I Will Bitch and You Will Listen Because No One Else Will, Livejournal. No One.

Everyone be aware of your health!

I've been more health-conscious lately (because I've decided the last year or so has been a yang phase for me and I would like to lean towards yin now) and wow, has it been awesome.  Quit smoking upon the request of my lady counterpart about a month or more ago, and I can breathe like 10 vaccuums. (except I can breathe out too, thank G-d) Been stretching, eating a little more regularely and healthily, and in general trying to be a nicer dude.  Especially to strangers.  I think meeting strangers is kind of like the litmus test for how kind you really are, because your friends are totally biased and all that whatnot.  Sometimes it takes your default first-impression to give you any insight whatsoever as to what you're like.

So I feel great, and you should, too.

All that mess with my work smoothed over nicely, too.  And I've had nightmares, like arm-cutting off and eating, talking to the devil type of nightmares, for the last three days.  But they haven't scared me at all.  I think I wanted to change to a positive, productive outlook because I was starting to feel panicky and fragile (mentally) and it's totally worked.

Today's advice to all 2 of my readers is to be scared of less things and to think rationally no matter what.  Chocolate love, all.

Do you think it's cruel to keep birds in cage where they can't fly freely or flock with others of their kind?  I know I certainly can't keep birds in cage.  I usually go bird:cage 1:1 ratio.

I love the little facts and weird updates sprinkled throughout livejournal.  Yet I would think most LJers are the type to have friends they actually know reading their livejournals.  Still, I do get some joy out of seeing the strictly formatted posts about current events in an attempt to have regular readers.  Professional blogging intrigues me. 

It's like

1) A strong subject title draws the reader in, and the flavor of this short phrase is just as important as its relavent subject matter.
2.) The introductory statement of the post has to be clearly defined and tell the 35-year-old unemployed dude behind his Dell computer what sort of facts and opinions he is about to experience.
3.) The body of the post should relay information that the reader doesn't already know.  For example, let's say you're discussing 9/11.  If you know who did it, you should alert the interwebs because everybody already knows that the building couldn't have been entirely burned from a plane crash due to the conspiracy bloggers that did their job 6 or 7 years ago. 

Anyway, it's amusing to me.  It's like, news fan-fiction.  Like:

Did you hear about that shooting in Dallas?  Would you like to hear about it again with...added opinions from someone that has nothing to do with you?!

Right right.

I am having a good day except that I have to talk to my boss today about how I need to request a day off and give him my school schedule (extremely overdue to do that) and apologize for being sick yesturday and calling in way late.  But nothing to be done about that except to do it.

Hope everyone else is having a bomb-ass day too! 

4.) The conclusion of your post will have the longest lasting effect on the reader.  It will imprint their memory the deepest, which reflects upon their opinion of your professionalism and talent.

What up LJ?!11

It's 2:30 A.M. 

There's a bear in front of you, a shark behind you, and a moat of acid surrounding you on all sides.

WHAT CAN YOU GET TO HAPPEN?!11

I'd bust out some sweet moves probably.  Moves that only were previously seen executed on Super Mario Brothers 2 (the fake Mario)

Deadlands happened, and it was alright.  I didn't do anything all that spectacular, I basically just sneaked all over and looked for stuff and killed maybe one guy and that's it.  The other campaigns I was hacking people into lunchable-appropriate bits non-stop, but I just kind of held it down and that was ok I GUESS. 
+ side of it: I've been hanging out with friends in a much improved fashion lately.  They all seem to be less stressed out and getting along better and all things that supplement the amount of fun I have.  Basically, I am interested in a group of friends that makes smart jokes and does not act like a dick all the time.

...jackpot.

Don't let it get to your heads, poop bags.  We're still on probationary friendship. 

P.S. I'm glad it's cool that we all talk bad shit to each other.  Good times.

I'll have no conniptions, man.  Someday I will be the pharoah. 

It's wet outside!  Also, we just had to take care of the one complaint from our apartment office that was actually true: Our bikes were on the balcony.  Sucked.  Sam had just finished re-arranging all the closets and then we had to scramble out in the rain and grab the cycles.  Man, they also sent us letters that we left garbage and our shoes in the hall.  That is the other people on the top floor and not us.  I would not put my shoes in front of someone else's door.  But who cares about their poorly founded accusations?

The party last night was dope, and I really hope Bobby pulls through for Deadlands tonight.  We've all been tied up, and I think Lawson is supposed to bust us outta this situation.  Also, if I remember right, I'm supposed to hang out with Tim whether we play or not.  Hiyo!  Party on, LJ. 

Fun night.  Thanks for stopping out, Palecek.  Thanks for still hanging with me even though I ruin Christmas surprises, people.  More posting to come...now, nothing to talk about but my sweet sweet day off tomorrow.  No idea what I'll do.  Hope I'm not hung-over.  I'm chugging water , playing a little defense and all, but I'm not sure how much success I'll have.  My throat hurts.  I want food, but my teeth feel sensitive.  I wish Sam was awake so I could get mad cuddly.  I'm too stoned to do anything impressive but i'm bored.  I will bitch and you will listen, livejournal, because no one else will.  No one. (Thanks, by the way)

It's so easy to post.  They just put the button right next to your profile picture, how clever. 

I'm a big fan of music and I always have been.  It can make me feel really alive, even make me believe in heaven.  I've been so indulgent lately, though it's hard to tell with me at times.  So, my new year's resolution is to stop being so self-centered.  I've been thinking about it a lot, and changing it from time to time, but I've finally decided on it now.  I can picture myself in my mom's old car coming home from my sister's soccer practice hearing 90s dance-pop jams on the radio and traveling to heroic places in my mind, driven by the beat of the tune.  I've never escaped that mentality, and it's been a double-edged sword.  I have an unrelenting love for music that most often results in me trying to force enough talent out of myself to make all my problems go away.  I haven't even stopped to consider the other young boys and girls hearing jams on the radio right now and feeling inspired the same way I did.  That electricity is a guiding light that can be sent to people all over the world thanks to all the new developments in recording technology, radio, and not to mention the ALL-ENCOMPASSING INTRWEBZ

I've been searching high and low for my motivation.  I've thought long and hard about the styles of other artists and tried to think about how they thought of things and thought about how I can pull those same tricks relative to myself, but I just don't connect with most of the popular sentiments expressed.  I'm not a party animal or a ladies man or a loser or a bluesy cat.  I care about things

Is it odd that I try to fix my own problems head problems all the time?  Do you think it alludes to self-consciousness concerning my sanity?  Happy Christmas!  God bless, all.

surgeonselfoperatephysicianhealthyselfyourinstrumentsareneededbutyouretieddownandtheyreontheshelf

How have you been?

I've been good, keeping up with most of the things in life that smart people find important.  Someone dangles a carrot in front of my nose (Sam, Mom, Boss, friends, etc.) and I get right to work!  For most of my life, I have been extremely difficult to motivate.  While I'm still a bit behind a lot of people, I've achieved a personal best.

Sam and I even picked up a book of empty musical staffs so I can just work on my basic skills instead of trying to push out rock and roll songs for The Waypoints or for a solo act in some airport lounge later in life.  Music has been a joke hobby for me too long and I have too much intuition and natural talent to just let it "do what it may".  I'm feeling the power of controlling one's destiny is closer to my fingertips than normal, and I'm excited. 

Hope everything is gravy for everyone else!  Oh, and God, sorry I've been treating you like you're not real.  Shit's been odd with my religious perception since I left my house.  I'm still monotheistic and realistic, slapping the bass fast and loose like some kind of a delirious, funky priest.  Life goes on.  Peace!

I feel like I have a lot of talent to write music and play it, but I don't know how best to market it.  It's honestly got me nervous.  I dropped out of school thinking that I didn't care what happened to me, but with the prospect of potential success in the music industry, I'm feeling seriously anxious that I might not approach the challenge properly.  I don't know if I should work my fingers to the bone writing and recording or if I should just chill out with my homies and play it cool.  It's making me anxious.  I know the best of musicians just don't sweat it, but I don't think I'm like them.  I think I have a more pragmatic approach to the creative process.  I'm not just trying to bottle and sell my talent.  I'm trying to grow as a musician and writer to ensure a good future for myself.  I'm trying to better the artist within to guarantee that I won't run out of juice before my time is through.  I hope that's right.  I kind of want this thing.        

So maybe I won't bother writing a book right now.  Maybe I'll just beat a dead horse and make a band with a couple friends.  Here's our myspace.  It's a little dorky because it's my friend Ken is writing for it and he's SO excited for this shit, but it's cool.  He's gg.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=370182398

We only have one recording so far, but we hope to expand that a.s.a.p.  Enjoy!

When did we realize that the guitar, the bass, and the drums were the easiest instruments to play that people would still listen to?  When did we decide that our children who were too young to drink or go to war were old enough to sign their names away to become more powerful than any politician could ever hope to be?

            Now I’m 19 years old, old enough to go to war, but I’m still not supposed to drink.  And I’m still grabbing the easiest possible instrument that people actually recognize as a good sounding machine (only popularized by the barbie dolls that hold them) hoping to catch the same updraft into stardom that those boys and girls have been doing for decades now.  What’s different about me?

            I don’t want to be able to support a cocaine habit or take a bath in champagne.  I just want to wake up from the American Dream, where we all do what we’re told and work ourselves to death.  I want to put away a huge amount of money and rescue my family and friends from all this fucking bullshit.  I want to earn my living doing something fun.  Fuck all this bullshit about me being a baby and not manning up to my studies.  When you “hate” school, a lot of time it just means you’re lazy.  I’m lazy a lot.  But a good portion of the time, I HATED SCHOOL.  Not like how you hate to do your laundry or how you hate that one news anchor with the wooden hand (I forgot her name) but the way you hate how you’ll never measure up to what everyone wants you to be.  The way you hate that nightmare you keep having, but then you wake up AND YOU’RE STILL IN IT.  You see what I’m saying.

            So yeah, I’m trying to be a god-damned rock-star.  I’m trying to be one of those guys you see on TV, more of an image or an idol than a real man.  I don’t care.  Everything that everyone has to say to me about this topic is a broken record.  I’m just trying to get big so that no one can fuck with me, not so that I can fuck with everyone else.  I’ll work my ass off to get 50 fucking feet tall to be able to smoke a bowl or crack open a beer or drive until dawn whenever I decide I want to, but I won’t fuck with anyone, not even the people that deserve it.

            Jim Morrison thought rock was dead, that the music was stale.  Kurt Kobain thought it was exhausted after 30 years, and he’s been dead a while now.  Maybe that’s the whole problem here.  The Beatles fired something up that had something to do with peace and love, love, love.  More importantly, they made it kind of cool to be girlie boys with long hair.  If it had been up to just dudes, they probably wouldn’t have been all that popular.  (Though male fans are now staunch defenders of the contrary)

            But I digress:  It’s stale.  Maybe I need to get up on a stage with just a djembe drum (which is just one of those native american type drums) and wack it with my hands and just get the audience to sing with me.  “This is the new rock!” I’ll say.  I don’t think it’s that dumb.  People are screaming for the music to be about the music all the time, but we still have Panic! At The Disco, whose record label was so Panic!ed that he couldn’t even wait to hear their songs before he signed them because they HAD THE LOOK.  Everyone’s waiting for someone to break the mold, but we’re all just holding our guitars and discussing with the members of our separate bands, “Don’t worry guys.  We have a synth player.  No one’s got a good synth player!”  Everyone has something that makes them a little different from anyone else.  Who gives a fucking rat’s ass.  

            The whole 4 guys on stage things should just cough…cough…DIE.  Our technology is so advanced, it doesn’t even matter what you do in the studio.  The magic is in our FUCKING MACHINES.  Once the singing and strumming and banging is all done, Joe Blow, who makes a miniature fraction of what the stars make, turns the dials and moved the switches and adjusts the levels and ACTUALLY MAKES WHAT YOU’RE HEARING ON YOUR IPODS.  The time of the Beatles ended, the good performers who just recorded their genius.  It gave birth to a time of super-technological music, full of all sorts of mini-genres and perfect vocal and guitar pitch thanks to our machines, giving our music an other-worldly and angelic sound.  The clean sound you hear is comparable to the cleanliness produced by DDT.  It’s clean, but there’s a dirty secret.  Too far of a stretch for a simile?

            Anyway, I think it’s long over-due for a new kind of music to spring forth into popularity.  Then all these punkers and emo kinds and moshers and faggots of all kind can just go back to their home-towns and either get normal jobs or start learning how to really please an audience with an art that is struggling for air more now with each passing day:  Musical performance.  If somebody told me I had to keep playing the guitar and writing songs to 12 year old girls on myspace in order to become that 50 foot tall man, don’t get me wrong: I’d do it.  But I’d rather just get up on a stage somewhere, anywhere,  and pour my heart out and give something and get something back and make the whole world just that little bit better every time I get behind the mic.  Man.  That took a lot of bitching to get to the center of how I really felt about that shit.

I think I'm going to be ok financially for a while.  I've got another job lined up at the gateway cafe and that library assistant job is still possible, but I can't stop thinking about my book, Pikemen.  I've only got the intro, beginning of the first chapter, the outline of the first 3 chapters, and vague ideas for the climax and ending.  It's farther than I've ever been on a big project like this, but I'm feeling discouraged like the idea is drying up in my imagination since I had the dream about 2.5 weeks ago.  What do I do with inspiration?!  Does one quickly whip it off from start to finish, quit and come back to it, or wait until an idea captures you for an extended period of time before embarking on a long creative journey?  It's rough to decide!  Most people would just tell you to try really hard and whatever happens is a learning experience at very least, but there's more to it than that.  It's most about sorting ideas and concepts in your mind and not just trying to vomit it onto the page in a frenzy and arrange it later.  Your ideas might get jumbled, and you may not think of as many new ideas along the way as you would if you took it a big slower.  Still, I feel like I might just be slacking and getting nervous at the prospect of failing to do a good idea justice, you know?  ART IS HARD.

Well reader, it's 1:45 a.m., the lovely and elegant Samantha is fast asleep and I am wide-eyed and ready to finish this novel.  It's about a man in political office who has some family troubles.  After reading his daughter's short story for school, he begins to have daydreams and fantacies about the direction his life is taking with relation to her interpretation comparing him and his best friend.  A vague description, I know, but I don't want to bore anyone with the details anymore until it's done.  Even though Ms. Young, my bride-to-be, is enough to fulfill my happiness, I still wonder if I have the talent to make it as a musician or a writer, so I feel a certain amount of emotional stock will be riding on this venture.  Wish me the best of luck!  While you're waiting, try reading Vonnegut.  I will be borrowing some of his pinache, style, and technique, so I'd hope that you'd enjoy his work if you hope to enjoy mine.  It'll be a while, besides.  I've only finished the outline and a page or two of introduction.  Gutten nacht, party people.                                                                                            

"This is the strangest life I've ever known." 

I'm just trying to follow my dreams, writing music, poetry, stories, and in essence, finding some way to break out of the way of life that many become so quick to adopt as their time elapses: Working like a dog in rabid fear of unemployment breaking down their door.  I want to be happy and live a relaxing life.  I know it sounds naive, but it's where I'm at.  I'm not a crazy rebel, I'll conform to put food in my mouth, but the moment I taste freedom, I'm going to be the way I want to be.  With any luck, I'll take my best of friends along with me for the ride.  

"Your imagination is as potent of a tool / as the timebomb of a riotor or ramblings of a fool / for torture and concussion, anxiety, and pain / can never really reach the world that's living in your brain / tame reality that hides beneath electrodes / you dream it; then you find it in your life / as dreams are only shadows of the things we know are true / rend the nightmare of your life asunder with your imaginary knife" -Daydreams

The beginning of a song by me!  I may go by "Everywhere a Crosswalk" or "The Waypoints" or maybe "Wit's End", I don't know.  Give it time.  

THANKS FOR READING.