I've kicked enough ass to open a donkey dealership

Ravens

2007-05-08T08:50:00.000-04:00

Everyone is a consumer. As much as we would like to think otherwise marketing has an effect on each and everyone of us. We are all part of a demographic where some marketing agency has been hired to reach us. Counterculture, artists, writers, scientists, anarchists, taggers, hipsters, 18 - 35's, film makers, mathematicians, etc, we are all just a group. While many get out of the high school clique mentality, marketers do not.

Yet for as long as time has passed advertisement has existed. We can even go back to when bartering was the trade of choice, we have been influenced by a description and look of a product. The giant watermelon that's cheap and bright green but infested and spoiled on the inside. The washed and waxed sports car that has a spotty engine and no transmission. The sparkly bronze sword over the grimly looking steel blade. Appearances are everything and our buying decisions are made off of them. However, we seem to have entered a new age of consumption.

Look at an ad and tell me if you ever just see the product. Clothes I can understand. You want to show how people look in it. Same goes for makeup and some other wearable products but look at everything else. Every ad has a person in it. These people are beautiful. Straight from Greek workshops they are sculpted figures of Adonis and Helen. An ad for Glad Wrap has a very attractive 35 year old women and her "two kids". Who knows if she even has kids or even if she's 35. But man my cucumber lasts for weeks before it gets bad.

Paris Hilton uses a pink Motorola phone. Was the phone bought by many because it has a quality piece of software, gets good reception, contains many necessary features or is it because in the newest issue of US Today Paris Hilton was seen talking on it after being paid X amount by Motorola for that exact photo-op. Viral. These phones are sent months before to "it" celebrities on the basis they will be seen with it. Why advertise when People Magazine is doing it for you. Coach Handbags got more advertisement in a month then they did in their entire history from the amount of people with them. Now every Sue, Jane, and Tom has a Coach bag and everyone is looking for the next big thing.

Stop worshipping celebrities.

Stop treating them as some sort of sun deity, a walking god, holding them to a platform of righteousness and dignity that you can not even hold. You scuff at Brittany getting drunk when two nights ago you did the same thing. You call Lohan a slut and last week you slept with two different people in the span of three days. Yet you were only having fun. Is this a job for them?

People make mistakes or decisions and all honestly they are allowed to. Celebrities just do it in fancier places with more money and with less repercussion. Just because the judicial branch holds them to a different standard does not give us the right to be judge, jury, and executioner. Stop with the terms and stop with the labeling. You're only angry at yourself.

TV and print is a reflection of yourself. You are disgusted with how those in the limelight act. Yet they are yourself. You made the puppet in your image and now are shocked he's misbehaving and lying about it.

You are disgusted with what you have become. What out society has become. We're ashamed that when our ruling bodies lie to us we don't go after them or care. Instead we go after adoption of third world babies and deaths of playmates. Stop and look at yourself for once. Slow down and smell the napalm.

We never had a royalty. We rejected the notion of honoring a symbol of a country that has no power. And yet we have begun to treat Hollywood as our Buckingham palace. Our Queen is some random actress. Our king is the hot singer. Our prince is the most current "hot" director. Our princess is the latest trust fund heiress. People have died from this. You killed Marilyn Monroe.

The ravens have left the Chinese Theatre; prepare for invasion...

Stop following trends. Stop following the made path. To use a cliche, take the road less traveled by. You are middle class. Similar to past countries, the middle class dressed and acted like the current elite in hopes that they too would be equal. Acting like the upper does make you the same. You have more in common with those below you then with those above you. They don't like you. They mock you. Stop adding fuel.

Dressing like the National Inquirer will not put you in it. It makes you boring. It makes you unoriginal. It makes you a poor copy of someone who is just copying someone else. Trends all come from some place and mostly it is from those who have their eyes open. Look and you'll see all around you the latest trends years and months before. It's amazing what occurs when you open your eyes. Open your eyes and listen, a world will be unleashed you never knew existed.

Hard work, diligence, and luck is what gets you to the top. Why was a king a king? Someone in his family long time ago had those three qualities and now is family is coasted. Let them coast. Change the system from within. They are blind to you. You can take over.

I hope the ravens never never return...

I have odd taste in music

2006-04-11T10:36:00.000-04:00

March Madness

2006-03-16T14:47:00.000-05:00

Jeppers H. Christmas. 2 games have been completed and I'm already 0 - 2. God damn it!

I'd give you freedom if it was free

2006-03-15T23:41:00.000-05:00

I was reading "V for Vendetta" tonight and the attitude of the book, along with some of the secular reactions to the Catholic church has gotten me in an odd shape. While I consider myself liberal and at times extreme - I believe in over taxation, health care for all, education for all, food for all, shelter for all, and most of all freedom. It's difficult for me to believe we live in a world where a man on the street can be dying of hunger and celebrities are force starving themselves to meet a fixed weight ideal set by the standards of society. Only the rich have eating disorders.

I go to school, I go to work, and I go to bed. I socialize, I read, and I write.

Yet what for?
Where am I going?
What am I trying to accomplish?

At times I feel the need to rip of the chains set my parents and myself and reject everything. Pick up my can and my pen and tear apart the fabric of falselessness and overlay it with messages of truth and reality. Anarchy seems at times to be the way to go. When all said and done, whatever exists we can start again. Somewhere we went wrong. I'd hope that in the end we will make it right, yet I know we won't.

It's a shame that children exist whose only taste of milk is from the hard nipples of swollen breasts atop a bloated defiled corpse.

The city is a canvas

2006-02-24T11:07:00.000-05:00

I have a wonderful weekend planned out that I am excited for but before I leave and get ready to go I wanted to post this wonderful trailer for what I feel is going to be an amazing documentary.

David Choe - Documentary

If I had to pick any art form I respect and love more then anything it is graffiti. Few people know this as I don't advertise it, but seeing a tag, a stencil, sticker or a killer piece laid out on a building just puts a smile on my face. It seems to be the one art form where function steps down to form. The tools used does not allow for one to focus on the details but rather the artist must focus on the message. Speed is essential. This is one of the reasons I have been drawn to contemporary art and stream of conscious writing/poetry. The labored writer pales in comparison to the free flowing writer. Editors rue the day for the laboring, carefully constructing each sentence, each word is hand picked. Yet it lacks any emotion. It's stagnate.

I have heard contemporary literature called journals in novel form. The beat writers of the late 50's and 60's exemplified this two-fold. However, where they failed was their work was still just as pretensious as Dickens. It didn't strip down the constructs of literature but merely moved it in another direction. There is few contemporary writings that truly shift words into another dimension ala modern art. I feel this may have to do with the nature of writing itself and how these mediums are looked at.

When we are kids we can paint, we can draw and color. It may not be the best and at times does not look like anything but yet it is creative and ours. It takes us years to learn how to write, it takes years to learn how to write well, and it takes years and sometimes never happens to learn how to write interesting. As an author goes through the process he infuses in himself a smug feeling of self-worthy due to his own innate and labored over talent. The artist does not need to know how to write. Two artists of two different countries with two different languages understand each other. Two writers in similar instances cannot. While we struggle to modernize literature and move it forward, we need to figure out how is writing is perceived. To modernize art do we have to go backwards and build a form of graphical nature of writing? To modernize words, do we need worldly symbols for all to understand? Do we need to treat writing as a picture? Words have allowed man to become who man is today. But it also has allowed man to separate himself from his fellow man. Was this meant to be?

Dios Mio

2006-02-23T14:20:00.000-05:00

I saw Los Muertos last night at the Eastman House and it was beatiful, pretensious, pointless, and riveting all at the same time. I have been unable to get it off my mind the entire day and I just feel the need to write all my views on the film before I either forget them or they become more of a jumbled mess.

"Los Muertos" is the second film from Lisandro Alonso, who is known around the world (especially in France) of his realistic documentary style movies about everyday life. This movie in particular follows the journey of a prisoner, Argentino Vargas, to deliever a letter to a friend's daughter and see his own daughter. Simple concept, simple exceution, but the film speaks volume in it's simplicity.

The film starts out suddenly with an out of focus camera moving in between leaves and branches in a forest of Argentina. Yet the camera picks up three bodies, two of them are children dead, and there is a third who appears in the distant and then walks past the camera. It is important to note that Vargas was convicted of murder, the reaosn he is in jail. Yet the viewer can see these bodies as either the work of Vargas in the past, work in the future, or just a sign of something that Vargas saw that drove him to do what he did. We never get this question answer but due to such a scene, whose implications are unknown, we are left in a state of disarry.

Even when we see Vargas, who is in every single scene but one, we feel uneasy about him. He's old, grizzled, smokey eyes, and very quiet. He walks with a childish limp, dragging his feet as he goes from place to place. His posture and attitues are also child-like, indicating that he has been in prison for a while and has not matured much. The camera also seems to feel indifferent about him as well. The cemra does not keep pace with Vargas, it moves slower, doesn't move when he does, or simply just backs off and shows something else we might find more interest, such as the forest that overlooks the river. Try as we might, we can never connect with Vargas. Similar to how Vargas cannot connect with the world. He has been in prison for many years. He left a daughter, who we later find out has a younger son and daughter herself, and she too has left them. As he goes through different episodes on his trip back - buy a gift, buy some bread, have sex with a prostitute - he acts shy and afraid of these people as he seems not to fully understand what is going on. Even his interactions with his grandson is emotionally stunted.

Really though, I think Alonso's main theme throughout the film was on isolation and freedom. In prison, Vergas was confined to a fenced in area. He slept in a small room alone, had to eat out of a tupperware, days spent drinking mate and watching inmates play soccer, and drink from a shared cup of water. Even in the scene he was confined. The cmera was placed very close and rarely left his sight. For seconds it was placed just to watch Vargas sitting and watching. Yet when he leaves prison, the camera becomes free, similar to Vargas. It begins to zoom out, more wide shots, it moves up and down, left to right, back and front. At times it moves out of the presence of Vargas. No longer is the viewer stuck with Vargas, we have a chance to leave his side if we so decide. Yet while we are free, the feeling of isolation overwhelms us. As the camera shows the enitre river and Vargas and his boat is such a small pinpoint on it, he is surrounded by forests on all sides. So while he is free from confinment, he is now a prisoner of his own lonliness and isolation. His prison is now the free world that he can not relate to. This is where I feel the forest is important. Only in the forest, where amny of the peasnats live, can someone be free and confined. Grounded by the forest arround them, they have the ability to do what they want to do. Yet what comes from that is poverty.

The film is diffently not for everyone. It is slow and at times nothing happens. Yet at the same time I was drawn to the ritualistic nature of it. From what I hear Alonso's other film "La Libertad" follows a similar style and I need to head down to Global and grab it.

Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeck

2005-08-12T10:51:00.000-04:00

Alot has gone on in the past few weeks, too much to actually write it up in detail so I'll summarize in order of good and bad

Good: I've moved to a house in Park Ave and I love it
Bad: I hate city parking

Good: Every week a new concert pops up that I buy tickets for. I'm broke due to a music shop being walking distance and my need of seeing live music
Bad: No one has heard of half the bands and I feel pretensious and smug and an asshole when I talk about them.

Good: I got the new Royksopp cd
Bad: There's a horrible drum and bass inspired track and it's more dancey then jazzish.

Good: I started work on a 9000 piece puzzle
Bad: I want to buy the 12,000 piece one next

Good: I don't have to pay for school anymore
Bad: Nothing at all bad about that

Good: I get to see Coldplay, Rilo Kiley, Bloc Party, the Kills, and Sigur Ros in a 10 day span
Bad: Sigur Ros and Bloc Party / The Kills cost me as much as the Coldplay / Rilo Kiley show

Good: I'm traveling to Penn State / Philly in 2 weeks to help a friend move
Bad: She's moving

Good: For the first time in three years I spent an entire day playing a videogame - Resident Evil 4.
Bad: I beat it

Carnage Fucking Carnage

2005-07-26T15:05:00.000-04:00

IMG_0203
Originally uploaded by Pmartino.

On my trip home this weekend for the Bocce tournament I finally picked up my flash card reader so I could upload the pictures I took of The Lord Weird Slough Feg show two Thursdays ago. I can also review what was a pretty decent show.

Crucifix was the first band on the bill. They are a local death / thrash metal band whose songs reminded me very much of Morbid Angel and Death. Fast, furious, and fucking heavy. My problem with a lot of newer death metal bands is just that they only focus on being heavy and throw away the thrash death metal needs. Changing tempos every 30 seconds does not make a quality track. Back to Crucifix though. The band's leader singer is fellow WITR DJ for the Heavy Metal show on Saturday night who actually told us about this show. This may make my interview a bit bias but they were a decent enough opening band, good for head banging, and didn't out right suck. Sadly I wasn't able to buy a demo CD and get a better taste of them since they left after we went to the ATM for cash.

Bible of the Devil was the next band. I assumed they were going to be straight thrash or a similar combo ala Crucifix before I heard them. Figuring I might as well hear some tracks before the show I downloaded a few and wasn't pleasantly surprised. They have a very AC / DC sound, duel guitar driven heavy metal. They also have a similar theme to AC / DC in their songs are about drinking, girls, kicking ass, and just being men. They started the show off with Guns, Germs, and Steel a song based off the book and the now PBS documentary. The song was long and awesome and I knew I was in for a great night. The lead guitarist was amazing with a fantastic stage presence and he definitely fed off the crowd that was very responsive to them (especially since this was most people's first time seeing them). The guitarist's parents were also in the audience. This led to an interesting tidbit when for their last song they were trying to figure out what to play. I yelled out Fuckin' A, one of the few songs I actually knew, to which the guitarist told me not to swear in front of their mother. They played Fuckin' A which was awesome. Combine this with the bassist laying on the ground floor and playing on his back on top of me. Why? Who knows.

The band I've been waiting for a month to see finally came on stage, The Lord Weird Slough Feg. I was not disappointed to say the least. They are definitely an interesting band and fit the stereotypical looking metal band. But there is a reason metal will never be big and its due to the flat out ugliness of metal bands. None the less, they make up in talent what they lack in looks, and the show proved this. Playing some of my favorite tracks - High Passage / Low Passage, Baltech's Lament, Eumaeus the Swineherd, Sky Chariots, Traders and Gunboats, Asteroid Belts, the Final Gambit, the Wickerman, and one or two more. I was hoping for Avatism, I Will Kill You / You Will Die, and Vargr Theme but I cannot get too picky. Sadly the temperature was horrible and Slough Feg ended the show what seemed to be a bit early. I also took almost no pictures and the ones I did were way too zoomed in to be of any worth.

Following the show I bought some merch - a sweet Slough Feg shirt, Travler, and Bible of the Devil's latest. Overall I give the show a 8 / 10, could have been better but it was good enough to be worth the ten bucks.

Bocce combines the strategic and intellectual demands of chess, the physical challenges of the decathlon, and the sublime poetry of Zen archery

2005-07-25T09:07:00.000-04:00

I just want to say I love the game of Bocce. What was once an average lawn game to play with friends and family has become a competitive force to be dealt with. B.O.O.B.S. - Bocce Organization of Beer Swillers - is a league started up by my brother, Paulie, and Jim. Each week they get together, drink, and play bocce. To make matters even better a Rochester group is starting up - an East and West division, with the winner of that becoming grand CNY BOOBS' Champion.

I somehow was able to get off work on Saturday and able to go to the Bocce Tournament held at the fairgrounds. First game was at 9, we started drinking at 9, and lasted all day until 4:30. Sitting in the sun, drinking beers, and playing bocce all day is hard work. Sadly no teams from BOOBS received a trophy but we came close due to two games the Brothers Martino and Team Black Ball should have won. Lack of consistency and courts we were not used to were the real causes of our defeat. We made an impact however, with kids complaining that we were "wasted" and constantly being asked what the deal is with our official looking shirts. Raised some money for charity, played bocce, and drank all day is if you ask me a quality day and worth the trip home.

Meet the Mets

2005-07-22T09:09:00.000-04:00

Just want to say the Mets are 4.5 games out of first and the wildcard respectively. The Nationals are falling apart like I've said for weeks (382 runs scored and 388 given up), we are tied with the Astros, and the Phillies are on our tail. Am I worried? Nope. We're going to the playoffs.

The Braves will probably win the East but I won't be surprised to see them collapse with as young as a team as they have. Right now I'm just excited about the wildcard spot. The Astros, Phillies, Marlins, and Cubs are the teams to beat. We routinely have great success against the Phillies, so-so versus the Marlins, same for the Nationals. Moving Piazza to the 6th spot has worked out amazing (need to do some statistics on this to make sure), Wright's fielding and base running is getting better, and Floyd has been solid. I'm so excited, I love the Mets.

Tickets on sale today for Bloc Party and the Kills. Looks like I'll be doing solo but I get to see Kevin and Chapman so the trip alone will still be fine.

I need to start a band

2005-07-20T12:36:00.000-04:00

Three days in a row I was asked if I was in a band. I have never been in a band or even have any resemblance of musical talent. I love music but can not play it, which is why I love being asked this question. I guess I give off the band impression with my strange band shirts, homemade shirts, interesting pencil line drawing design shirts, boot-cut jeans that fit, and a pair of loafers. Doesn't help I've been hanging out with friends this summer who also look the same. So when we are together I guess we give off that band vibe. It was especially odd on Thursday when we walked into the Bug Jar we were asked if we were in the band (I assume Bible of the Devil). Of course I said no. Realizing the awesomeness of being in a band but not exactly having one, Pete and I vowed to always say 'yes' if asked the question again. I failed that test twice the next two days.

So to remedy that situation I need to start a band. At the moment I have two ideas for a band that stem from the main points of music - getting chicks, getting drunk, and artistic expression. My first band involves the first two and my second band involves the last. See after realizing that whinny acoustic playing emo brats have whinny emotional artsy girls throw themselves all over these whinny acoustic playing emo brats but are too sad over their first love to do anything, I have decided to tap this market. Since I am not all that whinny, nor am I emotional, and honestly haven't loved anyone per say I'm walking into a glod mine. However, I also realized that there is another market untapped and that is the dark, gothic, and angry market. Metal heads are just butt ugly and these stay as far away as possible. Note these girls are also just as crazy and emotional as the ones that love acoustic music. So as long as I combine both genres I can perform a super band. I now present you Acoustic Black Emotional Metal. So I get drunk, throat my way through emotional songs about my love of Satan and the devil that dumped me for a fresh corpse and I wait for the 'killer' paychecks.

My other band isn't as exciting but involves keyboards, a sampling machine, a turntable, mixer, and a CD turntable. I then blend my love of odd samples, records from the 40's and 50's, book on tapes, hip-hop, and metal in a melting pot of pure shit and mayhem. Yet it'll be so artistic and bad people will love it. After doing it as a joke I'll start taking it serious. I'll do 50 minute interviews how I'm deconstructing music into a conglomerate of noise that reflects the current state of affairs going on in and how is damaging their .

So more or less I just make myself into a pretencious ass that takes himself way too seriously.

Elementary my dear Watson

2005-07-14T11:15:00.000-04:00

For whatever reason the title is the first thing that popped in my head when I started this post. Probobly due to I was reading comic books this morning instead of waking up, and Ruse juts happened to be one (as did the entire Deadpool limited series). Reading those books this morning made me way too nostalgic for comic books (as did seeing Sin City finally) and I think I may hit up a shop this weekend and pick up a few. If anything catch up on The Flash which still remains my favorite hero of all time. When I started getting back into the hobby say 6 years ago I stuck to mainly Marvel titles I loved as a kid. X-Men, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Avengers, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, etc. Yet as time went on and I started branching off into other cape books and *gasp* 'indy' comics, I fell, and boy did I fall hard, for DC Comics (my empty bank account showed this). I realized I wanted my Superhero books to be pure superhero and my independent books to be as wordy and prentenious as possible. Marvel tried to do both and if you ask me gave a much dryer and simplier overall product. It was then I fell for The Flash, yet it was not until Geoff Johns joined the book that interest increased and he by far gave some of the greatest 4 years of comic material I've ever read.

For whatever reason I feel really productive today (as noted by the fact I'm updating here while I extract some test scores from a database). I cleaned my office - put my new SAS books on the shelf, organized papers in the filing cabinet - and doing some serious work. This week I've felt insanly lazy due to my exhausting but amazing weekend. Friday I worked a half day and then went down to Syracuse for the annual Beer Festival. If you don't know what that is just imagine unlimited supply of beer for 25 bucks. You get a small 4 oz glass and each vender gives you "2 oz's" of beer. And this is not just any cheap beer, PBR still thankfully represented, but micro and global breweries and distributors from all over. I got complelty tanked, got home around 12, made some drunken phone calls (realized the next day) and slept a solid six hours when I woke up and could not fall asleep. Even still, Saturday was even better.

I watched TV and played videogames all morning since I was not asked to go in for my on-call shift at 10. After a while of being bored I decided to be halfway productive and hit the gym. After lifting, I stopped by the library to say hi to Laura who I haven't spoke with in a while. She was about to close the library and play softball, which I thought nothing of. Lo and beold, Dan - someone I see all the time in class and through other friends I have no idea he is friends with; We get along amazingly well, and every party we are at I end up chilling with him the majority of the night, we just never exchange numbers for whatever reason - comes up asks if I want to play softball. I can never say no to that and we go. The turn out sucked, only six of us, so we ended playing wiffleball instead which is just as good. Won the first game and lost the second (should have picked Laura over Dan - forgot how important speed is in wiffleball). After that I came up with the idea of throwing a BBQ, Laura offered her place, we bought some food and some beer, and barbaqued and watch Rounders, followed by an eight person game of poker until 4 am. Sunday I sat around, watched Lotus War at Pete's, watched Sin City, and ate at Jays Diner. Overall, the weekend was amazing. I just didn't sleep.

Tonight, I'm seeing The Lord Weird Slough-Feg. I'm finally going to bring my digi-cam and get pictures and rock out to the most insane and awesome metal band I've heard in a while. God I cannot wait.

Listening to - "Sky Chariots" - The Lord Weird Slough-Feg

The Lord Weird Slough-Feg have come for your children

2005-06-25T10:16:00.000-04:00

Every summer I come upon a band that I fall in love with and obsese about them daily. Four summers ago it was Zero 7, three summers was the Incredible Expanding Mindfuck, last summer was Iron Maiden (tad bit too late), and this summer is the Lord Weird Slough-Feg. However, I always either get in the band far past their prime or they are European and come to the states almost never. Not the case with Slough-Feg.

If you see me walking down the street with my ipod you'd probably never guess I'd be first in line for a Slayer or Cattle Decapitation show. To say I dress 'trendy' and 'feminine' would be an understatement. Yet, while I have changed, my love of metal will never falter. However, finding decent metal bands nowadays is very difficult as the market has become saturated with wanna be death metal bands and metal-core bands just making noise. I just want awesome guitar solos and kick ass double bass drum action. Lyrics aren't that important, but still need to be relatively interesting. So when a band combines those two and creates a concept album about space and genetic engineering humans into bipedal dog I'm sold. I love concept albums which explains my love of King Diamond and Iced Earth. And they are playing at the Bug Jar July 14th for 6 bucks. Life cannot be grander. Combine this with a band I feel in love with three summers ago, Pretty Girls Make Graves, is also coming down to Rochester in august. I feel like a school girl and want to scream all giddy.

In other news work is getting interesting. At first I didn't really like the job as it was boring and mindnumbingly stupid. I was just looking at numbers and organizing them and not really using my skills. Yet now I'm doing statistical work, writing progress reports, signing up for conferences, reading past papers on similar subjects, etc. I'm really starting to enjoy it and the more I talk about it, the more in love I am with it. Its going to help me immensely once I start looking for graduate schools, especially if we can get it published before next spring.

Hail to the bus driver, bus driver man

2005-06-21T15:19:00.000-04:00

So its official, I'm a bus rider. My life depends on a piece of paper that controls my entire day through the use of bus times. You never know how independent you are until its gone and it takes a hour to make a 10 minute car trip. However, it has forced me to listen to music much more closely again instead of back ground noise or music to travel to and I've been getting some reading done. I remember seeing something a while ago that asked people to use public transportation at least once a month to save on air pollution and the like. So it feels nice that for the next two weeks they'll be one less car on the road.

What's also nice is my car is going to get less use in a month or so when I move down to Park Ave. A friend's uncle bought a house three houses from Park which I'll be there until school starts. However, I need to decide if I want to stay in University Commons where I'll be paying more or less $550 dollars a month whereas the house I will be paying anywhere from $400 to $450 dollars a month. Since I'll be paying my entire way through, this extra hundred dollars in my pocket will definitely be helpful.

What comes up though is a total monetary view of the situation. Living in such a nice are with easy access to bars, restaurants, and shops I will be more prone to spending a higher amount of money on these activities then I do now. My gas fund will also increase as I'll have to drive to campus to get to class. Due it mostly being high-way though, my mileage may improve which may only increase it by a few. I'm leaning towards the house just due to the cheaper rent, amazing house, the experience, and if I end up going to graduate school at U of R, I already have a place lined up. I have a while to decide but going to talk to my parents about it and get my decision in a week.

With that, work at my internship, and the huge summer sale at Banana Republic, I have been quite busy. Have bowling tonight which we better win and same goes for the struggling Mets who have a big series verses the Phillies.

Start of something new

2005-06-13T12:59:00.000-04:00

Online journals and myself are like ones first day of school. You get really excited about it and then as time goes on you begin to dread it and just give up enjoying it. While I enjoy school and I enjoy writing, it comes to the point where it just feels like work. That point is where I give up and stop writing. So here we go again, lets see how long this one lasts.

Been a rough month with being sick, no car, money issues, and moving three times. I finally have a bed that isn't a couch and it doesn't feel like I'm in the way. Hopefully by the end of the month I'll get my money problems fixed. Now if I could only figure out the bus schedule, the next two weeks without my car wouldn't be so bad. So while things aren't the best, I cannot complain too much.

What is funny is I look at my problems now and my problems when I was younger. Back then I had serious identity and self-loathing issues that directly shunted any sort of social development for many years. I'm still paying for such mishaps now. Things are getting better and as a good friend commented "I am like a polished stone", which couldn't be further from the truth. I often joke I wish I could travel back in time and jump start the process faster but at times if I didn't go through that I wouldn't be where I am now. Everything happens for a reason. I somehow have developed a decent social life, going out on dates, and not subjecting myself to a constant nagging of discontent.