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.