There has been stress.

...and quite a bit, at that. I need some release, but I do not want to spend much time. I spent a couple hours writing a 1200 word dinger about the persuasive aspects of Keith Olbermann's special comment on the passing of prop 8, and it has made me utterly depressed and caused me to lose a great deal of respect for humanity. Maybe it's just because I've been writing a lot lately, and I'm not used to that. Last night I had this idea for a short story while I was in bed. I knew I would never write it unless I did right then, at one o' clock on a school night, so I did. That felt alright, but this is all just so paining. I am so tired and sick of oh so many things. My, oh my. This break can't come soon enough. It feels hard to be alive.



While I'm optimistic, here's something I wrote for a college application about an event in my life when I became acquainted with humanity. Ohz the humanity. Some things are worded kinda silly, but yeah.

A robot taught me how to be a human.
I have deduced in the first eighteen years of my existence that I have a consistent tendency to expend ridiculous amounts of effort to complete a product; even when I am entirely indifferent to the outcome. I entered high school with the hopes of doing everything, asininely chasing eternal happiness. No club, organization, society, team, play, band, honors class, or office was free from my reach.
I have had the experiences of pouring over the esoteric work of archaic men late into the night, forgetting who I was while acting on a stage, and the unfortunately vivid memory of vomiting profusely during summer tennis practices. I waged existential warfare with myself in my spare time; I eventually concluded that I was not truly accomplishing, that I was not truly being human.
My least favorite activity in school was working on the website team for the robotics team. For six weeks in winter, every member was required to return to school, into the busy, cacophonous shop room, and work at least four hours a night, six days a week. For some on the robotics team, this room was a second home for them. I did not share such enthusiasm. I sat on an old couch, laptop at my knees, and typed code. It was a mind-numbing practice: organize files, fix mistakes, become one of the most award-winning FIRST Robotics website in the country, code, look out to watch the robot being made, manage profiles, win more awards, update links, write CSS, code, watch them put the chains on the robot, code, the wheels, code. There was no escape.
Each year we would take a bus down to Atlanta for the national robotics championship. This left me time to battle with myself, listen to dreadfully depressing Elliott Smith songs, code further, and occasionally watch a film. It was one of the busses which sported a DVD player with screens over the seats. This group of engineers and mathematicians found films like The Guardian, Shrek 2, and Sweet Home Alabama to be the most original films made; they watched them ad nauseum. Like many times in robotics, I tuned out.
One time when they popped in the dreadfully silly Hitch, I watched The Royal Tenenbaums on my iPod. The cartoonish, weird, intricate yet seriously depressed film reflected a vision of humanity that I thought was exclusive to my pubescent psyche. At one point in the film, the hero of the story releases a falcon on a rooftop, setting a creature free that he had owned and cherished for so long. I looked up and saw the robot, ready to be used in absurd robot competition, prepared to be tainted by the ramming and force of other robots. I felt like it didn’t want to be here, on this bus, half-listening to Hitch, anymore than I did. And while I did not abscond with my robotic friend, I soon quit the robotics team and joined my school’s Creative Writing Club. I gained a role model who led me into writing and direct videos, solidifying my love for film. It was there that I found a purpose for my existence and started acting human.

Just, fuck. Winter be kind.



The next post here will be different than this.

I'm gonna let you in on a secret.

I've been playing a game over the past day.

You know how to ruin your favorite movies? Or at least solidify your hatred for one?

Look up foreign movie posters.



I got rid of them because the space they took annoyed me. Sorry.

"Hope you enjoy the future. -1973"

"Motherfucking cocksucker motherfucking shit fucker what am I doing? What am I doing? I don't know what I'm doing. I'm doing the best that I can. I know that's all I can ask of myself. Is that good enough? Is my work doing any good? Is anybody paying attention? Is it hopeless to try and change things? The African guy is a sign, right? Because if he isn't, than nothing in this world makes any sense to me. I'm fucked! Maybe I should quit. Don't quit! Maybe I should just fucking quit. Don't fucking quit! I don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to fucking do anymore! Fucker! Fuck shit!"

God, I feel like shit and I'm really not in the mood to talk about anything. I guess it's rude to shit an empty post on here.

So I was driving away from school and feeling like shit while in a desperate need of a nice shit when I saw that a local Blockbuster was shutting down and everything was on sale. The following two hours consisted of me blindly shifting what had to have been thousands of titles, coming this close to purchasing Grumpier Old Men, the sequel to Grumpy Old Men (which was the next logical step after creating a film like Grumpy Old Men,) Glitter, Crossroads, Bratz, The Fox and The Hound TWO (which is the next logical step after making something that should be left alone in it's own, beautiful form). But in all seriousness, I walked away with Wristcutters and Casino Royale, which I always feel morbidly enlightened after watching the former and cooler after watching the latter. Oh yeah, and they had Inland Empire for $4. I almost got that, but was afraid of watching it and... I don't know. That trailer freaked me the fuck out. And it's three fucking hours long. Maybe I thought it would leave me so afraid that I would have to move it to some other room because I feared sleeping around it. I mean, look at this.



Doesn't that scare the shit out of you? Yeah, it does. Apparently it's just a part of a dream sequence, and that's all the face does, but still. Can not live with that ugly.

This part of the movie scares me, too.



Shit, I feel like shit. Shit.

I didn't feel better after leaving, and I don't feel better after writing about it.

Oh, and last week I saw Sufjan Stevens screen The BQE with my favorite people to be around. I have decided that the film is what it is, and nothing more or less. A string quartet named Osso played some songs from Sufjan's Enjoy Your Rabbit, and this was wonderful.



Listening to Conor Oberst is a grim sign, but he doesn't make a lot of songs under the Bright Eyes name I grew up with and love.



I'm gonna watch the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie on VHS, Pizza Hut ads and all.

Ya know, this one.



P.S.

Just Some Videos

So I don't have much time to say anything because I'm very quite busy, but believe me when I say there are. Things are in desperate need of slowing down.

Here are some videos I showed this past week.

And I'm in my school play on November 12th and 14th at 7! It'll probably be my last show, and it's not a horribly written one.

Some Things Not Really True Concerning Death

Television has always instructed me to, "Live like you are dying." It has never occurred to me until rather recently that this goes the other way, too. Nobody wants to die old. Nobody wants to lose a long battle against cancer. Nobody even wants to be flung out of a car nowadays. That's just boring. Commonplace. Typical. Someone who used to be my best friend died in a boring manner just last year, and I have been thinking of this since. I asked some friends of mine of what would be their "Super Sweet Death." I find that many deathventures include a certain Humpty Dumpty complex. That is, of the prospect of never being put back together again, be it by a rocket launcher to the face or less grotesque dismemberment (though most were explosive). I myself have never thought deeply of the day of my death, nor have I bothered to spend time to wonder how it would happen. I do have fears of death, however. I have gone through high school without anyone "understanding" me, in particular, and my greatest fear is going through the rest of my life like this.
But if my death was chosen, then it would be the most baller shit ever. I'll give a crack at it. Here's how my final day would go. I would have this jar of peanuts. And all I'm doing the whole day is just monching down on these peanuts, so much that the taste of them makes me vomit profusely. Except the vomit will be peanut butter, I will direct my mouth to nearby slices of bread, and I make sandwiches out of it. I gather together everyone who has ever wronged me in a room where I will provide each with a sandwich. After a minute of eating, I inform the group that they ingested my vomit, and this results in further vomit. Real vomit, this time. The room fills up in it and I drown. My wrongdoers are fine, but they forever fear the taste of peanut butter. My ghost returns to my corpse and says, "I have left quite a mess."

Where the Wild Things Are was precious.

This is a teaser for a film I am making.



This song is lovely (just press HQ to make it play).
Does personally connecting with a song on the New Moon soundtrack make me like Edward Cullen, in any way? Either way, here's Bon Iver and St. Vincent's "Roslyn."



P.S.



P.P.S

I deleted my myspace. I think I want to be a good person.



I miss you, Thomas.