Friends Don't Let Friends Clap on 1 and 3

When at a concert, it seems like clapping along to the beat should be easy, especially given the fact that the musicians onstage are already playing that beat out for you.

Wrong.

When at a concert filled with an audience of rhythmically challenged people, clapping along to the beat is apparently the hardest thing ever.

There was a concert in our dorm tonight called "Dueling Pianos". Two people. Two pianos. Two loudly belting voices. One retarded audience.

It wouldn't even take a full measure before everybody was already off-beat. Clap on 2 and 4? Fuck that. I'll clap on 1 and 7. And in case you were wondering, beat 7 is 5/9 of the way between 2 and 3, and beat 1 is wherever the hell I want it to be.

It was bad.

Now I'm trying not to include myself in this generalization, given that I could at least detect that the rest of the audience was full of slow kids. And I'm sure there were other musicians there as well who knew that the beat was progressively getting faster and could think of nothing to do to stop it. It couldn't be helped.

But come on, let's be honest with ourselves. If we can't even keep a basic beat, what are we supposed to do when we're counting to three in our head before we say something stupid? It's not going to be a real three, it's going to be a fast three, or a non-existent three, or we're going to be thinking so hard about how to evenly count to three that we will forget to think about how wise it is to say that stupid thing and end up saying it anyway.

It was sad. I wanted to round up all of those clapping people and tell them to tape their hands to their sides until they pass a music theory class, and then maybe they'll be allowed back in to the audience.

On an unrelated note, when I got back to my dorm the bottom button of my shirt was undone. I don't know how this happened, but I am perplexed.

Maybe it was so flustered at the inability to keep a beat that it tried to run away.

Yes, I know that was a lame ending. Shut up. I couldn't think of anything else.

Be thankful you got an ending at all.

Burning Brighter

People think the stars come out at night, like a child hiding under the kitchen cupboard in search of a better place to sleep. But they're always there, always watching. Stars are the girl at the coffee shop observing every soul that wanders past from behind her tinted lenses, but never receiving a glance in return. Stars are the texture on a wall that nobody notices until they accidentally get their face too close. Stars are the best friend. Stars are the wallflower. Stars are the perpetual presence. Stars are all of these things, but stars... stars are not scared.

Uncertain.

Things I did on my last day of summer:

• Wore pajamas until 3
• Went to the post office barefoot
• Ate bacon for lunch
• Made a dollhouse out of cardboard boxes and duct tape
• (Stayed up two hour later than Paige)

Things I did on my first day of college:

• Made a joke about a serial killer with a hockey stick

Click "Like" If You Welcome the Flames

They say that the best artists are usually unbalanced. Faulkner was an alcoholic; Van Gogh was chronically depressed; Sylvia Plath was suicidal. But what these people produced, what they poured their passion and heart into creating, was on a legendary scale.

I don't really know what I want this post to be about, and usually I would just save it as a draft or copy it into a word document and leave it until such a time when I could actually incorporate it into a coherent thought, but tonight it just feels like it needs to be written, and I'm sure it will find its way eventually.

Last night I dreamed about destruction. I had just read the chapters in A Tale of Two Cities where the revolutionaries murdered people by the carriage-load, dragging prisoners through the streets to the guillotine for days and nights in a row. In my dream, there were school buses that carried death.

They would drive into a town, running over anyone they could, and when they stopped you had better hope that you had made it inside, because if you were still out in the open you were going to get shot. It wasn't adults doing the shooting, though, it was kids. The kinds of kids you would expect to find in a gang or a home, but also the nice kids who were persuaded to join their cause and weren't nice any more.

Anyway, they shot everyone, regardless of who they were or whether they deserved it. I don't know what they were fighting for; I don't know why they thought it was necessary to shoot the people that they did. But I do know that they did it with a sense of righteousness, and that it was one of the most disturbing dreams I've ever had.

I usually don't even remember my dreams. But I remembered that one, and then I also remembered the one I had next, though I don't remember it any more.

I heard once that dreams are an old psychological training program, essentially a way for our brain to prepare us for things that we may need to be ready for in order to survive.

There has been so much destruction lately, and so many people shooting others that they don't even know for reasons that are purely selfish. It's as if the country was in relative peace for too long, and there had to be an inflated amount of turmoil to account for the fact that no tragedies had occurred in recent years. Humanity has a way of reminding us of its true nature whenever we start to forget and think that people may actually be good, for a change.

Or maybe that's just the earth's way of keeping beauty alive. When everything is falling to pieces, the littlest things can seem extraordinary. If you numb a nature like ours to the beautiful things in the world, we no longer care to indulge in the creativity and the love and the passion that make our world worth inhabiting. So instead, why not shoot it all to shit and, while we watch the world we have forgotten how to love, burn, maybe we can take a moment and create beauty where it never would have existed before.

I Peed You a Poem

A common phrase,
"I should have known"
for placating
a sullied mind.
But his betrayal
of low-fat treats
surpassed excusal
and I should have known
when he denied
Tarantino.

Sugar-free

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life takes away your lemons, embrace the coolness of the water you're left with.

If the water is warm, add more heat. Then embrace the herbal nature held in a bag of tea, and create something new.

If the heat doesn't hold, wait for it to cool and pour it over ice. A summer evening has never been better.

And when your tea is gone, and you're back with nothing but water and a want for lemons, remember the tea.

Somebody Push the Rollercoaster, Quick

There are some times in life when everybody is starting on the same journey at the same time, some times when you feel like you're the only one. And there are times like now, where I should be starting on the same journey, but for some reason I look around to find myself sitting in the back row, the end car, still stagnant at the top of the climb but watching everyone in front of me plunge headfirst, screaming out with a scared joy.

My bed smells like coffee. Just a little, not enough to taste, but enough to smell like sunshine. My face is puffy from the holes in my gums where, up until this Monday, three little wisdom teeth sat. My best friend (at least, one of them) is gone to another state, and even though I felt like crying when I gave her one last hug for the moment I've realized nothing is really different. My guitar sits next to my bed, neglected for weeks, but the callouses on my fingers are still hanging in there because they know I'll pick it up again soon. My little stuffed ewok is in my lap, staring up at me through the lopsided hole in its cape, a soft reassurance of the things that I will always love, even when I'm not sure if I really do.

And my glasses that at first seemed too big have grown onto my countenance like a vine wrapping itself around a bench that has been established, shielding it with an oldness that cannot be left unaccepted.

My world starts in 17 days.

This Should Be My Job

I was hanging out with one of my old teachers a few weeks ago (try to curb your jealousy, she's really awesome) and somehow, while talking about literature and film and other classy things, we got to the fact that I've seen Magic Mike twice.


What.


Anyway, for those of you who haven't seen it (guys) it was actually a potentially decent movie that just ended up being about strippers. Who knew.


I told her all about that, and she told me that I should write a literary analysis of it on my other teacher's wall.


So I did.


And here it is:


So, I've been keeping up with the media and literature scene this summer, as I'm sure you're glad to hear. There have been so many great movies and wonderful books that I've just read though they're really not new, in fact many of them are actually very old, but they're new to me. Anyway, I do appreciate all types of media, which is exactly why I've seen Magic Mike twice. Channing Tatum was just a

 bonus, I swear. And that is why, as a voracious learner and critic or all things intellectual (or whatever you want to call it, I mean, it was about strippers), I have decided to do you the wonderful courtesy of describing the movie to you in all of its virtues and flaws (I'll try to keep it PG). So here it is... my literary analysis of the stripper movie, Magic Mike.
May I just start by saying that it actually could have been a good movie. For the most part, movies like that put about as much thought into the plot as the strippers in them put into picking out their names ("Bubbles. Because I like bubbles. Perfect!"), but this one contradicted that almost immediately. Within the first two minutes of the film, the subplot of Mike's custom furniture business had already been introduced, complete with the conflict of the banks not being willing to give him the competitive loans he wanted because he dealt mostly in cash. It was so promising that I almost believed it would actually be a movie equally balanced in plot and visual attraction. Alas, I was proved horribly wrong when they proceeded to ignore that subplot for the next hour, replacing it instead with (mostly) naked men and Matthew McConaughey's obnoxious voice and overall existence. Sorry, not a fan. Only near the end did they decide to return to real substance and give the quick and dirty version of "conflict-climax-resolution" by cramming it all into roughly twenty minutes of film and replacing "resolution" with "magical lack of conflict." And though the final product was somewhat disappointing, I was still impressed by the existence of a more complex plot at all, eliminating all guilt that I may have felt at going back to see it again. After all, responsible journalism does require extensive research, does it not?
I bet you want to go see it now, don't you. Yeah, you're welcome.

I got a double-like from both of them. And he said he needs "time to compose a proper response."

When that happens, it will be on here. Guaranteed.

I bet everybody wishes they taught me lit.

Get Them Creative Juices Flowing

The past week disappeared into a vortex, I swear. I didn't do anything of importance, and yet it's Saturday already.

On the bright side, I got my muse back while at a friend's gig tonight (which was awesome, by the way. Her name is Lindsey Saunders, check her out).

And since it has been a while since I subjected any of you to my poetry, I may as well do it again now. Unedited, freshly inked. Enjoy.

Oh, and since this title did not come easily to me as many of them do, I actually had to think. Which is hard for me. So, after much pondering, it has been tentatively named

Brainwaves in Diapers


(Awesome, right).

Growth versus scissors

Fine versus fat

To make it more jagged

or shield with a hat.

The pinballs they bounce

like shotguns in jell-o,

the splinter too old

for the skin to be mellow.

The top layer chips

and reveals a bare bone

pretending it’s weak,

but it’s never alone.

And when it grows stronger

there’s always a string

Broken down wishes

still posing as flings.

Roommate Queries

Okay, so I wasn't going to blog again until tomorrow to make up for the fact that yesterday's post was longer than most of your attention spans. But...

I got my rooming assignment!

Allow me to digress for a moment... AHHHBKASNFIWEIUAWCKLSDF!!!!!!!!!

Back. Sorry about that. My excitement got the better of me. It's like college is real or something.

And, I know who my roommate is!

Well, I don't know. I saw her name on the page, but I didn't know which one she was on facebook, and I'm not quite proactive enough to email her, so I'm just going to wait until tomorrow and see if she contacts me first. Yeah, social skills!

I got to talking with a friend, and I realized that there are multiple things a roommate should potentially know about me:

A) I play guitar. Aka, I will be the soundtrack to their world.

B) I play too much Xbox. Deal with it.

C) I'm not good at sharing. Touch my sandwich, and I will cut you. Also, I poisoned something in the fridge. Watch out for that.

D) And, last but not least, all roommates should know my tagline:

Feeling down? Need a hug? Got a frown? Flip that mug!
Because Emma Dell loves to cuddle, and she'll be there for you day or night, rain or shine. She has an embrace softer than the Egyptian cotton used for Jesus's diaper, and a caress more heartwarming than a cancer survivor watching a John Hughes movie.
So don't delay and be sure to get a squeeze from Emma whenever you damn well please.

Courtesy of Lauren. www.trulyincrediblecraziness.blogspot.com. She knows me so well.