Making Plans To Break Plans

For the most part my approximation of my classes was pretty accurate. Italian is interesting, if a little difficult because I accidentally missed the first class-- I know, I'm a fucking genius. But my instructor seems cool and at least my pronunciation is decent.

The First-Year Experience class is dead boring; it's basically an attempt to make us better "successful" students through self-reflection, journaling, and a bunch of other crap I don't want to do. Plus it's on the fifth floor of the HH building: lamesauce.

Anthropology should be cool; the professor, who insisted that we all call him Mark because he doesn't want to be old, is funny and there isn't really homework besides reading and studying.

Mythology, by far, will be my most awesome class. The teacher is like Mrs. Denning-- only a tad less so-- and the course work is fantastic. I think I'm looking forward to Halloween, watching the movie of Dante's Inferno... WITH PUPPETS.

I want to see if I can transfer into a music or art class, hopefully on a TTH schedule, and drop the First-Year class. I want to actually take things I enjoy.

Forgo the metaphors: It's fucking college

I've never really understood all the metaphors and fanfair people use to talk about college; generally this is done in high school graduation speeches. You know, a new chapter of your life, your glimpse into the real world. But let's be honest, it's just more school. You know, that thing you've been doing for thirteen years of your life? Yeah, that's not going anywhere.

As one might have been able to determine, I'm at school, sitting outside the cafe in an uncomfortable metal chair and watching the people walk by as I type away at my computer. Avoiding looking at those two guys across the aisle who are, in fact, staring at me. Ooo, a tall thing in skinny jeans of my favourite colour green.

Getting off topic! Actually, did I even have a point? At least there's plenty to watch for the next half an hour before I have to begin searching for my first class. I'm not really worried; the humanities building isn't hard to navigate. It's the class after that I'm thinking about: anthropology in one of the two buildings where the first floor you land on upon entering isn't the first floor. I think in the one I'm going to it's the fourth, but I'll have to check.

All this blathering, aside from making for some pretty damn boring reading material, is stream of consciousness-- when I don't get distracted, like by that beautiful blonde girl who just walked by-- and really only suits to take my mind off what I realised on the long walk from the car: I'm terrified, and for no good reason too. All the people I know who are already in college have told me that there's nothing to worry about in "institutes of higher learning" that there aren't in high school. Well, probably with a few exceptions, but I'm trying to be positive.

Watching all these people come and go helps and doesn't, because on the one hand I get to partake in one of my favourite activities and imagine their life story, but I also get to thinking about other things, like the potential these people have to affect my life. Jeez, if his pants got any tighter they'd be leggings... Right. Anyway, I'm going to continue surfing the internet and probably post another entry after class, because gods know something will happen that's worth talking about.

Go on. Stangle that mime!

"Plus what would I say to him?"
"I don't know... 'hi, my name is C and you look like Sisky, so we should make out'?"

"Great idea, lady on my TV, you make out with that guy driving the car."
"...WHAT?"
"It's okay. They crashed."

If you ever want to watch a TERRIBLE movie, watch "Zombies Anonymous." I didn't ever get through ten minutes of it before it got turned off. It's awful. Terrible picture quality, worse acting, so much wasted potential. If you want to watch a better, though admittedly more confusing and slow, movie, watch "Melvin Goes To Dinner". Nothing seems to make sense until the very end, and then you've got so many more questions, you'll want to strangle a mime. Or maybe that's just the need of anger management.

So I'm not really sure what to make of life right now. School's starting up soon-- I've got class Tuesday at eleven just to ease into it-- and most of my friends are leaving or have already left, except those lucky bastards on the quarter system who start in a month. So far nothing I've attended has peaked anything resembling interest, except for stories from friends going to other colleges who've already started, so I'm hoping that college isn't going to be as dreadfully boring as it has seemed so far. I haven't met anyone and I don't want to just go to class and come home and hate my life; interesting human interaction needed from people other than musicians at shows!

Also I haven't really been writing recently, not for lack of trying, but every time I sit down I can't formulate an idea good enough to keep. My brother playing Bass Hunter while he plays Warcraft certainly doesn't help, which is what's on now. I like Bass Hunter, but it's not what I would choose for inspiration.

It's awful; even this can't hold my attention long enough to say something meaningful. Maybe I'm just nuts and want something I can't have.

Quis ipsos custodes custodiet?

We're setting fires beneath our lovers' beds
Just watching the world burn

The slaughterhouse choir chimes and screeches
To the tune of the three-penny orchestra
Their screams and wails haunt and tug heartstrings
Because we've heard it all before
They echo in our heads at night
Waiting for the sky to fall

Masquerading dancers in the violent cabaret
Parade with flaming banners through Central Park
Blazing through the night sky
Like our childhood hopes, dreams, and fantasies
The verse ascends, the bridge climbs high
Listening for the end of life's fermata

Dirty tricks in politics
Filthy war and starving eyes
Man-made plagues soaring through the atmosphere
Did we bring it on ourselves?
Could our scapegoats all be lies?
Watching the bombs fall on television screens

Costumed masked men knock nocturnes out of blood
As we play poker with Tarot cards
New hand dealt, full house, four dead
The end of the world comes with a royal flush
Outside our windows bright spandex and silk capes fly
Beating our end-world plots senseless

We seek escape in white noise and olive skies
Biting through lips, gripping at skin and satin sheets
In the darkness of the twisted burlesque show
We are true. No lies to tell the world
We are sick and twisted and deranged
We're just watching the world burn

Or if you want to find somebody else that's better, go ahead

Something that, strangely now that I think about it, has never happened to me today, and twice no less. Today on completely separate occasions two men have cursed and then pardoned themselves because "there's a lady around." Now, I don't really mind swearing-- I'm quite prone to it depending on the situation and the company-- but I just found it funny, and now I find it sort of sad that you never see the same thing anymore with young people. Yes, I sound old, but I'm allowed to point out the discrepancies between my generation and those older, aren't I? That's what my cynical generation is all about: pointing out bullshit.

But getting back to the point, you never see-- or rather, hear-- that with anyone of the young generation. We swear liberally and quite casually, and we'll be fucked if we give a shit who hears it. I'd just once like to meet a guy under 25 who'd do the same as I heard today.

(And that usage of cursing was to make a point, in case you aren't too quick off the draw.)


"Shit I need a boyfriend."
"Shit... me too."
"Fuck, let's go get some!"
"Just go pick some up at the grocery store. What aisle do they keep them in again?"
"Uh, I believe it was 5b. Next to the ice cream. Gotta buy 'em hard."
"...That is both hilarious and disgusting."
"That is the point."
"That's what boys are."

"So blatantly obvious songs about sexing up someone make me laugh and think, 'Oh you. You're not getting laid!'"

"If a guy had a rack like mine, I'd say that fucker needs surgery and or hormone therapy."

"When I'm rich and famous I'm going to open a club in the city called Club Epic and we'll play Cobra Starship to dance to."
"Awesome! Will you host live bands?"
"Do you know me at all?"
"Sweet. 'Club Epic presents My Vagina Spaceship featuring I Look Good In Eyeliner.'"

"Do... do you have a vagina?"

"Someone needs strippers!"

Some old insanity

"Siobhan's not happy unless there's something with tight pants."
"Or naked."
"Or naked. Which means it was in tight pants at some point."
"Wouldn't they be hard to get off?"
"You cut them off."
"Kinky."
"With a machete."
"Wouldn't that be dangerous?"
"That's the point."

"What's the point of dating? I mean, really!"

"Ha! I just took a picture of that chick and you'll never know!"

"Did you see how that soccer player was checking you out, Andrew?"
"Yeah, it's 'cause I'm hung like an elephant."
"Wait. I don't get it."
"Let's just say I use Magnums."
"The gun?"

"I don't get the elephant part though. Is it because they're big?"

Two things to always remember: go left and look up, because nobody ever does.

Kick up the stereo, kids

I don't know if I've ever mentioned it, but I'm very annoyed by movie kisses. The vast majority of them are wholly unbelievable; too much dramatics, or maybe the attention to detail and motion is the fault of the cinematographer. Most of the time you think, people don't kiss like that, and if they do, it's certainly not in public like it always is in the movies; it's in the privacy of their own homes, or hotel rooms, or otherwise away from prying eyes. That never happens.

Well, in walking around Dublin, I discovered that they do, in fact, happen. People do actually do far more than peck each other on the lips in public. The most obvious examples I saw were the couple making out in the back of a taxi-- something I imagine must have created some awkwardness had the driver been forced to interrupt them upon arrival-- and the couple falling all over each other-- into a wall.

But I am right. Things like that are completely different from how they're portrayed in the movies. Only, I've learned... sometimes they're not.

~

Home. As Zach Braff said in “Garden State”, maybe all it is the same imaginary place people miss, and maybe all family is, is a group who miss that place.

So I’m on the plane headed back to SFO, and I have no idea where we are specifically. Judging that it’s about three and a half hours before we land, I’d say we’re somewhere in Canada. Hi, Canadians! My head hurts like you wouldn’t believe—I think it’s due to sinuses as those are being fucked up as well—and I seriously need to stretch my legs. Airplane seats are TINY.

I’m currently listening to Green Day’s “Homecoming” off American Idiot, and it’s hard to believe that this album came out four years ago. My freshman year. So much has changed since then, and yet it feels like nothing has. But nothing can make me enjoy this song less. This is my early adolescence here. My life.

And that’s what everything I’ve taken from this trip is as well. Not to be all melodramatic and say “oh ye gods my life is changed forever after two weeks” because it isn’t. I’m still me, only with a lot of swag and memories and photos. But at this moment I’m smiling because I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Even if I didn’t enjoy every minute and sometimes I just wanted to curl up and sleep the day away, it’s still mine.

And nothing’s gonna change that.

Post #100

Translation: C has nooooo life. But hey, that must not be true, because she's in effing Ireland. Also, I discovered where all the hordes of really cute guys are! ...Besides Dublin. Apparently all of them hang out/ work at this supermarket called "Superquinn" in Brae in county duhrbubrfubr*coughcough*.

Funny, I didn't know Quinn Allman was secretly an Irish superhero. Huh.

That's all. Coming home tomorrow.

I have played way too many video games for this not to be creepy as hell

That quote, said by yours truly, was in reaction to standing in the crypts beneath St. Michan's church in Dublin. I kept expecting bloody demon hand to snap out of the gated tombs and try to claw my brains out, Silent Hill-style. Don't tell the makers of that game; they might use the idea in yet another game.

I know there was some other strangely amusing thing I said today; I don't remember anymore. But wandering around Dublin was fun. It is quite trendy, as I have heard, and full of young people. Ah, now I remember. We were walking towards Grafton Street and a pack of teenagers-- the fun, smoking, wildly-haired and -tattooed kind-- and my dad says, "Mind the toughs."

Now, I know he's thirty years my senior, but I hope I remember what teeangers are like in thirty years. It was hard not to burst out laughing; these were the types I deal with-- and shove out of the way when needs be-- at shows all the time. "Toughs?" said I. "These are just kids."

And they are. Sure, noticeably more of them smoke than American kids, but really I was wholly comfortable with the crowds of people that inhabit Dublin today. Well, I mean, I hate people-- not persons or peoples, as we discussed today-- but I'm not afraid that boy with the spiky black-and-pink hair all dressed in black with the lip-, eyebrow-, and tongue-piercings and studded belt holding up waaaaay skinny jeans is going to start shit with me. I have that air of "I'll have nothing to do with you, so don't bother" about me often when I walk the sidewalks and department stores.

Which people actually take note of in European department stores! I wandered about Brown Thomas-- very chic, very swish, I am totally buy those 750 Euro Italian leather motorcycle boots when I become rich and famous-- and wasn't sprayed with perfume or asked if I could be helped or anything. And when I was finished, I walked straight out without bother from anyone.

I like that. I like Dublin. I like Ireland. But two weeks is a terrible long time. Perhaps we should've only stayed ten. I miss certain people I know, not to mention the ability to be alone. Need alone. Need space.

I am going to sleep so much on the plane until I can be back in my space.