Things.

It's odd how things that happen to you can affect the way you think, the way you feel. Odd how a subtle alteration in a friend - an ex-boyfriend, for example - can change the way you look at people.

It's odd how thunderstorms can make you feel so exhilirated, so alive, and yet they can also kill you. I was in a thunderstorm last night, inside, and I still felt that I was getting struck by lightning.

It's odd how he could read this and have no idea I was talking about him. Dense, good-looking... *sigh*

mish.

You didn't have to say "That's not your art." You could have said, "Wow, that's cool, did you really make that?" I'd have told you yes or no.

Music, sweet music, I wish I could caress...
- Hendrix

Slowly walking down the hall faster than a cannonball...

When I was in my Tyler phase, I began a poem about him; I've finished it, months later. It has no metre, no rhyme, no real rhythm, but it is in fact a poem.

Do you listen to Oasis? I don't, terribly much, but I do like this song. Aah, songs Sebhar heard in the nineties on the radio. This is their song Champagne Supernova.

How many special people change?
How many lives are living strange?
Where were you while we were getting high?
Slowly walking down the hall
Faster than a cannonball
Where were you while we were getting high?

Someday you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a champagne supernova in the sky
Someday you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a champagne supernova
A champagne supernova in the sky

Wake up the dawn and ask her why
A dreamer dreams, she never dies
Wipe that tear away now from your eye
Slowly walking down the hall
Faster than a cannonball
Where were you while we were getting high?

Someday you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a champagne supernova in the sky
Someday you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a champagne supernova
A champagne supernova

'Cuz we don't believe
That they're gonna get away from the summer
But you and I will never die
The world's still spinning around we don't know why
Why-why-why-why-i-i

How many special people change?
How many lives are living strange?
Where were you while we were getting high?
Slowly walking down the hall
Faster than a cannonball
Where were you while we were getting high?
Someday you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a champagne supernova in the sky

Someday you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a champagne supernova
A champagne supernova
'Cuz we don't believe
That they're gonna get away from the summer
But you and I will never die
The world's still spinning around we don't know why
Why-why-why-why-i-i

How many special people change?
How many lives are living strange?
Where were you while we were getting high?
We were getting high...

I'm in a very, very weird mood. Sort of tense. I think I might have a lot of pent-up aggression... maybe I should find a rug to beat out, eh?

Redemption.

"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds."
- Bob Marley, "Redemption Song"

I've always wondered why people look strangely at me, just because my jeans aren't plastered to my thighs and going up my bum. I don't wear spaghetti straps or belly shirts, and the t-shirts I do wear aren't babydoll style. Why? they ask. Because I'm emancipating myself from mental slavery, I reply, then turn on my heel and walk away, leaving them dumbfounded. One of them got it, once, but only because I have a shirt which says that on it, with a good picture of Bob Marley on the front. People also think I'm strange because I even listen to Bob Marley. I ask, why not? He soothes, he relaxes, and you don't have to be on the Rasta scene to enjoy their music.

If you like reggae and don't listen to the Easy Star All-Stars, or if you like good music and Pink Floyd, I suggest you check out ESAS. They did a wonderful cover album of Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd) called Dub Side of the Moon. It's beautiful, wonderful, and if you listen to both albums in rapid succession you find that the more recent pays meticulous attention to detail. It's well done, I highly reccommend it.

What do you do with a friend who is angry with you? One of my friends - I'll call her Elaine, because she got mad at me last time I used her name in a blog - is upset with me becuase... well, here's the whole story. Elaine is moving away to a little, distantish town, later this summer. Now, we're all going to miss her terribly; certain of us have been friends with her since she was three, she was my first friend when I moved here, etc. There's this guy, right, his name is... er... Harry. One of our friends turned 16 recently, and she had this great birthday party at her house. Elaine, Harry, and myself were all in attendance. Elaine and Harry ran off to play in the mud (erlack!) with another of our friends...er...Stephanie. The rest of us were inside, discussing things, and when Elaine, Harry, and Steph came back inside, the topic rolled around to Elaine's last birthday party here with us. I thought she'd plan something sensible, like have a smallish party like she's always had with us, and invite everyone else to her going-away party. But...gasp!... she said she had already planned to have her LAST BIRTHDAY PARTY with Harry. And now for the story of Harry... we were good chums with him last summer, hung out on his front porch eating smoothies and playing with his dog, right? Well yeah, school rolls around, and he's back off with the preppy whorish girls in their skimpy tanktops and short skirts (in the middle of winter, proving that they're all ice-queens to begin with). Left poor Elaine, who had a "thing" for him, to worship him from afar - eventually she got over it. But hark! For here 'tis, the next summer, the last summer, and she's going back to hanging out with him. The last friend we had move away, Harry forgot about her double-time, despite the fact that he hosted her going-away party and claimed never to forget her. She left, and he hasn't mentioned her since. Hmmm... Basically "Elaine", if you read this, I WANT YOU TO UNDERSTAND HOW I SEE IT. I'm not trying to offend you, or "Stephanie", since you two are great pals now, better than with those of us who dare to speak our minds.

...

Ever notice how playing the bass gives you very strange blisters?

Hmph.

The band list is completed. COMPLETED, I TELL YOU! All the bands I like, in alphabetical order.... yay! Eventually I hope to get it up on here, sometime... probably after I have my two favourite songs by each artist on the list as well.

I'm going to Canada for Band Camp! YESSSSAH! *falls over*

The book "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" is wonderful, and the entire world should read it. But first, if you haven't already, read "A Catcher in the Rye". Both are phantastic books, and I love them.

Mourn!

Mourn, ye mortals. Punk is dead. It's gone... it lives no more. Nor can I live without it.
- My MSN screen name

Righto. So. I'm in a discussion forum (actually not really, just the wiki on Elftown.com at a page called No Parking). Now, I'm a huge Green Day fan in addition to being a very open-minded person; I can understand if people don't agree with my views, if people don't like Green Day. But I cannot understand one who calls themself a punk who disagrees with the punkesque dogma. In essence, the way I've come to understand it through the classic gods of punk music like the Sex Pistols and the Dead Kennedys, punk means thinking for yourself. Direct quote (the song is Nazi Punks Fuck Off by DK). So you can't call Green Day's "American Idiot" album less punk than any of their other albums. In fact, more opinions, more calls to action, more desire to change the world, and more difference from current pop culture is captured in "Idiot". The fact that they did a rock opera in this time of emotionless, unfulfilling pop music is by itself a statement of their punkosity.

How can they laugh at my opinion and call themselves punk rockers? They defy the cause, the meaning, the founding dogma that the scene would have been founded on if indeed anyone had ever bothered to found it.

And yes, "punkosity" and "punkesque" are words.

>.> <.<

Right, fine. So I lied.

You're Bloody Well Right

Warning - If you're the sort of person who gets songs stuck in your head easily and likes to sing the song you have stuck in your head while in public, don't listen to Supertramp and take offense at strange looks people give you. I was at a graduation party today for my friend Brittney's sister and singing "Bloody Well Right" by Supertramp. In addition to feeling like a billboard (Squier by Fender shirt, Pink Floyd Dark Side Of The Moon cap, Paris Blues jeans... blargenflargle!) I was stared at by several people because I was walking around muttering "You're right, right, you're bloody well right..." to myself. Meep.

I'm so torn. I know I've got three-ish years left until I truly have to think about it, but the choice between U of Iowa and U of BC @ Vancouver is a titanic and difficult one. I know Iowa City to be a truly inspiring place with a wonderful Writer's Workshop, but I also want to familiarise myself with the "scene" and territory of Couver before I move there. Hm. Of course, I want to tour Europe with my friends, see Tuscany and Rome and Vienna and Hamburg (well, maybe not Hamburg, I'm a vegetarian) and London and Paris and Champagne and Edinburgh and all of Wales... *sigh*. I'd like to tour America as well, go to all fifty states. I want to have a box, a small-ish box, each with a very, very small something from each state. I've never seen a bayou, or the Atlantic, or a volcano, or even mountains from anywhere but above. I've never been to my nation's capitol city. I've never seen New York City, or Boston, or Philadelphia. Never been to Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Conneticuit, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, or Wyoming. I've never been outside the United States. There is so much I want to do before I even think about college. What if I die tomorrow and never get to do them? After all, I owe them a lot; they've kept me alive. They're the reasons I have scars and not deep wounds that will never heal. They're the reasons I've never jumped off the bridge by teh grocery store, never sat unmoving on the train tracks, never fallen asleep in the bath, never done drugs or drank (excessive) alcohol. They're the reasons I wear a seatbelt in an automobile and my helmet on a bicycle and clothing that isn't suggestive.
I know now that if I ever wondered what made me love so deeply, laugh so heartily, or cry so forcefully, that I will never wonder again. It is fear. Fear watches over me like a guardian angel, so I take care of myself. I'm not like the status quo, who fear other countries because the government tells them so. I fear not being able to live my life to the fullest. I fear not being able to live out my dreams.
People ask me what I want to do with my life. I nearly gave my high school's guidance consellor a heart attack once because I answered "drive a truck". I've also said "live out of a van", "write books", "run for public office", "meet my future spouse in a bar", "sleep", "make music in a college town", and "be proposed to by someone who offers me a vending machine ring, not because he or she is a cheapskate but because they can't afford it". The truth is, the honest truth, is that I want to be remembered. I want kids to be able to think of me the way I think of John Lennon. I want to be loved and respected by people I never met, by people who were born after I died, by people who think I must have been a good person because I tried my damndest to make a difference, to change things.

However, I'll have a job of doing that...no one even reads my stupid blog.