rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

… so they keep asking for Matt to teach them methods both slow and fast.

went to a wedding this weekend back home.
Smith and I went up friday night. friends from highschool was gettin’ hitched. it was cool, saw a couple of guys I hadn’t seen in a while.
bars in Valparaiso depress me. we went to a few. they’re full of people from high school, who either have been kicked out of the public university they stumbled through for a semester or two, or are half assing it a community college. they’ve all put on weight. they all either live with their parents, or some depressing condominiums behind the supermarket.
or maybe I’m just a dick, being to judgmental.
I can’t believe they got married, these kids I know. I stress, “kids.” it was a nice wedding, nice spread, especially on the budget I’m told it was done. shoestring. but still, just kids. she graduated from college a few months ago, and I don’t believe my main man the groom has a job. nice job, buddy.
hanging out with that group of kids is like kicking it with folks who treat mewwidge as a status symbol as much as anything. kind of like, “well, I’m married now. what have you got?”
that was the vibe I got, anyway.

so we came back this morning. woke up bright and early, so I could get back to the paper in time; hoped to be in around 1:30.
Smith lost his keys the night before. so we had to drive around town looking for them.
then some dumb yokel rolled his winnebago on I65 north of Indianapolis, so we sat in traffic for a half hour. I got into the paper 2 hours late.
good thing they could give a fuck. it’s the last issue of the summer.

on thursday, the paper had like a send-off party. had a ballot we had to fill out. I had five nominations or some shit. switch day MVP, best attitude (ha. are you fucking serious?), best editor, etc.
I didn’t win. any. total bullshit. but I did get a consolation prize: an AP style guide. actually, it’s a really tight gift, and it’s a real handy thing to have around. so I’ll definitely use it.

what elses.
I’m going to Va later this week. that means (bullet point option, you bunch of jerks!):

• I need to get the oil changed. Wal Mart does it. for like fifteen bucks. shit yeah.
• I need to buy caffeine pills.
• I need to find my road atlas. not that I’d ever need it; I have a permanent map of the mid-atlantic united states burned into my retinas.

see, the problem is, I forgot to request off of work until the last minute. I want to leave thursday, but I’m scheduled thursday. I was scheduled friday and saturday, but I bitched and moaned until I got them off. but now I’m all out of favors – no way to get out of town until friday afternoon, it seems. and I shouldn’t be leaving in the afternoon anyway; it’s at least an 11 hour drive. but oh well. I’m young.

and now I’m out. I’m out.

God Bless America, Land that I love.
Stand beside her, and guide her
Through the night with a light from above.
From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam
God bless America, My home sweet home
God bless America, My home sweet home

it’s on the Washington Post, too. but you have to sign up to read it there, and I can’t expect everyone to be as enlightened as me, a member of the Post’s online community.

listening to “eminence front” by the Who.
take it for whatever you think it means, but I think it means the Who didn’t like yuppies. and that’s fine; neither do I.

I’m very ready to get out of Bloomington for a few days, and by out, I don’t mean back to Valparaiso. I dont often say this, but I’m pumped about going out to Va, if only for a few days. besides, I’ll probably stay a night or two at Mike and Virginia’s, and then all of us or some of us (or just me, but I doubt that) are going up to Jersey. going to the shore. down the shore. kickass.

Mar’s good best good friend, Jaime, lost her sister over the weekend. Krystal was my age, junior in college down in Florida. was studying aeronautical engineering, or something equally impressive. was heavy into skydiving. wanted to get into the astronaut program. shot high.
this weekend, she was piloting a cessna down in the keys. had four people on board. in a storm, and the plane went down. they found her earlier today, with the plane.
that’s a damn shame. it’s a loss, no doubt. I don’t pretend to have been close to her at all; I haven’t seen her in a few years. but I do remember she was nice to me whenever I ran into her.
I told this to Mar when I talked to her a couple hours ago: it’s beyond regret. you hate to hear that it’s happened. but, at least you can rest knowing she went out how she lived. she loved the sky. jumped out of planes for fun. loved flying. I’d like to think that’s how I’ll go out. not a tap out, but at least doing something worthwhile, something that lets you know you’re alive. or, for the time being, anyway… that’s not the fucking point. I hope I’m clear, because for some reason, this is something I’m having trouble articulating.

stay up, Mar. not to try and make it seem like yours alone, but Jaime’s got you. she’ll be okay.

and by the end of this post, I’m listening to Bob Dylan.

I got offered a spot as a beat reporter on the city/state desk by the next semester’s editor.
and the other day, I got offered a features position for the Weekend section by its next editor.

see? all that time I spent here editing copy (read: jerking off and posting on a web log) is finally paying off.

god, I have gas. White Castle will do that to you, word of warning.

air conditioner took a dump, and it’s getting hot outside. fuck!

I bought:
The Futureheads (self titled)
David Bowie (Ziggy Stardust)
it’s because I have great taste.

I need to go into the paper today and read all that backed up freshman edition crap.
damn it.




edit: what was here was none of my fucking business

I haven’t been this stoned in a long time.
see, kids, that’s the good thing about not smoking too much pot. when that occasional time comes up where you do, it really works. really.

so now I’m sitting around, listening to “Rated R” by Queens of the Stone Age. by far a better album than their third, “Songs for the Deaf.” that album I think, kind of goes dead through the middle, though that’s framed by a couple of killer songs. something about “Rated R” makes me love it.
I’ve just started enjoying track 3, a lot more than I have in the past. I used to remember it as a the inevitable break between 2 and 4, but now, I look forward to it. and that’s fuckin’ cool, man.


so the Pierogi Fest did go down this weekend. so did Alisha. she’s an event in herself.
I hate crushes.
I don’t know why I still hang around her. but you can’t kill a feeling without mangling any relationship you have with the person. there is no surgical break. to get rid of attraction to her, something catastrophic would probably have to be done, and at that point, we wouldn’t be capable of a normal friendship. it’s impossible. that normal friendship that you’d rather have just wouldn’t exist, that cloud would be always hanging over you. for me and her, I’ll always be sitting on that desire I always have when I’m around her. I’ll constantly hope that sooner or later, she’ll be into me, and that me and her will become more.
that’s where we are now. she knows how I feel, and we just ignore it. act like we’re just close friends, which, albeit abnormally, we are.
so I should just get over it and her, break off contact, stop pretending that something will materialize. cause that’s probably never going to happen.
see? right there, I did it. I said “probably”. it “probably” never will. but “probably” means that I’m telling myself it’s not definite, that I’m still believing in it. keep hope alive, says Jesse Jackson.
I want something to be there, for reasons beyond the simple fact that I like her – I want something to be there just so I can believe that this isn’t all just a waste of time, that I’m not pathetic, and that people won’t see me as such.

now, that’s a fucking horrible thing to say.
I’ll be the first to admit my reasons. I know that the above is true. but I can also recognize that I’m not singularly thinking of “winning” her, that I’m not her friend for an entirely selfish purpose. I’m her friend because I do, genuinely, care for her. I like her. while I am into her, she’s still my friend at same time and like I would for most of them (not that dickhead Mike “I took the album you got me for christmas, burned it, and sold the original copy to a used CD place for five bucks” Smith), I’d lie down in traffic for her.
I like Alisha for Alisha, above and beyond the feelings I have for her. that keeps me from calling it a total waste of time, and clears my conscience.

but, that doesn’t make being around her any less of a bitch.
so, you’d think that spending any extra time with her, more than what’s ordinary, would be a bad idea. like, you know, taking her home to your family, long car trips. lots of situational shit that most people would avoid if they had to do it with the person they were into.
I guess I like punishment.
though, in my defense, I didn’t invite her along. I don’t even remember how it happened; just bam, she’ s coming to the pierogi fest.
yeah, I know. I could have stopped it, and I’m not ducking my own responsibility. I know better, know it’s bad for me, but I do it anyway. like cigarettes.
I don’t smoke, so maybe this is my vice.
and beyond that, what am I supposed to say to her? “Alisha, I don’t think you should come with me this weekend. cause, you know, when I’m around you, it feels like I’m on fire, but I’m only burning alone. so, yeah, I’ll call you later.”
man, motherfuckers should have seen me try and ignore the obvious. when she and I went out to eat with her granparents (cause they actually live in Whiting and were at the pierogi fest) and her grandmother (who is becoming senile, but still a nice lady) kept referring to me as her boyfriend and the both of us lucky to have found each other, that was something.
she actually tried to joke about it afterwards; “I can’t believe Grammy, about the ‘boyfriend’ thing.” she turned to me, laughing.
I don’t know if the color drained from my face, or if my heart actually dropped into my stomach, but it fucking felt like it.
that, or when she comes to me – she, comes to me – where I’m on the couch for the night cause there aren’t enough beds in the house for all of us, and falls alseep draped across me with her head buried into my neck.
and I love that. and I hate that I love that, I don’t want to love that, but I do.
I’m not totally inept, I’m not dense. you’d think that would be notice enough for someone to say, “dude, just fucking kiss her.” but that would be the wrong move. I don’t know if she’d slap me, but she definitely would not welcome it.
she feels comfortable around me. looks at me as something else, something, I think, beyond a friend and less than whatever the hell is next. fuck, it sucks sometimes.
so what does it mean? why would she do that, if she knows how I feel?
Josh says she knows. she uses me when it’s convenient for her to do so, and she’s gone as soon as she’s dating another guy.
I hate to think that. not, so much, because it represents a truth, that I’m actually (and I shudder to think I’m actually fucking typing this, I sound like such a tool) getting played, but because it would mean something about her. that she’s not genuine. that she’s not really my friend, that she’s selfish, callous, that she’d do that to me intentionally. that would hurt well beyond being made a fool of.

I hate all of this. life has all of those little subplots, like those “choose your own adventure” books. you read something, have to make a choice, turn to a random page, and make it another. when you fuck up, you get to a dead end – one choice puts you in prison for twenty years, another sends you over a cliff. it’s like I’ve backed my way into one of these situations, and there is no easy answer.
so we’ll go on like nothing is wrong. eventually, it’ll boil over and out of me, and I’ll tell her I can’t keep this up. we’ll play phone tag for a week, and eventually end up in awkward conversation, where I’ll tell her I can’t see her as much anymore, that I can’t be that close friend she wants me to be.
she’ll cry.
I’ll feel like scum for a week, until I’ll finally talk myself and hype myself into believing that I can be that friend to her, that there is something honorable and worthwhile in the willpower to forget my feelings. that her friendship is worth it, no matter how abnormal our relationship is. shit, I’m going on that tenet right now.
and we’ll be right here again. I’ll be writing this post again. still wondering that if she read this, if I sat her down and read this to her like a statement, if it would make a difference, resolve anything in any way.
and the world will turn.