Coming Up Roses.

"...we’d like to remind you that the second installment of your senior project was scheduled to be due tomorrow, Tuesday Feb 28. We’re going to push that due date back a few days until this Friday, March 3. We trust there are no objections!"

If there could ever be proof that there is a God, this is probably it. It wasn't even really a matter of procrastination that I was so screwed for this thesis chapter, the deadline just snuck up without me even realizing it. A good part of last week was spent kind of being concerned about the Glee concert on Saturday, and then Thursday obsessing about my JET interview in LA, most of Friday (starting at 6am when I woke up) was consumed by the JET interview, and then afterward Sushi Cruise with Glee Club, and then I trekked the mile and a half or so to Gabe and Elissa's apartment for some alcoholic fun.

Saturday was completely dominated by the Choir festival at Occidental, which also involved being in Lisa's car with Colin and Susan and driving literally about 30 minutes PAST the exit we were supposed to take. In our defense, we were all rocking out to Britney Spears and a lot of '80s music. We got back from the more or less mind numbingly boring festival at about 10pm, and without even the satisfaction of having done a very good job (we were chosen to go first out of the 9 choirs... I've never been so nervous for a performance, and the fact that 10 minutes previously I had been sitting in a car for the better part of 2 hours didn't help at all; I didn't even get to warm up.).

Luckily, Saturday night hanging out in Hayden's room turned out to be one of the more enjoyable nights I've had this semester. I really chalk it up to the sleep deprivation, but I haven't laughed so hard at so many random things in a long-ass time, and didn't get back to my room until 5am. All I have to say is, don't front with David Lo-Pan or he will ruin your shit before you can say "Holy shit, it's Lo-Pan from Big Trouble in Little China and he is here to ruin my shit."

So here I am, well-rested on a Monday night with a thesis extension that I didn't even have to ask for. I've got friends in all directions that I'm eager to see and a future near and far that can't help but seem abundantly hopeful.

It continues to rain, and the sound of it is remarkably soothing. I hope I dream of something nice tonight, but objectively speaking, my life at the moment would give any dream a run for its money.

The Old Man is Snoring.

I don't know how to deal with rain here. I could count on one horribly maimed and disfigured hand the number of times it has rained hard enough this year to need an umbrella. It's rare enough that the only times you actually realize you need an umbrella are when it's already raining, which is too late. And why the hell would I go out and buy one afterward, when this could very well be the last time it rains all year? It's a vicious cycle.

Besides, getting a little wet never hurt anyone. I have a mind just to walk to choir/class today naked with my clothes in a garbage bag slung over my shoulder. Mmm... dangly parts.

Exposition.

You know, I think the gestation period for a good friend is about 6 months. Why so long, you ask? Because it's not so much about getting to know the person, whether you click, or get along. It's a lot about finding out that you're sharing the same secrets, and often those secrets have to do with shared experiences.

Let me explain it this way: it's very easy to be agreeable with someone, and you can admire them and respect them and want to get to know them better and that's an OK criterion for a friend. But when the chips are way down or way up is when you're going to find out whether you're both on the same page about things. The reason for this is that there's a big difference between telling someone what you think and showing them how you feel. Telling someone your opinion can get mixed up in so much bullshit: emotions, courtesy, misinterpratation, verbal communication can be a terribly flawed medium. A lot of people never say anything particularly worthwhile.

I'd say it's often more telling to see someone's reaction... the fact that they're angry, defensive, or upset about something, than to hear the words they might be saying out of spite or pride or despair. When you see reactions, that's when you say "Ah, so that's the kind of person this is." Character isn't the cold, calculated image you deliberate on and project out to the world, it's the visceral, gut response you can't help but have whenever something affects you personally.

So when I say secrets, I'm thinking of these reactions people have that aren't getting shown. You don't shout in anger every time a person you hate walks by and you don't collapse in tears whenever someone asks about your family. For the most part, no one will have a single clue about how you really feel about many things.

But as time goes by, and the people that you thought of as acquaintances come to be normal fixtures in your life and you begin labeling them as friends, you carry around more and more of these secrets, these small, supposedly insignificant reactions that no one sees. And ultimately something will happen, be it the straw that broke the camel's back or something with more weight, and these secrets will start to come out, and you realize that those minor reactions that no one saw, well... someone else was having them too.

I'm not sure it works with past experiences, because I've spoken to some people with similar ones as I've had and we haven't always seen eye to eye about them or in general. It could be for a lot of other reasons, but who knows. The point is that there seems to be something important about the shared experience, the one where you were both there and simultaneously feeling and responding to it. Another thing that seems important is the realization that you and someone else had been sharing these secrets all along and just didn't know it, as if you had always been kindred spirits and were only just now lucky enough to discover it.

Maybe this is a good model for why people grow apart with distance. Or why it's so hard to be friends after a breakup. In the former, perhaps you didn't reach a point where the secret you shared was that you were close friends, and that might be the only constant in which you can have any certainty once you're apart. In the latter, there was a time when there were no secrets, where you essentially became one person reacting together. In a sense, once the relationship is over, you don't really know the person anymore, because suddenly there are secrets again. It's like forcing yourself to treat your best friend like a stranger.

Huh. Maybe that last bit is why I began this whole train of thought in the first place. The mind can be so tricky.

Open Up Your Heart.

I am ridiculously sore. Did an intense workout around 6pm yesterday, immediately followed by dinner and a power hour (that's a shot of beer every minute for an hour). At about 10:30 the crew and I bounced on over to grooveline for the Boys Howdy concert, which of course was amazing. I screamed "ADAM SUCKS! TAKE IT OFF!" and he took off his shirt and threw it at me. I would have kept it and worn it as a diaper every day for forever, but Maribel tore it from my grip.

I wonder if I should have been more drunk, because, unlike their last concert, there were moments where I became self-conscious about being the rowdiest, headbanging, mosh-pitting fool in the crowd. I kind of wonder what I looked like, jumping up and down, flailing my limbs and head and then pausing for a moment to look around to see what everyone else was doing. How embarrassing. 95% of getting away with looking ridiculous is confidence, having that waver is social suicide. SUICIDE.

Anyway, this basically means that my entire body is one large reservoir of lactic acid. I could hardly move my neck when I woke up. And moving from a prone position to standing... ooph (ha, bet you can't name that movie quote).

I also tend to make old man noises whenever I'm sore and have to move. You know, like a drawn out groan as if changing positions is taking a significant amount of the remaining energy you have for the rest of your life. I started doing it so often that it became unconscious, and I've definitely been doing it by accident in class or other inappropriate places lately. Pretty soon I bet I'll just start making random hacking-coughing noises and ripping farts while remaining slouched and completely motionless.

Test.

So in my last entry I said I had baked cupcakes, which is true. What I didn't tell you is that I also made a large tray of brownies, mainly to use up the rest of the mix that I had bought. Well, I offered some to Galen, and the conversation went something like this:

dillbrand: do you want brownies?
shoof27: pot brownies?
dillbrand: no
shoof27: dam
dillbrand: love brownies

But this got me thinking. So I experimented further:

dillbrand: do you want brownies
Freedamos: pot brownies?
dillbrand: no.
Freedamos: oh
Freedamos: sure

The answer was affirmative, but the disappointment was palpable.

dillbrand: do you want brownies?
freshben00: in general?
freshben00: or weed brownies
dillbrand: general brownies?

It intrigues me to think that the very concept of the brownie has become inseparable from pot.

dillbrand: do you want brownies?
JohnPB0430: =-O
JohnPB0430: no thanks
JohnPB0430: tempting, but neg
dillbrand: correct answer

My dear friend Alfred here passed the test, but unfortunately loses all credibility for instinctively responding with a retarded looking smiley.

Fin.

Fortitude. (+54 stamina)

I'm posting more or less every day now and I wonder how long I'll be able to keep that up. The main reason is probably that I basically have 5 days a week off. Technically only 4, but I count days where I don't have to wake up until 2 PM as days off.

So... Valentine's Day. Not quite as memorable this year, I'm gonna have to say. I did bake cupcakes with Ayesha, which was nice. I also delivered them to several people, which I enjoyed immensely, probably more than they enjoyed receiving them. I think the reason it's so fun is the sheer ridiculousness of it. I baked fucking cupcakes for Valentine's Day and delivered them personally to people's rooms. Who does that? Where the hell did I come from?

On that note... Glenna made a comment during the car ride back from the Glee Club retreat that has stuck with me a bit. We were talking about siblings, and she said that she always finds it interesting meeting people's parents, because most of the time you can pretty easily see why they turned out the way they did. And I agree, a lot of people I meet end up being a pretty good combination of their parents' personalities.

Then I think about myself and where I might have "come from". I had a sordid childhood, one with more or less a definitive lack of role models. For the most part, I don't see myself in any of my remaining family members. Sure, there are values that I share with them, particularly with my brother, but in terms of mannerisms... sense of humor... stuff like that... I think you might be hard pressed to find similarities.

Of course, I could just be hopelessly biased. Maybe I'm much more like my Mom than I'm willing to admit. Anything's possible.

When In Doubt...

Wow, this is a reasonably fun pastime. I had to look up the spelling of "pastime".

Glee Club retreat rocked! Despite the 6+ hours of rehearsal we had over the course of about a day, everything was really enjoyable (and entirely substance-free). The more I get to know these crazy Glee Clubbers the more excited I get to be spending time with them. And heck, we're going on this crazy whirlwind tour of Europe together, paid for by the school, so we might as well all be BFF's (Best Friends Forever...s) by the time we get there.

The No-Talent Show was certainly the highlight. I ended up with my pants off, that's how good it was. Blew those pants right off me, for serious. Let me know if you want me to send you a video of some of the skits. Or better yet, ask someone else in Glee Club so I don't have to do it. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Other developments... Today is Valentine's Day. Merry Valentine's Day everyone. For the second year in a row, I will bake cupcakes. Unfortunately, not for anyone in particular this year... OR SO YOU MIGHT THINK! *maniacal laugh*

God, I'm in a weird mood. This is practically stream of consciousness writing. Jasmine is calling me an idiot over and over again in an AIM window that is blinking at the top of my screen because I'm not responding. This tickles me. Oops, she just said "VAGINA".

I'd been planning on drinking very heavily tonight for a while, but I've also been pretty sick all weekend. I only just made the connection that these two things aren't going to complement each other very well. Shucks. I've been sick more times and for longer this year than probably the rest of my college career. What gives? I bet I have AIDS. Fuck.

That means that random girl at Aria has AIDS now too. Shit, that's gonna bug me for at least a couple of days.

Make Glee, Not War.

Gone until Sunday afternoon: Glee Club retreat at Halona, where we sing for like 10 hours of the day... brutal. But hey, I'm excited and so is everyone else that's going, which is funny. I've really never seen a happier (slightly erratic, but that's forgivable) bunch of people, EVEN while sober, and the one Glee Club social event we've had so far really made me optimistic about getting to know everyone. I feel like I suddenly have all these free friends, didn't have to pay a dime.

So I guess there's this tradition every year at the retreat where they have a "No-Talent Show". Besides the name tickling me immensely, it's basically a time for any person or group to perform feats that essentially take no talent at all. I guess the Sopranos (section not family) last year decided to have a contest to see who could fit the most marshmallows into her mouth.

I can't think of anything I could do. Hopefully someone will think up a fun group themed skit or something that I can participate in. Actually, I thought of bench pressing Jon Lee, but that does sort of require some talent. I guess, in the end, I just have to accept that I have no no-talent. Some people are just born lucky.

Real Ultimate Power.

I just dropped my iron, and as it fell to the floor I caught it BY THE HANDLE. I swear to God I must be a ninja.

Other ninjastic achievements:

Throwing a peanut across the room directly into my friend's mouth, AS HE WAS CLOSING IT AND TURNING AWAY, because he thought I had given up.

Gracefully catching a horribly tossed essay returned by a professor after it had tumbled through the air twice. The guy behind me goes "holy shit, did you see that?"

Ability to do several different pen flipping tricks in quick succession.

Superhuman proficiency at Jenga.

Seriously, it's times like these I wish my Dad was alive so I could ask him if there's ninja blood in our family. Haha, just kidding. I'm glad he's dead.

Minimalism.

This template is so fucking sexy. Dark, simple, and sleek... it really turns me on. In the emo tradition that I seem to be adhering to, I'll say that I kind of feel like I've found a home here. Xanga was just too tacky, and populated by masses of pre-pubescent whiny kids. This included myself back in the day, but I feel like I've graduated to blogger. Oh boy, look at me now, Ma!

So I'm drunk. On a Tuesday night, which is acceptable because I don't have classes on Wednesday. However, I was also extremely drunk last night. Drinking heavily on a Monday night kind of gets you wondering if something is wrong. But then I remember that it's second semester senior year and alcohol is always the right answer.

Unfortunately a hat trick hangover is out of the question, I have about 150 pages to read for an in-class discussion that I'm basically leading on Thursday morning. I figured a day off in the middle of the week would feel extremely liberating, but when you basically plan on doing work for the entire day, the novelty of it sort of fades.

*shrug*

Timbre.

First impressions are important, and I found myself increasingly self-conscious about posting that last entry. It's paradoxical really... writing a disclaimer like this to allay concerns about my emotional state, but the fact that I feel compelled to write a disclaimer in the first place pretty much means that I'm insecure about people reading what I'm writing.

So I guess I'll just say that I wrote it for the sake of writing it. I came up with the format of it a couple of days ago, and just wanted to see what I could do with it. Life is actually damned good right now... and if I've stopped on the sidewalk to talk, eaten a meal, or had a drink with you in the last 3 weeks, then I have you to thank for that. Here's to an epic final semester.

Good Days and Bad.

There are days that I hate her.

I wake up with a dull pain in my chest and an inscrutable frustration that lingers as I get dressed. My mind gradually catches up with my subconscious and pieces together the clues left behind from restless slumber. I had dreamed of her again. All of my resolve and supposed progress are undone by it; how many times has it been now? I silently curse. The professor drones on, and I think of lies and indecision and indifference. I get angry and hate myself more for ever being so vulnerable.

There are days that I love her.

I remember her laugh. It was a deep laugh, and she threw her head back as if the laughter had permeated her entire body before escaping. Before I even knew her or was attracted to her, I knew her laugh. And gradually, as I heard it over and over, became familiar with it, learned how to call it out, it became my laugh as well. We shared it, imperfectly at first as friends, and then more perfectly as partners, finally as lovers.

These are the bad days.

The good days... are the days where I don't remember.

Personal Space.

So I've decided in addition to the Bang Gang blog, which more or less never gets updated, that it would be good to resurrect a space for myself again, where I can post about inane happenings not necessarily intended to invoke chuckles from the audience... although that would be a nice side effect in general.

I'm also debating whether or not to just come out and say whatever I'm feeling regardless of who reads this or the consequences thereof. The struggle is against the side of me that absolutely detests being a whore for sympathy, as well as thinking about myself as pathetic whenever my thoughts turn toward self-pity or really any negativity in general. There are so many things to be thankful for every second of your life, it's a disservice to the people that are actually dealing with serious shit to not enjoy the comfort and blessings you've been given for even a moment.

There's a girl that went to my church back when I was in highschool, 2 or 3 years younger than me. I never really knew her, but she was friends with a few of my friends, so we were acquaintances at the least. She was just diagnosed with cancer (of the liver? see, I don't even remember... how insensitive is that?). What right do I have to complain about anything that I'm going through?

The answer is none.