officially not helping the situation since 1985

In response to Strange Culture’s post “Top 10 Songs I’m Diggin’ this Week” I’ve decided to post a list of songs I’ve been frequenting this summer.  If you have a listen to them you’ll begin to realize (if you haven’t already) that I love melancholic music.  It’s not that I’m sad all the time.  This kind of music, as ironic as this might sound, is uplifting for me.  It makes me happy, sometimes even joyful, but rarely sad.

Here it goes:

10. “What If” - X&Y - Coldplay
“Swallowed In The Sea” - X&Y - Coldplay
“Violet Hill” - Viva la Vida - Coldplay
“Lost?” - Viva la Vida - Coldplay
“Viva la Vida” - Viva la Vida - Coldplay

9. “Samskeyti” - ( ) - Sigur Ros
8. “The Animals Were Gone” - 9 - Damien Rice
7. “Constellations” - In Between Dreams - Jack Johnson
“Banana Pancakes” - In Between Dreams - Jack Johnson

6. “Like a Dog Chasing Cars” - The Dark Knight - Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard
5. “I’m Yours (From the Casa Nova Sessions)” - We Sing EP - Jason Mraz
4.  “Lady” - Begin to Hope - Regina Spektor
3. “Light” - The Thin Red Line - Hans Zimmer
2. “Avenue of Hope” - Gods and Monsters - I Am Kloot

And I’ve been listening to this constantly:
1. “Ara batur” - Med sud i eyrum vid spilum endalaust - Sigur Ros

At eight minutes and fifty-seven seconds, “Ara batur” is nearly three times as long as your average song. In the usual Sigur Ros tradition it starts out slow and then gradually builds up, finally climaxing into a magnificent two minute finale complete with an orchestra and boys choir. I get goosebumps every time.

Turn up the volume and bask.

I remember the day I discovered Podcasts. Not specifically, but I remember what it felt like. Up to that point I had only heard vague things about them, nothing concrete or definitive in regards to their nature. So when I sought out my first one (through a recommendation) it was a territory of the world wide web that I had never dug through before; it was exciting.  I began to understand why paleontologists (Ross from Friends, anyone?) get all giddy when it comes to digging through the dirt in search of something worthy of digging through the dirt for.  iTunes’ mound of Podcasts is definitely full of some dirt, but search long enough and you’ll find some true gems (or fossils, if that’s your thing) that you’ll have a hard time giving up.

So after listening to a slew of them over the past several years, I’ve come to “settle down” on a select few that I either listen to religiously or make time for on a monthly basis. Like most Southern Californians, I spend most of my life (less now with the high gas prices) in my car, so my iPod gets more use than my television and my kitchen combined.

If you have some extra time on your hands (haha) and you’re not sure what to do with all of that extra time on your hands (haha), here are a few Podcasts I recommend you check out on iTunes, all of which (like all other podcasts) are free for download:

NUMBER ONE: This American Life.  Do you like stories? Fake, real, or a mishmash of both? So do I! And I love this podcast. Every week the creators of this podcast bring a few stories focused around a particular theme. A few months ago they did one on highschool proms. It was amazing. One of the stories was about a Prom night in Kansas that was made memorable by a tornado. My favorite episode so far though is “Switched at Birth”, in which the entire hour long show is devoted to interviews of two mothers, and two daughters. The daughters were, you guessed it, switched at birth. Not dramatic enough for you? Ok, well…one of the mother’s knew about it and didn’t say anything for over three decades. (???) And so goes our American life.  Check it out.

NUMBER TWO: Filmspotting.  This podcast was (seriously) made solely with me in mind.  OK, and maybe a few others, but mostly just for me.  Every Friday Adam and Matty (Sam went off and got all married and domesticated and stuff…bastard) release an hour long show of movie reviews, listener feedback, and other fun shenanigans.  There’s “Matty’s Movie Minute” *insert funky tune here* in which Matty reviews a movie in, gasp!, a minute.  There’s also Massacre Theatre, a few minutes that consist of the two almost literally massacreing a scene from a movie, which listeners then get the chance to send e-mails in with guesses as to to which movie it is from, with special prizes and such.  There are Movie Marathons, Top 5 lists, and at the end of every episode there’s an outtake…which is always funny.  There’s are also a few episodes where Adam and Matty (but most popularly Adam and Sam in “The Lake House” episode, #110) argue to the death over whether a movie is any good or not.  Great, ridiculously entertaining stuff.  If you like movies, you’ll like this Podcast.  I love Adam, I love Matty, and I still love Sam (even though he is gone) and I shall weep the day (if ever) that this show seizes to exist.

NUMBER THREE: NPR: Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!.  I’m not much of a news person. I believe that anything worthy of note will either find its way to my attention no matter how hard I may try to keep it away, or someone in my Google reader is going to mention the end of the world eventually (even if I don’t hear of it until a few days after the fact). You might call me an Apathetic, but I prefer Decidedly Unaware of Depressing Things. Hence, I get my news from NPR’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! This isn’t saying much, because the show doesn’t really deliver the news at all (imagine that)…it just comments on it in a very funny way. People call in and play games, the hosts make jokes about Hillary Clinton, Obama, and the Bush dynasty, and every episode features a guest of honor, usually someone I’ve never heard of. Sounds too old fashion? Maybe something your grandma or grandpa might listen to on Sunday afternoons? Well, “you’re right!” as the host Peter Sagal would say. And maybe that’s why I like it so much.  It makes me feel old, wise, and bit ahead of the curve, even if none of that is true.  It’s my Wheel of Fortune.

Interesting note: All three of these Podcasts hail from Chicago.

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Other Podcasts I listen to when I have time:

• Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s Film Reviews
• Liquid Church with Pastor Tim Lucas
• The Kindlings Muse
• Scene Unseen Movie Reviews

What Podcasts do you listen to?

I watched a movie on a fifteen inch television screen in a dormitory at Biola University four years ago.  In case you’re new to measurements, a fifteen inch screen really isn’t all that big.  It’s probably the size of the computer screen you are working at right now, which is fairly large for computer work, but small for watching movies from ten feet away.  If you’re an anal-retentive purist like me, watching any movie (except really bad movies that are annoying and shouldn’t watched on anything bigger than an iPod nano, if that) on a fifteen inch screen is a tragic circumstance that you avoid as often as possible.  Small screens put me to sleep.  They also rarely come in flat form, so the picture is severely distorted and makes every movie look like it was shot through an oblong fish bowl.  And not only that, but small screens cause your neck and eyes to strain, which leads to poor posture, unglamorous kissing techniques, and blindness.  I don’t want any of that, so I watch big whenever possible.

But what is the point of all of this?, you ask.  Well, four years ago in that dorm room having a small screen didn’t matter at all.  The movie we watched transcended the severe short comings of our small television and did exactly the same thing it would have done if we had watched it on a larger screen: it, pardon the noun, scared the shit out of us.

It scared me again a few years later when I went to see it at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, a theater with an interior design that is scary in and of itself.

And then I felt the psychotic need to repeat the offense on my soul a few days ago, rationalizing the venture into self-mutilation and mental-”cutting” by saying that my friend “needed” to see it

Although he now hates me, he’s one more person in the world that I can relate to on a very important relationship bonding-level: we’ve both been through a traumatic experience, together…forever.

I blithely encourage you also to come play with us in the swamps of masochism.

WARNING: blood.

The Shining (aka, The Scariest Movie Ever)

You could watch this thing on a battery operated, five-inch, black and white television underwater without goggles and still find yourself awetting.

:: A

I really liked this movie. The music is fantastic, The Joker uncanny, and the opening sequence is a gem of classic, simple suspense and horror. “The moment”, though, I enjoyed the most was without a doubt The Batman’s quiet flight at night in the first half hour of the movie. It’s simple, really: The Batman flies over a city at night time. It only lasts 15 seconds (maybe less) but would have kept my attention if it had lasted a few minutes, even though it isn’t directly important to the story. Beautiful stuff there. This, director Christopher Nolan’s eye for the grandeur, is the movie’s strongest selling point, and is the biggest reason I returned to the theater for a second round.

Unfortunately (and I say this with more sadness than disappointment), I didn’t return for the story, which by the end of the movie had gone from something spectacularly crispy like a cracker to a sticky, messy block of molded cheese (which you’re forced to eat, unless you leave early). It had become prolonged and wrought.

The last 40 minutes of the movie is absolutely unnecessary. It’s one huge fat ass of an ending that seems unable to get over itself and just end. Single feature gone double. Bad choice on Nolan’s part. Nolan should have slowed down the interrupting influx of information that was the story and not spent so much time forcing so much of it into one movie. If he had silenced the obtrusive and forceful jabberwocky and been a lot less revealing in his approach, Nolan would have added more mystery to The Batman, Harvey Dent, and the series itself. As of now, though, The Batman, Harvey Dent, and the series seem to be spread a little thin (extremely thin for one those three) and explained too much, which I believe is a direct result of the overwhelming thickness of this movie’s length, multiple storylines, speechy-ness, and an overzealous demand for thematic continuity and “poetic completeness”.

But let me make this clear: I still liked it. I prefer movies too long than too short, but, like anyone else, prefer perfect timing more.

The Dark Knight isn’t a masterpiece, but it may very well be the best superhero movie out there (its a toss-up between this and the lighter affair that is Spiderman 2). But even though it loses its fervor in the fourth (fifth?) act by giving away too much two years too early, it still threatens my psyche long after the fact with some interesting questions about heroism, amorality, and sadistic humor. :: A-

I’m trying to be more consistent with “The YouTube Report”, but finding internet access this summer has been fickle business. So I resorted to doing the report every other week, but, again, internet access only got more fickle, and so the story goes, and here I am again, late, as has become the custom. I’ll eventually get this process down pat and the days of missing self-imposed deadlines will be of the past. Eventually. For now, though, here is a late edition.

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“Eskimo” - by Damien Rice

This song is not just part of the report for this week, but is also the first addition to what I’ve called “the pantheon”. (Don’t worry, its deadline-less, so I can’t ever be late. I wish more things were like that.) It’s a consolidation of the four separate pages I had on my old blog (film, books, music, and the rest, etc.), and it probably won’t be updated very often, but when it is…you’ll hear about it.

The song “Eskimo” is in Top Ten Song category for me. I don’t know what Damien Rice means by his “Eskimo friend”, and heaven forbid he ever tell me, save that it means the same to him as it does to me.

Whenever I think of Eskimos, I think of comfort. They walk (sled?) around in their big fluffy thingamabobs and hunt for what they need, build only what they need, and so…they are comfortable, and comforting, and content in their “minor” existence. They’re like Hobbits, and almost just as fictional, except, gosh darn, Eskimos are real. When I think of an Eskimo, no harshness comes to mind; they’re not brassy and clangy; they’re quiet, reserved, and their eyes are full of life. They seem unable to succumb to prejudice.

This song and Eskimos are comforting.

Of course, this may not be what Eskimos are all about at all. My exposure to them is limited to few photos, short videos, and this song. But those fragments have come to form an image in my mind, a legendary silhouette of comfort through their quiet acceptance and their potent joy. Everyone should have an Eskimo Friend. And I hope that I can be an Eskimo for any one of my friends. There’s no doubt there are days (of a high number) in which I have been everything but a comfort or joy. In fact, I was likely, as their greatest and harshest critic and judge, many people’s biggest problem. Think Salem Witch Trials. Now go listen to the song, and think Eskimo. Friendly, soothing Eskimo.

Tiredness fuels empty thoughts
I find myself disposed
Brightness fills empty space
In search of inspiration
Harder now with higher speed
Washing in on top of me
So I look to my eskimo friend
I look to my eskimo friend
I look to my eskimo friend
When I’m down, down, down.

Rain it wets muddy roads
I find myself exposed
Tapping doors, but irritate
In search of destination
Harder now with higher speed
Washing in on top of me
So I look to my eskimo friend
I look to my eskimo friend
I look to my eskimo friend
When I’m down, down, down.

Kosketa minua - Touch me
Älä käsilläsi - Not with your hands
Vaan niin että tunnen sinut - But so that I feel you

Halaa minua - Hug me
Älä käsilläsi - Not with your hands
Mutta sielussasi - But within your soul

Minä kaipaan eskimo-ystävääni - I miss my eskimo friend

When I’m down, down, down.
When I’m down, down, down.
When I’m down, down, down.

— Damien Rice

Well, I couldn’t get redison.org, so I had to think up something else, and I came up with The Oreo. “Oreo”, in case you don’t know, is an offensive term for African-Americans who embrace the lifestyles of “the white”. White on the inside, black on the out. I take a certain amount (a considerable amount) of pride in being a said oreo. Much of my unavoidably appointed and self-appointed identity lies in it, and it really isn’t a bad place to be. I get the benefits of a minority (school finances, a free pass to complain endlessly about “those white people” over there) and the benefits of the heightened, albeit often misguided, aspirations of the classically blessed 18th century white supremacist (a free pass to delegate the “lower” class and express myself without much reproach, pontificating liberally over the proper things of politics, religion, and, most importantly, art).

But why the offensive term? Why not something kinder like…”Raymond’s Blog” or “Get Fuzzy”.

Well, “Raymond’s Blog” would have been thorns in the eyes of creativity, not to mention boring. “Get Fuzzy” was a title that stuck longer than it should have. At the time I created my first blog, I was infatuated with the comic strip of the same name, so I named my blog after it. I still love the comic strip (the best ever) but its not as much of a centerfold in my existence as it used to be.

Also, I like taking the offensive (terms, ideas, worldviews, etc.) and making it less so. Whether I have successfully desensitized myself or if there was nothing entirely shocking about “oreo” in the first place is up for grabs, because I honestly don’t know how the world feels about the term in general. Me being an oreo is sort of a running joke amongst my friends, and I revel unabashedly (hence the title of the new blog) in the uniqueness that it seems to provide me. It doesn’t seem as common or as taboo as nigger or negro or colored person, but in the right context it could be taken as incredibly disrespectful, I suppose. If another black person came up to me and called me an “oreo”, its essentially him calling me a traitor, a two-timer, a Judas Iscariot…an ass-kissing slave of white supremacists.

It’s hard to offend me though because I find most things funny, and calling myself an oreo is just another branch in my ever thickening tree of self-deprecation. But whether I’ve developed this thick tree and skin psychologically as a protective measure or if I really just don’t care about what is supposed to be offensive (which is what I believe more to be true) is, again, up for grabs. I’d have to go to psychotherapy to find out for sure if I’m intentionally beating the enemy to the punch by stabbing and wounding myself before they arrive with their cavalry or if their blades of offensiveness are duller and flimsier than a slice of cheese and could only hurt me if I chose to shove them down my throat and choke on them with a dramatic, staged flair.

So…take the title and me for what it and I am worth to you: funny or just contemptuously off-color. Until a psychotherapist determines whether my apathy towards such terms is a healthy approach or not, here I am, The Oreo, or an oreo among an increasing many, a nigger of sorts, white on the inside, negro on the out, a lynch worthy offender at times, a colored person asking those with dropped jaws and thespian eyes…

WALL-E: It would be redundant to say that Pixar has yet again raised the bar. Thankfully, I don’t have to say that, because they have done oh so much more. Andrew Stanton and the Pixar team seem to have redefined the bar entirely, not just moved it, and they’ve left their competition flailing in futility. WALL-E is not Pixar’s best work, but it is definitely their most unconventional. This is saying alot, because the majority of their films are unconventional by default, but WALL-E pushes even Pixar’s conventions to the side and steps into some uncharted territory. You can think of WALL-E as the epitomization of Pixar’s unique “quality first” production line. They always start with the finest ingredients (believable characters, a good story) and then press forward to the slow process of baking up a visual feast. WALL-E is, in more ways than one, a Pixar space odyssey. I had always wanted to see a Pixar space movie, but I had no idea (even up to the point of buying my ticket) that it was going to be this one, and that it would be as playfully pensive as it has turned out to be. :: A-

Wanted: I went into this movie with a bit of enthusiasm. I had heard and read some favorable reviews and thought it would be a something of a simple, enjoyable time. It partly is, but it mostly isn’t. There are a few moments that are interesting, and some that are plain ridiculous. (”It’s the Fabric of Fate.”) It’s essentially a revenge film in all of its grit and grime, and there’s nothing to it really. It’s hardly skin deep, but it acts like a bag full wisdom. It did nothing for me at all but put me into a sour, defensive mood. It was just loud, annoying, and full of itself, and the over voice was trite and repetitive. “My life is pathetic and stupid, my girlfriend is cheating on me with my best friend, I sit at a desk all day like a moron, and my boss is a fat, psychotic woman.” And then he does it again: “My life is pathetic and stupid, my girlfriend is cheating on me with my best friend, I sit at a desk all day like a moron, and my boss is a fat, psychotic woman.” And then we find out he is a part of a “fraternity of assassins”. So he toughens up, chews out his boss, bashes the face of his best friend, kills a few people, and then at the end of the movie he looks into the camera and says, word for word, “What the fuck have you done lately?” And by that point I was so turned off by the whole experience I just wanted to go home and soothe myself with fig newtons and milk and rebel against “the fraternity” and their poster boy by doing absolutely_nothing…which is precisely what I did. :: B-

Blindness: Haven’t seen this, but I want to. The trailer can be watched here. Of note: the music in the trailer is from Danny Boyle’s movie Sunshine, by John Murphy. What I find most interesting about this is that the soundtrack for that movie hasn’t been released yet (its been over a year) because of legal issues. How, I wonder, did they get the legal issues solved so they could sell the music for the trailer? I’m kind of bitter about this and went so far as to track down an un-mastered, shaky rip of the music from the DVD a few months ago. It’s below in as much of its glory as possible at this time.

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Top 5 Pixar Films
1. The Incredibles
2. Ratatouille
3. Finding Nemo
4. Monster’s Inc
5. WALL-E

As written on my old blog #(3?):

I received an e-mail from one of my readers (that sounds so creepily possessive) (Nate at My Friend Ivan) yesterday about my new blog at theoreo.org.

Surprise! I have a new blog at theoreo.org!

I put it up last week but planned to tweak it and rummage through its code and then switch over when I felt comfortable with it (two or more months down the road, if ever), but alas, Nate found it, e-mailed me about the title and its Greek form (which I knew nothing about, but now I know something about), and so the cat is officially out of the bag!

It’s slightly painful to pull down the veil before I’ve buffed and shined my “statue”, but I’ll take this all as a sign and just go with the ‘flow of interrupting fate’, if I may be so egomaniacally poetic.

So, consider this the official switch over. I’m looking into a way to forward my RSS feed so that anyone who isn’t paying attention to my blog now and may never read this post will still receive my new posts. I know, that’s sort of silly, but you never know when they might come to their senses and realize the greatness that is me and start reading my blog religiously with utter bewilderment, excitement, and giddy joy! You just never know; so preparation is key.

More on the new blog later.

The world is just awesome.

A magnificent trailer, in proper format: click here for the elusive definition of beauty.

Thanks to Nobody for the link.

So, Adam Sandler released a new movie last weekend. Do you care? Probably not, and neither do I. But if you’re an Adam Sandler hater (”I HATE his movies.” or “I HATE his face.” or “I HATE his mom!”), we need to fix that. He’s actually made a few films worth pontificating over: Spanglish and Punch-Drunk Love. The former is amazing, the latter is really, really amazing, and his performances in each are top-notch. Rent them.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCkco7h6Tvg&hl=en]
trailer for Spanglish

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6btDjOPkEqk&hl=en]
trailer for Punch-Drunk Love

sometimes the battery dies,
and i’m forced to go do something natural.
yet other times, it does just the same,
and i plug it into the wall,
continue the pixel charade,
and vow to sleep tomorrow. ha!

It’s one thing to sit down and talk to someone about their religion while expressing your doubt, its another thing entirely to be shoving your own religion (your own life, in this case) and your own god (yourself, in this case) down that person’s throat like some of the crazy sign-toting, loud mouths I unfortunately have representing my shade in the religious spectrum. Don’t be a jerk, Bill Maher, unless that’s what you want people to think about your religion and your god. Be compassionate, not tactless.

———————
Religulous
———————

I was wordless a few minutes ago. I had nothing to say. This usually happens when I choose to be apathetic and self-enclosed.

But then I grabbed the green lighter that had been sitting on my porch table for several months. It’s what I do when I have nothing to say or no one else at the table has anything to say. I fill the void with a few moments of sparkling light. So this time, as usual, but alone, I grabbed it and, concentration overthrowing my body, I jerked my thumb and lit it, feeling risky, edgy, and a smidgen pyromaniacal. But I got more than what I had asked for. The lighter lit as usual, but then went from a gentle, tiny, half-inch flame to a ball of dragon fire the size of a baseball. I’d like to say that I kept my composure, securing what’s left of my manliness and dignity, and set the lighter on the table and let it diffuse itself while I reveled in the glorious phenomenon I had stumbled upon. But I can’t say that, because I didn’t, because clearly I was going to die.

In a matter of milliseconds I saw my life flashing before my eyes and I frantically tossed the lighter towards the table. Which, of course, dammit, was made of wood. I instantly convinced myself that it was going to ignite like a can of gasoline and I’d end up having to clumsily and non-sexily (heaven forbid I look unattractive in a moment of crisis or certain death) catapult myself over my porch wall, fall four feet into the bushes and then stumbled to the sidewalk to await the judging psyches of the multiplying crowd of onlookers. Before I knew it, in my mind, already a hundred miles into the future, a dramatic situation was beginning to theatrically unfold. My condo complex was burning, people were jumping out of windows, children were weeping and yelling for their parents, and I was being put in jail to await my trial and life sentence for reckless endangerment and third-degree manslaughter.

The igniter, still mid-air, hadn’t even hit the table yet. But in my mind, it had, and all was red hot hell from there.

I do this a lot.

I take bad situations and turn them into my own personal catastrophes. I woke up a few months ago with a completely numb arm; so, of course, it wasn’t that I slept on it wrong, it was that I had somehow in the middle of the night done something to my body to permanently damage it. Oh shit, I thought, I’m never going to be able to play the piano again. I’m going to walk around oblique and lopsided and sign my name with my left arm like a dumbass who dropped out of grade school. I’ll never be attractive. I’ll never get married. I’ll never, ever, ever get laid.

The numbness was gone after a few minutes, and my breathing went back to normal.

I do this a lot.

Every time I have a big test coming up, I’ve failed it a week before the professor has even printed it. By the time my ten minute drive to the dentist is over, I’m prepared to have all my teeth removed and my gums fitted for dentures. Certainly they all have to go, and not just the one in the back screaming “Get me the hell out of here!”

And yet, with all this inner derangement, most people think I’m an optimist. When I worked at Starbucks a few years ago my manager would question me often on how I kept so calm during the early morning rush. I would always reply, pridefully, of course, with a carefully enacted “I don’t know, I just am.” That’s a lie, really, because I’m not. My mind is baking powder; the world a vinegar. Mix the two and I’m sure to fuck things up and spew hordes of acidic foam all over my colorfully decorated mound of clay.

My mind is always racing, always dividing, always calculating the next and most “effective” move, and while my volcanic, clay brain explodes perpetually on the inside, my body remains presentable, acceptable, and conformable on the outside. The only reason I look cool, calm, collected is because I’m using so much of my energy on looking cool, calm, and collected…its a skill I’ve been developing and honing since the onset of my tragicomic childhood, when my parents skipped town, my grandparents took over, and my sister and I reclusively played Barbies for hours on end, a world of perfect men, perfectly breasted women, where nothing psychotic or dramatic happened and everyone went grocery shopping for baby carrots and dixie cups of water in hot pink convertibles. The sun, a portable light from the garage, always shown. And their music, coming from earphones set at full blast (no joke, ask my sister), always on for the always going party. So now, after those years of practice and training, my “look cool, calm, and collected”-skills are beginning to pay off. I’m fooling people. My Starbucks manager thought I was a mighty fellow. My customers at the pharmacy think I’m the cutest and most tolerable puppy since Shiloh.

So I’m winning, right? Right?? We all know the answer to that.

Calculations don’t create life. Lighters unexpectedly igniting into fireballs create life. They spark thoughts and blog posts and sometimes a few degrees of change in the direction of our lives. There is vigorous freedom in being in an unavoidable situation. My life was at its purest and most raw state when my world was burning up and my clay volcano was erupting on the outside where everyone could see, and not locked up on the inside like an hamster in a plastic globe pinging through the pin-ball machine, exacting every move to hit the right targets and avoid the hole of certain humiliation. But for a solid four seconds I was doing precisely what I was supposed to be doing: flipping out, cursing the existence of lighters, and imagining the death of the hapless, wordless life I knew four seconds before. For four seconds I was living, not concentrating, and it was inspiring. The ball of fire cleared my mind of my worry and anxieties, and snapped me back to reality, where life always goes on, even if your arm is numb until the day you die, and even your dentist yanks out every pearl.

Live life this way. Live life with a potentially dangerous idea in your hand. Piss off the gods of serenity, piss off the god of death, and volunteer yourself as fuel to the fire of fate, or chance, or whatever you’d like to call it. It’s scarier, it can get warm and out of control at times, but it’s so much more exciting than the cool, calm, and collected calculations of cuteness and domesticity and puppylusciousness.

For what its worth, I’m not writing this in jail. The table never combusted, the crowds never came. It’s Saturday, I’m on my porch, the sun is shining, my earphones are blaring, and my housemate came out a bit ago to smoke a cigarette. But alas, the green lighter was dead—all burnt up. I told him what happened. He went in and got a new lighter. A red one. I played with it for a while, hoping for a ball of fire, but it didn’t work. That, I guess, is too intentional. Too obvious. Too predictable. Boring.

All antonyms to this risk thrust upon us, this life we never chose to begin, but should live as though it’s about to end.