wasted days

hallow’s eve

Today was Halloween. What fun. After school I walked over to Record Service with Ariana, Mark, and Cordelia. Mark and I took the bus home. After dinner I went over to Julie’s party. The Faculty is a horrible movie, in many ways. But of the options, it wasn’t too bad.

Why is it always crappy weather on Halloween? Maybe it has to do with the time of year and my location on the Earth, but it seems like it’s always kinda pissy outside. It’s rarely a clear night, often raining, and it’s always too cold. The cold I can understand, it’s getting to be late in the year. But a cloudless night might be nice, too. Then again, the clouds add to the effect.

Last year it was a full moon on Halloween. That doesn’t happen for another 39 years or something. Made me feel all nice inside, knowing that I was enjoying this and it was relatively unique.

An idea for a nicer layout is beginning to gel in my mind. However, I talk about this too much. So I’m going to shut up and you can see what it is when I’m finished.

Happy Halloween.

soma

Creativity hasn’t been flowing tonight. I tried to create some basics for a slightly less striking template, but it just wouldn’t work. Everything looked like a copy of something else, and I hated all of it. I’ll give it some time and maybe come up with something a little more elegant when my mind isn’t so tense upon the subject.

I’m sorry to bring it up again, but I’ve got to talk about Fight Club a little more. Not so much the movie, as what I want out of life. I was thinking about it yesterday, and after some deliberation I decided that in the end I really want to be the shocking portrait of normality that movies tell us the media is telling us to be. Not immediately, and not entirely, but essentially, at some level, we all want to be Jack. The point of the movie is that everyone strives to be such a character, but no one really wants to be. And yet, I feel I do. Maybe I just need a punch in the stomach to wake me from this illusion. But for the moment I’ll say that I’ll take my 9 to 5, IKEA-dependant, disturbingly stable lifestyle over a torturous and confusing (if sometimes exhilarating) one. Brave New World, here I come. I don’t want a fight for a vacation, I’ll take a couple hours staring into the T.V. It’s the same effect, and there’s a lot less blood.

I doubt the existence of people like the characters in Fight Club. They’re too perfectly anti-everything; it’s too calculated of an insanity.

Now is the time for living. Of this I am convinced. There may be life after 25 (or whenever), but I don’t see how it could measure up to what this is. If it does, I think most people would be dead by the time they were 30. This lifestyle is self-destructive. It’ll run it’s course and end, hopefully without killing me, but in the meantime I’ve got to wake up and smell the napalm, so to speak. I think the majority of living must be done between the age of 13 and 23. It is the time of such great passions, of such monumental highs and lows, that I think it’s time I stopped gazing around in wonder and joined the fray. There’s a life to be lived, and it’s all just passing me by.

“you met me at a very strange time in my life”

the ending has got to be the coolest part of this movie.

i am jack

Today I spent most of the time outside of school watching Fight Club. I still haven’t finished it, since I keep having to stop to do other things. But it has been incredible thus far. A bit… typical, perhaps, in some parts, or overbearing, but at least not predictable. It isn’t enlightening, exactly; it’s too ridiculous in places for that. But it’s still one of the best movies I’ve seen in a while. There are so many great quotes from it, I wish I could remember some more. I could probably use a short phrase from that movie as the title of each of my posts for the next month without issue.

Othello was decent. I admit that I did fall asleep during the second half, abruptly awakened when Roderigo and Cassio stab each other and started screaming. And some of the scenes got to be a bit long. But over all it was an enjoyable experience. I’m proud of myself for following what was going on. I felt bad the Nobu Yuki, the Japanese exchange student, who was right in front of me, because there was no way he had any idea what anyone was saying (we could barely figure it out and we’ve been speaking English our entire lives). This was obvious, because he fell asleep (and I talk of all this sleep quite literally, mind you) before anyone else did. We also laughed at all the wrong times. I’m sure there were countless jokes that no one picked up on, and we tended to laugh whenever one of the characters looked ridiculous. There was no way Willy intended us to find Desdemona’s death by strangulation funny, but everyone (including the teachers) laughed uproariously at the antics of the character.

This template of which I am so proud is quickly starting to tire me. I don’t like the colors, they’re fine temporarily but not to look at too often. Next weekend a new one is on the agenda. Until tomorrow….

brilliant shades of gray

I uploaded my template to blogskins. It’s called noise. I’m so proud of myself. It’s a nice feeling, contributing to a community.

Today was my first Driver’s Ed class. I should have taken it back in August, but we moved too late, and school didn’t offer it again until now. I’m excited, I get a permit anytime after Wednesday night. That should be kickass. Unless I crash or something. The more I think about actually driving, the more dangerous the prospect seems. But regardless, the class isn’t terribly interesting. And it takes up the majority of my afternoon (doesn’t let out until 6), so I have to do all my homework and other stuff after dinner. Which hopefully won’t be too bad. I should be doing that now, in fact.

We’re going to see Othello tomorrow, all the sophomores and freshman. I’ve never seen a complete Shakespearian work in it’s original form. There were some funky adaptations shown to us in middle school (my favorite of which kept all the original dialog from Macbeth but did the props entirely in a post-apocalyptic theme) but I’m not sure if they count. So it should be interesting. If I can follow what’s going on. The plus side to all of this is that I don’t have to do my math homework tonight, since we have no class tomorrow.

I’m in a rather good mood. Dunno why. I have the urge to ride my bike over to Pages for All Ages and get a book. But that probably wouldn’t be too wise, since I’ve got other things I should be doing instead at the moment.

“No One Knows” by The Queens of the Stone Age just finished. Now I’m listening to “Bad Habit” by The Offspring. It would be a better song if they didn’t talk about driving so much and focused more about the rage aspect. But whatever. I think I’ll buy a Third Eye Blind album. Not sure which one, but I feel the need to buy one of their CD’s, and the new one doesn’t come out until sometime early next year.

I tried to get tickets to Dave Matthews, but I couldn’t get any! Which pisses me off. But I didn’t have anyone to go with (I was just assuming I was going to find someone, which I probably would have). Although I could try to get tickets from the radio or buy them off someone else. But that would cost me.

I’m still not used to the time change, so I’m getting kinda tired. That and getting up on Monday morning wasn’t so much fun even though I got a good deal of sleep. So that’s all for tonight.

got froot?

I’m not entirely sure my french is correct over at the top of that column. It’s close enough that you get the idea, though.

I almost forgot to post today. And we all know how bad that would be. The time change has me a bit off. I’m more tired than I normally should be at 8:30. But perhaps it’s for the better, since I’ll go to bed earlier and then get more sleep. And at least for the moment it’s going to be lighter when I wake up. I hate getting up when it’s dark out. It just isn’t natural. But I can force myself to do it easily enough, and once I’m up I don’t mind.

Mark added a rather thoughtful post to his blog today. It’s personal, or so he tells me. I rather liked it. I’m not sure what the interest is for people to get into other people’s heads and other people’s lives. But we all seem to have it, at least to some extent. Maybe that’s why people like Blog’s so much.

My dad asked me what a blog was the other day. At first I thought he had found mine, which made me kinda nervous, but he quickly explained how he had seen them mentioned in Doonesbury. Indeed, go read last week’s at that link, they’re rather amusing. Maybe I should be a cartoonist. But I can’t draw, so I guess that isn’t going to happen.

I like drinking the milk from a bowl of cereal after I’m done with the actual cereal. I just polished off a bowl of Froot Loops and I’m drinking the sugar-saturated milk. Yum.

Wow, I just realized that I’ve been spelling fruit “froot” and not noticing it. It goes so much nicer, though, to have both words in the name be double “o” words. I like Froot Loops.

polar fleece socks

I got inspired late last night and wrote the basics for this new template. I finished it up in the morning. It’s not completely finished yet, but it’s good enough to start using. Let me know what you think.

Tonight is the Halloween Dance. I hope that goes well. At the very least it should be amusing to see all these random characters and villains and costumed people dancing with one another. I was thinking last night about how awkward it would be to dance with someone with a really big costume, like one of those sumo-wrestler suits or something.

I spent waaaay too much time on the computer today. I’ve got to get off and go do something. It’s freezing in here, too. I don’t really want to go outside, though, since it’s even colder out there and the weather is kinda disgusting. Oh well, maybe I’ll just put on several more layers of clothing and go for a bike ride to get some fresh air. Until next time….

rip-off

I’m working on getting a new layout. I’m going to try to make this one from scratch, rather than taking another and changing it to suit my needs and whims. Unfortunately, it’s hard to come up with something original on my own. I have a few ideas, but unfortunately they’re too abstract to really apply well. And I’m discovering I don’t have very good luck with choosing colors, either: whatever I choose tends to look a little off as a combination. So anyway, if you’re wondering why there are sporadically various different (sometimes unreadable) layouts for the page.

Today was exceptionally unexceptional. None of my tests were terribly difficult, and we didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. Prospects for the weekend are bleak, too. There’s the Halloween dance, at least, but for some reason I’m not that psyched about it. It’s odd, but a lot of the things I typically like (case in point, dances) haven’t seemed like much fun lately. Some things I look forward to, when it comes time for them to actually happen, or near that time, I suddenly don’t want to do anymore. I don’t know if I’m just in a bit of a slow mood, not wanting to do anything, or if my tastes are just changing considerably, and fairly rapidly.

Ben said he can’t go to the Dave Matthews Band concert. I understand, but it annoys me because now I have no one to go with. There are some other people in my grade who like DMB, but no one I know very well. I’m kinda tempted to just buy a couple tickets and assume I’ll find someone to go with. But I probably won’t, unforunately. Ah, but I want to go! It tears at my mind.

you might get shot (or run over)

I just downloaded Good Charlotte’s album, The Young and the Hopeless. It came out a while ago but I forgot to get it. It’s decent, nothing terribly out of the ordinary but I like it. I’m only half way through it, but I think I like their first album (self-titled) better. That album had a bunch of great songs on it, that I listened to over and over and over again.

Yay, no written homework tonight. Just studying. Which I’m not really doing. The chem book is open in front of me, but I’m just kinda staring at it instead of reading what’s written on the page.

What do you define yourself through? The music you listen to? Your work ethic? Your relationships? Your art (whatever it may be, music, painting, writing, whatever)? Your past actions, your views of the future, your ignorance of both? Or perhaps by the fact that you do your very best not to define yourself at all. Me, I don’t know. I can’t figure out a way to properly capture all that is >me

greener grass

I keep saying I’m done for the night, and then I read another blog and it forces me to post again because I have something to say.

Last Saturday I got an e-mail from the person who runs this website. She said she liked my site, and was kind enough to link to it. So you’ll notice that there’s a new site addition under the “Cool Shiznits” (I’ve got to do something about that title) section.

Anyway, the point is, today in that blog there’s a rather intriguing discussion about hope. What I feel the need to write about isn’t so much the hope, but more so the idea of wanting something badly and then not getting it. Especially when you know all along that you probably will never get it (ie, there’s a distinct lack of hope). In such a situation, I’m finding, if there is enough of a desire in me, it tends to become a very real thing in my head. And real-world events relating to that thing no longer seem to have a very prominent effect on my imagination about this thing, since it’s become cemented in my mind as a fantasy just the way I have imagined it. What I’m trying to say, essentially, is that when I want something badly enough I unconsciously begin to treat it as something that has happened. Not in my actions, but in my thoughts. I think this requires an example to be properly conveyed. So, for example, take girls. Being a teenage boy they occupy far more than their fair share of my mental capacity. And if I’m beginning to fall for someone, at a certain point in my head I begin thinking about what would happen if they liked me to, and so forth. So that my imagination creates scenarios based on this information (that the both of us like each other) rather than reality (that I just like her).

This was often very apparent last year. It affected me in another way worth mentioning, as well. I began to live for things that would never happen. I thought “hey, I think I should do this” (this being just about anything). And I’ll think about doing it, and I’ll think about doing it, and the more I think about it the less likely I am to actually do it. And then, suddenly, realization dawns upon me with blinding intensity: I’m never going to do this. And all that’s keeping me going at this point is a random collection of fantasies and hopes and wishes for things that will never, ever, happen, either for reasons beyond my control or simply because I will never be able to bring myself to do them. It’s a shocking, depressing, somewhat exhilarating realization. I don’t want to go through it any more.