Today I made a pound cake. It was a pain in the ass. About 3/4ths of it is this awesome looking marbly pound cake, but the rest is all fucked up because it didn't get completely cooked. It's like, the simplest thing ever to make; I think my transition from layered chocolate cake or roast turkey to a recipe with only four ingredients just made my brain burn out, or something. I'll post a picture of a slice later.

Tomorrow (or today, I ought to say) is New Years' Eve! And thank God, I'm spending it with some friends rather than alone at home or with people I barely know. For those of you that I didn't complain to about, I was going to be dragged to Victoria to Schroder Hall--it's some Texan dance hall where a bunch of old people are going to be entertained by a group called "Billy Mata and the Texas Tradition". No fucking thank you. My mom told me I didn't know what I was missing. I'm pretty sure I do. I wish I didn't. In any case, Brio with Emily and Scott and other miscellaneous people, then the mall. It ought to be a blast. I don't really have any champagne here though and I don't know if te group is going to be hanging out until midnight.

I know I'm freaking horribly lazy and all, having only applied to one school (Pennsylvania Culinary Institute in Pittsburgh), but if I went to the one I got accepted to right now I think I'd be happy. I've been researching Pittsburgh and what there is to do in the area, and it seems like a nice place for a guy like me to live. Supposedly it used to be a smokestacked industrial hellhole but it's a really neat and cultural place now. I've seen a lot of pictures online; it's so scenic. There are SO many bridges. There are also lots of non-franchised little coffeehouses near the place I'd be going to. Sweet. I think I'm going to get a really nice full-length wool and cashmere coat to take with me if I go up North since a Hot Topic canvas trench and some sweaters isn't going to cut it in the wintertime. In any case, I need to get to work on my essay for the CIA's pie contest (I guess I'm going to apply even though they want kitchen work experience), and also apply to the Art Institute of Philadelphia. It actually requires an essay, which might provoke thinking. Gasp.

I need New Year's Resolutions. Here goes.

1. Get out of this state.
2. Meet a really, really good-looking girl. Or two or three.
3. Get bench up to at least 200.

That's all I can think of. I think they're really supposed to be things you change about your personality or character, but, well, I'm untraditional, so fuck it.

~you're so untouchable; it's devastatingly sexy

1. Comment here and I'll draw a picture of whatever you want using the mighty MS Paint.

2. Put this in your journal along with the pictures people drew for you.

Freakin' sweet.

Tonight I was driven around by someone with no respect for the speed limit. It was glorious. Me, Julia, John Kleb, and his girlfriend Cindy were speeding down Stuebner and all sorts of cop-infested roads at 80+ mph. It was so amazing the way all the stoplights simply truckled to our recklessness. We exited I45 at a hundred miles per hour, crossing four lanes in a matter of milliseconds. I tried to act terrified as if it was what I should've done, to be afraid for my life as if it were something I could kill with simple exhiliration, but it didn't work. I wanted to be in the passenger's seat with the windows rolled down. Metallica was on the radio, loud and maddening. I felt like I was being driven around by Dean Moriarty in the giant Cadillac Limousine. John would ask where we were going next, and I'd just point straight ahead and say "That way." at a hundred miles per hour. It just didn't fucking matter.

I baked some Goddamn puffs.

Whoa! Whoa.

I got a scarf today. It's a white lambswool scarf, and it goes around my neck, and it makes me warm. I also have fudge. I am like chocolate Jesus; I eat chocolate for everybody's sins.

Cooking for Christmas dinner the other day was badass. Everything came out exactly the way I wanted it to--I found this recipe in the Joy of Cooking for sweet potato puffs--I know, puffs--which involved bananas and nutmeg and baking little mounds of orange stuff at 500 degrees. It was so awesome. I thought they would explode or some shit at that temperature and I'd be cleaning the oven for days but it really worked out. I invented my own method of cooking brussels sprouts (which are horribly abused during the holidays, people boil them to death). My new knife cuts through tomato skin like warm butter. I'm going to learn souffle soon. I'm going to go to college, and one day, I am going to beat the fucking game and then I will the final boss.

I have the desire to just dress up, like, mad fucking Gothic. I have been so sad recently because the sleeve on my fishnet shirt is lost somewhere in the washing machine. I was washing it one day, and you know how the sleeves are all attached with paperclips because, well, I'm totally hardcore, right? One of the sleeves just kind of ripped off and so now I've got this fishnet shirt that has a full sleeve with paperclips, and then only a half a sleeve. It pisses me off because I really wanted to wear it a lot during the winter and I don't have money to buy a new one. Blarg.

~reco'nize on yo' ass

Christmas Dinner Cuisinefest '04~

Best Christmas presents ever.

An early Christmas present for you:


THREE NAMES YOU GO BY:
1. John
2. Johann
3. John Gray (said very quickly)

THREE ...SCREEN NAMES YOU HAVE HAD:
1. JohnH778
2. Ianaman
3. Dark Angel

THREE THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
1. physical strength
2. voice
3. uniqueness

THREE THINGS YOU DON'T LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
1. my lips
2. my skin
3. my left hand

THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE:
1. German
2. ...
3. ?

THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU:
1. becoming obsessed with the big picture and the long-term
2. serving food to someone that makes them sick
3. losing my sight or hearing; either one would prompt suicide


THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS:
1. social interaction
2. music
3. coffeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW:
1. green sweater
2. black hot topic pants with, like, 17 pockets
3. army steel-toed combat boots

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE BANDS (or artists at the moment):
1. DJ Doboy
2. Skinny Puppy
3. System of a Down

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE SONGS AT PRESENT (not in any particular order):
1. Hoopy Frood - Sequence
2. Dzihan & Kamien - Homebase
3. I'm not sure, but the third song in DJ AX's 2003 megamix

THREE NEW THINGS YOU WANT TO TRY IN THE NEXT 12 MONTHS:
1. learn to cook many, many more dishes
2. when I go to college somewhere up north, I will find a sushi joint that serve sea urchin; even the Sake Lounge here has it not.
3. finding real work

THREE THINGS YOU WANT IN A RELATIONSHIP (love is a given):
1. intellectual connection
2. affection
3.

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE: (SEE IF U CAN FIND THE LIE!)
1. I experiment with creating my own prerecorded techno singles
2. I once took tae kwon do classes
3. I do weighted incline situps regularly

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS ABOUT THE OPPOSITE SEX THAT APPEAL TO YOU:
1. dark, short hair
2. athletic
3. I am utterly shallow. Cute butt.

THREE THINGS YOU JUST CAN'T DO:
1. beat brown sugar into egg whites
2. be forced to swim competitively
3. sing in front of people

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOBBIES:
1. weightlifting
2. cooking
3. computer gaming

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO REALLY BADLY RIGHT NOW:
1. Make out with someone (sorry, it's the truth!) (keeping this one from emily's blog)
2. play in the snow which is not really there
3. gun a fast motorcycle to its limit on an empty freeway.

THREE ...CAREERS YOU'RE CONSIDERING:
1. executive chef
2. pastry chef? probably too tedious for me
3. model

THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO ON VACATION:
1. Japan
2. NYC
3. Alaska

THREE KID'S NAMES:
1. I feel as though I am not qualified to answer these questions.
2.
3.

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE:
1. Get some good kicks. Ain't nothin I love more than good kicks.
2. Attempt to be homeless for a week.
3. Bake the perfect souffle.

THREE PEOPLE WHO HAVE TO DO THIS MEME:
1. Julia
2. Nicole
3. other people?

smileypie?

You Are the Peacemaker

9 You are emotionally stable and willing to find common ground with others. Your friends and family often look to you to be the mediator when there is conflict. You are easy going and accepting. You take things as they come. Avoding conflict at all costs, you're content when things are calm.

What number are you?

I'm back. Fixed my goddamn computer so I can actually do things now. Christmas holiday kicks ass. I even met my goal of getting my bench to 180 by Christmas. Woo. More later, my head hurts a lot.

Allriiiight, finals. That week where so many useless hours of school are endured for nothing. I ate granola bars in most of my classes today. Tomorrow promises to be much of the same, at least until my nerve-racking chamber choir final. On Friday, I actually have to go to school for maybe an hour and a half to take my fucking choir final. I will be forced to stay for the entire time.

Claire's so awesome. She gave me a picture of Sterling, Kathy, her, Emily and I for Christmas looking all sexy at the opera in this really neat frame. I haven't been able to do any Christmas shopping yet. I have to do something because I've actually got a little cash this year, but I need to get out to do it.

I have passed out so many freakin flyers recently. I did Spring Creek Forest in five and a half hours and just today I got half of Oakwood Glen done. My feet feel like the ouch and it's been hard to find such large slots of free time recently with all the runouts and choir junk, but I'm getting it done.

allright! attention whore!

1. Tell me one thing you love about me.

2. Tell me two things you love about yourself.

3. Look through the comments ~ when you see someone you know, tell them three things you love about them.

4. Do this in your journal so I can tell you what I love about YOU - and if you've already done it, tell me so, so that I can go back and give you some love.

whoa, look out, holy craaaap

1. First Name: John
2. Were you named after anyone?: My middle name, Gray, is the name of my dad's friend Gary who is a racist taxidermist from Florida.
3. Do you wish on stars?: I might consider it if I could see stars from this place.
4. When did you last cry?: Long time ago
5. Do you like your handwriting?: Yes. It adheres to no organizational pattern whatsoever, so I do like it.

6. What is your favorite lunch meat?: mortadella
7. What is your birth date?: Aug. 23, 1987
8. What is your most embarrassing CD?: A DMX sample CD which has "I'm Blue (da ba dee)" by Eiffel 65
9. If you were another person, would YOU be friends with you?: Yeah, I think so.
10. Are you a daredevil?: I'm not reckless, but I'm not boring either.
11. Have you ever told a secret you swore not to tell?: I only do that after the secrets become common knowledge anyway.
12. Do looks matter?: Yes. I'm not that saintly; I like sexy people.
13. How do you release anger?: I punch doors open at school, and kick brick walls with my boots. It is so much fun.

14. Where is your second home?: If I made more money and had a car it would be Javajazz. Right now it's Starbucks.
16. What was your favorite toy as a child?: computer. Or, if you want something more interesting, nerf guns. I owned so many.
17. What class in high school do you think was totally useless?: Very many. Not so much the classes but the way the information was drilled into me.
18. Do you have a journal?: well,
19. Do you use sarcasm a lot?: Nah.
22. What are your nicknames?: Johann, DJ Johann, trenchcoat guy, FX dude

23. Would you bungee jump?: No.
24. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off?: Only if I'm wearing my combat boots, but that's just because I have to in order to get my feet out.
26. Do you think that you are strong?: Yes.
27. What's your favorite ice cream flavor?: jamocaaaa
28. Shoe Size?: 8 1/2

29. Red/Pink?: red
30. What is your least favorite thing about yourself?: occasionally I get hyperactive and then no one can understand what the hell I'm saying. I begin speaking at 500 words per minute or something and it just comes out like the jibberish.
31. Who do you miss most?: Santa Claus. I will certainly never regain the ability to have blind faith in things.
32. Do you want everyone you send this to send it back?: I'm not emailing this to people.
33. What color pants are you wearing?: dark blue emotastic jeans

34. What are you listening to right now?: hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
35. Last thing you ate?: carrot cookie.
36. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?: red-orange, as opposed to orange-red.
37. What is the weather like right now?: nice and cold, though it could be colder. I love the feeling of wearing many layers of clothing and being warm in a hostile environment.
38. Last person you talked to on the phone?: sterling

39. The first thing you notice about the opposite sex?: I could be all sophisticated and tasteful and say that I look for that special light in her eyes. But I'll just say "body" instead.
40. Do you like the person who sent this to you?: I found this on the livejournal of someone I don't even know.
42. Favorite Drink?: cream soda (tribes in a can)
43. Favorite Sport?: I thought about this for maybe five minutes and couldn't come up with anything.
45. Eye Color?: blue

46. Do you wear contacts?: No, but I have some prescription glasses that allow me to see faraway thingies
48. Favorite Food?: tasty sushis
49. Last Movie You Watched?: Spiderman
50. Favorite Day Of The Year?: New Years. Probably because I'm a champagne whore.
51. Scary Movies Or Happy Endings?: Scary movies with hilariously tragic endings.

52. Summer Or Winter: Winter. Especially where I live.
53. Hugs Or Kisses?: Kisses. If you're kissing someone, you're usually hugging them at the same time.
55. What's your favorite dessert?: paralyzingly rich chocolate cake
56. Who Is Most Likely To Respond?: mreh
57. Who Is Least Likely To Respond?: feh

58. Living Arrangements?: One day I want to take a week off from whatever I do and attempt being homeless. Right now, though, I live at my parents' house.
59. What books Are You Reading?: I just finished 1984 and need something else to read.
60. What's On Your Mouse Pad?: Edgar Allen Poe portrait.
62. What Did You Watch Last night on TV?: Nothing'd
63. Favorite smell? Cappuccino with cinnamon on the foam

Diary of an Emo Kid

Well, today (another chapter in the soon-to-be-ended pursuit that is my meaningless life) I went to a show. Fyend and some other band were playing (but I think they've sold out). Me and Emily looked real scene, and I've still got my show wristband on. I'm gonna wear it until it falls off. Maybe it'll provide some kind of relief in this bleak existence. I wish my parents hadn't divorced.

Just kidding. Javajazz is the kind of place that kicks ass even if the music you go to hear sucks. There are people there that actually aren't so radically different from me as, say, the student body of KHS. I met some interesting people and drank lots of coffee. Very content right now. Got lost for an hour or two driving up there with Emily, which was fun. Some guy at Hollywood Video gave us directions which I misinterpreted, thus getting us lost further. But it was cool. I've got a show buddy now, man. Shows.

I had a shitty day today. Not good at all. It was almost refreshing as I have not had one of those in quite awhile.

I learned this morning that there was apparently a chamber choir runout yesterday at 4:30, the Robare's private party in fact, and I missed it. Out of sheer forgetfulness and irresponsibility, I actually had no idea that this runout was taking place. From what I hear, Mr.Raddin sang with chamber and was really kind of stressed out, because Sterling also didn't show up.

I felt awful all day about the damn thing and went by the choir room to look for Mr.Raddin to apologize, but couldn't find him until fifth. Afterward class I mentioned some menial pitch problem to him (to be honest, it was also bugging the hell out of me) and then told him that I really had no excuse for the whole thing, that I completely forgot, and that I was really profusely ashamed about it. I was. He just said, "It happens to the best of us."

In my three and a half years in this choir, I have not once turned in a gold form, been unable to go to some choir function where I was needed, or "forgotten" completely about a performance, the only exception being spring trip last year where I fucked up my life by failing a class. I'm not saying that to make myself look good or make it seem like I deserve to screw up. That's not how it works.

My point is that while I don't really give a damn about my grades and constantly hurt myself through my own irresponsibility or incompetence or whatever, I don't really care about that. It's when I hurt someone else through that kind of thing that I hate myself relentlessly for it. I cannot bear to let a man like Mr.Raddin down because one of the things I most solidly try to live by is that I really ought to honor my committments. Screwing something like that up shouldn't happen to the best of us and I care about being a reliable person.

Colorful bedsheets make me happy. I have a green mattress cover, a red pillowcase, and a gray and blue blanket.

Today I got to be a roadie with Sterling's band. They were pretty good, though the party itself was kind of... not boring, but it was definitely full of people I would otherwise stay far away from. I was happy to be afforded the oppurtunity to lift heavy objects and carry them around.

Soon I start passing out flyers again. I'm not thrilled about it but it's good to have some work to do again. I don't really mow lawns anymore and I don't get enough real cardiovascular exercise, which is a category that weightlifting doesn't really fall under.

I am consuming a 23.5 ounce can of Arizona green tea

That's the last one. I have no more choir auditions to worry about ever again. No more music to spend all that time learning.

Well, all that time in after school rehearsals anyway. I never practiced at home; Sterling still has my practice CD. I suppose I can be pretty proud to say that I made region nine mixed choir three years in a row without practicing at home once. Look at that, I've grown an ego.

Anyway, I got twelfth at the audition last night, so I didn't make it. For those of you not familiar with the TMEA audition process, to get to the pre-area auditions you have to make it past the district auditions, then the region auditions, and after the region choir weekend, you have to get within the top five at pre-area auditions. If you pull that shit off, you go to Austin for area auditions, and if you get top eighth or something, you make allstate choir. Pre-area was kind of cruel to me. It was the first audition I was actually really quite nervous about in awhile, and I just really wasn't with it. I screwed up a lot of rhythm, and tragically, I couldn't sing any of the really low notes. I must've been having a bad day. Some of the judges gave me 200 out of 300 points on my songs, one gave me 100. "You don't have the low C" all underlined is kind of a blow to a guy like me. Let me tell you, O judge panel of great gluttony--I have it--I have a fucking bag full of them that I will throw through your window late at night.

Sightreading is the other part of the pre-area audition. You know, they give you a little staff with some notes on it and you've got to sing the right pitches and rhythms, no matter what you do it on. I guess you could sing it in quacks or barks as long as it was in tune. To be honest, I thought I did awfully after coming out of it--I really don't think I'm good at setting my own tempo and sort of conducting myself, and besides that I never practiced the stuff--but I got about 59 out of 60 points on it, so I can at least say that I aced half of the thing.

Aside from music, my grades aren't really all that good, which is nothing new for the four years I've been going to KHS. I'm really kind of sick of school but I get along well this year because of people. Punching all the doors open also helps to relieve stress.

Kieron and the Gillespies are coming back to town, I don't know if I've already mentioned this. Come to think of it, they're probably already here and looking for a house. All I know is that they're going to live in the Houston area again. Don't worry, I won't take up EverQuest again but to be honest I'd love to have a nicer computer to play Half-Life 2 and the like with.

I guess I was tired enough to ramble like I used to with my blog entries; I really need to get back into doing that as it's very satisfying.

~turn up the bass, captain

bleg

First best friend: billy butler
First car: don't have one yet. it'll probably be a small used pickup truck.
First break-up: er, naschelle taylor
First screen name: JohnH778. creative shit, man
First self purchased album: Meridith Brooks. Oh yeah.
First funeral: great-grandmother that I'd never met
First pets: that cat, TC, that died recently at the age of 17
First piercing/tattoo: I stapled my thumb through once, and daily I tattoo my homework on my palm.
First credit card: I kind of stay away from those
First true love: it's kind of hard to say since I fall madly in love with people all the time.
First enemy: this goddamn kid pushed me off a floaty thing in the pool once. I swear by the soul of my dead mother that I will kill him.
First big trip: probably from austin to nevada
First music you remember hearing in your house: willie nelson
Last cigarette: I don't touch the stuff because I've seen what it does to people
Last car ride: rob driving me home
Last good cry: months and months ago
Last library book checked out: I haven't been to the library in a long, long time.
Last movie seen: spiderman
Last beverage drank: tasty water
Last food consumed: chicken soup
Last crush: nicole
Last phone call: good ol' jeff smith at the modeling agency
Last shoes worn: black tennis shoes
Last item bought: black shirt at salvation army
Last annoyance: the fact that it was november 29th, 80 degrees outside, and 86% humidity. I HATE TEXAS~
Last time wanting to die: I never want to die, I occasionally want other people to
Last time scolded: I don't get scolded, I get argued with.

Relationships
Who are your best friends? rob, todd, sterling
Do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend? sure don't

Stuff
Where is your favorite place to shop? salvation army, left-handed monkey
Any tattoos or piercings? see above

Specifics
Do you do drugs? I took aspirin the other day. whoa. hardcore.
What kind of shampoo do you use? herbal essences, the one that the chick in the commercial is using and it instantly gives her an orgasm
What are you most scared of? not the consequences of fucking up, but people criticizing me for doing so.
What are you listening to right now? hummmmmmmmmmmmmm
Where do you want to get married? I really don't romanticize the concept like the rest of society
How many buddies are online right now? 25/95
What would you change about yourself? I'd have better skin

Favorites
Color: red
Food: sushis
Boys' names: what?
Girls' names: blah
Subjects in school: any subject where I actually care to pay attention
Animals: cats
Perfume: uomo by alviero martini

Have you ever...
Given anyone a bath? Besides myself? not a bath, mind you, unless you count the dogs
Smoked? no, though I've probably inhaled enough from hanging out with old hunters in south texas to qualify a yes for this question
Bungee jumped? no, it doesn't seem like a really great idea
Made yourself throw up? nah
Skinny dipped? no
Been in love? yeah
Made yourself cry to get out of trouble? no, though I've been known to fake sickness so well that I make myself sick
Pictured your crush naked? yes
Actually seen your crush naked? nah
Cried when someone died? yes
Lied? more than you can possibly imagine
Fallen for your best friend? ...
Been rejected? yeah
Rejected someone? once or twice
Used someone? no
Done something you regret? I can't think of anything that really stands out

Current
Clothes: green t-shirt and khaki shorts. no, I'm not a highschool freshman, I was just working out.
Music: none, which must be remedied
Make-up: right, I was practicing my eyeliner-applying-technique
Annoyance: someone honked at me tonight and I just about jumped onto a streetlight
Smell: dust. it's a dusty room.
Desktop picture: evangelion unit 01
DVD in player: I don't have one of those new-fangled contraptions
Color of toenails: whatever color they're supposed to be, I hope

Last person...
You touched: alex pankonien. I poked him and was like, "that's faux suede!"
Hugged: julia
You imed: nicole nguyen
You kissed: larkin

Who do you wanna...
Kill: the president
Slap: his entire goddamned cabinet
Get high with: bob marley. in the afterlife.
Look like: legolaas! no, not really, it's just the only person I could think of me resembling
Talk to offline: anyone who's willing
Talk to online: I typically let people IM me

Which is better?
Coke or Pepsi: dr.pepper, sirs
Flowers or candy: candy flowers
Tall or short: Tall

Random
In the morning I am: it depends. this morning I did 60 pushups and felt all awesome and ate pancakes. some mornings I can't walk in a straight line.
All i need is: myself
Love is: hard to find but worth the trouble
I dream about: I dream about some fucked up stuff, but it's just silly weirdness, nothing really morbid or nightmarish
What do you notice first with guys/girls: Guys: "son of a bitch needs to learn to use a belt"
Girls: eyes/hair color
Last person you danced with: nicole
Worst question to ask: "will you have sex with me in the bathroom?"
Who makes you laugh the most: eddie
Who makes you smile: happy couples. I am not one bothered by PDA, to be honest.
Who gives you a funny feeling when you see them: what an awful question to answer.
Who do you have a crush on: william hung
Who has a crush on you: one or two people I would imagine

Do you ever...
Sit on the internet all night waiting for that someone to IM you: nah
Wish you were a member of the opposite sex: no. guys have it too easy
Wish you were younger: not really, I sometimes think I'm too old for my age

Number
Of times i have had my heart broken: nothing that I didn't really get over. once or twice.
Of hearts i have broken: one
Of continents i have lived in: one
Of tight friends: 5ish
Of cds i own: two
Of scars on body: maybe eight, mostly on my hands and legs

Sorry, that was probably really boring.

Got my hair cut today. It's so wavy... I'll try and have a picture up later.

Thanksgiving was uneventful. My grandparents have moved into a smaller house in a little subdivision. I probably walked 20 miles just to have some time alone, and besides that it was really nice and cold. I got to cook for a whole day only to find out that my relatives were eating thanksgiving dinner at their relatives' house and were coming over to my grandparents' for leftovers. Allriight.

Hurray, men's choir tomorrow. Fuck.

Sterling's birthday party was fun. My right ear still hurts from Ben Jackson's masterful vocal performance but I avoided becoming deaf by stepping outside to talk to Allison until he left. Whew. I played the drums.

Currently powered by TEH REDHAT LINUX 9.0!!!!1 I figured out how to install programs. It's more complicated than you'd think. When you download most linux apps they don't come with little self installers, but you've actually got to compile the source files yourself when you download them. So currently, in order to install the linux version of winamp, I need to download glib, in order to compile gtk, in order to install gcc, the real compiler, so that I can install xmms (linux winamp).

Why am I doing this? Well, I thought it'd be a good idea to get directx 9.0c, but it obviously wasn't, because I downloaded the bastard and when I installed it, my network card kind of quit working.

tasty honey made from not so tasty bees >.<

Whoa, so I went down to the creek and it was all full of water, right, so it was like WHOOSH FWOOM splipple blip, very meditative and the moon was all like "AAAA MOTHERLAND PROJECT MEDUSA VS. EXOR"

Bake a tasty pie while everyone's asleep...

I made cookies the other day for the poetry club meeting consisting of peanut butter, chocolate chips, oats, honey, cinnamon, and nutmeg. They seemed well received. This meeting was a lot of fun as it was at my second favorite place, Milano's, where I got a huge americano and got to sit around looking at the rain until everyone arrived. Snizzle. Pop. Crackenspiel.

Good god, it rains. I am sad because I forgot to cover my workout equipment and now all of my weights are wet. Luckily the weights are encased in plastic but I really hope my bench doesn't rust a whole lot. I have to dry the stuff off when it quits raining.

Blech. The first four periods are sluggish this year. They're not really that difficult so I remain pretty happy throughout them all, but by about third period I get really restless and need to go move around. I plodded around in the mud today as a stress relief, since, well, if you wear combat boots to school, that ought to be one of the things you do with them.

I think when I can drive, a wonderful new concept for me is going to be going to Starbucks alone when I'm really bored in the evening. I love sitting in a coffee shop alone. There's so much stuff to observe and you can just relax. Not saying that sitting around with friends is a bad thing but even looking out the window in Milano's today by myself was real nice. It's the same feeling I get when I just go down to the creek in Spring Creek Oaks and nap on the concrete, which I may consider abstaining from this evening as the creek is going to be very full of waters.

Bench update: 175. I improved five pounds in less than a week. Sweet.

Waking up too late in the morning is bad, because you miss the bus. But, you get more sleep. If I had a car of my own I'd do this every day.

Yeah. In other news, this really cute girl I hardly know has asked me to make out with her about twelve times now. It's funny, because I almost don't know how to even understand the kind of thing she's asking me. I was always used to spontaneous romantic stuff like that happening to Sterling. I dunno. She's got a really badass car.

reelfrootsmoothee

Reached new bench press: 170. Woo.

I, John Heidelmeier, think Halo 2 is retarded.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, it's time to talk about my day as if I had recently created my journal and was still enthusiastic about doing so. I heard bad speeches in 1st period today, probably about as bad as my own. I think the teacher was lecturing us on something in Economics. Meh. There is a girl in German who wants to brush my hair and do various other things with me in the men's restroom. I have made a point of being either way, way too busy to talk or way, way too sleepy to talk the past several days in that class. The good part about German though is I just kind of eat cookies.

In other news, I did my English homework on the way to English, sat around in the practice-room-in-the-back drinking sodas in choir with a few agreeable sophomores and one junior who's a complete fucking narcissist that loves to hear his voice. "Tenors, let's hear you from measure 10." And then this damn bass 2 will sing along with them, or do some obnoxious thing because he's full of himself after making second in region. Whee. He sings the warmups in the exact opposite way we do them so he'll stand out; if we sing a scale from low to high, he'll sing from high to low and brag about how well it harmonizes. I wish to hit him with a truck full, oh, very full, of rocks.

Nearly didn't go to pre-area rehearsal today, as only three people showed up, me and the narcissist including. I was heading out of the choir room to maybe idiotically sit around with the lit club, but then I learned that Mr.Raddin would be rehearsing us, so I stayed, because Mr.Raddin is cool and shit.

I got a real fruit smoothie today. Real. Fruit. Smoothie.

more tired than tires which are so freakin tired because all they do all day is roll around on concrete which is tiring, ever thought about that?

I love oreos. However, I do not love it when oreos are the only thing I have for lunch. I really need to start packing stuff, but that would necessitate me waking up even earlier in the morning. Ugh. Baggy eyes.

I learned recently that my childhood (I say childhood because I think I was pretty childish my freshman year) friend, Kieron Gillespie, is moving back to Houston. I figure me and Rob are going to buy him some enchiladas, since we owe him. We decided that if we hadn't spent so much Goddamn time either at his house or playing EverQuest, we probably would've turned into complete assholes. The lesson learned is that computer games keep kids off the streets, right?

I was paranoid recently about failing a class and not being able to go to region, but that's probably just because I screwed up so badly last year at spring trip, since there was no chance of me actually failing. For some reason I thought I had, like, a 50 in English but I have an 80. The incredible fear almost made me start working hard.

Mowed a lawn yesterday, worked out too much the day before. I feel really worn out from feeling anxious and speculative and nervous and hyperactive and excited about a zillion different things. Something is missing from my life. I bought an apple dumpling from this rather cute employee person at the Ren Fest, and she asked me if I was all alone. I answered yes. Life is still pretty easy in any case. It seems like all the strength I've accumulated from the weight training is just extending my ability to do shit, like work. I did so much damn stuff Sunday and barely got to sleep because of the energy I still had available. Region choir's this weekend, it's going to kick ass. Thoughts a r e n o t c o h e r e n t currently.

So I was at HEB, buying sauce. For our pasta. And I see this sauce, on the shelf, called Vodka Sauce. I got it. It was good. This is the most uneventful blog post ever. I have to sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeP.

allright~

And now, in early morning impulsiveness, a list of 50 things you may or may not know about me.

1. My middle name is Gray, which is the last name of my father's friend in Florida who is a gun enthusiast, a racist, and a taxidermist.
2. I have a heart murmur which means absolutely nothing unless the draft is reinstated.
3. I hate it when people say "you're so random. gosh, what randomness. what a random thing to do." I find it grammatically absurd. You draw numbers at random, you don't randomly do something. You impulsively do something, or you're spontaneous in your manner of decision-making, know what I'm sayin?
4. I ate beef tongue for dinner tonight.
5. I actually enjoy hunting and love firearms, despite being extremely liberal.
6. I had a kitten that died, and my mother put it in the freezer. She has since buried it, but my other, older cat died, and then my mother put it in the freezer. Every morning when I get frozen fruit or something out of the deep freeze, there is a dead cat in a shoebox next to the bananas.
7. Nearly half my warddrobe comes from second-hand clothing stores.
8. I know a shit lot about computers. I'm currently using one that I built, and I built the 3.3ghz machine my mother uses for her business. Ironically, computers piss me off and I'd never be comfortable with a computer-related career.
9. I have a switchblade in my pocket.
10. I have no fucking initiative whatsoever regarding academic pursuits, and I know it.
11. I often see incredibly tragic, serious things happen, and find some way to be optimistic, if not bitterly satirical, about them.
12. I mow a lawn owned by a woman who keeps turtles. On the lawn. I am horribly frightened that one day, I will paint the grass red with the insides of a turtle.
13. I love chocolate. If you ever get me any amount of chocolate, chances are it will not be around anymore in a day. It's kind of a problem I have.
14. Especially dark chocolate.
15. I really like Japanese anime, but am really, really picky about what I watch or read. Rightfully so. There's some scary shit out there.
16. I Goddamned love coffee.
17. I am addicted to working out. When I have nothing else to do, I pick up heavy things and put them down again until I am sore, and the idea of always getting stronger because of it is very satisfying to me.
18. I enjoy a good bagel.
19. I prefer the green kind.
20. I find it absurd when men complain about wearing ties. They are not uncomfortable; they are made of silk, idiots. If men were forced to wear ties made out of, say, rusty iron chains, then I would complain too. We should all try wearing high heels.
21. I'd love to dye my hair black sometime, but I want to become a model and don't want to change my look dramatically.
22. I want to become a model to make money for school, but I lack initiative to get started. I think I will get it done anyway as the idea is quite romantic.
23. I'm a little bit nearsighted.
24. I once fixed a huge cracked section of my driveway by pounding it apart with a sledgehammer and filling it in with concrete. It was fun, and I still wish I had more things to hit with a sledgehammer.
25. I like to write but never feel like I have anything to write about.
26. I like America.
27. Not too crazy about 51% of the inhabitants.
28. I think football is dumb. My entire extended family disagrees.
29. I really, really like gothic clothing and radically dyed hair. I do not like drugs, alcohol, and being needlessly depressed about the only life I've got.
30. I like wearing a suit and tie every once in awhile, just for the hell of it.
31. I make techno music by the use of a software studio I illegally downloaded and taught myself to use. I'm not very good.
32. I refuse to sing for people when they ask me to. But I got tenth in region choir.
33. If I had studied visual art more, I'd probably be good at it, as there's a lot of talent in my family. But I didn't. So fuck it.
34. I take great delight in having a deep voice, but am surprised when people mistake me for my father when I answer the phone. Occasionally I catch myself answering with a very Southern "Yello."
35. I would love to live in New York City amidst all the activity.
36. I am probably one of the few humans who does not aspire to marriage, having kids, or even living with anybody. I don't like the idea of being socially alone, but I truly cannot imagine myself co-existing with another person.
37. I think it's crazy that some people had no clue as to the fundamental differences between the presidential candidates.
38. When I look at the giant American flag in the choir room, I cannot think of anything else except that very flag being aflame. It has nothing to do with any political fury, it's just that I think fire is pretty, and I'd like to see some during fifth period.
39. I really don't know how to take compliments.
40. I hate telephones. I cannot stand talking to someone over a wire. It always seems as though I can't understand the person I'm talking to at all.
41. My grandparents don't know that I'm the most blasphemous atheist ever.
42. I don't see myself having another girlfriend until I get the hell out of Texas, as nice as it would be.
43. I really don't like standleaders.
44. I broke my left arm this one time and due to shortened tendons I can't move my fingers a certain way. It's kind of a bitch when I do pushups.
45. I enjoy walking around at about this time at night. It is ironic because I like the quiet absence of people, yet I'd like to have someone to walk with.
46. I wear steel-toed combat boots most of the time at school. So if you trip over my toe, you really don't need to apologize, because I didn't feel a thing, and I'm more worried about you.
47. I can eat pounds and pounds of sushi and weird shit like beef tongue burritos but I have never had food poisoning and the last time I got sick and threw up was at least six years ago.
48. I have never passed out in my life. I really can't imagine what it's like.
49. My room is a fucking mess. I clean it, like, once a year, and then in a few days it gets really dirty again. One of the reasons I can't live with people.
50. I have a hard time thinking of things to put on these surveys and lists.

The GOP can't make a pie like this.

Well, I guess this is what America wanted. We've now got all three branches of the government in Republican hands. Eleven states voted to ban gay marriage last night. We're going to be stuck in the same war forever, and all that tax cut money is going to continue being funneled into the hands of the wrong people.

Hey, listen.

For those of you readers who are 18, I can't stress enough how much we need a new president. Vote for Kerry. Don't forget that whoever wins is going to be in charge for the next four years of our life--probably the most important. We're all heading off in some direction, whether it be school, the workforce, or even the military. Come on, guys. Vote for a guy who won't give our money to the rich and claim to be a compassionate politician. Vote for someone whose close buddies aren't guilty of corporate fraud. Don't forget that if we vote in Bush again, we're going to be paying off the federal deficit when we need to be paying off our goddamn college loans. Don't let the idea of tax cuts ensnare you. We're smarter than that, and we ought to know that tax cuts ought to go to families like ours rather than to Ken Lay and Dick Cheney.

And let's vote for a guy who's actually got a plan to get us out of that country in the Middle East.

This is the strangest morning I have ever experienced. I'm so alert and content with things, it's like I've reached some meditative Zen enlightenment thing. Usually I feel kind of like ass.

Maybe Kerry is going to win.

Economics class doodle. He needs coffee because he never gets to sleep :( I may do it again on real paper and draw a little cappucino machine by his feet. Watching the souls of the damned is a tough job.

Men are pretty dumb. Sterling and Shawn came over today, and the three of us just picked up heavy things and put them down as much as we could, in an effort to literally rip our muscles apart so that we could regenerate them, only to actually do it again a few days later.

This morning I woke up, well, sort of, unplugged the alarm clock, and went back to sleep. My mother came up at about 6:30 and asked me if I was going to go to school. I said probably not. I woke up at noon and passed out flyers for four hours. I wish I could do this more often.

But, yeah. Besides finished up a few streets in OWG tomorrow with this flyers deal, mowing a lawn, and possibly starting on flyers in Spring Creek Forest, I don't have anything planned for this weekend. If someone wants to do something, I ought to be around most of the time.

Well, I'm back throwing out flyers again. Despite the numbing exhaustion that accompanies the job, I'm glad to have it again. I've got something to do, at least, though I wish the damn weather would cool down. The forecast shows the temperatures dropping right when I plan to be through with my work. Ugh.

I realize that I haven't written a gargantuous post on homecoming. I'll do it when I'm not so tired, but in a nutshell, best dinner I ever had, enjoyed myself at the dance, went to 24 hour Starbucks downtown until 2:30 AM, and had a cool date.

Apparently somebody signed my name on a list of people going on some class trip to the Renaissance Festival, or something, and the teacher of that class was wondering who the hell I am and why haven't I turned in my money yet. I dunno who signed me up, but I might as well go anyway. I missed it last year and if things go the way I'd really, really like them to, it'll be my last October in Texas for awhile. CIA wants six months of food preparation experience for entry, though I'm still entering their pie contest. Looking at a multitude of culinary schools in the East now, one of them being in Pittsburgh. Awkward as the conferences with the counselors are, they reminded me that I've got to start work on applications. I have a lot of essays to compose regarding food.

Monday Morning

As I stand on the barnacle-rocks, shrouded in a languid sheet of fog, I can hear a foghorn dutifully groan its walrus-like hum. The sound rises and tumbles over and over the empty ocean just before sunset. I cannot see its source; I only feel the cold wind and the smooth solidity of the gray-green boulders I stand on. Fade to black.

Shit. Monday. The first thing I can perceive is the near-full moon, coalescing in the half open blinds that spread across one glass wall of my house. It stares me down and I realize that I can still hear the foghorn from that desolately real dream. I wrestle my alarm clock to the ground and phase into the bathroom in a desperate attempt to enliven myself in welcome heat.

Shit. Monday. It doesn’t work. Now that I still feel awful but with my hair cold, heavy and wet, I phantom my way down the stairs without waking the dog. The beaming red light from the water tower and liquid blue flame that erupts out of my stove are the only light I need. I’m sore, but I juggle orange juice, glassware, eggs, and various produce in the hopes that the ingredients will fall into their respective places. Steel slides across steel as my right hand calluses and chef’s knife become one. Garlic, peppers, and onions evaporate into smithereens to sizzle in the oil as my arm rocks back and forth. Fwip. I don’t know the humble, prepped taste of Pop-Tarts and Cheerios. Good.

Shit. Monday. The coffee filter is dirty. I have two, but the clean one in the cupboard is cracked on two sides, which somehow makes me feel insecure. I toss it into its green, plastic funnel that sits anxiously on a Pyrex glass coffee pot. Bop. The fierce whirr that raises the dog’s ears but not her eyelids turns potent black beans into black chili powder ready to be steeped in pure water. I crisscross my arms, spatula in one hand, tired old aluminum kettle in the other. I brew and cook simultaneously and lower stove heats with my right knee. I’m very interested in stem cell research because I’d like to grow another arm.

Shit, it’s got to be Tuesday. It ought to be because I’ve acknowledged the real fact enough and it seems only fair for one sleepy morning to be out of the way, but it’s not. The eggs are damn good. I think I was supposed to have a book completely read for English class today that I never bothered to buy. Damn good eggs. I eat maniacally, standing up with a plate in my left and a stabbingfork in my right. I always do this when I’m alone, cooking for myself. All the sautéing is too exciting to simply sit down and consume anticlimactically. I will rave and swear of my food insanely (like my father), not submit insouciantly to its tastiness.

Shit, it’s 6:40! Diesel burns outside my house and the bus driver wields that monstrosity like it’s a battle-axe, weaving around parked cars and taking off with that narrow, yellow door closed before the poor freshman bastards can sit down. I pull the nylon cords on my steel-toed boots tight and wrap them around my ankles once or twice for good measure, letting baggy black pants envelop the tops. I wrap myself in a black canvas duster that’s lost all its buttons and storm out the door. The Democratic campaign bumper sticker is ragged and hastily pinned onto my school bag. I pull a stray foot-long blonde hair out of the sticker's sticky side. I guess I’m a bit eccentric. Good. I board the bus at a later stop with my heavy stainless steel coffee mug hovering eerily outside my clothing. That mug is powerfully hard. I am convinced that if I were to be involved in a fight while in possession of that mug, my bludgeoning abilities would surpass the burliest of men. There is nothing in my coffee but coffee itself.

Good, it’s Monday.

Taking Out the Trash -- A Short Story

We set out and I learned what it would mean for Drew if his truck broke down under the strain. The vehicle was nearly paid for now, but his line of work depended on its ever-reliable strength and he'd be a ruined man if his capital blew a head gasket. The man's eyes were sky blue as if sun bleached, and his skin matched the color of my slightly creamed morning coffee. He gave a squint of perseverance as he drove, the fine wrinkles in that leathery, bristled skin setting into place as he spoke of business and his bad back. A sad, deep, and genuinely Southern voice told me that Drew had nothing better to do with his life than drive around in a truck and do odd jobs for people; he was a man who did a teenager’s favors in his late thirties with fancy equipment. It was listlessly beautiful because I don’t think he really cared.

As we lurched toward downtown, smog-obscured Houston, the trailer made structural iron groans at us, weary of its two-ton cargo of brick and stone. I heard the coal-black Dodge truck’s engine work harder and harder in dire fear of the spurred gas pedal. In order to stop at stoplights we had to begin braking hard at a few hundred feet, occasionally yanking at a smooth, worn-down emergency brake in between the two front seats. I imagined throbbing veins making themselves apparent on the hood of the vehicle, pumping the same imaginary oil that played optical tricks on us, dark puddles vanishing and manifesting themselves in the road. It had rained the night before but any tangible pool of water gave up on survival as soon as the sun rose. The humidity, the electric partial overcast still left over from the evening’s thunderstorm, razed through my hair.

The hill thrown in the back belonged to my neighbor. I was helping him move, and one of my chief tasks was to relocate his little private construction supply depot from his backyard to his driveway with the help of a rusty red wheelbarrow and leather gloves—he expected that the absence of this material would improve his chances for selling the house. I agreed for a hundred dollars. I did it in two days, and then was hired to work for Drew the Trashman for ten dollars an hour. We had to move this junk from the driveway into a trailer with a dirt-encrusted plywood gate by picking up individual bricks and hurling them on board, then driving to a class five construction waste dump and hurling the stuff right back off again. I noted that this was probably a pretty good example of that low-skill, low-income work that politicians talk about so often. Also increasing my ground-level awareness of political issues, I worked alongside more hired help, a sinewy illegal immigrant who was happy to have the job and communicated with me through a series of complex hand gestures. It amazed me what we got done in such a short time without verbal communication or injury—we literally threw basketball-sized chunks of concrete over each other’s heads for four hours without concussions or swear words. It was actually fun, but I quickly realized that it would not be so much fun to do for a living.

I think I became a little more down to earth that day, and at the same time a little further away from it. The dump we eventually arrived at was such a real place--it smelled of dust and dirt and motor oil—but my experience of it was all too fantastical for me to really still believe in its existence. After Drew pulled his truck away from the front entrance, a huge elevated weighing mechanism for incoming and outgoing commercial vehicles, our descent into what seemed like the earth’s underbelly reminded me of the works of M.C. Escher. As we rolled up and down the surface of the muddy gravel, towering organic skyscrapers of bricks and iron rods stared down the Dodge’s windshield with malice, as if threatening to extend a wet, rocky arm and push us over some manmade precipice into distant, wriggling nests of elephant-sized concrete earthworms. At one point during the unloading work it took me a full delirious minute to determine that a truck driver—not a gray-toothed, growling truck itself—was asking me for a light. I finally came to my senses and pointed to the worker who was heaving the seeds of a newborn rubbish-pile next to me. None of us had a light. We were already smoking the car exhaust and the humid, sunny atmosphere that we slipped and fumbled through in our mud-slick boots. Tobacco seemed a redundancy at this point.

After we had unloaded, the mysterious laborer swung closed the makeshift trailer door, and we left for my neighbor’s at greatly improved speed. Drew’s truck made those impressively manly horsepower noises that you hear from powerful, expensive four-wheel-drive vehicles never used for what they were intended. The Dodge was far from that status. It served a purpose; it would never be a 3,000 dollar riding lawnmower bought for a tiny patio home, or a 400 mile per hour backpack leaf blower used by some extravagant homeowner to clean up his driveway once a month. It would retire to the same junkyard it strived in with a broken back and ragtag Michelin tires. It would be given a hero’s funeral at 200,000 miles. There would be tears for that tool.

Upon arrival back in my sheltered part of the world, I remained a part of the crew in order to load up a ridiculously hoarded stash of some 200 gallons of paint. An old, still usable lawnmower went, along with a lot of shiny, finished lumber. Richard—my neighbor—was a retired painter. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time to keep the stuff around. Drew knew no legal way of disposing of the pigmented slop, and was still calling contacts in his business when the quiet one and I finished dislocating so many buckets of it. The contractor was obviously dissatisfied with the position he’d been put in as toxic waste middleman, but had to get rid of the stuff anyway. It was his job. I wiped my forehead and took off my leather gloves. Drew shook my hand, paid me in cash, and got my phone number to likely hire me again sometime. The two groaned off into the real world, out of the pleasant birdsong of my neighborhood. I could see smoke seeping its way out under the hood of the poor black tool. Nondisposable paint sloshed around in the trailer. He’d never get rid of that stuff; the only places accepting it were environmentalist recycling companies, and at five gallons at a time, for a fee.

I never heard from Drew again.

Nummer Drei.

Hooray, region auditions. I made tenth, so I get to give pre-area a shot. Woo. The important thing is that I get to go to Brehnam.

For Lack of a Better Pasttime

I'm sorry. I used all my blogging productivity on the last entry.

YOUR PORN STAR NAME: (NAME OF FIRST PET + STREET YOU GREW UP ON) : T.C. Westfield (more like a writer's name, I'd think)

YOUR MOVIE STAR NAME: (NAME OF YOUR FAVOURITE SNACK FOOD + GRANDFATHERS FIRST NAME): Cookie Harold

EXOTIC FOREIGNER ALIAS: (Favorite Spice + Last Foreign Vacation Spot): Paprika Fallujah (not really, but I thought it fit well)

SOCIALITE ALIAS: (Silliest Childhood Nickname + Town Where You First Partied): Johnny Klein

"FLY GIRL" ALIAS (a la J. Lo): (First Initial + First Two or Three Letters of your Last Name): J. Hei. That was retarded.

DETECTIVE ALIAS: (Favorite Baby Animal + Where You Went to High School): Coyote Klein

BARFLY ALIAS: (Last Snack Food You Ate + Your Favorite Alcoholic Drink): Cookie Manhattan.

SOAP OPERA ALIAS: (Middle Name + Street Where You First Lived): Gray Westfield. That's really accurate.

ROCK STAR ALIAS: (Favorite Candy + Last Name Of Favorite Musician): Candycorn Oakenfold

IF YOU COULD BUILD A HOUSE ANYWHERE, WHERE WOULD IT BE? I'm not into houses, but East coast somewhere.

WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE ARTICLE OF CLOTHING? Black trenchcoat in the wind.

IF YOU COULD HAVE CHOSEN YOUR FIRST NAME, WHAT WOULD IT BE? John. Probably. But if I'd known the sheer amount of people named John, I would've chosen something uncommon like Michaelangelo or Rafael or shit, the ninja turtles are cool.

WHAT IS THE LAST CD THAT YOU BOUGHT? Sheryl Crow. Shut up.

WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE PLACE TO BE? That one level of hell where there's a shitlake. Either that or my English class, but I can seclude to the computer lab in there and write things.

WHAT TIME DO YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING? 5:30 on weekdays, like fucking noon or later on the weekends

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE KITCHEN APPLIANCE? Kitchen tool? Carbon-steel Japanese cleaver. Appliance? Jenn-Air gas range.

WHAT MAKES YOU REALLY ANGRY? When people are disrespectful.

IF YOU COULD PLAY AN INSTRUMENT, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Acoustic bass or drums.

FAVORITE COLORS? Red

DO YOU BELIEVE IN AFTER LIFE? Yes. After life, I will rot in the ground until I become one with the dirt, in everlasting harmony, Amen.

FAVORITE MOVIE? American Beauty

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SEASON? Winter

IF YOU HAVE A TATTOO, WHAT IS IT? No.

CAN YOU JUGGLE? I used to be able to juggle two balls. That's right, folks--two balls.

THE ONE PERSON FROM THE PAST YOU WISH YOU COULD GO BACK AND TALK TO? My past, or historical past? If it were my past, I'd talk to Kieron. That sonofabitch just disappeared.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DAY? Friday

WHAT IS IN THE TRUNK OF YOUR CAR. Since the last thing I drove was a CJ-7, I'll count that as my car. There's a machete, some deer antlers, more than likely a shit lot of bullets, and some beer cans. None of those items belong to me.

WHICH DO YOU PREFER.....SUSHI OR HAMBURGER? Sushi burger.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CARTOON? Neon Genesis Evangelion.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE MEAL? Warm pasta with a decent homemade sauce in extremely cold weather. Right now, however, it's a chimichanga with fajita meat.

Long Posts are Fun

For English, I've got to write a descriptive paper; the subject I've chosen out of her list is "first day on the job", but what I'm really going to do is write about my work as a day laborer throwing bricks out the back of a junk guy's pickup truck at a dump. It was kind of a fascinating experience for me, and while I don't pretend to flaunt any really fantastic skill with storytelling, I think I'm allright at describing stuff, if I really sit down and subjectively tell about something that I've experienced. I think it's good that I'm doing this now; the weather is beginning to get cold, so I should write about work while heat and exhaustion are still fresh in my blood. In any case, if it's any good, I'll post it.

Stuff has been going great this week. The fall concert absolutely wore my ass out (as all performances do), but I think it was pretty spectacular. My only grievance is that my voice was already not doing very well when we began because of so much damned rehearsal, but I managed to pull through all eight songs, expecting to cough up a little blood and maybe a bass clef on that last God Bless America chord.

Afterwards my mother and I went to Sonic for burgers, which I have not done in a veritable eternity. I'm really not big on fast food. In fact, I prefer to ferociously avoid the stuff; I will eat a sandwich at Jack-in-the-Box in the middle of a lawnmowing Saturday simply because of the requisite energy for pushing gargantuan leaf-slicers around--I will even eat some pretty awful food at the school cafeteria if offered to me--but it's out of hunger. Once in a blue moon I like to get a burger somewhere. It's oddly satisfying, but it also gives me a sharp reminder of why I, home alone, will prepare a blackened salmon with lemon garlic sauce along with a spicy pineapple-base stirfry over a Mexican TV dinner with more cholesterol than Rush Limbaugh's studio audience. I very often live for the satisfaction of eating something warm and familiar, and even more so for giving such a thing to other people.

For some reason today I went outside, mowed, edged, and blowed my lawn off, and then proceeded to remove a hundred pounds of branches and vines from the azaleas in the side yard. I admit it, I'm a weird son of a bitch, but I enjoy working on things like that. There's something about manipulating things with your hands that can be a lot of fun. Besides that, I got to employ the help of gas-powered small engines, which is probably a dumb male fascination which I will never, never be rid of.

Speaking of ridiculously brutesy, testosteronic endeavors, I've recovered from my blood loss and increased my bench press to 165. It's another addiction to physical effort I've got, but it's wonderfully satisfying to know that you can lift 20 pounds more than your body weight with your upper torso. I think I went too far tonight, however: I actually tried my hand at jogging around my neighborhood, that peculiar pasttime where you bounce around in shorts and expensive shoes in an effort to strengthen your blood-pumpy thing and lose weight. I've done this several times in the past and hated it. The same happened tonight. I got a quarter of the way around my subdivision and then just jogged my way right back. Even if I do have decent shoes now, I happen to value greatly the use of my knees, and I came to the conclusion this evening that I can do the exact same workout on a bicycle and go fast enough to race my friends' cars anyway. Therefore, running is silly, but by working my legs out anyway through cycling and various weightlifting gruntmucks, if I ever really need to run the hell away from something (huge angry guy, explosion, 80-pound rabid rottweiler angry at me for flyer distribution), I probably can.

I have a homecoming date now, the cute and literature-savvy editor-in-chief of the newspaper. ^.^

On the Road by Jack Kerouac is in its intermediary stages of mesmerizing me. It makes me want to ride a bicycle to every small town and bustling metropolis in the country. It's making me restless, like I was when I came home to Houston from New York and realized that I'm in the wrong place: the middle-class suburbia where people seem to care more about their lawns, cars, and incomes than their lives. I'll never be a homeowner, I swear to it. The day I worry about pressure-washing my driveway so that the neighbors will complement me on my pearly white concrete parking spot will be the day Satan is fashioning rock-hard popsicles out of the souls of the damned.

Today I went home from my novel-reading in the wilderness to get a can of food for a hungry dog. When I got back to the creek I'd been sitting at, the dog was gone. I looked for it until dark, but couldn't find it, and went home.

If you ever really, really need to be cheered up, just go to www.ratemykitten.com.

1. Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, and find the 4th sentence: "He was a pilot and flew his plane as low as he dared over Yossarian's tent as often as he could, just to see how much he could frighten him, and loved to go buzzing with a wild, close roar over the wooden raft floating on empty oil drums out past the sand bar at the immaculate white beach where the men went swimming naked."
2. Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What do you touch first? A double choir arragement of Ave Maria by Tomas Luis de Victoria
3. What is the last thing you watched on TV? Some of the VP debate
4. Without looking, guess what time it is.4:13
5. Now look at the clock. What is the actual time?4:01
6. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear? "Colores" by Dzihan and Kamien
7. When did you last step outside? What were you doing? I got out of Nicole's car in teh rain, home from the poetry club meeting.
8. Before you started this survey, what did you look at? On the internet? My email, I guess.
9. What are you wearing? A small black work shirt with some little dice on the front, my Chereskin jeans, and my mutilated "shandles".
10. Did you dream last night? Not that I can remember.
11. When did you last laugh? I snickered in the poetry club meeting because some guy's AIM screenname was "Wannaquickie77"
12. What is on the walls of the room you are in? There's a Japanese painting on silk, a God-knows-how-old poster for the movie "Independence Day", a map of Norrath...
13. Seen anything weird lately? I saw a big turtle. With laser eyes.
14. What do you think of this quiz? Not really a whole lot of fun.
15. What is the last film you saw? Fahrenheit 911
16. If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy? My education, and a bunch of sushi.
17. Tell me something about you that I don't know. I actually possess a great appreciation for the music of Avril Lavigne.
18. If you could change one thing about the world, what would you do? I would cause fireballs to constantly float around at eye level. They would move in a constant direction (though they might bounce of buildings) all the time, and if you weren't careful, you'd get your head incinerated. I would also make gravity variable rather than the same all the time, like in Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut.
19. Do you like to dance? Not really
20. George Bush: Is not a very smart guy.
21. Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her? John doesn't like kids~
22. Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him? See above~
23. Would you ever consider living abroad? Maybe. If I had the oppurtunity to really master the German language, I could do Germany.
24. What do you want God to say to you when you reach the pearly gates?"Oh no, it's him."

I'm working on the pictures thing. Getting to my mother's digital camera is hard. In the meantime, here's another dumb awkward questionnaire that's more practical:

I ____ John.

John is ____.

If I were alone in a room with John, I would _______.

I think John should_____.

John needs _______.

I want to ____________ John.

Someday John will ___________.

John reminds me of _______.

Without John_______.

Memories of John are _________.

John can be _________.

__________ is how I describe meeting John.

Worst thing about John is _________.

Best thing about John is ________.

I am ________ with John.

John ______ too much.

Blogger.com suggests:

Ask your readers to think of three photos they'd like to see posted to your blog. (Things around your house or whatever.) When you have enough requests, post them!

So, think of three things.

I woke up this morning and did a weird thing: I went and listened to some Taking Back Sunday songs on their website. The strange thing is that I liked them. I usually really don't like the punkish style of vocals in a band like that, but I think it's pretty cool.

John McCain fully believes the president won the debate last night:

"The reason this president is popular is not because he's a complex individual."

So, what? We're all idiots? Complex individuals are a good thing. I don't want a simpleton looking at the issues, because the issues are complex.

Gee, I really can't decide who won the debate after all that rigorous foreign policy talk.

Nucular...

Techno pie.

Coming to Space in Ibiza summer 2005.

Debriefing

My second apple pie is not quite as tasty as the first. I got the amount of apples right (the other pie was miniscule in overall thickness), but I used a different recipe this time for the buttermilk filling base. You see, I follow a book recipe for buttermilk pie, and then fold my own apples in. The first one used a bit of lemon juice and a tablespoon of butter; this one used an actual full stick of fucking butter (I used margarine since my father couldn't locate the butter in the deep freeze underneath all the squirrels, snakes, a kitten, etc.), which made my product far too oily. Also, my mother suggested I use Red Delicious apples this time over Granny Smith (she said the last pie was too tart), but I found them to be really kind of boring and flavorless.

My original problem with the first pie was that it was too liquid; it was a cream pie with some apples floating around in it. I'm going to base my next invention upon the first recipe, since it uses much less butter, but I'll put in only the amount of lemon juice required to keep the apples from oxidizing. I plan to use slightly less buttermilk in order to thicken the mix a bit, and I'll use the same amount of apples I did for the second pie. I want the buttermilk "custard" to simply fill in the cracks between the apples and give it a light, sweet flavor, not exist as the sole contents of the pastry. Less sugar is in order, too--the first recipe calls for two damned cups, and I'd like to have an apple pie rather than an angel food cake. At the end of this I hope to have my own recipe which combines my personally adjusted buttermilk pie with a certain amount of apples, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Despite the dissatisfaction at my second recipe's result for the filling, I think I've finally figured out the crust. I did it the night before, a difficult single crust recipe with not much shortening (I still can't find butter in my damn house), and put it in the refridgerator until the next day. It dried up considerably, but with some extra moisture it finally rolled out, and I even got it into the pan without making some sort of misshapen omelet. I've been pretty happy with the crusts, as they're just the way I want them: flaky and not crunchy like a blackened pecan pie.

And the second.

The first pie...

I sure am glad I don't know any standleaders.

To a lot of people I must be a walking contradiction. I can put on an outfit that varies from black only in an orange cat hair or two, and come to school looking like I've been hit by a train full of Nyquil, and then sing uplifting gospel/jazz music.

Tribes 2 is a good game. Gamespy gives you a free CD key now, and I happen to have the Gillespies' CD left over from long, long ago, so I've been giving it a shot. It's really the same old junk with better graphics, but I am absolutely in love with the vehicles. I was in Tribes 1--my skill at piloting Scouts is mind-boggling, in that I often fly underneath miniscule bridges in order to drop bombs or fire rockets at unsuspecting Starwolf--and now I am able to actually enjoy the grav cycles, bombers, mobile point bases, shrike turbogravs and the like without playing some god-forsaken unbalanced mod that looks like ass and plays like a fucking Dragonball Z episode. A teammate will frantically rant of an incoming bomber, and I am able to jetpack towards the practically indestructible vehicle pad in time to intercept such a threat with an agile fighter, which allows me the enjoyment of watching ejected Tribesmen fall to the ground like pathetic ants--along with the charred rubble of their craft. I can park an assault tank in a ravine thousands of meters away from the enemy base, and constantly lob mortars blindly into turrets, inventory stations, and people. It's the first different and enjoyable gaming experiences I've actually bothered to have in awhile (besides playing Doom 3 at Sterling's), and makes me actually consider investing in a graphics card less than six years old.

The Breakfast Club is a badass movie.

Eureka!

My first pie is complete. Despite misproportioned amounts of ingredients (too much buttermilk, not enough apples), it is a pie worthy of tasty pie praise. I have, therefore, written a techno short entitled "Tasty Pie". IM me to get it. IM me for the picture too, I can't get fucking picasa to work so no pictures on my blog for awhile.

Apple Pie; Baseball; Scholarships

From now until March 5, 2005, I will take on a new ambitious mission: to become a master of apple pie. I will bake, and bake until I bake in my sleep, and then I will continue to bake until I feel that my buttermilk apple pie is a masterpiece worthy of Chairman Kaga. I will be able to simply walk into my kitchen blindfolded, find ingredients, and make a pie on gut instinct when I am finished.

The purpose is to enter the CIA's (Culinary Institute of America) All-American Apple Pie Contest. I must forge a beautiful work of art in the fires of my Jenn-Air oven worthy of professional photography, send the CIA a picture, and write an essay which pours out my otherworldly passion for food. The first pie will be made tomorrow, using vegetable shortening for crust, as I will be focusing on the pie filling itself first, and the perfection of a flaky crust later (any pie guru will tell you that both filling and crust must be in complete harmony for a truly glorious pastry). I intend to keep a photo diary of my progress.

Haha, I found an angora sweater in a box while passing out flyers. I'm such a vulture.

Man, stuff sure is going great. I think it has quite a lot to do with Hawaiian coffee in the morning, which I am very, very proficient at brewing. I take pride in the elitist art so very much that I actually parade around the school exclaiming that one must use only purified water, and grind the beans for 15 seconds; no more, no less. It is shameful and it is good.

I find that I like people quite a bit, contrary to popular belief. All they have to do is be mature about things. In fact, this year I am far, far friendlier in general. I think it's because I feel healthier and more awake in the unholy hours we are forced to give to Klein High School. There isn't any significant burden of academic work at all, so I can concentrate on the things I like to do, like singing, and actually acquiring some relatively useful knowledge in a few of my classes without unproductively practicing for a new version of the same test I've been taking since first fucking grade. I can just sort of enjoy things, and communicate with my fellow semi-humans. I do believe this is what confidence feels like...

So Sterling and I have almost distributed flyers throughout every street in Memorial Northwest. Our last day of agony for the time being is tomorrow, and then I can collect the modest paycheck which will most likely serve as an insole for my shoes. My feet are tired as they have never been before; I feel as though I have been trekking through the desert for weeks, except my feet have been falling on concrete and dry, rock-hard soil instead of sand. It always amazes me on these outdoor expeditions that I have the ability to drink literally gallons and gallons of water, but the necessity to relieve myself of any excess fluid is relinquished completely for periods of five hours or greater.

My bench has increased to 155. I am a weightlifting addict, though I refuse to down spoonfuls of horrifyingly concentrated protein supplements. Lots of people do it and say it's great, but I prefer to stick to my more natural curriculum. Besides that, I really don't think I want to look like the guy on the can of PROTEIN POWER SHIT 2000. I don't mind being all buff, but I prefer to keep as many of my veins and arteries well below my skin as possible, and you really don't need to see every individual muscle fiber through my shirt. The whole idea that I am pretty strong, especially compared to my virtually glorious days as Ianaman the Level 50 Cleric, is enough for me.

You know, I think the physical exertion--working out, doing the flyers, mowing lawns, and doing grunt work for neighbors--that I've done this summer and continue to do is a priceless thing. It's not even that important because of the money, but I truly believe that if you go into the real world after your childhood and teenage years without really knowing the feeling of struggle, even if it's something you voluntarily do, you're doomed. When you're panting and running around in your third hour trying to get stuff done, or barely getting that bar back onto the bench while feeling your muscles start to lock up, or just sweating and knowing you won't stop sweating for quite awhile, you really get a sense of what it is to be human. I don't know, maybe it's just masochistic, but I do it all to better myself physically and mentally.

While we're on ideals, a guy at district choir auditions (which I got seventh at, by the way) told me that it's good to raise kids with a religion because it teaches them a set of values, morals, etc. to become good people by. My opinion was (and is) that you should never "raise your kids Catholic" or "raise your kids Baptist" or some junk like that, but that you should just raise your kids. You tell a three year-old that there's a god, and there's no way he can deny it, but as he matures and begins to observe his surroundings more deeply all the time, he may begin to doubt that. So many are hurt because they begin to question their faith at about our age, and hate themselves for it because unfaithfulness/godlessness is such an ultimate sin.

So, that takes care of my gullability theory on the whole matter. What I'm really getting at is that you don't need to bring a kid up along a set of religious commandments just to teach him the difference between right and wrong, because to be honest, I consider that relatively close to brainwashing. I wasn't raised with any sort of religion--it was never really even mentioned in my household. My parents taught me what to do and what not do do because, well, that's how it was--they didn't teach me to be a complete asshole. I don't consider myself a morally unsound person, or even a morally loose person. I use my own sense of judgement in ethical decisions, and I think I do pretty well without trying to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. I looked at religion a lot as I aged and tried it, didn't believe, didn't think it was for me, etc, with no help from anyone else, which I am incredibly thankful for.

Well, seventh in district. That's one better than last year. I'm going to make region, and be able to say that I made region three years in a row without practicing at home once. Anybody think it's funny that John Gallagher graduated and then I moved up a rank? I dunno, I made 18th last year at region, and the cutoff for pre-area auditions was 17th. I'd like to be able to give that a shot this year.

Flyers job is done. Eighty bucks is in the bag. May have been a pain in the ass, but a well-justified one.

Man, everything feels better now that I've got that crap done, too. It was really beginning to bother me. I think that walking so many miles in the sweltering heat just causes depression, not to mention having to convince dubious homeowners that you're really not there to rape their kids or steal their TV while they're mowing the lawn.

So I went to Ninfa's last night with Emily, Sterling, and Kathy. My love for Mexican food is, I think, unparalleled. Asian food is wonderful, sushi and the lot, but there's something about good beef and spicy stuff that just gets you really feeling alive. I think sushi is really a more elegant and subtle pleasure. I don't even know. God, I love food. And deep house music.

So I come across this blog, just while looking at ones randomly, that is titled, "Brainwashed Drone of the Imperial Satan".

His top post is ten paragraphs trying to convince me that John Kerry aided the Vietcong during the Vietnam war.

I shit you not.

End hypocrisy, vote for the guy that'll be on the back of my t-shirt next week!

Assholes are always pissed off at the guy handing out flyers. Well, I'm going to Oakwood Glen to finish the job tomorrow morning when the reverent bastards are all attending church. HA.

Currently I am having a smoothie. It is a pale orange color--an abomination spawned from the evil of carrots, apples, and bananas. Oh, and grapes. Six grapes.

Trying to get myself looking good for a modeling career is a bitch. I can do the working out, taking care of my hair, getting enough sleep, etc--in fact, I even enjoy that--but my skin is the worst. I am cursed with awful, oily skin, and despite doing the cleansing/drinking obscene amounts of water every day/facial masque/toner/astringent bullshit routine all the time, the best I can do is a relatively clear face that's always shiny. It is, in fact, the only thing in my life that I ever remotely worry about. I've taken everybody's advice on things; I have resorted to actually applying baking soda to my face in order to dry it out sufficiently (also, the particles are small enough to clean inside your pores unlike most of that shit you buy at walgreens, you'd have to be retarded to believe that little pieces of apricots are going to clean out the near-microscopic holes in your skin), and it seems to be improving my skin's condition. And no, before you say it, that does not, as they say, overdry my skin. Nothing does. I cannot fathom dry skin as actually being a problem for a human being, nor can I think of worrying about something so minute as skin texture when all I'm trying to do is make it all look the same color.

Of course, I'm at a handicap, I suppose, or several--I'm seventeen, a hormonal wreck, I work outside in the dirt, and it's blazing summer. I'm thinking I actually won't have much of a problem once it gets cooler and drier outside, and I also won't be working as much, but it still pisses me off.
I really don't want to see a dermatologist about it, as that would cost me a shit lot of money, and would keep costing me money, as I would have to pay for some strong prescription that might work, but would also have side effects such as depression, temporary worsening of acne (WTF), and suicidal thoughts. I'm not even fucking kidding, go look up Accutane or something similar, it's really bad stuff.

I'm to the point where I'm not even embarrassed about it anymore. Tell me, is the problem with my skin that noticeable, or should I just go ahead and hire a makeup artist and a photographer for my comp card shots?

Hurray for gas prices: "The head of the OPEC producers' cartel said on Monday that the group, which controls more than half of world exports, aimed to increase spare output capacity by about one million bpd in the next few months in an effort to bring down sky-high prices."

I found that an interesting piece of news because it said that recently busted Iraqi pipelines wouldn't be fixed for five days or so; you'd think stabilization in Iraq would be the explanation for the 41 dollar a barrel oil prices compared to the almost 50 dollar prices earlier, but it's just OPEC trying to make the global economy not suck, evidently. It seems the world doesn't revolve around everything America does, now isn't that fascinating? Besides, China's the biggest consumer of oil now that so much industry is centered there.

Damnit, I hate the way politicians run their campaigns. Vicious bastards they all are. Kerry needs to quit talking about his Goddamn Vietnam war hero record. We KNOW he fought and was all honorable with medals. Bush needs to quit being all righteous about 9-11; we know it was tragic and that you bombed some bastards.

If voters go to the polls more educated about the candidates' personalities than the issues themselves, I don't care who wins, the country is fucked.

Besides that, if some 527s start running that slam Bush's background, he's screwed anyway :P

Some asshole(s) egged Allison Scace and her boyfriends' houses. I find that really quite cowardly.

I could go on forever about things like this, but most of the things that the Republicans continually repeat (such as Kerry changing his mind about Iraq) are based on pretty awful statistics. For example: one of Bush's most favorite things to say is that he's created 1.5 million jobs.

We lost 1.1 million jobs since he got into office. That's a net of 400,000 jobs that he's created which represents slow growth. The growth is due to his tax cuts, which caused a short term boost to the economy, but are going to cost about 2 trillion dollars over the next ten years. We're going to be paying for that, you know.

Personal fitness update: my bench is at 150.

Ah, how the new school year is already rushing past me. I just glide through all my classes each day to go home early and relax, or make money, or work out. I can get hundred in English just for writing down a bunch of multisyllabic bullshit about a metaphorical link between the emotional mind and a thunderstorm. It's wonderful, because I don't have to practice daily for a test at the end of the year that I won't even fucking take.

I like the music we've got in choir this year, quite a bit. The fact that the music is really good keeps me able to withstand the daily lectures in Mr.Raddin's conducting school, although I must admit, I still think it's retarded. It seems as though every time my section is having a problem with something, one of the directors picks the exact opposite issue to work on; if we suck at the rhythm, we need to learn the pitch, if we're off beat, they think we're off tune. Maybe that's just in chamber choir, I dunno.

There's nothing more to write about. Except that district auditions are in a few weeks. As usual, Mr.Jones will get pissed at the rehearsals and say things like "some of you guys in here just aren't gonna make district", while I giggle, throw away my practice CDs, and make eighth. How wonderful it is to be a pretentious asshole.

Doesn't it frighten you when a president's solution to a pesky little civil rights issue is a constitutional ban? I guess since gays are a minority, he doesn't need their vote. It would be foolish, after all, to think of making life better for all citizens.

Pshaw~! I lifted 145 pounds today, almost 150!

Mary gave me flowers today, she's so sweet. ^.^ I just ate chocolate cake~

Today I weigh 17 years. Or something. That didn't sound right, going downstairs to make alots of coffee.

Damnit, I almost forgot it was my own birthday tomorrow...

You know, I think I may have finally gotten over this morning-phobia I've got. I mean, I'm not turning into Amelia Snider or anything, but I don't feel like shit right now, and it's about 6:20. I think I should've been a coffee drinker starting freshman year. I even worked out last night.

Ah, senior year. It's wonderful! My classes are a joke (not counting my English class, whose teacher has already revealed herself as an absolute stone cold bitch). I mean, I've got speech, economics, german, english, choir, lunch, and then, excitingly enough, choir again. Then I just go home with Todd, because I've got early release and I get to hop and skip around everyone else who has to stay for another hour. This kicks ass. I have never been happier about the beginning of a school year. I think that, quite possibly, I might not be subjected to a full year of monotonous bullshit this year, partially because school will not be the biggest part of my life.

Because I am... Derek Zoolander! *blue steel!*

And now, for a lesson in wildlife management.

If there are squirrels eating the insulation in your attic and causing a ruckus in between the walls of your house, lure the squirrels into traps with peanut butter, and then fry them in a large cast-iron skillet.

Problem solved, and much money saved at the grocery store.

I just put one of those cardboard door-hanger advertisement things for a realtor on every fucking doorknob in my subdivision. It took me eight hours. So, you know, if you've got this little thing on your door that says something about Dennis Coots and RE/MAX when you get home, and you live where I live, that was me. I was, like... at your house.

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Ribbon dancer?

I realized something awhile ago about politics and the candidates' takes on the issues.

Both Bush and Kerry (or any competing candidates) have logical ideas about the country. The problem is, both sets of logic conform to different realities.

In Bush's reality, God is on America's side, and the country is in imminent danger from an enemy we know little about. We have to prevent further attacks on our nation and increase military spending to make people feel safe.

In Kerry's reality, this is not completely the case--national security is an issue, but it doesn't mean taking most of the armed forces overseas to fight a war we don't really have a whole lot to do with. Homeland security means leaving that shit alone, and saving the economy from the sorry state it's been put in from spending money that we don't have on bombs.

Both cases make sense, but they are two plans for two different realities. The voter's job is to find out what the REAL reality is, and determine who's closer. Don't you think?

In other news, I've been being artsy lately, and took some photos to screw with in fotoshop. Tell me what you think, they're just silly alterations.

And now for the dramatic!

Cactus.

Red~

Best picture of me on the runway at First Colony Mall. My mom took a whole roll of film, but took the fucking pictures with her glasses off, so almost all of the others are unfocused. Or, erm, I guess they looked focused to her.

Yay, go John Kerry!

Got fitted for the fashion show today. I'm wearing some stuff that's... well, not my usual look. And I made a typo in the last post, the show is at 2 PM at the first colony mall, in the food court, I put 8 AM because I was thinking I've gotta be there at that time. But yeah, the show's actually at 2 on Saturday.

God damn, Bill Clinton gives a good speech.

It'll be really, really nice if we have a new president who can fucking speak at press conferences. Can you imagine reading a memoir written by George Bush?

Walking around at night in a place so quiet as my neighborhood is absolutely chilling. I become mesmerized in my own thoughts, completely entranced in a dream as my legs carry me silently through the places I know like the back of my hand. Two hours and five miles later, I end up where I started without even knowing it. It's just strange--I don't even pay attention to where I'm going, I just focus on the peace of being alone. It'll be a hell of a lot nicer in the winter, though.

Looks like the rest in my routine did me a lot of good; I moved up five more pounds and can bench 140 now, nearly my own body weight. *yay*

I have to bleach and pressure wash my fucking patio tomorrow. I hate pressure washing. It's tedious, and a horrendous waste of water (not like I'm much of an environmentalist), and pointless. Washing your driveway is like trying to sweep the sand off the beach. In my opinion, as long as it's not entombed beneath a layer of rotten leaves, leave it alone; it's outdoors, made of concrete, and not supposed to be fucking white. But I have to do my patio and not my driveway, which is very fortunate, because my driveway is huge.

Rollerblading on Tuesday. This will be fun, as I have a good pair of rollerblades which still fit very well, despite being size eight.

Fitting for the fashion show at First Colony Mall is Thursday. The show is Saturday. Woo, hooray for the exotic back-to-school catalogue runway. If anyone wants to go and watch, it's 8 AM on the 31st at First Colony Mall in Sugarland, in the food court, but I wouldn't recommend it, it's probably not going to be all that interesting. It's also kinda far away. If someone wants to go shopping with me afterwards though, I dunno, that's fun.