Yo Ho, A Drummer's Life For Me

2010-10-13T21:49:00.000-07:00

Time for a general post! Why? Because i haven't done one in quite a while. So my apps are done and out of my hands. All I can do now is pass classes, eat candy, write bizarre stories and nap. Mostly nap, I hope.
On another note, I have decided that pretty much every girl is hot in her own way. Not the most revelatory comment, but true. Despite the cuteness and hotness surrounding me, I don't feel a need to partake. I'd love a relationship, I would, but I don't really feel like putting any effort forth at this point to get myself into one. But with this unseasonably warm weather the window shopping is good.
Well now I feel like a bit of an asshole for the preceding paragraph, so I guess I'll wrap the post up.
Reading:
The Name of War -Jill Lepore
The American Revolution -Gordon Wood
Watching:
random things on netflix
South Park
Munching on:
Cookie Crisp, graham crackers and beer. Wow, that sounds lame.
Listening to:
Tegan and Sara
Alkaline Trio
Oasis
The Distillers
Opeth
Dethklok

Until Later folks

2010-10-13T20:19:00.000-07:00

I was thinking the other day about my interests as a history major, and I came to a realization. Where once I looked on American History as depressing and not worth my time, I have become an Americanist. I used to see the hypocrisies in the rhetoric of antebellum politicians, see Manifest Destiny, see general intolerance and I'd get pissed off and read something else. Reading European history and seeing forced movements of people, i.e. the Jews being expelled from Spain in 1492, or rampant genocide or hideously and infuriatingly depressing things and I wouldn't bat an eye. It wasn't until recently that I realized the reason that American history got me riled up is simply because I'm a bloody American. I care about American history, because it shapes who we are as a nation and how we are perceived as well.
I'm not articulating this particularly well, but where I used to get upset and quit, I find the ideas that led to atrocities like Manifest Destiny and explore them. Where Europeans settled with their cultures, new cultures formed from fusions with native peoples and other European nations forming a distinctive set of American cultures from New England to Oaxaca. Yeah, I like Mexico too. But anyhoo, it's nice to have a focus that you like in the subject.

2010-10-08T23:14:00.000-07:00

I hate literature. I do. Well, to be specific the way that literature and English are taught have ruined the experience of reading short stories or fiction. With the focus on the underlying themes and reading between the lines, people lose sight of the important question. Is it a good story? Did you enjoy it? Were the characters compelling? Was it a vacation from reality? Not what does the train on page 47 say about conservatives in this country. That's horseshit. Anyone who tells you it isn't is also horseshit. I was taking a test today in some G.E. class and all I could think was this is the most meaningless and arbitrary attempt to invent meaning and I hate it. Literature classes have ruined literature for me.
Perhaps I'm just not appreciating a sophisticated approach, but why does it have to be sophisticated? Reading used to be fun for me, I wouldn't have to think about life and racism and politics or whatever. Reading was a simple pleasure, and higher learning is trying to take that from me. It's upsetting, because I feel that education is extremely important, but I really hate it right now.
Oh, and sophisticated sounds a lot like sophistry. And this whole talk of themes is sophistry, pure and simple. I always thought sophistry was to be avoided in an intellectual setting, but I guess I was misinformed. Thanks literature class, you are skewing me towards the cheap entertainment of eating for fun, not reading. So now I'm going to just get fat and probably diabetic because of this class. Make sense? No. It's sophistry, fallacious reasoning.

Can I have a class where we just read books, don't tear every scrap of invented meaning from them until all that's left is a tattered binding?

2010-09-27T00:42:00.000-07:00

A PUNK SYNOPSIS »

By Greg Graffin
Details, 7/96 called it "Anarchy in the 10th Grade"

About two weeks ago I received a letter from a punker who said he used to be a fan of Bad Religion. Used to be, that is, until we let him down by releasing our last two albums which didn't fit his definition of punk. There weren't any songs against the establishment, he claimed (which isn't true by the way), so how can you call it Bad Religion? Indeed how can you guys call yourself punk? He went on to imply that we don't know anything about what punk is because we are so out of it. He was clearly angry, and intolerant of what our recent music actually had to say.He believed that the sanctity of the punk establishment had been infringed on somehow by our last two albums (but he also noted that our previous seven albums weren't guilty of such treason).

The very same day I ran into someone on the street in the town where I live and he recognized me as the singer of Bad Religion. Like the guy who sent me the letter, he too was a punker, but he wasn't angry or judgmental. We talked for a short while and he spoke about how increasingly these days young people in general are hostile to strangers, and don't want to listen to anyone but their own comfortable circle of friends. And about how people seem to be motivated these days by some unseen force to be closed minded. His open desire for opinion, and his focus on relevant issues were refreshing and it made me remember all the great things about the punkers I grew up with and still interact with today: open-minded, inclusive, unpretentious and not presumptuous, and willing to confront the people or institutions that seemed unfair or unjust. Instead of being concerned with establishing an institution within which we could exclude others (which, sadly, is what many punkers really want), we were interested in including people who felt estranged by, or disillusioned with their social surroundings.

In that one day I experienced some of the best things about punk, the traits exhibited by the kid on the street, and the worst things about punk: the negative, self-righteous, dogmatic thinking of the kid who wrote the letter. Both of them were self-acknowledged punkers yet they were from almost opposite ideological poles. For 16 years now I have been a member of this strange sub-culture, and I have come to realize that there are both liberal and conservative wings of it. In that sense it is a microcosm of society in general. It is an inane task to try and define punk universally. Its meaning is fuzzied everywhere by contextual circumstance. A 16 year-old girl from an affluent religious family who consistently shows up to church on Sunday with her green mohawk and Fuck Jesus shirt is punk. But so is a 42 year old biology professor who claims that Charles Darwin's ideas were wrong. Neither person has ever heard of, nor met, one another, nor hung out together at the same underground club. And yet their challenge to established institutions and revulsion to dogmatic thinking links them spiritually. Whether this is genetic or learned is unknown. But I too feel a kinship with everyone who shares these traits. I don't feel allied with those who are exclusive, elitist, and who think that their way of life is a model for how others should live theirs. My philosophy was instilled by the open minded thinking of my parents of course, but also through the turmoil I experienced growing up. While I realize many kids had it harder than me, I have found that a lot of people who call themselves punks had similar experiences.

In 1976, At the age of 11 I moved with my mom and brother to the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. Like millions of other victims of divorce in the 1970s I had to deal with the fact that my father was now living far away (in Racine, Wisconsin) and I would not get to see him as much as most other kids see theirs. This pain was compounded by the bewildering alienation I felt as a Wisconsin boy at Junior High School in the Los Angeles unified school district. I had entered a landscape unlike anything I experienced in my 11 years of life. I had dark brown fluffy, wavy hair, unfeatherable, impossible to mold into the cool rock-and-roll hairdos of the 1970s that were so popular. I wore velour kids shirts from K-Mart, and corduroys and because they were less expensive than jeans and we didn't have a lot of money. I had cheap shoes, usually also from K-Mart or Payless, always worn out, with goofy logos that emulated the real popular brands that all the other kids wore.

I rode a Sears 10-speed that was heavy, sluggish, and couldn't jump or skid. I had a powder blue, plastic skateboard with noisy, open-bearing wheels, totally unfit for the skateboard parks that were so popular in southern California. I had never been to the beach in my life, and thought of it as a place to go swimming, not as a symbol for a way of life. People asked me dude!.....do you party? I thought of our annual kids new year's parties back home in Racine. We stayed up past midnight and ate ice cream and soda, but other than those I didn't have much experience throwing parties. It took me about six months to realize that party was a synonym of getting high.

I saw fellow 7th graders come to class with squinty eyes and euphoric smiles reeking of pot smoke (at first I didn't know what that smokey odor was). Fellow classmates in shop-class had secretive projects that they brought out only when the teacher, Mr. Feers, took his cigarette break. Their works consisted of salvaged polyurethane cylinders, sealed at the bottom, sanded smooth around the top, and a few 1/4 inch holes quickly forged on the drill-press. I was bewildered when one of them asked me: dude!....check out my bong, isn't it bitchin? Not only did I not know what a bong was....I didn't understand the adjective he used to describe it, nor why he was hiding it.

All I knew was that there was some weird secret about all this, and I was not one of those who were welcome to the information. Kids moved up the social ladder by revealing their knowledge of rock and roll culture and sharing their covert collections of black beauties, Quaaludes, and joints. If you partook in their offers, you were one of them, a trusted confidant. If you were afraid to partake, you were a second-class loser. In other words, if you went along with the flow, unquestioning and complacent, you were accepted and rewarded with social status. If you questioned the norm, or went against the grain in any way, you were in for a rocky ride down the social ladder.

I shriveled under this pressure. Unable to compete yet unwilling to shut down, I came to be friends with a particular class of people who were labeled geeks, nerds, kooks, dorks, wimps, and pussies (or wussies if you combine these last two). We hung out together and did creative things after school, but the greatest alleviation of my suffering came from music. We had an old spinet piano that I would bang on and sing songs I learned by ear. I desired to gain a musical identity just like my peers at school, but I wasn't inspired by the bands that formed the fabric of this burn-out drug culture: Led Zeppelin, Rush, Kiss, Journey, Foreigner, Styx, Ted Nugent, Bad Company, Lynard Skynard among many others.

Luckily, by the time I was 14, I had discovered a radio show on Saturday and Sunday nights that showcased local bands from L.A. I discovered the station because it was the only one in L.A. that played Todd Rundgren from time to time. My friend in Wisconsin and I had grown to love Todd and Utopia because they were melodic rock, but somewhat beneath the mainstream of popular music. Those characteristics still appeal to me today, and often guide my preferences for other bands.

I cannot overstate the importance of that radio show in the development of my musical personality. It was called Rodney on the Roq (on station KROQ) and it proved that there was an entire community of people right there in the same city that used music to share their alienation and confusion about the culture around them. It also proved that you didn't have to be a virtuoso or signed to a major record label in order to be played over the airwaves. The actual recordings were not slick high-budget productions. Often times Rodney would simply play demo tapes, or acetate pressings (limited-use vinyl singles or e.p.s). It was gloriously vulgar, and inspiring in its simplicity.

I wanted to be part of this community of musicians. The music was heartfelt and desperate. It spoke of the suffering that comes from the pressure to conform, and the burden that is placed on us by those in power, and the celebration of belonging to a community of powerless misfits. Yet it was delivered by such a variety of bands, from different backgrounds. I went punk at 15. I cut my wavy hair very short, dyed it pitch black, and made my own t-shirts. I was creative enough and over the years I had experimented with songwriting on the piano along with my friends playing pots and pans and using cheap tape recorders. We were determined to send in a tape to Rodney on the Roq. But before any of that could materialize, I was introduced by a fellow wussie to the guys who would become Bad Religion.

By the end of that same year, 1980, I had made my first record and Rodney played it. Usually this would make anyone a hero at his high school, a veritable recording artist as a classmate! But my high-school peers were violently opposed to this new evolving subculture. It was not the kind of music that glorified sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. It wasn't mellow and it didn't inspire people to get wasted. I was seen as an enemy of their way of life. There were three of us at the school who were punkers. And all three of us at one time or another were physically beaten by people at school who attacked us only because of our musical preference.

This scared me and at the same time made me feel powerful. It made me realize how frail most of the conformists really were, how easily they could be pushed to the point where they lose control. I found great solace in the community of other punkers from different schools, all with similar stories of oppression and abuse. My house became a hang-out and our garage became a rehearsal space (my mom was lenient, but also always at work, so there was no adult intervention). I began to feel like there was a way to deal with the disillusion of my cultural surroundings. But it was through questioning and challenging, not conforming and accepting.

This stance probably made me more insightful about human social interaction, and a better critic; but it also made me more cynical, and less understanding of those close to me who weren't punk, and therefore it definitely retarded my ability to have intimate relationships. We punkers were linked by what we thought was a deeper cause, our desire to overcome societal pressure. It was a tacit assumption that we all had the same feelings, because we were all treated similarly by our society. The emphasis was always on the collective turmoil of our group and not on individual personal issues (there were a lot more songs about us, our, and we than about I, mine, and me). Maybe this is why so many of my friends got hooked on hard drugs, and some killed themselves. My punk friends did not practice understanding, we only exhibited toleration.

This shortcoming naturally extended to the sexes. I just assumed that girls were equals on every level. They dressed similarly, had similar hairstyles, and even slam-danced with us boys. Their suffering was our suffering, it seemed to me. I never thought that maybe they saw the punk scene from a unique perspective. Women's issues were not on our discussion agenda. Both sexes were too busy being stalwart, and tough. It was wonderfully equal, and I was proud of my egalitarian view of the sexes. Unfortunately, it was also an excuse not to address differences between the sexes. To this day, I am great at being tolerant with women's expressions, but bad at understanding their needs. And the time with my male friends is spent talking about mundane issues or worldly problems, not personal desires or feelings. This has interfered with numerous close friendships, and it has undermined my ability to be a good husband.

I decided to go to college. I anticipated that it would be a place where dissenting voices were recognized and applauded. This romantic vision appealed to me. I loved playing in my band and contributing to the challenge of mainstream music, but I also wanted more. I felt an urge to question more of society than just the music scene and people's fashions. I figured that I could play in the band on weekends and vacations, and I could write about the relevant issues I was discussing at the university.

But I realize now, in retrospect, that the university was as replete with the pressure to conform as my high school was.Students were rewarded for thinking like the professor. Only rarely did the professors try to educe original ideas from the students. More often we were rewarded for regurgitating the same rhetoric on tests that they professed in the lectures, which were more like state-of-the-union addresses in any given discipline.

Although I was lucky enough to find three wonderful and inspiring faculty advisors who praised my originality and made me feel smarter than I probably am, I was saddened that there were so few like them. I became acutely aware that the usual university experience for most students was one of indoctrination into the prescriptive thinking of a privileged society. It was a recipe for what was acceptable to society. And nowhere in that socialization process did they provide a troubleshooting guide to deal with alternative ways of thinking.

As a result, my undergraduate G.P.A. was only slightly better than average. But thanks to my advisors strong recommendations and insistence that I had original research ideas, I was able to continue and receive a Master of Science degree in Geology. I went on to a Ph.D. program too. Both of my higher-degree programs have taught me that the way to succeed in our society is to walk that fragile line between understanding the dogma that is inherent in the prevailing ideology and showing the people in power that you have your own ideas too but are not willing to infringe on their tolerance.&Originality has a low tolerance threshold.

Over the last year and one-half I have been privileged enough to travel with more than most people do in a life-time. As I became more worldly, I realized that at every level of society and culture there are teachings that dictate how people are supposed to behave, and that in some way or another control people's freedom to express themselves and live happy lives. I feel that it is the gift of being human to be able to challenge and confront those tenets, and share new ways to evoke originality from others. I'm glad that I'm not an animal.

Today, I have a more sophisticated view of my social surroundings.I have children, I own a house, I have insurance, I make financial decisions. My insight into the world comes from disparate sources: geology, organismic biology, music, travel, and fatherhood. This plurality insures my individuality. And learning to be an individual was the best gift I got from growing up punk. I am conscious of stereotypes, and try not to fit them. No geologist I have met is also knowledgeable about the music business and likewise no musician I know understands earth history like I do. I am proud of this unpredictable uniqueness.

Strangely, punk is quickly becoming mainstream. Last year, more people bought punk rock records, tapes, CDS, t-shirts, stickers, and show tickets, than ever before. As in any capitalistic situation, the punk market is experiencing a focal shift away from the original intent of the art (or product) toward the creation of a credo or indoctrination surrounding the marketing of the product. Why else would entire music labels market themselves as punk labels? Because they are selling fashion and building a sub-cultural retinue instead of promoting honesty and creativity of its artists. This is a sad state of affairs in the music industry that occurs at the independent-label level as well as in the majors. Therefore, it is no wonder that there are a bunch of punk police out there monitoring whether bands like ours fit the stereotype, and match their dogmatic view of acceptability. They exhibit the same behavior as the academic clones who graduate by the thousands each spring, ready to discriminate against others who challenge their learned ideology. The letter I received two weeks ago from that disgruntled fan was sadly reminiscent of the persecution I felt in high school from the stoners.It is also a shining example of how easy it is to follow the party line and advocate unoriginal, thoughtless sentiments, which in turn motivates me all the more to provoke.

Greg Graffin, singer of Bad Religion, and one of my favorite rock stars. I found this on my old Xanga, and liked it again. Good times.

2010-03-20T21:14:00.000-07:00

So it has been a while since I've posted on this. Let me see, is there any news? Well I've successfully put off working on my various papers and I have made a stunning discovery.

Blondes are hot and/or attractive.

For years I generally disagreed with this statement, with a preference for doe-eyed brunettes with a saucy mind and a foul mouth. Then I stumbled on a canceled show from the WB, an ex-show if you will, called Veronica Mars. And damn. Kristen Bell has restored my faith in golden locks! But Pam Anderson is still not an attractive lady, all disproportionate and plastic, yeck. Anyhoo, they still should cuss like a sailor, and be able to throw a punch. Good luck me.

Now any blondes that I know should not take this seriously, no I did not find you ugly, and no I am not suddenly smitten with you.

So, moving on to other topics. Um, there's really not much else, been listening to a strange combo of Midnight Oil, Pixies, and Ke$ha (come to think of it, she's pretty hot too). Oh and I've been craving a big juicy bacon cheeseburger. MMMMM Just delicious. Ranks high on the deliciosity scale, with a cold beverage and a milkshake, and a foul mouthed badass hottie. Sounds like a fantastic outing. I should try that sometime.

Well, toodles

2009-07-10T07:02:00.000-07:00

Honestly, I'm tired of this. I'm tired of the singing to animals, I'm tired of the work assignments on my few days off, but mostly I'm tired of how she puts me down over and over again. My mother makes me doubt myself so much that it infuriates me, all it takes is a single snide comment in passing and it cuts right to the quick.
I've tried sharing aspects of my life that I enjoy and consider important, but they always seem to be lacking...nothing makes the cut. I came home from school for the summer, and had recently recorded a song that I had written and was proud of- her response: is that you singing? (indeed it was) get a new singer. Ouch. Thanks mom. Wtf. Never mind that I'm already ridiculously self conscious of my voice. That was the last time I'll let her hear a track I've done. It wasn't the first though, and when she heard those she immediately asked why I didn't have any songs about happy well adjusted relationships. Well, there weren't any because a: it was a concept album and b: yet to have one of those well adjusted things. But I've heard her singing....she doesn't get to judge.
Next to be insulted was my job. I know its low paying, entry level first job type stuff, but I take pride in it. I give a damn good tour. Of course there is repetition, but that's true of any job. Every tour is different though, no group is the same. Being a tour guide isn't just about relaying the script, it involves gauging group interest and reactions, entertaining the group, dealing with various issues, etc etc. Suffice to say, knowing the script and reciting it and doing nothing else makes you a shitty guide. So when she dismissed any creative element that tours have by saying that there is no creativity and that its just repetition, that was an insult to me, even if she didn't realize it. The implication is that I put nothing of myself into my job, that I just show up and drone through on autopilot sounding like a combination of Ben Stein's monotonous voice and a nervous second grader speaking in front of a group.
Essentially what I'm saying is that it gets harder and harder to come back home. I honestly don't know if I can do another summer back home. That week of camp will be so nice, not because I'll be away from work, but because I'll be away from her. She's grinding me down, and I hate it. I've been depressed and angry before, I'd really rather it not happen again. That whole thing was bad enough to go through once, but it almost feels like we're heading there again. She doesn't even realize it either. She treats me like I'm 16, old enough to transport myself but young enough to be closely monitored and ordered about. I know that sounds angsty and juvenile, but its just getting to be too frustrating. I need a damn vacation. And a drink (and its 7:30 am).

2009-05-03T14:25:00.000-07:00

I have a relatively new acquisition to my collection of way too many instruments- a ukulele. Why did I get it? Well, its not just because I stumbled across Julia Nunes videos on youtube. Well maybe it is. Shh...those videos are great. But in any case, I have a ukulele, and its harder than I thought it would be. Despite only having 4 strings, the way they're tuned is pretty strange. After 3 or 4 weeks I still only know like 6 chords. It's kinda frustrating.
In other news, Left for Dead is a pretty enjoyable game.
But I digress. My ukulele is pretty awesome, and I already wrote and recorded a song with it. It also has a name (thanks for the input Courtney) and Jenny joins Denzel, Freddie, Big Red, Clyde, and the Atomic Wonder-Set in the ranks of my named instruments. Look for more to come from the entertaining pairing of Jenny and myself as I continue to waste time songwriting instead of being productive.

Listening to:
Hall of Mirrors- The Distillers
First Impressions- Julia Nunes
Maybe I Will- Julia Nunes
Little Wild One- That Thing You Do Soundtrack

Reading:
White Teeth- Zadie Smith
Thank You For Smoking- Christopher Buckley
V for Vendetta- Alan Moore
Watchmen- Alan Moore

Watching:
South Park episodes
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Zack and Miri

Playing:
Red Alert 3:Uprising
Medieval II Total War

2009-04-13T22:37:00.000-07:00

So the game earlier today coupled with being swept by the Padres kinda destroyed me for a while...but I'm sane again, at least until tomorrow's game. Anyways, time for a real post. So I'm finally on break, but everyone else already had theirs and are once again busy as shit. I was considering a visit to Socal to see people I haven't seen in a while but I didn't really think of this soon enough, and made no plans. Next year, I shall have to try again. In any case, this is going to be a boring and uneventful week.
Well like two years ago I tooted my own horn on this thing about writing, my songs and such, and about having nine of them done-ish. Now its more like 34? Yeah. I think that's right. Well until relatively recently most of my songs weren't inspired by anyone in particular, well a few were. Some people got more than a few, but like 9 songs recently were directly inspired by one person.
Who? I ain't tellin. Suffice to say that she gives good material. At least I think so. In any case, I think I've written some decent stuff. If you want to see/hear, comment or email or im me and I'll get you some.

Listening To:
The Collected Works of The Distillers
Eve 6- Eve 6
Country Grammar- Nelly
Various Blink 182

Reading:
Way too much on Native American Religions for a research paper

Watching:
Star Trek....lots of Trek
South Park
The Giants Losing. (Baseball )

Playing:
Eve
Oblivion

2009-04-13T16:23:00.000-07:00

First off let me say this. I am a Giants fan. I've bled black and orange my entire life and hate the Dodgers with nearly every fiber of my sports-related being. But what the hell?
What the hell are the Giants doing? They have what is reputedly one of the best rotations in at least the NL West, with THREE Cy Young winners, yet none of them has pitched well yet this season. The only starter who approaches effectiveness is Cain. We can't hit anymore, and worst of all, we can't seem to play defense. At least we haven't since Martinez took that line drive to the head. The whole team is rattled, understandably, by the incident but we need to move on and play some goddamn baseball. It hurts me to say this but I'm willing to accept losses like the one we took today. But not to the Dodgers. If we play well against anyone, or even just play terrible (as opposed to the abysmal amatuer ball we're currently playing) let it be against them.
I want to hear the crowd chanting "Beat LA!" at games again, and have it happen. I'd like a season over .500! I'd like us to play like it was 1989, 1997, 2002 or any of our other seasons where we won the west or the pennant. I'd like a lot of things.

Mostly I'd like to just see the Giants play good, major league baseball- that's something I haven't really seen in years.

2009-03-02T21:26:00.000-08:00

Wow, it has indeed been a while. Well, I have officially decided that I detest Russian authors as a consequence of having books by them assigned en masse by Prof. Steve Bittner, but all in all life could be far worse. My cousins have decided (finally) to try baseball, and I am super stoked about that. I'm in an insane baseball mood; tempered, of course, with hockey madness.
I guess that suffices as an update....well...anyways...
I'm am nostalgic. For what you ask? Freshman year. Yup, freshman year. I miss the dorms, chocolate milk on tap at the cafeteria, the girls next door, their toaster oven, the cinnamon rolls from said oven, and generally the brotherhood and family shared by the residents of Verdot Claret 07-08. Where is that now? I don't even know my neighbors in my complex. I rarely see anyone from the golden days of freshman year, with a few notable exceptions, and even when I do see them its generally in passing. I'm not the only one, other Claretians (I just came up with the term....should've thought of that 2 years ago) have shared these thoughts. We need a reunion, although everyone is pretty busy. That being said, I still think before the end of the next fall semester, we need a Claret get together. Well that's enough for now.
-Teags

Listening to:
As The Cold Rain Falls -Tiger Army
Pain -Tiger Army
Hall of Mirrors -The Distillers
Sasquatch -Tenacious D
Go Into The Water -Dethklok
Time to Waste -Alkaline Trio

Watching:
Futurama, Heroes, Firefly

Playing:
Age of Empires III, Fallout 3, Jade Empire

Reading:
A Hero of Our Time -Mikhail Lermontov

2007-03-07T21:11:00.000-08:00

Hello, I still exist.
A lot's happened since my last post, but what's on my mind the most is that my car got fucked. Quite basically, that's what happened. But less basically, a spark plug got smashed, a valve got smashed, a cylinder got screwed by those getting smashed. All in all, the jetta is dead. So, let us remember the good times we shared. The food runs in band camp and various other high school times. Blasting music en route to baseball games. Taking people home from swine meetings. Ripping the damn bumper off every time we park. Hurtling up to SSU with various lights inoperative. Beach adventures.....(teehee) Having so much trash in it that I was voted messiest in senior class. I maintain that the car won that for me. Mall runs to Santa Rosa. Picking up Vince's girlfriend from the bus stop. Repeatedly. Crapping out in the Bank of America parking lot. It's been fun jetta, now go to hell with your busted engine and p.o.s. coolant system. Hmph. Goodbye and good riddance.

But I'll miss it nonetheless.
If any explanations for events mentioned above are needed, or if you have memories of the car to share, comment away!

2006-12-09T01:52:00.000-08:00

Wow, First semester of college is almost over.....thats insane because movein feels kind of like last week. It just blew by me incredibly fast, but I was lucky in that I got three kick ass roomates to put up with me and my guitar playing at various hours of the night and other sorts of quirks. So looking back on the term, I've come to the conclusion that I love sleep much more than work and food more than both. I had more spare time than I thought I would, I even found time to figure out how to record on Garageband. I now have nine songs that I like that I've written, I guess an album, sort of? But whatever, if you want to hear them, hit me up with an email, and I could send you some. But enough self promotion, I have mixed feelings about going home for six odd weeks over break. Its going to feel really weird because Rohnert Park feels like home, and it'll be an extremely long break. PLUS, all you other people that I hang out with from high school will go back to school, and I'll be stuck home for another month. Lame. Very very lame.

Oh well, good luck for everyone's finals!

Reading:
The Egyptian Book of The Dead
Crappy Textbooks

Listening:
The Complex- Blue Man Group
Audio- Blue Man Group
Abbey Road- The Beatles
Please Please Me- The Beatles
Vhiessu- Thrice

Watching:
Scrubs
South Park
Scooby Doo

~Toodles!~

2006-10-12T16:54:00.000-07:00

Wow. I can only take so much guitar hero, until ghII comes out, then its showtime! But anyways, playing real guitar makes me happier. But seriously, the game is like heroin. Addictive, and you just need more and more, but i'm gonna try and quit cold turkey, and watch colbert report clips online instead. YAY COLBERT REPORT! Heehee. So yah, we're talking about Marx in anthropology and class and junk, and of course, i'm IMing people. So my buddy Bernice tells me that she's in a far more interesting, and possibly disturbing class. Let's leave it at rat sex with pictures. Now i'm wondering if we have a similar class up here at sonoma, and whether i should take it.

now listening:
Two Princes by Spin Doctors
Losing my Religion by REM
The Color and the Shape by Foo Fighters

now watching:
SOUTH PARK
Futurama
Family Guy
Colbert Report
History Channel
Parental Control

now reading:
nothing....sad

now playing:
star wars battlefront
age of mythology
guitar hero
half life 2

2006-09-28T16:20:00.000-07:00

(Backstage. Amy Poehler, Chris Parnell and Jason Sudeikis are talking. Antonio Banderas runs into them)

Amy: Oh, good job, Antonio!

Chris: Really good!

Jason: Yeah, really good.

Antonio: Doing sketch comedy is easy, you know maybe I´ll do this for a living. Anyway, I´ve gotta go. Gotta go. See you later.

Jason: OK, see you. That´s great. (Antonio leaves)

Chris: See what I mean?

Amy: Now I do.

Jason: What do you guys mean?

Chris: The foreigner thinks he can do our job?

Jason: Oh, I don´t think that´s what he meant.

Amy: No. They all do. I´m tired of these Mexicans coming into our country and taking our jobs.

Jason: You know, first of all, Antonio is not Mexican.

Amy: Yeah, he is!

Chris: Definitely is! Looks like one.

Jason: No, he´s Spanish, all right. And secondly, you guys are racist.

Chris: Oh, are we? Wait 'til they take your job.

Amy: Yeah, yeah. If NBC had its way, this whole cast would be border-jumping Mexicans. (Horatio Sanz joins them) Yo, Horatio! What´s up, man! (Highs five him)

Horatio: What´s up, guys?

(Fred Armisen talks directly into the camera as Amy, Jason and Chris leave)

Fred: I´ll tell you what´s up! My name´s Fred Armisen. (Antonio Banderas joins in)

Antonio: Hi, I am Antonio Banderas.

Horatio: And I am "Horacio" Sanz.

Antonio: In the coming weeks, as the issue of illegal inmigration takes center stage in American politics, you are going to hear many sides to this difficult issue.

Fred: Much of what you hear will not be the truth. Politics will color the debate, making it harder for all of us to understand the real issue.

Horatio: No matter what anyone says, there is no simple solution to this problem.

Antonio: What we know is this: we are coming, and we´re going to take your job.

Horatio,/b>: We are also planning to have sex with your women and make lots of babies. Which you´ll pay with your tax dollars.

Antonio: But that has long been the plan.

Fred: Many of us are criminals. And we intend to cut you with knives.

Horatio: And flood your cities with drugs.

Antonio: But there is no fight in this. It was a plan we all came up with and we all agree was the best plan, right?

Horatio: Yes.

Fred: I´m not really an illegal alien, but my mother´s Venezuelan and she used to tell me this great plan when I was a child. Take their jobs, cut them with knives, drugs.

Antonio: And make babies.

Horatio: Hopefully, this will put an end to the debate. There is no solution.

Fred: Only the plan.

Antonio: Thank you for listening, and remember The Alamo.

(Fred, Horatio and Antonio join hands in big Latin support)

2006-09-27T15:30:00.000-07:00

Har har.

Bravery & Unity

Sir Kenneth Chandler.....Pierce Brosnan
Private Louis Jones.....Tracy Morgan
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Ward.....Will Ferrell
Lieutenant Colonel Gniewko Lubecki.....Darrell Hammond
Patrick O’Harrington.....Jimmy Fallon
Filipe Gonzalez.....Horatio Sanz

Narrator: September, 1944. The allied forces embark on Operation Marketgarden, a surprise airborne assault on German troops in Holland and Belgium. If the attack was going to succeed, the allies needed all the help it could get.

[ show host, Sir Kenneth Chandler, seated in his study ]

Sir Kenneth Chandler: In August of 1944, the British advance troops joined forces with an underseas command unit from Krapog. The Poles, of course, hated the Germans and were eager to help. But, sadly, they all perished. It seems that, due to a crucial design flaw, the Polish had built their submarines with screen doors. More than 70 men died that day.

Narrator: With Poland unable to assist, the Allies turned to Greece for help.

Sir Kenneth Chandler: The Greeks had a tremendous sense of brotherhood and fraternity. The men were very close to one another - after all, their motto was "Never Leave Your Buddy's Behind". Soldiers of all ages fought together. Why, among the Greek soldiers, the only way to separate the men from the boys was with a crowbar.

Narrator: The reinforcements helped, but as the operation wore on, Allied casualties mounted.

Private Louis Jones: Why did so many African-Americans die in the war? I'll tell you: every time they started firing on us, Sarge would yell, "Get down!", and me and my friends would jump up and start dancing. I watched six of my best friends die while doing the Funky Chicken.

Lieutenant Colonel Robert Ward: We were outside Demengen, and a friend of mine, a Jewish guy named Goldblat.. he stepped on a landmine, and.. we rushed over to him, and he was lying there bleeding - there was nothing we could do. We asked Goldblat, "Are you comfortable?" And he said, "Ah, I make a decent living." He died in my arms.

Narrator: The operation was proving to be too ambitious. Pockets of Allied airborne troops were surrounded. Many were taken prisoner.

Lieutenant Colonel Gniewko Lubecki: [ speaking in German, translated into English ] My entire Polish realm was captured in . A friend of mine, a friend who grew up right down the street from me in Warsaw, was driven insane in the prison. They put my friend Stanislaus in a round room, and told him to sit in a corner. But it was a round room! There was no corner! Where was he to sit?! He took his own life.

Narrator: The Allied units, under great duress, still managed to find joy in simple pleasures, like Christmas dinner. It meant a lot to the troops, especially the 101st at Osterly.

Sir Kenneth Chandler V/O: [ over re-creation ] A soldier named Patrick O’Harrington, prepared a traditional Irish seven-course meal - a potato and a six-pack of beer. Burritos and tacos were provided by Felipe Gonzalez, who invited 300 of his Mexican friends from the 94th Infantry. More would have come, but they only had two jeeps.

Lieutenant Colonel Robert Ward: That was some kind of unit, we had people from all over.. we had a half-Italian, half-Pole named Antonio Wojcesak. He made me an offer I couldn’t understand. There was Pepe Chun, a half-Hispanic, half-Asian who stole an enemy Jeep but he couldn’t drive it. Then there was my friend Elmer Watkins from Alabama. He spent all of his time writing to his wife, and his sister, and his mother. He only had to write to one person. War is hell.

Narrator: Next week on the History Channel - an examination of Chinese beverage contamination warfare, entitled "Me Chinese, Me Play Joke, Me Put Pee-Pee In Your Coke."

har. har. har.

2006-09-26T16:43:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone...or no-one. I've decided to open up a new blog, so forget my xanga, and i don't particularly like myspace blogs, and facebook is getting freaky. So yeah. Anyhoo, I'm in my Anthropology class at Sonoma State University, and we are talking about linguistics, for the third class period in a row. We tend to revisit the same topic for lengthy periods of time.
Yeah, so I'm in my freshman year, and so far so great. I'm loving it here, and I think my friends from home or 4H should visit. Hmph. I said it, now come up and visit me. So, I guess I should go back to paying attention now, so goodbye all.

Currently Reading:
Nothing. Sad isn't it?

Currently Listening to:
Rock in Rio (live) by Iron Maiden
Whiskey on a Sunday by Flogging Molly
Stadium Arcadium by The Red Hot Chili Peppers

Currently Watching:
Family Guy
South Park
The History Channel