A List of My Weird Fascinations

-birds
-blood
-angry dudes
-suppressed rage dudes
-Hamlet
-Fear
-physical manifestations of mental distortions
-beards
-loss of sight
-drawing things on myself
-hands and teeth
-earthly spiritualism
-forward motion
-what we all have in common
-plaid
-dreams
-bromances
-Castiel
-things I cannot figure out

I tried to think of a title for this and couldn't

The brown-haired boy flipped the pages of his book, a book he usually enjoyed but one that couldn't amuse him at a quarter past one in the morning. Hearing a pause in the background noise of words and intermittent laughter, he rose from his chair and walked over to his friend, who was much taller and blond. "Can I have my computer back now?" the boy asked, holding out his hand.
"What?" the taller one said, his forehead wrinkling. "No, I'm not done reading quotes yet."
The boy raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, but I want my computer back. Just use yours."
"What? I'm not going all the way up to my room," the taller boy said, as if the idea were preposterous.
"It's one floor up. Can I have my computer back now?" The brown-haired boy took hold of his computer, but his friend would not relinquish it, tugging back forcefully.
"I told you, I'm not done reading quotes. If you want a computer, you can go get mine." He held up his room key.
The boy released his computer and stepped back, an expression of surprise on his face. It wasn't at all calculated, not like the manipulative guilt trips he occasionally imagined himself orchestrating in other situations. He was, quite honestly, stunned.
"Seriously?" he muttered, retreating back to his corner of the room. Behind him, he could hear his other friends also questioning the blond, but still he would not relinquish the computer.
The boy decided to plug in to his iPod, hoping the music would help. And it did, a little. It dulled the words that the blond was reading off in the background, the words that he'd heard before and that meant nothing to him. He also played Solitaire on the iPod, sometimes placing his hand on his throat in an attempt to suppress his coughs. However, when he had played so much Solitaire that he actually won a game, he knew that this had been going on for too long.
Eventually, the blond told the boy he could have his computer back. The boy was usually civil, even amiable regarding such disagreements, but his friend's conduct had surprised him so much that he couldn't let go of it.
So the two of them fought, for a minute or two, and with no raised voices. The friend's argument was so alien to the boy, so robotic, nonsensical in his world, that he was forced to leave without making progress, so unfathomable were his friend's actions (and rationale). Walking out of the room and into the hall, he received hugs from two of his other friends, then turned and went downstairs. On his way, he couldn't help but wonder, 'Is my friend really that self-important? Or is this just another part of accepting that I'm never going to find someone else like me?' The boy pulled his hood up as he stepped outside, but by that point the rain had finally stopped falling.

In the other part of the dream, I was taking Japanese and Chinese at the same time, so that sucked too

Last night I had a dream that some guy fucked one of my friends over, so my friend told me to cave his head in with a baseball bat. I was fine with it, but I did it digitally or remotely or something. So yeah, what the fuck does that mean?

"always gonna keep in touch! never wanna use a crutch!" (or: This Is Why I'm Straight Edge)

Listen, man. I know you like to go out and get trashed. So does everyone else, seems like. So you're not the only one. But man, I gotta tell you how I really feel. When you come around and you're totally wasted, it just feels like you're trivializing whatever we got here. I mean us, like people, like just being people isn't cool enough. Like you want to fuck around with your brain because your brain's not enough to have a good time.
So let's be honest, man — drugs are bullshit. It's just so fucking selfish, you know? Like, hey, being around you is getting kinda boring, I'd rather not be me when we're hangin out. And hey, if you wanna get high every so often because that's fun too, then yeah, I can deal with that. I don't wanna do that shit. I like being a real person. You wanna get high now and then, I can deal with that, I'm just not gonna join you.
But when did it become the default? When did growing up turn into every weekend, going out and getting shitfaced? Aren't we smart enough to find new shit to do, and not have to use a crutch to have a good time at a party? Apparently fucking not.
Whatever, man. Keep fucking around with your brain whenever you get tired of being a person who has to live in the real world. I'm not gonna do that shit. I'm smart enough and strong enough to have a good fucking time on my own.



(note: you'll notice that I'm not actually militant/an asshole about this in real life. But this is why I hate the drug culture, and why I'm straight edge, and also why I would be very angry if you got me drugs as my birthday present.)

racking spikes with zach (snippets of my day)

When I get there at 7 a.m. he and Ricky are racking spikes. He collects one-handed and takes a drag on his cigarette with the other. He's not using gloves, but I put on a pair and then I take the spot across from him. I look again at his scar. It's a red-and-white kid-scrawl V, starting above his right ear and dribbling to a point an inch below his hairline.

"I've been cutting down though." Zach is 20 years old. "This weekend my buddy got a 30-pack, I only drank 6, he drank 24. I haven't gotten loaded in 3 weeks."

We're talking about music. We did that a lot today. "Last concert I went to, Kenny Chesney, aw man, it was so bad. Gayer than AIDS."
"...yeah, he's pretty terrible."
"It sucked, he was a total douchebag. And everyone there was drunk. Lawn seats, it fucking sucked. Everyone was just totally trashed."

Ricky knows about everyone in the factory whether he wants to or not. So he knows about Zach's scar and why one of his legs is shorter than the other. He's giving him shit about it, with his big burly Florida boondocks drawl. Zach's trying to sound less guilty. "And those guys in the ambulance, they were trying to take off my pants, and I was like, what the fuck, don't fuckin touch me!"
"D'ja think they were tryin to get at your pants 'cause you were bleedin all over the floor?"
"I woke up later, in the hospital, find out I was handcuffed to the bed!"
"Well, maybe you should stop being such a fuckhead."
They both grin like they want to laugh but neither one does.

I don't know how we got on this subject. "Like heroin. I don't fucking get it. Some of my friends from high school, they're on heroin, and I see them and I'm like 'what's up?' and they're like 'uhhhh go get eightball.' Or they don't even fucking recognize me, like, we've been friends for ten years. And I gotta see, you know, their mom, 'hey, how are you, have you talked to Jason lately?' Oh yeah, he's shooting dope into his ass. 'Have you talked to Frankie?' Yeah, he married a hooker. He's like 'oh, she works at Denny's.' One morning we wanna go fishing, says we gotta wait til 5 a.m. for his wife to get back, what do you do when you get back at 5 a.m.? 'Oh yeah, it was costume night.' Yeah, costume night in a fishnet full-body suit. And my buddy Jason, he went to rehab for 2 months, got clean for 2 months, then he went right back on the drugs."
"Crazy."
"It's fucking sad." The machine has stopped working again by this point and Ricky comes in to try and fix it.

He sings a lot (and terribly) (although his Rob Zombie impression is pretty accurate). I don't know any of the songs he's singing except when he sings along to the radio. "Hot Blooded" comes on and he sings along for a little while, then transitions to something else. Another familiar one comes on and, excited, he steps away from the table to hit his knees twice and then clap his hands. "WE WILL, WE WILL ROCK YOU!" I rack the spikes with two hands to make up for his absence. Ricky's heavy Southern accent ranges across the machine. "You know who sings this song?" Zach pauses and cocks his head. "Uh... King?" I keep racking but my smile gets bigger.

The machine isn't playing fair today, as Ricky puts it. Zach gets really angry whenever it starts spitting out broken spikes, chucks them in the barrel with a grunt and goes, "These spikes are shitty!" Maybe he gets so angry because he hates doing nothing.

I watch him dump the broken spikes into the barrel. Hey man. Maybe you should find your brain. Wring the alcohol out of it. Build a life or something.

"No One Cares What You Look Like."

That's the phrase I seem to be repeating to myself most often these days. I've heard the speech a couple times now — each time I've gone to see Therefore I Am, they tell us about it between songs. If I remember correctly, it's something along the lines of, "You guys standing there with your arms crossed looking cool? Come on up here and dance. You don't go to a concert to stand around and look cool. No one cares what you look like." When I go to concerts, I wear some jeans and my Minor Threat t-shirt (it's a tradition) and then when I get there I rock out like a crazy person. The risks: someone standing in the back will look at me through their sunglasses, tuck their flat-ironed hair behind their ear, and feel secure in the knowledge that no one could possibly think that they are lamer than I am.

Well, no one is looking at this kid standing in the back. No one's really looking at me either. And I would rather feel all the energy and frantic passion I get from moving around than be the coolest kid in the crowd. What does "cool" even mean? That you make all the right plays so that you're automatically better than everyone else? That you wear the right clothes, drink the right beer, and take instant gratification wherever you can get it? I'm not gonna follow someone else's set of rules. I am not better than everyone else. I'm gonna do whatever I want. I don't want to be cool. I want to be angry. I want to be angry that our everyday lives have stopped meaning something. And I want to mosh.

Listening to music works too, like when you're listening to a song driving home from work, and there's this one part that makes you grit your teeth and press the back of your head into the headrest, and you're pretty sure you're not the only one who's ever done that. But at a concert, that other kid isn't two hundred miles away. That other kid is right next to you and even if you didn't bring a friend to the concert, you're not alone anymore.

I mean that. We're all angry about something. Maybe you're stuck working a dead-end job because you can't pay for college, or maybe your big brother just lost a limb to an IED, or maybe you've got a stable life but you seem to be the only person you know who still cares about the Haiti earthquake. And you can't do a whole lot to change it. So where do you put your anger? Well, you put it in your hands and you go to a show, and the music moves you like it always has, except a lot more because the band is right there and there's no barriers between you now. Then you shove the guy next to you and he shoves you back, and pretty soon there's a pit going. And when you leave, you're sore and probably bruised, but you feel better than you've ever felt in your life.

Why? Because you can really, physically feel it now. The anger, or the pain, or whatever you've got. But it's not just yours. This is not just about you. This is about the kid who shoved you back, and the other kids you ran into, and the singer, and the band, and me and you too. It takes all of us to make that happen — to make each other move and shove and run into whomever is nearby. You wanted to express your anger? We heard you. That's why we've got black-and-blue marks on our forearms.

This is what I want. This is what means something to me. For some reason, it's against the rules to put all your emotions out there. It's weird. It's not cool. I don't care. I'm gonna go dance.

a poem inspired by another poem that was written by a guy i don't know and inspired by a band i don't listen to. http://massculture.blogspot.com

Sometimes when I listen to music I
find myself moved by emotions
deep and opaque, and I have
no idea why.
but I think I figured half of it out.

It's the promise of comfort
in certain kinds of cadences.
I rarely find rage, or fury
in any song. usually
it's either triumph or sadness.
Sometimes everything will be ok.
When the chord changes the sun
will rise. We'll be in a safe place
with our friends.
There is no such thing as fear.

But sometimes that's
not the case.
Sometimes the resolution leaves more questions
than answers. Sometimes the singer is so drained
that by the end of the song
he cannot do it again.
But the final cadence to us is
that promise of comfort
because we can just hit the back button.
and listen to it one more time.

A while ago when he was recording it
the singer was overcome by everything
that makes him sing. but he's fine now.
The price is paid.
The song ends in a deceptive cadence but
music has never lied to me.
My body has. So has my family.
But never a synthesizer. A drum kit. A bass guitar.

Maybe the day I stop lying to my friends is
the day I can finally write good music.