Not Sure if I'm Mad or Happy

I was going to take a nap, but then the Sci-Fi channel started playing Startrek: Enterprise ( the new one). Normally I wouldn't care as this show isn't really all that good, but this time the Intrepid crew of the Enterprise have decided to travel back in time accidentally to World War II. I can stop watching, an alien race that I don't recognize are SS officers. This is entertaining as hell. Someobody just died or passed out or something. The Captain is being bathed by some woman and I can't tell if she's supposed to be black, asian, or an alien race, but regardless she lives in France. Oh, she's black, and they're in Brooklyn? Oh, I get it, this is an alternate history, the Nazis are pwning everything. I get it now, even better. Well, I'm going to watch the rest of this now.

EDIT: massive frustration, in the last 15 minutes of that two hour special I nodded of during a commercial. This happened just in time for me to miss the conclusion, as I woke up with the bad guy screaming and (maybe) dying.

Oh me, oh my

It's hot, dammit. I'm listening to Jackson Browne's Greatest hits. Brandon is playing Gmod with David and some random other fellow. Daniel is yelling at the xbox about how someone's JDAM is messing up (his more colourful language omitted). I have nothing to do, so I thought I would update this blog with some completely unuseful information about my current situation. Brandon's Skype chat with Niccole died when we went up to Andy and Matt's house to try and ruin Andy's day. I feel like I accomplished this by stuffing both his harmonica and his back scrathcer down my pants. Keep in mind that it's sweltering out, and that I'm perspiring in unmentionable places (in other words my balls were sweaty). The picture on the front of the Yakov Smirnoff DVD Brandon bought when we went to see his comedy show is glaring at me looking every bit like a russian Al Borland. Speaking of Al Borland, Home Improvement was a fantastic show. I remember I used to laugh my ass of when Tim made those jokes about how Al was always wearing flannel, and then feeling like a dirtbag piece of shit when I found out that Al wore that flannel as a tribute to his dead father. It's a very touching story, really. I remember crying when I saw the last episode of Boy Meets World as a little kid, but I remember cryingnot only when I saw the last episode of Home Improvement, but bawling my eyes out when Jonathan Taylor Thomas left, and then even harder when he came back for Christmas. I think I'll always feel like Home Improvement and MASH had the best two sitcom endings of all time. *sigh* Good times, but anyway, what else did I want to say? Ha Ha, Brandon drank too much pineapple juice and now feels sick. That's what he gets for taking the whole damn thing. Brandon called David on Skype and now David and Daniel are bitching at eachother about who is hated more by their respective families. Brandon's room is an amalgamation of dumb shit and awesome shit. For example, there's a Pokemon: Battle Revolution poster right next to a Shaun of the Dead one, and a Pink Floyd: The Wall (movie) poster hanging above a door with a giant magnetic horseshoe hanging from the doorknob and a big pile of dirty pants at the bottom rendering it unopenable. That's okay, I suppose, there's nothing behind that door but his dad's collection of Altoids cans (don't ask me).

The Listen or Die Podcast

seems to have fallen through spectacularly due to lazy-ness on the part of it's creators (Brandon, Nathan, Andy, and Myself) and my current lack of transportation. The point of this blog isn't for me to announce the indefinite hiatus of a podcast that only had two episodes, however. Mainly I'm writing this blog to fill in whatever poor bored soul wants to read up on my daily life about what has been going on lately with me. Here it comes. Get ready. Wait for it. Wait for it. NOTHING!

That's obviously a bit of an overstatement, but it was still a pretty boring long-weekend, most likely because I'm still down in the dumps about losing my car and, subsequently, my freedom, or at least my hightened sense of it. I did manage to accomplish a few things, however, mainly I went to Nathan's 17th birthday get together (I say get together because party conjures up images of pointy hats and cake of which there were none) and managed not to hurt myself with the exception of some glass shards which got stuck in my hand after I tried and failed to reenact a bar fight by smashing a beer bottle on... something. It was fun, but unfortunately I feel like we may be reaching the last of the "get togethers" since we're all coming quickly upon the age of eightteen and we're starting to feel childish sitting in each other's basements eating too much, getting sick, and playing Halo. Anyway, as I said, it was good fun, I played pool almost constantly and went on a rant about how much I hate Irish people in an attempt to get into Jared's head which worked, a little too well. I went home the next day feeling happy and not really thinking yet that this would probably be the last of such celebrations. 

Other than that, I picked up some photos from Target, and really like quit a few of them. Others aren't so great, but eh,  I realised I would end up wasting some film when I started experimenting with different stuff. Mostly what I've been working on is shooting all the outdoor lights in my neighborhood. It might sound a little weird, but I really like the effect it gives sometimes. The problem is, these lights aren't very bright and many of the photos I need involve some mild for of breaking and entering or at the least some extremely suspicious behavior on mine and Brandon's part. So as a result many of the pictures had to be taken from a greater distance than i wanted or at a weird angle or in a hurry or something like that, and most of the ones I really had hopes for didn't turn out at all. 

I've been listening to this one album almost non-stop, and one song in particular has me pretty much in love. The band is This Mortal Coil, the album is It'll End in Tears, the song is Song to the Siren. I think the best way I've heard This Mortal Coil described is gothic dream pop, and it personifies this song specifically. I've never been a big fan of goth music, and so understand that this isn't some gushy unrequited love song, and understand that for me to be recommending gothic music to people means that I'm extremely taken with it. 

Other than that, I really haven't done much of anything, I went to Earthfare last night and got some dinner, which was good, and I ate some of said dinner for lunch today. I read some from one of the many books I need to finish at the moment, and after I finish this blog I'm gonna go read Of Mice and Men for Mrs. Wallace. Usually I would blow off a school-related book if there was another book which I liked better that I wanted to read, but OMaM is a classic, and I really like it, AND it has a deadline, so my other books are just going to have to wait for a while.

Hurm... it seems I wrote quite a bit for someone with "NOTHING!" to say.

Congrats to me

I've now officially filled my ipod (30GB) to capacity. I knew this day was fast approaching, but it feels so surreal, my ipod is more of a nostalgia generator for me sometimes than a music player. For example, I heard Modest Mouse for the first time whilst on my way to Canada for the first time, and I wore that album OUT and it'll always be in my mind. Also, I remember reading the Drizzt books by RA Salvatore while listening to Stadium Arcadium by The Red Hot Chili Peppers so that one is lodged in there pretty far. 

The albums that pushed me to the 30 GB mark?

Beck - Odelay

Rollins Band - End of Silence

Queen - like 4 greatest hits albums

Joy Division - The peel Sessions / Closer

Kings of Leon - Because of the Times

Raveonettes - Whip it on

This Mortal Coil - It'll End in Tears

Yardbirds - Greatest Hits

Short story notes/ideas

I'm making a list of random stuff I want to incorporate into the story so that I can remember it all. This is going to be a running list and suggestions to the categories are welcome. 

Names: (Note to self: Japanese names in English style)

- Quinn

- Bruce

- Mari Konno, Masami Yoshizawa, Erika Nanba, Ayako Nomoto (there's a story there)

- Ishmael

- Leviathan, Behemoth

- Gomory

- Armitage

Character traits:

- rubbing a scar when nervous

- missing limbs/appendages

- love of speed metal

- martial arts (possibly Jeet kun do)

- racial mix

- 21st century weapons

- Kafkaesque (impact before stop)

- drug overdoses

A New Post and A New Day

I've been brainstorming pretty much constantly about a new short story lately, and I still have no idea what I want to write about. Thanks to a friend of mine I now have OpenOffice so I won't have to type the whole thing on wordpad. I don't think he reads this blog, but in case he does, Andy, if the story ever gets written, it'll be because you found me some software. Alright, now on to the point. I have, like I've said, no concrete plan for this story, but I was thinking something about a town full of people in the middle of the desert who's job it is to remove obsolete satellites from orbit. I've been listening to a lot of Nick Cave and a lot of Tom Waits (I recommend them both highly), so it has to be set in the desert so I can have the whole wild west feel. I'm thinking maybe they'll be removing these satellites for one of three reasons:

1. Humans have filled the thermosphere with too much shit, which is now obsolete, but still in the way and we can't get any ships through to deeper parts of space which is severly hampering our colonization attempts

2. Humans were forced to flee Earth due to something (work in progress obviously) and eventually decided it was ok to head back. Only problem is that they need a small ship to be able to zip through the layers of debris in the thermosphere, and that the only ship capable of doing that can only hold about 10 people or so comfortably and the story takes place several generations later where the great great great grandkids of the original earth re-colonizers have carved out a life for themselves and are bringing down satellites so that the larger ships can return for all the people who were left behind out in space to come back.

3. There is a war being fought with spaceships in the lower atmosphere, and the protagonists would be tasked with removing the debris from the on-going war because the chunks of metal from the battles are raining down on the inhabitants of Earth.

I'm kinda leaning towards #3, I feel like that would give me a chance to do more action and focus on the character's work instead of their lives on Earth which are bound to be boring as sin. I'm sure I can work in some bar fights and a comic relief character so the whole thing won't have to take place in low orbit, but still I think the space battles part is the really interesting part. Another issue, I'm pretty sure this is going to be written in 1st person, if it indeed does get written at all, and saying I'm unfamiliar with 1st person writing is a rather big understatement. I don't think I've ever written anything seriously in 1st person, really, nothing. I used to always write in 3rd person limited but I have real trouble writing dialogue in that format because I don't like typing things like "(name) said" and without that it gets confusing. I know 1st person won't really do anything to relieve this, but I'm hoping to establish a very vivid personality for the main protagonist and his or her buddies so that leaving out the "(name) said" kind of stuff won't bungle it entirely. Like I've said, none of this is concrete, at this point, the story could just as easily end up being about an Ostrich who dreams of becoming a nightclub bouncer or something crazy like that.