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Because I miss my friends ever so, I am going to post a story I wrote that was inspired by one of them a few months ago, enjoy!

'Alyssa'

She’s the girl who wants it.

Badly.

Just look at her.

Look at the way she’s wearing that “new; old school” Edie Sedgwick short cut she spent papa’s 52 dollars and a tip on at the fancy hair salon on main.

The way she walks through the door of the restaurant, trying hard not to seem like she’s looking around to see who noticed her walk in the door, which in turn just makes it seem even more obvious. She knows she looks good, and she knows her fathers’ cash was money well spent, yet her past won’t let her believe it.

Raped at the age of 12.

Heart broken at 19.

Scarred for the duration of the flight.

She tells all of her close friends that all she wants is companionship, love, and someone to ask her how she is and really mean it. Her friends tell her she’s beautiful and petite and that she is going to have it all one day. Her past tells her she is ugly, pathetic and going no where.

She sits down at the table with another stranger she feels might give her what she wants. He’s dressed conservatively with a plain navy suit, solid blue shirt and dark blue tie. They both order the fish and sip their waters as the man talks about whatever it is he feels she might be interested in. She isn’t and it shows by her wandering eyes.

She sees a middle age couple laughing

She sees a family of five peacefully eating.

She sees nothing she recognizes.

It’s not that the man isn’t handsome, he is, and it’s not that what he is saying isn’t interesting; its just she is incessantly worried about everything around her. Like a newborn she tries to soak it all in. Like a scientist she is trying to figure out how it all fits into the formula that is her self conscious.

They finish their meals, skip dessert and leave a nice tip. The man offers his coat to her as they walk out, it has begun to rain and neither of them are the news radio type, thus they came with no umbrella. She politely accepts the offer, and flashes one of the few “soul baring” smiles of the night. They exit the restaurant and enter the rain soaked dark. I watch them as the walk rapidly outside.

Water falling from the sky.

Water hitting the black of the night.

Water flowing through her hair.

Purge

I need something.


I need something new to outlet my emotions. Wow, if that wasn't the most Emo fucking thing ever written on here, than I don't know what is.

What I'm trying to say is, I need a new outlet for what goes on inside.

This blog is great for me, and I love it, and I am going to use it more and more, but it can only serve so much as a purpose as an outlet. I need something a bit stronger, a bit more cathartic.

I want to be in a band. I want to fucking be in the most angry band ever. I want to write songs and scream till my fucking lungs bleed. I have always wanted to do this, I've thought about it many times. It wouldn't be about being good necessarily, or even being popular, I just want to be in a band that plays basements and fucking parties, and the occasional hipster bar.


Some of you might say, "my god, are you really that angry?" And to be honest, yes and no, I'm pretty angry sometimes sure, but I have a pretty sweet life, and this is why the little things that do get me angry or upset tend to fester, because i really have no right to complain. But if I must say, all of the people I have met in heavy bands have been extremely happy, nice, content people. They use their time on stage, or behind their microphone, guitar, kit, etc, to deal with and "release" whatever it is that bothers them.


A therapy of sorts.


The only people I have met that were in sad, heavy bands, and were still sad and depressed after the music stopped, were in terrible bands that didn't actually care about their sound or what they were saying, they were just acting the part that they thought they needed to act.


One of the people that reads this blog told me the other day that they thought my blog was really good, and I thanked him for the compliment, and really it was nice to hear, but I got to thinking...am I writing this for it to be good or bad? Is this about quality? No, it isn't, and although i was glad to hear that I have people that actually read my ramblings and grumblings, I realized I don't care if this is good or bad, just like i wouldn't care about if my band was good or bad, all i would care about is whether or not it was what I wanted it to be. I think it would do a lot for my Psyche.


Or maybe i should be as cool as this kid and get a tattoo:

The Cooler

Some days man, some fucking days are just shitty fucking days.

Worst part is, when you have one of these days, and you aren't terrible upset, nor did anything really all that bad happen to you.

No, these kind of days are worse. These are the kind of days where you really have dick to do with your time, thus you let your mind wonder to places it shouldn't go.

I'll elaborate.

Today i had nothing to do but go to class at 6:30, so I sat around all day and festered on my inadequacies and all of the things that are going on right now that I am not too happy about. I thought about my lack of motivation to engage in any real sort of physical activity, and then i thought about why i should be motivated to engage in physical activity. I got down on myself about how I really have nothing left to look forward to this summer except for the Dark Knight coming out, and the new Staind CD on august 19th.

I'm losing one of my best friends that I've had for the past eight years to a terribly stupid addiction, and no matter how much i scream and yell at him about how much i care, it doesn't get through, and even when I make a mistake and fuel his addiction I'm given no choice but to make him pay for it because of his inability to realize he is destroying himself day by day.

My social life, albeit pretty solid, has some major fucking flaws in it. My two best friends are away, one in Boston, the other in the fucking Dominican. My other two best friends here at home are leaving by the fall, one to China and the other to Delaware. Three out of my four best friends from School are either too busy to celebrate her own 21st, too far to afford to be able to see me, or doesn't have a car, or even a license for that matter, and lives about an hour away. I'm (finally) coupling with girls that I have been crazily enamoured with for years, yet instead of trying to build on these acts, or instead of being upfront and social about my feelings or drive to start something serious, I'm talking to them like I talk to all of the other pieces of waste I've shared a bed with in college.

I'm in the sort of mood where I have no idea what kind of music I want to listen to, it seems the only CD that really brings a smile to my face is a 10 year old New Radicals album that I don't think they even press copies of anymore, oh that's right, even the lead singer thought they were a one hit wonder so he fucking ended the band. Shame, that CD is incredible.

My parents have been gone for a week and a half, and I'm all fucking alone in my house, which was cool for the first few days, but now I really have nothing to do. My mother might get on my ass for the dumbest of shit sometimes, but at least fighting with her was something to do.

I can't talk to my best friends about something that has kept me from having a good night's sleep since last week. As much as I tell people I like it, I think I fucking hate working at the steakhouse, and I miss the comfortably of the Chee. Besides when I write in this stupid thing, the Internet fucking bores me senseless.

This isn't a pity pull, I just want to know what gets you people when you get into one of these moods, what do you think about when you have nothing but time to kill?

I don't need anyone to tell me everything is going to be okay, or that I am a good person. I know I am, and I know my life is great, so if you came here to do that, thanks, but please take it somewhere else. Really.

I'm just having one of those days.

Lightning Crashes

A lot of people talk about accomplishing things. People talk about climbing their "Mount Everests," in other words, doing things that seem impossible to many, or just impossible to them, but they work through the hard times and do it. Using their "roof toilet" is what you Scrubs fans out there might say.



I have many "Everests" that I want to climb in my life, I wanna be a Talent Agent, I wanna make money, I wanna make money so I can buy myself and my family nice things. I wanna weigh 180 pounds, etc.



I recently received something that I had been wanting for a while, it wasn't an Everest by any stretch of the imagination, not at all, but it was something that I had been working on for the past few years. Well, not working on, I don't want to give you some mental image of me looking like one of the Seven Dwarfs, getting up every day and hammering out some monster fucking mission with a weird hat on, and a really baggy onsey, so maybe I haven't been working on this for a while, but I sure as hell have been thinking about getting this for quite some time.







This weekend this thing I've been "jonesing" for came to fruition, and to be honest, I can't decide if it's a good thing or not, or really what's going to come from it, if anything at all. I keep trying to decide whether or not any of it was even worth it. I mean when Led Zeppelin was writing "Stairway" do you think they knew they were writing the greatest song of all time? Do you think they sat there thinking, "hmm maybe if we had this string arraignment here, or a guitar solo here, it'll be the greatest fucking recording ever, ahh fuck it let's go throw lunch meat on the groupies..." Although I'm sure they covered many a woman with coldcuts, I highly doubt they knew the importance of what they were doing while recording that song. Only after its release and years of praise did its true greatness become exposed.



So should i judge my recent dealings after only a few nights of pondering its importance, or do I let it sit and burden my thoughts for say, the next 10 or 15 years?



Worst of all, I have absolutely no one to talk to about this that will truly understand the importance of it all in the mini spectrum of my life. All the people that can be trusted with this sensitive material wouldn't understand the importance of the actions, and all of the people that would truly realized the epic proportions of said events wouldn't be able to contain the information. Hell no one would be able to.



So I guess my question is, how do you talk to someone about something, without really telling them what you're talking about? God knows I need to talk to someone. Or maybe I should just pay a stripper to let me throw lunch meat at her.



Hey, it worked for Led Zeppelin.

Melt

I don't think Fuck is the dirtiest word that one can say anymore. People say fuck all the time, it doesn't shock us anymore. Hell if you hang around me enough you'll hear it so much you'll forget your parents told you never to say it in the first place.

I think the more taboo word, or conversation if you will, would be race. We don't like to talk about it, we don't like to analyze it, and we sure as shit don't like to recognize it's importance on the normal person's decision making process. It's why people just wanted the recent democratic primaries to just be over, so we can all stop pretending that race didn't play the biggest part in that decision.

The reason I am bringing this up is because of two separate occasions over the past five days I saw examples of the lowest forms of the two most dominate races in this country.

On Saturday four friends and myself went out to Wildwood for a night of boardwalk, and bar / restaurant hopping. We ended up at this rest. called Juan Pallos. Mexican place, it was just okay, their quesadillas were lacking, but their tortillas were on point! anyway, after we were done at Juan Pallios, we started walking back towards our buddy's place where our car was parked. On the way, there were about 10 black guys and few Latino girls hanging out on a car. One of them put his hands in the air and tried to elicit a high five from one of my friend's girlfriend, who was with us. He was a bit too pushy, and my friend was full of patron, so he stepped in and told the black guy to go fuck himself, and to stay away from his girl. This prompted a block-long walk where three black guys just yelled at us while we kept walking and me and another friend telling them to relax, and that it was a non issue while my buddy and his girl went ahead. Instead of trailing back and letting it go, the instigator black guy ran ahead and punched my buddy in the neck. He then ran back to us an apologized. He was obvs. trying to impress his friends, and rectify the situation with us, although there were more than them, we weren't necessarily backing away from them.

After all this we got back to our place, and our car, and everyone calmed down. I thought this was hilarious, but everyone was pretty angry and or upset. Everything calmed down and we finished the night and went home. It was pretty terrible that we even had to deal with this sort of thing to begin with on an otherwise pretty sweet night, but it happens.

My other instance happened just yesterday. I was leaving the Wawa in Birches West, and as I was about to enter my car I see about four or five Mexican guys walking across the street and towards the Wawa, as they are about to enter the pavement the Wawa is on, a car full of four white guys drives up, slows down, and one of the guys takes out a megaphone, and goes "Go back to Mexico." It was loud (megaphone duh) and direct, and it was the most rude terrible thing I have ever seen for no reason. I looked over at the five Mexican guys, and you can tell they weren't happy about it, but they kept walking to Wawa, totally used to that kind of thing happening to them. My whole car ride back to my house I was full of anger, I hated those kids for doing that, I hated that they found it so funny, and by the way they executed this prank it seemed like they had done it a million times before, I hated Washington Township for producing such over spoiled trash that would do such things. I was full of hate and it made me think of race. It made me think of Saturday night, and how those black guys felt threatened by us, or how we felt scared because they guys coming after us were black. These Mexican guys didn't feel threatened by their megaphoned attackers, but you'd be stupid to think their feelings weren't hurt. The white guys in the car feel threatened by the Mexicans, just because of the color of their skin and the way they say our words different.

All of these races, scarred of each other, threatened by one another.

And I just kept thinking the same thing over and over again when I was driving home after seeing the Mexican instance at the Wawa.

Maybe we aren't so different after all.

Brogan

My family is moving.

Well, we were.

Moving was something my family teetered with almost two years ago, it didn't work out, so we took our house off the market. I didn't want to move then, and I thought I didn't want to move this time as well. I spent many days and trips with my family going to see houses and picking out the bad things about all the houses we saw. There wasn't one single house that I wanted to move into. It's not that the houses weren't nice, some of them really were, there was just something that was holding me back.

Fear.

I was scared of moving, and I was scared of having to go somewhere new, and somewhere different. I've lived in three houses my entire life, and I thought when we moved into the house we live in now that this would be it; that this house would be the house I take my grand kids to when they wanted to visit their grandfather and crazy Grandma Sue. Even though I hated this house when we first moved from South Philly, after some recent alterations, and a really nice extension of my "room" I began to really fall for it, and even looked forward to coming home some weekends last year when things were a bit rough at school. That all changed last Friday.

See, we went to go see a house behind a local church, before I even got there, I was putting down the neighborhood it was in, and trying to plant the seed of doubt in my parents' mind. We get there, and its actually a really nice house, four bedrooms, well almost five, two and a half baths, full finished basement, and the most spectacular backyard I've seen behind a house in real life. It was way below our budget, and it had everything we were looking for in a house. It was perfect!

We all begged and pleaded with our parents to put in a bid to buy the house, and I think they loved the house as much as we did. This is where this dream story comes to a crashing and confusing halt.

Long story short, our house isn't sold, and although we could probably just pay full price for the house, we still had to sell ours. As great as owning a home is, it comes with a fuck-ton of bills, and one of those being a mortgage. If we bought this nice house, and didn't sell ours right away, we would have to carry two mortgages. Again, long story short, my parents are afraid, although they can afford it, they afraid it might cripple us if our house doesn't sell, and the double mortgage goes on too long.

Fear.

I'm not going to go in depth on what must be going through my parents' minds. For two reasons, one it's none of your, or even mine for that matter, business. Second, It's their money, and although I am deeply disappointed that we aren't buying that home (even though I'll probably be out on my own in a year anyway) I understand their decision, although I don't agree with it. My parents deserve that house. Not that our house is shabby, it isn't, it's a great home, amazing kitchen, and we live comfortably here. That being said, my parents have earned the right to live beyond comfort, to be able to truly stretch their legs.

My Dad doesn't have a college degree, yet we go on over a months worth a vacation every year, I went to a 35 thousand dollar a year private university, and we live in a expensive town. My mother busted her ass in night school to get a degree in, like, six years at the age of forty, and works everyday. They doesn't just provide for our family, they flat out fucking spoil us. I know they must have a million things going through their head everyday, and god knows my brothers and I don't make it any easier on them.

The only way to truly thank them is to be at least half as good to my kids as they were and are to me. The reason I say this is because I want you to understand where I come from when I say that my parents are being scared dogs when it comes to this house ordeal.

Fear.

I want this house, they want this house, but they are too scared to take a risk. Case closed, end of story. Fear wins again, and again we all lose.

I really don't know when fear took over all of us. When we let it creep right into our fucking lives, sit in our favorite recliner, and drink the coldest beer from the back of the fridge. I'd blame George Bush and how he manipulated that bastard fear for his own personal gain. I'd blame Osama Bin Laden and every fucking "terrorist" that gets angry when he sees the red, white, and blue and is jealous of the freedom those colors represent. I'd blame the whores and the assholes who spread STDs with dirty needles and careless sex, or I'd blame the drug dealer who helps kids greet death everyday just so he can ride around in a pimped out caddy or sleek black Mercedes. I'd blame Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, and John McCain, and every other cock-sucking politician who makes us fear the future if we don't vote for them, so they can make our decisions for us. I'd blame all those stupid fucking signs and brand new security measures at the airport that scare the shit out of all the families before they board their flight to "sunny Florida!" I'd blame the finger-fucking Priests and all the clergy men of all religions for scaring it's patrons into believing God will make us pay. I'd blame all the atheists for pissing off God and believing something that wasn't Divine could possibly make everything around us. I'd blame all the models and workout shows for making some of my best friends hate themselves when they look in the mirror, and make people so scared to go to the beach, or go to a pool party, that they'd rather sit at home and do nothing for fear of being judged.

I'd blame everyone else, if I could. But I can't, because I know who is really to blame for letting fear take over ourselves. We are, and I would tell you how to change it, and I would tell you how to fix it, and how to regain our footing in this fucked up world. But I don't know how to.

Actually I think I do know how to fix it all, I'm just afraid I might be wrong.


Fear.


Author's note: So, the people that were selling the house that I wanted to move into said last night that anyone who wanted to put a bid in for their house had to do so by 10 am today, and they would make their decision by noon (apparently other people wanted that house as well) My parents went to bed last night deciding to not put in a bid, and to take our house off the market. I just got a call from my Dad telling me that they put in a bid for the house, and that they accepted it, thus making us the new owners of the house! Apparently something made them change their minds this morning, and take the risk. I sure am glad they did ;)

Pack Your Knives

I Love Top Chef.

I think it's the best reality show on TV at the moment. Bravo does an amazing job with editing the footage, getting top notch judges, (unlike American idol whose number one draw on the judges tables is someone whose only real credit in the music business for the first four seasons was producing a Teletubies soundtrack) (p.s. Simon Cowell) and bravo understands that the show isn't about the judges, it's about the contestants and their product.

Tonight, for those of you that don't watch, my favorite chef out of the remaining six was eliminated, Dale. The show consisted of the six remaining chefs competing in "Restaurant Wars" which pits two teams of three against each other, and the goal is to see who can put together the best one night only restaurant experience. Long story short Dale was the executive chef on the losing team, and was tossed from the show.

Most people don't like Dale because he is brash, ultra competitive, sometimes cocky contestant. I happened to love all of these qualities in Dale, and I thought it was what would have made him an excellent Top Chef. I'm not writing an entry about this just so I can bitch about the outcome (although Dale got fucking hosed if you ask me), it's because I feel that I possess the same qualities as Dale does, and I execute them in my life.

I'm rough, I'm open, I'm brash. I hate to fucking lose, and I hate to be beaten. I hate making mistakes, and sometimes I'm super confident about certain things. Over the past four to six years of my life I have tried to work these qualities into a more positive disposition for myself.

I didn't get along with many people in High School, but I always gave everyone a shot. Same thing for college, but looking back I see that me being brash, and real, and sometimes brutally honest causes people to not enjoy my company. Mostly these people are people I have never met, people that have never shared the same conversational air with me, or have even tried to, yet I'm no one that they would ever spend time with.

Now I'm not some hippie that thinks everyone can get along with everyone, we human beings aa a whole only really like certain people, and personality dictates a lot of the decisions we make about our relationships, but does that mean we should shut out people completely just because of what we might hear, or what obstacle their personality might present?

Dale said something in his post interview after he was told he was off the show. he said "You either love me or hate me, but either way, I'm myself." Cliche? Sure, but it got me thinking a little bit.

The reason some people shut me out before meeting me, is it the other people's fault, their negligence for not forming their own opinion, and instead just swallowing the spoon fed judgement dictated to the many from the few?

Or is it me?