3 Days Down, 1 to Go

I have been partying my ass off the past several days.  Friday it was drinks and B movies, Saturday was a bonfire and swag, and last night was ANOTHER bonfire, a real fucking huge one at points, and tonight some more friends are throwing another party.  I haven't partied this much since college.  I am feeling pretty thrashed.  And I've spent a decent chunk of cash.  But I do not care.  This is a bender.  Cutting back a little after this week, mostly for my wallet's sake, until my most recent money-making scheme starts to take effect.  Also, i'm setting up a resume to apply for a part time position with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources as a warden.  Seems like a pretty sweet gig.

Also, yesterday (Sunday) was the 14 year anniversary of Jeff Buckley's death.  So here's "Hallelujah."  I still get chills listening to it, and personally, I think it's even better that Leonard Cohen's version.  Mainly because the emotion behind it seems so much more powerful.

If You Having Girl Problems, I Feel Bad for You Son. I got 99 Problems but a Bitch Ain't one

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A Backwards Look Towards a Future of Turmoil

First, thanks for the birthday wishes from you guys.  And Elliot Macleod-Michael was right.  I was pretty much fishing for birthday wishes.  Partly because I still hope, like the childhood version of myself, that my birthday is still relevant (even if it isn't) and that it's a "special day" (even if it doesn't feel like it). To me, the simple act of wishing someone a happy birthday just legitimizes a relationship.  Maybe it's stupid, but with how fucked life has been for me, it's like a break from the shit; a rock breaking the river's flow, giving me a moment to rest before I continue to be swept downstream.  The other reason is because for the past two years, my birthday has been the greatest day of pain in the year.  And following a comment left by Elliot, I'm going to share a little bit of personal information with you.

Two years ago, on my 23rd birthday, I was woken up at roughly ten am by my father.  He told me that I should say goodbye to my mother, because she had just passed away.  She had colon cancer; April of the year before, she went to the emergency room with back pains.  After CAT scans and X-rays, turned out it was cancer.  She started radiation treatment almost immediately; chemotherapy started shortly afterwards. Her oncologist once told us something that has stuck with me: "some day, we'll look back in horror at chemotherapy and not believe the suffering we inflicted on cancer patients." Chemo is brutal.  The prognosis was initially good.  She did chemo for a year.  But then, almost exactly a year after her diagnosis, everything started falling apart.  The cancer had spread to her liver.  And she wasn't going to make it.  We had a bed out in the living room, and hospice nurses came and cared for her.  And she ceased being my mother, and started being this thing, this entity of pain that inhabited the living room of my house.  And I couldn't talk to her.  And I could barely look at her.  And it killed me inside.  It killed me that I was no longer seeing my mother.  And she passed away, on my 23rd birthday.  And that was the defining moment that fully turned me into the bitter, jaded adult that lives on today.  Now, obviously, I can't blame all my faults as a human being on the fact that my mother died.  I was well on that path before, but it damn sure didn't help.  I was my mother's child; my brother's are close to my dad, and while I get along with him, and understand him, we are two completely different people.  He coped amazingly well, setting a great example for my brothers and myself; I slid dangerously close to the bottom of the bottle, trying to be stoic and a rock.  It didn't work.  And that was the final nail in the coffin of my personality.

I'm sharing this because I want to.  Because this defined me.  And because Elliot shared, and that got me thinking.  This is what happened.  And I'll be damned if it doesn't feel good.  Get this shit out.  Because there's no reason not to.  Because this was my life.  Is my life.  I look at my family around me, and they seem much the same.  But I have changed.  Maybe for the better, maybe for the worse, but I'll find out one way or the other.

Since I'm in a sharing mood, there is something huge I want to get off my chest that I've been holding in forever.  But I'll share that another day.  Peace out.

Sitting at a Quarter of a Century

Today is my 25th birthday.  Not trying to trawl for birthday wishes or anything, mostly just informative.  Why? Because we're blogbros.    I'm pretty sure we all started these blogs for the same reason.  And we're still doing it.  And in my case at least, the reason why I started it has slipped through to the wayside.  Which is life.  It's been months, and I'm still moving this blog forward one post at a time.  And you guys are still reading, and still commenting, and for that, I say thank you.  Thank you for reading my self-deprecating rants.  Thank you for listening to my problems, for being my sounding board because if I told some of this stuff to my IRL friends it would be awkward for a while.

Now that I have said that, I'm going to get out of bed and eat me some food.  Then, I'm going to continue my birthday tradition of buying a bottle of birthday scotch and drinking the shit out of it.  Started my 21st birthday.  The week before, I had won like 500 bucks with a scratch-off ticket, coincidentally the first one I bought since my 18th birthday.  That morning, went out, bought a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label.  Amazing.  Every year since, I buy a bottle of scotch on my birthday.  That was the first and only time I drank Blue Label.  It lasted me for seven months, because I only had a drink of it as a reward when I did something great.  Every year since then has been Johnny Walker Black Label, but this year, I think I may have to dip down even further.  Like, Clan MacGregor or below.  But I will not break this streak.

An afternoon of Video games, Punk Rock, and high class pornography

If I have one true love in life, it's music.  And I listen to a vast amount of genres, from extreme metal to blues, except for country music, because fuck country music.  That doesn't mean I listen to everything, though.  Because I know what I like, and I know what I think is good.  And that has a tendency to drive some of my friends crazy.  Because they'll like something that they think sounds the same as something they know I listen to, but then I will tell them I don't like it.  And they won't get why.  I'm a music snob.  It's my life.  But if there is one genre of music above all others, it's probably Punk Rock.  I'm still that teenage punk kid at heart.  It was punk rock in high school that helped form my identity from a young geek into a geek who didn't give a shit what people though about me.  It brought me peace.  And the Album the band that kicked all of that off was the Descendent's Milo Goes to College.  It was, and is, one of my favorite albums.  I could listen to it every day for the rest of my life.  Fuck, I'm listening to it for the second time today as I write this blog.

So, I got out of my funk, sat around playing Ocarina of Time on my brother's Wii, listening to punk all day today.  It was a pretty chill day.  A recuperation from Sunday and Yesterday, during which I was awake for like 36 hours, and did just a shit load of stuff.  Went to my cousin's confirmation party, went fishing with some friends, went disc golfing for the first time this spring, went fishing again, and just dicked around.  It was pretty baller.  And a nice way to get my mind past shit.  Everything.  Just get a nice mental cleanse.  And I've got another party tonight.  So I'm gonna go get my swag on.  And stay fucking Posi-core tonight.  Because if I bring up everyone around me, they'll bring me up.

Also, some music:

Descendents - I'm the One



Kid Dynamite - Living Daylights

My Rapture

Happy Rapture. I hope all the non-christians like me are prepared for a world of awesome. A dystopic future of kill or be killed. Tomorrow's weather: Violent, with a chance of dismemberment. The open road calls me, dog at my side, sawed-off shotgun at my side. I will be the Ayatollah of Rock'nRollah.

Last night, I drank the most I have drank in quite some time. A forty, a bottle of wine, and countless beers and mixed drinks. I passed out in my car and vomited in my friend's driveway. It's been a looong time since I vomited while drinking. It was a bonfire at a friend's house. And I had a bombshell dropped on me. Maybe that's why I drank as much as I did. Also, the Rapture.

Everyone has that "what if?" person in their life. That person that it never seemed to work out with, despite how great everything was. That person that moved, and you couldn't do the long distance thing. Or that person that you never got the opportunity to be with because the timing was always off. Mine was that last one. We were roommates for a year, and that's why we never got together, even though we both wanted to. Then, when I was visiting my alma mater, we hooked up. And it was awesome. But, we decided we couldn't do the long distance thing, and she was seeing someone else. She was my "what if?" girl. And I hadn't talked to her since New Year's. So I texted her to see how her life was going. And she told me she's 15 weeks pregnant. Bam! Bombshell.

I hate being that person. The person who dwells on what could have been. But, it rocked me hard. I watched boyfriend after boyfriend mistreat and eventually leave her because she's damaged goods and clingy; but to me, she's beautiful, smart, funny, and incredibly caring. She helped me out of some of the worst feelings of my life. And now, she's pregnant, by some dude I don't know. So, I feel pretty shitty right now, both from the info I got, and from being incredibly hungover. So I'm going to continue to watch TV, possibly mix a bloody mary because those are the greetest hangover cures ever, and maybe watch the Rapture later.

Oh, here's a song:

Swag out the Ass

So, I went to this party last night at a friend's place. At 24, I was the oldest person there, and one of five that was of legal drinking age. Under normal circumstances, if it wasn't a friend's birthday, I would not have went. As previous posts can attest to, I enjoy the fuck out of a beverage, but I generally feel like I'm a little too old to go to parties that take place primarily in the basement. But, it was his birthday, he invited me, and I obliged. And I got DRUUUNK.

Normally, I'm not a super-personable guy. I'm pretty introverted. But when I drink, I transform into something else. I get swag. And this was the case last night. I picked up my preferred party beverages: I go to the liquor store, get two 40s of Mickey's, and scavenge off of party goers when those run out. But there was beer provided, so I was all good. I finished the first one, felt good, then finished the 2nd, and felt like the coolest guy on the fucking planet. And everyone around me acted in accordance. I just got my swag the fuck on. I felt great. It was a welcome break away from my thoughts. I woke up with some random girl in my bed (although I was informed that we didn't actually fuck, just fooled around). I have a whole slew of new friend requests from the college kids at the party who thought I was the coolest guy. Let this be a lesson: 1.) It feels good to just live in the moment sometimes, and 2.) that if you can win at beer pong, you are a god in the eyes of underage college students.

Sleepless in Southern Wisconsin

I'm a night person. To the fucking core. I can sleep for three hours, be up for all the day, and the minute that the sun sets, I am ready to rock. And yet, I sleep shitty during the day, and best at night. It's a conundrum. I've been up all night, cherishing an empty house before my dad returns from a trip. But I can't get back to sleep. Nothing in particular is bothering me, just this random feeling of dread. I'm thinking of putting my pants back on and going for a walk, but it'll only be a matter of time before the sunlight gives me a migraine because of my lack of sleep. But, such is life. Besides, I like lounging on my couch in nothing but a t-shirt and boxers. My balls are dangerously close to falling out, but no one's around to give a fuck about it. Feels good man.

I think this evening I'm going to go get a bottle of wine and wander around my favorite park until dark, brown-bagging like a homeless man in an alley. One of the joys of living in a small town (Aside from all the bullshit)is knowing almost all the cops in town, and which cops are on duty at most times of the day. Most of them don't give a fuck what I do, because they know me, and know I rarely cause problems. Maybe I'll wait until the stars come out, and just stargaze until I feel like walking back home. We'll see. I'm playing this all by ear.

Depression has gotten me no where

And I'm sick of it. Dear readers, it seems like I only blog on the precipice of being in a shitty mood. Which sucks. For me, because it helps very little, and for you, because no one enjoys a pity party. This blog is my rant zone; I feel comfortable venting to everyone who steps foot here, mainly because I can mention anything about anyone and no one knows who I'm talking about. It's nice. But I feel like I have begun taking advantage of that. Like I'm looking for people to take pity on me, try and help me, when I really need someone to kick my ass until I get shit done. But I've got enough of that. But, I'm still going to fill you in, dear reader, about a situation that has been bothering me recently.

I've been friends with a guy since I moved to the little hick ass town I live in now, 12 years ago this June. He has very few friends from here. Or very few friends in general. He dresses differently (Kind of pseudo-goth), which always made me think that people just hated him for being different. Then, we became adults. I went to college, he didn't (not that there is anything wrong with that). He's married, and lives in the same trailer his parents owned when he was in high school. He started smoking pot after high school. A year ago, a mutual friend started smoking pot again with him. I do not give any sort of shit about use of controlled substances unless addiction is involved (obviously, I'm a prolific drinker). But they have this elitist attitude towards it. They just hang out together, and hot box whoever's place they are hanging at (Usually the latter friend). And the first guy, for now, we'll call him Jay, leeches everything off of the other guy, Beez. Jay is incredibly confrontational, and argues regardless of whether he's right or not. And I find myself blackballed by him because of an argument.

I wouldn't usually give to much of a shit, Jay and I have moved well away from each other at this point and I only hang out with him if he shows up at Beez's house. But he has been turning Beez even more inward, and away from other friends based on their marijuana consumption. Beez has pulled away from everyone else in the past few months except for Jay. And the escalation happened last week. Another Friend and I were walking down the street at night when our friend JB pulled up in his motorcycle. He lives a town over, and we go over there to hang out, but he rarely, if ever, comes to where we are (unreliable transportation). Turns out, he was invited over to beez's house to watch some movies. When me and my other friend were talking to Beez earlier seeing what he was up to. He told us he had to work. But he was hanging out with Jay. I don't want to be a fucking drama queen, I mean jesus, I'm a few weeks away from 25 years old, but it upset me. Beez is one of my best friends, and he's been blowing me off based on the opinion of Jay, for months. Who said, and I quote, I was a "square who put off bad vibes. And was butthurt." Is that a decent reason for blowing someone off? Just because they want to hotbox the entire fucking place? I don't smoke much anymore, but I don't care if people do it around me. But I feel rejected. From someone who was supposed to be one of my best friends.

Maybe this post is immature, or childish, but I'm pretty upset. I needed to vent that shit out. Just even if to not keep it in. I don't want to lose my friend, but I don't want to cave in to an immature doucher.

Yesterday

Because when someone makes a mix-tape about my life, there will be several tracks from Atmosphere on it. Because if you replace the parts about a dad on this song with a mom, that's the fucking truth of my day. She's been dead for almost two years, but I swear to god I saw her today. And it killed me inside when I realized it wasn't her, and when I remembered she's never coming back. I fucking love you mom. You tried to make me the best person in the world, but I fucked it all up.

I want to get out of here

I don't have a job, I'm not particularly attached to being around my family all the time, and other than a few dedicated friends in the area, I don't have a huge attachment to a lot of people around me.  I have roughly 800 dollars in my bank account.  I want a change.  But I don't think I'm capable of doing it myself.  These are the things that keep me awake.  Do I just go for broke, or play it safe and steady?  If I do leave, how will I meet new people? Will I? Can I make a career out there in the big, bad world, or should I just find a job nearby?  What do I even want as a career? At what point do I just give up on my dreams?  I don't have an answer to any of these questions, and it's driving me crazy.  It's easy to see what my family expects out of me: get a job, move out of this pre-adult stage, stop getting wasted, and move back towards being a member of society.  But I don't want just a "job." I want something I can enjoy or can lead towards a career.  If I merely wanted a job, I could have had one over and over again, by settling for whatever sales or office position was available.  But I don't.  Is it foolish? Probably, but I get complacent easily, and if I am complacent, I don't push myself.  I do what I've done so many times in the past: work at a level of incredible mediocrity.  So I can sit here in my dad's basement, staying up until  or six in the morning and sleeping until the afternoon, surfing the internet and listening to music, wondering these questions.  Or I can do something about it.  But for the life of me, I don't know what I can do.  So I do just sit here.  And watch life flow around me, wondering what stops me from being like everyone else.

Amurikka

Fuck Yeah!  So, apparently Osama Bin Laden was killed last night.  I was sleeping.  I'm not sure how to feel about it.  Yeah, he was a doucher, but I've never been a real strong supporter of capital punishment.  I feel like it would be much better if he were tried in front of the whole world.  Set a precedent that the United States still believes in due process and rights and so on.  The United States was far from the only victims.  I don't know, whatever.