Harry Potter and Yinz-ers

Just watched episode number three of the Pens/Caps HBO special. Magnificente! It's a good thing we beat them last week because those Caps fans did a lot of talking.

In other news, I got my Deathly Hallows tattoo with Tina on Wednesday. Afterward we went to the Blue Dust and got amazing food and yelled along with some drunk people as the Pens lost in the shootout against the Islanders. We went back to her house and watched Harry Potter 4 & 5. On the way to the shop we got lost in Shadyside, because any time Tina says she know how to get somewhere, it's probably best to bring along the GPS.

Here's how they turned out:



(sorry for the awful picture quality. It was taken on Tina's cell. My foot's the huge one)

Twas awesome. The pain was a lot worse on the left side (the side by my big toe), than on the right for some reason. Still nowhere as bad as my wrist tattoos. They took about 20 minutes each. Chris, the guy that did my Rosie tattoo, did both of them.


Let me tell you, it is very odd watching a cute guy shave your foot.


But anyway, any time I watch the Pen/Caps thing I realize even more that I love my city. Now, I don't live within the heart of Pittsburgh, I'm like 15 minutes away when traffic isn't atrocious. Pittsburgh has a fair share of uppity jagoffs, but Pittsburgh tends to be a city of more genuine, largely working-class, people. When talking with people who left Pittsburgh for another city then came back, they say Pittsburgh has a certain genuine-ness that a lot of other cities lack. We're a tiny city compared to a lot of others, yet we have a lot of influence. We got the G-20 and the Winter Classic.

We have the best teams in the NHL and NFL. Don't even try to argue with me. I'll let Philly handle baseball, but that's it. There's a plethora of awesome little restaurants and shops, especially in South Side and Squirrel Hill. The weather sucks, and driving sucks, but it's to be expected. There's a certain brand of badassness that comes with Pittsburgh. I love it.

So what if we butcher the English language?
I'm proud to be a yinz-er. I haven't been to many other places, but I think I'd have a hard time calling any other city home for an extended amount of time.

Black Swan

I just saw Black Swan. I can't audibly explain how I felt about it. It's kind of like the first time I saw Clockwork Orange and I just didn't know what to do with it. I went on to love Clockwork Orange, but IDK if I'm going to end up loving this movie.

There's a few spoilers ahead. I don't think there's enough to spoil the movie because I don't think I could explain it if I tried. But if you're a purist and plan to see the movie, don't read on.





It was crazy-intense. The story centers around Nina (Natalie Portman), an aging ballerina and her obsession with being perfect. There's a skanky rival ballerina named Lily (Jackie from that 70s show), a weird French ballet instructor, a straight-out-of Carrie mother, a crazy drunken Winona Ryder, and a lot of snotty younger ballerinas.

Oh yeah, some weird steamy self-lesbianism as the result of drinking and ecstasy. Lost? Me too. I went with Tina, and looking around, we couldn't figure out why the audience was full of dudes. I mean, if I mentioned a ballerina movie to Tony or my brother, they'd scoff. Well, after some crazy sex-ish scenes, I think I could guess why a lot of the audience was male.

But the sex-ish scenes were almost grotesque, more out of a horror movie than a porno. It was all very surreal. There were a decent amount of cringe-worthy scenes.

If I was more mature I could probably love the movie, but I'm not. I love the last like 1/2 hour. I want to know more about Nina's relationship with her mom. There's something really weird going on there.

There was a lot going on that wasn't consistent with the character. I don't know if that was the point of it or not, based on other things that were going on in the movie. I don't know. I just can't articulate what I'm feeling about that movie.

It was all just very surreal and very strange. I think I'll have to process it overnight and do some google-ing.

I found out that it's directed by the same guy that did Requiem for a Dream, which makes sense.






I'm watching my brother skype with his GF after just spending a whole afternoon at her house. It's so cute I want to puke. Ricky Martin in on Access Hollywood talking about being gay.

I watched Eat, Pray, Love with my mom and Tony today. Totally not as good as everyone was saying it was. I have a hard time believing Julia Roberts as a genuine person. She's better in bitchy sassy things. Probably because I don't watch them.

Also, I made an important discovery, Paula Deen is a cyborg. And I finally figured out who that Bieber twat is, though I don't understand why he's a pop-culture icon. Perhaps someone could explain it to me.

Tattoos

I love tattoos, and there's no way around that.

I have five now;

1 and 2. Black stars on my wrist with "Radio Radio, When I got the music I got a place to go" split between my wrists, written with fun script. I got the stars on my 18th birthday. I skipped out early on my Senior picnic at school and left with Tina and Brandon to go to the tattoo shop. Brandon was in the trunk of my car because (there was another girl I was kinda friends with in the backseat, she asked me to take her to work and I agreed) we were convinced the security guard would turn us in for skipping the picnic because it was considered a school day.


Well, he didn't care. And Brandon got a brushburn on his elbow. He jumped out of my trunk in the Kennywood parking lot, getting us a couple strange looks from people.And so we went to the shop. Tina paid for the tattoo as a present for my birthday. I went back like a year-ish later and got the lyrics put by the stars. They're the lyrics to my favorite Rancid song, "Radio."

It was done by Matt at Body Shop tattoo in Pittsburgh, though their shop was in Dravosburgh when I got mine done. He's awesome. The stars were $50 and the lettering was $100.3. Dagger tattoo on the side of my left calf. I got it because my pap was in the navy during WWII and got a dagger tattooed on his arm while he was stationed in Maryland. I decided to go get one because he's always been a big part of my life, and his alzheimer's and other health issues were becoming apparent around the time I got the tattoo. The tattoo's gorgeous. It's really colorful and has flowers and patterns running through it. It doesn't look like his at all, but I think that speaks to the way I've taken what him and my gram had raised me with and made it my own.

The ink was done by Doug at In The Blood in South Side. I don't think he's there anymore, but the ex-singer of The Last Hope owns the shop. It was a bit of a fiasco. The day I was supposed to get my tattoo, the shop was robbed and a lot of their stuff was either stolen or destroyed. I waited a few months to get the tattoo, but it was worth it. I think I paid around $250 for it.

While my uncle was in Ireland, he also got a dagger tattoo for my pap. Mine's a lot bigger, lol.
4. Rosie the Riveter on the back of my left calf. I am so damn proud of this tattoo. It's perfect. I had wanted it for a long time, and after seeing Tina get a gorgeous pin-up girl tattoo on her back from Matt at Body Shop, I was confident that he'd be up to the challenge. He was. It took two sessions and nine hours for Rosie to be done. I got it because I had always loved that picture, and the "Rosie" movement was one of the defining moments of feminism. After that, a lot of women were no longer happy being housewives. After the 50's cookie-cutter lie, people were fed up with having to be the nuclear family. And so Rosie is on my leg. I get a lot of people asking me questions about it. I think I paid about $300 for it.
5. A half-assed Jack Skellington head behind my right ear. I love Nightmare Before Christmas. I got it at a $20 tattoo party at a bar with some friends. It's not done very well, the color's not consistent the whole way through, but I love it. I think it's bad quality gives it some character it would lack otherwise. Right after I got my tattoo, the bouncers at the bar kicked us out because 3/4 of us were under 21, thought it didn't say anywhere on the flier that you had to be over 21 to go to the tattoo party. Oh well. It was fun.



These are all great, but now I have a problem. I am addicted. I love seeing anything I want becoming material on my skin. The pain and the after-tattoo itchiness sucks, no doubt, but the payoff is awesome.

I'm getting the symbol of the Deathly Hallows tattooed on my foot next week, and so is Tina. We've been wanting to get a tattoo together, and there's nothing more "us" than a Harry Potter tattoo. First our idea was to get "muggle" tattooed on our feet, but it changed to the symbol after we reread book 7 and saw the movie. I'm excited. Here's the symbol:

I'm having a dilemma when it comes to the rest of the tattoos I one day want to have. Only a couple are set in stone. I'm getting a portrait of my grandma when she was working as a kitchen girl at a factory. She's gorgeous. It'll be black and white, maybe with red lipstick, on the same leg as Rosie and the dagger tattoo. But I don't have the money for that right now. I also want the girl from Night of the Living Dead tattooed on me. I love horror movies, zombies in particular. She's the least grotesque zombie I can think of, and she's in the film that launched Romero's career. Here she is:




My mom would probably kill me if I got my favorite zombie, Bub from Day of the Dead, tattooed on me. This is Bub:




I think I'm going to get something Ireland-related, probably something like the framed clovers and embroidered "forget me not" that belonged to my grandma on that side of the family. It'd be a cool ankle tattoo. Idk, I never had the same kind of connection with them as I had to my mom's side. I also think I want something Cherokee related because I'm a little Cherokee from that side of the family and I feel pretty close to that time in history.

I'd love to get some Sailor Jerry type-stuff, but I'm having a hard time getting something just because I think it looks cool. I don't really have a connection with it, other than that I like it a lot. I want sparrows and a sugar skull, but I have to find some kind of connection.

I also want tattoos relating to books, but I don't want to get words. I wish I could get the point across with a picture. The Fountainhead, 1984 and Cat's Cradle are the books I'd want in some form on my body. Maybe some Chuck Palahniuk too, and possibly one of the illustrations from The Little Prince.

Pens vs. Capitals

I love my Pens. I'm still more into football than hockey because it takes less commitment and I understand it a little better, but HBO's 24/7 Pens/Caps special part one was awesome.

There's something just amazing about how young they all are. Most of the star players are like with 5 years of my age, and they act like it. They have a thing called "mustache boy" where, at one practice per month or so, they have a shootout. When you make a shot, you're out. The last guy left has to let a moustache grow in till the next guy looses. Fleury makes all of these goofy saves and tries to trip the guys as they're shooting. It was really funny.

Max Talbot is such a goofy-looking dude, but he seems pretty awesome with his goofy sweater.

I'm watching this Bounty Hunter movie just because Gerard Butler's in it. This is probably going to be a really stupid movie, but I'll watch it anyway.

Deryk Engelland is a badass of the highest degree and Matt Cooke's smile is hilarious. I hope there's more Tanger in the next episode. They only had him wrapping his stick in this one. Hooray for dirty-sounding hockey references.

I'm actually feeling kinda bad for the Caps. Not enough to offset how much I love the Pens, but still. I feel kinda bad. Especially for Nicklas Backstrom, he seems like a good guy, and he's pretty talented, but the Caps are having a pretty hard time doing much of anything. They had a scene of him ice skating with some kids, one little boy says something about how they've been losing games, and Backstrom starts apologizing.

Oh, and by the way,

I was going to go try and meet Tanger while he was signing at a local mall, but you had to spend $50 on winter classic stuff to meet him. I can't afford that. But one day I WILL meet him.


And yeah, this movie sucks. Forsure.

Oh English....

I've been having to do a shit-ton of work for my English classes lately and it made me think about why I'm an English major....I've come to the conclusion that I'm an English major for purely selfish reasons, and not in a bad way. Let me explain:

I don't ever expect to make money because I have and English B.A. degree. To do anything vaguely worthwhile in upper level English studies in the U.S., a person pretty much needs a PhD. In this lifetime, I will never have the money to get a PhD; I'll be working 40 hours a week from the time I get out of college till I die. Sad but true.

I would love to go to school forever and work in academia-land, but it's just not going to happen for me. Maybe if I was someone that came from money or if I was outstanding in some way, but I'm not. I'm just Kelsey. I have good grades, but that's about it. No one gives you money for that.

I like writing, I like theoretical ways of thinking, I like exploring things like Feminism, Queer Theory, Marxism and Critical Race Theory. It's escapism for me. It lets me deny my reality in favor of finding the structural similarities of Melanie and the bird in The Birds, exploring I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as a coming of age story in Angelou's ideas about race, talking about how Emerson and Thoreau make us better citizens, tearing apart American hypocrisy with literature, exposing the gendered practice of getting coffee and finding the relationship of base and superstructure in Ode on a Grecian Urn. It's lame, I know, but I love this stuff. It makes sense to me. That was just a short list of stuff from this semester, I've done a lot of other cool things in my English classes, like:

1. Analyzing masculinity and the structure of the love story in Fight Club
2. Giving a 10-minute presentation on swearing. I got to say "cunt" in the classroom. I was stoked.
3. Writing and illustrating my own fairy tale in ENGL101. I'm still pretty proud of that thing.
4. Building a portfolio of original poems
5. Giving a ten-minute presentation and 8 page paper about how stupid the religious argument against Harry Potter is.
6. Giant, exhaustive research paper on female roles in zombie movies
7. Seriously bashing the founding fathers and the Christian right in Early Am Lit

What I love about it all is that you can take just about anything and make it interesting, and relate it to something you care about. All of my papers tend to be about female roles and stereotypes, racism, bashing organized religion or the government because that's what I care about. But you can make it into anything you care about.

After I took 122 with Mike Sell, I knew English was where I was supposed to be and he's probably the best professor I've ever had. He's challenging, makes you simultaneously love and hate him, and gives you as much as you give him. I'm really trying to have him a third time before I graduate.

English studies isn't going to pay the bills or cure cancer, but I feel most at home with this stuff. I wish I could just drop journalism entirely and do more with English, but I have to make my mom feel like the money she pays for me to go to school will eventually pay off. I'm really going to miss going to English classes after I graduate.

Here's some pictures from the Mattress Factory that I posted about yesterday, taken by Melissa Clark, because I didn't think we were going to be allowed to have cameras:

Douglas Perez, Ecosystem, 2009. Click for detail shot, the grey-ish looking bones
are actually bodies.






Yayoi Kusama, Repetitive Vision, 1996.


View from the mirrors on the ceiling. I'm reppin' the Hines Ward jersey.


Greer Lankton, It's all about ME, Not You, 1996.








Romantic Dollarscape Series, 2003. Pedro Alvarez.








There were another set of paintings I really liked by Armando Mareno with the tilde over the "n." http://www.mattress.org/index.cfm?event=ShowArtist&eid=96&id=488&c=Current

Oh, and RIP John Lennon.

The Future Freaks Me Out

I'm really terrified to grow up. I just went to a wage workshop and the cost of living, even without a car, is like 1,820 per month to live in Pittsburgh. You need at least a $30,000 job to even break even, which means I'd need like a $60,000 job before I ever adopt a kid. How the hell do people do it on a McDonalds salary? I hate thinking about money. Hate. I'm back to wanting to live in the woods with some plywood and a tarp. I think I might get hives. Cue "The Future Freaks Me Out" by Motion City.

I think I may just stay in school forever. I'm already at a job I hate. I can't imagine being locked into something like that for years.

Seriously. I'm freaking out a little bit here. I don't know what the hell I'm going to do with my life in a year and a half. I'm going to have to live at home till I'm 40, or go to Europe and teach English because you can apparently get a job with little to no teaching experience at all and still be solidly middle class.

Maybe I'll go to grad school and hope I figure things out by then? IDK. I'm freaking out. I can't go back to living with my family after college. Can't.

AHHHHHHHHHH.

Yeah, yeah, Sean-a -Paul...

Quick question, what the hell is the percolator? Rappers mention it all the time and I have no concept of what this dance move looks like or why it's important. Youtube isn't helping because there's no real constant among percolators.


So yeah...Sean Paul. I've been listening to him on and off since Caribbean Night on the 13th. I downloaded Dutty Rock and The Trinity yesterday. I'm getting kind of obsessed. I have no idea what he's saying, but it sounds really good. "Like Glue" is my current favorite.

It's just really weird. I haven't really listened to pop music since 8th grade.

Other people on my ipod that might surprise you: Wu Tang Clan, Beyonce, Kanye West, Eminem, Outkast, NWA, Tupac, Biggie, Nas and M.I.A.

In addition to Sean Paul, yesterday I downloaded Kid Cudi, Cloud Cult, Say Hi to Your Mom, Oxford Collapse and The Strokes. All are really good.

The Strokes made one of my favorite albums ever, Room on Fire. Other albums on my list of greatest albums ever:

Brand New: Deja Entendu
Fear Before the March of Flames: The Always Open Mouth
Circa Survive: On Letting Go
Muse: Absolution
Modest Mouse: Good News for People That Love Bad News
Rancid: Let's Go
Once Nothing: Earthmover
Rage Against the Machine: Evil Empire and Battle of Los Angeles
Neutral Milk Hotel: In The Aeroplane Over the Sea
The Clash: London Calling
The Builders and the Butchers: self titled
Death Cab for Cutie: Transatlanticism and Plans
Amy Winehouse: Back to Black

These albums are great start to finish.

My friend is in a band called Oldfears. It's experimental hardcore. They're playing a show in Pittsburgh with The Chariot, another band I like, but I can't go because it's on Wednesday and I have to drive home on Thursday too. I really wish I could go :(

I have to go do homework now. Damn these next three weeks to hell .

Nicholas Cage is the best actor ever.

Just watch this. Next time my step-dad tries to tell me that Cage is good actor, I'm pulling this out...

Shane Dawson & Steelers

Like once ever four months, usually while I'm trying to write a paper, I stumble upon Shane Dawson and fall in love with him over again. I think most youtube funny people aren't very funny. They're just odd little kids who shouldn't have gotten webcam for their 13th birthday. Or they're like Will Ferrell funny, which is not what I usually go for. Dawson is crude, hilarious, and exactly what I need at this point in the semester when I have 3,000 papers due. I kind of feel like a bad person for liking him so much, but he's funny, and offensive, and I love him.

Seriously, he's super offensive. Don't watch if you think you'll get pissed.

Here are some of my favorite videos of his...


I love this kid's Nicholas Cage face. It made me laugh pretty hysterically.




Killed by Lady Gaga



Just...lol.




Right now the Steeler game is on and I'm yelling and hitting things. I HATE TOM BRADY. I hate the cheating New England Patriots. And they're somehow up 20 points and I want to strangle Ben Roethlisberger and kick Jeff Reed in the teeth. You have no reason not to be spectacular. You are getting paid to do the job you love. Thousands of people adore you. You have no financial woes whatsoever. DO YOUR JOB. OR GIVE ME YOUR PAYCHECK AND I'LL GO SACK TOM BRADY FOR YOU. I'm not kidding. When I have to, I can turn into a blonde fit of fury.

They FINALLY got a touchdown and field goal. I'm still pissed. We're going to mfing lose.

Sex Hair, Getting old and Drunken Grandmas.

♥

Jersey stolen from: http://hockeyrandomness.blogspot.com/
Picture stolen from: http://www.facebook.com/58reasons?ref=ts#!/58reasons

I realized today that I've gotten pretty comfortable around the people I'm around most. I had lunch with three girls that are kind of my opposites. The word sorority comes to mind. One used the f word, and I don't mean fuck. I haven't heard someone use that word that freely in a really long time. I don't like it. I kind of wanted to punch her in the face. But I didn't say anything, and I regret it.

These girls are also not feminists. Almost ever girl I associate with is, or at least seems to be. One was super-Christian. It's just weird to be put in a totally different mix of people. The only real constant was checking out boys. Just weird.

They are also not liberals, at least one of them that I'm closer to than the rest. She's pissed about health care. I feel like I should shake things up a little more often.
I got livid in my 212 class today. It was all about Thoreau. I don't care if you hate on him, but have a reason. It seemed like most of the class agreed with me though after I ranted for a little bit. I talk in circles because my brain goes faster then my mouth does, and it really pisses me off. I know I probably annoy the hell out of people in my class, because some of them annoy the hell out of me. Between the old lady putting us down because she thinks she's superior, to ponytail girl never ever adding anything of value to the conversation, I get angry. It's one thing to struggle through Thoreau, but its another to not even try, then to try and pass it off as though you did. I don't know why I get so offended when people don't read Thoreau. I guess I'm just a fangirl.

I start losing my ability to debate when people are agreeing with me all the time. I need to get out of my comfort zone a little more and enter the line of fire.

It's really weird to me that people my age are finding the people they're going to marry. Like six of them. It's kind of freaking me out. Marriage has always seemed like some middle-age thing. Romance in general still freaks me out. I am totally not at a point in my life that I even want romantic relationships, let alone marriage. It's just odd. I feel old, or somehow not old enough.

Tina turned 21 tonight and I couldn't be there because of the amount of shit I have to get done this weekend. I feel really bad about it. She went out to the bar with her mom and grandma because plans fell through with Melissa. She had fun, but it was also really embarrassing for her. It's just not fair to her. I need turn 21 right now so I can go take her out for real this time. Nonetheless, I'll make up for it. I still feel bad though. & I feel bad that I couldn't be with Meg for her 21st either. These past couple weeks I feel like I've been neglecting everything, friends included.

Tanger has his own folder on my computer now. This is the newest addition:

Transcendentalism

I'm reading Emerson for my ENGl212 class. It's insane and I love it. Don't take any of this stuff as truth because I may not know what the hell I'm talking about.

Here's a basic synopsis: Nothing and everything matters at the same time. You can't do anything to change society, you can only change yourself and possibly inspire others. It's on them whether they change or not. Humans are untrustworthy. You can only aspire to truth by sampling everything and seeking out knowledge without it being a means to an end. Knowledge is an end of itself. You will be seen as weird. You will piss people off. But, you will be better for it. Religion is bullshit because it was created by men, not nature. Nature is truth and beauty. Knowledge and seeking inspiration is more important than love. The individual's journey through inspiration is the most important thing ever. Stop waiting to die and be sent to heaven and just live and aspire to greatness, acknowledged or not. Do what's right by you, follow your own rules of morality that you've formed through intense study of many different avenues.

I think I'm in love. It totally affirms most of what I've been saying for most of my life, except for the way that I'm constantly trying to change people. I do put myself out there for comment though, and I do try to inspire something or other. I know I can't change people, but I can inspire something in them.

It sucks, but America could never embrace this. We need something material for our work. Knowledge, in its purest form, is not material. As long as we are capitalists and believe in God, we can't ever rise above living the same old shit with a different name. Cynical, maybe, but I'm a realist.

Reading list, if you're interested:
Anthem by Ayn Rand, and probably The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.
--It's more objectivism than transcendentalism, obviously, but it still had a place when thinking about transcendentalism with a sort of selfish (but not in a bad way) yearning for knowledge. Emerson and Thoreau, more than anything else, were concerned with their own intellectual journeys.

One of my favorite quotes ever, from Anthem:
"And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: 'I.'"

"Walden" and "Civil Disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau.
--Walden is kind of hard to get through, but it's worth it.

"The American Scholar", "Nature," and "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
It's long, it takes a long time to read because you need to bring your brain along, but I promise you'll be better for it.

You can also check out Into the Wild. There are a lot of problems and contradictions, and it shows some of the problems with transcendentalism, like the way that you have to leave the people you love if they can't accept you. I don't really agree with that. I also think that Chris McCandless was a little naive at times. But it's a great story that makes me cry every single time. I get him or something.

The Walking Dead

I totally dig this show, but I have several big problems with it.

1. Zombies cannot climb fences or ladders and they definitely cannot pick up a rock and use it to break glass. They have no logic. They can shamble, grunt and eat. THAT'S IT. They lack the motor skills for anything else. I do give them credit for choosing slow zombies though. I would've stopped watching if they were fast zombies.

2. This show is a montage of all previous zombie movies minus the whole, "let me lick your stomach then we can have sex in the woods" scene. But whatever. That scene doesn't matter right now. BUT, they have the racial tension (specifically black guy/white guy, like night of the living dead), the people stuck in a store (dawn of the dead), the person that just happens to know something obscure, like the way that pipes run under the city, and thinking that getting a big truck (dawn of the dead) is going to solve all their problems.

There were some pretty cool newer things though. There was a scene where the cop was chopping up a zom zom and putting it's blood and guts all over him so that him and the other guy smell like one of the zoms and therefore can walk around them without being eaten... WHICH AGAIN CLEARLY SHOWS THEY DON'T HAVE THE NECESSARY LOGIC TO BE ABLE TO USE A ROCK TO BREAK A WINDOW.

They also somehow got away with saying the n-word on national TV. The FCC is probably shitting itself. My jaw honestly dropped when they said it, and it takes a lot to surprise me when it comes to TV.

They also made the show pretty graphic. There's lots of blood and guts, head-shots, they showed some intestines today and a zom getting his cheek slashed so that teeth were exposed. Pretty awesome makeup.

3. Women are still totally subordinate. Can't we have one badass that doesn't have to be having sex all the time? Just one. Even the blond woman that puts the gun in the cop's face is shown later to be admiring jewelry and she's trying to figure out if taking is looting or not. Seriously. There's fucking zombies. Take whatever the hell you want.

I'll still watch it because I want to know where it's going to go. The random people in the woods storyline is kind of goofy though. I know it will all eventually connect, but I'm getting a little impatient, especially because the people in the woods are almost an afterthought. I don't know their significance at all.


...One cool thing I found out is that Norman Reedus, AKA the cuter brother from Boondock Saints is in four episodes of the series, AND he looks really good with a big gun. He's on the left in this picture.




You know what? I'm going to write a zombie story, the way zombie stories should be written, without climbing and fast zombies.

I can has Tanger?

Some Letang pics because he's just so damn pretty. Most of these pics are from http://www.facebook.com/58reasons.


>>hahahahha


>>this totally looks like a myspace pic


>>after scoring the winning goal a couple games ago.

Oh, hipocrisy

There is so much hypocrisy going on these days and it's really frustrating me.

The human brain is always, constantly, looking to categorize and when you're not of a certain category people are afraid, and they don't know how to relate to you. I don't put myself in a category, but I do categorize. It's inherent.

I'm a go-between. I'm not a punk, crust-punk or hardcore kid. I'm not a hipster, a hippie, I don't dress a certain way. I like what I like, and it's cool if you like it too, but if not that doesn't put you on my shitlist automatically. You have to earn the shitlist, and you have to earn the friendslist. I'm equal-opportunity here. I have conservative friends. I have (albeit more) liberal friends. I have friends that don't give a shit about politics and some who live for politics. I don't care. If you're a generally good, humble, intelligent human being that holds to general humanist beliefs, I'll give you a chance. Seriously. If you prove to be unintelligent, bigoted, arrogant or plain ignorant of what you say you know, then don't even try.

I like people that practice what they preach.

I like punk, but I don't like the "real punk." Isn't that elitist of itself? Isn't that what you're against? Punk is an ideology. What totally took away from it is the way you idiots destroyed it with drinking, drugs and hypocrisy. It was a pure form and you fucked it up. It was the manifestation of a bunch of kids who were tired of taking shit and were sick of being underrepresented in the arts, and you made it an advertisement for cocaine, hot topic and 40s. If I'm getting the whole ideology wrong here, let me know, but this is what I take from it.

They're wearing uniforms. You're no better than the cops, or clergy, or even the fucking Hitler youth. Congrats, you're an elitist asshole. Meet your brethren.

It was the same problem with the 60's. You had a great idea. You fucked it up with drugs and senseless violence toward the end. Now all your known for is drugs and a bunch of musicians that killed themselves one way or another. It takes away from all of the great things that were done because people, not the idea, fucked it up.

And hardcore! Hardcore came out of the D.C. area from bands like Minor Threat that loved punk but hated the drug infested shitstorm the scene had become. They didn't like it, so they created something new. Now it's about militant jackasses and girls that wear bright eyeshadow and Devil Wears Prada shirts.

And straight-edge is now a synonym for douche-bag. When did that happen? I'm not doubting its truthfulness, but when?

The same thing goes with any scene, ever. Good intentions turned sour by bad ones that usually smell like alcohol and taste like chemicals.

And a girl I was talking with said how she hates going to shows in Pittsburgh because she hates the way people stare and judge the second you walk through the door. It's because every scene is its own catholic school. You need to fall in line and if you don't you end up a wanderer, like me. I'm not saying I'm high and mighty, because I'm not. I have my own prejudices and issues to work through, but even though sometimes I've tried, I can't be in a scene because you all smell like shit and think you smell like roses.

//end rant

Women in the Congo

I just watched this documentary as part of the Hillary Clinton for the Congo Campaign. It's basically a campaign stop the state-sanctioned rape of women in the Congo and get it into U.S. foreign policy. I doesn't matter if you like Hillary or not (which I don't), it's a human rights issue that any function human can get behind. Basically, the military and the police, and anyone really in the Congo, especially if they have a gun can rape women without any type of recourse. There is a single tiny hut, containing one police officer, a typist, and two other employees to handle all cases of rape and crimes against children in the entire country.

These people are extraordinary, but four people can't do much on their own when the government and the law-makers are sanctioning the rape and abuse of women.

Guess where some of this comes from? Religious and spiritual ideology, big surprise. If there's a horror committed in the world, a religious ideology typically isn't too far away. The Roman Catholic church is big in the Congo. Because god made men to have power over women, they can do what they wish with them, according to one of the rapists. One rapist, a Hutu, believed (and he's not alone) that to win wars, and make the magical potion in which to win wars, men must rape women. Other rapist just said it was the male need to have sex that drove them to rape. None of these men were sorry. Several of them haven't even kept track of how many women they've raped. One estimated that he had raped 25.

The part of the movie that really choked me up was when the camera focused in on a four-year-old girl. She was gorgeous, the cutest little girl ever with a chubby round face and braids, wearing a bright green dress. She had been raped. Her mother too. One woman had been forced to lay on hot coals while men raped her and shoved things into her. One girl was only 10 years old. Some children had to watch helplessly as their mothers and sisters were raped. The victims range from old women to babies. Many have died due to the shame associated with going to the doctor, and the lack of resources. Some had been gang raped, sometimes over 20 men who's genitals are completely dismembered, sometimes so much so that they no longer have a bladder. Many of the women watched their husbands being killed. The ones that still have husbands largely have been sent away from them, the husbands saying they can't live with a raped woman.

There are thousands of raped women that have nothing and have to cope with both physical and psychological pain without any help at all. The campaign stipulates that if every state can get 10,000 postcards that were available from the campaign in the mail tomorrow then the legislation is automatically passed. It just really makes me sick. This atrocity has been going on for over 10 years. I'm still trying to get my head around that documentary. It's called The Greatest Silence. You need to watch it.

I wrote a poem about it because that's how I tend to deal with things that are too much to deal with. I have a really hard time believing in humanity after seeing things like this, especially men who think women are only here to be raped or to be used as sex objects. Not just these crooked cops and soldiers in the Congo, but the rapists and abusers in the U.S., male and female, people that do bad things to children, and, maybe above all, the people that are apathetic to all of it. Mi poema:

Women with faces too young
to be scarred by the lines of worry, fear
splashed in something the color of blood,
but more grotesque.

Guns ordered, rape!
Kids ordered, jump!
On pregnant bellies,
Abort what's growing in your mama's belly.

Men in olive greens,
men out in the trees,
men, but never on their knees.

Rape.
Rapping on every door,
ripping clothes, bright colored sacrilege,
gnashing, pushing
saying, I am here.
Rape, somewhere in the eyes of unwanted babies,
right between fear and hate,
in that tiny spot both visible and hidden.

I saw a four year old, tiny braids in her hair, lime-colored dress,
raped.

Ten, twenty, more;
How many is it going to take for
men in suits to pound their fists,
say, women matter.
Say, we don't want this for our daughters.

WTF Movies!!!

While I'm on the subject of movies, here's the top 10 WTF moments in some of my favorite movies.

If you haven't seen Boondock Saints, the Departed, Se7en, Fight Club, American History X, Night of the Living Dead, Scream, Donnie Darko, Psycho or Ghost Ship and ever plan to, don't read this post. Mega-spoilers ahead:::





1. Leo DiCaprio, shot in the face at 1:22. Martin Scorsese, I don't think you can even handle all of the profanities spilling out of my mouth the first time I saw this scene. Total WTF moment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lak0__k8icw

2. Fight Club. In the hotel bedroom when Tyler tells Edward Norton that he isn't real. No good videos on youtube of this scene.

Please return your seat backs to their full upright and locked positions...

3. Then ending of American History X where Edward Furlong is shot in the chest. This part if the movie was in my last post, so I'm not posting it again.

4. Boondock Saints and the cat killer, "I can't believe that just fucking happened!"


5. Se7en: Gwenyth Paltrow's head in a box.


6. Night of the Living Dead. Guess what Mr. NRA?! You just killed the hero!

At 4:08


7. Scream. Okay, this movies is goofy as hell, but I love every second of it.



8. Donnie Darko. I can watch this movie a hundred times and still find new and awesome things about it. The moral: don't live under a airplane's flight pattern.



9. Psycho. The real version, because I can't take Vince Vaughn seriously.

Basically, the mother is dead. The son has a split personality disorder where he believes he's the mother. No good videos on youtube.

10. Ghost Ship. I still maintain this is the best cut and slide scene ever put into a movie. I totally wasn't expecting that.


Honorable mention:
I love High tension, but I called the ending before it happened the first time I watched it so it can't rightfully be on this list.

The Sixth Sense would've been on here, but someone ruined it and told me the ending before I saw it for myself.

I've tried to watch Memento about a hundred times and I just can't get through it. I have a really hard time sitting still. It's probably good, I just can't do it.

Saw was good...the first 8,000 times they gave us twists.


In case you're really into gory stuff and you want more like Ghost Ship, here is a disgusting yet somewhat hilarious montage of cut and slide scenes:

Weep-fest.

There are some movies that just make me cry every single time I watch them. Namely, Big Fish, Life is Beautiful, The Pianist, Armageddon, Into the Wild, Pan's Labyrinth, 7 Pounds Good Will Hunting, Ghost, American History X and Public Enemies. Anything with Heath Ledger in it has the ability to make me cry, even when he's sadistic as hell as the Joker or when he's cute and funny in 10 Things I hate About You. I think I cried at the end of Troy too, but I've only seen it once so I don't know what specific part.

Sometimes Edward Scissorhands, Lord of the Rings and the newest Harry Potter make me cry. Titanic, Saving Private Ryan and Pearl Harbor if I really sit down and get into the movie. Most movies where Leo DiCaprio dies pretty much make me weep. Sometimes SLC Punk if I'm feeling particularly weepy. These are all spoilers. If you haven't seen the movie DON'T WATCH THE VIDEO:



Big Fish:


Life is Beautiful:
This is one of the greatest movies ever made. If you haven't seen it, do it now.

The story is basically an Jewish Italian father and son are in a concentration camp. The mother was taken to a separate one. The father, to keep the son from being scared of the Nazis and getting killed, tells him that's it's all just a a big game with rules and final prize at the end is a real military tank, because the son has a toy military tank that he always plays with. The movie starts with the way that the main character got his wife to fall in love with him. It's an incredible movie. Complete with heavy weeping.



The Pianist:
Another World War II movie, but this one's main character is a Jewish Polish pianist played by Adrien Brody. It's a really great movie. Pretty much the entire thing is a weep-fest, so here's just a montage to give you an idea:



Armageddon:
Cheezy, sci-fi, but it still makes me cry. I hate you Ben Affleck.



Into the Wild:
Alexander Supertramp/Chris McCandless, I get you, which makes the ending of this movie all the more heartbreaking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX2QLFatSVA

Starts at 6:24

Pan's Labyrinth:
I hated that she had to die, but this ending was perfect.



Ghost:

I still can't believe that Swayze is dead.


American History X:
AHHHHHH. HUGE WTF MOMENT.



Public Enemies:
In any movie, when Johnny Depp is sad I'm sad and when he dies I die, lol.



SLC Punk:
NOW I DON'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS!


Titanic:
Seriously, if you haven't seen this movie don't talk to me. I can't find the ending on youtube, but you should be familiar. Because I couldn't find the ending to Titanic, here's another Leo DiCaprio ending that makes me cry:


Saving Private Ryan:
I hate you Matt Damon. I'm sensing a pattern with World War II movies on here.



Pearl Harbor:
Can I just say again how much I hate Ben Affleck?! Danny should be alive so he can raise his baby with Evelyn, Affleck and his bad acting should've been killed by the Japanese. Josh Hartnett was ROBBED.



Edward Scissorhands:
No good videos on youtube. Again, you should have seen this already. Poor Johnny Depp. Again.

Lord of the Rings:
How can you NOT cry after you've been with Elijah Wood for three incredible and uber long movies?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q80NHbxj2v8

Harry Potter:
Dear JK Rowling, you are a brilliant and sadistic bitch. I'm probably going to be suicidal by the end of the final movie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTEU9H-zMYM

7 pounds:
No good vids on youtube. It's a really good movie though, and it will make you cry if you have a heart at all. Basically, Will Smith killed seven people in a car accident, so he has to change seven people's lives for the better to make up for it. It's a really good "makes you think" movie.

Good Will Hunting:
The only time I will ever feel for Matt Damon. Again with the damn Ben Affleck in this movie.

It's toward the end of the video...


Honorable mention:
1. Pay It Forward. That Osmond boy is just so damn cute, and the way he dies is so tragic.

2. Powder. He's just so misunderstood. I think anyone could relate to him. Totally, totally underrated.

3. Any scene where and animal dies because I feel for animals more than people. They're all really sad, so I think this is just a category and not a specific movie. Examples; I am Legend, Lion King, Land Before Time, Turner and Hooch.



Now that you're sufficiently suicidal, here's some funnies:

The song starts at 0:54::


Ben Affleck roid rage, a video I watched in my high school health class. You will never watch any of his movies the same again, lol:


I'm going to go watch Rocknrolla now and do homework. Hasta luego/

Hooray for meth!

I'm watching a show about methamphetamine and learning about the Mexican mafia. Drugs are interesting. I want to know how documentaries protect anonymity. The last show was on cocaine, and this guy in Columbia was filmed at his house and farm, with he face just shown on camera. Columbia's no joke. This guy and his wife and two daughters would be dead if someone didn't protect them. I'm just curious. The next show is about pot. I'm excited.

& London has a big cocaine problem, but they don't like crack. I didn't know that. Americans are all about meth & crack.

And why is it that dope can mean like 100 different things? It's confusing.

Anyway, enough about drugs. This weekend was pretty eventful. I went to WV, watched a boy get chased by a clown on stilts, got freaked out in cell #2 and heard some pretty righteous accents.

I went to WV with five other people, all from IUP. We went to go to Dungeon of Horrors at the old WV State prison in Moundsville, WV.

OH WTF. GIANT PICTURES OF METH MOUTH ON MY TV. ICK.

So, the car we drove to WV broke down in a pizza hut parking lot because the battery died. We waited for AAA forever and had to get our tickets moved to the 9:45 time. It was totally worth it though, the haunted house was awesome. I screamed a couple times. I didn't really appreciate the way people were touching me though, getting way too close. IDK. It was still fun though.

The image I will have in my head of the whole trip is as follows:

Christian was separated from the rest of the group because he was the last person. We were in some type of basement-type room that was filled with fog and had some orange lights, but you really couldn't see a way out. The rest of my group stops to try and figure out how to get out when we realize that we lost Christian. No joke, running out of the fog in the funniest scene I've ever seen, is Christian followed by a really sadistic-looking clown running after him on stilts. I'm laughing pretty hysterically as I'm writing this. He wasn't running like a normal person would be running, his hands were up and there was a mixture of horror and utter satisfaction on his face. It was spectacular. He ran past me and past Adam who was in the front of the group did a U-turn then the clown went away. It was the funniest thing I've ever seen. I'm still laughing.

Oddly, I was okay with the clowns because I didn't realize they were clowns until we were away from them and Tiff was yelling about them. It was funny as hell.

Some guy got up in my face and said he was going to disembowel me and do something to my intestines. Other ones, always guys, were like leaning on me, and we all know I don't really liked being touched. Plus, if you're standing in my way and I can't see shit, you should be the one moving, not me. We went into this one part of the jail that looked like a house, a guy screamed "DO YOU KNOW WHAT WE DO TO INTRUDERS?!" I just said "Eat 'em" and he yells "Good guess!" it was funny :D

There's a church that grows pot. This is too great. It's protected by the constitution because it's a religious institution, lol. These people are rolling the most excessive joints ever. It's kinda funny.

But anyway, the morning after the haunted house, we went on a tour which freaked me out more than the haunted house. All of those Paranormal State and those kinds have shows have found stuff at the prison. The tour took like two hours, during which the guide told us about the inmates and the various horrible things that went down there. They used to straight-up torture people into submission. I was cool until we got to the first big cell block. Things were eerie, but it wasn't bad until then.

Cell #2 freaked me out hardcore. I'm definitely a skeptic when it comes to all that, even though my old house has some weird shit going on, but all in all, I wasn't expecting much. When I got into that cell though, I felt like I couldn't breathe. There was an enormous weight on my chest, and I felt kind of dazed. When I got out it felt like there was a hand on my chest. Tiff said something weird happened to her in that cell too. She had been recording the tour on her phone, but when she got out of that cell, the recording had been stopped and deleted, and started again without her touching anything.

I don't know if I'm going crazy, but something was definitely in that cell. No joke. I couldn't breathe. After we got out of that part of the jail I was fine, but it freaked me out.

As for accents, there were a bunch of people with varying degrees of southern accents. One woman has a really weird, almost New York plus southern sounding accent. It was just interesting.

All in all though, it was cool and I had a lot of fun. I'm trying to get a paper done now, so hasta luego.

Oh, if you're interested, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_State_Penitentiary

Iron Ore, Binge and Purge, others

Here's one of my old poems that I found and messed around with, here's the result:

Iron Ore

Smoke stacks
giant, dormant cigarettes
the only things left standing of an era
that sprouted legs and walked out
with a black lung slung over its shoulder.

Men walking to work the mill,
making smooth metal for big cities.

They let loose on
8th Avenue
big band clubs,
where women who wore stockings
would dance with men who wore suits.

Enter
14th avenue,
mine:

Broken brown glass on lumpy
alley pavement,
because a drunk thinks glass looks good
lodged in stomach lining.
On Amity, in a powder blue slide,
a brownish-red crust.
Blood.

The trees uproot the sidewalk in protest.

Homestead,
Rusting.





I'm kind of a compulsive person. When I'm doing something, I put my whole self into it and if it's important enough I sort of lose myself to it. Here's a poem about it, just wrote it tonight:

Binge, Purge

I said, "exist"
so it did.

Spun on its heel, it looked at me, crooned
here, I'm your child.
Here, watch the purging:

Crack my spine, hand to my collar bone, making sure it's still there.
Still me.
Spitting sour ink,
from a tongue cut out.

Wrap a string around my finger,
it says
"you, you're living."

I'm real?
It's real.




I also sometimes write short little things on my phone, here are two:

From sometime in January:

The stench of stale air, not returned outside for a month
is season with cigarettes. Grey smoke, stationary
a thin fog, a fan idly buzzing in the corner.

From sometime in July:

Yellow painted steel, eaten by rust that makes a rough spot the shape of California.
Rails framing the blue that bestows neon bright,
lights of places named for banks that are going under.
The city's outgrown its strength.

I couldn't lump this all together with a couple words

I think my hair is gaining its own personality. I don't really approve.

Some days I really think Dr. Chase should be castrated. He's a whore. House is still pissing me off.

Either my computer and my critical theory book have to get lighter or my back needs to get stronger.

There are some days that I have a little speck of faith in humanity, then others where every human just disgusts me. I confuse myself. I hate being a contradiction. Today's been kinda rough. I've been thinking a lot and a few things happened that really made me question humanity;

1. We had a good turnout at the week of orange table. It's to raise awareness about human sex trafficking. On an orange piece of paper, we had people write a freedom that they have that enslaved people lack. We're putting a paper chain together of the freedoms and it's going to be in the oak grove. There was one woman that came up to the table and did it, and she looked like she was going to cry, then shook my hand and hugged O. I don't know who she was, she looked like she could have been a professor, but I feel like she understood or something. You know, when people just get what it is you're trying to do or what you're saying. I don't know, I just really like that feeling. It's happened a few other times, but it's not often.

&&I think I hate apathy and indifference more than anything in the world.

2. NY Times posted an article on facebook about a Jewish leader in the U.S. that wants to end the way kids are supposedly brainwashed to accept homosexuality in schools. More than the leader, it was the comments on the story that bothered me. If these people exist, then why the hell am I even trying?

In part of an autobiography by Anne Moody that I read for class today she talked about distancing a person from what they believe in. Particularly, that racism was a disease, not an idea. I think it's the same with other prejudices, but I'm having a really hard time separating the person from the disease. I hate a lot of people I've never met, because, in my eyes, you just can't come back from some of the stuff these people say. And people are what they say. And everyone had their stupid faults, myself included, but where do you draw the line? Because if there isn't a line then I have to hate everyone and I don't know if I can handle the gravity of that.

I've been having issues with this for a long time. Is this kind of hate I have towards people the same thing I'm trying to eradicate? Everyone's equal, but I wouldn't be okay with being called "equal" with Sarah Palin. I'm walking around a giant contradiction, I know, but I can't get out of it. Honestly, I think I would call myself very moral in a Chris McCandless sense of the word. I'm harsh on people. But I feel like it's deserved. But I don't know what to do with it.

My problem is that I care too much about too much. And I can't fix it.

3. How far do you take the freedom of speech? I'd like to say that I believe in it to the Voltaire sense of the word, where he said "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." I think there are some things that you just leave alone, like these Neo-Nazis, I wish they'd just form a suicide pact or something, but they have the right. What's hate speech? What's not? It's all really subjective and I can't decide how I feel about it. But do they have the right to say it? I don't know. I wish they didn't, but it may only be because I don't agree. And that's not a valid reason.

4. Can something intelligent cancel out something really unintelligent? A girl in my class today, as we were talking about how biased history is (a point she raised) then said, and I'm paraphrasing, "Well, all countries do it. I mean, Germany probably doesn't teach kids about the Holocaust." About three of us in the class made the same WTF face at her.

5. I don't care how smart you are, if you're pompous to a fault, it instantly cancels out everything good about you. Mr. big glasses and plaid shirt.

6. I can't find a happy medium between what's real and not. I'm too much of a realist to be an idealist and vice versa, but I don't fall in the middle.

7. People have been ignoring me ever-frequently. Do I not exist? If you don't like me just tell me so I don't have to pretend to like you either. It would save me a lot of energy. I have an infinite number of things I'd rather be doing instead of getting ready then waiting around for you not to call me. I think I'm going to start operating on the idea that any plans I made will be broken. I think I'll get more shit done.

Secondly, people need to just tell me when I'm being annoying or something because I constantly feel like I'm being annoying; but this may just be because a lot of people annoy me. I can't tell. So I'm always suspicious that the people I'm friends with don't really like me, that I'm just tagging along. Generally I don't care what people think, but if I take the time to get to know you, and consider you a friend, I do start to care at some point.

&&& I've never caught anyone talking about me or saying bad things about me, and I'm curious. I don't really have any enemies to ask. It sounds narcissistic, but I really want to know what my faults are according to others because I don't know. If I don't know I can't change for the better. I'm talking about personality, not physical shortcomings because I don't think bodies are that important in that sense. Nice to look at, but I don't want to have a conversation with someone's nice arms.

8. I know there are people with much greater problems than me, and yet I tend to become really self-centered. Much of the problems I presented are philosophical, not "real" concrete things, like "how are we going to eat today," but I think they're valid nonetheless.


P.S. I had fun with all of my zombies last weekend. I really love doing zom makeup. Don't ask me why, because I really couldn't tell you. Maybe it's because I can't do anything else considered artistic. Or maybe I just like being recognized for something that I did myself that has nothing to do with school. It's something I can do that other people can't or haven't tried. I don't know.

I think the number of different people that I've turned into zoms is somewhere near 17 or 18. I don't even know a few of their names, but apparently they trusted me enough not to blind them by putting latex in their eye. Life is funny.

I'm tired but I feel like I'm going to be up all night cleaning and reading. This is what my life has become. Today has been melancholy in every sense of the word.

Lewis Black

Thank you, Lewis Black, for being motherfucking spectacular.

Highlights of the night include a mega-rant on how Black thinks his generation should have the legalization of pot as their legacy, lol. Because, in his words, if pot is a gateway drug, so are pretzles. I love him. He talked about how insane it is to tax the poor more than the rich, and how much it sucks to get old. Again, I love him.

He talked about taking LSD and losing, not forgetting, losing, his name and how, when he was in his 30's losing his feet while smoking pot.

The opener for Black was awesome too, but I can't, for the life of me, remember his name. He was in the middle of a joke about taking pills, after he said, "I take pills" a girl by the stage yells "me too" and he has to stop because he starts laughing really hard. He made some really good jokes about Indiana and the Jimmy Stewart street things.

He stayed after the show to sign autographs and take pictures and was really sweet. My life almost complete. All I have to do now is resurrect George Carlin and give Sarah Palin some cement shoes.

By the way, I had an epiphany:
I am heavily attracted to intelligence. This is why I go for guys older than my parents. I'd probably marry Lewis Black if he'd let me. And he has no redeeming physical qualities at all and he's 62.

My Autograph::





Pens lost :(
Apparently me using masking tape to spell "Lets go pens" on my window didn't help as much as I though it would. No matter. Hartnell is still a dickbag. Letang is still el amor de mi vida.

Zom walk on Sunday. Possibly Scare House on Saturday. Thrift store and homecoming festivities tomorrow. Sounds like a good week to me.

Concerts :D

I think I'm getting to the point where I'm almost over going to concerts. I just don't really want to beat up on kids anymore, I think I grew out of it or something.

I hate going to hardcore shows. I like the music when it's done well, but I hate the fans and the crowd. Think of every douchebag you know standing in a small room feeling violent and add speakers that are way too fucking loud to make any sense-- then you have the idea. And girls in the pit are often not welcome.

I do love punk shows. Same violence, less douchebags, better music. There's sort of a family type of thing going on there. If you fall, someone will help you up. If you fall at a lot of hardcore shows, people will step on you rather than help you because it's a bunch of snotty teenagers. I've gotten hurt at punk shows, but I'd always do it again because it's fun. I'll probably continue to go to see The Casualties and NOFX every time they come to Pittsburgh.

Indie shows make me uncomfortable. People aren't really violent, and there's not as much pushing and whatnot. It's always overrun by hipsters. I always feel like I don't really know how to act there. Brand New (i don't know if you can consider them indie) is the exception. You will be squeezed to with an inch of your life. And honestly, other than the time I saw them at IUP, I'm not a really big fan of them live even though they're one of my favorite bands. If you've seen them once, you pretty much have the idea.

Bands I still want to see but haven't yet are, of course, all the old punk bands like The Adics and TSOL and whatnot. They still play Warped Tour dates in California. I would give my left arm to see Rage Against the Machine even though they're kind of broken up. Also, Death Cab for Cutie, Big D and the Kids Table, The Strokes (though I think they may be broken up too), Modest Mouse and Amy Winehouse. I still want to see Motley Crue, lol.

If I could, I would take a time machine to see Iggy and the Stooges, The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, Queen, Janis Joplin, Nirvana, The Clash and Dead Kennedys, and all the other old punk bands in the 70's and early 80's that I love.

When I say I've seen a band like 4 times, there's a good chance one or two of the times were at Warped Tour. I think I'm missing a few here, but here's all of the concerts I've ever been to since the very beginning. I'm adding little stories to some of them:

1. 8/27/1998 Hanson @ Mellon Arena
2. 7/16/ 00 Nsync @ 3 Rivers Stadium
3. 5/28/01 Nsync @ Hershey Stadium
4. 6/4/01 KissFM Monster Tour, 98 degrees @post Gazette
>>Insert 10/7/03 Good Charlotte, Mest, Something Corporate @ Peterson
>>>Went to this with Meg, Kyra, Angie and my mom and step-dad. My mom was horrified that Tony Lovato was saying fuck every other word and spitting into the crowd. She didn't know that I secretly had their CD already. She saw Tony Lovato walking around before the show and casually came back and said she saw some weird-looking guy with a mohawk and piercings giving autographs. I could have killed her for not telling me sooner. He left by the time I got up there.
5. 11/11/04 Good Charlotte, Sum 41, Lola Ray @ Peterson Events Center
>>This was my first concert without a parent. It was me and Meg and we were stoked. Meg ended up at the bottom of a mountain of people that fell over, and she lost her shoe that we eventually found later.
6. 4/24/05, Green Day, MCR (opener) @Peterson Events Center
>>For all of their faults, Green Day is still a great live band. They played a lot of their good old songs.
7. 5/27/05 Social Distortion, MCR, Unwritten Law, 30 Seconds to Mars @ CA
>>A huge guy with a Slayer tattoo across his chest saved Tina and Jamie from getting killed in a mosh pit. I really don't like 30 Seconds to Mars, but I say them like 3 or 4 times because they kept playing with bands I like. Same with Thrice.
8. Warped 2005
>>I met one of my favorite bands ever, MXPX. They signed a CD jacket and a poster for me. I would've died happy. I got a picture with the guitarist of Bleed The Dream where he gave the camera the finger and the whole band signed my T-Shirt. To put the icing on the cake, I got Tony Lovato (singer of Mest), who I was completely in love with, to sign a CD jacket.
9. 9/9/05 Disturbed, Our Lady Peace, Bloodhound Gang, Cold, 30 Seconds to Mars @ PG
10. 11/26/05 From First To Last, At All Cost, He Is Legend @Smalls
>>I consider this my first real concert. The venue isn't enormous.I went with Brandon, Kevin and Jess. It felt like a lot of the other shows I've been to since. Mikey Way from My Chemical Romance was at the show because his girlfriend was playing base for FFTL... they hadn't replaced theirs yet. I got Sonny More, Matt Good and Mikey Way to sign my Marilyn Monroe t-shirt. I think I also got Sonny More to give me a kiss on the cheek but I can't really remember. This is Sonny More:


11. 12/23/05 Loko Phylum, ClearviewKills, Cali AC @ Smalls
12. 1/11/06 Emanuel, A Fall From Grace @ Smalls
13. 2/2/06 Mest @ Zoo
>> I cried at this show. It was the last tour before breaking up. They've been one of my faves since I was like 13ish. I got a picture with Mest's drummer.
14. 3/28/06 Aiden, Emanuel, 30 Seconds to Mars @ Smalls
>>This was my first experience with "the wall of death." Look it up on youtube. I caught a sweat rag from the bassist, got something signed, and got a picture of Wil Francis kissing me on the cheek. Again, I would've died happy. I loved this kid. I think Aiden is still around, though I believe Wil is wearing less makeup. This is Wil:

15. 6/17/06 MSI, Kill Hannah, ProCon @ Smalls
>>Singer of MSI, Jimmy Urine, licked my face, lol. I'd add a picture, but he's really gross looking, or at least he was back then.
16. Warped 2006
>>Fought to the death to get a half of a drum stick from Aiden. Me and this kid were fighting over it, then we decided to break it in half. Somewhere in PA there is a boy with half of my drumstick. I got elbowed in the face during NOFX's set and bled all over the place.
17. 9/5/06 Rancid! @ Zoo
18. 9/13/06 Def Leppard, Journey @ Post Gazette
>>I went to this with my mom and step-dad. It was raining so hard that the venue started flooding. We didn't get home to 3am and they still made me go to school the next day.
19. 10/17/06 Silverstein, Aiden @Smalls
20. 11/06/06 The Casualties @ LV Moose
>>I think I blacked out at this concert for a few seconds. Someone that was too heavy to be stage diving landed on my head.
21. 11/26/06 Norma Jean, Fear Before the March of Flames @ Zoo
>>Me and Tina pushed this girl we didn't like into a mosh pit. Hilarious.
22. 1/30/07 Thursday, Fear Before the March of Flames, Murder by Death @ Smalls
23. 3/31/07 Taking Back Sunday, Underoath, Armor for Sleep
24. 4/7/07 Missing Pages, DNR @ Smalls
25. Warped 2007
26. 8/21/07 Less Than Jake, Reel Big Fish @ Zoo
>>Paid for Brian's ticket. Still waiting for him to pay me back, lol.
27. 9/11/07 MSI, Julient-K @ Smalls
28. 7/15/07 Fear Before the March of Flames @ Smalls
29. 12/8/07 Brand New, Mewithoutyou @ Palumbo Center
>>So many motherfucking hipsters. The whole place reeked of incense and dirty bodies.
30. 1/28/08 Once Nothing, Oh Sleeper, Our Last Night @ Octane
31. 5/14/08 Circa Survive, Thrice @ Zoo
>>Anthony Green is one of the best front men in the history of the world.
32. 4/25/08 Casualties, Krum Bums @Rex
33. 4/27/08 MXPX, Chiodos, The Color Fred, Protest the Hero @ Zoo
34. 4/30/08 MSI with Birthday Massacre @Smalls
35. Warped 2008
>>Caught a drum stick from Reel Big Fish and a fake neck brace from Less Than Jake.
36. 8/18/08 Cali AC CD release show @ Diesel
37. Ozzfest 2008
>>Don't ever go to a free metal concert. It attracts the bottom of the barrel.
38. 9/24/08 Chiodos, Hit the Lights, Person L @ Smalls
>>I think I groped Craig Owens at this show when he came out into the crowd, lol.
39. 9/28/08 Brand New, The Builders and the Butchers @ IUP
>>Absolutely Incredible.
40. 10/14/08 Once Nothing @Smalls
41. 10/24/08 NOFX @ Zoo
>>Caught Eric Melvin's guitar pick that says Nofx on the front and Melvin Sucks on the back. I was so stoked. They remain one of my favorite bands.
42. 4/5/09 Once Nothing's Last Show!!!! @Altar Bar
43. 6/12/09 Craig Owens, Todd from Once Nothing @ Smiling Moose
>>Craig Owens was over talking to a bunch of fans, but I was too scared to go and talk to him. I loved this show. It was on the second floor of a bar in South Side. The stage was tiny and there probably weren't more than like 35 people there.
44. 6/24/09 Aerosmith, ZZ Top @ Post Gazette
45. 7/2/09 Casualties, Leftover Crack, Trash Talk @ Smalls
>>Nasty cut on my face from some guy's spiked jacket. Thankfully, the scar finally went away.
46. Warped 2009
47. Mayhem Fest 2009
>>Fuck Marilyn Manson. He's a total asshole.
48. 8/11/09 AFI, The Gallows @ Club Zoo
49. 8/14/09 Blink 182 @ Post Gazette
>>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1NpMFoAmdw This was insane. Travis Barker was playing a drum solo from a rotating platform like 50-ish feet up in the air.
50. 3/20/10 Portugal. The Man, Port O' Brien, The Dig @ Smalls
51. 4/5/10 HIM @ Club Zoo
52. 4/25/10 Brand New, P.O.S. @ Club Zoo
>>Introduced me to P.O.S. Love him.
53. 7/29/10 Kiss @ Post Gazette (now First Niagara) Pavilion
54. Mayhem Fest 2010


My roommate is watching Glee and someone is seriously fucking up REM's Losing My Religion. I love that song :(

Edit:
We just had a fire alarm in my building. It's like 11:45 pm. There was an insanely cute boy that may or may not live in my hall, he came out of a door of one of my neighbors. He was wearing a black beater and a green beanie. He had a big upper arm tattoo. He held the door for everyone in my hall. He had a really cute face and great arms. I think people should burn Styrofoam in the microwave more often.