| camping |
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| 11:09am 10/07/2005 |
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mood:  chipper music: foo fighters- everlong
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camping. what can i say? jess and i conquered sweltering heat, a waterfall/river thing, and didn't have to shit in the forest. i'd say we had fun. i'll write more about it later for the maybe 3 people who read this bullshit. |
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| emotional |
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| 05:41pm 07/07/2005 |
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mood:  bored music: miles davis- 7 steps to heaven
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i've had a very emotional day. i feel drawn to everything and at the same time, insanely detattched from life itself. this morning i woke up to a phone call from my best friend which was nice. but after we hung up i cried because i missed nick, and i feel so close but yet so far from arizona. it's like someone waving candy in front of a little kid just out of their reach. i cried like the little kid who just wants their fucking candy, and i felt stupid about it. then i watched my little brother while my stepmom went and worked out for an hour and jessi called again and we were making fun of Gilmore Girls and Full House. it was relaxing especially after my brother fell asleep, i guess pulling on your big sister's hair and climbing on her while drooling (multitasking) is tiring. im grounded from AIM, because my dad and my stepmom who sooo clearly haven't taken the time to get to actually know me think it's a marvelous punishment (because i'm such an online chatting freak... because i met my spouse on AIM.. oh wait, that's them.. lovely) because my friend apprently woke the baby up yesterday with the doorbell. big fucking deal. so i've been reading and writing all day and i decided to publish a book of all my stupid poetry because i'm sure someone out there will like it. i always get compliments on my writing and i've won things and one of my poems is published in a book that i have somewhere in this shithole house, so maybe it will actually be something worth my time. i found a book that i have that was published from one of those 'first books' sort of publishing deals and i got online and now all i have to do is wait for the package to come in the mail to put transcripts in and an outline of what i'm actually supposed to do. oh, and a call from one of the workers tomorrow, but i'm going to be camping until sunday starting tomorrow. which reminds me.
ive never been camping before. i've always wanted to but i just don't have that kind of hands-on family. my family is fake, sheltered, cynical, cocky, and spoiled by the luxury of being indoors... ALWAYS. the last time my dad and i actually did something outside together that required some effort was when i was 8 or 9 years old and he was teaching me how to throw a baseball. we can't go to the beach without somebody complaining that it's too hot or too sandy. are you kidding me? it's the fucking beach, of course it's going to be hot and sandy. and after complaining about their lack of interest in actual NATURE *gasp*, i realize that i wouldn't want to be seen with my family at its fullest outdoors anyway. i'm ashamed of them, and very different from them. i've taken the time to notice what they like and what they don't and most of their tendencies, but i don't receive the same kind of attention anymore. when i did i felt smothered. somebody is doing something wrong.
when i get to the campsite i'm sure i'm going to be in love with it, and i will never want to leave. i don't mind bug bites or dirt. i don't care if my hair is fucked up or if i'm not going to be wearing any makeup. i wish that's just how life was. i'm so hungry for any kind of liberation. if it takes sleeping on the ground in a sleeping bag and eating freeze-dried foods for a weekend then so be it. i want out. |
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| = equality = |
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| 12:47pm 07/07/2005 |
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mood:  lethargic music: ben harper- the drugs don't work
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my wonderful boyfriend read a really thoughtful short story to me last night, it was about equality at its extreme. it makes you think, and it makes you question what you really want your rights to be.
hereeee it is .. its good.. read it.
"Harrison Bergeron"
by Kurt Vonnegut (1961)
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.
George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel’s cheeks, but she’d forgotten for the moment what they were about.
On the television screen were ballerinas.
A buzzer sounded in George’s head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm.
“That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did,” said Hazel.
“Huh?” said George.
“That dance – it was nice,” said Hazel.
“Yup,” said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren’t really very good – no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn’t be handicapped. But he didn’t get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.
George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.
Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself she had to ask George what the latest sound had been.
“Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer,” said George.
“I’d think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds,” said Hazel, a little envious. “All the things they think up.”
“Um,” said George.
“Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?” said Hazel. Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, a woman named Diana Moon Glampers. “If I was Diana Moon Glampers,” said Hazel, “I’d have chimes on Sunday – just chimes. Kind of in honor of religion.”
“I could think, if it was just chimes,” said George.
“Well – maybe make ‘em real loud,” said Hazel. “I think I’d make a good Handicapper General.”
“Good as anybody else,” said George.
“Who knows better’n I do what normal is?” said Hazel.
“Right,” said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped that.
“Boy!” said Hazel, “that was a doozy, wasn’t it?”
It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling and tears stood on the rims of his red eyes. Two of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, were holding their temples.
“All of a sudden you look so tired,” said Hazel. “Why don’t you stretch out on the sofa, so’s you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch.” She was referring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in canvas bag, which was padlocked around George’s neck. “Go on and rest the bag for a little while,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re not equal to me for a while.”
George weighed the bag with his hands. “I don’t mind it,” he said. “I don’t notice it any more. It’s just a part of me.
“You been so tired lately – kind of wore out,” said Hazel. “If there was just some way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of them lead balls. Just a few.”
“Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out,” said George. “I don’t call that a bargain.”
“If you could just take a few out when you came home from work,” said Hazel. “I mean – you don’t compete with anybody around here. You just set around.”
“If I tried to get away with it,” said George, “then other people’d get away with it and pretty soon we’d be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn’t like that, would you?”
“I’d hate it,” said Hazel.
“There you are,” said George. “The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society?”
If Hazel hadn’t been able to come up with an answer to this question, George couldn’t have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head.
“Reckon it’d fall all apart,” said Hazel.
“What would?” said George blankly.
“Society,” said Hazel uncertainly. “Wasn’t that what you just said?”
“Who knows?” said George.
The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn’t clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, “Ladies and gentlemen – “
He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read.
“That’s all right –” Hazel said of the announcer, “he tried. That’s the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard.”
“Ladies and gentlemen” said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred-pound men.
And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. “Excuse me – “ she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive.
“Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen,” she said in a grackle squawk, “has just escaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a genius and an athlete, is under–handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous.”
A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen – upside down, then sideways, upside down again, then right side up. The picture showed the full length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall.
The rest of Harrison’s appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever worn heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H–G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.
Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds.
And to offset his good looks, the H–G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle–tooth random.
“If you see this boy,” said the ballerina, “do not – I repeat, do not – try to reason with him.”
There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.
Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake.
George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have – for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. “My God –” said George, “that must be Harrison!”
The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head.
When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living, breathing Harrison filled the screen.
Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood in the center of the studio. The knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.
“I am the Emperor!” cried Harrison. “Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!” He stamped his foot and the studio shook.
“Even as I stand here –” he bellowed, “crippled, hobbled, sickened – I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!”
Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.
Harrison’s scrap–iron handicaps crashed to the floor.
Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.
He flung away his rubber–ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder.
“I shall now select my Empress!” he said, looking down on the cowering people. “Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!”
A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.
Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all, he removed her mask.
She was blindingly beautiful.
“Now” said Harrison, taking her hand, “shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance? Music!” he commanded.
The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their handicaps, too. “Play your best,” he told them, “and I’ll make you barons and dukes and earls.”
The music began. It was normal at first – cheap, silly, false. But Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs.
The music began again and was much improved.
Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while – listened gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it.
They shifted their weights to their toes.
Harrison placed his big hands on the girl’s tiny waist, letting her sense the weightlessness that would soon be hers.
And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang!
Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well.
They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun.
They leaped like deer on the moon.
The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it. It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling.
They kissed it.
And then, neutralizing gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time.
It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.
Diana Moon Glampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.
It was then that the Bergerons’ television tube burned out.
Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George.
But George had gone out into the kitchen for a can of beer.
George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. “You been crying?” he said to Hazel.
“Yup,” she said,
“What about?” he said.
“I forget,” she said. “Something real sad on television.”
“What was it?” he said.
“It’s all kind of mixed up in my mind,” said Hazel.
“Forget sad things,” said George.
“I always do,” said Hazel.
“That’s my girl,” said George. He winced. There was the sound of a riveting gun in his head.
“Gee – I could tell that one was a doozy,” said Hazel.
“You can say that again,” said George.
“Gee –” said Hazel, “I could tell that one was a doozy.” |
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| insomnia |
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| 10:07am 06/07/2005 |
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mood:  moody music: unwritten law- she says
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this whole week it's been difficult to just shut the fuck up, stop what i'm doing, and SLEEP. and every night i go to bed later and later. first it was 3:30, then 4, then this morning i went to sleep at 5 and woke up at 10 for christ's fucking sake. in the words of Mugatu, I FEEL LIKE IM ON CRAZY PILLS. holy god.
oh, and i dyed my hair dark, dark brown, i haven't done anything wrong to it AND IT'S ALREADY FADING. i swear to god if this color goes away completely i'll kill something. i want it to actually stay, i love it. ugh, hair dye. cheap thrills. |
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| me against the egghead mafia |
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| 10:45am 05/07/2005 |
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mood: annoyed music: th futureheads- le garage
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one thing. i'm not stupid. i'm so fucking tired of cocky "intellectuals", or just anyone, treating me like i have no brain. the things i write and the things i think about should earn me a spot at the cocky intellectual table. not that i'd want to be one or sit with them if there actually was in fact a cocky intellectual table. it sounds contradictory because i'm giving myself so much credit right now, then degrading the stuck up genius-y, egghead type, but i have never given myself enough credit. if those "intelligent", "gifted" people really are what we call them, they wouldn't be discriminating against people like me. i am QUITE aware that i look like a dumb bitch. honestly. if i saw me walking down the street, i'd probably think that my IQ was the same as my bra size. yeah, that small, i'm being harsh here. but if these people are so amazingly brilliant, haven't they learned not to judge a book by its cover? i mean for fuck's sake they've probably read more books in the past 5 days than i have in the past 5 years, they should know. everyone spaces out sometimes. some people more than others and i'd be in that category. but it's not like my brain shuts off. in fact, it's the exact opposite. i'm always thinking. maybe not about the task at hand or anything even closely related, but i have my own world, thank you. i'll think about whatever i damn well please whenever i want to. i get so wrapped up in ideas that i get that i'll tune everything else out and think of it. sometimes i find the best words to use for something i want to write that i've been thinking about and i'll space out and try to make myself remember it for later. or i'll notice something and focus on it and question it or elaborate on it. like i've been talking to someone before and there'll be a plane go by and i'll think of every possible situation where that plane could come crashing down or i'll think about how strange it is to look up and see this thing that a bunch of people are in, talking and carrying on their lives like it's nothing special, like flying through the sky for miles is a natural thing that humans were meant to do. then i'll realize i was talking to you and you'll see me snap back to the subject i was supposed to be thinking about and it's obvious. it's not that i' uninterested or don't know what's being said/understand. it's that i have better things to do, better things to think about. i have depth and i get caught in it. i know for a fact that i'm not the only one. but i'm done playing along with the 'stupid' jokes and comments. the only person allowed to insult my intelligence is me, fucker. |
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| can't sleeeeep!!! |
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| 04:04am 05/07/2005 |
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mood:  hungry music: pete yorn- life on a chain
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So it's almost 4 AM and my bitch ass is up and kickin. and going through my old writing apparently.
In a surplus of beauty
Religion is trivial
Falling like sand
Between the fingers on a silken hand of grace
No God grants the prayers
That eyes like diamonds can with such swiftness
No sacrifice is needed to gain the security of beautiful darkness
Discard your Sunday’s best
A dress of lace and human composure is enough to be holy
Instead of a mere factor of worship
The scent of rain envelops the senses
Much more efficiently than a drop of holy water to the head
Depression cringes at the sight of a pacified smile
But it will not run from the susceptible priest
The priest who lives a life of all things trite
Believes that living a cliché is your passport to heaven
That controversy is the rotting petals on the blooming flower
Among a garden of lively youth
And the conflict is beautiful
But the beauty itself
Has never caused a war
anyway. ugh. nick, my incredibly amazing takesmybreathaway boyfriend moved to arizona about 3 months ago. i miss him so much that it hurts. im in love with what we have, though. i never really thought about love the way i do now with him. i fell insanely in love with my best friend in the entire world, and it saved my life. much like ice cream when im in pain. or like, 2 days ago when i just really wanted some. ooooooooh ice cream does the body good. but anyway back to love. im in it.
i really need sleep im gonna wake up with a stick in my ass if i dont get some sleep soon. |
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