Not At All Sarcastic

"Yeah, I guess I got a little tame this year."

"No, you didn't get tame, you got lame."

Thank you for being a wonderful friend, and accepting my choices and decisions along with being courteous when I respectfully decline to get shithoused for no reason at all. Really, couldn't ask for a better friend than you!

It's time to sit down with friends and family, be thankful for what you have in your life that's grand and celebrate a holiday in which pilgrims enjoyed the generosity and hospitality of the natives, who they then slaughtered and put onto crammed reservations.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Being lame... or being myself?

The typical college weekend usually involves a lot of alcohol, maybe some drugs and lot of dignity lost come Sunday morning. I have been victim of this, and I bet that more than half of the college campus can agree with me on this one.

This weekend, I went to see my school's drama, I watched The OC and a couple movies. I worked. I went to bed at a reasonably early time, and woke up at a fairly decent hour. I had the option to go out, but I chose to stay in with my roommates instead, cuddled up on the futon. It was, all in all, a chill weekend, and I'm not terribly upset that I didn't waste money to essentially embarrass myself.

My weekend could be called, by those who spent hours on York Rd, "lame".

Was it really, though? Since when do I have to get obnoxiously inebriated in order to have a good weekend? When I was in high school, I went to the mall, saw a movie, spent way too much time at diners, smoked cigars in parks, and went to shows - local or at venues like the Electric Factory. I went to the occasional party and worked quite often. My life wasn't considered lame then, but now there seems to be such a high standard on going out and getting drunk at every possible opportunity. (It's funny how this is seen as normal behavior for college students, but a disease, namely alcoholism, for those who have since graduated and are nearing their 30s.) According to this societal norm, regardless of whether you actually want to go out, you have to go out.

You know what?

Fuck you guys. I'm not lame, and my weekend was pretty respectable. I had a good time fucking around with some friends, playing with a new camera, and watching two movies in a row featuring Zac Efron. There's nothing wrong with going out, because I do find enjoyment in drinking and dancing in Baltimore's finest establishments, but can't we all take a break? Why does the weekend's value depend on cab rides and dollar beers? It's actually quite nice to stay in, and - I don't know - relax, enjoy the silence and share some laughs over the trivial things in life.

(Just an idea.)

Words of wisdom from a fictional drug addicted prostitute from the 70s.

"I mean, they don't even know what it is to be a fan. You know, to truly love some silly little piece of music, or some band, so much that it... hurts."

- Almost Famous

(Not) Spreading Some Holiday Cheer

It's that time of the year again. Some may call it the most wonderful time of the year. I, however, am here to be the obligatory Scrooge because, yes, I hate the holidays. Thanksgiving. Christmas. New Years. I don't find this time of year cheery. I get annoyed at the radio stations that start playing holiday-themed music once November 1st arrives. I don't feel all warm and fuzzy inside when I see candles in the window, snow on the ground and wreaths hung in the doorways. It sickens me to hear people babble on about how excited they are for Christmas and spending time with family; I am the antithesis of excited.

I wasn't always this way - when I was younger, Christmas was magical. The little things excited me, like playing Sega Genesis or Mario Kart with cousins that I rarely saw or the prospect of Santy Claus dropping off new clothes, a Barbie cruise ship or an American Girl doll. My mom even made gourmet breakfast - pancakes, eggs, Canadian bacon, french toast, the whole nine yards - which never happened.

But I was young, stupid and too naive to see what really happens on the holidays. First, Santa Claus is a big, fat lie and even if it was true, it's a fucked up scenario. A fat dude breaks into your house, thieves your cookies and milk and leaves gifts that he probably stole off the back of a truck (elves my ass). Second, you know those family members you never see? There was a reason - they're all assholes. Remember that time your uncle cried on Christmas Day because he was "so happy to see us"? He was high - that's why he never called and we don't talk to him anymore.

Since the end of my childhood, which occurred at the tender age of 11, the holiday season has been filled with nothing but cancer, family feuds, stress about money, death and an overall increased recognition of how much the world sucks. My parents always try to make it like the magical ordeal it once was (my mom still makes breakfast), there's no covering up the underlying truth which is that the holidays are just a remembrance of lost family members, increasing financial problems and are just a lead-up to a huge letdown.

So excuse me while I don't join in on the eighteenth chorus of Deck The Halls.

Amanda has... angst?

I re-stumbled upon my xanga, which I kept up pretty much until the end of senior summer. Who knew my wee body could fit so much angst! Most of it is embarrassing, but these two struck me (even today):

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

"Inside my head"

Sometimes I worry and sometimes I get anxious, and then angry and pissed off and the next second content and happy and I worry a little more because there are so many things to worry about like donuts and blowing out tires and irrational people and pimples and there are things that are out of my control and a lot of the time images just flash in my head like speeding cars and I'm running, I'm always running, haven't you noticed that I'm always running and it's you, you freak me out, if I don't hear from you I freak and I don't have a hold, but I just want you to like me because I thought you were more into me than I was into you but maybe not anymore and I really hate that some people don't know the differences between 'than' and 'then' and I know some people read this and are probably freaked out and I wonder how many people I freak out, you know, and then I wonder if I care because one second I do and the next it's like fuck it and I never do my homework, I'm always so tired, sometimes it's hard to stand on my own two feet and sometimes I can't stand you and that's a lie, I can never not stand you, I say things I don't mean in the heat of the moment, it's just sometimes you need to learn to chill and not act like a hot piece of shit, and I'm worried about college and I'm going to Loyola and then there are images of what I want to do, and my imagination runs wild and I can be having a conversation with someone and in my head but be thinking of an entirely different scenario and sometimes I think I won't make it, but I have to, don't I, doesn't everyone make it somehow in some way and sometimes I wonder if you read this because I used to like you and I care about you in that friend-like way and I want to see if you care too but I doubt you read this because you don't give me the time of day and I've noticed I tend to go for people who don't give me much attention on second glance and I want to fight for it and expunge too much energy and I'm not an idiot and sometimes I say things I regret and sometimes I am self-conscious and sometimes I want to crawl in a hole and not come out and sometimes I want to live on the clouds and escape, I always want to escape because I'm never satiated and I want to read my horoscope and sometimes I'm frustrated but overall I'm glad I'm where I am.

Tuesday, April 03, 2008

My computer is a piece of shit. I don't blame it - it's really old, and me adding 4000+ songs and I'm sure the same amount of high-res pictures doesn't help. I can't complain - I'm going to get a laptop for college anyway.
However, I have this fear that one day my computer is just going to shut down completely inexplicably because it gave up. So now I'm trying to prevent this from happening by deleting unnecessary files and programs from my computer. It was hard, but I went through my music collection and deleted some stuff that I never listen to/really do not enjoy. It was really painful - I kept thinking that someday I would need this music and when the occasion came, I would be terribly sorry that I had deleted this certain artist. But I did delete about 2 or 3 albums, which did absolutely nothing to help the condition of my aging computer.
So, I went to my picture files. (I'm getting to the point). You know, as a freshmen and/or sophomore, I would take a shit load of pictures just so I could say I took pictures. Some pictures were pointless (like of a carpet or something), or some were so blurry that you couldn't really see the person. Some were just plain embarrassing (for me and for others too) and they were eradicated so no one could lay eyes on them again. So I went through the arduous task of going through almost every picture in order to sift through those I don't need in order to prevent the death of my dear Dell.
I'm in a random album (actually titled 'Random'). And there are only four pictures in it. I delete one particularly ferocious looking one and skip to the next. It's a picture of a friend sitting on a couch. She doesn't look too pleased, and at closer look, one can see the pain and confusion in her eyes. At the time, everything outwardly appeared great, and if she did look semi-upset in the picture, one could argue was that I caught her off-guard.
I decide that I hate this picture. I hate this picture because the day said picture was taken I could not ever imagine what was going on in my friend's head. I was trying to figure out my own fucked-up self and was wallowing in my own self-hate. This picture actually makes me enraged. I only wish that I could have snapped out of it long enough to save someone. This picture reminds me that I was too much of idiot to see something I would find out 6 months later (more or less.. six just seemed like a good enough number). I know I'm not to blame, but I feel as if I did nothing to prevent ('prevent' must be the word of this entry..) the harm caused to my friend, my best friend.
I wanted to delete this picture, because it made me sick - not because of the way the person looked, but because of the negative connotations it held - but for some inexplicable reason, I didn't.

I went to the next one, and so my cleaning process continues.