kids, we've got the dreamer's disease."

14. "Gimme The Loot" Notorious B.I.G.
"I'm all that and a dime sack, where the paper at?"

15. "Lovely NYC" dj BC and The Beastles
"Brownstones, water towers, trees, skyscrapers
Writers, prize fighters and Wall Street traders
We come together on the subway cars."

16. "Watermelon Man" Herbie Hancock
"woo WOO woo WOO! woo WOO! woo WOO!"

17. "Roses" Outkast
"I know you like to thank your shit don't stank but lean a little bit closer, see. Roses really smell like--"

18. "Are You In?" Incubus
"It's so much better when everyone is in, are you in?"

19. "1,000 Deaths" Aesop Rock
"You ever died a thousand deaths? I have.
And in the morrow stood a thousand steps from where my nourish laughed
And made a boat at, nomad, I roam in a social coma
Jones and be home alone days sink how my poems I
Dig in the dirt I bring up the earth like pulley systems
Thereby painting the perfect metaphor for hung juries
Strung along a song of spawning thorns of fury."

20. "Hallelujah" Jeff Buckley
"Well I heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do ya?
Well it goes like this the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah"

That this year is over hasn't sunk it, and probably won't for a couple of days. Maybe then I'll be ready to reflect on how much this year has changed me and the people I've met and stayed close with. The things I've done and the jokes I've heard and the people I've hurt. Soon.

'til then.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

Antarctica starts here

2008-04-14T01:23:00.003-04:00

This one-post-a-month trend isn't permanent. I do promise.

The past few weeks have been more quintessentially college than any before, for better or for worse. One wouldn't be unfair to say I've been putting schoolwork and the like on something of a back burner for the sake of that good time. Sure, I've have my days writing eight page papers and cram sessions same as anybody else, but I'm doing my best to chill a little bit-- just float on like people do.

"You'd better take your face from every cloud I see,
how could I have known you'd be so deep inside of me?"

But it's nice. There's something to be said about somewhere new to be on Tuesday and Thursday nights, new faces, et cetera. And as long as it takes for me to settle in or open up to a new crowd-- I'm getting there, I'm getting better.

I find myself unable to put words to sentiment lately. Like I've got something on the end of my tongue or the tips of my fingers that just needs some ethereal push to resolution, but things can't tie up so nicely.

-

Bridge
After asking why the last four pages are blank

A beat, then, for you to write
the ending, Mike. Behind cracked

hands— my father not knowing
the answer. His tired

slipper steps down-
stairs and erasable pen,

life ring for Leslie, smudged
where formatting had left

me unfinished. Like trying to untangle
an orbit with fingers and

teeth— there are things without
loose ends. A shiver,

like a line that is not a line

We’ve killed her.
We’ve killed her.

-

"You shouldn't tell them that you've seen my face somewhere,
when I leaned in your direction I leaned much too far."

And too much unlike Oscar it's like I've convinced myself not to allow any feelings for anyone to bud, for fear perhaps of rejection-- I don't know. But I get twinges every now and then. I have conversations that leave me wondering how things intersect and thinking I've still got some capacity to feel "that way" in me. There are people too much like poems not to cradle up and believe in with every fiber of being that can still hope. And there are people like me who need them so badly, if only to still believe in poetry.

Speaking of poetry, there has to be some line I can walk through confessionalism unintruded upon by the sentimental. Some line.

"Please will the highway never end?
Some things get broken and they never fix again."

Rick and I played another show last week and I think its safe to say it went significantly better than the first time around. There are naturally frustrations but the songwriting has been coming along alright. It helps to have people to bounce things off of. People who I can trust to give me an honest enough opinion. And it feels good to play the songs I wrote for friends and strangers who, I can hope, are around because they want to hear them. As good as feels to put sentiment to music and say it all like it all seems to me.

"All crooked, all bloody, I'll take my leave.
All the leaves fall and the turnpike lies in front of me.

And this whole wide world isn't wide enough."

Yet sometimes everything is just so big.

Yeah I've got reason to believe
that we're all capable of terrible things
but if we make it through the badlands
we'll find Eden on the other side

Maybe.

Bomb the blogosphere,
Mike

PS. All line in quotations are from "Whole Wide World" by Okkervil River.

PPS. Joe, I remembered to tag you as you requested haha.

Watch the north end die

2008-03-15T06:29:00.003-04:00

and sing "I love this town."

6:29 am.

I will be expected to wake up in four hours and one minute. I've been some kind of awake for the last sixteen hours but my body doesn't seem to notice the time. I think I understand addictions to sleeping pills. I've been waiting for my Benadryl to kick for the last hour but it seems to be taking its time. That's alright. I've got all of that in the world.

I was in Canada for the (significantly) better part of the last week. Two nights in Montreal and two in Toronto, an hour and change at Niagra Falls and already the memory is blurring. Nothing to do with any activities participated in over the border, but just the same fade the best times tend to suffer. The morning after your seventh birthday party-- nothing to do but scrub cheeto out of the carpet and remember how thrilled you were twenty-four hours ago. I won't bore anyone with the rundown of exactly what we did during our visit to our neighbors up north. With any luck I'll have a video chronicling the whole thing put together before too long. And besides that it's probably exactly what you'd expect.

Things I learned in Canada:
-Canadian girls are stunningly beautiful. However, Montreal girl edge Toronto girls out by a considerable margin.
-ERGO, Montreal > Toronto
-Zombies are bad, but Hurricanes and Screaming Orgasms are quite good.
-Late night television consists of awesome shows that were cancelled after one American season.
-It is not at all difficult to find a Wii in Canada.
-Most of the news is about America. I probably heard about Spitzer before you did.
-Sidewalk plows exist.
-Tim Horton has Ronald McDonald running for his loonies.
-Pints of Guiness make you strong. Eventually.
-New York isn't that expensive.
-Coins can have significant value.
-Motherfucking poutine is a world-rocker.
-I will probably drink anything with Amaretto and/or Bailey's in it.
-Most of the time, perhaps in defiance of probability, they'll pick "no deal."
and probably some other shit.

I had a great time, but being away even for just 5 days reminded me how reliant I am on communication. 5 days without AIM or cell usage beyond a few idle messages (25 cents to send, 20 to recieve) is beautiful the way camping is beautiful. You can focus on something, a task or a view or whatever, without interference. But at the same time, too much isolation leads easily to lonliness (even in excellent company) for me. It's not really a good thing and I think it's safe to say a lot of people, myself of course included, could benefit from stints away from home with the cell phone packed away.

Pretty much every paragraph in this post thus far has begun with "I." I am the quintessential narcissist-- without being so at all.

So, excited for spring break to be over? Yes and no. Sure, I miss my Ramapo guys and girls but there are too many people back home I love that I haven't gotten to see yet. Or that I've gotten to see so briefly its like a tease. I went to see my high school's theatical production of Peter Pan tonight (last night?). It was fantastic and it's bizarre how proud I am of underclassmen I've never met. And how much I miss the stage sometimes. Not just the shows themselves, but "circling up" before each performance or fooling around between shows on Saturday. Antics with cameras and impromptu trips to Burger King. 13-year-olds and 18-year-olds talking shit or pissing themselves laughing or crying or comforting or whatever.

I remember Saturday night Pirates of Penzance with Eric and Dustin, getting snot all over each other and promising we'd never lose it. That thing we had that made us. Impossible-- together--

We were titans, man. We were giants that night.

And I believe in a world that can cry when something sails. That can sing when something sinks and drifts apart like sailors on scattered floorboards. Squeezing eyes tight so as not to forget the ship as it divides ourward into a million little trajectories, as things do.

7:19 am. And the world spins madly on.

Bomb the blogosphere,
Mike

Oh, poor sky

2008-02-24T01:35:00.003-05:00

The past month and a half of my days have largely gone as follows: wake up way to early itching like a motherfucker, pop a prednisone and maybe a few tylenol, shower, overapply various creams, go to class, eat, go to class, return, go on the computer/play counterstrike/take a nap, eat, and wait for something to happen. Now, if something happens, it happens and I stumble back pretty early and awkwardly crawl into bed, lather, rinse, repeat. If nothing happens, I go on the computer for a while before popping two benadryl and counting the 45 minutes down before it knocks me out. Lather, rinse, repeat.

One of the shittiest things about both medication and allergic dermatitis is that they suck the libido and (as if "therefore") creative energy straight out of you.

I'm out of prednisone.

So then what's there to write about? I guess the aforementioned is as much an apology for having nothing to say as not saying it. But maybe it's time to stop apologizing. Everyone says the only way to beat writer's block is to write through it, even if it means pages of dribble, just... words. So I'm here. With nothing of value to say.

I'm on edge lately. Easily frustrated, anxious, worried, paranoid, socially awkward. Only small deviations from the norm but enough to be noticeable. I don't want to do things I should want to do, or that I used to want to do. I worry a lot about friendships. Futures.

Mom doesn't want to let me see an allergist.

Oscar Predications: (aka Who I would give the awards to)
Actor in a leading role: Daniel Day Lewis "There Will Be Blood"
Actor in a supporting role: Javier Bardem "No Country for Old Men"
Actress in a leading role: Ellen Page "Juno" (realistically: Julie Christie "Away From Her")
Actress in a supporting role: Cate Blanchett "I'm Not There"
Animated Feature Film: "Ratatoille"
Directing: Joel and Ethan Coen "No Country for Old Men"
Music (Score): "Atonement"
Best Picture: "There Will Be Blood"
Writing (Adapted): "No Country for Old Men"
Writing (Original): "The Savages"

You know, Rick and I are playing Female Friendly Funk on Thursday. It would be rad if you came.

don't cry on me
Are you gonna fall apart again?

My head plays it over and over.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

The Indecisive, Conflicted Life of

2007-12-29T00:36:00.000-05:00

There is free wireless at this Holiday Inn. It's these little discoveries that keep me going, I'm sure of it.

Yesterday I read a book. Yeah, a whole book. It was nice-- I forgot how much I like doing that. Just sitting down with a book and reading it. Minimal interruption, taking it all in. "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz, before you ask (as I'm sure you were about to). Do I recommend it? Do you think you've ever been in love?

It brings up something interesting, though. The title character, a socially awkward and overweight Dominican sci-fi/fantasy enthusiast, has the bizarre but beautiful habit of falling in love with all of the many women who pass through his life. As endearing is this is, Mr. Diaz' theme works in near direct conflict with one of Mr. Sheff's (Yeah. Will Sheff. Okkervil River. My hero.)

Will writes, (as the album name of what is, in my opinion, the best OR record) "Don't Fall In Love With Everyone You See" But Oscar did just that, in the story of his brief, wondrous life. And it was magical. Beautiful and fucking-- innocent. The purity of man in possession of so much love despite the absence of its reciprocation.

So who's right?

I don't know. But while I think Will is right to warn us, but I get the feeling he believes as strongly as I am beginning to that we all fall in love a hundred times in our lives. Hell, I'm talking a dozen times a day. Maybe not Oscar's love, the awkward forwardness of the unkissed and looking to become lost, but the kind of love that comes from looking upward out the back windshield of your buddy's car from the backseat. Or from simultaneous laughter. I think I fall in love every time I buy a damn coffee.

It's like wanting something so bad you build it. It isn't the same but that's what I've got. Somewhere, there's a perfect balance between care and discretion-- and the capacity to have and share all that love.

Unconventional, yeah. But some nice thoughts, I think.

I'm in Florida. But not the Florida with beaches and bikinis and Disney characters. Nope. The other Florida. I haven't seen anyone older than 7 or younger than 45 sans my sister and random waitresses in 3 days. But I'm getting some reading done. And reminding myself why I'm no "family" man-- despite how badly I want to be one.

I wonder if I'll ever write that novel.

Bomb the blogosphere,
Mike

Jesus, etc.

2007-12-26T01:26:00.000-05:00

Christ is dry on my tongue and I am a puddle of digression.

I am, perhaps, the term personified. As if a single one of us isn't, now. Catholics
in his house, kneeling and thinking that in the morning we'll draw straws

to see who makes the omelets. We're a splatter of pea coats and sweaters
and hairloss. Too in-between the ages that remember Jesus. The Nicene

Creed is projected on the wall because we don't know it. It should
have been in Latin like I've heard it used to be for all the good we did it.

And I remember Jimmy, telling me with a mouth full of Dutchmaster
that you have to keep it wet so it won't rip. His thumbs working to crack the spine

and spill the dirt and the shit onto the floor. Like a surgeon. Or
maybe like something else, which escapes me. And I remember Junior

year, and how stupid I was. I wonder if I'm as stupid now. Now
that I've come full-circle on the subject of intimacy and landed

nowhere. Like it won't change tomorrow. Like it ever stops. Maybe
it's the way things move around me when the bathroom is dank that makes

people climb out of their people-costumes and stop reciting Shakespeare.
And when someone puts The New Radicals on I feel my own people-costume feather

like molted spiderwebs-- crumbling under the implications of the past
tense and exactly what it is to be too anything. Late, late, late--

like my grandmother who always asked how my girlfriend was. I would protest
at the embarrassment of being eleven and treated like I thought about girls like that

(which I did). Now I think I'd lie. "She's fine, Grandma. Beautiful." And maybe
she'd smile. As I write I realize grandma never met a girlfriend. As big an injustice

as any. Jimmy's name isn't Jimmy. But the idea is the same-- the tongue, like
it intended to send a letter. And I remember cracking the window and toweling

the door. And I remember Father's homily about being God's great masterpiece
and thinking it bullshit. And I remember the great sadness of regret

and the way it all rushed back like if Central America stopped and the East became
the West like it sometimes does in songs about believing. The sex

and how it wasn't important like the music was.

And I remember standing in the upstairs E wing
as I was recited lines I knew by heart.

Bring back album-based music!

2007-11-28T00:38:00.000-05:00

The following are the top ten most important albums to my life, thus far.

10. "Films About Ghosts" by Counting Crows
"Oh, well happy new year's baby
We could probably fix it if we clean it up all day
Or we could simply pack our bags
and catch a plane to Barcelona 'cause this city's a drag."
Counting Crows put on the best live show I've ever seen. The experience was moving in ways I couldn't have expected from a band I wasn't even there for. It became clear during a particularly riveting rendition on "Mrs. Potter's Lullaby" why Goo Goo Dolls open for them.

9. "Enema of the State" by Blink 182
"I haven't been this scared
In a long time
And I'm so unprepared
So here's your valentine."
I wouldn't play guitar if it wasn't for Tom Delonge. No two-ways about it. And while I can't remember if it was "Dammit" by this band or "Brown-Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison that was my first learned, I can accredit the effort to Blink. This album appealed in every way to the middle-school kid in me who didn't get girls and just wanted to be a middle-school kid making mistakes and being vulgar and being young.

8. "Greetings From Asbury Park" by Bruce Springsteen
"I stood stone-like at midnight,
suspended in my masquerade
I combed my hair till it was just right
and commanded the night brigade"
For years, this was the CD I played while in my Dad's truck. For entire trips to various campgrounds and back again, Bruce accompanied. It's pretty safe to say that when I started really writing songs I wanted to be the next Bruce Springsteen. Today I hope to one day hold a candle to him.

7. "What It Is To Burn" by Finch
"Stay with me
Cigarettes and open air, hand in hand
I said stay with me
'Cause every star that I see is brighter than the last"
This album IS my freshman year of high school. I got turned on to it by a sophomore in my drama class and, I guess, I haven't been the same since. It was my first exposure to "emo" or whatever it was and I loved it. I went through an elitist classic rock period junior year and I can't even express how refreshing its been to come back to this album. Like coming home by walking backwards.

6. "Your Favorite Weapon" by Brand New
"And is that what you call a getaway?
Tell me what you got away with
Cause you left the frays from the ties you severed
when you say "best friends" means friends forever"
If "What It Is To Burn" is my freshman year, "Your Favorite Weapon" was sophomore. Yes, "Deja Entendu" is "better." But this isn't about that. This record put poetry to my frustrations for the first real time, I think. I covered songs from it in my first "band" at my first "show," the local Cornerstone Cafe.

5. "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning" by Bright Eyes
"The end of paralysis, I was a statuette
Now I'm drunk as hell on a piano bench
And when I press the keys it all gets reversed
The sound of loneliness makes me happier."
I accidented upon Bright Eyes by perusing shared networks on iTunes last year. I found myself listening to strangers' libraries more frequently than my own. It's all about the lyrics and I'm always so thrilled when people get that. Conor Oberst is the artist I'm most frequently compared to, and be that meant positively or negatively... I'll take it.

4. "(What's the Story?) Morning Glory" by Oasis
"All your dreams are made
When you're chained to the mirror with the razor blade
Today's the day that all the world will see"
Oasis is the first band I ever went to see with friends. I'll never ever ever forget it. Taking the train, eating at Nathans in Penn Station, noticing the British kids behind us smoking weed, Jet, crescent moon tambourines, and Ultimate the next morning. How perfect.

3. "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" by Wilco
"The cash machine is blue and green
For a hundred in twenties and a small service fee
I could spend three dollars and sixty-three cents
On Diet Coca-Cola and unlit cigarettes"
My album I'm currently wearing out. It's so working/middle-class. So earnest. So midwestern. I tell people I want to move to Oregon or Nebraska. It's because of the worlds that exist in these songs. Wilco is from Illinois but it's a universal things for the middle-Americans I think. Something I've never gotten, having lived only on coasts. A slower life, a big sky life.

2. "Black Sheep Boy" by Okkervil River
"So why
did you flee?
Don’t you know you can’t leave his control
only call all his wild works your own?
So come back and we’ll take them all on.
So come back to your life on the lam.
So come back to your old black sheep man."
It occurs to my how much I owe Apple for my musical taste. I happened upon Okkervil River on an iTunes radio station. The first song I heard was "Black." OR is my favorite band. There's just nothing I can say that can express what their songs have done for me.

1. "The Blue Album" by Weezer
"You walk up to her.
Ask her to dance.
She says, "Hey, baby, I just might take the chance."
You say, 'It's a good thing
That you float in the air...
That way there's no way I will crush your pretty toenails into a thousand pieces.'"
I was on a Boy Scout canoeing trip. I was maybe eleven or twelve. My dad and I were carpooling with another family. The other kid in the car was a couple years older than me and on the ride home he asked his dad if he could change the music. After a nod of his dad's head he slipped in a cassette. For the next two or three hours I listened to "The Blue Album" three or four times, interrupted only by the clicking as the car's cassette deck flipped it every five songs. I would have never gotten into rock music, never mind alternative rock music, had it not been for this experience. It's still close to me, despite Weezer's decline. And I think it always will be.

So, to summarize, my life by album:
Middle School: "Enema of the State" by Blink 182
9th Grade: "What It Is To Burn" by Finch
10th Grade: "Your Favorite Weapon" by Brand New
11th Grade: "(What's the Story?) Morning Glory" by Oasis
12th Grade: "Black Sheep Boy" by Okkervil River
Freshman: "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning" by Bright Eyes
Sophomore (s0 far): "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" by Wilco

Hm.

Bomb the blogosphere,
Mike

On the surgical stage

2007-11-04T01:19:00.000-04:00

Aside: This note will be composed of disjointed, largely unrelated but nevertheless applicable one-liners. Sorry. This is going to end up highly confessional. Really, don't read it. Sorry. /Aside

How is it that I can surround myself with people and still feel lonely? It's possible that I'm just not good at convincing myself that I'm supported.

Pretentious people are the most self-conscious and insecure.

I am probably pretentious.

I am probably not as pretentious as I seem sometimes. But maybe I am.

There's little better than being proven wrong on a bad first impression. There's little worse than being proven wrong about a good first impression. Being proven right doesn't really make me feel any more or less of anything. Except maybe cynical.

If you asked me what I looked for in a girl the first thing I would think of would be a mutant Audrey Hepburn/Jenny Lewis and the first thing I'd say would be, "I don't really know."

If you asked me again I would say, "cute, sweet, well read and listened, honest, and in possession of a good, honest laugh." What I would mean to say would be, "cuddler, handholder, lyrics-quoter, and whisperer." What I would really mean would be, "crazy about me." And I would picture sweaters and sidebangs. But those aren't really important.

I think sidebangs are so cute because foreheads are so funny looking.

I'm too picky.

When I find out that someone told me something because it's what I wanted to hear, while they told a party with a conflicting opinion that they agree with them, I get deeply hurt.

Some of the behaviors that bother me the most are behaviors I would adopt given the right circumstance. That makes me feel horrible. But I don't think it's really so bad to be jealous as long as you're honest about it.

Coupland is right. Dogs are beautiful because they never fall out of love.

People are always telling me not to worry about what others think of me-- that I'm amazing and people just don't realize it-- that I've just gotta keep truckin' or hangin' in there or-- that there's a setting and a cast of characters out there waiting for me somewhere--
That is the worst advice.

The term "breakdown" doesn't mean deconstruction or collapse into power chords and crashing cymbals. It's because life is an album and at times things unravel and move at different speeds. We tend to do a lot of screaming during those times. Whether we open our mouths or not.

But it will always always all come back together for one. last. chorus.

I talked about this last time-- but people don't want to hear the truth. And so to preserve what it seems I'm supposed to be I gotta bottle back up. This must be why I've got pores called fingertips. Pens and guitar strings. Blogs and conversations that are only ever half open.

Thinking about how much it would mean to me to be read into makes me feel narcissistic, arrogant, and pathetic.

All writers are liars.

Conceit is like skin.

But it's not the kind of lying you're thinking of. If I say, "I love you," it means I love you. But I'm lying because I didn't say, "I love you because you remind me of the midwest and how I've only been there in postcard racks."

Or assuming a persona. Maybe I don't love you-- but if I did it would be fucking beautiful.

That doesn't make any sense.

None of this makes any sense.

Bomb the blogosphere,
Mike

Like antennas to Heaven

2007-10-31T01:34:00.000-04:00

In order to really really express ourselves we need the ability to invent adjectives. They just aren't vast enough or aren't applicable or accurate enough to properly prefix any given emotion. Like that sinking feeling you get in your stomach when the butterflies that used to flutter there wither and die. Like the lead feeling of sleeping feet when something comes full circle. Or even the cavernous hollow of chest-- like the heart's given up, closed its belfry wings, resigned to sicken and so live.

But that's why we have images. And that's why we have nouns. There are nouns no adjective can touch. Guilt. Regret. What is "guilt" when it's something deeper than "guilty?" And what am I if I'm relieved and at the same time so full of regret? Am I a baby born healthy to a single mother, a motorcycle and a magician for a father? I'm not. Or am I selfish because I got to say what I had to say to make the guilt subside[?]-- but I fucked up and you've moved on and we're learning that the recovery process isn't universal. Because what's out there is out there and is it wrong to hope that words alone can find host in opinion and create possibility? For second, third chances?

I'd hope that one day with all this rhetoric I'll finally say something that makes sense. But I hope too much more that with all this weight and hurt I'll finally forget figures and say something real. Or something beautiful.

You don't make friends by saying what is true. You don't get invited to parties or out with the cool kids by saying what is true. You don't get laid by saying what is true. You don't get by on facts. We don't get by on the true. We live on food and water and aethetics and when we can't find enough to eat or drink or love we create it-- and I think that maybe that's why the world is getting smaller. Because we all need to be in Paris to blow our loads. So to speak. And we want so badly to be have everyone else think we're beautiful.

[line deleted] because you don't find love by saying what is true.

Nothing hurts worse than regret, I'm convinced. And I've seen the mantras: "live life with no regrets." But you might as well be living without feeling in the tips of your fingers. So that even when you're subject to bites and cuts and burns and slammed doors-- you're groovy. Wouldn't it be nice to be numb? No. It would be so dreadful and lonely and false to never hurt and never regret.

Aside: Self-conscious ---> self-aware? Goal, maybe. /Aside

So again, sorry.

I'm still figuring this whole thing out. Really.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

With poise, with grace

2007-10-26T20:24:00.000-04:00

"Chase This Light," the new Jimmy Eat World album, is hella good. Even though it sounds a little like a musical at times.

My mom is reading some "How to get published" book. I guess so she can give me advice or empathy or something when I hit the point of needing such a book. Anyway, I skimmed through it a little bit and the common advice seems to be what I already knew: write everyday. More of writing pages of shit for a line you love. So here I am.

Mark and I had our first radio show last Monday. It went pretty well for everyone... except whoever tried to call in. We could not figure that stupid phone out. We played some quality jams though, rocked out a little bit. It was fun and I'm looking forward to this upcoming Monday.

Spring break I'm roadtripping to Canada with Keith and Mark.

...

That right there was a pause for applause.

The Moon Red-Handed is coming along, coming together. I've never really been held to a practive regiment before when it comes to music, but everyone who wants to progress should be. Most of the recording equipment I ordered came in too. So big things are ahead, methinks.

Man, I wanted real bad to go to Six Flags tomorrow to see everyone. The weather is effin' shit though. Rain rain, GTFO.

Aside: I just got a text message that says, "Hey can you do me a favor and shut your mouth or I will do it for you okay? Have a great day" And all I can think about is what a terrible sentence it is. /Aside

But yeah. I only even really want to see 4 or 5 people. And I'll be alone in my visit because that's how it goes.

Aside: Nowhere people really are terribly dramatic. /Aside

And then there's the party. Do I even want to go?

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

A soundtrack

2007-10-23T21:12:00.000-04:00

Why the hell do these things work out so perfectly?

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't try to pretend you're cool...

SOUNDTRACK TO THE LIFE OF: Me

Opening Credits:
"Wolf's Mouth" Kevin Devine

Waking Up:
"Kracked" Dinosaur Jr.

First Day of School:
"A View from the Afternoon" Arctic Monkeys

First Kiss:
"Roads" Portishead

Falling in Love:
"What's in Store?" Architecture in Helsinki

Fight Song:
"Killing a Camera" Braid

Breaking Up:
"I Don't Know How to Say This" The Early November

High School:
"The Ugly Organist" Cursive

Prom:
"Silver" Mineral

College:
"Katrien" Mogwai

Study Abroad:
"After O'Rourke's 2:10am" The Good Life

That One Drunk night:
"Bacardi" Nada Surf
(WTF.)

Life:
"In a Radio Song" Okkervil River

Mental Breakdown:
"Pull My Hair" Bright Eyes

Walking Down the Street:
"Blueside" Rooney

How your Husband/ Wife Feels about you:
"Cute Without the 'E'" The Vitamin String Quartet

Driving:
"Enthused" blink-182

Flashback:
"A Shot in the Arm" Wilco

Getting Back Together:
"Butterfly" Weezer

First Job:
"Harvest Moon" Neil Young

Wedding:
"Love and Some Verses" Iron & Wine

Birth of Child:
"Alone Down There" Modest Mouse
(Oh my.)

Vacation:
"All There Is" Rites of Spring

Retirement:
"Neon Bible" The Arcade Fire

Final Battle:
"Smith" Pompeii

Death Scene:
"Last Call" Elliott Smith

Funeral Song:
"I Hope Tomorrow is Like Today" Guster

Closing Credits:
"Voids" Paulson

Funny funny funny.

Bomb it,
Mike

The arc and the eclipse

2007-10-16T01:57:00.000-04:00

Things come together and things drift apart.

And so seems the general operation of it all.

Really, a post a month wasn't what I was gunning for. But the whole apology thing is growing tired I'm sure. Perhaps I should be more concise and less ambling. More visual and less introspective. I can't scribe my chronology, but I can paint snapshots-- that kind of thing.

So I've finally got something cooperative and musical going on! The sixth, or thereabouts, saw the birth of The Moon Red-Handed-- and acoustic project of Sir Rick Marciano and myself. Judging by our first little jam session the other day, there is certainly something to look forward to. The only downside is that writing songs severely inhibits by ability to write poetry. Yeah, believe it or not the process is entirely different. But it is what it is and I'm glad to make the trade.

I used exclamation points in the previous paragraph.

There's electricity in the air.

I've been pretty down the last couple days(weeks?). The single life is one I'm accustomed to. But it's also one I feel like I need to outgrow eventually. Like wearing hand-me-downs. And it isn't looking so good on me-- especially not lately. Loneliness is a callous lover, let me tell you. Not that, I'm sure, you need telling. We all know the chill.

And I guess I'm just jealous of all the happy couples. I am. And it isn't worth it to pretend I'm not.

It's just that people are so fickle
they fall in love at different angles.

I haven't shared any poetry in a while. Here you go:

[removed]

Bomb the blogosphere,
Mike

Prairie fires

2007-09-20T00:36:00.000-04:00

I sometimes worry that to keep a blog such as this one is self-serving and egotistical. So many sentences beginning with "I". But at the same time, where am I without that pharmaceutical glow or percussion of text against eyes against mind against heart? Shut up tight, liquor-lunged perhaps or bronzed from necessity to be something worth knowing. So it's as much for me to share as it is for you to cradle, maybe. And that alone is enough justify it.

That, and the echo.

It's been a while again, hasn't it? I'd promise not to make a habit of allowing months between posts but these things happen. The shame of it is that with such a larger span of time to reflect on I feel like I lose track of the minute bits of beauty that really matter in favor of summary. But this too, will happen. Almost as unforgiving is the feeling of responsibility- to say something grand and worthy of time wasted. And I'll be honest, there's nothing more synthetic than a month sprinkled in powdered sugar. So we'll try avoid that. We'll stay as small as we can without losing it through the space between our fingers.

I don't miss being home any more than I missed college those first weeks between sheets that smell like the sheets I've slept between for years. The freedom is still fresh and I haven't enough time to think about how I'm another year older and another year more unfit for hiding under my parents wings. Or how in 3 years I'll be expected to frequent the nest more as a novelty than a necessity. Give me time. I'll be thoroughly worried about my life and my future and growing up soon. Right now I'm just enjoying the quiet and the late mornings.

My classes are alright. Naturally, Poetry Workshop is the high point of my academic week. My professor proving himself a genius over and over again with each class. It's a homecoming and my poems have never been more organic. Better writers than I have dreamed of being poets. And better writers than I have crumbled, become homeless, sucked shotguns off, given up. Taught high school English in tiny Minnesota towns. Drank until the words couldn't tread water any longer. And worse writers than them have weathered long enough to see dawn break the storm clouds. Precious few of us wake to blue skies. Precious few.

Intro to Psych is essentially the same course I took in high school. With the same book and everything. Anything short of an A is a product of my foolishness. Intro to Lit is essentially 3 hours of prospective Literature majors attempting to assert themselves as insightful. It'd be wrong of me to assume myself above this, but I don't know. If only Hemingway knew what we were going to do to his work. He'd have shot his publisher before himself.

I have Public Speaking tomorrow. It's more work than a Public Speaking course should be, but the professor knows her shit. And the company is quite the opposite of unpleasant. Quiz tomorrow. I haven't studied.

Of all the things I think about, the wildest must be my midwest romances. There are few things more desirable than sky blue skies into sunsets over rangetops. Of handholding and gypsy-moths and blue jeans and prairie fires. The warmth that sweeps through evening chill like inland waves or music.

It's funny how people can look different from different angles. Or how hard it is to tell the girl across the classroom that her abnormally large nose was the most beautiful thing I saw today. That so much history must be in the creases of her face that form when she smiles. Some eyes are just tired. And I want to tell you, boy with the cigarette outside the atrium, that I know how you feel. You're gonna be alright.

We're all gonna be just fine.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

Post Script: Something more tethered to Earth soon haha. I promise.

In one fell swoop

2007-08-09T00:05:00.000-04:00

If there's one thing I've learned,
it's that we never feel the heat until we get burned.

In one fell swoop we're gonna cover the past two months. Cool? Cool. It's embarassing to realize that I haven't updated in over a month, I assure you. But really, what has there been to say? I work 65 hour weeks and sweat nearly every second of it, I collect reasonably fat paychecks that I don't have time to spend and I dance the Cotton-Eyed Joe. I'd be lying if I said that every day is the exactly the same, but really, what matters are those inexplicable subtleties. So why try? I've met some of the most amazing people and I can't think of another batch of kids I'd rather wear carpet and fiberglass with.

But we try so hard not to die,
sometimes we forget to appreciate life.

It's almost unfathomable to think about not seeing those same smiling or laughing to sleeping or sweating or hungover or stoned faces on a daily basis. And when that time comes at the end of August and into the fall- when I'm back at Ramapo, Laura and Matt are back at Rider, when Steve's on a boat somewhere, all the high school kids are dozing off in class and thinking about high school things- I think, or maybe I hope, I won't be alone in feeling like I left a little part of me at Six Flags. Because I think we do that. Leave little traces of ourselves everywhere we've sweated or cried or bled or laughed. It's a nice thought. That when we die- we're still scattered around the world.

When the spark reaches powder, I will blow up.
I'll become the mist you breathe into your lungs.

Nineteen is a stupid age. I can buy cigarettes I won't smoke and do in secret what Twenty-One year-olds do legally. I can wonder what it's like to be two decades old. I can give coworkers funny looks when I find out that they were born in the 90's. I don't think I want a cake this year. Nineteen candles is perhaps a few too many.

All of my love will then turn into yours.
And you will feel hope bleeding out from your pores.

But I did manage to get out of the house long enough to spend a killer weekend last week with Eric. His brother's engagement party straight into Warped Tour Sunday. Ballin'. Warped Tour was pretty cool. All that could be expected to be lame certainly was. But flying Gatorade bottles and overweight crowdsurfers aside, I had a great time. What follows is a list of the 8 bands I saw ranked from worst to best based on live performance in Englishtown. (because you know that if I do a long and sweeping blog entry... I'm gonna rank shit):

8. Drop Dead, Gorgeous
7. The Starting Line
6. Coheed and Cambria
5. Envy on the Coast
4. Hot Rod Circuit
3. New Found Glory
2. Straylight Run
1. The Spill Canvas

I am the definition of objective.

[Mom and] Dad, you were there when nobody was.
I followed your lead, now I'm proud of what I've become.

I want to grow my hair, grow a beard and get a tattoo. And I wanna play guitar in a rock 'n roll band. Perhaps I'm going through a phase. We never seem to grow out of those, do we? We just grow from one to another. But I kinda like it like that. And I wanna keep putting pretty words together for pretty girls. Up three-sixty-five a year twenty-four sev 'cause real gangsta ass poets don't sleep.

[Girl], you never cease to amaze me.
Maybe someday we'll get another chance to be.

FM Stringer - AIM
12:31 im blogging
12:31 and thinking i sound old

_______ - AIM
12:31 you ARE old

To all my friends, where do I start?
I know I'd be dead without you in my heart.

In my heart.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

Credit where it's due: "Appreciation and the Bomb" by The Spill Canvas

Backwards through the megaphone

2007-06-18T00:29:00.000-04:00

Yeah. It's been a while. I know.

But what's ever there to say when someone else has said it better already?

My life has belonged to Six Flags for what must be the past four weeks by now. I don't even mean that figuratively. This week, Tuesday through Sunday, I'm working open to close. That's somewhere between 10 and 13 hours every day. But I'll tell you what. I love just about every second of it. From tying in Sly's belly hoop to learning to worship the Character Clubhouse whiteboard to dancing the Cotton-Eye Joe for the second time in 45 minutes to napping on the breakroom floor to drinking contraband Rockstar to being a nonsmoker on cigarette breaks to gradually learning and accepting that everyone in the department is at least a little bit bisexual to gossiping to Block Party. To the windows-down car ride home. And all those other little things between. To writing prematurely nostalgic run-on sentences about how much I actually enjoy my job.

It's been a long time, I've realized, since I've actually given my all into something. Since I've really dedicated myself to doing the best that I can do. And even longer since I've felt that glowing feeling you get when your efforts are recognized. Four weeks ago I was making a huge fucking mess out of escorting Porky to and from the Big Wheel. Three weeks ago I was imagining the embarrassment of dying dressed as K-9. Two weeks ago one of my most respected co-workers said I was a great escort, among the best he'd had. And sometime last week I walk in and see my name next to "Main Gate: Sylvester." There I stayed for three days. Possibly 36 of the best hours I've ever had. I don't care if this sounds stupid. I can't expect the vast majority of those reading this to understand. But when I'm on the street, when I'm Sly or whoever else, it's not about watching the clock and counting down the hours. It's not about the paycheck or weekend plans. It's about rocking the fuck out to "Mmm Bop" and "Mambo Number Five." And rock the fuck out I do.

My second day as Main Gate Sly I was escorted by the guy who usually fills that role. After the morning's first, or maybe second, Cotton-Eye Joe he said to me: "You killed it, Sly. Amazing job." And it made my fucking day.

Sure, there are times when I want to drown myself in the fountain. A good number of the high school kids are, objectively, whiny little bitches with attitude problems. Honestly, I've never heard so many absurd complains and makeshift maladies. Nor have I ever met anyone quite so eager to make insulting assertions about myself. Whatever. I'm sure it's to compensate for his own overwhelming inadequacies or some other jargon like that. And I'm feeling just good enough not to punch him in the throat.

I have off tomorrow but go back Tuesday. I can't wait.

Now the usual fractures of thought:

My dog, Cassie, passed away last week after being transported to the Garden State Veterinary Clinic. They attempted CPR and it wasn't successful. We think it was spleen cancer. I went to the Relay for Life Cancer Walk last night with my family and we lit a luminary-thing for her. It was nice. I thank whom ever is up there for letting me spend her last day with her. I miss the tinkle of her collar and the way she would wag her tail. Even up to those last hours, too weak to walk.

My lodge adviser in the Order of the Arrow died also. I helped conduct the Broken Arrow Ceremony at Conclave. I was proud to have been a part of it and to have served as one of his Chiefs.

They say death comes in threes. We'll leave this one open ended...

There are a ton of friends I haven't yet seen this summer.

And not even a prospect of a summer romance. Seems this won't likely be one for the record books.

Sex, as an event and not an act, confuses me.

And that's about it. If you're reading this, I probably miss you.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

"Spill this dark ink"

2007-05-26T02:38:00.000-04:00

It's always hard to say what makes us feel the way we do. What puts us in these "fuck yourself" moods.

But I'm just impatient lately. And any number of other things that either do or don't stem from my frustration with this two-dimensional conversation. Practice for whatever it is I'm waiting for. I don't even know what it is I miss about the way things were. It's possible that they never actually were, in reality. I have a bad habit of romanticizing things.

And I can't decide if it's more or less mature to tell myself that things'll change. Because they never really seem to for any significant length of time.

And I also can't decide if it's more or less mature for me to try so hard to believe in Shane Koyczan lyrics. Or, I don't know, John Cusack movies.

"Gotta cash in my reality checks."

And maybe stop living between one-liners.

I do apologize for the ambiguity. But I guess when I'm this burnt out trying to articulate lonliness without using the word comes out a little less clear that I'd have liked. And maybe vagueness is just our way of not saying what we mean. And I'm just to exhausted with... with everything to hide it effectively.

And I hate using words like "empty" or "hollow" when I'm trying to describe how I feel. It's more like being a big bowl of chicken caesar salad without the dressing. You don't really need it. But everything just isn't right without it. Yeah. Exactly like that.

And I really do believe that independance is an impossibility. That we are only the sum of our relationships and interactions. And that whatever it is we're trying to achieve, happiness or whatever else, is attainable only through that moment of silent belonging. I think that's love.

I need someone willing to lend me her maddness.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

"Through candy-coated eyes"

2007-05-22T03:31:00.000-04:00

People say that Jersey is a dive.

But, really, livin' ain't that hard if you know you're alive.

It's the day to day life for forgetting what it is to worry, right? Dad always said, in a given situation, it's always too early or too late to worry. But that doesn't stop either of us. The future is scary. Big and scary and dreadfully obscure. So I guess it's nice to come home from work too tired to do anything beyond collapsing into bed. It brings out the subtleties. Smooths the redundant and highlights the extraordinary. Makes every misplaced moment significant. There's a beauty in that akin to novelty. And probably as fleeting. But for now I'm okay operating on the small scale. For now I'm okay just living until my bones ache with restlessness.

But I'm as historically restless as I am historically ideological. But I sometimes wonder if I'm too busy watching falling stars to chase them. Or if I'm too busy chasing them to catch one.

I got my Manzar letters the other day. Letters written to me two years ago by myself and some of my friends. It's funny how at the same time things change and others stay exactly the same. I don't think anyone can write a letter to himself and not come across as dumb two year later. I think parts of us grow at different speeds. I don't know for sure though.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

Tonight's for fighting

2007-05-10T00:39:00.000-04:00

I need new soundtracks for these whiskey nights. But that's for another day.

I've finished my first year of college. But somehow I'm not yet prepared to write about it. It just hasn't sunk in yet. It isn't real. Not tonight.

Tonight's for summer mixdiscs and open windows. For working it out. For trying to be panoptic.

Tonight is for one liners.

Shifting my biological clock should be a gradual process, I understand, but I'm finding it dangerously difficult to get up before noon and go to bed before 3. And living the next four months without Late-Night Dining to tide me over is going to be a trip and a half. The intelligent person would start eating breakfast but I say "Nay! Breakfast foods are for in Diners at 4am." See the problem? I need to reset my life for summer-rules.

I need to set goals for the next several months. Because if I don't, I'll get nothing done and I'll feel like a giant failure. So please accept the following as my "SuMmA lOvIN' tO-do LIsT!"

1. Weekly Ultimate Pick-up Games
Status: Begun
I need to stay in/get in better shape for next year's Ultimate season. To do this, I gotta keep playing. Good thing for me there are plenty of willing and talented disc-tossers around here. The only wrinkle will be finding a day that's good for everyone. It'll get even trickier when I start working. I have no idea what that'll do to my calendar.

2. Survive Empoyment at Six-Flags, Make Mad Dough
Status: Begun
I have department orientation on Sunday, which essentially means that I'll be starting next week. This is either wonderful or terrible news.

3. Make Rock in a REAL Musical Project/Band
Status: Pending
Dan and I have been talking about this forever and I know we both really want it to happen. And honestly, there's no group of guys I'd rather work with than the ones he's assembled. He's probably the most rock-dedicated dude I know, Matt's amazingly talented, and Tom has the Dan-stamp of approval. And that's good enough for me. I picked up the Strat today and didn't sound so hot. I need to get my electric chops back in shape. That, or turn it up. Volume and quality are so totally correlated. But seriously. I want to write sweet songs and play shows. Like... now, damn it.

4. Have a Summer Fling
Status: None
Seriously, is there any better a topic to write about? I could get some quality pop-punk out of it. I'll just overuse the words "heart" and "boardwalk"and somehow incorporate driving abandoned highways with the windows down. In every song. But there's some appealing novelty in it... in falling in and out and never forgetting. In that "what if's" and coulda-beens. We'll see about this one though. The opposite sex is historically uninterested in its resolution.

5. Write my fucking Musical
Status: Put-off for like 2 years
Not much to say. I just need to fuckin' do it.

6. Spend as much time as POSSIBLE with my Boys and Girls
Status: Pending
I love my Monmouth County crew. I really really do. There are no times like those shared with them. I need to make personally sure that Applebee's nights and WaWa runs and drunken antics and bad movies and late nights and hysterics and honest conversation and man-hugs and blown kisses and four/four handshakes and Socratic singalongs and drama gossip and Surf Taco evenings and political Starbucks humor and lasting memories are maximized. That's all there is to it.

And no, I haven't yet decided myself if number four is a joke.

But I'm no longer a college freshman. And that's enough to tickle the corners of my lips upward.

Next time: A lengthy reflection on this past semester and musings on my disdain for bullshitters.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

It's a funny thing...

2007-04-29T20:00:00.000-04:00

...about writing as a craft.

It's the integrity of the art.

And how we write whatever the fuck we want.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Love always,
Hugs & Kisses,
Mike

"Face or kneecaps"

2007-04-28T04:53:00.000-04:00

Come on. Hit me with your best shot. I'm down and you won't get a better shot than this one.

Maybe it isn't entirely her fault that everything I see her do or hear of her doing disgusts me. Maybe I'm just emotionally overdriven enough to transfer the pain into anger. The only thing I can hope is that what happened to me, what she did to me, helps generate awareness of her game to everyone.

I've already struck chords to the last song I'll ever write about you.

And 2001 alone has more than the number of one-liners you deserve.

So, as a final thought, I hope that every time you get your heart stomped on... every time you get led on or played... I hope you stop and realize that he isn't me. That he isn't half of me.

But enough of that. Only a week or so left in this semester. How wild is that? I remember so vividly this time last year. Preparing for prom, graduation, summer... worrying about high school problems. Well, I suppose that some things aren't so easily changed. But I don't really feel any smarter. Maybe it'll take a couple weeks of being apart from the classes and exams and homework and the fucking Birch Tree Inn cafeteria food for it to set in. For me to feel whatever wisdom I'm supposed to have garnered. It's not over yet, though. My nostalgia is premature.

The single/uncommitted/untethered gauntlet isn't the worst thing in the world, I suppose. There's always that promise of chance meeting, of aligning availability and interest. It all boils down to that "hope" thing, as it tends to. But I guess I'm okay with that. What else have we got, right? It'll take some time to trudge through the doubt and cynicism though. My self-esteem isn't the quickest at recovering. But refusing to hide the cuts- by letting them run in the rain- I think that'll help. I think I'll be back to my swagger before too long, so to speak.

And I'll be ending one of the worst weeks of my life with some of my best friends. Tomorrow we drink in celebration. There's no drowning on Cinco de Mayo.

So no. Everything isn't back to normal. It won't be for a while. Everything isn't forgotten. Forgiven, perhaps. Each of our greatest weaknesses is our humanity. And that's what she is. She's human. And so am I. We'll always have that. We'll all always have that. So I guess everything is okay. Life is okay.

I am okay.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

"Isn't that what you expect?"

2007-04-23T20:08:00.000-04:00

"I could have sang you to sleep.

And all you want from me..."

All you want from me...

You want nothing to do with me.

Today is most likely the worst day in recent memory. I'm listening to Saves the Day and laughing my ass off because what I really want to do is cry and catch a train to Kansas City where I'd forget everything I've known in the last month. Where I can save some fucking face. This is the last time I put so much stock in someone. The last time I try to make something out of nothing. The last time I let myself lie in bed and smile to myself at how much promise there is in a potential future with someone.

But I am guilty of saying that all I wanted was some closure. And, in a manner of speaking, that's exactly what I got.

So, although it's a really roundabout way of saying it, this is essential entirely my fault. I don't doubt it. I don't deny it. I believe it fully. My conduct in the past few weeks has been so so so stupid. I set aside everything I've learned about people and let myself get enraptured. Again. A-fucking-gain.

It's entirely my fault for letting myself sink this deep.

When you say "yeah I get you" I hope you understand that you couldn't possibly.

When you say you "dated someone exactly like" me... I hope that one day he takes you back.

Because boys don't care like I care much anymore.

That's all I've got to say about that. This'll be on facebook for whoever want to read it. But I don't care anymore. I'm sick of trying to be who everyone wants me to be.

Bomb the fucking Blogosphere,
Mike

Tennis shoes

2007-04-22T03:40:00.000-04:00

It's 3:40am on what promises to be a beautiful April Sunday and I have nothing better to be doing than reheating some General Tso's, putting on and half-watching Kingdom of Heaven, and thinking about things. And how crazy things always seem to get. This is the night and what it does to you. What it does to me. Makes me think and dream in impossible ways with a clarity, or cloudedness, uncharacteristic of day. I'll sleep through half of the beautiful Sunday today promises to be but what matters now is me and my General Tso's. My cherry coke zero. The backround noise and my wandering mind. This is the night.

Greek Week seriously interupted our Ultimate Frisbee equillibrium. I arrived at the field to discover it swarmed with Fraternity boys and Sorority girls. Their muscle shirts and big white plastic-rimmed sunglasses. Their uniform crew cuts and fucking sidebangs. We started our game 40 minutes late because of their potato sack races and inability to understand that their tug-o-war game could just as easily be conducted on the sidelines. That's 40 minutes to watch and think and realize that I'll never be one of those guys. I'll never have mammouth biceps or million dollar abs or chisled features or centerfold calves. I'll never be able to competetively throw a beer keg for distance or bench press a small horse. I won't. I will never be that good looking or have that certain collegiate air of superiority.

Is that what you want in a guy? Is that what I'm not to you?

Hilton hit one of them in the head with a disc. I laughed. Sometimes it's the best you can do. Laugh and be self-righteous in the face of everything you're not.

I took Casey's advice and wrote a song. I may be an asshole, but I listen. It's not bad as far as I can tell, but everything sounds better alone at 2am than when I finally get the balls to play it for someone or to record it. It's what I want to say, though. What I wish I could reverse but can't, it seems. It's not for lack of trying, but then again, it never is. It is now, though. It's something. I've got something to show for these 4am's, these dreamless nights, these unreciprocated gestures. It's the opposite of how it happened to Rivers. You've got my letter, I've got my song.

Just say something. Say fucking anything.

On Friday I went to the Ramashows concert. The bands were half-good, half-bad. I took a liking to the fun-loving Flaming Lips-esque Lima Research Society whose infectious melody and saccharine singwriting left me with "Magic Juice Box" stuck in my head all weekend. The show's headliner really made an impact though. I Am the Avalanche started as what I expected, a mediocre emo punk rock band. But they had two significant differences. One was that they closed with a Lifetime cover, which will always win me over (unless you do it poorly) and the other was the song "Green Eyes":

When she called my sneakers "tennis shoes"
I knew she was from the west coast
or the "best coast" like she'd say
and I had to disagree

I fell in love with a ship
A vessel with at least twenty holes
Yeah but she still floats
I fell in love with the sea
A brilliant tidal wave
She devestated me

It has to have been since my rediscovery of "Nothing Feels Good" that lyrics have shouted at me like these. We all fall in love with wild things, with beautiful things. We all invest ourselves in heartbreakers and the only thing that seems to ever be true to us is our roots. So continues my love affair with New Jersey. One day I'll go back to California. But I don't think anyone ever really leaves New Jersey.

At least not forever.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

Forgive me my antiquity

2007-04-19T17:35:00.000-04:00

I had a stick of gum for dinner last night fighting back or biting down to halt the dams behind my eyes for bursting first in many months but then... it isn't often one has a week like this And these are the nights we thought we'd left in high school The dry mouthed cigarette sips gin stink of liquor broken now and open to abuse it's so hard to always hide baby and I've grown too old or tired to try to be for you that soldier who doesn't break when you bend him, doesn't bruise when you beat him, doesn't wait for you for hours honey harrowed now but hoping maybe somewhere there's a reason why you aren't where you said you would be oh baby baby baby ... Am I to you so commonplace? Ours is a generation that's forgotten forehead goodnight kisses or holding hands on trains because we like it But most of all we are a breed that has forgotten conversation We're all small-talk segways and witty quips that somehow always lead to fumblings with buttons breathing heavily deliberately hot and gripping slipping squeezing salt balloons and moaning - we might as well be fucking ourselves So forgive me my antiquity I just try too hard to believe in people.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

In saying "cuspidor"

2007-04-13T23:33:00.000-04:00

Multi-tasking has, historically, been a rather strong suit of mine. I'm currently sitting in my Freehold bedroom blogging and chatting online on the Mac, watching Taxi Driver in the background, and attempting to download The Departed onto the Dell. Now, if I was any sort of sensible my prioritization list would include studying or working on the math project I have due on Monday. But of course, and equally historically, I do not.

This past week has had its ups and downs, that's for sure... and more than its allotted number of ambiguities and "what-the-fuck" moments. But last night kinda made it all go away. Cryptic? Sure. But it's not really so important what's got me like it does as it is... simply that it is. That's it's there in my life and in my recent history. To rewind and replay and mull over. I like things like that.

Am I the only one who thinks that apple pie with a slice of yellow cheese on it is about as American as child obesity? Patriotic. But for all the wrong reasons.

People wore crazy blazers in the seventies. I wonder if there's anywhere I can still buy one.

Seems the multi-tasking goes hand in hand with entering random stream-of-conscious mode. This entry is becoming strictly reactionary to what's going on in Taxi Driver. With about the grace of Robert DeNero's birthmark. Don't sweat it, Bob. It's very becoming. I promise.

I really am facinated with he concept of lying. With what motivates people to tell others things that either aren't true or fall within some degree of the truth. A lot of the time it's probably to impress. Or to create some false image of oneself in the eyes of those around him. It's gotta be indicative of a miserable self-esteem issue. To be so unsatisfied with yourself that you lie to assume something alternative. And then there are the instances in which people fuck up, or fuck around on each other, and that becomes a big lie. Not the mistake, or the affair. The relationship. It's complicated to operate a relationship in shades of grey. And really wishy-washy. But I guess that's why people fuck around on each other in the first place. Indecision. Selfishness? Irresponisbility or a disregard for committment or respect. Whatever. But I think that if someone sat in my taxi and told me that he was going to shoot his wife for cheating on him, I'm not sure I'd blame him.

I'm really in miserable shape. I shouldn't have had the trouble I did at frisbee today, keeping up with everyone and such. A decent arm only gets you so far, right? But being in good shape requires getting in good shape. Which requires devotion on top of motivation. It's one of those things that seems too distant. Too unattainable to be real. But still fervently desired enough to be bothersome. And thought about with enough frequency. But now I'm whining.

"Romance." It's kind of an icy word when you whisper it out loud. And "love." Those end-"v" sounds have a real edge to them. But "gossamer," "wisteria," "oleander" and "dulcemer." Those are beautiful words.

And "home."

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

"So come back, I am waiting"

2007-04-07T17:03:00.000-04:00

There is, at this point, no doubt in my mind that the music of Okkervil River is the most important to defining and detailing my life. It's sweeping, majestic, raw, dark, intensely perceptive and poetic. One never before knows the hopelessness in a set of dark black blinds or the romance in a single, cracked stone. Or the crackle in a radio song.

But I digress.

I envy Alanna's ability to write without reservation. To be a private writer doing what she does for the sake of it. I write to be read. That's why I tag people in this mess. And why whatever's in here will be just a few clicks shy of honesty. Well, maybe not honesty. But spontaneity. An unfinished quality... an essense of genuineness. Maybe I should try. But at the same time I realize that if I'm ever writing about someone in here, I'll refer to him or her as just that.

"She makes me smile like I haven't in forever."

See? But where are the balls in that? There isn't a gusto to the language like there would be if I wrote about how Leopold is the biggest fucking cock-sucker, like, ever. With imagery and colorful verse! "And when Leopold ran a sticky hand through that crisco hair I felt like saying 'well, isn't this just perfect' before burying a potato skinner in his neck." Sorry Leopold, whom I've never met but will inevitably find this and be insulted. Maybe I take to ambiguities. Or maybe I just really want you to wonder if what I've got to say is about you.

Rutgers deferred my application, opting to wait for my Spring semester scores before admitting or rejected me as a transfer- arranging it so that I'd be selecting classes after the incoming freshmen, I'm sure.

And I can't help but think "Well...

Isn't this just perfect."

But life isn't all bad. I got a job this morning. At least I think I did. The employment application and interview process at Six Flags is extraordinarily disorganized and unpleasant. But I have orientation next weekend, so that sounds reasonably binding. What'll I be doing at Six Flags? I will be costumed character. Go on. Laugh. Get it all out. But the price is right and performance art is something I've been missing these past months. Maybe "art" is a stretch. I take what I can get.

No, seriously, it really isn't all bad. I've been happier lately than I've been in quite a bit. There is a fairly lengthy list of things that have contributed to this but it does NOT include: Rutgers University Admissions Department, Probability and Statistics, the UFlorida Gators, every damn store that I put in an application for and never called me back, my family to some extent, etc. It's funny to note how depressing my "good days" seem.

So Overlook it is next year. And in certain terms, I couldn't be happier.

It's time to get big, little kid.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

South x Southwest

2007-03-24T17:45:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, I suppose, we're left to evaluate and take inventory of all the things that make us. Sift through nuances and decisions, details and descriptions. Filter out the unappealing, purge the distasteful. Tune. Adjust for intonation and perfection. Rewrite. And rewrite. And rewrite.
Recreate and recycle. Make new what has worn. Purge. Cleanse. Hide the unattractive under sweatshirts and sweet words.

I've got a head like the sieve these days. And a heart like a doormat.

A mouth like a leaky faucet.

there is a glow
that rises off the parkway
a billion teardrop fog
refracting headlights
homeward bound
and I
am so
enveloped by this
night deprived of sleeping
deeply
lost in dreaming
watching trickles
run in rivers down windows
south by southwest
and missing you dearly

And yet the impossibilty of obtaining that which I have been apart from for so long is more and more obvious every day. The more I think about it, the more certain I am that the promise of companionship is synthetic. That eligible and available are more different than intially expected. That Hollywood endings exist to satiate our neverending thirst for hope in white knights on silver stallions. In princesses and in humanity.

For what it's worth, I blame internet netowrking at least in part for my neurosis.

But back to self-improvement and my inability to perform it. I'm sick of living in drafts. Of being rough around the edges. I lack a luster and reflections are evidence enough of this. Inventory is evidence enough.

Ah, life! Wherefore art thou ever faithful to the fair of skin? Hath thou no eyes with which to see? No heart with which to cradle me and sing me softly, now, to sleep?

Heh. I'm a riot.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

Love is best shared simply.

2007-03-21T00:50:00.000-04:00

No play on words title, this time, for an entry detailing my experiences with a movie screening.

In the short review that follows (I find it much harder to review things I enjoyed) I'll make sure not to spoil any of the movies more surprising moments. Nor will I reveal the ending or even attempt to approach discussing the alternative view on the world and growing up provided. I'll just say that it moved me and made me thing in way a movie hasn't in a long time.

My neglect to be "punny" is most likely because, unlike last semester's evening with Sunshine, tonight's feature is an exceptional slice of cinematic glory. Mark and I went to see a private viewing of Rocket Science, a beautiful romp through one of suburbia's most fractured circumstances. The film, which earned Sundance Film Festival reognition, chronicles one year in the life of the unfortunately named, stuttering high school freshman Hal Hefner (Reece Thompson) as he falls in love with the beautiful and liquidly confident Ginny Ryerson (Anna Kendrick), captain of the school debate team. Hilarity and twisted sweetness ensue as the tongue-tied boy dives headfirst into Policy Debate, love, and life.

The cast, made almost entirely of youth and implemented adults only to supplement the realism and advance the plot, is nearly flawless. Thompson's insecurity and poor oratory is infinitely endearing and truly creates an empathetic atmospher while Kendrick plays the cookie-cutter cutie you love to hate. Equally strong at the performances of Josh Kay and Vincent Piazza, playing the socially awkward pornography enthusiest Lewis and Hal's kleptomaniac brother Earl, respectively. The setting, soundtrack (most memorably featuring The Violent Femmes' "Blister in the Sun" behind a revenge sequence) and screenplay breathe New Jersey and the film protrays Policy Debate culture, to the best of my knowledge, fairly accurately.

If you're a fan of Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, I Heart Huckabees and Little Miss Sunshine you can't miss Rocket Science when it is released this August. And if you currently or have ever competed in high school speech and debate, well, you should already havre August 10th marked on your calendar.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

Don't worry, we'll be back to discussing my own fractured circumstances soon.

"Landlocked blues"

2007-03-16T17:57:00.000-04:00

What an absolutely miserable day.

At least if the rain were pounding there would be some energy. But instead it dribbles and runs lazy rivers down my window before, bored in its own purposelessness, retiring to that ground where it makes slush of this morning's flurries. The roads are in ruins, everything is getting cancelled, I've got no plans for the evening, and everyone seems to be holed up in their own personal spring break hibernations. Morale is low. Life took a fucking snow day.

Though I suppose, in all fairness, it hasn't been the worst spring break. I mean, it started two days early when I got picked up at 4am and driven to Newark to catch a 6:45 plane to San Juan, Puerto Rico. I was there attending a leadership conference and conducting some evaluation and planning. Business. As usual. We got to tour Old San Juan, however, and I suppose it was kinda cool to be in a city made up entirely of crumbling ruins and overpriced bars. It was a good trip, though I was eager to get back home and spend some time with my friends from home.

How silly of me.

The only schools that ended up having "off" the same week as mine were Rutgers and Dartmouth, the latter of which is only half true as Tom came home Tuesday. Early this week I enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with Eric. We trekked out to a drama rehearsal with Bryan, Kristen and Rich and were greeted by the mass chaos that tends to go hand in hand with tech week at FTHS. We got to talk to some of the kids which is always nice but for the most part we kept to ourselves in a quiet corner of the classroom behind backstage. After escaping we drove to Applebee's for cuisine and conversation characteristic (+3 alliteration points) of a night in good ol' F-town. It was nice and we ate a record number of half-priced appetizers, 8 dishes for 5 people... a record I am bent on breaking.

The next day Eric drove me to the mall and window-shopped while I filled out applications for summer employment. Thus far I have applications submitted for Six Flags Great Adventure, The Gap, Banana Republic, Fossil, and the Apple store. Number of phone calls recieved and interviews scheduled? Zero. Perhaps I'm impatient, but this is rather distressing. Later on we drove to Manasquan to go to Surf Taco. We could have just driven a straight line to the one in Point Pleasant, but since Eric's friend works at this one we spent half an hour or so wandering the shoreside streets of Manasquan squinting a street signs 'til we found it. I wasn't even hungry... but I ate a Sunset Classic anyway. There are certain things you just don't pass up.

Thursday was exciting. I got up mad early for my second driving lesson.

[[For clarification sake... and for those of you readers (ha!) not completely down with my life and history... yes, I have my driver's license. However, last year I was in a car accident and totalled the car I was driving. Now, a year later, since I need a car to drive to work and things, we got a new one... a 2003 Jetta. Sweet, right? The catch is that she's manual... and I have no idea how to drive stick. Hence, driving lessons. End anecdote.]]

It didn't go so hot and I was pretty pissed at myself for a while. But then at 10am or so Tom picked me up and we drive to pick up his cousins before catching a train outta Matawan, City bound. We were going to see The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. After arriving we ate lunch at Bella Vita off 7th, which beforehand opened up the opportunity for me to be cool and say, "we could go to this little Italian place I know." We did the obligatory Toys 'R Us stop and then headed west to get on line, for 90 minutes, for the show. All in all, it was funny and a pretty cool experience. The program is a lot shorter in person but I got to see Sandra Bullock in real life... an event that may very well sustain me in future tribulations. We ate dinner at Nathan's (ew.) and headed home, exhausted.

Which brings us, me, to now. Sitting in my room, in the quiet, with the lights off. Eyelids heavy from neglect and utterly reduced to one word responses to half-hearted questions. Break isn't supposed to be like this. Hell, home isn't supposed to be like this. And with the weather like it is, it looks as if I'll be completely and totally landlocked for at least the rest of the night. Probably even into tomorrow.

I don't know if I'm gonna make it.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

Let's just talk about the weather

2007-02-28T22:18:00.000-05:00

Life really does have a hilarious way of letting you know that you're worthless and directionless, that your dreams are unattainable, that your talents are overrated, that your love life (as if) is laughable, and most of all, that the reason for all the aforementioned is that you are simply not good enough at what you do and how you live to matter.

In other news, it was uncharacteristically sunny in Hell today.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

"Your new aethetic"

2007-02-23T02:52:00.000-05:00

It's one of those days.

One of those long, lonely nights that I sit through and think about how I'm utterly sick of writing poems with happy closing couplets.

I'm sick of investing hope in things that break too easily.

Like... people.

The "I am what I am, take me or leave me" philosophy isn't worth the bullshit its written in. Because you never what someone thinks of you, really. You never know what's whispered behind your back between chuckles at your flaws. You can't tell if your participation in a group of people is real or some kind of running joke shared between the select elite. I can't in good conscience name a single person at this fucking college that I am certain likes me for the person I am. Not for the things I say or the words that spill from behind my teeth or quivering pen onto page. Not for some fragile link, a connection via some rediculous common interest. A single person that thinks for just a fleeting moment, "I thoroughly enjoy time spent with Mike. He is a genuinely good friend."

And it isn't limited to within this environment, however God-forsaken. Friends from home move ahead in life, advancing towards tangible, goal-based futures. Creating relationships based on something like all that is left of what was once called love. Forging friendships and sailing unblinking into tomorrows brightly lit by life led without me. Where am I? What am I doing here? What makes up my tomorrows?

I'm sick of doubting.

And I'm sick of the turnpike stench and knowing that there isn't a corner of the globe I can huddle in to escape it.

Every city, every state is an imperfect reflection of the last. The paradigms and dynamics fall into place in ways the deviate frighteningly little from the known. The people occupying schools or streets: blurred shadows cast in the setting sun creating outlines on the pavement. Constant, consistent outlines. At least that's how it feels when you can't help but believe that you are so totally alone in your life experience. In my life experience.

Where's the life? Where is the beauty in character or personality besides lost behind synthetic emotion? The horror in symmetry. These are just aethetics. I am not a fucking print. I am not a fucking copy of the Mona Lisa that the poster store sells a hundred thousand of for $8.99 plus shipping. I breathe and I hurt and I long for company. For companionship. For love?

But is that what you want? A manakin that you can pose and manipulate and reinvent? Is that all we are? All we do? Faces in a tool chest. Filling roles and performing tricks.

This is what I get for being honest. For trying to embrace a life of minimal delusion and falsery. And yeah, I've said some fucked up things. I've made some fucked up choices. I've hurt a lot of feelings and maybe broken some spirits. But my perception does not define you! I don't claim to be law any more than I claim to be God. These vibes that I get- this instinct I trust my social conduct to- it's so tragically imperfect. But when I'm right I succeed. And when I'm wrong I fail. Isn't that just so beautifully "so it goes"?

And I've made a lot of mistakes.

I've been wrong about people before. I'm detached and defended against someone while being raped raw by another. I've had my spirit broken too. I've fucked up in letting myself be vulnerable before, and I keep doing it. Not for aesthetics. For honesty. And if who you know isn't who I am... I've lost myself.

This arrogance. This pretense. This is my aethetic. This is my defense.

One day maybe I'll learn to trust again.

Bomb the blogosphere,
Mike

Blown a wish

2007-02-15T03:00:00.000-05:00

You know, I have never had a valentine.

Just throwing that one out there.

I was doing better at updating regularly for a while, and now I'm back to slacking off again. Though, as usual, I have the "nothing to report" plea to fall back on. Valentine's Day this year brought with it some snow. Or rather, quite a lot of snow. Enough foul weather, in fact, to cancel all the classes at good ol' RCNJ. Good new, right? Sure. If it was any day but Wednesday. Mother Nature has a sick taste for irony, doesn't she? Piling us with snow on the one day of the week that I have a class I enjoy. It couldn't be tomorrow- rescuing me from an early math class in which a group project is due and a late Readings in Humanities class in which an essay is due. An essay that, of course, I have not yet begun. Typical, eh? Typical.

So in many senses, the bleak wintered stormy weathered Valentine's Day is oh-so appropriate. Like the coldness of my heart, emo-me says. But seriously, I can't stand Valentine's Day. I hate the idea of recognizing a holiday celebrated by a select population. It's like... a day for the people who are happy anyway to be extra happy and rub it in the faces of those who aren't. Let's all just celebrate how fucking happy we all are! Please. Sure I'm bitter. But I am so not alone in this.

I woke up this morning for long enough to check my email and make sure that I didn't have a class to prepare for. Then I rolled over for another good hour and a half. After finally getting up, showering, and dressing it was time to work on that math project. The one that's due tomorrow. We finished it up (and when I say "we", I really mean Ashley and Jess. I am so useless at math. I pretty much sat there and stole Ashley's music. I'm such a waste.) and parted ways.

Then I watched Eurotrip and chilled with some legit people (at Ramapo!) until around 6:30, at which point I had to make good on a promise I made to Casey a couple weeks ago. A promise that I'd accompany her on guitar while she sings "You Get Me" by Michelle Branch to Mark. So we did that and it was cute and sweet and adorable and "awwww"-inspiring. Yeah. Oh, how I hate you, St. Valentine.

So I went back and we ordered up some Chinese, hung out, and played Scene-It for a while. Afterwards we just talked about all aspects of life for.... for hours. It was seriously incredible. I'd missed that. It was really refreshing and I felt so welcomed. I can't really phrase anything without sounding lame so you'll have to trust me. Even without the typical ingredients to a good college time... I had fun.

"But you... but you... You write such pretty words."

But I guess there are worse things than being alone on Valentine's Day. Being single on Valentine's Day. Because there's all this promise, right? All. This. Hope. That maybe she's right around the corner or in the blind spot beneath my nose. Maybe she's staring me in the face but glancing away when I chance a look. Like we're taking turns flinching and missing each other. Or maybe she's waiting somewhere in the coming months. Here, home, elsewhere... Who knows? All I can say with some semblance of certainty is that she's out there somewhere. Somwhere watching the Earth turn and hoping that I'm out there. Counting stars in the same way we're all blown a wish on the wings of tomorrows and tomorrows and tomorrows.

Awfully romantic for being anti-V-Day, wouldn't you say?

Yeah. I guess I would too.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

Note: Today's title refers to "Blown a Wish" by My Bloody Valentine off the album Loveless. Ain't I clever?

I use the same words in every poem.

2007-02-08T02:02:00.000-05:00

It seems as if the RSS feed that spoonfeeds this monster into facebook no longer works. It's just as well, really. I don't have too much of value to say these days. Watch though, I'll preface this blog as such and suddenly everything miraculously fixes itself and I look like a huge douchebag. Wouldn't be the first time.

My life varies only slightly from week to week. My "everything" seems to be a small array of unending cycles that spin round and round fluctuating only minutely from cycle to cycle. The thing is that they aren't cumulative. Nothing ever builds on itself or anything else. It's like Groundhog Week meets The Mike Stringer Show meets A Comedy of Errors. Good God, give me something to work with!

On the other hand, I'm writing lots of poetry. Lots of poetry that I'll actually look at and read without wincing. I'm happy about that despite my conscious rejection of the knowledge that you can't raise a family writing poems. And unless I plan on writing the great American novel, I can't expect prose to pay the bills either. Some people are good at math or science or something else that translates into an economically stable future. I end up being the starving artist. Though I suppose that the art comes from the pain which comes from the struggle. How's that for twisted?

Regardless, I both dread and eagerly await recieving the decision on my transfer application to Rutgers. It could be quite altering. Imagine losing a year... as I'd essentially be doing. Is it worth it? Is it really better there? One can only hope.

I remember talks I used to have with old friends about "real" people and "fake" people. But now it feels like the argument isn't so accessible anymore. I don't know these people. I make judgements and I end up being wrong. I get caught up in a whirlwind of being myself and trying to be likeable and I wonder... who am I to say who's "real" anymore. Am I even? I really sincerely hope so.

I've always been facinated by lying, the nature of falsehood, and bullshit. And I can't help but think that of all the things these people have told me - all this shit I've swallowed as fact - there's gotta be some bullshit in there. These are the things that I think about when I'm being introspective.

Maybe I should post some writing on this bitch.

Maybe.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

"Nothing feels good"

2007-02-01T03:29:00.000-05:00

Interestingly, the sheets of paper on my dorm room door declare that "FM Stringer's Song of the Week" for this particular row of calendar squares is "Nothing Feels Good" by The Promise Ring. If you haven't heard the song, don't sweat it. You're in good company, I'm sure.

But yes, "Nothing Feels Good". Am I a champion of apropos song selection or what?

Please excuse the following. I'm rather fractured.

So I'm sitting in the dark with The Honorary Title blaring in my earbuds as my roommate flicks channels back and forth between "the Strongest Man in the World" competition and an interview with Bill Nye "the Science Guy" on CNN. CNN of all things! Oh... it's Larry King live. Never mind.

I have math class in six hours.

But see, the terrible irony in writing this thing is that the people who really should be reading it almost certainly are not. And she's done so much for me. Despite the cryptic conversation and speaking between intentions. Despite the months of hatred and miscommunication. Despite heated words and broken hearts. Despite time gone by... I still bleed for you. I sing your graces between swigs of the Captain because, let's face it, that's when we're at our most honest. And our most vulnerable. I read that poets drink not to make the pain go away... but to fuel it. To remind ourselves that we're alive. And my best poetry is about you.

Even though there are few moments that go by in which I don't pray for someone beautiful to glide into my life in skinny jeans and flats (holla Rick)... even though my most magnificent dreams feature some- some angel brushing her bangs out of her atlantic blue eyes and asking me if I'm into Okkervil River... even though I can't think of what I wouldn't give to love and be loved again...

I think that on the back burners of my brain simmers the lukewarm hope that you'll take me back.

But I'm being silly.

And it's time that I put these absurdist fantasies to rest and start running the singles gambit again. Because kissing girls in dark rooms before stumbling back to my own is only worth so much. It's the conversation that carries the most value. The giggles between butterfly kisses. The comfort. The cuddling. The needlessness of libido.

What it comes down to isn't anything profound. This isn't an entry in which I, in all pretentiousness, unleash upon whoever fucking reads this my worldly pretty-talk and smirking quirks. This is putting down in text how truly alone I feel.

One day I'll make a living being vulnerable. One day maybe you'll take advantage of me. One day maybe you'll rape me and leave me battered and broken. But I'll get up. And I'll write. And I'll make a living being vulnerable.

But for now... this is me feeling lonely.

Math class can go fuck itself. Really.

But then

It's been 26 hours since my last cigarette so I guess things are, in some strange way, looking up.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

Fingerpainting

2007-01-29T12:25:00.000-05:00

Almost as if to illuminate my miserable inability to achieve closure and the new beginnings which follow, I find myself prefixing an unhealthy number of sentences with "and" or "so."

Just food for thought.

I'll let you chew on that for a moment.

Okay.

There isn't a whole hell of a lot to report, truth be told, sans the boring rehash of the goings-on in my life. But I guess that there are worse things. This past weekend was largely pleasant and Eric's visit was most welcome, as was the assurance that the past six months or so haven't been the product of my growing maddness therein. It was fun to decline responsibility for a night- just saturate and let come what may. I don't get to do that often. And probably for good reason. We went to New York and that always manages to put me someplace magical for a while. The lights and sounds and people. It's the second greatest city on Earth. Second, of course, to London... which is only so great because I've never been there. And until I do it will continue to simply be the flawless depiction of class and zeal that I've scrawled -nay- haphazardly fingerpainted on the canvas of my mind.

There are so many places I've never been.

And then there's this thing I do with isolated lines. You know, when I'm saying something that I think is significant, worldly, quotable, or wise. Is it really as effective in accentuating a thought as I think it is?

Is it?

Or perhaps it's just useful in creating a tempo, pauses and moments implying their passage, in the piece. Are we having a conversation, dear reader? A depressingly one-sided conversation? Have I effectively made it so that my monologuing is compelling and theatrical?

I'm probably pretty unbearable to read or even talk to when I'm being cynical. Whatevs. This morning I had math class, another 90 minutes piled atop a mountain of time wasted trying fruitlessly to learn how to think in numbers. I'm a mathematical lost cause. Maybe when I die they'll observe my brain to find some rare tumor only present in the grey matter of those weirdos who'd rather write an essay than do long division. Okay, maybe a slight exaggeration. I'm actually pretty fucking good at long division.

Afterwards I opted not to go back to sleep in hopes of limiting my hours as an insomniac - a stupid decision considering that tonight is 24 night and I don't have class tomorrow. So I could theoretically stay up as late as I want, watching movies or something equally useless. So once again my good intentions are trumped and my eyelids are getting heavy. It's not even 1pm yet. I think I'm hypersomniac.

Or a hypochondiac. Hm.

Bomb the blogosphere,
Mike

PS. I can't figure out if I should capitalize "blogosphere". I suppose it is a proper noun. Fuck.

Everyone sells out

2007-01-21T20:46:00.000-05:00

So lately I've been in between dreams, scheming and seeing nothing through. Running around in circles and wondering why the scenery isn't changing. Shit goes wrong and shit goes right but in the long run they're really nothing more than potholes in the long road to the middle. My aspirations to mediocrity.

I've been occupying my time doing things with the purpose of making the hands tick by faster. I've accomplished damn near nothing. I am unmotivated. I am uninspired. I am utterly utterly unoriginal.

"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion."

Jack Kerouac was never wrong about anything.

My creative writing course is going to be a lot more difficult than I had originally expected and it seems that this whole semester is going to be one big failure after another. Everything I've written since the first meeting of the class is complete and total garbage, melodramatic slobber that drips from the page like kisses wet with tears. Utter. Emo. Shit. I'm trying too hard. That's really what it is. I want so badly to scribe something enlightening and... fuckin'... important that I'm selling out in the worst of ways. I'm trying to write good poetry. I'm trying to produce something utterly synthetic and sell it as philosophy. I'm a fucking scenester. I hate people like me.

In between writing stanzas better suited for boys with feathered hair and girl's jeans than the intellectual elite I'm ignoring my other work and trying to subscribe to a work-out regiment. So I'm trying to look better before swimsuit season. Fucking sellout.

And as sick as I am of the whole "Waahh, I'm upper middle class white with feelings and no one understands them" mentality, I can't help relate. It's this cancerous feeling of not belonging in the pit of my stomach.

Where's my golden girl?

"The only people for me are the mad ones. The ones who are mad to love, mad to talk, mad to be saved; the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."

You know you've hit a new plateau of lameness when you snag quotes from your facebook profile to convey tone in your blog - which incidently has an RSS feed with facebook and loads all blog entries into the page's "notes" section.

Christ.

Bomb the blogosphere,
Mike

In honor of High Fidelity:
My Top 5...
Pump-Up Songs

5. "Invalid Litter Dept." by At the Drive-In (tie)
5. "Post Script" by Finch (tie)
4. "Timberwolves of New Jersey" by Taking Back Sunday
3. "Amphetamine" by Everclear
2. "Let's Go" by Trick Daddy ft. Lil Jon and Twista
1. "Victoria's Secret" by Sonata Arctica (don't knock it 'til you try it)

Honorable Mention:
"Fight Club Theme" by Nine Inch Nails
"Theme Song of a New Brunswick Basement Show" by Lifetime

"Always ten feet tall"

2007-01-11T22:51:00.000-05:00

So winter break, in all its ups and downs, draws to a close as friends trickle down the Parkway or some other more interstate superhighway and I find myself whiling away the evening hours alone... again.

Such is the end of anything though, I suppose. But I'm beginning to really believe it's true that it's better to burn out than it is to fade away. At least then you don't have to worry about the weekends spent in limbo... in fumbling preparation for closure. It's just, poof, concluded. I guess that's not the way the world works though. And what kind of mixtape would my life be without transitional sequences, right? right.

Everyone is all "God, I can't wait to get back to RU!" or "Man, my homies at Harvard must be missin' my gangsta ass." Even facebook statuses proclaim a longing for Universities missed and friends missing. Brittney is MiSsIn hEr RaMaPoOo gUrLeEz! lol!!1 <333

Christ.

Everyone.

Everyone.

Everyone... and yet the funny thing about it is how easy it is for me to get comfortable. With people, with places, with habits, with whatever. But I'm thinking that when you get rooted so easily, constant upheavals... constant instances of uprootedness weaken your grip. Weaken my grip.

Elipses imply uncertainty. Almost always.

As often, at least, as they imply a presence of the unspoken.

Just pause to add your own intentions. Right here.

...

Feel better? Neither you nor I, dear reader, will ever be able to, respectively, read between those dots. So fuck 'em. Fuck 'em all.

Oh, home. Which house is yours?

Bomb the blogosphere,
Mike

...

"So this is the new year"

2007-01-01T02:39:00.000-05:00

And, really, I don't feel any different.

So this is the new year.
And I don't feel any different.
The clanking of crystal
Explosions off in the distance.

It's truly been one hell of year. I pretty much did all of the obligatory recapping in my last entry, detailing friendships made and friendships kept. I talked about my classes and about my friends. Nothing much has really changed since then except that I learned just how right I was about everyone. Winter break shared with old friends has been less a breath of fresh air than a desperate gasp. I don't know if it's healthy to cling to the accostomed to with such ferocity - and I know even less if I'm even going to let it bother me.

Granted, I miss my friends from college too. It's two different worlds really. And I was never terribly good at juggling.

So this is the new year
And I have no resolutions
For self-assigned penance
For problems with easy solutions.

But this isn't about last year. This isn't about Bava house parties or Harvard or Europe or Prom or Graduation or Summer of '06 or my first semester away from home. This isn't about mistakes made or questionable decision making. This isn't nostalgia and this certainly isn't about regret.

"We are nowhere and it's now."

And what really matter in these first hours of 2007 is the twelve empty pages of calendar days ahead. It's impossible to tell where I'll be in 365 days. I couldn't tell you now if i'll be enrolled in Ramapo or Rutgers. I couldn't tell you if I'll be single or in a relationship or madly in love. I couldn't tell you now if I'll still be making music in the wee hours of the night, seeking solace in the satisfaction of independent accomplishment. I don't know if I'll be drunk or sober, stoned or sitting by the window, dreaming. Maybe in a year I won't be listening to Death Cab or Bright Eyes. Maybe I will be. I couldn't tell you now what will have unfolded or changed or fallen apart or been built. I couldn't tell you. All I really know is that in 365 days I'll be here, typing about how I don't feel any different. But I will be.

So everybody put your best suit or dress on
Let's make believe that we are wealthy for just this once
Lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn
As thirty dialogues bleed into one.

New Years resolutions are for people who need some empty promise to motivate them in rectifying something about themselves that they or their partner find troublesome.

This year, I do not resolve to lose weight. I do not resolve to go to the gym more or to do extra crunches to trim baggage off because I'm supposed to want to. I do not resolve to make more of an effort to talk to girls or to be friendly to everyone. I'm probably not going to join a club. I don't promise that this time next year I'll be self-crafted out of stone. I have neither an iron will nor a shallow heart. I don't resolve to lay off the liquor or stay off cigarettes. I won't allow myself to be governed by anything like it.

This year, I will sing whatever tunes is in my head and blaze whatever trail leads to where I want to be. I will keep my friends close and my enemies far far away. I will contribute to conversation in a lively and effervescent manner. I will laugh obnoxiously and, grinning, tell stories. I will play my guitar as loud as it'll go. And I might play out of key. I'll live. I'll be.

I wish the world was flat like the old days
Then I could travel just by folding a map
No more airplanes, or speedtrains, or freeways
There'd be no distance that can hold us back.

New Year's Eve is the most popular suicide night of the calendar year.

And we're all still here. We've got clean slates and another handful of weeks to accomplish and experience and to fall in love. We've got clear sailing. We've got blue skies 'til morning.

There'll be no distance that can hold us back.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

Lyric Credit "The New Year" by Death Cab for Cutie

Unearthing clues to where the wild things went

2006-12-14T03:44:00.000-05:00

At 3:44am on what is technically a Thursday morning I suppose it's fairly safe to say that I have nothing better to do than compose and hopefully publish a blog entry. I can sleep when I'm dead.

So it seems that a semester come is a semester gone, predictably quickly when counting in college minutes. There are a whole lot of things to think about and reflect on after having experienced something as new and unusual as one's first couple monthes away from home. One's first real experience with self reliance and responsibility. So what better a time and a medium for expressing such sentiments than here and now? I can't think of any, and I'll be damned if you can either.

College courses are interesting to say the very least. My week began at 8am on Monday morning with Professor Janusko's smiling, or grimacing, ol' mug. The thing is though, I didn't really mind getting up early after a busy weekend for English class. It was structured in such a way that it was easy to settle into and get used to. There weren't any surprises. Just 20 or so minutes of discussion, 20 or so minutes of freewriting and 20 or so minutes of sharing what we've written. Somewhere in there was a rant and a tangent, but for the most part they were interesting and enlightening. Additionally, Rob J's sense of humor was unparalleled as far as any teacher I've ever had is concerned. Somehow he managed to see the comedy in my half-asleep rants about Frederick Douglass or my masterpiece composition detailing a 6-step method for women to defy the tyranny of men. That's great. Finally, an english teacher with an appreciation for individual style, one who doesn't expect his student to conform to his ideals. Refreshing. I'll miss him.

Feizi's Bio class was Bio, there's nothing more that can really be said. 90 minutes twice a week of him talking at us in his Iranian accent, trying and failing miserably to accurately pronounce and spell the words whose definition he was trying to convey. But still, he had a personality to him that made him more than likeable. Especially when he told everyone to stop smoking cigarettes and start smoking marijuana. That was great.

American Studies was my least favorite class for several reasons. First was the professor. She did not like me. I don't know if she didn't like me because I wasn't a radical feminist, because I wasn't a minority, because I'm male, or because I refused to simply agree with the dumbass opinions she had about everything. Second, I considered myself liberal upon entering Ramapo. Leaving that Am Studies class I felt neo-conservative. A direct quote from one of the lovely future Political Science majors here at Ramapo: "We should really just redistribute the wealth so that everyone is equal. Then there won't be so many problems with like, poverty and stuff." Huh. Someone slap me next time I accidently register for Communism 101. Seriously. I have no idea what my final grade will be in that course but I'm pretty sure I don't care. I have bigger things to worry about than some woman who gets her jollies out of penalizing students for thinking for themselves.

Leadership Skills meant John Yao. John Yao is the man. The class was painfully short for the amount of material available, so I really hope they consider that for the next time they run it.

First Year Seminar. New York. I couldn't possibly have more mixed feelings than I do now, writing about this class. It's one of those things that you absolutely hate and can't stop talking shit about until it's all over and done with and you realize how much you learned and got out of it. I'd never written a 15 page research paper on a neighborhood before. I'd never written, directed, shot, cut, produced, and presented an amateur film before. I'd never scoured the streets of Manhattan in a desperate attempt to find some random-ass coffee shop's name. But I have now. And I'm seriously all the better for it. I've fallen in love with Manhattan, all its opportunities and all that it stands for. In addition, I've met some of the coolest people here at the 'po through this course. Ali and Jess, who scared me with their zaniness on that first walking tour. Sean and his infinite insight and honesty. Noah and his stellar taste in music. Val. Susie. Trina. Elisa. Sam. Heather. Kevin. Yes, Kevin. Everyone added something fantastic and facinating to my first semester here. And if I didn't mention your name here explicitly you probably had such a profound effect on me that that particular part of my brain is numb.

Yeah.

People are important in life.

And here I guess I can say I've met some sweet ones. Keith, Brian, Mark, Kim, Casey, Jenny, Jill, Ryan, Ali, Jess, Justin, et cetera et cetera et cetera. The list could go on for quite a while longer but it's tragically limited by my laziness. Everyone contributed to the flavor of these past few monthes. We've been through great times. We've been through shit times. But as lame as it sounds, we weathered them together. So whatever. You kids are fuckin' cool.

And still, I miss my crew from home more and more every day. Every joke, song or movie seems to remind me of something awesome shared by one or more of us back in Freehold, 'Nallypan, Mar'boro, or Howell. I miss driving aimlessly North and South on Route 9, knowing no other directions or deviations. I miss chilling at the Bava castle or scarfing half-priced appetizers at Applebee's post-10pm. I fucking miss Wawa. It's impossible to imagine a life without Steve, Mike, Eric, Kristen, Christie, Bryan, Nicole^2, Dan, Jim, John, and everyone else. So I dunno. The Rutgers transfer application sits on my desk unfinished and I couldn't really tell you what next year, or even next semester brings in those terms. And I think I'll die if I don't see my drama homies from high school. My life needs some Dustin, Boasi, Egizi, Brent, Buccheri and Yodice lovin' in it. Some lovin' I intent to secure over break.

Love at Ramapo is, thus far, unseen and growing unbelieved in. Everyone constantly tells me that she'll walk into my life the second I stop looking, but I find this silly and terribly unrealistic. I sometimes wonder what I could change about myself to make me more accessible, to become that guy I want, that everyone wants, to be or know or be close to. I believe in knowing thyself. And I believe in making thyself. Still. Vision is so easily blurred, you know. Direction is so easily... misdirected. Despite this, I talk a big enough talk in my lectures to Jimmy and such that I suppose it's time that I myself started holding my head up higher. Besides, how can one see all there is to see with his head fixed on his feet? I guess he can't. And I guess I haven't been. New Years resolutions are only worth so much, but a little goes a long way in this crazy mixed up world of intangible currencies.

But I have found passion at Ramapo. Slam poetry has consumed me and fills every blank page slid in front of me. Next semester I'll be taking TOPICS: Advanced Creative Writing (skipping the initial Creative Writing course entirely, in my infinite wisdom) so that should either make or break me. Maybe we'll all see the beginnings of that novel I've been putting off. Maybe I'll finally share the shit I DO have. Maybe. We'll see.

So that brings me to now. 4:23am. But not feeling any earlier or later. Like our time together, me and this machine, was spent in some rift in time. Independent of anything more than the topic at hand. Venting. Recovery. It felt good, and this shit ran a lot longer than I thought it would. I have no doubt that spelling and gramatical errors run abound. But I'm pretty sure I don't care, and if you do... well. I'm pretty sure I don't care about that either.

Happy Holidays to all, and to all a Good Morning...

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

Tryptophan, baby

2006-11-21T18:11:00.000-05:00

I have, for as long as I can remember, considered Thanksgiving an overcommercialized slab of purposeless slobber. I thought, "What could possibly be the value in a celebration recognized only by Americans - one of the few days of the year that we all stop bitching and reassess our positions in life, recognizing really how lucky we are." This internal statement was often responded to with the further internal sentiment "fuck that." It takes a serious uprooting, a change in circumstance, to force those such as myself to take inventory of our blessings and give thanks to all those who deserve it. Every year we would go around the dinner table and say what we are thankful for. For me, and I'm sure I'm not alone here, such a practice was more an excercize in convincing bullshittery than anything else. As I've alluded to, however, something about this year is different. And what better a forum for expressing my gratification than to the millions who populate the internet at a given second? So allow me to waste a little more of your time, dear reader, and give credit where credit is due. Maybe this way I'll provide, at least for myself, some substance to what before now has just been a square on the calendar. I am thankful for these things:

Ramapo Friends - While my definition, and indeed the list of those who compile this list is constanly changing, I am nevertheless thankful for all that you have done to/for me. There are times when lonliness can be a big big bitch, adn in these times it's really comforting to have a friend. Someone to sit around and talk about nothing with. Whether we're scouring campus for something resembling a good time or basking in our own snobbery, detailing with great wit our shared discontent with RCNJ's offerings, these are the times and relationships that make people - and I'm happy to be sharing them with you.

High School Friends in College - We are long overdue to have an enormous party. An enormous sloppy get-together. Thank you all so much for the memories and the promise of future glories ahead.

The New Jersey Forensic League - The NJFL is the shit. It was incredible to observe the speech and debate scene from a judge's standpoint, finally becoming "the enemy." Sure I miss competing. Having only done so for a year and a half, I can't help but know that I cheated myself out of quite the experience. But still. Returning and getting to see all the high school kids I competed against, coaches, judges, and the lovely Randolph girls was amazing. And then there's this little team that I'm affiliated with. I couldn't possibly by prouder. I see national competitors in so many of you, including but not limited to Alanna, Joe, Nicole, Priyanka and Big Scott, the freshman LD demigod. Thanks for welcoming me back and giving me something valuable to do with my Saturdays.

The Patriot Players - I type this having just returned from a rehearsal of the aforementioned and anything I said about being welcomed back warmly goes 100x here. Returning to the drama club is like being some hero of war returning to his home country after global conquest. It was so great to see all of you - to notice that you're all growing up but that you haven't changed a bit. Every little dynamic and paradigm is still there. From the moment Joe grabbed my ass I knew that this was the club that I had invested so much in throughout high school. And what's more, you're carrying on everything we've instilled in you with such luster and might. Thank you for that.

Mike Locke/ Eric Branning/ Steve Kropa - The Big 3. There's little I can say here. You dudes are my boys, my best friends, my... dare I say... bros. Thanks for being fuckin' awesome.

The Female Population - Thank you. Just thank you.

That is all for tonight. Hope everyone has a safe holiday. Happy thanksgiving!

Bomb the blogosphere,
Mike

FUCK

2006-11-13T16:18:00.000-05:00

Fuck.

After nearly completing the longest blog entry ever (trademark) firefox fucking "quits unexpectedly" and I lost everything.

Fuck you Firefox.

And fuck you Blogger for not having a recovery feature.

Minimalism.

2006-11-08T21:09:00.000-05:00

It's raining.

Inside and out.

I am out of my fuckin' mind

2006-10-30T19:16:00.000-05:00

Dane Cook.

November 12.

Floor seats.

Be jealous.

"This is more exciting than that time we went to see 'Sunshine'."
-Keith Stratton

Forgive my lack of tact.

2006-10-24T02:30:00.000-04:00

Please do. This hasn't been prepared. This hasn't been edited or proofread. This is pure unadultered NOW. Odds are it'll come out as a couple paragraphs of slobber. I couldn't possibly give less of a fuck.

I have been at Ramapo College of New Jersey for more than a month and more and more I wonder where the college experience is. What the hype is all about. I spend hours at a time sitting at the desk of my dorm room checking facebook for attention tossed my way from friends at other Universities. I pour over pictures of their drunken escapades, smiling faces, throngs of new friends. I read their walls and laugh as if I understand the inside jokes therein. I sit on AIM and hold online conversations with kids left behind, confidently comfortable in their high school situations. Perhaps this is because they're seriously satisfied with clique dynamics and the "mean girls microcosm". More likely they're counting the days until they too get to toss their caps into the air and join everyone else on the long trail to mediocrity. We expect to leave high school when we graduate. I didn't sign on for four more years of it.

Some of this is doubtlessly my own fault. For all my pretty wordplay I certainly would expect an element of maturity of myself which doesn't appear present. I still care too much about what people think. I'm still shy around girls and I still get my feelings hurt way to easily. Oh. And I still fucking hate myself. For all the aforementioned reasons. For my uncanny ability to always be around (cause?) all the goddamned drama. And then I drink. Maybe it's my suicide. More likely it's satisfaction to my desperate need to feel loved.

I left LiveJournal to symbolize an end to the self-loathing, girl chasing diary entries ripped from the pages of a fucking Chbosky novel. Old habits die hard.

What do I need? I can't even wrap my tongue, or in absense of an ear to listen, my keyboard around an appropriate articulation. I need so badly someone to love. Someone to send flowers to for no good reason. Someone to go on chilly autumn walks with. Someone to give my jacket to when she shivers. Someone to drink hot chocolate and count stars with, to sit in silence for hours... speaking nothing and saying everything. Someone to hug and hold. To watch smile and to watch glow.

Someone to write love songs about.

But the more I think about it, the more conclusive I am that I am so undeserving of that. Of that love.

Everything here is so fucking unstable. One day someone is pissed. The next the offending party, distraught with the effects of its actions, tosses and turns wondering how to make well. And then it's like... everything is hunky fucking dorey except the hole in my heart because I lost sleep over you and you never needed me half as much as I still need you.

No one knows what my problem is, least of all myself.

Bomb the fucking Blogosphere,
Mike

Good Ol' Fashioned Lover Boy

2006-10-17T00:58:00.000-04:00

Video I made for Keith's Birthday:

The Longest Winter.

2006-10-03T19:09:00.000-04:00

I wrote this bit of free-form prose in Bio class (naturally) and I swore that I wouldn't post it. But now I am. It doesn't really matter. We're each entitled to reflection on our histories, am I right? If someone reads this who was never supposed to, well, whatever. My experiences and my life are mine to share. With the internet. Hm. Yeah.

~*~

"The Longest Winter"

It's been the longest winter I can remember - not that it isn't completely and utterly self-imposed. I sit in my snowglobe and recall exactly what it was to be two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, sifting through all the shit the world has to offer and finding each other a breath, no, a violent gasp, for the drowning. Rewind two years and I'm sixteen and tragically poetic. She's two years my junior and beautiful in a way that can't be expressed in numbers or even in color - but rather in passion and in prose, in springtime and in song. She is unconventional in the most appealing way and her smile completes me. She is a tiny dancer and she is infinite. Radiant. She is the rock to my roll - my bumbling, baffled baffoonery. She is mine and I am so in love.

She stops me in the hallway and starts up and I'm all "maybe? Now? Ready? Foreign. How can I? What if I? I want want want so badly and yet yet yet yet yet... here? Please please please just kiss..." inside my head. Externally I am silent and it is so hard to find the words to express how desperately enraptured I am. She kisses me and everything I had read about fireworks and circles of stars exlode in surest understatement. The bell rings and we separate. For the rest of the day the smile never leaves my face and my feet don't once touch the ground.

Then somewhere I fuck up and am once again drowning.

I leave her in favor of some fairy tale dream which I chase and I chase and am forever eluded by, some oversimplified reflection of my horrific selfishness. Lost was everything we shared. the laughs, the literature, the magic, the film, the music. Oh, God. The music...

I hear "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" play over and over and over and over and yet... a feeling shared by kings and vagabonds both is a feeling I have felt and thrown away. She is beautiful and I am so so stupid.

I can't even come close to articulating how much I miss her. I miss her constant encouragement, laughter, passion, antiquity, tiny hands, powerful voice, funny glasses that she let me wear when she stole my sunglasses. I miss the jittery nervous feeling - the butterflies I got in the pit of my stomach when she signed online. I miss "Almost Famous" and "The Perks of Being a Wallflower". I miss her warmth, her kiss, her love. I miss her.

It's been the longest winter I can remember and there are monthes to go before I wake.

~*~

Yeah. Huh.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

Aborted.

2006-09-22T00:31:00.000-04:00

Recently I've gotten really into free-form prose. It's not something I ever sit down intending to do. I've been writing a lot of it in Biology class. You know. When I'm supposed to be taking notes. I limit myself to one notebook page per piece. I'm sure I'll be doing a lot of this in the coming monthes. On lucky days, I'll post the results here.

I have to disclaim first. The following is a statement, not necessarily a reflection of my own ideals. Also, none of my grammar nor useage has been corrected for posting here. You get the raw deal.

So here it is. The first of my free-form prose postings. Enjoy.

~*~

"Aborted."

Honey you and I alive and ignited are fire in the sky, burning Gods and beasts across the miles. We are each of us constellations dancing through the depthes of midnight immeasurable by modern science. We are as infinite as the soldiers in the stars before us. We are as limitless as we are open to interpretation. We are lovers engaged in epic toil the scale of which is limited only by perception and the will of God allowing men to so perceive.

We see shooting stars less as wishes cast on wings of hope but instead as the seeds of giants tossed carelessly over darkness. Each one a symbol both of life and of lust - unbridled alignment of signs and scars, of starbursts and supernovas not for creation but for satisfaction.

We are as dark and deep as black holes ending galaxies.

TONIGHT WE ARE BIGGER THAN GOD.

God defines and punishes sin. God solicits prayers for forgiveness of sin among other things - for lottery victories and blessings on voyage. For health and happiness and "God save the Queen!"...

WE ARE SIN.

We fuck a thousand miles above the hemisphere not in celebration of life nor in procreation nor even in love. We fuck because we are so selfish and so sick of the same God damned skyline. While millions fuck below we birth stillborn planets. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.

Aborted.

Each explosion is our passion and each scripture is fuel in the fire. We have lost faith so many years ago.

SO JUST WATCH THE FIREWORKS.

"Don't let the sun go down on me"

2006-09-14T15:08:00.000-04:00

More importantly, don't let the sun make its way onto your list of "must-see" movies in 2007.

I refer, of course, to the 2007 Danny Boyle (28 Days Later) film "Sunshine" of which Keith and I saw a screening of last night. The basic premise of the plot is this: In the somewhat near future the sun is dying and, by a simple logical process, so is the earth. The planet's most able scientists purge the land for all remaining resources and invest them in the constuction of what is pretty much just a giant nuclear bomb. Naturally, an international team of physicists and astronauts must embark into space on a ship that looks retardedly like a giant golden contact lense to ignite the bomb and "restart" the sun. Onboard the Icarus II is an oxygen replenishing garden, a freezing cold well in which computers are stored, and a room in which one character looks at the sun a lot. You can taste the originality. En route to the sun the Icarus II picks up a signal from the Icarus I, which was lost in space seven years previously. Physicist and main character Capa played by Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Batman Begins) makes the tough decision to change the trajectory of the ship so as to take the bomb (referred to in the film as a "payload" which opens a whole host of innuendos that I'm not even going to touch) and have a second shot at saving the world should their own payload fail. Of course... disaster, insanity, sexual tension, and terrible cinematography ensue.

Right now you are most certainly saying, "But Mike, haven't I seen this movie before?"

And the answer to your question would be "Yes" you have. This streak on the underwear of cinema is most easily described as the child of the mediocre "Armageddon" and the horrendous "Event Horizon". The ugly child. With down syndrome.

We'll get the good stuff out of the way first. Granted, what we saw was still in post-production so whoever is producing this thing could still pull the plug and leave with his dignity. Also, the CGI was incomplete but that doesn't much matter as I wasn't about to discuss the absurd overabundance of sunscape shots and poorly placed beams of light anyway.

Cillian Murphy and Rose Byrne are actually quite good. Their characters shine (har har) particularly brightly (har har) onscreen together, somehow managing to bring humanity to a bleak and dim (okay, I'll stop) screenplay. Cillian's Capa is the textbook unlikely hero, establishing himself as a big softie shortly after the film begins through a video mail to his family back on earth. He is tragically sensitive and responsive to pressure, human both in emotion and imperfection. The audience actually gives a shit when he is in danger. Rose is the likely compliment. She's the girl you grew up playing manhunt with before suddenly realizing that she's smokin' hot. She is young but subborn, petite but intelligent. Her soft presence commands scenes as they are such a contrast to nearly every other character in the movie. She is fragile. A voice of morality amongst a sea of mechanized characters and two-dimensional personalities. The two are a joy to watch and I look forward to seeing them work together in a film that doesn't take place on a fucking UFO and that wasn't written by a four year old.

Unfortunately, the good points (sans the Postal Service-esque soundtrack) end there. The rest of the movie pretty much sucks. What's-his-fuck from The Fantastic Four (Chris Evans) fills the role of the gritty loose cannon, the man dedicated so firmly to the mission that he'd sacrafice any crew member to see it through. He's the Rafael of the cast (yes, the red Ninja Turtle. Leave my analogies alone). Unfortunately for viewers of "Sunshine", his performance is about as good here as it is in TF4. Which means it isn't. Good, that is. The rest of the characters really don't fit into the group dynamic at all - from the asian chick who loves to garden to the asian dude with a terrible memory to the asian capt... wait. What the fuck? I guess in order to obtain international appeal Boyle casted as many asians as possible. He probably hates blacks and hispanics. Nazi douchebag.

I won't ruin the ending for you, or completely detail the rediculous connection to "Event Horizon" but if you're smart, you don't care anyway. 2007 brings with it Spiderman 3, Shrek the third, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Transformers, The Simpsons, Harry Potter 5 (okay, I'm stretching) so why in God's name would you spend money on this trash? That's right. You wouldn't.

Thanks for reading, and you're welcome in advance.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

In a sunrise

2006-09-08T10:30:00.000-04:00

Whatever beauty is in the breakdown cannot possibly compare to the beauty in a sunrise. There's something sweet and comfortable in the air here, filling one with the gladness of a dawning. Of a springtime. Of a beginning.

I find that I have a difficult time writing here. I sit down with every intention, and certainly enough material, of writing an entry and nothing comes out. Maybe it's atmospherically based. I need to settle before I can be enough at ease to make wonderful wonderful love to the english language. To channel it's sexiness and, contorted, plop it on the page you're reading. Like a literary funnel cake. Yeah. That's it.

Because of the aforementioned, my articles will likely be a little on the shorter side. I'm sure they will gradually progress to the massive size of one or two of my previous pieces.

College is awesome.

The group of friends I've made is incredible and the potential for further good friendmaking, especially in my First Year Seminar course, is virtually limitless. It's really amazing how fast crazy shit can happen. And seriously. I could never get the hang of Thursdays. But when everyone is there for each other, even having just met, it's gotta be a sign of great things to come.

I've had some class but not a lot of homework. This is both a boon and bane in that while I'm certainly glad I don't have any... I feel like I should. Oh. And I want my fucking textbooks already, bookstore. God.

So yeah.

Hello, Ramapo College of New Jersey. You beautiful ol' bastard, you.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

A bright day for the Black Sheep Boy

2006-08-31T23:56:00.000-04:00

Holy Shit.

The man, the legend: Lou fucking Reed just gave my favorite band (who no one has ever heard of), Okkervil River, a shout-out on the fucking MTV Video Music Awards. It is a beautiful day for indie rock bands and a dark, terrible day for pretentious hipster snobs. Thank you, Lou Reed. Thank you!

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

We sank Manhattan out at sea

2006-08-31T16:58:00.000-04:00

It always rains when I am in New York City.

Tuesday, August 29th is no exception. I awake to grey clouds and greyer worries, I'm simultaneously thrilled and terrified to meet my future schoolmates. Nevertheless, my mother drives Chris and I to the Little Silver train station where the ticket machines don't carry any change. On the way we look in desperation for a Dunkin Donuts so I can satisfy my hunger for a Dunkaccino and fuel my unhealthy addiction to caffine. Our efforts are in vain and we are unable to find a single chain store whereas there are like 7000 on Route 9. I find out later that after my mother dropped us off she found one on the one street we didn't check. Needless to say she didn't bring us anything back.

It is at this point that I meet the Messiah and two other fellow Ramapoers.

Keith, Brian, and Kevin (Jesus) arrive at the station shortly after we do, Keith and Kevin sporting "Legends of the Hidden Temple" T-Shirts (Orange Iguanas and Blue Barracudas, respectively). Our train arrives at about 9:27 and we're on our way. The train ride is largely uneventful so Chris hands me an earbud from his ipod and we silently jam out to 90's music. I'm positive that every song we listen to on the way to Penn was on one "Now!" compilation or another. After making a less-confusing-than-we-anticipated transfer in Newark we get to New York, Penn Station. From there we find our way outside and lumber over to one of many many many (many) local Starbucks. We are joined shortly by the rest of our contingent, who I will attempt to name now. In addition to Chris, Keith, Brian S, Kevin and myself there was Jill, Brian B, Pat, Mark and Matt - most of whom, I believe, had attended previous meet-ups and were already a part of the fantastic brotherhood to which I would soon subscribe. We all shake hands, introduce ourselves, and banter about what we want to do.

Right then, or a little beforehand, it starts raining.

We retire our discussion to a nearby McDonald's and eventually come to the conclusion that we have no conclusion. So we decided to relocate to the Manhattan Mall, where evidently the atmosphere makes decision-making easier. Following a brief stop at a smoothie joint for "shit shakes" (you know, those smoothies that help get rid of, or promote, diarrhea). Kevin attempts to chug his but his neglect to first turn it into wine comes back to bite him in the brain. Each of us complete a free sample circuit and it is agreed upon to center our trip around Times Square.

The NBC building is among our first stops, the highlight of which is us almost getting so see Rachael Ray! Here is what wikipedia has to say about Rachael Ray:

"Rachael Domenica Ray (born August 25, 1968 in Cape Cod, Massachusetts) is an Emmy-winning television personality and author who hosts at least four different programs on cable television's Food Network: 30 Minute Meals, $40 a Day, Inside Dish, and Rachael Ray's Tasty Travels. She has authored a series of cookbooks based on the 30 Minute Meals concept. She will also host a syndicated TV talk show starting on Monday, September 18, 2006."

Wowee Zowee. That woulda been sweet.

We wander around Times Square fairly aimlessly and eventually venture to the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue (really fucking far away) which is pretty sweet. Two of the employees almost splooge all over the "LOTHT" shirts that Keith, Kevin, Pat, and Jill are wearing. So the ramapoers kindly direct them to a website at which they can purchase, and splooge on if they so desires, their own. We depart and make the long-ass trip back to the square. Brian B is a nut and a champion of dodging traffic. I am impressed. I'm realizing as I type this that I have completely forgotten what order we did things in. So whatever. Deal with it.

The Virgin Megastore is exactly what the name implies. There's like a bazillion CDs and DVDs in the place but they've sold out of "Snakes on a Train". We mourn its temporary loss and move on. On the CD racks we discuss music and and Kevin proves to us that not only is he the king of the jews, but the king of metal as well.

We visit a local sheet music shop and discuss musical taste further, largely agreeing on a universal distaste for Creed and Nickelback. Everyone loves the 90s, however, and I am thrilled. This store had sheet music for some of the shittiest bands ever. O-Town anyone? Who the fuck wants a Dream Street guitar chord book? No one. That's who.

Toys "R" Us provided the most entertainment of all our stops. I worry for a generation of American youth raised on Bratz dools. In fact, I blame the entire "McSlut" revolution on terrible terribly effective marketing schemes. You too can be a whore! Just like your favorite Bratz doll! Just roll on some lipstick and eyeliner, wear scantily clad apparel, and stand on the streets giving BJs for nickels! What a world. Some of the playsets are also hilariously sexist. Like the kitchenette at which the little girl wearing the apron serves the little boy his breakfast. Then again, the little boy was on his knees. I think there's some gender confusion shit going on there.

We eat at Applebees, which is exactly the same as Applebees here except that everything costs $6 more. Literally. Those bastards. Keith, Jill, Brian, Pat, and Kevin resolve to fight the tickets they recieved over the weekend and the world rejoices.

The best part of the entire tip, however, was meeting the awesome homeless man bearing the sign "Need money for beer, drugs, and hooker. Hey, at least I'm not bullshitting you." After donating generously to his worthy cause we participated in a dialogue that went something like this:

"Get that fucking camera out!" (We all pose for a picture, flashing our fingers) "Fuck yeah. Are you kids American?"

"Yeah..."

"Aww I fuckin' knew it man. American kids are the fuckin' best man. Not like those fuckin' French kids. French kids fuckin' suck!"

We leave our racist friend behind and eventually it is time to depart. After dropping Brian B and Jill off at Port Authority we realize how little time we have to make our train. We rush past various sex shops and peep shows and soon arrive at Penn Station at exactly the moment our train is departing. Of course... we miss it. The next 42 minutes are spent sitting and waiting, bullshitting to pass the time, and discussing our excitement and worry about beginning college. Too soon, we get home.

As I reflect on this I can easily conclude that going was a good idea. The group I shared the day with was absolutely incredible, whether we were flipping TRL off or belting the "Crossfire" theme song, I felt somewhat comfortable even having just met them earlier that day. Granted I have no idea what they think of me, but I sincerely hope that we all continue to hang out and become great friends over our course at the 'po.

I guess it goes to show that despite the rain and despite the grey, there's always light on Broadway. A beacon of hope for a battered army.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

"Everything that keep us together is falling apart."

2006-08-27T22:50:00.000-04:00

She talks a good game. She really does. And it breaks my heart to think its possibly she's just telling me what I want to hear. She always talks about how we'll all stay friends even in college and how we'll get to see each other all the time despite everything. And yet I can't help but feel like she grew up without us - and has greater aspirations for friendship than we can keep. But it is what it is.

Last night was what I'm sure will be one of the last social gatherings of the summer, and of this chapter in my life. Eric, Tom, Diana and I went to Applebees and, over half priced appetizers, talked for hours about nothing. I'm going to, and to some extent already do, miss that. It's all at the same time hysterical and nostalgic and magical and close and carefree and whimsical and it's home. Two years ago we all went to the very same resteraunt and laughed until there was italian dressing running out of our noses (quite literally in some's case). It was there that we all, exhausted and punch drunk, exhanged sex stories, secret and pent up desires. I invented the table-crippling self-cleansing device. And it was there, last night, on almost hallowed grounds, that we said goodbye.

It's true though.

"Everyone is afraid of their own life."

Sorry this one is so short but it's so hard to hold on to something when everything is so desperately in transit.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

"Round here..."

2006-08-24T01:07:00.000-04:00

"...we always stand up straight."

It comes with a sort of grim dawning that I realize it really is less than two weeks until liftoff. On September 4th I set sail for voyaging the treacherous waters of Ramapo College of New Jersey (I realize that I neglected to mention my school last night. oops). It's a little bit funny and a lotta bit sad watching each of my friends parting ways and, one by one, disappearing into the gathering dark. I don't know how anyone can stand watching relationships they've invested so much in flicker and die. How can anyone just let four years lived be four years passed? How can I, in the time it takes to say goodbye, let these people know how much they mean to me? And how much I'll miss them?

It would be a good night for fog because there is gloom over Freehold tonight.

I spent my evening driving aimlessly with my good friend and fellow graduate Steve (you can keep up with Steve here) and partner in political turmoil Johnny B, a new senior in a high school I'm now sufficiently qualified to call Hell. Stops on our journey included Best Buy to play "Guitar Hero" and check out the Snakes on a Plane soundtrack (the inclusion of Panic! At the Disco frightens and disturbs me. This is a horror that cannot possibly be unintentional. Curse you, Samuel L!), Applesomething or other Farms for ice cream (now the story here is that there's an assisted living home called Applesomething Estates, and I can never ever ever get the two straight. Sue me), and Walgreens so I could pee and drink Sobe. I sure love Sobe. Naturally conversation ranged from sex to rock and roll to parties and everything associated to wisdom teeth to literature to people we'll never see again to the future and beyond to three hometown boys with nothing to do, as always, back to sex. It's a vicious conversational cycle and I love nearly nothing more.

"Round here... something radiates..."

Steve leaves for Temple U this Friday. He is a symbol of everyone before him and everyone who will follow him on the path to a future without me in it as much as I wish I could be.

But of course, every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. And a host of "goodbye"s means limitless opportunity for "hello"s. I'll be meeting a number of my fellow Ramapo '06ers next week. With that, allow me to digress and sing the praises of the internet:

Never before have I seen such incendiary use to online resources as a medium for friendship and interaction. I am referring, of course, to the Facebook. Someone in my incoming class, who I'll leave nameless due to the inevitable throngs of people who will want to stalk him, decided it would be pretty sweet to meet people before move-in day. So he planned some meet-ups. Not one. Not two. Like... twelve... or some crazy shit like that. How awesome? For someone to afford everyone the opportunity to forge relationships before semester even begins? I'm meeting him at the train station next week and I hope it's the beginning of a long friendship.

End digression.

They say that you can make new friends and keep the old. But can you? I can't imagine not doing so. I can't picture myself updating this thing in three months having replaced the people that keep me going and who have without a doubt made me who I am. Watching names drop off my "call to hang out" list is like a countdown to drowning. But still I look forward, engraving in memory forever driving down route 9 head-banging to Muse and laughing about how much promise there is.

It's 1:52 am.

"Round here we stay up very very very very late..."

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike

It was the summer of '06

2006-08-22T15:11:00.000-04:00

Key word, at this point, being "was".

I've been toying around with the idea of starting a blog ever since livejournal began losing its luster. Nothing against livejournal of course. For two years I updated religiously - pouring every bit of passion I had, in whatever it was at the time I was passionate about, and inevitably flooded cyberspace with my issues. This is not to say that my time spent playing the online journal game was wasted. I lived and breathed for comments posted. I weathered fights and controversies, however petty, that were violently accellerated by the publicity associated with internet slander. I mourned loves lost and celebrated newfound interest. I was, for once, participating in something bigger.

But now I feel that a larger number in my age column requires, or even entitles, me to leave a community that is so unfortunately labeled "high school". As we throw our caps in the air we, referring to whatever breakdown of american youth I am most familiar with, do several things in very quick succession. We delete our myspaces and make facebooks (which is just as well. The world could use less cancer). We trade in our "Brand New" "Taking Back Sunday" and "The Ataris" records for titles by Kanye West, Dave Matthews, and The Decembrists. And we invariably disassociate from anything we invested in in high school (namely, of course, livejournal. This of course also applies to the MakeOutClub... which I was somehow managed to miss out on. Count my blessings). To make my observation more scholarly, note that the key demographic for livejournal users is 16-18 year old females from California... which sounds interestingly similar to the demographic for MTV's new smash hit "The Hills". Spare me.

So.

Age is change.

Livejournal is passe.

and Indie is hip.

Shaken, not stirred, and served with a crisp twist of irony. Oh what it is to be young.

To clarify and bring this back to a personal account as opposed to an uninspired essay: the move to the blog is me trying to fill shoes I, with a society of young urban satirists beside me, have manifested. This isn't about conformity. It's about identity. And for me it's about finding the best medium for expression. Hello blogger. Oh. And don't ever expect me to throw "Tell All Your Friends" away, Kanye.

It was a good summer.

Despite being enslaved by an army of five year old children in excellent financial situations I managed to find time for seeing people and doing what little there is to do in Monmouth County, New Jersey. For those unaware, I was employed by Rolling Hills Day Camp for the last 8 weeks. To sum the experience up, it's a good thing I didn't start this blog until now. It spares you, the reader, a lot of frustration in attempting to read my ranting. It's absolutely true that you hate the job until the last day, however, at which point you fall in love with it. Translated: tipping was very very good to me. And you know, despite how much anger they can kindle in you, five year olds are really good at getting you emotionally attached to them. I'm going to miss them. Well, a handful of them.

It was also a good year for the movies. After spending ten bucks a pop on tickets for Superman, Pirates of the Caribbean 2, Clerks 2, and, of course, Snakes on a Plane... I can't say I regret it. Seriously though. Snakes on a Plane. Awesome.

It seems as if the summer between your last year of high school and your first year of college is an opportunity, however automatic and mandatory, to filter out lasting friends from superficial ones. You realize, upon graduation, that you don't actually have to be nice to anyone simply because you MUST deal with them on a day to day basis. The result of this is at the same time depressing and liberating. There are a select number of people that I am really truly going to miss. And that upsets me. More on that in future posts I'm sure. Which pretty much segways into college.

College.

What a milestone, man. Four years to simultaneously forge your future and be as irresponsible as you possibly can be. It's scary. It's daunting. It's really really nerve wracking. But I'm excited. This is a clean slate. A chance to start over and remedy anything I ever fucked up in high school. I'll take that in a second.

Which brings us to now. Less than two weeks to liftoff.

Oh, baby.

Bomb the Blogosphere,
Mike