Guilty Pleasures

The Princess Bride.

Sara Bareilles.

Imogen Heap.

The Donnas.

Brad Paisley's rediculous guitars.

Amadou & Mariam.

Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Esquire magazine.

Every single Victoria's Secret model (Actually, I have no guilt about that.)

Horror stories.

Anne Hathaway.

Eye-catching ties.

Chocolate News

Katt Williams

Comic Books

Folding@Home

My ever-changing desktop

Update:

Halloween Friday. Ajax costume complete. I'm probably going to freeze to death but it'll be worth it. Speaking of, it's getting cold as balls here in ATX and riding down the highway in what seem to me to be sub-zero temperatures is no fun at all when you're on a motorcycle. I had to go out and buy a balaclava and some thermal underwear since I don't have time to fiddle-faddle with my chaps in the mornings and am too insecure to leave them in my saddlebags while I go to class. Since I can't seem to stop rambling about motorcycle-related issues, Alex needs a bath. There's a place down the road that washes cars but I don't know if I trust them with her. Idiots would probably end up laying her on the asphalt. Plus, I doubt they'd get in all the nooks and crannies. 

And I'm up while the dawn is breaking, even though my heart is aching. I should be drinking a toast to absent friends instead of these comedians.
-Elvis Costello

Grrr....

I really want to dress up this Halloween as Ajax from The Warriors. If you haven't seen that movie, I highly recommend it. Unfortunately, it's a bit of a cult phenomena so every shop I've checked out is absolutely devoid of anything Warriors-related and I lack the skills to make my own costume. I wonder if I could get my mother to embroider the logo. That would probably be cheaper than buying a costume but might not turn out so well. I could go as one of the Furies but that's overdone and doesn't look nearly as cool.

In other news, I've officially started my college career. Two days under my belt and so far I'm liking what I'm seeing. Classes are interesting. My psych teacher swears like a sailor and seems pretty funny and interesting and appears to actually want to teach us, despite the enormous class size. My physics prof looks like he could be sitting with the class and has a tenuous grasp of the English language so understanding his directions in the lab might get a little hairy but he's pretty nice and friendly. I'm on the fence about my journalism class. While the coursework is pretty much what I was expecting and even hoping for somewhat, the class is very large and the professor (at least from my initial impression) is a bit uncharismatic. But we've only had one class so I'll reserve judgment for later. I'm going to love my 'Philosophy of the Theatre' class. There are only about twenty or so kids in it, everything we're reading interests me, we get to go see productions around town for free, and the professor is dean of undergraduate studies. We meet in his office. I also have a sneaking suspicion that he was the judge for one-act that kept us from going to state. I don't think so because I remember that guy having white hair and prof does not. Maybe he uses Just for Men? Also, we're reading Bacchae by Euripides. Guess who translated it. If you guessed the professor himself, you'd be correct. Turns out he's published quite a few translations, novels, and such. I guess that's to be expected of a man in such a prominent position.

As I used to say when I was being potty-trained:
I'm done.

Austin

I love it. Town, school, culture; all of it. I'm here for orientation right now and it's just great. Honestly, there's too much stuff for me to see and do still so I can't really focus on making this blog eloquent or even interesting. I'm going to grab something to eat. Later.

Here it comes...

My last day in high school is upon me. I'm excited about the future but there are people here that I'm truly going to miss and it is more than a slight pain to know that I'll never see a good number of them ever again. Friends I've had since I could walk, ones I've just recently grown close to, people I wish I knew better than I do; with a few exceptions, they will all pass out of my life. But I, too, will go away from them. They're leaving me as much as I'm leaving them.

I don't know whether that thought is comforting or not.


To all of you who know me, which I assume is most everyone reading this, I just want to let you know that I'm going to miss you.

For a while, at least. I can't make promises for any period of time after that.

I love this poem.

Kissing and Horrid Strife by D.H. Lawrence




I have been defeated and dragged down by pain
and worsted by the evil world-soul of today.

But still I know that life is for delight
and for bliss
as now when the tiny wavelets of the sea
tip the morning light on edge, and spill it with delight
to show how inexhaustible it is:

And life is for delight, and bliss
like now when the white sun kisses the sea
and plays with the wavelets like a panther playing with its cubs
cuffing them with soft paws,
and blows that are caresses,
kisses of the soft-balled paws, where the talons are.

And life is for dread,
for doom that darkens, and the Sunderers
that sunder us from each other,
that strip us and destroy us and break us down
as the tall foxgloves and the mulleins and mallows
are torn down by dismembering autumn
till not a vestige is left, and black winter has no trace
of any such flowers;
and yet the roots below the blackness are intact:
the Thunderers and the Sunderers have their term,
their limit, their thus far and no further.

Life is for kissing and for horrid strife.
Life is for the angels and the Sunderers.
Life is for the daimons and the demons,
those that put honey on our lips, and those that put salt.
But life is not
for the dead vanity of knowing better, nor the blank
cold comfort of superiority, nor silly
conceit of being immune,
nor puerility of contradictions
like saying snow is black, or desire is evil.

Life is for kissing and for horrid strife,
the angels and the Sunderers.
And perhaps in unknown Death we perhaps shall know
Oneness and poised immunity.
But why then should we die while we can live ?
And while we live
the kissing and communing cannot cease
nor yet the striving and the horrid strife.

My Vice-Principal..

...just came into my class, talked to the substitute teacher, sat down, picked up my teacher's guitar, and started playing. If you knew this man, you'd know why I'm so dumbfounded.

This is probably one of the strangest things I've seen in high school.

The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows

Senior prom is this weekend and the faculty at school is just pounding their propaganda into our heads. It's only Tuesday and I can't begin to tell you how many stories have been told to us about "the day after". Even now as I am writing this blog, my teacher pulled all of us aside and started preaching his gospel to us. It's touching almost to see how much these people care about us when most of us wouldn't give them a second thought.

I haven't been drunk since before my sixteenth birthday. I've had alcohol in these past two years but never enough to give me anything more than a slight buzz. I can't honestly say what it was that made me quit drinking like I used to; I didn't have a car wreck, I didn't knock some girl up, I didn't get arrested, and I didn't pass out in a parking lot. Maybe I just grew up.

I'm still on the fence about what I'm going to do in the next few months. All this talk of prom and graduation and finality has me pondering my next steps. I hope to cross a few things off my bucket list and maybe dig up some fire I buried a long time ago. I want to throw rocks at the moon and write my name in the stars.

As Buster "Rant" Casey once said: "We won't never be as young as we is tonight."

Idle thoughts.

So much of life is spent searching. Everything we say and do and think is just a means to an end. Even Buddhist monks only relinquish everything in order to reach Enlightenment, Nirvana. What would happen if, one day, you were given everything you could ever desire? What then? Would you finally be content and settle down to enjoy you newfound wealth? No. Contentness would lead to complacency would lead to idleness would lead to boredom. Suddenly, all the treasures of the world would be worthless in your eyes. Longing would swell in your breast once more as you set out on a journey to find something new. Such is the curse of man. Always hungry, never satiated. What if the curse was broken, though? What if mankind suddenly valued his neighbor's welfare more than his own? Would the world truly be a better place? Or would this idyllic community become corrupted as well? Can a balance ever be struck?

The Paths We Take.

Every day I wonder about the chances I've let slip by.
I think on how things might be different if I'd only taken an extra step.
Would I be satisfied with this new outcome or would it only cause more grief?
That's the rub of life; we can never know what never happened.


I'm going to leap tonight.
I don't care where I land.

3 Cheers for Recognition

I wrote an article for a local news magazine recently. It's about GPS systems if that's your thing. I'm hoping they ask me to do some more work for them since this is what I plan to do with the rest of my life. Hopefully I can build up a respectable portfolio before I leave for college.


Now, if only they'd publish some of my fiction...

Regarding the banners.

In case anyone was wondering who's all in the banners;

Top Banner L2R
Troy Sanders - Mastodon
Schecter C-1 Hellraiser
Alex Varkatzas - Atreyu
KSM Model 358
Dave Mustaine - Megadeth

Bottom Banner
Paul Reed Smith Custom 24 body with an Epiphone John Lennon acoustic neck/headstock.

Ryan Meche...

...is nearly deaf. I'm sitting here talking to him right now and he can't hear a word I'm saying.

What a jerk.

Ryan...

...your blog will never be as cool as mine.


And everybody else: check out the new banners at the top and bottom of the page. I've been working on them for a little while.

First off...

...let me just say that I'm only doing this because I'm bored out of my mind in Video Production today so I thought I'd finally create a blog on this doohickey. I'm thinking of creating an actual website, though, so be on the lookout for that one of these days.