Unfortunate series of events. Or fun in the sun.

Having just gotten back from a weekend of fun in Disneyland I feel more _______ than ever. I have class tomorrow and I only hope that I can get through it. Imagine me, a person who never much cared for school, going back to school after having graduated from college. A full fledged University. And not just any school. DVC! The school for dropout slackers and perpetual retards (no offense to people who are actually mentally disabled). Sometimes I feel I would serve the world a whole lot better if I just became a janitor or a garbage man. I feel like I'm just faking it. Faking everything I do. I live in a dream. I'm not living a dream. Every day is a haze that just seems to blend into the next. Ah well. Maybe I'll have to wait until my next life to get it right. I wonder which one I'm on. And I wonder what I did in my last life to have ended up here. I applied for another job today, but I'm not going to hold my breath. I know that things have to get better soon. They just have to. A person can only live so many repetitions before something changes. I guess that's what I'm waiting for. Something to change. We'll just have to wait and see if it's me who changes or the world around me. Again, I'm not going to hold my breath. Goodnight dear reader.

God and Opera

I recently saw my very first bit of live opera. I have never been an especially big fan of opera. Well, now that I think of it, I haven't really ever seen an opera before. At any rate, I must say it was some kind of mind blowing. I have seen musicians perform live before, with microphones and big bands backing them up. This was nothing like that. It consisted of a pianist and a woman singing with nothing but her own breath supplying the sound. It was an incredibly moving thing to witness. Some of the notes she hit really gave me chills. I won't say it was the most moved I've ever been by a piece of art, because lets face it Avatar was spectacular, but this was certainly a close second or third.

It's funny because I'm not a believer in organized religion, or even the christian notion of God and yet seeing this opera I can't help but question whether or not there is something more out there in the universe besides our little planet. Maybe I should give a little background of my rise and fall from proverbial grace. I was raised saying my prayers every night before going to bed, but nothing more. It wasn't until I started going to catholic school that I got sucked into the whole secret society thing that is the Roman Catholic Church. Going to church every Sunday, saying prayers, eating strange wafers that only certain people could eat. Talk about elitist. At any rate, I went along this way for some time until college when, as I'm sure many college students do, I began questioning everything. I wondered why, blah, blah, blah, etc. Any in the end came up faithless. My only belief now is that there must be some kind of order in the Universe that makes things progress as they do.

What is the point of this religious rant? Well, sometimes when I listen to certain pieces of music I start thinking again. Thinking that something so perfect; Beethoven's Piano concerto No. 5 for example, or said piece of opera, couldn't have been created by an unguided hand. How could man in our infinite fallibility create something so utterly perfect. And before you question me, listen to Beethoven's Piano concerto No. 5. It is perfect in every way. Without question.

Aww. Don't worry. I haven't been converted. I haven't had a religious experience. I am not currently chanting the Our Father while lighting candles at a makeshift altar I have constructed in my closet. I just said it made me think of things. And at the risk of sounding long-winded. I will leave it at that.

The Salinger Clause

As Many of you know, JD Salinger passed away a couple of weeks ago. After I heard, I decided to pick up 9 Stories again and finish the couple of stories I had never read. War sure does some crazy things to people. His stories are so sad. And not really sad in traditional ways. Its somehow on a much deeper level. He has characters who are crippled by fear, or deep depression, or even PTSD. Some of them are really depressing to read. Maybe I should start reading happy stories from now on. Or maybe not. Reading his stories I can certainly see why he disappeared into a life of seclusion. The outside world was just too much for him to take. He needed to escape. I read once that the only reason Catcher in the Rye was never made into a movie was because Salinger would never accept anyone else playing Holder besides himself. And he was too old to play Holden. Isn't that strange? Not that it should be made into a movie anyway. It means so many different things to different people. No studio could ever capture everything for everyone. Although I'm sure some studio will eventually try. Knowing Salinger, I bet he has some clause in his will stating, "None of my books shall ever be made into films, ever." I like that he added the ever at the end for emphasis. Speaking of clauses, do any of you remember that Tim Allen film The Santa Clause? Admit it, some of you thought of that when I mentioned the word clause. How on earth did they ever end up making three of those? How did they even make one? Granted, when I was a kid I did go and see the first one in theaters. But then some 8 years later they decide to make a sequel. Who makes sequels that many years later besides douche bags like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg? I haven't seen the other two Santa Clause films, so I guess I have no right to judge them. And there is no way I'm wasting 4 hours of my life on that. Speaking of which, I just looked up Spielberg on the internet movie database and it appears a fifth Indiana Jones is currently in the works. Oh joy! I tell ya, some things should just be left well enough alone.

Car Horns. Just a thought

I think that instead of having a car horn, everyone should get a personal loudspeaker. So when you get in your car you just throw on your head-set and then instead of a horn sounding when you hit the steering wheel, it will activate your loudspeaker. That way people won't use their car horn for everything. When someone hasn't pulled far enough forward to let you turn left (as happened to me the other day) you can say, please pull forward so I can get by, you inconsiderate cock-sucker. Or something to that effect. This would do away with many of the misunderstandings that occur on a daily basis out on the open road. No one would ever doubt whether or not you were honking at them or the person behind them because you could specify to which car you were referring. Hey you in the blue honda. Hey you in the beat up old pickup. Maybe we could even have a translator built in so all the horrible female Asian drivers could understand us. You know who you are ladies. So, personal loudspeakers for everyone. Just a thought.

A Little Bit Brighter

Nobody's perfect. A phrase used often by people trying to justify their mistakes. I personally think its a good rule for life. We are none of us perfect. All we can do is to do our best with what we've got. Get up every day and do our best. The trouble all starts when people stop caring. Stop giving it their best. Apathy. You walk in to a coffee shop or a restaurant, and you know the minute you walk through the door that your waitress doesn't want to be there. She doesn't want to help you. She wants to collect her pay check, but she wants to do the absolute minimum amount of work to get it. Why should she smile? Or make you feel welcome? She makes the same amount whether you have a great time or a horrible time. And the one percent of people who come in to the restaurant and actually complain about what a bitch their waitress was is not half enough to actually get her fired. So I guess the real question that wracks my brain is, “Why do people not care?” Is it enough to get by by doing the minimum? Now don't get me wrong. I've done my fair share of the minimum. Anyone who's gone to college knows what the minimum is. You've procrastinated your way through another semester and its getting down to the wire. You have exactly one day to finish your final paper or final project. You rush to get all your sources sorted out and you start writing. All you can hope for is that by the end of the semester you will have established a baseline for how much under the required page count the professor will accept and still give you a passing grade. I know all the tricks. I have done-them-all. But its not a suitable way to live life. You can't get by in life by doing the minimum. Why is our country in such dire straights? Because George fucking Bush got up every day and did the minimum. Why did the twin towers get bombed? Because everybody in the homeland security council of 2001 did the bare fucking minimum. My big question is this. Why do we accept the minimum? Have we gone through life for so long just accepting shit that it somehow magically becomes gold? No. No matter how you twist it around, shit is still shit. I say we don't take it anymore. If you go into a restaurant and get horrible service, don't grumble about it on the car ride home, I say you tell the waitress to her face (ladies please don't be offended that I use “waitress” in my descriptions, it could just as easily be a man). I say you walk right up to the waitress, smile, and say “excuse me miss. I just want you to know that your service was horrible. I didn't see you smile once. You honestly don't look like you want to be here. And if you don't, then why are you? And don't say its because you need the money, because needing money is no excuse for being a mean cunt.” You might want to omit the “mean cunt” line. I just added it in for dramatic effect. But it really just goes along with my belief that we should start calling shit shit again. If someone breaks down my back fence I'm not going to use a politically correct description of said individual. I am going to use every expletive I can think of do describe him. Now some of you may be saying, “Now you wait just a dang minute here! I can't say that to my waiter.” And my rebuttal is, “Why the hell not!?” She didn't think enough of you to give you service with a smile. Is it that hard. Did she have a bad day? Awww...Is that what it was? Poor girl. She has three kids at home to feed, and no husband to help her. All the more reason for her to learn some good god damned manners. So please friends. Follow my lead. If you go in to a coffee shop, or a bar, or a restaurant, or anywhere, and the service is horrible, don't just grin and bear it. Make as much of a commotion as you can. Get that mean waitress fired if you can. It's not a crime to want to be treated with a little respect. And who knows, if we stop letting people shit all over us, maybe the world will start taking notice. Maybe people will start learning to turn that frown upside down. Maybe, just maybe tomorrow will be just a little bit brighter.

Musical Discoveries

So I finally decided to "put my money where my mouth is" and start a blog of my very own. I figure that I usually find myself pretty funny, and perhaps my readers will too. So here goes. Yesterday while I was looking for a copy of an old monologue from the Cherry Orchard I happened upon a list of albums wadded up in the back of an old dusty drawer that I printed out a while back. The interesting fact about the list is that (according to whatever website I found it on) it is a list of albums Jeff Buckley had in his possession at the time of his death. Unfortunately, since he died back in 1997, some of the albums are pretty old, and some are hard to find or even out of print. Because of my general hatred for mainstream radio I usually try to search out more eclectic forms of music, while at the same time, not seeming like a elitist/music-nazi douche-bag. But its a fine line. I guess you can decide for yourself which one I am. So far I have "acquired" 7 albums which I have put into a folder aptly titled "Jeff Buckley's Personal Albums". They are as follows:

Dead Boys - Young, Loud And Snotty,
Fishbone - Give a Monkey a Brain and He'll Swear He's the Center of the Universe
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Ibn'e Haider Toun Khuda Ka Raaz Hai (I'm currently listening to this)
Pixies - Doolittle
The Jesus Lizard - Head & Pure
The Stooges - The Stooges
Yo La Tengo - Painful (1993)

Yeah, I had no idea Ya Lo Tengo has been around for that long. On a side note, the Fishbone album and the Nusrat Fateh album are both different than the ones he had, but those suckers were hard to find. Now, some of you may be asking, "Why did he spend all this time listing these random ass albums when he could have been entertaining us with his rapist wit?" And I assure you it was not to flex my musical guns. Its just such an interesting feeling to listen to music that a musician you admire once listened to. Its kind of hard to explain. Its almost like walking through a ghost town or ancient ruins. You know that someone else was there before you. I guess the same could be said for every famous Beatles album or Led Zeppelin album. But this is different. This was Jeff Buckley's own personal stash. And its stuff that I've never heard before, save for the Stooges. Let me stop here for just a moment to make sure of something. You all know who Jeff Buckley is right? No???!!! Have you heard that version of Hallelujah playing on the radio, or during some teeny-bopper TV show, or god forbid during some cinema -style car commercial? That my friends is Jeff Buckley. And if that is the only song you have heard, then you owe it to yourself to go out and buy Grace. Go ahead. I'll wait. I'm just keeeeding! And if, by some MIRACLE you have never heard of Jeff Buckley, then you can't consider yourself a real music lover. End of story. And Taylor Swift doesn't count!