Sigh

Good

I like getting to do exactly what I want to do and I like being around people who aren't just trying to force their own ideas of fun on me, regardless of whether or not I'm having a good time.  I don't think turning 25 is at all significant, really, but I feel like (mentally, at least) I'm too goddamn old to be doing things that I don't want to do or sacrificing my time for anything that I'm not getting some sort of enjoyment from.  And I'm too old to give a shit about what other people think of me.  It's not as if I've ever been that accommodating or compromising, but I'll be damned if I'm going to start now.  Anyway.

I miss you being in this world.

Ha

Watching It Might Get Loud...up until now (halfway through the film) Jack White and the Edge have been playing it cool.  Then Jimmy Page starts playing "Whole Lotta Love" and damn, those guys looked like they could barely contain themselves.  Their faces just lit the fuck up.

Most beautiful thing I've seen in a long time.

More

La la la...

I am going to shoot video of...I don't know.  Random shit.  Things here, things there.  Things everywhere.  Nonsense.  I can title the movie, "Boring Life in Small Apartment with Cat, accompanied by Disgruntled Mutterings about Bullshit."  Maybe I'll shoot video as I drive down the interstate.  The film will end when I rear-end somebody, jump out of my car, drop to my knees and scream to the heavens, "POURQUOI?!"  Shaking my fists the whole time, of course.  Dramatic effect and all that.

I was going to dress up as Carrie for Halloween, but now I'm going to dress up as Drunk, Pissed-Off Person.  But for anyone out there who is going to go as Carrie, I just want you to know: you may have spent the time and money to pour blood all over yourself and shove a tiara on your head, but you'll never be able to match my desire to kill people with my mind.

Die, you assholes!

Video

I haven't actually thought much about my video project.  I know that I don't really want to use video for my final project in the class, so it can't exactly go towards that...

It isn't that I'm not interested in video.  iMovie was fun and pretty user-friendly compared to everything else we've learned so far.  But I don't really want to develop my skills with editing videos.  I just don't.  I'm far better, I think, at appreciating film than I am at making it.

What can I say?  I'm pretty disinterested in everything at this point, for reasons I can't go into without an angry mob forming at my door.  And at this point...whatever.  Being pitchforked to death wouldn't be such a terrible way to go...

Yep

"Technology is a big destroyer of emotion and truth.  Opportunity doesn't do anything for creativity.  Yeah, it makes it easier and you can get home sooner, but it doesn't make you a more creative person.  That's the disease you have to fight in any creative field: ease of use." - Jack White

Example

In the dream, I was ______ ________.  I had come to a man's house to steal money from him, and he came home as I was standing in his kitchen.  I went out on the window ledge to hide, but I was very drunk, so I almost fell.  He saw me and laughed-- one would expect this sort of thing from ______ ________.  A woman pulled me in and carried me down a hallway.  Suddenly, I was carrying her.  I laid her on a bed, and decided that the time was right to tell her I was ill.  And then I wasn't ______ anymore.  I became ______'s son, standing in the corner, watching.  And ______ told the woman about his illness, and told her that he would be okay.  And in the corner, as ______'s son, I began to cry, because I knew he was wrong-- he would not be okay, he was dying.  And then I was ______ ________ again, looking at the corner where I thought I had seen someone and where there was now no one, and I turned and looked back at the woman on the bed.  She was a blackened, burned corpse.

Dumb

It would be nice if you could choose to have dreams.

No, not choose what you dream about...I just want to decide if I want the dreams or not.  I'm a very all-or-nothing kind of person. 

All I ask for is an on/off switch...

Beliefs

I don't even care if this offends someone.

There is no hope for a shitty writer.  None.  It doesn't matter if you memorize books on grammar and punctuation, read a million how-to guides on creative writing, and participate in workshops for the rest of your life.  If you have no natural talent, the best you can ever hope for is to rise from being a shitty writer to a mediocre writer.  Oh, so I was wrong...rejoice, asshats!  There is hope for the shitty writer!

Creativity can't be learned.  Talent can't be created from nothing.  Just because you know, it doesn't mean you can execute worth a fuck. 

I am not musically inclined.  I have tried to play many an instrument, but in the end, it never sounds as good as it should.  This is not to say that I didn't practice or that I didn't have people trying to help me or that I couldn't pick up on the technical nuances of playing these instruments.  I just did not have a fucking talent for it.  And yes, there are those who can force themselves to painfully learn a craft and produce a passable end-result.  They might even do well at reproducing a masterpiece.  But these people are not the geniuses.  They are not the gods.

I do think that passion, in some cases, can make up for a lack of talent.  However, it will only get you so far.

I think it is true, though, that a good writer can become a great writer.  Nobody starts out on top.  There is always something to learn.  But in my opinion, good writers are those who have a natural aptitude for the craft, and thus, those talentless, shitty writers can never be great.

Am I saying I am a great writer?  No.  But am I a shitty writer?  No.  I am good, and one day I hope to be great.  I have things to learn, failures to get past, and a lot of experimentation ahead of me before I can ever be close to great. 

But at least I'm not shitty.

Even Jesus thinks I'm a bitch.

Story

Once upon a time, there was time. It crept around corners and lurked in drains and drifted inside the house whenever a window was left open. It found its way to everyone and soon all the people in the world had a terrible, incurable case of time. Not knowing what to do and tired of doctors with needles and traveling salesmen peddling tonics from wagons, everyone simply acted as if they were perfectly well and went about with daily tasks such as icing red velvet cakes and tripping over shoelaces. Whenever children asked about time, parents shushed them or took them to church (where they shushed them religiously). A man from Missouri decided to write a letter to the newspaper editor about the absurdity of ignoring the disease and he was promptly arrested and taken to prison where he was infected with a cruel dosage of time, more deadly than any other case since his time was slowed for torturous effect. For years and years the world spun and people died from time. Babies cried for all the time they had yet to endure. Schoolchildren sang warning rhymes about the dangerous levels of time suspended all around them like smog. Teenagers were rebellious, reveling in their time and boldly sassing that they wanted more of it, that there was never enough time. Adults remained quiet. And elderly couples held knotted hands and wept over all the time they had suffered through, praying over tepid tomato soup in the evenings for the time to finally go away. Eventually, the world became so thick and heavy with time that it slowed down tremendously, the moon tilting to look with ancient eyes and puzzle over why its schedule had been interrupted, the sun burning with annoyance over the boredom it felt faced with the same view for so long. Finally, the world stopped completely. Time crowded up against people then, bore down on them like a great zeppelin slowly sinking back to earth. And yet, nobody wished to say anything, to cry out against the awful time; it was their burden, their sickness, their accepted doom. Only the man from Missouri looked up through the bars to his permanent view of the moon, crossed his arms on the windowsill, and felt a smile, for he had grown to love time-- it was, after all, the only thing he had left.

Horrible

The horrible conversations that happen between me and my friends:

"How would you feel if he died?"
"I'm not even sure I would notice for a while, actually."

"Don't die of cancer- that's fucking lame.  If you have terminal cancer, have some self-respect and pull a Hemingway, man.  I refuse to ever die of cancer.  I would rather the actual cause of death be 'stuck head in oven' or 'provoked and was subsequently eaten by a bear.'"

Also, stupidity happens:

"What's the capital of California?"
"Saskatchewan?"
"No, that's a person."
"No, you're thinking of the Sasquatch."

"Cool jacket.  Did you make that?"
"No.  She stole it from a hobo and hung it there as a war trophy."

Honestly

Sometimes I just don't feel like writing a damn blog entry.  I don't want to prattle on about something nobody cares about, I don't want to explore personal topics and tell everyone my history/feelings/opinions, and I don't want to write something just for the sake of writing something (i.e. just so I don't make a bad grade in the class).  Most of my entries are just...well, I had to write something. 

And so obviously this is just completely useless, but hey, it takes up space, right?  Look: words! Punctuation! 

Eh.

No sense in hiding the fact that sometimes I'm not into this or in pretending that I'm always enthusiastic about blogging.  Some people are meant to blog, some people aren't.

On a related note, why do we spend so much time pretending that we like something just because other people make us feel obligated to like that thing?  If you say, "Wow, I really hate argyle," and a friend of yours says, "Hey, I'm wearing argyle socks right now," then why is there this pressure to backtrack and mumble something along the lines of, "Oh, well, I like that argyle.  I was talking about something else.  Actually, my entire wardrobe is argyle."

Stupid.

Extra

Oh my God, just fucking shut up already.

Man

My great-grandfather in the middle.

I think I should have been born a man.  I honestly feel that I'm an old man trapped in a young girl's body.  One of my male friends actually told me that I'm more misogynistic than he is.  Terrible, I know.  Oh, well...

Blank

I collect journals.  But I don't write in them. 

Right now I can spot about eight journals in my apartment (all blank) without leaving my bed or even turning my head.  It's fairly ridiculous.  I'm not sure why I don't ever write in them.  Well...actually, it's probably similar to the reason why I'm not a fan of blogs.  I don't feel like I should record all the boring aspects of my life that even I'm not interested in reading about.  So I suppose I'm waiting for something interesting to say.  Which may not happen, because life is never as interesting as you think it is.  I guess I could use the journals for my fiction...but that doesn't appeal to me, either.  So...I guess I'll just let them sit pretty in my room and every now and then I'll pick them up and leaf through the empty pages.

Everything feels pretty blank these days.

Is death more interesting than life?

Cage

Apparently, when a whale dies in the ocean, most of its body sinks to the ocean floor.  Its blubber, however, rises to the surface of the ocean and sits there, rotting in the sun, while birds peck at it.  In a Shark Week documentary, I watched as a crew drove their boat up to this pile of floating fat.  Great White sharks were chomping on the meat and one of the crew members climbed out of the boat and onto the rotting whale blubber and sat there and watched as the sharks ate around him.

I want to do that.  Seriously.  I want to sit on a piece of stinking whale-corpse and watch as Great Whites rip apart the tissue from around me.  Or I'll settle for going down in a shark cage.  Either way, I want to see a Great White.  It's #1 on my bucket list.

Just putting that out there, for anyone who was wondering what to get me for my birthday...

Nom.