I’ve made a decision.  I’m not sure whether or not it’s actually a good decision, but at least I’ve made one.  That’s more than I can say for any other choice I’ve had to make recently.  Usually I settle for the middle, find a way to balance things out.  Nuh uh.  Na ah.  Time to grab life by the horns, Daryl, take the initiative, and other inspiring clichés.  Here’s what I’m going to do.  I’m going to write in this thing every other day.  Every other day, even if I have absolutely nothing important going on in my mind and the only reason I’d even be writing in the first place is to hear my fingers clatter on the keyboard.  Or to get my ‘voice’ back.  Apparently that’s what writers are supposed to develop.  Their ‘voices’ and their ‘styles’.  This is my voice, I suppose.  The thing is, though, I don’t sound like this in real life.  You’d have to break off every other sentence with a seven-second awkward ‘ummm’ and insert a ‘like’ in between every four or so words in order for this to be my real life voice.  One time I heard myself talking on a home video and it was painful.  I bet it would be painful for you too. Really.  Try it sometime.  Because the truth is we’re all living in an unfathomable lie.  I’ve spent the majority of my life thinking I had this really deep, sultry voice.  I also thought I was taller and faster than everyone and that I was a generally intellectual human being.  And then I saw myself on tape.  At first glance, I mistook the scene for just another lame episode of The Angry Beavers.  Maybe even a re-run of another lame episode of The Angry Beavers.  That’s what I thought up until I took another look and realized, to my utter horror, that there was no beaver in that television.  No, no.  That buck-toothed midget thing in there?  Reciting her torah portion for the entire congregation in her nasal munchkin voice?  That, kids, would be yours truly. 

 

Now you all know the real reason I want to be a writer when I grow up.  I go around telling people it’s my passion and proudly recite quotes by Thoreau and Emerson, and then I scuttle off into my little corner and think about my real future, which basically involves becoming a Tibetan monk in a far, faraway land.  So that, like, I’ll never have to speak again.  I’ll just live in my Tibetan village, doing monk things, hanging with my monk friends…not talking.  It’s really a lot more fun than you’d think.  We can play tetherball and stuff.  And don’t forget about the staring contests.  Those are wild. 

 

I guess I could also be ashamed of my real life voice because I’m from Philadelphia.  No one actually knows or cares that I’m from Philadelphia except all the kids I know from New Jersey.  See, New Jerseysians have it embedded into their thick skulls that kids from Philadelphia have Philadelphian accents.  Have you heard of this accent?  Have you heard it in action?  Here is where it’s in action, right here: Laren.  There.  That is the only word in the history of this godforsaken universe that can fall under the category of ‘Philadelphian Accent.’  You say Lauren, we say Laren.  I don’t know if I can handle the intensity of such an outrageous culture clash.  

 

But we can get past all that.  All we have to do is move on and accept the fact that in person I sound like a whining eleven year old boy.  I mean, right now I sound normal, conversational.  I will admit, I just read a page of Catcher in the Rye.  I mentioned this only because it’s relevant to the way I’ve been writing tonight.  Catcher in the Rye is the garlic all of books.  I could read one page of that book and proceed to speak and smell like Holden Caulfield for the rest of the following week.  There’s even a twinge of Holden in my writing right now.  However, I need to say ‘phony’ in order to be a true Holden Caulfield impersonator.  Phony phony phony.  Alright, I’m set.

 

I’m quite exhausted right now since it is nearly two in the morning and I should have gone to bed earlier because I have a driving lesson tomorrow.  That’s right, I’ll be driving. I’ll be ruler of the road, parallel parker extraordinaire, soaring down Millburn Ave. at the respectable speed of ninety miles per three seconds.  Lock up your children and warn the others before it’s too late. 

 

Have an excellent weekend,

 

Daryl.

A Load of Crap

A few days ago I started reading Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut.  While dear Vonnegut was writing this novel, he was experiencing the same problem that I am currently enduring: a load of crap.  Over the course of this year, my mind has been stuffed and zipped up like a bloated, tattered suitcase.  “Jee-sus, what do you got in there, rocks?” one may question.  And yes, my dear friend, pat yourself on the back, not just for reciting such a cliché remark, but for guessing correctly.  Rocks.  Boulders.  I’ve just got rocks and boulders, a lot of weight, and all it’s doing, when I carry all this weight, is making me trip over myself from all of its pointless pressure.  Prisoners, dropping-the-soap prisoners are supposed to perform such futile tasks.  Prisoners are supposed to do that type of thing. 

So here’s what Vonnegut did.  He took all those rocks, all that junk that had been occupying his mind for such an unhealthy amount of time, and he dumped it all into Breakfast of Champions.  Just took a giant shit and out came an international best-seller.

I’m not Kurt Vonnegut, but I do have the same problem he did.  You may notice by the dates of all the entries I’ve posted this year that I hardly update anymore, and the few posts I do bring out into the world well, to be quite frank, suck infinitely.  So to be fair to you and especially to myself, I’ve decided to do as Vonnegut had done and dump all of my shit into this here blog.  Blog.  It even sounds like an appropriate name for a constipated mind’s toilet. 

Well, in that case, here is every unfinished entry I’ve written this year.  I tried my best to put them in chronological order.  You don’t have to read all of them.  In fact, you don’t have to read any of them.  I just need to get rid of them so that maybe, at some point, my mind won’t resemble the carpet in my room, which I haven’t seen for three months.

The First Day of School

Five years ago in fifth grade, I spent three hours picking out the perfect outfit for the first day of school.  The process was a tedious one only because my closet consisted entirely of the same shirt from Limited Too in fifteen different, eye-rotting colors.  Barbie pink or metallic silver?  Sequins or pleather?  The possibilities were endless.  Little did I know that no matter which outfit I ended up choosing for that fateful day, I’d inevitably appear to resemble a hyperactive Spice Girl that never went through puberty.  Eventually, I settled on jeans, the lime green shirt and a sweatshirt, stuffing them in the laundry bin so that they’d be all fresh and clean for the following morning.  Then, after eight hours of restlessly tossing and turning in bed, I jumped out the second my alarm went and retrieved the outfit from the drier.  Fifteen minutes later, backpack in hand, I was out the door and set off anxiously on my brief walk to Lower Gwynedd Elementary School. 

The air was crisp, the grass was dewy, and by the time I arrived in school everyone in Mrs.  Morrissey’s class was present, sun-burnt, and silently twiddling their thumbs in newly assigned seats.  I smiled, acknowledging the people I knew, grinning at my new teacher, and heaved my backpack onto my desk near the door.  Then, I calmly turned around and stood up to unpack my belongings.   And the second I did, the most unexpected thing happened.  People started laughing.  My classmates were in full-out hysterics, clutching their bellies, holding onto the edges of their chairs for support.  Awkwardly, I joined in; looking around the room to see what on earth was so damn funny.  I looked around and realized that every one of my classmates was looking directly back at me.  My heart jumped and my fingers went numb.  I hadn’t wet my pants, there was no toilet paper stuck to the bottoms of my shoes.  My fly was up, my socks were matching.  Mrs. Morrissey’s eyebrows rose into a concerned arch.  She got up from her desk and swiftly pulled me out of the room before I could say anything.  Her face crinkled into a sympathetic scrunch as she hesitantly removed my sparkly pink training bra from the back of my unforgiving sweatshirt from hell.

I never did like the first day of school.

Evil laundry is only one of the reasons.  Then there are always the new lunch tables, the new schedules, the new people, and the way everyone is constantly checking out everyone else.  Holy hell, Alyssa’s boobs got enormous.  Have you seen Stephen’s acne?  Is that road kill or Samantha’s new haircut?  Even if you don’t think they are, people are always judging, nudging, and whispering. “Ah! I missed you!  How was your summer?” is usually just a censored way of saying “So I hear you had sex with five people on your teen tour!”  Braces are off, eyebrows are plucked, and people who aren’t typically bronzed buy tubes of Neutrogena Instant Tan with the high hopes that someone will mistake the artificial orange stain for sheer, magnetizing hotness.  In essence, the first day of school is merely a convention of pathetically insecure, catty, if not cannibalistic, social climbing gremlins. 

 

 

Dance

 

I could say it was a mere mental or physical flaw that was stirred into my gene pool way before I set foot upon this planet.  I could say it was a defect I acquired at birth. I could say I secretly do have two left feet. But then I would be lying.  In truth, there really is no accurate and reasonable excuse.  I just tell it plain and simple.

 

I

Can’t

Dance.

 

Not in front of a camera, not in front of my friends, not in front of my obese cat Todd, not even in front of my dead goldfish.  Why?  Because I’m considerate. 

 

I guess I’ve always had a problem with performing pointless body motions to the beat of some terrible techno dance song.  I guess that would be because I have the need to question. Everything.  The body roll: Are you trying to knock over the person behind you?  The ‘One Hand Up in the Air While Shaking Your Booty At The Exact Same Time’ thing: Is that your idea of multi-tasking? The “Grab the Hand of the Friend Next to You as You Grind Intensely with Some Random Person” method:  Do you think the Eye Twitch is attractive? Because your friend just obtained it.  The Elbow Nudge: Why?

 

 

Art Class

 

“Alright then,” the art teacher said in an unnaturally high voice, “Moms, show your children how to hold a pencil so they can practice their meaningless scribbles.  And who knows?  Maybe by the end of this lesson one lucky little fellow might be able to maintain a straight line.”

 

I looked over at the other three year olds as they stared utterly dumbfounded at the writing utensils that lay before them.  A few children began flicking them so that they rolled off the paint-splattered table onto the floor.  Others curiously chewed on their erasers.  “STOP!” said the art teacher, just as little Ralph jabbed the pencil up his nose.  Mothers hushed their children, took the pencils away.  The teacher’s high heels cliddy-gunked against the dusty wooden floor as she made her way over to where mom and I were sitting.  “May I see that, please?” she practically sung, taking my paper and holding it up for everyone to see, “See this? This is the perfect example of a parent taking control over a child’s creativity.  Mrs. Adler is it? Mrs. Adler undoubtedly aided her daughter in this drawing.  It’s practically impossible for a three year old girl to draw a three-dimensional mouse.  Children at such a young age should be able to draw freely, to learn from their mistakes, to let them teach themselves.  Mrs. Adler, you really must let your daughter thrive on her own imagination or else she may end up never knowing where to find true, wholesome happiness.

 

“Dumbo,” I said a moment later.

 

“Pardon me?”

 

“I drew Dumbo the elphanent. Not a silly mouse.  I drew Dumbo eating breakfast.  And mommy didn’t help me one bit.”

 

The teacher merely shook her head in utmost pity and ordered the class to get back to work. Before the lesson ended, I decided I would make her a picture.

 

“Cute,” she said sarcastically as I happily handed her the drawing of a slaughtered mouse, complete with gauged out eyeballs and a twisted tail. 

 

 

Yom Kippur

I told myself I would fast this year.  I was pretty determined about it, actually.  Last night I even wrote inspirational sayings on my hand to get me motivated.  Things like "Do YOU want to be the 60% on America that is obese?" and "Go ahead. Eat another doughnut, you fatass." still won't wash off my palms. It's not because I want to lose weight.  It's just because I have never, not once in my life, gone an entire day without food. Not even for something as important as Yom Kippur.  People like Siddhartha Gutama and Gandhi make people like me want to sulk around in self doubt for as long as we can manage and then binge on a suitcase full of cookies the second we hear our bottomless pits of stomachs start to rumble.

"Ay eat because Ay'm unhappay.  An' I'm unhappay because Ay eat." ~The Fat Bastard.  

This morning I was sure I would make it this time.  I was about as prepared as a bear might be before hibernation.  The bear eats like he won't for the next three months.  I ate like I wouldn't for the next twenty-four hours.  I probably ate more than the bear.  So, when I woke up this morning, I wasn't hungry for breakfast at all.  Not in the slightest.

For the next hour after I woke up, this sense of fullness slowly deteriorated.  Because the 'break the fast' was supposed to be at my aunt and uncle's house, the place where I had stayed for the night, food was being made.  Lots of food.  Everywhere.  At first, I tried to escape the captivating, seductive smell by hiding upstairs.  But the scent reached under the doors and flooded the place.  I was cornered in a world of brownie mix and Oreo cheese cake, and damnit, there was nothing I could do about it.  I began to go about the house breathing through my mouth only.

Minutes after Finding Out Todd (My Cat) Died

 

I never really cried at funerals.  True, I’ve only been to about three, but this is death I’m talking about.  Solid, blank eternity.  You’d think I’d at least get a lump in my throat as the rabbi monotonously projected his sermon to the pale faces of the stony mourners, at least blink back a single tear of despondency as the sleek, rigid coffin was lowered into that gaping hole in the earth.  Say bye bye to great aunt Margaret, my conscience would scold, squeezing my throat and kicking at my weightless heart.  Cry, Daryl.  For God’s sake, cry for your great aunt Margaret.  For Dear old Gramps. Cry for your Aunt Rosie.  And all I can do is sit there in my black attire, twiddling my thumbs as everyone surrounding me dabs as their mascara smeared faces and sniffles back moans of deepest grief and pain.  And all I can do is feel guilty for not feeling at all, for being so solid, so blank, so black, so ignorantly young.

 

For some reason, when I think of youth I think of summer.  I think of shorts and bare feet and spontaneity and awkward first times.  I think of dancing in the rain, of experiencing forced epiphanies while dancing in that summer rain. Because you know it for a fact that epiphanies only matter when you’re drenched, soaked, shivering under the weight of your heavy clothes clinging like extra skin to your numb limbs.  Because feeling those icy drops fall onto your oily face, feeling them soak up your perfect hair, your perfect makeup, your perfectly fake smile, it makes you feel free.  It makes you forget about

Habits

So today I caught myself in seventh period science.  Picking at my split ends while everyone else was taking notes on punnet squares and hemophilia.  Thinking about nothing.  Just doing these pointless tasks.  I snapped myself out of it, though, when Mrs. Arrigoni called on me to answer a question on the board.  As I walked up to the board I began to wonder.  If I can unconsciously resort to picking at split ends and hang nails at practically every chance I get, even if it’s against my will, what else do I do that I hopelessly can’t control?  I can’t stop picking at my fingers, the very parts of my body that have instant access to anything above all else.  The ten parts of my body that have the most power, the most physical control above all else.  The direct messenger between my brain and the rest of the world.  And nearly half of their use had been dedicated to nitpicking themselves apart, all in an effort to feel.  A useless effort.  A mindless effort.  Not even an effort at all, anymore.  A habit.  A controlling, dictating, absorbing habit. 

 

Being me, I’ve realized that I must be doing something with my hands at all times.  They can’t just exist there, dangling as if they were mere dead weights rocking back and forth like pendulums.  Whether it’s fiddling with my bag, my hair, themselves, they must be doing something.  I don’t know how, but for some reason it makes me feel like an uneasy person.  Why can’t I just be still when I talk to another person?  Why can’t I simply look them dead in the eyes without looking at anything else, without fiddling, without uselessly picking?  What if one day I could feel something through these conversations without that physical pain afflicting the tips of my fingers?  What if I started basing feeling off of emotion?  But I have to be doing something with my hands at all times.  I’d like to say it’s because I’m a writer, but that’s my way of covering what my bigger, underlying problems are.  A label that has a thousand words to go with it.  A diagnosis for a terminal illness that’s so mind-blowing it’s completely embarrassing to describe to the general public.  A name to cover up a cover up.  A name to name not a profession, not a talent, but a flaw.  A habit.  A distraction. 

 

I believe I’ve always known this, ever since the day I first called myself a writer.  But today I really did want to be a writer.  Especially during that moment in seventh period science.  I wanted to live up to the title I had so selfishly placed on myself, a diagnosis, not of my creativity, but of my apathy.  When I came back from to my desk after I had finished answering my question on the board, my hands instantly migrated to each other, immediately resorting back to picking and pulling at each other like the nervous, distracted hands that they were.  And I caught myself once more.  And I pulled my hands apart and looked at them for quite some time.  I tried to stretch them out, pull at each individual finger, press them against the desk to wring out all the pain that has accumulated under the nails.  I cracked my wrists, attempted to crack my knuckles, and I looked at my hands once more.  And they felt so small and numb and brittle.  They looked just as they felt.  They were beginning to twitch, itch with the need to do something with themselves.  I told them to grow.  When they didn’t I did the only thing I really could do without going back to my usual ways.  I started typing on the desk.  Typing my thoughts on my imaginary keyboard on the top of my desk.  Backspacing, capitalizing, punctuation, the whole deal.  My peers must have thought I was positively crazy as I typed on that desk, typing furiously like I was trying to reach this mad deadline for the most important novel of my life.  Type type tapping on my notes, anything that came to mind, anything I observed, everything spilled invisibly, escaping my fingers but going nowhere else.  Going nowhere, sure, but at least, for once, I wasn’t tearing myself apart.

Being Happy

I’ve realized that everything I’ve written this year has been depressing, cynical, and/or painfully sarcastic.  And as much as I love telling dead baby jokes, I think it’s time to move on.  Time to drop the negative aura and pick up something easier to swallow.  I’m sick of cynicism.  Just a giant mass of overly analytical crap dumped on top of my head. But this is no ordinary mound.   It’s a clichéd-metaphorical, talking mound.  And it says things like “Daryl, love isn’t real!  Make a joke about how love isn’t real!”  “Satanic incantations are  huh-larious!”  “End of the world!” “Dead babies!” 

 

I mean, it’s practically Easter.  It’s mid-April.  I can’t just go around telling my dark theories on life while little children frolic in the meadows searching for rainbow eggs hidden by some chuckling fat guy in a bunny suit.  I need to get past all that crap now, get it out of my head and make room for some more positive things, like marshmallow peeps and knitting.  Sarcasm is what a lot of people call ‘a sign of weakness’.  I totally agree with that, totally. I need to strip myself of those types of weaknesses.  I need to be dumped into some ridiculously symbolic river of good feelings and be freaking baptized out of sarcasm.  Yeah, and I know what you’re thinking.  “Less talking more action, Daryl.” Yeah, I know.  So, while I’m on a role, I’m gonna make a list of some positive things that make me happy.  Minus clean socks and watching people watch the Wiggles on Nick Jr.  That’s a give-in. 

 

 

My Room

 

I’ve been living my life in two ways.  I’m not sure how long I’ve been doing this, maybe for this past year, maybe for my entire life.  However, it only recently occurred to me.

 

It occurred to me this morning when I woke up after a very long and horrible night.  I opened my eyes and for a moment I didn’t see anything except for the blinds from my window and then I turned my head and my eyes rested on my giant Almost Famous poster hung up on my door.  The poster is the cover of the movie, of Kate Hudson’s face with the giant sunglasses with ‘ALMOST FAMOUS’ in bold on the lenses.  I looked at the poster and I had no idea what the hell it was doing there, why the hell there was this blonde woman hanging on my door like I met her before, like we were close friends and she had somehow earned the right to watch me at all times as I got dressed and I wrote in my journal and I danced to my music.  I forgot Almost Famous was my favorite movie.  All I could see was this poster that was simply a poster to me.  All I could see was this face of a familiar stranger, this objective glance at something that, to me, had a deeper importance. 

 

 

My Job

 

Well, class, Daryl has some exciting news.  It’s actually so exciting that she’s decided to refer to herself in the third person for the rest of this introductory paragraph.  Basically, ultimately, overall, in essence, Daryl got a job.  Well, she didn’t technically ‘get’ a job, since the job required no interview or resumes or, like, talent, but that, my dear friends, is besides the point.  Daryl is an EMPLOYEE now.  A working class citizen.  Part of The System.  She’s got things that you don’t got.  Like a Lunch Break.  And style.

 

Anyway, I did the third person thing so that I could flatter myself without coming across as conceited.  Clever, huh.  Well, I guess I should fill you in on this job of mine now.  I work at an art gallery in the city.  Actually, I don’t really work there. I simply sit there for eight hours every Saturday as ‘the guard’.  That’s what I call myself. It sort of reminds me of the time kids dubbed me as The Judge in games of tag so that I’d feel important when, in reality, they were just trying to prevent my asthmatic ass from clogging up the field. Besides, everyone else who works at this gallery refers to me as ‘that intern,’ which makes me feel about as valuable as the crusty gum underneath my desk in science class.  Yokay, yeah, whatever, so it’s an internship.  I’m still getting paid, nonetheless.

 

The first thing you should know about being a guard in an art gallery is that in requires absolutely no physical strength.  At least that’s the case for the one I work at.  The only reason those places even hire guards

 

 

My Mom’s Job

 

There is nothing really all that intriguing about my mother’s profession.  She’s a real estate agent.  A particularly talented real estate agent working for Keller Williams. Back when we lived in Pennsylvania and I observed my mom doing her job, I often got so bored that I’d resort to making Leaning Tower of Pisa replicas entirely out of chewed gum by her colleague’s desk.  As I’d mount the slimy work of art into an empty shoebox that used to store files, mom would perpetually gab on her cell phone to bodiless, voiceless names like Barbara or Linda, names that could only belong to middle-aged women that get their hair and nails done twice a week.  Words like “broker”, “mortgage”, and “listing” socked me in the ears every time I tried to watch an old episode of Spongebob in the living room.  Gray haired, gray suited, monotonous men carried briefcases into their blank offices, never offering me a single lifesaver from their candy jars, which were, as one had explained to me as he adjusted his suffocating tie, “Specifically for clients.”  In essence, if mom’s job was a kid at my elementary school, his name would have been Eugene, he’d have a really annoying, nasal voice, and no one would talk to him.

 

I tried the best I could to make the real estate world appear more exciting.  I’d play tag with my sister in the lobby.  Hide and seek in the maze of cubicles.  Then there was always ‘treasure island’, which basically involved us dressing up as pirates, taking the jar of lifesavers during gray man’s bathroom break, and stuffing them into our mouths until we gagged. 

 

In school, I decided to drop the ‘estate’ and simply refer to my mom as a ‘real agent’.  “A real agent?” my peers would marvel, “So, is she, like, some sort of spy?  An agent working for the government?  Did the president assign her to save the world, one potential apocalyptic tragedy at a time?” 

 

“Don’t know,” I’d shrug, “But her car tends to morph into a rocket ship whenever someone threatens to drop a nuclear bomb.”

 

 

Thinking at 3 in the morning

 

Mouse arrow hitting end of screen.

 

 

Bored in Third Period

 

That is the only characteristic of mine that can be compared to a dog. The fact that when it is a beautiful day I have this tugging urge to go for a six mile run.  Many people can accurately be described as 'playful' or 'fun to be around' or 'energetic' or 'hairy'. I'm not really any of those.  Like if I weren't human, the species I’d most likely be placed in would be that of the Felines. But not a ferocious feline.  One of the useless ones that might witness a forest fire and react by licking its anus. Or snootily turning up its moist pink nose to the scorched, gourmet cat food served on a silver platter. A domesticated, fluffy kitten.   

Or maybe I could be a platypus.  I like them.  They're different.  I remember when I was in elementary school I had enough beanie babies to sell them on eBay and in return receive enough money to feed a few thousand starving families.  And for my sixth birthday my grandma and I sought out on an expedition to FAO Schwartz in New York and basically bought every beanie baby they had in stock.  At the time I didn't really know what a platypus was.  So when I saw it in Beanie form, I assumed the manufacturers probably effed up the sewing machine, causing whatever parts made Ducky with whatever parts that made Happy the Purple Hippo to collide and form that thing. 

 

On My Sister’s Anger Issues

 

We were on our way home from the Disney Store when the car came to a sudden stop. There was a muffled crash as the pieces of Abby’s new Lion King toy scattered all over the floor of the car.  Throughout the ride, she found each plastic Disney character and put it back where it belonged.  However, once we got to the highway, Abby was in a state of panic. 

 

“WHERE IS NALA??!” Abby was shrieking, “Mom! Daddy! I CAN’T FIND NALA! WAHHHHHHH.”

 

“Abby, you’re just going to have to wait until we get home,” mom said.

 

“NO!  I NEED NALA NOW!” She roared, kicking furiously and punching the seat in front of her, the ceiling, the windows, “NALA!”

 

Abby’s behavior would have been tolerable.  It probably would have been bearable for the remaining ten minutes of that car ride. It probably would have even been enjoyable had we merely dumped her in the Schuylkill River to begin with.  However, being that we valued our ability to hear, we knew her screams had to come to an end as soon as possible.

 

I acted first with the suggestion of stopping the car to succumb to Abby’s demands of searching for Nala.  This was mainly because she had switched from kicking the back of Dad’s seat to kicking me.  However, mom and dad ignored my crippled condition, refusing to surrender to the bratty gremlin that inhabited the car.

 

Eventually, once she managed to kick dad so that he swerved and almost crashed into a passing truck, the parents decided to move to Plan B.

 

“Abby,” dad said, his face reddening, “Give me the toy.”

 

After some hesitation, she gave it to him. 

 

“If you dare scream one more time, I swear I will throw this thing out the window.”

 

And with that, Abby let out an earsplitting scream of protest, causing China to call a little while later to inform us that we had knocked down The Great Wall. 

 

Dad opened the window and thrust the Lion King toy out onto the side of the highway, never to be seen again.

 

The memory of that car ride has haunted me years now, and even to this day I pity the lost and mangled Disney characters that were so hatefully strewn about the pebbly side of the road.  Would they stay there forever?  Would some car obliviously run them over?  Would someone find them and give them away as a gift?  “Hakuna Matata,” Pumba the giant, gaseous pig would say to console his fellow characters as they starved to death, “It’s our problem-free philosophy, it means no worries!” On the eighth day, they ate him.

 

 

I Wrote This on My Spanish Homework

 

Hi my name is Daryl Seitchik and I am supposed to be in a romance with writing.  One of those arranged marriages, you know?  But my parents aren’t the ones forcing this one me - I am.  I am.  I am.  I am not in love.  And even when I try I can’t be.

 

Writing is made up of words that represent thoughts.  There might be five words in the English language for one little thought, and I can never choose the right one.  I am trying to interpret my own thoughts by letting them come out in this public, common language because that is all I know.

 

Since when does grammar make someone GOOD at WRITING?  Grammar is the proper way to use that generic language, those impersonal words and letters and punctuation.  A good writer?  A good writer can use those words and letters and punctuation to show how he feels, what he thinks, and he doesn’t need any special format to tell him how it’s supposed to be done.

 

Grammar

doesn’t matter.

 

It does only to people that let it bother them.

 

 

Coffee Addict

 

I am that irritating, compulsive foot-tapper who sits behind you in math class.   You hate people like me.  You wish, hope, pray that I’ll be absent on the day of the test, that at the very least I’ll have a sudden stroke, collapse to the floor, and have to leave early.  But I never do.  In fact, I have a nearly flawless attendance record, a check in every box of the attendance sheet for every day of this school year.  And each one of those checks, each individual check represents forty-three solid minutes of my foot psychotically vibrating only inches away from your desk.  “Tap,” it mutters as Mrs. Perpendicularlines explains the Pythagorean Theorem to the class, “Tap, tap, tap, tap, TTTAP, you sonovabitch.”  At first, it’s merely a sound.  That’s all the tapping is, just this flick of sound that poses as a minor distraction.  Fives minutes pass.  Seven.  Tap. Tap. Tap.  By ten minutes, it’s no longer a just a sound, but a violent perpetual hammering deep within the confines of your own suffering mind.  You want nothing more than to stab my foot with a tainted syringe but, instead, you settle for Plan B and politely pat my shoulder and say “Hey, could you cut that out?”

 

“Cut what out?”

 

You gesture over to my possessed foot. 

 

“Oh,” I say, blushing, “Sorry.  I don’t even realize when I do it.”

 

Then there’s silence.  Sweet, golden silence.

 

Meanwhile, I’ve managed to twist my legs into a distorted pretzel-like structure, and I am wondering how in the name of baby Jesus I will be able to stand up when the bell rings.  Sitting there paralyzed, I begin to hold my breath, staring at my feet, scolding them not to make any sudden moves.  The clock is tic-tic-ticking. “Tap,” dares that wretched tic, but I hold my ground.  Tic tic tic tic tic toc. Tic toc tic toc tic toc tic toc.  “Neat!” I think, “I’m grooving to the phat beatz of Father Time!” Instinctively, I begin to drum along, repeatedly clicking my mechanical pencil to the rhythm of the never-ending song. Like nothing was wrong.  It sounded like an echoey gong. Long. Bong.  King Kong. Man, I’m on a role. 

 

Anyway, you hate people like me.  My type of people.  Our kind.  “You people!” cry your people, and my people furiously tap our feet with rage.  Who are we?  What are we?  Coffee Addicts.  Should you care? No.  Even I don’t care.  I drink so much coffee that I don’t even feel like staying on the same subject anymore.  Peace out.

 

THE END

 

If you read all that, I applaud you.  I know it was long and tedious and it really wasn’t all that worth it in the end, but at least it didn’t give you Chlamydia.  This entry is twelve pages on a word document, so I think I’m just going to fake my own death so I don’t have to write some meaningful conclusion to this giant mass of crap.  I don’t like writing anymore.  I don’t like writing because writing involves thinking and I don’t like my thoughts.  I’ll get back to you when I have a clear head.  (Author of this entry experiences a sudden aneurism and dies.  Haha, I kid you.).

I Love You Like a Mathlete Loves Pi

 

50 Cent once said “I love you like a fat kid loves cake”

But I love you more than the circumference of the earth

And I would measure its entire diameter

Just so I could take the Pi from PiR-squared and make it into a delicious dessert and I could say

“I love you like a mathlete loves pi”

I come to you with obtuse arms and the distinct belief that we are

A linear pair, our hearts not similar, but congruent

Side Side Side congruent, because I want to be near you forever.

No angle could separate the two of us.

Our distance formula is simply the supplementary bond we share.

Together, we form a straight line,

A line that hits the midpoint of our hearts.

“I love you like a fat kid loves cake,” said 50 Cent

And I say “If I had one love, then it’d be you”

Because that is a conditional statement

That is true

And the converse, inverse, and contrapostive

Would be too

Unlike that concave-brained 50 Cent,

Who doesn’t know

2 cents

about Geometry.

Feeling Small

 

Sam: Every time I go to the MoMa I spend more time checking out what people are wearing than the actual artwork on display.  People are just so artsy here.  I can’t think of any other way to describe it.  Eccentric?  Capricious? Whimsical?  My SAT vocabulary cards probably have a better idea.  Whatever they are, I want to be just like them.  One of those artsy city slickers, sipping black coffee at some tiny hidden café, wearing odd hats found in trendy boutiques, listening to vinyl records in my messy apartment.  That’s basically what I dream about every time I come here. My awesome future. 

 

The actual reason I come here, though, is entirely for the sake of taking notes in my sketchbook, a doodle here, a sketch there.  I have to carry that damn thing around with me everywhere now, since the AP Art final exam portfolio thing has to be completely done by the end of this year.  Thirty-six college-worthy pieces need to be all packed up and ready to go by mid-May.  Thirty-six.  I don’t think my entire life’s compilation of works even adds up to thirty-six.  My age doubled doesn’t even add up to thirty-six. And yet as ridiculous as the number is, I’m a slave to it.  My room is trashed with magazine cutouts, oil paints, crusty brushes, crumpled up pieces of paper.  Twenty-six down, ten to go, I tell myself.  Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine.  The things I do to get into college.

 

My little sister Rory flicks my shoulder when I daze off like I just did.  I forgot to mention her.  Mom makes me bring her along on my MoMa expeditions because it’s easier than hunting around for some brace-faced babysitter.  You’d think I’d mind this, considering this is my future I’m dealing with, but she’s decent company.  She flicks me on the shoulder sometimes, like she did just now, but it’s only when she wants to move on to the next painting in an exhibit and I’m blindly staring off at the passing people. 

 

“Sam,” she says, and her eyebrows rise into the middle of her forehead, her mouth gaping, “Look over here.  I think I’ve seen this one before.”

 

She grabs the sleeve of my jacket and pulls me to the piece, one that is shrouded with several chin-stroking observers.  We fish through the crowd, peer over some heads, and I recognize the piece about as quickly as I’d recognize Madonna. 

 

 

“I know I’ve seen this before,” she says, biting her bottom lip, eyebrows furrowing.  I stare at her like she is the biggest moron on the planet.

 

“Van Gogh’s Starry Night, Rory.  Do you live in a cave?”

 

She shrugs.  “If I do then you do.”

 

That's the one thing that annoys me.  When my nine-year old troll sister outwits me.  I just want to be like, “No, no, Rory, now you’re supposed to whine and complain and be embarrassingly immature because I’m just flat out more intelligent than you,” but I know perfectly well that it’s simply not part of her nature to act like that.  She’s peculiar, I think.  Peculiar is the perfect word for her, as Starry Night soaks in and reflects out of her deep brown eyes.  Only if she were me, she would know that Starry Night isn’t even that great of a painting.  I never understood what made it so freaking special, so unmistakably famous, an icon of the art world.  I mean, look at it, I think, it’s just a bunch of lines.  I bet I could do an exact replica of Starry Night about as easily as I could make my bed, paint my toenails, finish my homework.  Even Rory could pull off a Starry Night if she wanted to, and I tell her so.  But she only continues to gape at it in undisputed wonderment, like she does with the millions of other things that positively fascinate her. 

           

Rory’s young.  When you’re young and naïve like that, you simply can’t understand art. Art is a skill. An acquired skill.   

 

I flip open my worn-out sketchbook and slowly thumb through my own drawings, slightly tilting them towards the unblinking eyes of my hypnotized sister.  As if saying, hey, look, look at what I did. These, Rory, are hardcore pieces of art. My drawings of real people, realistic drawings of existing things.  It takes skill to draw reality, years of art classes and sketchbooks and practice. She looks at Starry Night and probably sees a recent episode of Spongebob Squarepants, The Rugrats.  A scene from Finding Nemo. I look at Starry Night and I see lots and lots of lines, movement.  That’s what Van Gogh was trying to convey, anyway.  Movement.  And he did a great job and all, but seriously.  Starry Night?  Come on, anyone could do it. 

 

Rory:  I know Sam doesn’t want me to be with her right now, but I really like this place.  I felt like a grownup when we took the train into the big city and I could stand a foot away from a skyscraper, try to look up at its top, and feel like a tiny ant because the skyscraper appears to never end.  And as much as I love the city, Sam loves it even more.  I can see it when she’s busy seeing everyone else.  She is interested in people even more than the paintings in the museum.  She looks at them with wide eyes and an open mouth, and I have to wake her up every few minutes to show her a pretty picture I found.

 

I flick her extra hard when I come across a bluish painting with all these people around it.  I saw it and it instantly set off a spark, like a familiar song or smell, and I knew right away that I had seen it somewhere before in my life.  When we get a better view of it, she gives me that older sister look she gives and tells me the painting is called Starry Night by Van Gogh.  Then she keeps acting like she’s older and better and smarter, and I don’t even care because Starry Night is so beautiful and so close that I almost feel like I am a part of it.  Sam doesn’t feel the same way, though, because she is looking at her own drawings.

 

When I look at this painting, it isn’t just a painting.  It’s a surrounding feeling as well.  The sky is gigantic.  It has gusts and paths of stars swirling and twinkling, a shimmering wind in the night.  The sky is gigantic, enormous, so much bigger and more powerful than that tiny, dark little city crouching below it.  This painting, although it is so much smaller than me, it makes me feel smaller than the smallest ant.  Here I am in this huge city, this busy place with so many people and places, feeling small. Here I am in this huge city with never-ending buildings, those towers, those skyscrapers.  And they don’t even touch the shimmering and swirling blanket of starry night.

 

I really do want Sam to see what I see, but she is still too in love with the big city, looking at her own drawings as she stands in front of the Starry Night.  Sam is an artist and she tries to act like one, but all of her drawings are of models from magazines and photographs.  She tries to teach me what art is by showing me what she does.  Most of her art is of what she sees in real life.  She says this is art because it is hard to copy real life onto paper, but I always thought we had cameras for that.

 

As I watch Sam watching her art, I hope that one day she will paint something like Starry Night.  I don’t mean she should copy Starry Night, either, because anyone with a paint-by-numbers kit can do that.  I hope one day she will be painting a picture of one of her beautiful models, and she will realize that painting reality, copying the real world – those paintings can’t go any farther than the reality that they live in.  I hope that one day she will feel small like me and she will toss reality out of her apartment window. And I hope that on that same day she, with a little help from the endless swirling sky, learns how to paint with what she feels.

When I was in fifth grade I based all of my assumptions of high school off of the movie Drive Me Crazy.  This was a movie starring Melissa Joan Hart, involving some sort of scheming love story and an over-exaggerated prom experience, motel rooms and all.  Cheerleaders were worshipped, popular, if you will.  The football players were dumb shits but people would do the whole part the sea thing for them in the hallway whenever they walked by.  Geeks sat at one table, art freaks at another.  Big buff fat guys shoved little wimpy freshmen into the lockers.  People dry humped outside of class.  And people generally looked older.  I figured I’d have some intense boyfriend by high school, too, and I’d probably have really gigantic boobs as well.  Then I turned fifteen and all those ridiculously optimistic dreams fell to crap.

 

High school ain’t nothing like that. You come with will all these delicious misconceptions, then two years in all you want is to listen to really bad rock music and run around screaming in empty rooms to release your underlying rage.  Here, my dear friends, are the most common misconceptions about these four years of my life.  I constantly have to remind myself that, too.  That it’s only four years.

 

Aw, Man, Another Entry About High School.

 

1.    These aren’t the best years of your life.  I don’t know why people say they are supposed to be because all I feel like right now is this giant morphing machine that is constantly growing and changing in every possible way.  No one wants to be a giant morphing machine.  When I think of giant morphing machines I think of those alien spawns in that movie.  I have no idea what I’m talking about.  But not only are people changing right now, but I feel like we’re all so busy analyzing the way we’re changing that we aren’t able to control which way we are headed.  You know? No?  Me either.  The point is that high school is really just a trip that leads onto bigger things.  Your way to the top.  If you look back on high school as, by far, The Best Years of Your Life, clearly the mountain you were climbing was a small one.

 

2.    The Hallways.  I came into high school expecting the hallways to be these deserted runways that you could basically strut your stuff on in slow motion so that you’d look excellent in memories and you’d fit with the rhythm of the background music that would be playing in someone’s head.  But hallways are nothing like that.  I don’t even have the glory of stepping on other people because I’m one of the slow walkers that people yell at.  I’m the kid with the flapping soles on my shoes because so many kids have brutally stepped on the backs of them. People get hallway rage here.  There’s road rage and in high school there is hallway rage.  Hallway rage is actually much worse than road rage because the person doing the raging is much more capable of physically beating the crap out of you or emotionally screwing you over.  If I had a physical wound for every time I’ve been emotionally bashed in the hallway, both of my legs would have been amputated and fed to famished wolves by now.  Just last Tuesday some bored senior decided to take all of his boredness out on me, telling me to STAND STILL IN THE HALLWAY WHILE THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE IS GOING ON, BITCH.  And I really, really, wanted to go up to him and say something like “Hello, cheerio, can you buy me a crumpet?” so that he’d think I was British and feel like a total idiot, but I decided against it since every time I attempt a British accent I sound like a trannsexual version of Austin Powers.  Anyway.

 

3.    The Cheerleaders.  I’m just going to say it straight out.  Our cheerleaders are not hot.  They are not hot at all.  When I see our cheerleaders cheer against the Livingston cheerleaders, I want to cry in a corner and read ‘Don’t Kill Yourself’ books for them.  Okay, not really.  They look like they’re enjoying themselves out there.  But, I mean, those movies.  The cheerleaders were hot in those movies.  They owned those movies.  Bring it On.  I memorized the entire cheer in the beginning of that movie.  For nothing.  I kind of like how our cheerleaders don’t own the school though.  Actually, no one really owns our school.  We’re practically communists here.  Except for the occasional rising asshole.  But that guy is an asshole, so the only people that generally care about him are his asshole friends.

 

4.    The Front Lawn.  Take a look at the beginning of every teen movie.  It will always start with some loud punk rock song, giving a sampling view of a high school front lawn before the bell rings.  These front lawns are infested with students, smoking cigarettes, playing guitar, doing cheers, talking.  I couldn’t wait for high school solely for that reason.  I just wanted to dwell in front of the school with all the cool kids.   I don’t know why we don’t actually do that.  The weather might mess up our hair?  The grass is wet?  I don’t know.  People generally resort to that dreaded hallway, walking aimlessly back and forth and grumbling about running into one another. 

 

5.    Dress Code.  In Drive Me Crazy Melissa Joan Hart came to school wearing a bikini.  So when I was nine I’d always draw pictures of my high school self wearing bathing suits in math class.  I’m glad my assumption was incorrect.

 

6.    Senior Prank.  I blame this one on the college process.  Yeah, yeah, whatever, you have senioritis.  But you’re in college now.  Everyone wants to be in college now.  College dictates everyone’s lives around here.  We are the American Hermione Grangers of the new millennium.  “So, you’re saying I might die.  Or worse, get REJECTED??!?” is the typical mindset of the average Millburn student.  So, unfortunately, filling Mrs. Pitt’s office with five tons of chocolate pudding is entirely out of the question.  No, no, instead our class will donate a new scoreboard, a new vending machine.  Great, thanks, thanks for that, really guys.  Now piss someone off, for god’s sake.

 

7.    School Dances.  I figured we would have a school dance at least once a month in the gym.  And it would always be this huge production, with sparkly balloons and tiny sandwiches and punch in those circular bowls.  And there would be a slow song and everyone would get really nervous and gradually people would pair off.  I always pictured myself being the kid that sat in one of the side chairs watching everyone dance as I sipped my punch that didn’t even taste that good, and then my great grandpa would come out of nowhere and offer to dance and then I’d dance with him and everyone would laugh at me.  That never happened in any teen movie I’ve ever seen, but that’s how it always plays out in my twisted mind.  Instead of dances we have those parties.  It’s basically the same deal minus the punch and the slow songs and my great grandpa.  However, couches sure beat those cold, hard side wall chairs.

 

8.    Lunch. More specifically, food fights.  Food fights just seem like they’re supposed to happen in high school cafeterias.  Some bitch calls a bitch a bitch, and then flying edible slime all over the place.  This place is too polite for food fights.  We hardly even have lunch aides anymore, either.  In the middle school we practically had a lunch aide for every table, with printed out constitutions of the Laws of the Lunchroom that they followed religiously.  Exit the facility in a straight line, show up on time, sit down.  We have so much freedom during lunch now, and never once have we taken advantage of it. Someone needs to take action.  Not on me, though.  And I can’t start it, either.  The vice principal already knows my name, my age, and my social security number.

 

9.    The Girls’ Locker Room.  Supposedly this is where all the secrets come from.  In the movies, people travel far and wide to trudge through the air vents and catch an earful of what goes down in the girls’ locker room.  I would feel very sorry for you if you did, because the most significant thing you’d probably hear there would be something along the lines of “Aw shucks, someone left their tampon right by the soap!”  Unfortunately enough, we have technology now.  Any dark secret we might have has probably been strategically transferred through a text message. 

 

10. Take a brief glance at the time in which this entry was posted.  Yeah, holy hell, Daryl has positively no life.  I still have more to say, but I want to experience tomorrow rather than sleep through it like I usually do.  I don’t always need to fill up to ten anyway.  3, 5, 10, it always has to be one of those for some reason. 

 

One thing I did get right about high school is that you get a better sense of who you are there.  I am more myself now than I have ever been in my entire life.  Everyone seems to be themselves times ten in high school.  The angry kids dress angry; the happy ones wear really bright polo shirts.  Then you get older and know how to control your emotions.  You mellow out.  But being extreme is fun every once in awhile.  It gives me more to write about.  It gives me more reasons to keep observing and living in general.

 

Also, Happy Passover.

 

Daryl.

A Really, Really Ridiculously Long Explanation as To Why I Haven’t Written Anything Decent in About a Year

 

When it all boils down to it, the majority of my life’s problems seem to be directly linked to the fact that I wore pigtails in the third grade.  These weren’t your typical pigtails, though. You wouldn’t find them on a freckly seven year old playing with her Barbie dolls in a sandbox.  My pigtails were meticulously crafted works of art at the time, inspired by those of Baby Spice, Brittany Spears, Amanda Bynes during her “Ask Ashley” era.  I wore my pigtails so high, so tightly on my head that if you took a guitar pick and strummed the most straining hairs, you could play “Purple Haze” with enough accuracy to round up a bunch of aging hippies and host your own private Woodstock.   I wore them so symmetrically that the part in the middle of my head was no longer a part, but a penetrating incision that would, over time, cause both sides of my head to split into separate plates and collide every time I attempted to finger paint or solve a math problem.  There is no doubt in my mind that prior to the Pigtail Plague of 1998 I was equally intelligent in all academic walks of life.  I could do long division with as much ease as drawing a self portrait.  Science class involved me waving one hand in the air, both hands in the air, standing on my desk all for the sake of answering a question, going up to the board to explain the theory of relativity. 

 

Then fourth grade hit and all of the sudden life was a Disney movie of rainbows and frolicking centaurs.  “Pass the box of crayons!” I’d sing to my fellow chorus nerds as I twirled and drew pictures of my imaginary fairy friends.  Recesses became dedicated to constructing abridged versions of Annie and The Lion King and The Nutcracker.  I wore ballet flats to gym class, referred to Picasso as “one sweet dude”.  I was upgraded to accelerated chorus, downgraded to Special Ed. Math. 

 

“Which box of crayons?” a fellow student would inquire, “The set of 25 or 90?”

 

“What’s the difference?” I’d wonder, scratching my pigtail strangled scalp in utter confusion.

 

After a few marking periods of undercover investigation, my teachers came to a groundbreaking conclusion.  “Daryl is…special,” they wrote under the comments section of my report card, “Clearly, she is a complete left-minded thinker.”

 

Although at the time I was unaware that the term ‘left minded thinker’ was just another synonym for ‘borderline retard”, I still knew this couldn’t possibly be a good thing.  I knew perfectly well that only a year before I was a bright kid, an intelligent kid, maybe even a child prodigy had I continued with gymnastics.  Now, in fourth grade, I took on the appearance of a chubby, pre-pubescent Spice Girl on acid.  I could have blamed it on the curriculum, my life at home, genetics.  However, being that I am and will forever be failing science, I’ve always blamed it on the pigtails, the pigtails that basically split my head in two. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wearing White after Labor Day

 

To make a long story just a tad bit shorter, the disappearance of the right side of my brain basically resulted in what I like to call Obsessive Chorus Disorder.  For some twisted reason, I figured nailing every singing solo at every chorus concert would be the most effective way to attract members of the opposite sex.  “Oh Danny Boy, the pipes the pipes are calling…” I would coo into the mic like it was a mating call of the wild, and the only male attention I’d receive came from my grandpa and his flashing video camera.

 

Angry at the world, I’d spend lonely hours eating my feelings.  Love was replaced with Boston crème doughnuts and fudgecicles.  Happiness with cheese burgers.  Grief with French fries.  By the middle of fourth grade, not only was I into show tunes, but I was practically an ogre.  I was actually so large that the only things I could wear were oversized sweaters with matching leggings.  I’d never mix and match these outfits, either.  It was always a red sweater with red leggings, orange with orange, white with white.  Needless to say, The Fashion Police of my grade found ways to make fun of me in practically every color of the rainbow. 

 

Red:  "See Daryl’s outfit?  That’s why tomatoes are considered fruits."

 

Orange: "Hey!  Charlie Brown! We found him! We found the Great Pumpkin!"

 

Yellow: "Big Bird called.  He wants his suit back."

 

Green:  "Dreamworks claims you inspired their new movie Shrek."

 

Blue:  “Oompa loompa doo padee doo…”

 

You get the point.  I did, too, actually. I tried, really, I tried to fit in, blend somehow.  Never once did it occur to me that all I needed to do was hold back on the sweets and buy a sweater that wasn’t screaming “KICK ME, I’M MASSIVE”.  Instead, I coped with the situation in the only way that seemed logical at the time – I wore only white. 

 

I did it because white is such a blank color.  A nothing color that people tend to disregard.  But for those few days when I wore only white, it wasn’t the Pillsbury Doughboy wisecracks that got to my head.  Those were expected.  It had more to do with what people like my mom said, my aunts, even some random boys in my homeroom.

 

“Why the hell are you wearing white after labor day?”

 

Like it was a crime.  Like I’d committed unadulterated murder by wearing white leggings and a white sweater in the middle of February.  What in god’s name was I thinking wearing white after Labor Day?  What kind of sick, menacing creature was I turning into?

 

The thing was, back then there was that little mob of Fashion Police to take care of situations such as that.  “Freeze! Put down the weapon!” they’d say to the boy clutching the plastic pocket protector, and the world was a better place.  But it seems as though we don’t have anyone looking out for us anymore.  Gone are the days when sex symbols wore pigtails. Gone are the times when wearing white in the winter got you a permanent reservation in hell.  Problems are bigger now.  Problems are harder to solve.  And I’ve had one tremendous problem for this entire year.

 

The best way to understand this problem of mine would be to open up a blank word document and stare at it unblinkingly for seven consecutive months.  However, I’m pretty sure none of you have the lack of social life to pull that off, so the next step would just be to understand the color white.

 

When I arrived home from camp I had just experienced the greatest summer of my entire life.  Two whole months of color war, excellent rice krispie treats and the beloved Lake Thompson.  All I wanted was to preserve it in the exact condition I had left it in.  All I wanted to do was take the lessons and memories of the summer and experience them over and over again as the air got colder and my workload increased. I stargazed when there weren’t any stars in the sky.  I walked around barefoot in the frost. It came to the point when I couldn’t find any other way to be happy. 

 

This entire year has brought out my pathetic rebellious streak. I was wearing white way after Labor Day. I was breaking the rules all for the sake of preserving things that would forever remain in the past.  I figured that somehow I could live solely in the past but grow and mature at the same time.  I thought that maybe I was being smart by preserving, by keeping everything I’ve learned and experienced inside of me so that it could forever swarm around in my mind and give me a sense of false security.  But everything bottled up – all that did was weigh me down, make me too tired and preoccupied with my disorganized thoughts to even feel willing enough to stand up for some new experiences.  I’ve spent this entire year carrying around all my thoughts like a dead weight, so focused on keeping them perfectly preserved that I forgot what they were about in the first place.

 

And that, kids, is white. Every color in the world mashed together, but none are reflected.  It’s a giant mass of blankness, a wad of dead weight. 

 

I’m not trying to go psychoanalytical therapist on you.  There is no leather couch in my room.  I don’t wear ‘spectacles’ or compulsively take notes on the way you bat your eyes.  Granted, I do think too much.  It doesn’t mean I’m sick in the mind, that any minute now I’m going to burst into a fit of tearful confessions and threats of suicide.  I’m not suffering from acid reflux disease, diabetes, cancer.  What I’m suffering from, what I’ve been suffering from, what I’ve painstakingly endured every day for the past seven months, every time I pick up a pencil, a pen, a freaking piece of chalk – is writers’ block.  

 

Writers’ block, in essence, is the gob of white on a writer’s palette of ideas.  By itself, it is nothing.  Alone, writers’ block is just the bottling up of a million different thoughts and ideas.  Swarming around, crowded, in a claustrophobic mind.  None can escape, none are reflected, and none ever reach the paper.  What is often mistaken as a lack of ideas is really an abundance of them, only the writer is too afraid of letting them out into the world.  Too afraid that they won’t turn out just right.

 

And that is why everything I’ve ever written this year has been watered down.  The few pieces I did manage to post on this site were my ideas, stingily removed from my mind and mixed with that whiteness.  I would be aiming for a deep blue and end up with pale one.  When white isn’t acting alone, when writers’ block is blended in with what a writer is trying to convey, that deep blue, it goes pale.  It doesn’t stay true to the author’s actual thoughts.  It is shallow, forced.  Even as I write this entry, I can’t help but feel that I’m not expressing myself the way I want to be. 

 

I don’t want to live like this anymore, carrying all this dead weight, an entire years’ worth of pressure on my back, weighing me down like a massive white sweater soaking in the frozen memories of what’s already happened.  I’ve just been too scared to let it all go, afraid that if I did I would loose it or, even worse, ruin it.  But it has finally occurred to me that the best writers do just that –write.  Not bottle every thought, memory, idea inside until they implode into blankness.  There’s only one cure for writers’ block, and that’s to just let it all out.  Whether it is illiterate psychobabble or aphorisms fit for Emerson, just get it on the paper.  Let it all out onto that white sheet of paper; cover it up until all possible blank spaces are filled with the raw colors of your mind.  Once I see those true colors on paper, I’ll know my mind has finally been relieved of writers’ block.  It is once I see my experiences as words reflecting back at me that I’ll know that horrible spell has been broken.  After all, even the best of us wear white after Labor Day.

 

 

I’ve noticed that for this past year my ears have become much more sensitive to sound.  As I try to read, write, think in general, there will always be some sound distracting me. A thought emerges hesitantly in my mind, like a deer about to cross the street.  It cautiously looks one way, it looks another, and as far as the thing can tell the coast is all clear.  So it makes a run for it, it dashes, and I can sometimes catch a glimpse, see an instant of the thought that was attempting to cross my mind.  But most times?  Most times that doesn’t happen at all.  Most times these giant snow-plowing trucks of distracting sound come and smash them into the pavement.  Grind them into the rough roads until all that’s left is some mutated, bloody puddle of what could have potentially been the greatest thought I’d ever thunk.  Thunk.  That’s what happens when the sounds come.  I don’t think; I throw my thoughts out there and they crumble, they plummet, they thunk.  Could be’s, would have beens, oh…too bad’s. I think I might finally understand the meaning of lif- *phone rings*.  So I guess that’s why my parents got divor-*dog barks*.  Maybe all I really need is to be- “DARYL CLEAN YOUR GODDAMN ROOM.”  In all honesty, if I had a baby for every thought I tried to have this year; nearly 99% of them all would have been sickly miscarriages.

 

It is a battle between the real world and the one inside my head.  Snowplowsatandeermurder is telling me to go! Live my life!  Get those damn thoughts out of the way because all they do is make the tires sticky, block the windshield, leave a nasty spot on the highway. Don’t think, be assertive!  Don’t ponder, drive!  That’s what those sounds are screaming to me when they run over the remains of my wilting imagination, that’s the point they are, quite literally, trying to get through my clouded head.  I don’t have a choice as to whether I want to listen to them or not.  It’s sound; it filters into my ears no matter how tightly my hands are pressing over them, it seeps into the cracks and stealthily vibrates behind my eyes, disrupting the silence, the peace, those hopeless deer attempting to cross the street. 

 

Some people drive.  There are some people that simply enjoy being reminded of the physical place in which they physically exist in.  But, for the most part, not me. Every time the real world pitches in any way, all I feel is like I’ve just been woken from a dream, like I’m being shaken out of bed by some obnoxious alarm clock, constantly reminding me that I’m too lazy, too spacey, too ponderous to fully enjoy or even, simply, live my life.

 

And as I sit here, typing, distracted, I pretend not to notice my mom talking on the phone, my step dad clanging away with the dishes, my sister chasing the dog.  I pretend that the roads are safe to cross and for once, that it is okay to explore what’s going on outside of them.  That’s all I really can do without having to go through the whole tedious process of changing my entire being.  “You’re useless, Daryl.”  “You’re so ridiculously spacey, Daryl.”  “Wake up, Daryl.”  And you know what?  I am awake.  I’m just taking a different route.  An unprecedented route that could, potentially, lead me to becoming blood and guts in the middle of that mainstream road.  I am ridiculously, shamefully, unbelievably spacey.  Yes, truly, I am.  Snap your fingers in my face, clap your hands next to my ears, pinch me.  You will find me lost in thought, hopefully, lost in the woods on either side of the road.  That is the only route I know and I’m not just going to snap out of it for the sake of appearing normal and sane to everyone else.  I am a lazy, apathetic, dreaming, writer.  And let me make something quite clear.  That, my dear friends, does not make me useless.  It makes me walk into walls that I’m nearly positive weren’t there five seconds before.  It causes me to barrage you with ‘what?’s’ up until you may consider slashing at me with a chainsaw.  It completely confirms the fact that I never, ever do my homework.  I probably won’t be the CEO of some major company.  Chances are I’m not going to be your boss someday.  Call me ‘space cadet’ as I stare at a blank wall.  ‘Shy’ when I don’t strike up a conversation.  ‘Introverted’.  ‘Weird’.  ‘Dead Inside’. Whatever suits your fancy.  It’s really alright.  I haven’t been run over yet.

Tribute to Toddy

 

 

On Friday the 13^th my cat Todd died of colon cancer.  I could go into the whole speech about how Todd Was No Ordinary Cat or about That Time When Todd Pooped On The Couch, but really, those stories only seem to reduce his degree of feline excellence. Sure, Todd had, at one point in time, ceremoniously left a massive dump on our living room sofa, but come on, every cat does that.  It’s the unwritten code of catdom expansion.  Columbus left his mark on the New World; Todd left a present on the cushions.  However, don’t get Todd confused with every other domesticated kitten that ever left a few little pellets of love on their newfound territory.  Todd was the Cortez of the household cats.  Todd was the freaking Zeus of those sappy, milk-sipping bundles of pathetic fluff.  First God invented dark, light, land, sea, fish, and then he doth exclaimed “Let there be Toddy!”  And with that, Toddy burst forth from the fiery flames between heaven and hell, thundering through the churning oceans of the earth and wrestling with the tumultuous clouds that strangled the sky.  He galloped, he rocketed, he sprang, and with the robust swipe of his colossal paw, the dinosaurs were extinct.  “Meow,” he roared as we retrieved him from the mighty wrath of the pet store and taught the little bugger how to tinkle in a litter box. 

 

Todd lived his life at my dad’s house in Pennsylvania, full of luxury and unlimited servings of meow mix.  It was for this reason that he inevitably grew up to have the physique of a sack of lard.  If Todd was a human being, he would have been Kenan Thompson with the fat suit.  Kristie Allie before the Jenny Craig effect. Todd was so fat he ate every last one of those ‘Yo momma’s so fat” jokes just for the sake of washing down the baby elephant he inhaled for a mid-afternoon snack.  Todd was so fat that when he stepped on a scale it read “to be continued”. Todd was so fat that, even if he really wanted to, he couldn’t roll in his grave. Actually, now that I think about it, he wasn’t all that fat. He was just…husky. A mere twenty-five solid pounds of love and cholesterol. 

 

The only problem with Todd’s size was that he never really got used to the other earthly forces that were incomparably more powerful than him.  You see, Todd was invented before all that crap.  Long before man, animal, gravity, inertia, there existed the indestructible Todd. Quite frankly, he was a wild, agile beast.  He strutted over mountains, glided down rivers, soared through the sky.  It was during one of these flying excursions that an apple came out of nowhere and fell on his iron skull.  “Haha,” said God, “Isn’t gravity COOL??!” 

“Shit,” said Todd, and proceeded to fall 30,000 feet and smack deep into the earth’s fairly dense crust.  Today we refer to this historic landmark as ‘The Pacific Ocean’. 

 

Ever since that fateful fall, Todd had resorted to being a land dweller.  Not that he actually had a choice.  By the time he pulled himself back up onto his paws and dusted all the boulders off his back, inertia pulled a fast one, stating that “all objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force.”  So, being that no force is more prodigious than the almighty Todd, he pretty much laid sprawled out in the exact same spot for greater half of the Cenozoic Era.  Eventually, we found him, shivering profusely on Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec.  The civilians were complaining, so we got Willy Wonka to split the poor guy up into little itty bitty molecule-sized bits and transport him to the suburbs of Pennsylvania.  From there, we built our house around him and admired that fact that he was just too goddamn fat to even walk up to eat from his food bowl. 

 

Actually, only about 15% of the above story is in fact true.  Todd just told it to impress the ladies.  Nonetheless, it’s not that far-fetched.  Sir Toddy was and will always be the greatest pet I’ve ever had.  Not even a pet.  A brotha.  A homie.  Nearly half of the drawings and paintings I made during my childhood were inspired by him.  Practically all of my secrets over the past twelve and a half years have been whispered into his hairy ear.  Sure, he’s just another cat, but to me Todd was always one of the few stable things in my life.  No matter how much I grew, how much people changed, how many people left, my big old Todd would forever be the obese, observant, lazy turd of fluff he had always been.  Seeing him gave a similar sensation to going into my old house and taking a nap in my former room.  Only with Todd the police probably wouldn’t get involved. 

 

Of course, I’ve had my fair share of other pets.  As a child, I always believed that we got these excess pets solely for the sake of keeping Todd company.  That basically meant I didn’t have to feed them, play with them, or acknowledge their existence in general because, whatever, that was all Todd’s job.  They’re Todd’s friends; Todd should take care of them.  They’re Todd’s sidekicks; let them be cute and fluffy on their own terms. 

 

Needless to say, seven hermit crabs lost their lives.  Twenty-something goldfishes choked on their own poop.  My fourth grade class’s pet guinea pig, Gizmo, was nearly run over by a garbage truck.  When I was nine, I collected an entire jar of caterpillars and left it out in the blazing sun for two weeks.  I was the apathetic dictator of the house pet world.  The Abusive Shaker of the Fish in the Ziploc Baggie. Once in my possession, no one was safe.  Hardly anyone survived.  Except, of course, for the select four.

 

Although Trixie died three years ago, I still consider her one of the survivors.  I took care of her and loved her like she was Todd’s long lost girlfriend.  And she was a cute cat, she really was.  She just had a…streak.  One minute she would be purring and nuzzling up against your knee, licking your fingers and playing contentedly with her bouncy ball, and then a second later she’d get injected with steroids and morph herself into the incredible hulk of feline bitchery, tearing apart the furniture, slashing and hissing vituperatively at anything with legs because move, bitch, Trixie has a hairball. 

 

If Trixie took human form, she would probably be Paris Hilton with a fatal case of Tourette’s syndrome.  Anyone could tell she was an attractive cat.  Even I knew she was hot.  The problem was, she was more aware of it than anyone else, causing whatever superficially attractive qualities she possessed to simmer into a bubbling mound of stinking conceitedness.  Everyone in my house hated Trixie for that reason.  Everyone except Todd.  “Shittitsfuckcocksuckermotherfucker,” Trixie would babble in her native tongue, and Todd would respond by sympathetically nuzzling her neck and passing her a corner of his beloved blankey.  Maybe he truly did see something warm and inviting about her character.  I mean, you never know.  But this is Todd I’m talking about.  He doesn’t just lend his holy blanket out to whoever offers him free coupons to Petco.  Todd was in it for the goodies.  He totally was.  That fox.

 

Trixie died of constipation. We found her sprawled out in her litter box, a look of sheer agony etched into her delicate features.  From the position of her tail and the depth of the scratches on the wall, it was evident that she went through quite a painful struggle.  At least, that’s what I told my friends in seventh grade because I had nothing better to talk about.  In reality, Trixie died of diabetes.  Constipation was just that much more appropriate for her personality.

 

Now the most common misconception about Paris Hilton would be that she is as bad as it gets.  The scum at the bottom of the bucket of pond water.  The goose poop beneath the soles of your shoes.  Negative.  There is only one thing worse than Paris Hilton, only one creature more vile and idiotic than that tabloid-invading, orange-skinned whore.

 

 

Her dog.

 

Chihuahuas are misleading creatures.  You see them in People magazine, cuddling adoringly in their celebrity owner’s arms, basking in the lights of the paparazzi and angelically nibbling on their sparkly, pre-shrunk Marc Jacobs sweaters.  And then.  And then you buy one.  You buy one and, the second you let it loose to run free and roam around that in house of yours, it will find a butt and by golly, it will sniff it incessantly until you shoot the damn thing with a tranquilizer gun.  Meet Peanut the Chihuahua.  I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if he was right behind you.

 

Upon my monthly visits to my dad’s house, it became clear to me that Todd hated Peanut for two reasons.  For one, Todd was allegedly ass-raped by Peanut at least forty times an hour.  And that was after he was neutered.  For two, when Peanut wasn’t humping, he was sniffing.  It saddens me to admit that Todd spent the last three years of his existence with a horny Chihuahua magnetically attached to his rear. However, I guess that probably happened to all the great leaders of the universe.  In a way, I mean, if you squint kind of hard, Todd could be considered the Jesus of domesticated house pets.  True, he died of colon cancer, but I’m almost positive perverted Peanut played an important part in his sudden passing.  Now read that previous sentence five times fast without spitting. 

 

Since Todd’s gone, I often wonder what exactly Peanut does in his free time.  I never thought I’d feel so sorry for the leg of a dinner table.

 

While dear Toddy and his furry inferiors pranced about my dad’s house, my sister Abby and I resorted to getting pets for our own home.  I did this reluctantly; Abby welcomed the idea with open arms.  Why?  Because we weren’t about to get our own cat.  Once you go Todd you just never go back.  So, well, she wanted a dog.  And don’t get me wrong, I love dogs.  I’m just not what you’d consider to be your typical Dog Person.  There are Dog People and there are Cat People.  Dog People tend to be generally happy individuals that favor the moments when they have the opportunity to put their pet on a leash and take it for a stroll around the block.  They tend to enjoy games of Frisbee and that infamous sweaty canine smell lingering on practically every niche and crany of their homes.  They like it when that golden retriever slams them to the ground and slobbers its slimy tongue all over every bear patch of skin after a tiresome day at work.  They like that.  They look forward to that.  They cherish that.  And, to be honest, I don’t.  I’ve just always been a Cat Person.  It doesn’t mean I’m lacking in soul, it doesn’t mean I lost my mojo.  It just means I prefer calm, self-absorbed, cynical, lazy cats.  Granted, if I was an animal I’d probably be a caged parakeet, but my mom would never in hell let me keep a parakeet, so a cat is about as close as I’ll ever get to owning an animal that seems to almost identically mirror my personality.  At least Cat People typically don’t end up looking like cats. 

 

I wish I could say the same for Dog People, but to be honest, it’s an accurate statement.  I came to this conclusion after we purchased this thing:

 

 

This is Toby the Shih Tzu after his annual bath.  I don’t know whether he’s morphing into my mom or whether my mom’s going through some awkward midlife crisis phase, but sometimes the two look creepily similar.  Mostly because they nearly have the same haircut.   I would post a picture of my mom so you could compare, but I think that’s illegal and I kind of want to go out this weekend.

 

One major fact you should know about Toby is that his lifelong goal is to achieve enlightenment.  This would be a highly respectable goal if it weren’t for the fact that enlightenment, in dog language, is a direct synonym for ‘the biting of one’s tail’.  To make a long rant short, Toby has an IQ of .4.  He has spent the majority of his existence chasing after his own behind, never once questioning the futility of this task.  There was even a point last month when he actually did reach his tail.  He finally managed to grip it in between his teeth and get a decent look at it. And once he did he just bit it too vigorously, spit it out, and continued chasing after it once more.  When he’s not doing that he’s eating underwear and hiding their remains in his evil lair under the dining room table. 

 

Besides Toby, we have this goldfish thing I recently found in a bowl over our bookshelf.  Apparently, his name is Gandalf and he’s been living here for two years.  I’m not sure how or why he is here.  I also have absolutely no idea how the guy’s been living for so long, considering no one in this household has ever mentioned his name until this week and no one seems to take the responsibility in feeding him.  It kind of creeps me out.  First we have hidden goldfish, next time it’ll be garden gnomes.  Never trust your parents.

 

Of course, out of all the pets I’ve ever had, Todd will always be the one I hold closest to my heart.  If Todd was still around, I’m pretty sure he’d either be sitting on my shoes or achieving world domination.  He was equivalent to Nickelodeon during my childhood; he was my emotional outlet when I didn’t feel like writing.  Todd was the walls at my dad’s house.  He saw everything with his glowing eyes, and it stayed in those glowing eyes and nowhere else.  Sometimes you don’t need an active participant to give you advice and assuage your emotional wounds.  Sometimes all you really need is a wallflower to just take it all in, just absorb it and keep it locked up and safe.  Sometimes all you need is someone who just simply listens to you.  For me, it was my cat Todd.  And if there actually is a cat heaven, I sincerely hope my dear Toddy gets that infinite supply of cat food he always wanted.

 

 

 

 

Hokay so.  I haven't been able to write anything new recently.  Too much living going on, I guess.  Not enough time to observe anything anymore.  However, I do write for this totally awesome underground newspaper for my school called millerlite. And since I'm too lazy and unskilled to think of anything original, I'm going to just post one of the articles I wrote. Keep in mind that you will probably only enjoy reading the following text if you're either a diehard Harry Potter fan or a student attending Millburn High.  Or if you just really, really love me.  .  There.  That was the first and last time I will ever use a xanga smiley face.  Bleh. Happy Holidays.

 

Wizarding School Opens in Short Hills

 

Due to the gradually increasing student population in Millburn and Short Hills, a new school has opened in the Short Hills area with the hopes of creating a more spacious learning environment.  “We’re all about learning here,” said a portly school official last Tuesday, “By allowing your child the opportunity to attend smaller classes and not die in a fatal crowded hallway incident, he or she would develop a more personal educational experience.   Hi mom.”

          

However, the board members seized to mention any further details regarding the new school to anyone other than some random old woman living in Springfield.  So naturally, I tracked her down and tortured her cats until she spilled the beans.  What I found out was more than I initially bargained for. 

          

The new school, Short Hills School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (SHSWW), is not only exceedingly hard to say five times fast, but is also an academic phenomenon.  The building itself is fantastically disguised as the Dunkin’ Donuts located in lower Glenwood.  All you have to do in order to enter the school is walk into Dunkin’ Donuts, go to bathroom 9 3/4, and flush your head down the toilet three times.  On the third try, you should find yourself sitting cozily by a fire in one of the school’s garishly decorated common rooms.  If that doesn’t happen, consider wiping the urine-reeking toilet water off your face and taking a trip to the nearest petting zoo. 

          

Assuming you have entered the school, you would be immediately sent down to the auditorium to be sorted into one of four houses, which were created to keep classes organized and to form athletic teams.  Students are sorted based on the decision of the Sorting iHat, a computer-animated hat that can hold up to 10,000 songs, play videos, take pictures, speak in a British accent and do the Macarena at the exact same time. 

          

The four houses are called Japindor, Smartassin, Randomclaw, and Hufflepuff.  Each house has its own Quidditch team along with an animal mascot.  Japindors root for the Dead Mink Coat.  Smartassin cheers on the Tomagachi.  Randomclaw worships the Miller, whatever the hell that is.  Hufflepuffs give hurrahs to the Rolled-Up Fat One.  However, no matter how hard each teams plays, the entire school is always inevitably clobbered by Livingston.

          

What SHSWW lacks in Quidditch talent it makes up for in academic excellence. The school contains, in total, twenty-seven AP classes, all of which students claw each others’ eyes out in order to attend.  “I didn’t get into AP Dsjeolsitology,” sobbed a sixth year last week, “Now I’ll never be able to fight off Lord Voldemort, preserve the happiness in the world, and dare I say it, get into Harvard Law.”  Along with its vast array of advanced placement classes, the school also provides each of its students with his or her own magic wand, made entirely from the remains of the slaughtered deer found on Old Short Hills Road. 

          

The faculty of SHSWW is no exception to the school’s practically flawless reputation.  Every member contributes their share of insightful knowledge to the course they teach, making each subject just as entertaining and magical as it is educational.  “I beg to differ,” an algebra teacher said just a few minutes ago, “I’ve been teaching kids what y equals for fifteen solid years now.  It only just occurred to me that nobody actually cares.” 

          

Other faculty members that dwell within the building’s walls can actually walk through those walls, however, they choose not to.  This is because they are ghosts, souls with unfinished business to attend to.  Members of the student body most commonly refer to them as the Ghosts of Christmas Past. “Yoo hoo! Come out come out wherever you are!” said the ghost Nearly Headless Nick as he hopefully checked under a dining room table for at least a fraction of the school’s Christian minority.  “Merry Christmas,” he muttered to absolutely no one.

          

Overall, Short Hills School of Witchcraft and Wizardry seems as though it will benefit the town and the academic futures of many young adults.  “It’s a good thing this idea was totally and completely original,” said J.K. Rowling moments before she stabbed the writer of this article and proceeded to write the seventh book to the Harry Potter series in her blood.

I stay up really late on the weekends.  Not like twelve or one.  Like four in the morning.  I stay up until my eyes dry out, until one minute feels like one hour, until I feel sure, I feel nearly positive that I'm the only awake person in the entire world.  That I'm alone on top of this mountain, above all the snoring dreamers, above all the serene, silent peace.  I never am, though.  It's just a thrilling thing to believe.  All thoughts have stopped, all anger lazily placed by our alarm clocks, waiting impatiently to ring and startle us back into the real world with the real problems and that occasional inconvenient daydream.  I like thinking that at some point everything just stops, everyone is at peace.  I like the idea of witnessing that. I'm the first to see the sunrise. The first to experience the day. 

Then I pass out at 4:30 and wake up at two in the afternoon.  I'm not fooling anyone.

I never understood why the cliche is "I wasn't even fooling myself".  Like the easiest thing to do, out of all the lying, scheming, cheating, is fooling yourself.  Like if I said "I'm a carnivorous ninja named Bangschwa", I'd typically be the first person to believe it.  But, you know, I couldn't even fool myself this time.  Dude.  Man.  What a dumbass.

It's so much easier to fool everyone else, in my opinion.  Maybe that's just me.

I'm waiting for someone right now.  Just staring at the computer screen waiting for some particular person to sign on or randomly show up next to me.  Sometimes I just assume my brain signals are so intense that they're sending telepathic messages to the people I want to reach.  I'm not even sure who this person is, though.  Someone witty and attractive, the dark, handsome, mysterious type.  Smarterchild, maybe.  However, I have the sneaking suspicion that our relationship is slightly one sided:

ineedavacation89: hey baby
SmarterChild: Don't baby me.

Deep down, it really does hurt.  I know he's being unfaithful.  It’s no coincidence that Shopping Buddy's been acting unnaturally perky lately.  She immed me a few minutes ago with her gooey pink font, "tehhehe wanna cyber? woops wrong IM lol win a FREE iPod!1!." Get a freaking Chat Room, whorish fembot.

I'm talking to robots.  And now that I think about it, it's truly come to the point where the real world doesn’t seem as bright, as vivid as the one that exists on this computer screen my eyes are glued to every day when I arrive home from school.  Everything is so clear here, so luminescent and colorful and painfully shallow, simple.  By averting my eyes to any place surrounding this tiny square of brightness, you’ll find me squinting, trying to make sense of it all, rubbing my eyes and hoping they will eventually adjust to the darker world that surrounds me.  The deeper world that is just so damn fuzzy around the edges.  Maybe I'm gradually transforming into a moldy drooling vegetable, my values revolving soley around the spam emails I recieve, my social life depending entirely on insignificant things like myspace, little boxes popping up going bideeepbideeepbidoop.  Or maybe, just maybe, I simply really need glasses. You never know. 

This entry was a time waster.  I apologize.  I'm writing it because I feel insightful in a spontaneous sort of way.  In reality, though, I really should just consider not sniffing paint.

Happy Sunday.  I'll post something real eventually.