... to bring me back to my roots/origins. Um, consider this part one?


Simon: In eight years, I'm going to completely deny this moment ever existed.
Nick: Are you sure you want to do that?
Warren: I certainly hope he continues to deny that he got with that skank ho last night.


Warren: Yeah, I think Simon needed to go, guys.
Nick: Simon, why on Earth didn't you decide to go before we did this photo shoot?
Simon: Shut up or else I'll lose my concentration.
John: Something certainly smells concentrated. Ugh.


John: I'm a little teapot, short and stout...
Roger: ... I'm a little tipsy, so help me out.
Simon: I'm having a fabulous time going off and being a jolly jack tar!
Nick: Uh, Simon, that's a flashbulb going off, not a lighthouse.
Andy: I hope they get this over with before I wet my trousers.


Roger: I wonder if anyone's told Andy that Halloween's a few months off.
Simon: I tried to tell him, but then he threatened me with a lawsuit.
Nick: I'm not even going to try convincing him he doesn't look like Ralph Macchio.
John: As long as my hair looks fabulous in this picture, I don't care what Andy looks like.
Andy: I gotta look tough for Mr. Miyagi!

Confession time: I did all of these late last year while I was going through a series of photographs I'd saved on my old hard drive. These are some of the funnier ones, so imagine how bad the unfunny ones were. I was mostly going for a bit of fun with these photo captions, and I kinda needed to reconnect with that, so. But anyway. Hope you enjoyed it and hope you found at least a little bit of entertainment value in the above. BTW, I might do this with other photographs I find of other musicial artists I'm a fan of. Hence the possible part one scenario.

Dedicated to you-know-who; directed at you-know-who-you-are

So I'm not indie enough to join your little clique.
You're not Eighties enough to keep up with me.
If I say that enough, maybe that'll do the trick
As I battle the ancient demons of misery.

So you're much adored by the folks in the in crowd.
You've still failed to make an impression on me.
As I think those thoughts, I resolve to be proud
Enough to make that truth fill me with glee.

Holding tight, holding tight onto my pride
As I flash the biggest smile my face can make
Hoping that it betrays the sadness inside
And struggling to head off another heartbreak.

So I'm not pretty enough to be squired around town
Your promises and loyalties are made with gossamer
So when your looks finally start to let you down
I'll laugh as others ask, "What happened to her?"

So you think my mindset betrays my calendar age
And I seem unhip and sadly old-fashioned to you.
When you're older your youth will fill you with rage
And deep satisfaction will my own memories accrue.

Holding tight, holding tight onto my pride
As I flash the biggest smile my face can make
Awaking to the nascent joy that's growing inside
And a high self-regard I'm no longer to fake.

So my intelligence had to be cultivated into being
Yours, natural-born, apparently serves you no good
Your conversations lapse into gigglefits and peeing
And mine are about connections and being understood.

So none of my origins are glamorous, it's true
And your own hometown is much more in the limelight
My town is growing fast and soon it will get its due
As yours dies out from being squeezed too tight.

Holding tight, holding tight onto my pride
As I flash the biggest smile my face can make
I've finally cast those nasty demons aside
And now my self-confidence is at last awake.

I like myself for the first time in my history
And I'm not afraid now to look you in the eyes
And tell you how little you finally mean to me,
You who had made me feel like a booby prize.

Your time will come when the demons will infest you
And taunt you constantly with their remonstration.
Don't approach me for help as I'll follow your cue
And do nothing as you go mad from self-repugnation.

I float freely into orbit and look down right into you
And see all those terrible things that you used to do
And now my time has come for me to take hold of myself
And watch your empty words gather dust up on the shelf.

So I'm finally inputting another journal entry after how many years of me not being in this thing?? It seems like years, anyway.

I've been having fun exerting brief spurts of energy on my MySpace "blog", which you can see by clicking on the handy little link I've finally included on this journal. Even though I have the list of links to the right of this entry, it'll be nice to have it somewhere where they put the home page links just in case you completely missed the link in the first place.

I also need to fix the list of interests. There are some things listed that I've gone off of, and some things I've completely fallen in love with since the last time I entered anything into this thing. That's the way the universe works. You change your interests. Though mine are generally more stable than the ones most people have, even my list changes.

I'm also bored right now. I'd love to be swanning about the Interweb, but I haven't been able to get any (save for one) website that I frequent to actually WORK. What's wrong with the Internet? Is it broken? Is my DSL connection for shit? I don't know the answers to any of these questions, but I do know that I'm incredibly grateful for the New Wave Outpost's continued operation at 100%. Well, LJ is also operating at 100% too, but I don't really frequent it anymore, do I? Anyway, the NWO still being up is keeping me from going completely nutso. Dude, I can't even get WIKIPEDIA to cooperate with me tonight. That's just wrong.

Suddenly I feel a burst of energy guiding me to type furiously into this thing. I suppose I would, though. Considering all the things that have happened since the last time I created a new entry, my LJ cup should very definitely be running over. But one thing I'll start off with (and close this entry with, quite paradoxically) is the disconcerting notion that, because I didn't really do that much complaining about the weather last month, which happened to be the hottest month on record for the city, I'm actually beginning to be at peace with this heat and sun I loathe so very much. Being at peace doesn't mean I'm going to go and actively SEEK out this shit, but at least I'm at the point now where I can live through it and go, "Meh, this is just summer. Live through it, babe." OR MAYBE IT'S BECAUSE EVERYWHERE ELSE IS HOT MWAHAHAHAHAHA LIVE THROUGH MY NIGHTMARE, CHICKADEES. Ahem.

Apparently I am slowly but surely becoming adept at maintaining my Orpheus (Orpheus being the name I christened my 1995 Chevy Blazer, after the David Sylvian song). It was doing some mighty awful chugging this morning, but when I tightened some battery connectors and disabled the cruise control (which I had no idea was even on in the first place), it started humming like a champ. I am now currently knocking on the particle board that my desk is composed of. But really, there shouldn't be anything wrong with Orpheus; its battery is practically brand new, it has plenty of antifreeze/coolant (after I filled the reservoir a couple of months ago), I checked the gauges and the water temperature is perfect, I'm getting exactly the right amount of charge from the battery, and I don't need any oil (I'm going to have to double-check that one this afternoon, but I just put oil into the vehicle last month). And it can't be that my vehicle is filled with bad gasoline as I only stick to three gas station chains -- Exxon, Shell, and Texaco -- and all three of them are trustworthy.

So anyway. How am I doing? Not too bad, actually. I am trying to deal with another cyst growth on my back. This time it doesn't feel all that bad. I'm putting the heating pad on it and I started a regimen of antibiotics (speaking of -- that's the one word in the English language I have trouble pronouncing) that will hopefully dry it out. I don't want to go in for another procedure. I've had it with those procedures. I'm going to try this non-surgical route for now. Though the last couple of nights haven't been the most restful for me. I find myself in the old routine of having to sleep on my side, waking up whenever I need to change sides and tucking a pillow between my legs to reduce/alleviate the painful pressure resulting from having the cyst on my back. You know, cysts love me for some reason. On top of having problems with cysts along my spinal column, I also have polycystic ovarian syndrome -- I've even seen x-rays of my cyst-filled ovaries. Oh gee, I feel so special.

I'm going to have to close up this decidedly lacking journal entry now. I have to leave myself enough time to type up a little entry on my other LJ and to check my Gmail before returning to my regular world o' responsibility. TTFN!

Counting the hours
Till the dawn
Now that I am starting to remember
How to love
How to learn
Draw like a child
Run for miles and miles
Now that I am starting to remember
Who I am

One of the most wonderful things about YouTube is the fact that they have just about everything under the sun. Just last night I was going through the myriad of videos they have available for viewing and was able to spot quite a few videos from "Sesame Street" that took me back to the days when I was a little girl, actually watching "Sesame Street" and "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" and a whole host of other programs PBS had available for children in the mid - late '80s (ca. 1984 - 1989). At first it was a sort of "Oh wow, I can't believe they have this" situation, but then it slowly became something of a "Wow, if I could just have a bowl of cereal handy I would totally be able to revert back to my childhood!"

I suspect that that kind of thing could be therapeutic to me. You know, a sort of revisiting of that time period in my life, when all I knew how to be was to be just me. No self-conscious editing, no masquerade, just pure, unadulerated me. I need to remind myself to draw from that well every now and again so that I can remember who the real me is and what she represents, what she stands for. This is something I have unfortunately lost over the course of the last several years, something I have covered up by piling atop it layer after layer of bitterness, cynicism, wariness, suspicion, and anger. I mean, yeah, I was hurt a lot when I was younger; I was one of those children who are constant targets of bullying and harrassment. I had no real friends at all until I was fourteen. But at least I was comfortable in my own skin, and it's not like I've been able to avoid the unpleasantness by trying to be as proactive as I possibly could.

Sure, I'm never really going to be able to regress to that same state of mind I carried around me when I was eight, for example. Yet I could also learn a lesson from the little eight-year-old in me, and maybe being a little more like that will at least keep me from looking back at what I've done and who I've become and not recognizing anything at all. In all honesty, I have made some strides since my childhood days. I have learned so much and have gone so far. I will never forget that, nor would I ever; that's why I began this entry with some Duran lyrics. But I must also try to remember who I used to be. This is why I'll end this entry with the lyrics to a song that Mr. Rogers used to sing at the end of each of his episodes. Hopefully I can come to some sort of compromise and find the me I really am supposed to be.

It's such a good feeling to know you're alive.
It's such a happy feeling: You're growing inside.
And when you wake up ready to say,
"I think I'll make a snappy new day."
It's such a good feeling, a very good feeling,
The feeling you know that we're friends.

I only have a very short time period to insert anything into this journal, but I'm going to have to state something I desperately need to get off my chest. I hate who I've turned into. I hate whom I've become. I am completely lost when it comes to who I am, to the point where I don't know who I am or where the real "me" begins and ends.

I am completely lost when it comes to interacting with others. I don't know where their honesty begins and ends and I have no idea how to see through other people's facades. I try as hard as I can to analyze others and see whether they're being genuine or not, yet at the same time I seem to come across ever more duplicitous and devious personalities who are better and better at covering their real selves up. So I'm always left with a sense that I'm being laughed at or used or that all my efforts to shield myself from two-facedness are for naught. This is not what I had hoped or dreamed of happening back when I decided to try to become as guarded as I possibly could for the sake of not being taken advantage of.

That's it, ultimately. I have lived much of my time since turning 18 with the sense that I needed to take care of my overly trusting character and nature, to protect myself from being hurt by others. Yet nothing I do seems to work, and worse of all, I seem to be losing the concept of who I truly am because of all of this. Who am I? What am I doing? Why is it that this should be happening? I am fearful of the fact that I don't know the answers to these questions, and am horrified that I have had to turn myself into someone that I ultimately don't like for the sake of trying to protect myself, and that that hasn't done anything for me.

Ok, that's it. I'm going to be having to get off soon, but I just wanted to input that, to get it off my chest. Now I can go about the rest of my daily business.

The other day, I whinged to a friend of mine about my inability to fit in with anyone. The people of my generation cannot understand my pop cultural loves, while the people who CAN understand my pop cultural loves cannot understand the people of my generation. The people of my ethnicity can't understand why I am the way I am, and the people outside my ethnicity... can't understand why I am the way I am. I live a life perpetually as a square peg, though even communities full of square pegs seem to have difficulty understanding me (I think this goes back to the whole thing wrt the people of my generation). I've always felt that it was difficult for me to find like minds out there in this world, but recently I've felt that it is nigh on impossible to do so.

Anyway, I was explaining all of this to this friend of mine because he's been the only person out there on this planet whom I've found to be in my exact same situation, and he gave me a good pointer: If I'm tired of being this perpetual misfit and want to try to pretend to be someone else for the purpose of fitting in, it won't be worth it because I'll just be pretending to be someone else, not me. He says it's more worth it to keep on being myself, even if it's a detriment to my finding a niche community or group out there. And you know what? I think he's right. As much as I would love to find a ready-made grouping of individuals out there whom I can instantly feel a part of, I must come to the realization that that would never happen for me unless I were willing to completely compromise who I am. And I just can't do it anymore. I can't fake interest in the things that don't interest me, nor can I suppress interest in things that I'm not "supposed to" be interested in. I'm tired of attempting to be bendable. I just want to be me, regardless of what that means wrt my wishes to find a circle of friends.

I guess that's why the nostalgic-/historic-themed 'zine idea I've got going will end up being of great use to me. What I'm trying to do with this project is take a look back, year by year, of what's happened in both Duran Duran's life and my own life since the band formed in 1978. It really has been helpful to me in terms of my ability to reclaim myself in the context of something that has been helping to define who I am for such a large portion (well over half) of my life. I can no longer pretend that the fantasy of being able to live the life of an Eighties Teen can or should be reality. Not only would it never be feasable, it would actually be nightmarish in that I would probably lose my own identity in the process. Like it or not, my time spent as a Nineties teen did help shape who I am, and the circumstances and situations I have been a witness to in the various stages of my life have been hugely important to shaping my identity. This is the one tiny aspect of my being that I and the rest of my generational crowd cannot diverge from. And, like it or not, I will always utilize the Eighties pop culture as my gold standard for that which I can be interested in. Whether it be John Hughes teen dramedies or Billy Crystal romcoms (they existed in the late '80s!) or yuppie dramas or synthpop or disco rock or anything orchestral and highly polished or anything else that is a signifier of the 1980s, these aspects of pop culture will always return to me, time and again, in the entertainment and style choices I make. I can never, SHOULD never, separate myself from that.

Maybe I'm just being impatient, though. Maybe in five years' time, that which I have always found to be ideal will be considered ideal by the members of my generation. Maybe it will happen with some odd moment of "this is actually COOL"-style cultural renaissance or retro adoration. But if it never happens, I will still keep on liking what I like and being a product of that which I am a product of. I know this much is true.

What did I say about Jill Carroll on Friday?

Though I'd actually prefer to wait awhile for those psychological wounds to heal a bit and for Ms. Carroll to recover her wits. That will be the moment when she'll be most with-it. Who knows what kinds of shit her captors put her through? Even just the act of being held captive must do some pretty awful things to a person; the State Department is aware of that and in its publication entitled "Personal Security Guidelines for the American Business Traveler Overseas", there is a section that deals with coping strategies should an American citizen be kidnapped overseas. (It's in a document for business travelers because I suspect that business travelers are historically the ones who get kidnapped most often.) In fact, the following is a quote from this very publication:

· DO NOT be uncooperative, antagonistic, or hostile towards your captors. It is a fact that hostages who display this type of behavior are kept captive longer or are singled out for torture or punishment.
· Watch for signs of Stockholm Syndrome which occurs when the captive, due to the close proximity and the constant pressures involved, begins to relate to, and empathize with, the captors. In some cases, this relationship has resulted in the hostage become empathetic to the point that he/she actively participates in the activities of the group. You should attempt to establish a friendly rapport with your captors, but maintain your personal dignity and do not compromise your integrity.

What Jill Carroll seemed to be doing, then, is precisely that which was advised in the first bullet point quoted above. She wasn't about to be hostile toward her captors, even though they killed her translator, whom she must have been very close friends with. She was simply trying to get along with her captors for her own sake. Plus, Carroll, by all outward appearances, did "attempt to establish a friendly rapport with [her] captors", but only time will tell whether/if she actually developed a bit of Stockholm Syndrome, and only time will heal her from that, if indeed she did develop that syndrome.

In the meantime, it'd be interesting to see if those people who were quick to lambaste Ms. Carroll are now backpedaling furiously or blubbering on about being apologetic, misunderstanding the original message, etc. Though I still stand by the observation I made about their ironic detraction of one kind of religious extremism while being ardent defenders of another kind of religious extremism. That does not change.

I find myself coming to the table yet again with very little to say but an awful lot of thinking in the interim. I don't know what's wrong with me. I had such perfect, beautiful thoughts flowing in and out of my consciousness all throughout the week, yet when I finally can have the time to type all of them out, my mind goes, "Neener neener, I'm going to give you NONE of it!"

So: The state of friendship today. My own personal state is this -- I'm still maintaining good ties with two people, both of them surprisingly male. I'm stuck in a limbo state with two others, both of them surprisingly female. Two more people are in the "Maybe" column, two more have landed squarely on my Shit List, and one person is confounding me. (Mixed signals? Or maybe it's because this person is a recent addition and I should know to take those slowly?) And two other people are Big Surprisers. Hurrah for the Big Surprisers?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have been thinking long and hard about what's happening with Jill Carroll, and while I'm at a loss as to why some people aren't joyous with celebration over her release, I do understand why they feel that way. They look at what she's saying and her overall global viewpoint and they see a traitor, a silly little girl overly in love with something that these individuals view as a danger to Western society. And, you know, they're halfway right. The zealots and fundamentalists of Islamist society are the ones who regularly call for bloodshed directed at the "infidels", the sinful Westerners who don't follow the strictly Islamic way of life. But that's not the whole story wrt Muslims. Most Muslims are friendly toward those of other religions and ideals. We have millions upon millions of them right here in the U.S.; they're American citizens who fly the red, white, and blue just as proudly as anyone else, they serve in the U.S. military, are willing to die for our country, and stand up for the country as much as they can. If Jill Carroll is standing up for THEIR interests, then more power to her. However, if her wide-eyed romanticism is directed at those who would wish to kill her because of where she was born and what religion her family practices, then she is obviously a very deluded person who will hopefully grow out of it eventually.

Then there's the issue of what she's said about her captors. She has had nothing but warmth and praise toward those people who made her cry in those infamous videotaped messages, the same people who killed her translator. The people who are crying foul wrt the Carroll rescue might see this as either an example of how she was complicit with her own kidnapping or a sign that she actually agrees with those people who wish to damage the world in the sake of their own deluded religious idealogies. I think it's noteworthy that a few people have stepped aside and pointed out that maybe Carroll was pressured by her captors to not say anything negative about her time in captivity lest her family or other innocents be harmed. Maybe she's just too tired or too afraid to admit to the captors' wrongdoing. Maybe she's adopted Stockholm Syndrome and will need years of counseling and therapy for that to be reversed. I agree with these people and think that others should just wait for time to elapse. If Jill Carroll is still saying what she's saying in ten years' time, that will be the time for us to wash our hands of her. However, as of now, let us wait for her to recover her wits and to place herself again in the land of the free. Lord knows what kind of psychological damage she's going to have to recover from.

Oh, BTW, I wish I could comment on how ironic it is that the people who are being the most vocal about the things that Jill Carrol has said that have angered them, are also the same people who readily and easily advocate our own homegrown zealots and fundamentalists who seek to destroy the U.S. (at the very least) by foisting their own unbendable, extreme version of Christianity upon the rest of us. But time is running out on me very quickly and so I must close this entry now. (Oh wow, I actually commented on something of substance!)

There's this new radio station in S.A. called KAHL - Call 1310 AM. Most of the time, its concept sucks ass. Do we really need another talk radio station in the city? Well, yes, if the answer involves having a more progressive-minded talk radio station settle in and root itself on the local airwaves. But the kind of talk this station does is so hilariously far from that that it seems completely pointless. What does excite me, though, is the music this station will play. See, from 6 p.m. - 6 a.m. Monday - Friday and from 12 noon onward on Saturdays and Sundays, this station specializes in playing the same languid, easy listening style pop and soft rock I specifically remember cuddling up to when my parents or grandparents would listen to "Soft Rock Radio" (KQ102 FM, for a local example). So when I listen to that station, I immediately return into a warm and comforting place, even if the types of music that move me now have little if anything to do with the honey-dipped AM pop the station plays. Why is that so?

On another note, I came back this past Monday from an extremely lengthy holiday period. Owing to the fact that last week was Spring Break, I was faced with more time at the house, meaning more time helping my mother out with things she had put on a list of Things To Do. I seem to have morphed into the "honey" that "honey-do" lists were created for, especially that week. Even though we did manage to attend two films throughout that week (Failure To Launch -- skip it; Mrs. Henderson Presents -- don't miss it), it was still mainly a chore-driven week, particularly when I took off work last Thursday and Friday. But I guess all that hard work paid off in having so many things get done around the house, especially on the outside. Trees are trimmed, plants are potted, and it really does look nice. Still, I would have loved instead to jet off to someplace else. Seattle, I'm thinking, or maybe even L.A. I haven't been to L.A. in over ten years. It's bound to look different than the mental pictures I have of it. OR... or I could have been bold and demanded *gasp* a city on the EAST COAST. Boston, maybe, or maybe Portland, ME. Imagine me actually being somewhere east of the Mississippi! I have never done that, not even for a day trip. It's kinda funny (oh-ooh-whoa-oh-whoa **): I've spent a few months in England, yet haven't even spent a few minutes in NYC. Ha.

So. Maybe a visit to Dallas would do me good. The last time I came back from Dallas, I must have hugged every building I encountered in S.A. for the proceeding week. There's nothing like visiting one of those Other Texases to be grateful for what you have in Your Own Texas. Hell, I'd even settle for Vegas, and I like the idea of gambling just about as much as I like the idea of several root canals without anaesthesia.

Argh. I've done it once again. I've typed out a full entry here without talking about the things that have really occupied my mind in my offline world lately. Well, I mean, I certainly have been thinking about this whole travel thing and how busy last week was, but I've also been thinking of lots of other things: how absurdly ironic/prophetic it was that the Judson ISD superintendent banned Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale (for those of you who don't know, Judson ISD is just about the most macho of all the local public school districts), how much last Sunday's editorial about Roe vs. Wade made sense to me, my conflicted feelings about the whole George Dickerson affair, and so on. Oh, and Genero Espinosa Dorantes was even nabbed by the FBI when the highly ineffective Mexican government decided to give him and a few other fugitives up to the proper U.S. authorities! That was news worth celebrating over! But, again, I will have to delay discussion on any of that until I can get my head straight and remind myself I should talk about any of the above. Darn it.

*: That comes from Duran Duran's "Late Bar". I r fangeek.
**: Yeah, that comes from the Josef K song "It's Kinda Funny". I r fangeek SUPREME.

When I used to be an easily cowed little girl, someone with a distinct lack of confidence, I didn't encounter any outward controversies coming my way, but that didn't mean my life was free of troubles. Even when I was sailing in calm seas I still had my inner demons to work out, those nasty voices that attempted to size me up negatively compared to other individuals I'd meet up with. It's taken me a long time to rescue myself from the automatic routine of thinking myself as less of a person than others, and I am not going to undo all of that just because people have a hard time with me not kissing their asses.

I am not going to be the same little doormat type I used to be. I have worked too damn hard to view myself as someone worthy of something to give all of it up, just so drama-seekers can return to feeling superior. I'm not even going to bother with these types on a direct basis. If they want any reactions from me, they're going to have to contact me directly. I am not going to feed their sad appetites for high melodrama by attempting to reach them on their own playing field. I mean, God, if they actually *had* an issue with me in the first place, don't you think they would have attempted to contact me in private, one-on-one, to address their issues with me?

This will be the last I say of any of these absurdities. I'm not going to bother to waste my breath for one more moment on any of the bullshit until someone sucks it up, gains a backbone and a life, and actually addresses me privately with their unadulterated, dramatics-free explanations for anything they feel I might have gotten wrong. It will only be then, in a rational, thoughtful, private manner that I will decide to say something.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On the subject of the entry I submitted on the 10th: I make mention of something "a good friend of mine told me about creativity and rejection". This friend basically said that anyone who is in a field of creativity has become accustomed to all manner of rejection and naysaying, to the point where they don't even listen to the negative vibes anymore. At the time I responded that I was accustomed to being a "normal person" and that because of that, I was still ill at ease with negativity being directed my way for something I created. But I think I'll have to heed what she says. In introspective, contemplative works of mine, whether they be posts, journal entries, mini-essays, etc., I am not seeking to simply add a few cast-off attempts at witticism, nor am I simply trying to pal around. I really do thoroughly contemplate that which I expound upon. Usually the pondering will occur offline, over the course of at least a day. I don't think I should reduce my ideas to a dumbed-down, formulaic expression. So yes, as a matter of fact I *am* being creative in forming these posts or entries or what have you. It's not just me going off on some tangent.

So in the spirit of all that, I'll just do what Anton Newcombe of the Brian Jonestown Massacre does when he's faced with someone who is trying to silence him by ridiculing and belittling that which he has to say: essentially saying IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, FUCK OFF. And then going on with whatever it is I have to say. Nobody can silence me now. Nobody can reduce me to the little whimpering, simpering fraidycat with her tail between her legs. Constructive criticism will always be welcomed warmly, but anything not for my own personal benefit will be received with a stony silence and a renewed committment to standing my ground.

My inner world is full of words I cannot catch in time. My outer world is full of actions I cannot capitalize upon due to time constraints. My inner and outer worlds frequently battle each other out for the attentions of whatever energy-related resources I have inside me, all of which culminates in a very exhausted me. How exhausted? Last night, when I came home, I succumbed to the power of sleep and took a nap that lasted two hours. Right now I'm typing this and yawning at the same time, still as bleary-eyed as ever.

Every time I'm away from the computer, running around and living through the everyday demands of life, my mind becomes filled to the brim with entry ideas, words and phrases and whole paragraphs full of insight into what I'm thinking at the time, what makes me tick, what's affecting me and my life. But when I finally have access to a computer to type everything out, my mind clears, my head a blank slate upon which I cannot lay claim to anything. My great ideas turn into dust and I'm forced to rely upon whatever brief flashes of input I have at the time.

That's what's happening to me right now. As I was driving to the library in my now-routine period of mental unloading, my mind was filled with all of these rich ideas about what to talk about. Now I can't even think about what I would've liked to discuss. I think it was something along the lines of what a good friend of mine told me about creativity and rejection, or maybe it was something about the state of the woman in today's United States, or maybe it was something else. Maybe I was going to go on about something more banal, something like how much I enjoyed last night's light dinner of one of those lower-fat Lunchables meal kits. Maybe I might've talked about how surprising it was that Margaret Cho's Revolution was on Sundance again last night, or how my little baby puppydog (who is really in her middle aged years but will always be my baby) is doing on this new medicine regiment she's under. Or it could have been something else. I don't know.

Oh wait.

Okay, as my time here in front of the computer quickly erodes away from me and I have to return to the everyday hustle and bustle of life in this outer world of mine, please let this be a record of some of the brilliant ideas I have had for this journal and please let me have some time to actually expound on some of the better ones. Maybe I can just talk about life and move on from there. Or maybe I can enlighten myself while I ponder. Until then, however, I will have to just leave this journal as it is, forever an incomplete insight into my inner world.

... but it was met with universal derision, so I'm posting it here! (Original Forum folks who might be lurking, you guys are far less stupid than these jerks. Even the you-know-whos.)

A good friend of mine is making me revisit the decade of my elegantly misspent teenaged years in a fond manner. It doesn't hurt that VH1 Classic has been starting to air music videos from this era for the past year or so. On "The Alternative" I have gotten to see two of the music videos I used to wake up to when I was back in high school: "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden and Bad Religion's "21st Century Boy". A couple of nights ago I spotted "Interstate Love Song" by Stone Temple Pilots (which I remember as being more of a "VH1's Crossroads" thing) and one of my favorite '90s singalongs, Counting Crows's "Mr. Jones". All of this is making me terribly heartsick for a decade I have never been at ease with.

I mean, when I was a teenager I worshipped at the altar of '80s-dom. I truly envied those people who had the opportunity to spend their teenaged years in the decade of fuzzy sweaters and frilly collars. But now -- now I'm remembering how much I also enjoyed and participated in the pop culture of the '90s. I remember MTV airing the video for Nirvana's "All Apologies (Unplugged)" on heavy rotation shortly after Kurt Cobain's passing and how I used to feel the heartache of losing a teen icon every time I would see that video. I remember yammering on about "summer singles" in my high school diary, talking about how Blur's "Girls and Boys" and "Rocks" by Primal Scream were "summer singles" while "Shine" by Collective Soul wasn't. (I still loved all three of those songs.) I remember how much of a Joan Osborne fan I used to be and how thrilled I was to find out that two of The Hooters were responsible for co-writing many of the songs off of her wildly successful album Relish. I remember many a difficult situation being resolved by just closing my eyes and letting "St. Teresa" wash over me. I remember my brief flirtation with modern-day punk, where I attempted to devour all the information I could while listening to Bad Religion, The Offspring, Rancid, and Green Day, the last one being more of an escapist variation of the theme. (Who would have thought that years later they would have recorded a politically aware album? I sure as hell wouldn't.)

I remember quietly laughing to myself when I witnessed the complete transformation of VH1 from stodgy to more modern and vital and being absolutely SHOCKED when I saw them play the Unplugged version of STP's "Big Chair". I remember Lewis Largent and "120 Minutes" and Kennedy and "Alternative Nation" (anyone remember SLB substitute-hosting "Alternative Nation" and closing out his ep by dressing and acting like Kennedy?). I remember Daisy Fuentes hosting the then-wonderful summer programming, where the Beach House was just a fun place to hang out instead of an exhibit of the ignorant and the Svengali-driven. I remember slow dances at school being soundtracked to Boyz II Men and Bone Thugs n' Harmony. I used to love watching MTV News just because of Tabitha Soren, Allison Stewart, and John Norris, and hating MTV News because of Kurt Loder. I remember Loder being shot down by Jewel and how that kept me a Jewel fan for just that much longer. I remember "Bull In The Heather" by Sonic Youth and how cool it was to hear something that far-out. I remember falling in love with The Breeders and feeling that Veruca Salt were just wannabes aspiring to the wondrous crown of the Deal sisters (later on, I would be shocked to find out that the angelic-looking Kelley Deal was busted on drugs charges). I remember favoring Oasis in the great Oasis vs. Blur fight (now I would favor Blur, but the fight is no more). I remember MTV's brief flirtation with airing country music videos (I guess that's what drove Jon to apply for the "Real World").

Speaking of the "Real World" (sorry this is non-musical in nature), I remember Tammi's bogus cries of rape. I remember Angry Kevin from s1 of the "Real World" and recall now how many times I've seen him interviewed for various pop culture-related things and how calm he seems now. I cried with the rest of my MTV generation when Pedro died, when Cobain died, when I heard the story of Brad Nowell and saw that beautiful, sweet-faced baby boy of his. I remember those "Sex In The '90s" specials, "MTV Sports" hosted by Dan Cortese, "The Grind" with Eric Nies (though I avoided that one as best I could), staying up until the wee hours of the morning to watch the newest videos by the newest artists, VH1's "The Big '80s" (it really, truly sucked in retrospect, but at the time it was my only resource for '80s videos), Moon Zappa and John Fugelsang as two of the first VH1 VJs (I *think*), VH1 as a whole before it went all cultural zeitgeisty, flannel and Doc Martens and baggy shirts and the return of the bell-bottom and '70s chic and heroin chic and the introduction of CK One.

I remember all of this and more and reflect upon how much I truly was into the decade of my teenaged years, even though I thought I wasn't. The funny thing is how much I yearn for a return to that time period. I guess it was a simpler, happier time for me. The music scene wasn't as choked with insipid teenypop as it is today, nor were females pressured to get all dolled up, as if they were preparing to enter a nightclub. My point is, I'm really yearning to dust off my Joan Osborne, Catherine Wheel, Oasis, Nirvana, Urge Overkill, Spin Doctors, Utah Saints, The Breeders, and other CDs and listen to them all, back-to-back, starting as soon as possible. Wow. I guess I wasn't going to skip out on being nostalgic after all.

(Crossposted with my MySpace profile:)

Contacting a former high school classmate of mine = instantaneous revisiting of all the insecure, unelegant social fumbling I did as a teenager. I had a decided lack of confidence when I was a teen, and feeling as I did back in those so-called "halcyon days" frightened me. I'd always been comforted by how far I'd progressed since those days. I'm not the same person I was when I was 16 or 17. I'm more cynical, more guarded, less of a naive easy mark for those who would wish to take me down. I can explicate more clearly that which I wish to express to others. My words flow more freely. I'm not tongue-tied anymore. I have worked very hard at this. I have put up so many inner guards that prevent others from easily accessing the innermost aspects of my being without my getting to feel like I could truly trust them. I have had so much practice with relating with and to others since graduating from high school. Every conversation I have with someone now brings me closer to fully disentangling myself from that quiet and fearful mouse of a girl I used to be. I refuse to revisit those days, not even for an hour. I am not that person anymore. I need to repeat this to myself time and time again until I can drill it into my head.

I. Am. Not. That. Person. Anymore.

I mean, God, I curse nowadays! I curse and argue and stand my ground and am sometimes unladylike. I'm just starting to get to a point in my life where I don't try to be chameleonlike for the benefit of "fitting in". I have said FUCK YOU to the whole concept of "fitting in". I know I can't keep myself from being the square peg in a sea of round holes, even if the "round holes" in question are the members of my own faith. I have been unafraid enough to write a letter to the editor. I have gone off on my own to see my alltime favorite musical artist, to explore parts of a city I have dreamed my whole life of being in, to shop at a store I actually wanted to shop in, to see a movie I and only I wanted to see. When I was 16, I would've cringed at the thought of doing any of that. When I was 16, I dreamed of a day when I could be in a vast ocean of like minds. It's the impulse that drove me to the Internet in the first place! But I have finally said "no more" to all of that. I am starting to remember who I am, and fuck anyone who doesn't like me for being that. This shall be my mantra from now on until I can restabilize, until I can be resolute in knowing I won't ever revert back to the same mentality I had when I was that timid youngster.

So I don't know if I will contact another person from my past again. Maybe when I'm even further away from my teen years. But not now, not when it's become evident to me that I haven't yet run far enough from those days.

I will attempt to encapsulate my thoughts (at least on this paragraph) onto pen and paper before typing them out. This might be a difficult endeavor; even when I had no idea there was such a thing as the Internet, I was keeping my young adolescent thoughts in a text-based computer file. When I confided this to some of my high-school classmates, one of them replied incredulously that she felt what I was doing seemed to her to be exceedingly cold and artificial. Some ten years after I was given the impression that maybe a diary kept on a computer wasn't exactly the proper thing to do, millions of individuals regularly type up their thoughts and concerns and post them onto online journals for the whole world to see.

What is this drive we humans have adopted to share our ideas with the rest of humanity? Why is it that we are suddenly crying out to be heard? Is it that we always had those thoughts but never acted upon them until now? Or is it that we became accustomed to so many people voicing their own feelings and wishes on a public stage and, as a consequence, now want in on the action? Ten years ago, if any of us had dreamed of whole communities built upon the basic contents of a diary, most of us would have snickered. It would have seemed to us to be, if not exceedingly cold, then highly artificial and unheard-of. But now I'm typing my thoughts onto this public journal for virtually anyone to read.

I suppose those tireless advocates for literary thought and composition, i.e. the world's English teachers, would reap the rewards of all this expression, this seeming celebration of the creative word. Instead, we hear complaints from English teachers that the children of today frequently rely upon shortcut words, truncations not endorsed by any official body and a lack of any real ability to express things in a clear and intelligent manner. I guess all of this easy accessibility to shared thoughts and expressions does us as much bad as it does good. We are frequently reminded of the shortcuts OTHER people take and, as a result, are encouraged to use those same shortcuts ourselves. Take a look at any teenaged LJer's diary. The lack of any overt intellect or in-depth thought to their entries will make those of us who passed our teen years without online journaling weep into our legally-purchased beers. One cannot blame the tactile medium upon which these teens deliver their half-formed ideas; when I was creating my computer diary as a teen, I stopped with the over-reliance on punctuation and ill-conceived words (e.g. "majorly") when I turned fifteen. At that point, it just seemed juvenile. But today's fifteen-year-olds are being taught by their peers that juvenility is no longer juvenile, that one can just type up any old crap and voila, instant entry. Add a few emoticons for good effect, of course.

I was thinking this the other night, when by emergency-driven necessity I was compelled to do my laundry at a laundromat, accompanied by a Lorrie Moore book. Ms. Moore's writing is innovative without being indecipherable. She is brilliant at conveying ideas in a way that I personally could never have thought they could have been expressed, utilizing methods that would lead anyone to believe that she was gifted at crafting words into stories. The similies and metaphors were genius. The ideas and ethics were heartfelt, humane. It struck me that the era in which Lorrie Moores for the new generation would be borne into existence is fading from us. I can't see how the average 17-year-old LJer could be reformed into somebody who could be that much of a wordsmith, a craftsman, someone who thinks and feels and ponders at that deep a level. Maybe if there was some rebellion-driven movement to return to the era of full, complete sentences and full, complete ideas, the art of painting with words will return.

And now I shall complete this entry by filling out all the applicable blanks, selecting which icon I wish to use, and pressing on the "Update Journal" button, thus sending this journal entry out to the public, for any random individual to peruse. I'm an avid contributor to this new condition we have been afflicted with. I should be hurling epithets at myself, or at the very least wear a red "H" (for "hypocrite") around my neck. Or maybe I can just stop looking at teenaged LJers' journals and concentrate on those LJs written by older people, which are better executed, even when they're expressing random thoughts by tired people. I'm 26 years old. Aren't I a little too young to be this "these kids today"?

As some of you might know by now, I have been going to Jazzercise for a little over a month. Please don't regard that mention as any sort of endorsement for that exercise program; I have yet to experience any of the benefits from going to it and I actually thoroughly hate one of the instructors there, but I'm planning on sticking with it just so I can see how far I can go with it and where it takes me. I am still at the point where I'm having to do the lower-impact aerobics, but I continue to move about in hopes that if I do this long enough, I'll be able to move up the ladder in the foreseeable future.

I actually figure that this move is a bit of a rebellion from the world of ILX. Jazzercise is totally not something your average ILXor would engage in, and that to me is worth sticking to the program for. I don't know how on Earth I got to the point where everything typically antithetical to the ILXor way of existing is everything that appeals to me, but I suppose it's a step in the right direction wrt completely cutting myself off from that environment. Already I'm doing well at sticking to one thread series (the TITTWIS one) and wouldn't mind seeing, in the future, my complete disattachment from that thread series. I can sorta pinpoint when my disillusionment with that whole environment began, but it's refreshing to have woken up and realized that, even though these people could intellectualize, their inability to see beyond their own mental realms and their overall youth (I have always lived and thought as though I were a 35-year-old) meant the environment lost its charm and novelty with me at that point. Not that I'm exactly crying over it. I don't mind it at all.

I've also started to come to the point where I don't mind not being able to find an online community that does suit me well. I think my friend A. (in the Tampa Bay area) is right in saying that I don't need to have one of those to complete my online experience. It's completely all right that I listen to the "wrong" kind of music, wear the "wrong" kinds of clothes, have different ways of thinking and dealing and feeling from those that are expected of me from various societal arenas. To change myself to fit my demographic would mean to dissolve my Me-ness, the very thing that makes me, me. I would have to become very inauthentic to live up to the image and lifestyle expected of me, and that doesn't appeal to me. It also wouldn't appeal to me to try to pretend that the huge gulf of differences that separate me from those people who do share my cultural obsessions and general state of mind can and should be bridged. I may think like a 35-year-old, but I will never be exactly like a 35-year-old of today. They have gone through a far more different climate of social and cultural changes, events, etc., than I have, and as such their mental list of references and opinions are and should be different from mine.

That's one of the reasons why I think this and my other LiveJournal (the deethepraiser one -- it's been updated, so check it out) are valuable tools for me. They are my own ways of expressing my own self, without having to fit my square peg in the round holes of any online community out there. I have had enough with pretending to be someone else to try to get others to like me, and I am certainly not going to try to put on another facade for another set of individuals whom I feel I must try to win over. I am going to be me from here on out, and hopefully that will be every bit as freeing as it sounds like.

(A. in Edmonton, J. in Chicago, and the aforementioned A. in the Tampa Bay area -- you've gotten the unadulterated me. And thanks for sticking with me. You're my kind of people.)

Alert the news media.

I am planning on updating here AND my "praise" journal (see my user info for more on that).

I have also left work early so I could make it to the nearest public library internet terminal, so I could do this very thing. (BION, my workplace has recently managed to filter out any blogging communities, as well as any online communities such as MySpace.) So. Fingers don't fail me now.

(More when I get home later tonight.)

For some reason, I keep on thinking of the issue of mortality today. Mortality and aging. I've felt for at least a couple of years that life is a terminal illness. Once you're born, you spend your waking hours seeing the time you have left on this planet slowly erode. I have come one minute closer to my death since starting this entry. I used to live in total denial of this, but now I'm all too aware of this fact. It's silly to deny that we are all slowly marching, step by step, to our final breath. That's why I stopped kidding myself.

But mortality and aging... I hadn't considered until now how both of these change a person. There is a rather tired expression: "You can never go home again." Now, at face value, this is a silly thing to say. Of COURSE you can "go home again" -- we all do that at the end of each day. But that literal interpretation is not what I mean, nor what those who express it must also mean. What I've come to realize it means is that you can never go back to any set time in your life. As much as you'd like to return to a stage in your life when things seemed simpler, happier, better, this can never happen. It is futile to indulge in nostalgia for those reasons. You can become nostalgic over your teenaged years because you enjoyed the pop culture back then, but to immerse yourself in that because you're looking to resurrect the ephemera surrounding that time in your life, the uncomplicatedness and relative ease, is stupidity.

I'm in my twenties. High school ended for me nearly ten years ago. (And no, I am SO not going to that reunion.) I would like to go back to those hazy, crazy days, but I know both intellectually and in my heart that that can never happen. I can't even recreate how things were five years ago! As much as we would all like to turn back the hands of time for the sake of reliving our own most pleasant memories, this can never and should never happen. Indulging in the past, which is not the same as paying tribute to the past, is harmful. It keeps us stuck in a rut, undeveloped as human beings, unable to continue evolving as people.

We need to continue evolving so that we can keep up with the aging process, which I have just now figured out is the secret to living (and dying) with dignity. A person who acts his or her age is infinitely classier and less embarrassing than a person who acts ten or fifteen (or more) years younger. I feel like the people who can leave this planet with their heads held high and their hearts at peace are those individuals who have always had the mindset of someone their own age. Someone who's always thought younger is still trying to fathom in their mind how they managed to land on their death bed.

I feel like if I continue to keep in mind that I am an aging being, slowly progressing toward her eventual demise, I will be able to live the kind of life I am meant to have and, as a result, I will be able to hold my head up high as I continue my march to the grave. Remembering that this life is meant to be for a set period of time and that the afterlife will be something much better, a world without fear, pain, or suffering, will be a very good thing for me to keep in mind.

I don't know who I am or if I can ever really find myself. I don't know where my security and self-assuredness went. I don't feel like I'm at all the way I used to be when I was 15 or even 19. I am a big blank sheet of nothing wrapped up in an enigmatic grin that hides the confusion and loneliness within. I need. I need ALL the damn time. I have few friends but many acquaintances. I feel stuck in nowhere land looking at nobody in particular. I might as well be shipwrecked and marooned on an undiscovered island in the South Pacific. I look out at society and see groupings I'm never going to be a part of. I'm never going to be slottable. I'm never going to be define-able, nor am I ever going to be capable of maintaining myself in a particular grouping of individuals. I'm too white, too ethnic, too old, too young, too engaged in the wrong decade, too ordinary, too weird, too intelligent, too stupid, too kind, too vicious, too loyal, too indecisive, too patient, too hot-tempered. I am incapable of finding a support system to be surrounded by. Eventually everyone finds a weakness in me they can use as their reason for keeping their distance. Who I am authentically is destroying me, yet I'm unable to maintain a proper facade long enough to convince any group.

Happy New Year? Yeah, welcome to more of the same. Whoop. De. Doo.

I just spent the past hour and a half Googling for fanlistings to join, eventually subscribing to nine of them. Why do I do it? Hm. I suppose I kinda like the whole ritual of joining a fanlisting, of feeling a part of something larger based on a shared interest in something. It's a part of this whole interconnectedness thing that I feel like I have a constant need for. I think. Maybe, again, I'm talking out of my arse.

I do know that I am experiencing a drought in thought at the moment. This is evidenced by my inability to really express anything on the Original Forum, even though quite a few threads have popped up therein that I've felt intrigued by. I hope I will eventually be able to pick myself up from this slide and get back to regular participation. Because I do feel as though I am slipping here, slipping from some sort of committments. Or something.

Anyway. I just wanted to post that I'm still alive, that I've got some new fanlistings up on my profile. I'm going to try very hard to show how alive I am in the near future. The rest of what I want to say has escaped me at the moment. Words are failing me. And that's not a good thing.