Teenage Waste

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

"This Party is Old and Uninviting...

Participants all in black and white
You enter in full-blown technicolor
Nothing is the same after tonight"

In suit with the mood, it seems that the world IS being torn apart by a "fiction-worty wind". Things...damn things. My friends are being swept away by shittier situations than mine. Their pain would be enough to knock me on my ass but now I can't help but struggle with my own. The guilt of this selfishness is something all it's own as well. Everyone's leaving at the same time. I resent that my father hates me, and is getting married to a woman who doesn't exactly fancy my bitchy ass... That my old bedroom was better deserved for something new, and clean, reminding myself of my own dirtiness. My mother is a mess. I'll have nothing to squander my attentions on in October when shit goes down. Which also means November is quick on it's heels again. That said, the news arriving at lunch snapped something. Who knew: the cliches are right. It really is like dominos. Like a one-ton domino in the face.

The ride's over. In two months time (that if I'm lucky) it appears my emotions will be curled on my bed, emptying my eyes in an over-sized coheed&cambria hoodie, or staring at a card with an old concert ticket in it and a shot glass on the front.

Very well.

Posted at 03:49 pm by hernameis
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"And You Jerk it Out"

As I watch our countries struggle still with further assimilation, attempting to uniform political systems to cut back terrorism, I do think. I wish more of even our public realized it isn't so easy to accomplish as all that. Our presence in the Middle East is not an effort to relax our tensions with their people and ideologies, but to demonstrate our power and fortitude, an explanation that we will not tolerate the whisper of temerity from dangerous factions. I'm not saying that it doesn't need to be done -- I refuse to talk about something so split. But I believe -- j'espere -- that our government will concede in the future that our resources in Iraq will not be the solution we're making it out to be. If you cannot hold and honest word with the people in your country, how much better can this life be? (I don't want to hear a smart word from fellow patriots -- life is better here tenfold when it comes to creature comforts, treatment, etc... But it's a matter of principle. A lie is a lie, non?)

Yes, I can sit back in my apartment, sipping wine from Transylvania, talking to my friends about anything I wish, and I can sit here and criticize all I desire -- it's great. I know this and express it whenever I can. I just don't like where we are headed. It's a fear, really. I enjoy, love, crave the rights I tenderly excercise daily. I don't want to lose them.

I can remember this year's Independance Day, a handful of us walking from my shabby, wonderful apartment down to the concrete bridge connecting our nearby sister city, for a time uniting so many of us -- at least for tonight. We were waiting so patiently, ambling and chatting with more familiar faces in the gigantic mob of people gathered over the river for the fireworks display. Old friends, some I don't speak to anymore, and even a couple I wish never again to speak with. What can I say? People have their falling outs. Just as a good friend of mine re-coined last night, "people change". It may be a weak argument, but it's so simply true. This again may be the small scale problem facing our government. Times change and when goals no longer run parallel we tend to turn a selfish cheek, blind to another's pain or problems.

My tightly-knit group, finally dry from an earlier water balloon massacre, reconnoitered by the fencing on the old bridge. It had been a beautiful day. The weather was perfect, we went out and bought a grill and BBQ'd the afternoon into evening. Our bellies full and water pistols set aside, we had nothing to do but smile. Happy times are more than welcome and hard to come by anymore. But this day was a good day. I stood there under the pyrotechnics, beautiful to my eyes and ears.

I can't remember what happened first. At times like these events happen on top of each other and have no clear end or start. My mind wandered at the chest-pounding rhythm. You know the one, the rich boom that you can feel deep inside your ribs. It stirs me, year after year, into contemplation. This year all I could wonder at was our history. The air ripped by rifle pellets, Americans being ripped apart by the British. The shaking boom of the heavy cannon fodder we shot at each other before the peace between Union and Confederation in the summer of 1865. The looming peril from direction of the sky in the World Wars. Our bombs over Japan and Germany. Don't forget Iraq. Bruised hearts -- by gunpowder or loss. We do this to ourselves again and again. Sad, fearful, angry at myself because of the man behind me, gathering discarded plastic water bottles to cash in. Then my indestructable horror and anger toward the unmindful, dissatisfied youth who, at that moment, began their own mindless spat on the crowded bridge.

I got a good look at everyone involved -- a circle of their comrades formed around them, providing them their ring. What were they yelling? Oh, I see. This is all over a girl. What? Who's more street? Huh.

The Police came by and broke it up.

Why? Why do we do this to ourselves? There we all were, we may not have known or even liked each other, but we were being stared in the face by the most beholden representation for all that we are. That is us up in the sky! Who cared though? It seems a great waste to some people. One of my friends even mentioned being miffed at this squandering of money. I'll tell you what though, the only reason this spectacle is a waste is because of the citizens who forget why we're doing this. We could all be sitting inside our air conditioned plazas, or at home in front of a fan, going about our everyday lives, maybe watching a parade on television -- maybe not, would it not too be a waste? -- or maybe just reheating some dinner as we slowly loosen our grip on OUR story. Quel jour de liberte...

As faulted as we all may be, it makes us who we are. My point? I'm proud to be exactly who I am. I wish nothing but to be the absolute most aware of all these problems as I can be. Issues should not pass by unnoticed, unfixed. My precious country is worth all the immense pain I feel for her. I would pay for these little Independance displays myself, if I could. My country is my best friend, and rife as she may be with mistakes and sadness, she is part of me. I hope we all remember that, and stop making a fool of her. From citizens to leaders.

Beautiful America is my home. You can lay in her feilds, head on the wet grasses. Sit in one of her plethora of coffee specialty shops. Drink yourself silly in the privacy she has given our homes. Dance in her streets. Speak in her courts. She has given us everything we could ask for. I may leave, but I will always return to her.

Posted at 10:42 am by hernameis
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Thursday, June 23, 2005

"What fool doesn't like Fruit Loops?"

What an absolutely unmerciless country. Hitler-referencing news anchors aside, the crippling disease usually reserved to plaguing our Pitts and Britneys has turned violently against political prisoners as well. News specials and magazines have found a caveat in providing a gluttonous country, hungrily referencing trivia on their favorite movie stars and musicians, with all the fodder we clamoured for. How long, however, must we suffer this fatuous trend? Is there an end in sight?

The once-pensive now deafen the nation with a "no", our wistful questions settled once the likes of Corporals Reese and O'Shea hit us in our homes this week. It appears that this deluge of interest in media-pervading figures is now growing, feeding on political dissatisfaction and the over-saturation of our nation with war issues. Now we turn on our television sets and are, if not bombarded with a paparazzo's photograph of Paris' pantilessness or a frusterated celeb flipping the camera the bird ("GOOD HEAVENS!!! No, surely not the middle finger! ...Normal people surely don't do such things..."), thrust into a broadcast of Saddam Hussein's Daily Mediocrity.

I was first introduced to this unsettling abomination while watching, as always, the TODAY Show. It seems Reese and O'Shea were two of the guards stationed to maintain Saddam Hussein. Fair enough, a little PR stunt, get a nice story about two American Boys to ease the fear in the hearts of our states' mothers, spouses, et al. Wait a minute... Is that what this is? ... I'm sure you can picture my joy while being subjugated to a tedious list of the Tyrant's daily menu, and facts of such entertaining caliber as his preference of Doritos to Cheetos.

I could have just changed the channel, but an almost masochistic need to know what merit this story might have kept me 'tuned in'. Surely they were headed somewhere pertinent? Helpful? Informative?

Just my luck; no. Nor had they hit the bottom of this degrading abyss. Just as in wars past, the precocious little newsbugs at the station try to dehumanize 'our enemy' with petite histoires of this Saddam's bizarro behaviour -- "weird" obsession with cleanliness, using descriptors such as fake, manipulative, etc. Fearing him. Painting a perfect symbol of 'the enemy' for our average citizen to mentally cling to, at home in their kitchens, at their offices' watercoolers, on the battlefield.

Can I just point out at this point that this man, evil as we consider him, is behaving normally under his conditions? It would not be a fear of dirt and grime that would keep us cleaning ourselves, food, utensils, clothing, surfaces. It would be our fear of poisons, of our captors. Also, yes, we are the enemy. You are thinking you would not be manipulative and fake upon capture? It is simply intelligent and strategic to get on the best side of those with power over you.

Now, cet homme is not a good man. He is the absolute antithesis of our morals and the morals of what we consider the civilized world. He slaughters his people, his enemies, has no reguard for life or justice that is not suiting his own needs. We call him a tyrant, a despot -- he is. He does belong where he is, the situation being that we even bothered to stick our noses in the Middle East; in custody, awaiting trial. It is right of us not to mistreat him, to give him food while he is in our care, clothe him as acumen and conscience tells us. So we do. Just long enough for him to be fairly tried and sentenced. I am not worried that he will get off, our government is too focused on "a hangin' ", so-to-speak. A little dog and pony show to symbolize our progress in our generation's war, something to please the masses. So there is no other reason for us to dehumanize him. The courts that WE, OUR COUNTRY, established to provide due process will determine his fate, it is now out of the people's hands. The prosecution will do a fine job, and I'm sure the world will be pleased.

That said, let's stop debasing and just get past the issue. It's disgraceful to our ever-so-untarnished views on our superiority as a race to continue with this game. Please? We have our own mistakes to fix, a nation we owe our attention to rebuilding, as we were the ones with the 'better judgement' to tear it to the ground. Time to put our money where our fat, brazen mouths are and pull through in the clutch.

Sorry to be so preachy. I'm done.

Posted at 09:39 am by hernameis
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Monday, June 13, 2005

CUE UP THE BAD BANGLES MUSIC!!!

Yes, that's right everyone; Time to walk like an Egyptian and paint various ankhs and eyes or Horus on ourselves. The boy-king Tutankhamun is returning to the US for viewing, initiating in LA. Not only will his own funerary articles be displayed (not the entire collection of course, 1,000+ is a little much, non?) along with a few pieces from his predecessors' tombs (his great-grandmother's golden likeness among them), but also the new data on Tut's physical appearance, derived from scans of his skull, giving the pharaoh depth, humanity, and personality. Hand-in-hand with the new images of Tutankhamun's face is the new information presented by Dr. Zahi Hawass that there is no evidence of skull trauma, that it is more likely the nineteen-year-old died of a leg infection.

Posted at 08:13 am by hernameis
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Local Brain Hemorrage

Pick a page, any page -- out of today's Sun Journal. Anything strange? Errors in spelling and grammar...uninteresting topics made no less futile by poor writing. I think it's a depressing reflection.

Two-bit paper, two-bit town? What a sham. I am, again, left unimpressed, Auburn.

Posted at 08:08 am by hernameis
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