Hey there, guys. I'm blowing the dust off of this livejournal. I may spruce it up more as time goes by, but I think I can use this as a launch pad for my various writings and clips and such. Maybe I'll post some Eleven Hours from Ordinary stuff here as well.

Well, other than that...
hi...
How's LJ these days?

testing, testing.
1, 2, 3.

not much to report. If you know me, you know my life.

oh, but the new They Might Be Giants album--"The Else" is absolutely incredible--download it on iTunes now.

This is the sound of a family falling apart.

Long discussions and raised voices and the lives of painkiller-addled fathers and melodramatic sisters and a mother reduced to a voice on the other end of a borrowed phone.

This is what it looks like, from the perspective of an outsider.

He watches scornfully, pretentiously. He feels better than the two currently battling. He feels like his life has potential. He looks at his father with pity, seeing a shriveled ruin of hopes and dreams, and he looks at his sister with contempt. He knows he is no better, but he does nothing to change that. He uses his humor as a shield, and deflects any bad feelings with a sense of absurdity.

These are the feelings of one caught in the middle.

He laughs at the absurdity of the situation. Something about laundry and phones and being out too late. Absurd. He sees the root. He knows the true cause of all unwanted tension in his household, and it’s the same devil that tears apart most families: money. His father has been without paycheck since January; his injury was severe, and his income is sorely missed. The mother places her hopes in the volatile world of real estate, and has not had a closing since February. Money is tight. Everyone talks about it, but no one confronts it. They all wait on the possibility of some life-saving lawsuit, and maybe after then, life can get back to normal. They all put their prayers into a vague hope of prosperity that's more gamble than reality.

He just thinks about school, and his friends. His friends provide solace and comfort.

He thinks about money, and how the cash in his pocket will only last so far.

The sister screams, the father screams, and he calmly responds to both of their shallowly-made arguments. His voice may enter the harsh realm from time to time, but the best way to describe it is condescending.
He sees himself superior, but really, he’s the worst of all. He’s inactive to the point of nonchalance. He’s cut himself off from life with the people he’s lived with for 17 years. He’s severing ties, and preparing for college.
He calls himself the only sane person in the family, but he knows it isn’t true; not at all.

The sister mocks the father behind his back as he tearfully says how much he loves her.

Somehow, I snap into consciousness, and cry.

This is the sound of a family falling apart.

Things are looking up, for once.
I've gotten my act together, most of my college apps are mailed off, and things are starting to go right for me.
It's almost like I've got a sinking feeling that it's all a dream, and something's gonna come by and sweep it away.
And then I realize I'm crazy, and I just need to work at the good things, so they'll stay good longer.

I'm ready to go back to school, and I'm ready to start the last semester.
I think it's going to be interesting, to say the least.

It's almost...odd. I haven't posted in this thing for so long. Sometimes I feel that journals in general have let me down, and I stand by the fact that nobody's really interested in reading about my life, or anybody else's. People have made the general trend of shifting toward facebook for their social needs, and trends will do as trends will do.
It's a new year, so I say to hell with the insecurities, awkwardness and regrets of last year and I'll start off fresh.
Which isn't to say 2006 was a bad year.
Which isn't to say 2007 is going to be necessarily spectacular.

But here I am yet again, with a new outlook, and some serious stress (Emerson's due tomorrow, CSF in a week or two, along with odds and ends--FAFSA, some scholarship essays, etc.), and stability. I know where I'm going and what I'm doing.

I've lost friends, and gained friends this past year. To the friends I've lost--I'm sorry. To the friends I've gained--Let's make 2007 something neat.

It's a new year. Does that make us new people? Or does that remind us the same people with the same problems. I think it's the latter. The beginning of a year is often seen as a 'clean slate' for many, but I think the slate is just as dirty as ever. It's just now that we realize that we do in fact have the power to clean it.

Happy Belated New Year's, everybody.

about a month late, I bring you a poem by Billy Collins, from his first collection, The Apple that Astonished Paris, enititled:

On Closing Anna Karenina

I must have started reading this monster
a decade before Tolstoy was born
but the vodka and suicides are behind me now,
all the winter farms, ice-skating and horsemanship.

It consumed so many evenings and afternoons,
I thought a Russian official would appear
to slip a medal over my lowered head
when I reached the last page.

But I found there only the last word,
a useless looking thing, stalled there,
ending its sentence and the whole book at once.

With no more plot to nudge along and nothing
to unfold, it is the only word with no future.

It stares into space and chants its own name
as a traveler whose road has just vanished
might stare into the dark, vacant fields ahead,
knowing he cannot go forward, cannot go back.

quoted for truth:

Nobody needs me to remind them here what today is. Nor do I think it particularly necessary to again publicly express my feelings or memories of that day five years ago.

I do, however, find myself today thinking about what was going on in this country on December 6, 1946. On the five-year anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, we were already a year past V-E and V-J Day. Nazi leaders were on trial at Nuremberg. The United Nations was up and running, dedicated to making sure we never had a repeat of the horrors witnessed in recent memory. The country was heading into probably one of the most comfortable and secure periods of its entire existence.

Today, we have George Bush and Company trying to compare terrorists to Nazis, and themselves to Churchill and Roosevelt.

They wish.

wow...just...wow.
I think that's all I can say about this.
http://www.digitalirony.com/blog/2006/07/obadiah-parker-hey-ya.html

heeeeey look--I got my new camera.
super-excited.