Nightmares.
I remember, as a kid, all it took for me to be terrified was a good monster or parents-turning-into-spies-for-aliens-and-abandoning-me nightmare. I can’t remember the last time I had a surreal nightmare such as that. They have been replaced by realistic fears. I just awoke from a dream where an ex-girlfriend of mine turned out to be pregnant, and my life was turned upside down. In the dream, I remember just trying to be the strong guy and telling her no matter what happened on the past, I would be there for her. I tried to be responsible. But I remember just collapsing and just breaking down, something I never do (especially in front of others).
After watching my life unfold, I wake up on my couch to my mom shaking me and telling me to go to bed. I was in a cold sweat, but just so relieved that it was just a dream. It got me to think, though. I just realized how much I have changed, and how all aspects of my life evolved, accordingly.
I also realized how much I miss the monster nightmares.
Thnks fr th Mmrs (?)
I’ve been reading some blogs from one of my best friends (stevenwakefield.wordpress.com) and I’ve come to realize that my brain works like Google. To bring up all of these great memories from the deep confounds of my mind, I need a stimulus, much like the need to type something into the text box in order to bring up a result. I forget all of these great moments of my life, like shooting an air hockey puck with Vincent all the way to the locked abyss of the Bowling Alley, or the like. There are only a select few memories I can bring from the annals of my mind without any assistance (the night the Dead Poet’s Society was created).
I often feel like my life is like a good novel with the vowels dashed from existence. It’s just not right, and unfulfilling…which makes me so thankful that I decided to post my life experiences up to the world, whether they be in video or through text.
It’s my way to keep the holes filled.
Fad Over?
Cutting.
It was very popular fad for a long while. Now? It just seems to have faded away, in my opinion.
The whole “purpose” of cutting was to substitute emotional pain with real, physical pain. I always thought this practice was completely idiotic, and I’ve had some close friends do it regularly. There used to be a time where I could see a slashed up arm at least once a week at my high school, but now, with the death of “emo-maina”, this grotesque practice has become non-existent, at least to my knowledge.
This got me to thinking, however. When does a “fad” become old or dead? What constitutes this? I say when people find a new fad to move on to, but that’s just my opinion. What do you think?
Seven years later…We move on.
For those who have forgotten, it has been 7 years since the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Since the attack on America. I remember, every year since then, during school, there would always be a moment of silence for those who lost their lives that fateful day. The media would always have some documentary or archived footage playing throughout the day from 9/11/2001.
What happened today?
School. The announcements come on. We stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. We sit. The announcements are made. We wait for that moment when they say, “and now, if you will, a moment of silence for those who lost their lives x years ago…,” but it never comes. “Have a great day, Gateway.” That’s it. Some students don’t notice. Some students make their, “Gee, that was strange,” look. Me? I was maybe the only one who realized that this could very well be the year that we have finally moved on.
School ends. I go home, and immediately turn on the television. I change to MSNBC, expecting some kind of footage from that day playing, and some 40-50 somethings discussing the impact. What do I see? Oil price gouging. Normal news. This goes on for a while, then it is mentioned that Obama and McCain would be at Ground Zero today to visit those families who were affected that day. Strictly political. Then, the news carries on.
Is this whole “moving on” thing…a good thing? Sure it is. “Moving on”. Putting it in the past, and looking toward the future.
But, by moving on, do we sacrifice something greater? Do we start to forget? They told us to “Never Forget” though. I saw the pins and the buttons and the bumper stickers. I also saw them disappear, slowly.
“Never Forget”? “Moving on”? What will we do? You surely can’t move on without forgetting…and if you never forget, you can never move on. Those two phrases don’t work together. So which will America choose?
Judging by experience, we got our answer today, during those announcements, talking with friends, watching the news.
I got an idea. From now on, let’s just choose to remember during the years with the nice, round numbers. 10th anniversaries…15h….and so on. It’s worked for us in the past.
Once a geek, always a geek.
Ahh, my favorite masks in the world...
I recently ran for Senior Class President (and a few of my Drama Club [DC] friends ran for other offices). I campaigned fairly hard (made campaign videos and shared the link amongst the seniors, gave out cards, etc). I ended up not winning the election (nor did any of my friends, who campaigned harder than I did), losing to the “popular” kid. Me being obviously troubled, my dad comes to me and asks me what’s wrong. I tell him what was wrong. I got really attached to the possibility (and, at one point, it did look very possible) that I could be president, and I could actually help out my student body. Actually represent them well. Deliver on my promises (rather than make impossible promises like these popular kids made). My father says, “You know why you lost, right?”
“You are in Drama. The Drama Geeks back when I was in high school were just as popular as you are. Just as popular as commercializing moist socks.” (okay, I embellished a little bit, but that was the gist of it)
Drama Geek. A label. One that has been around for at least two generations.
The sad truth about it is that my father was right. I remember one of my friends (who was running for office) telling me that one of the students told him that because we were in Drama Club, we could just be “acting” like good candidates.
It’s ridiculous.
I have deduced, however, that if I had to make the choice of being a Drama Geek or Senior Class President, I would line up to the earliest audition. It has been like this for years….decades…..CENTURIES! And it will be like this for generations to come. I decided I might as well embrace it.
Gateway got the President it deserves, and if the school should fall due to his leadership, the DC shall still prevail and rise up from the ashes. This time next year, the barriers will be broken, and I will help a Drama Geek become President. This is another promise that I intend to keep.
The Nasty and Critical Will Lead Lonely Lives
I typed "Constructive Criticism" into photobucket and this is what came up.
There is such a thing as “constructive criticism” in the world, as well as “putting down”. A dear “friend” of mine recently made fun of a blog post I put up, saying I was being overdramatic and such. I went to edit the blog post when I realized that I shouldn’t be controlled by such negitivity. I read the post and didn’t find a single thing wrong with it; it was something I wrote in the style that I would write it in. To change it would prove that this person had some kind of control over me, and that I had no mind of my own. I don’t care what you think. I type what I want to type because it is what little freedom I have as an American teenaged boy, my freedom of speech and creativity. If you take that away from me, what am I? I’m a product of society, disappearing into the masses of people who do everything they are told, even if they know for a fact that it is wrong. That isn’t me, and people who know me know that. I’m too stubborn for that.
The Spawning of Blogging
It's "Pay It Forward" gone wrong...horribly wrong.
I have made a realization. The reason why Blogging has exploded recently is because of the way it is spread. Person starts blog, friends see blog, friends see that it is easy to keep a blog, friends start blogs, repeat. I can see why the internet “veterans” are annoyed by this. It kind of annoys me, and I am in no way a “professional” Blogger, nor do I think I am any good at Blogging.
On the flip side, who am I to talk, seeing how I got the idea in kind of the same way. What annoys me are inconsistant blogs (people who make one post every other month or so) which are the result of the phenomenon which I will now refer to as Blog Spawning.
Sensationalism
Sensationalism in the media...
Sensationalism in the world.
There is one thing any intelligent person can say: people really love to exaggerate. Why do they do this? Well everyone knows why it’s done in the media: ratings. When one channel is reporting a fire, and the other channel is reporting a blaze happpening near schools and nursing homes (which are, in fact, 50 miles away), which channel do you tune in to? Sadly, because we live in the days of “infotainment”, we would tune into the “blaze” channel.
Nowadays, you can’t turn anywhere without someone heavily exaggerating a story. Today, on Digg.com, a website which serves as a kind of platform where you can post up news stories, funny pictures, inspirational videos, and various other things and have them kind of voted on (or dugg). When a story is highly dugg, they make it to the daily top 10 stories. The story I have linked in the picture above threw me over the edge, and has now made it to the top articles of the day. This person linked to a video on youtube, saying “Martial Law in the USA! It has started! Can you believe it?”. For people who may not know, martial law is defined as “the system of rules that takes effect when the military takes control of the normal administration of justice”. The town described in the linked video is not, in fact, under Martial Law. The mayor of the town implemented a strict curfew due to the high rate of crime in the area. I have my own opinions on how this mayor runs his town, but that isn’t the point of this post.
My point is that there are people out there who buy into sensationalism so much that they actually believe that the world is coming to an end, or that someone is secretly taking over the world. For these people: don’t you think we have the means to take over the planet as it is, without all of this cloak and dagger nonsense that you think is going on? We have the means to DESTROY the planet if we wanted to, but the fact of the matter is that it hasn’t happened. If it hasn’t happened yet, chances are it won’t happen, and if it was going to happen, we would definitely know about it.
I am just so sick and tired of these people. I’ve reached the point where I’d rather watch sensationalist news than get on the internet, exposed to these insane people who think the moon landing was a hoax, George W. Bush is some evil genius mastermind behind world domination (are you KIDDING me?), or 9/11 was staged by us. Again, we have nukes and politicians, we don’t need this whole elaborate plan which involves a whole web of lies or Freemasons or the all seeing eye…just to dominate the world. All they are doing is talking crap, scaring the innocent, confusing the misinformed, and pissing off the rest. If they want to be surrounded by this nonsense, there are proper forums, websites, and park benches where they can converse amongst themselves, without bothering people who actually have real and solid problems to worry about, like their family, or the economy, or which president will get us out of a 9 Trillion dollar debt, not which president will stop the NWO from happening.
We Don’t Have To Look Back Now
Life.
This fairly violent cartoon is an extreme dramatization of how life as a Senior feels at the moment. I have been waiting for a good majority of my life to leave this House of Broken Glass. Every good child loves their parents to death, and I do, but with all the things I have had to deal with in this home I am just counting the days until I can finally move out (hopefully into a dorm, I can not spend more than another year here). Some people live a life that they can appreciate and in a home filled with true love and care for one another. I am not as fortunate. Just as a forewarning to my readers, I’m not typing this blog as a plea for help or looking for some kind of sympathy, I just figured it’s a part of my life, so I would post it up here.
I suppose if my parents ever found this they would give me some kind of lecture about how I shouldn’t be posting our lives up for public view. Well today, waking up to my mother yelling at my father about how he won’t get off his lazy ass and do the chores she asked him to do (over and over again like a broken record) and my father ripping a cabinet door off it’s (already broken) hinges, I realized that I am no longer some 10 year old cowering in fear on the couch as my mom leaves the house and my dad throws her purse in the pool, I am almost an adult and enough is enough. I am at my breaking point and it is no longer “our” lives, it’s “my” life that they are screwing around with when they do this.
I have stood by for as long as I can remember watching my parents do horrible things to each other, then turn around to hold some facade around other people. I guess this facade is somewhat a reflection of the good they have in them, and how they can actually be good, loving, caring, and responsible parents. These are the parents those of you who know me personally know, and please don’t treat them any differently after reading this. It is just a whole new experience once you have lived under their roof for 17 years and you have seen them behind closed doors.
The acidic relationship my parents have has traumatized me mentally, I believe. I know I am still in High School, but so far I haven’t been able to hold a relationship much longer than a month or two, because of insecurities within myself. I do not want to be in a relationship like my parents are in. I don’t want to be in a relationship where I would cheat on my wife, and she would respond by cheating on me….and still say i was completely in the wrong. I hope that came out right. I digress. They need each other only because of me and they’ve been together for so long they don’t know what the hell they would do without each other, as if time was glue: the longer two things are held together the more messed up the two things get when they are seperated (paper gets ripped off, glue stays on, it’s just a big mess). Another thing I have noticed in myself is that I am more and more jumpy when I hear a loud noise (due to my mother and father’s knack for throwing things around when they are arguing). At times, I would have a quick flashback of one of their worse fights when someone slams a door or something.
For fear that I will lose my friends due to them thinking I’m insane, and in fear that I will reveal one fact too many, because I can tell you there is a lot I can go into, I will just end my rant here. I love my parents, and they can be the best parents ever, but if they go through a little episode like this again I’m just going to run away to Boston or some place where we used to be happier.
Working Title: AXIS and ALLIES: The Life.
A piece of script from one of my favorite cartoons.
I am attempting to write my very first script (possibly to be made into a movie featuring several of my friends) using a pre-production program and I must say it is tough stuff. There are a lot of things that you have to think about before you can start writing: Character analyses, Settings, Beginnings, Middles, Endings…I was sorely mistaken when I estimated I would be a quarter of the way through in one day. I haven’t even finished all of the character analyses yet! This is just another step into me trying out all branches of “the Biz” (first it was Acting, now it’s writing, hopefully next it will be directing). Okay, done ranting, now time to get back to work.
