Month: October 2002

Does anyone really relate my titles to my posts? I could post something completly random, and often I do, and no one would catch it. Like this time.

Okay, we have
1 new poem by Emotional Evolution
and
2 new authors.
Luke Sudenga has a prose piece I have entitled “Musings” because I wasn’t sure what title he wanted.
Hesh is our other new artist. This author has submitted 3 haikus for your pleasure. Please read them!

It’s people like this that help keep my site going. :)

Thanks, Guys

Today’s topic? Boys with fingernail polish.

First off, if you call it “fingernail paint”, boy or girl, you’ll get made fun of. I found that out. See, I was at play practice tonight (go figure),

, and Heather and Jamie were doing nails. Jamie says, “You want me to do YOUR nails?” After some consideration, I said okay. She did my right hand in dark red with a silver thumb, and the opposite colour scheme on the other hand. Now, my excuse to my friends is that it was for the play. In fact, it kinda is. We decided that for one of my plays, my character is going to be a punk/goth kid and might wear nail polish. I’m thinking red and blue for now. I can’t find anyone with black.

So, the issue is what’s wrong with guys wearing nail polish?

Society does nasty things to people. It makes people say “THAT’S not right” when they see a boy with black nail polish. Tattoos, piercings, nail polish. These things are “tools” of the goth. Really gothic people have a large assortment of these things. But why? It’s because society says that “THAT’S not right” and that’s what the goth counter-culture is about : being not right.

How did nail polish get into this. I’m not sure how I feel about tattoos and piercings. Both are permanent changes to your body. A reactionary would say that God gave you your body, and you have no right to change it beyond his vision. This is too … reactionary for me. But I’m not sure that fashion falls into the realm of burning ink into your flesh or poking metal/plastic pieces into it.

Nail polish is different. It’s simply decoration, like makeup or hair colour, or clothing, even. People of different background decorate themselves a different way. I’m not a big fan of corsets, myself, but some people wear them. Good for them, I say. I like to be different at some things.

I’m not into clothes. I, early on, learned to hate popular kids. I do, truly. And popular kids care about how they look – they dress in the highest fashions, with the highest regard for price tag. Not me. To deal with this, I could care less where I bought my clothing. Most of it is from rummage sales, and no one cares. And if they DO care, then they’re a “popular kid” and I hate them.

I did dye my hair. I enjoyed the change. I change my desktop background often – severely often. I change my windows theme less often. I love change, being different (part of that anti-main stream thing) and so I changed my hair. It was work, though. And many people didn’t like it. Some of my friends weren’t very impressed. Some people liked it. In either case, it was the reaction that I didn’t like. Why react to me differently? I changed my hair, not my religion. Nothing big.

I don’t do makeup – it’s part of that same anti – mainstream thing. Though, a guy wearing make up would make me counter-culture, which is what I want. Hmm, maybe something to consider.

Nail polish : issue. I’ve talked to one guy who has no problem with it. I’ve talked with one guy who has deep problems with it. I’ve talked to a girl who has no problem with it. I’ve talked to a girl who has problems with it. Let’s explore this.

Problems with this : maybe these people are scared. Maybe they had oppressive upbringings. Maybe they’re scared to be individuals, because they don’t want to be the ones on the outside. I was on the outside, and I’m not going in.
Societal norms are good for creating a sense of home. If you’re young, and society says “Be whatever you dream” then where do you start? You become overwhelmed – or you become fabricated. You copy your parents. People get stuck into a certain mode – a certain mold – and they can’t/won’t break free.

Why? Is it fear? Fear plays a large part in our lives – it makes us do many stupid, crazy things. So does lack of fear, for that matter. We call one group cowards and the other hell-raisers. Is that right? Is it right to say that society should dictate our personal feelings. Sure, culture should influence, but should it set in stone? Culture’s been wrong before, and will be wrong again, and may be wrong now.

I don’t know – maybe I’m thinking too much about this. All this over nail polish. I’m wearing some right now. What do you think about that? Does it make me weird or gay? Does it make me cool and counter-culture? Or does it not even matter?

By the way, just so you know – I don’t own any.

Yet.

“I choose white” – bright like starlight,
But pure chrystallite on its space-wise flight.
So, dot dot dot, here’s fallen snow –
“All dressed up with no place to go.”

Blanc, like a bride, blushing with cold,
Made frozen and bitter with no one to hold.
She closes her eyes, but try as she hides
She can’t force back feelings. Her loneliness sighs.

This winter she’s gone out, spaced apart – tossed about,
Launched into the air, floating haphazard routes.
She lands upon earth, hard, sans sun’s mirth,
And lays there forever as snow without worth.

You know you’ve gotten too far when you see signs for Sioux Falls. Today, I drove right past my exit. I got a little worried when I saw billboards for Dell Rapids, and then I got very nervous when I saw “Sioux Falls 10 Miles.” I mean, I love seeing my name in white, but this meant that I was far far away from home. So, I turned around.

“This is great,” I thought. Just another way to top off my weekend. If you noticed a distinct change in my mood today, and you wouldn’t unless you showed up before play practice, it was because this weekend I confronted my mystery girl.

I could give you her name, but what does it matter – she’s gone. I have a bad feeling from the beginning, but my intuitions were confirmed. She didn’t quite say no. Girls don’t say no to me. If I even get to the part where I can ask her out, then she says yes. But usually, I get almost to that part, and the girl in question wigs out. She starts to feel bad because she knows she has to say “No”, but she doesn’t want to hurt my feelings because I’m a “nice guy,” but she just doesn’t think of me “like that.”

This post will not be very humorous.

What is it about me that makes girls cry when I ask them out? How does that work? When I ask a girl out, she either really likes me, and says “yes” right away and we’re quite happy for a spell, or she breaks down and I get the “I don’t want to lose you as a friend” speech. So, now I have to decide if “love” is overrated or “friendship” is overrated. And where is the line? How does one tell?

That’s what gets guys messed up. How are we supposed to know when you bloody girls are ready for more than friends? How are we supposed to know if you’re being serious or if you’re not? I can’t read minds. I tried. We sat around in seventh grade and tried to send each other shapes when we didn’t have band, and the results were less than average. I can’t recieve or send messages via ESP, so why do you keep trying to get them out that way? If girls weren’t so sure that they have to hide their traces, we wouldn’t have this problem. If the female gender wasn’t so bloody paranoid, we’d all be happier.

Geez. Quit trying to knab guys. Or if you aren’t, start doing it. Or if you don’t really care for guys, then you shouldn’t be taking advice from me. Wanna know a secret about guys? It’s never that complicated. The answer for a guy is always simple. If you think she likes you, then you’re gonna find out you’re right. That or she liked you and changed her mind. We don’t dwell.

Things were simple once. Maybe it’s that I’m not a “guy” but nothing gives me more ulcers than girls. So many signals. Maybe it’s that I’m sensitive to the signals, and that I misread a lot anyway, but it makes life pretty damn complicated. And I can’t even get my ASM to work properly, so, God knows, why my screen flashed grey lines. It supposed to be a solid color!! Ok, I’m getting off topic. In fact, I’m ranting.

So, yeah, I got turned down. Then, on Saturday night, a friend from Sioux Falls (she’s an xray technical engineer… kinda) was on MSN, and we chatted, and she came over at 900. So, Alicia (the girl), Bryce (my bro), Lindsey (Bryce’s g/f), and me (single still) all watched the Lion King. That’s actually a good movie, even as old as it is.

So, the weekend wasn’t all bad. Alicia’s cool. But, yeah.

Check it out! My “Pizza What?” story got published at uber.nu. Uber.nu is a daily webzine that is editted by Ben Brown who has also been mentioned on the site before.

Please check it out! I am so stoked that he published it.

Also – read what I wrote last night before this.

“Hey, roomy. Did you see that I got the new Seether video?”
“Oh, yeah? Is it on your whack?” (snicker) , (snicker)
“No. Yeah. It is now, Miles.”

There we sat, Adam and I, in our solitude. We sat comfortable in our own quiet little worlds, set easily within the span of our expansive, luxurious room. I turned and walked to the hot tub, where the masseuse was getting the oil warmed. I smiled. It’s really the little things that make life worth it.

Suddenly, Adam broke the space. “Hey, did I tell you that … uh .. I also … uh … got … that …” As his ellipses of thought traversed the span between us, through the llama farm and over the chocolate milk brook, my imagination broke my mental space. I asked myself, what would it be like to travel on –

It was a chilly, and possibly blustery, evening as Jasmine and I stood, arm in arm for warmth. The train pulled up with it’s brilliant red engine, and it’s solid black passenger cars. The pistons pumped with the mighty footfalls of a giant of lore, then suddenly they stopped and the mightier brakes engaged, throwing sparks into the air beside and underneath the train.

Jasmine turned to me. I could see the excitement in her eyes. She didn’t need to say anything. It’s not often that a pair of poor, underprivileged street cleaners, like ourselves, got to ride on the fabled train of thought. I breathed deeply the open air. We were lucky. This particular station, located in the heavy thinking portion of Adam’s brain, had hardly any thoughts to disrupt the train. Mostly visitors boarded here. We were also lucky in that the usual oppressive hot air front had passed on this October departure.

We got on. I was so racked with excitement that I soon became sick in the bathroom and had to lay down for several minutes. Then the train started. It heaved forward with the push of Paul Bunyan himself, giving us an anticipated rush forward on down the tracks.

We sped into busier parts of the brain. Through the portion for talking, and then to the lesser populated region for listening. We saw wondrous sites and a couple in the next car came by to share a spot of tea with us. They were a polite couple, and we discovered that they were going to visit their son in the olfactory suburbs. They told us stories. Stories that I, one day, will share with my kindred as if I, myself, were at those places that they spake of.

We neared the center of the brain. This is what Jasmine and I had waited for so long to see. Our grandfather had come from this area. He had been a translator, but he had grown incompetent with age and soon took to less intensive jobs. It was a dream of his to visit the land of his birth. Too bad we didn’t have enough money for three.

Jasmine and I started to share this story with the Oudoors when we heard a scream. It seemed to come from in front of us. I noticed the high pitch it had, and it seemed to go on forever. We dashed out into the hallway, and it was at that moment, when I saw the car ahead of us compacting itself strangely, that I realized what I heard was not a scream at all. The sound was the squeal of the breaks, the twisting of its metal, the destruction of our train.

I can, now, only imagine what the wreck suggested from the air. A snake of cold black, a head of red, slithering it’s way at the speed of an impulse, mounting ranges and dashing through valleys, suddenly and violently stopped. A beautiful invention of man met head on by a beautiful creation of nature, and the resultant carnage. The train derailed terribly. It broke into many parts, destroyed trees and baggage, and took many many lives. Car after car piled upon car after car as the momentum of our journey caught up with us.

Finally, it all stopped. It was dark where Jasmine and I were. We were on the grass, I think, and I think the train covered us like a distorted metal tent. I dared not to move.

Then the wreck began to slide. We were not on a decline. Nay, we were quite right flat, but the wreck was moving as if it were being pulled by something. I crawled out from under the car. I pulled my sister out with me, out into the air and the sun, and we turned to the direction that the train was lurching. There in front of us was a black hole. It was approximately 20 feet in diameter, and it pulled debris in with indiscriminate taste. I heard a voice, a faint voice, say “Who would leave a black hole next to a train track anyway?” but we were all too worried, too distraught, to answer his rhetorical question.

Then I felt it on me. The gravity was pushing me, pulling me, towards the black, gaping … hole. Jasmine, all at once, was swept up and taken in as if she were nothing. Having more man meat to me, I was able to hold off for several more seconds, but I too succumbed to the force.

I was off the ground – I was in the air. Then I was in the black. I could see for miles, but I could see nothing of my sister, the train, or anything else that had been taken hostage by this abomination of nature. All I could see was a single word. Solid, large letters of white against the forever black background. The word –

“Our Lady Peace song?” … what?
“What?” I murmured.
“I said, ‘did I tell you that I got that new Our Lady Peace song?’ Innocent?”
“Oh, no. You didn’t. Sorry – I spaced out for a second.”
“That’s okay – my train of thought completely derailed on that one. Hope everyone’s okay.” And he laughed hard – naive to the reality of it. But inside I thought the same thing:
I hope everyone’s okay.
I hope to God they’re okay.

Well, kids, another day is gone. I’ve gotten a lot of noise about my post yesterday. I got three MSN conversations from one person, completely blown off by another, and an email from someone I’ve never met asking for more information. Shmoly gesus. I seem to know how to create a sensation. I think I should clarify somethings.

Of course, there is always the possiblity that I’m making her up, but that aside, she doesn’t live at DSU. I implied that because I am a dirty, sneaky little devil and it gives me pleasure to use words like weapons, but I never said it. Ha ha ha – you all fell for it. Fools.

See the above box to tell why.

You know who I’m talking about.

You people are shallow and sick.

Carl. Get your own.

Does this help? Is it my style? Is it my delivery? What makes people react like this to my writing? I’ve had similar lashbacks before. People who think they know what I thought when I wrote something actually have no idea what I thought or why I thought it or what I’m thinking now.

Like this: I was on my way to the Dakota Prarie Playhouse for play practice today. It was around 9:20 pm, and it was dark out. Suddenly a bright point of light streaked its way across the sky. I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not going to tell you what I wished for. Besides, my mom read this blog. Naw, I’m just kidding. I didn’t wish at all.

How can you not wish at a shooting star? Easy. I looked at it with this stark confusion, like I didn’t know what was going on. And a voice in my head said, “You should make a wish” but nothing happened. I just stood there dumbfounded, like this was the best thing to ever happen to me or the worst. And then it was gone, and I realized that I had stopped walking.

What do YOU think it means? It’s a true story, but it’s fitting enought to post. Let me know your thoughts.

I had never before considered it. Could they really have a plan? Could they really have some sort of grand scheme that we are all merely pegs in? (I know I know – don’t end a sentence with a preposition!) I may have stumbled onto something that will, more than likely, end in some sort of apocolyptic Male VS Female battle for the world, but let’s hope it doesn’t. I can’t hit a girl.

Let me explain.

Those of you live in Madison, I won’t tell you so don’t ask me. Those of you who don’t, send me an email and maybe I’ll drop a hint. And plus, I’m probably making this up. But, as of lately, I’ve become frustrated with this vixen, and have taken to IM counseling. A friend of mine, whom I trust because she doesn’t live around here, came online. Since we’ve discussed girl/guy problems before, I asked her for advice. P.S. She lives in Israel – the country.

Dead end already! What was I to do. My tried and true method of “wait it out, suckah” had just gone down in flames by a member of the sex I was trying to seduce. Ayelet, the girl I’m talking to in this conversation, told me to go online, and wait. Right. That’ll work. She asks for more info on the story. I give her a quick summation of the specs. This is what she has to say.

Holy cow! I had no idea! When did girls get to be masters of the universe and suddenly decide to run our lives behind our back?! I needed time to think about this, so I went to class (novel idea, I know). When I got back, Ayelet was still online. And someone else was, too.

So, there I was. My grand answer is – be online, and wait seven minutes, then say “Hi.” THAT’S supposed to score me this girl? It was about this time that it hit me – I’m taking relationship advice from a 16 year old girl in Israel.

Should I take her advice or not? Post your comments and let me know what to do.

No school today. How great is that. I’ve never heard a better set of words slung together than “school” + “today” + “no.” Choose whatever order you want, it translates beautifully into any language.

So, you might (but probably won’t) ask, what did Miles do today? Let’s explore this experiment in Time Management.

This proved to be more difficult than some may think – I didn’t go to bed until 5:30 am. So, it is only by God’s hand that I was able to wake at this hour. I lept from my bed to the stool, fell off, and landed face first into the dark green, stained, carpet. For some reason, the carpet smelled of tangerines.

I love showers. I do. So much more than, say, torture. Or even lesser painful things like biology. Or even good things like pizza and soda – together. So, I try to draw out my bathing for as long as bloody possible. It gives me time to think, dream, sing, sleep alittle more, and to explore my body.

Eh…

Did I say that outloud?

Food. I had Ramen Noodles: Shrimp. Exciting huh?

I pulled out my math homework. He assigns us problems every day in class, and we have four days of class a week, but I’ve been … floating those on down the responsility barge toward the tree cutter of “Oh-Shoot-It-s-Test-Day” … I guess, and I decided to see what I had to do: x = 2.
Done.

My screensaver came on. It has a lot of flashing lights and colors. I can’t look away.

Mandy (some girl downstairs who thinks we know each other) wanted me to help her with Trillian. It turns out that her computer is actually an Etch-A-Sketch, and they don’t have Trillian for that operating system. While I was down there, this very distrubing witch movie came on HBO, with a boy who becomes a talking mouse and they wear masks and have all sorts of different and fun accents.

Well, I came back to what I was doing before – oh, right. The screen saver.

I ate again. This time – Trojan Center food. Well, okay. It wasn’t food, and I didn’t finish it.

I’m in two plays. We practice at 7:30 pm. So, since I had to have 2/3 of the play memorized by now, I figured I should see how far along I could get. Lordy Lordy, let me tell you. Adam doesn’t do that well for a girl. No offense, Adam, but I’d rather someone from Second Floor did that part instead. He kept putting his hand on my knee. Then would nuzzle up to me like a cat. A little freaky.

I could not find Holly (my co-star) and Sue (my director) anywhere. Did they disappear? I spent all that time enduring Adam’s advances for nothing?! He’s not even that good of a kisser.

Have you ever been to the Zimmermann Hall website? Yeah, neither have I. If you’re like me, then you just learned that Zimmermann had a website at the Hall Council meeting where you were elected Webmaster of it. But not a whole lot of you are like me. So, I decided to work on the page and man do I hate FrontPage. It just … MAN DO I HATE FRONTPAGE. It’s ONE WORD! Like we don’t have enough “one-word-with-second-or-third-meta-words-capitalized”‘s! I mean, c’mon. It couldn’t be “Microsoft Webs”? Ok, maybe not, but I do hate that FrontPage is the only program I can use to do the Zimmermann Site.

Erin, Adam’s sister, came up to have Adam do her Visual Basic homework. While she was sitting here she says, “Man, I want this to be done! It’s not like I don’t have a paper to right. Of course, I’ve had about 3 weeks to do it.” My curiousity piqued at the obvious misuse of “right” for “write”, and I asked her, “What’s the paper about?”

“It’s about Time Management”

I think Erin just proved a very good point. Homework sucks.

I decided to post this long, probably unfunny, …. thing onto my website. It maybe the one thing I do all day.
Oh, wait – that’s right. I also figured something else out.

x = 2

Today, Adam’s parents came up for no apparent reason other than to install a shelf unit (more difficult than we thought) and to give him a good ribbing. In celebration of their departure, we visited the local Pizza Hut.

I must say, was I disappointed. So much so that I plan on sending them this letter, at a time more to my convenience, that discusses many of the problems we had with the popular pizza serving chain.

Here goes.

Dear Pizza Hut:

××××I am writing to explain certain grievances as have occurred in my short (well, long) stay within your brown and orange brick walls.

××××First off, where is the hut? This building doesn’t much look like a hut to me. Where’s all the grass? Where’s the sod? Where’s the bare-breasted matriarch? I was not impressed right off the bat. I thought you had one of those bead drapes, but it turns out that it was a troupe of trick flies pulling a joke. It turns out that the flies out number the patrons by about 95 times. I wonder what attracts so many of them? Maybe it’s the underlying urine smell.

××××The waitress, after a good, healthy pause, came over to our table. I guess she wanted us to think about what we wanted before she bothered us with menus. “Are you ready to order?” Uh, you just gave us the menus. “I’ll come back later then.” It turns out that what she meant was, “I’ll leave now make you find me later. Just don’t peek out back!”

××××Well, we found her – mark it up to good ol’ South Dakota schoolin’, but she was no match for us. We ordered our food, and again we sat waiting. Why doesn’t our fan spin? Why is the TV off even though it’s facing us? Why does the radio keep going out? And honestly, since when is Canadian bacon not a pork product? Did this just happen? When did Pizza Hut decide they could re categorize meats? “What’s in ‘pork ingredients’?” “That would be pork sausage and Italian sausage with a little spicing.” “So, that’s Canadian Bacon then?” No, Adam, it’s not.

××××Well, we found the waitress again. “We ordered bread sticks, didn’t we?” Oh, yes you did. I don’t think they’re ready, but I can check on them. Thanks, that’s what I meant. I didn’t actually want them. I wanted their status. While you’re checking the status, maybe you turn that radio knob one tic one way or the other instead of getting 65% of “How You Remind Me” by Nickelback, which is 10 years old anyway. And check on those plants – I think they’re either dead or fake or both.

××××She brings us our bread sticks. Actually, for seven people, she brings six plates and five bread sticks. And all within a shade of a century. Gee, thanks. I was a virgin before I came here, but it seems I couldn’t wait anymore. Say hello to Miles Junior. He has his mother’s eyes, and half her bread stick.

××××About now, I can’t take my eyes off the shroom picture you have on the wall. It speaks to me. Maybe it’s the hunger, but I could eat that painting. Maybe I’d get the power it harbors. Ok – I’m losing it. Oh, good the pizza’s done. In fact, it almost beat the bread sticks here.

××××It’s at this point that I think, who’s running this joint? There is only one girl for 200 tables, and, let’s not kid ourselves. She’s not exactly the best and brightest that this franchise has to offer. She would blame most of the problems on the “computer” they have in the “back room.” Apparently they put orders into this “computer” and it seems to have “crashed” so she had to use her “notebook” instead. That’s a lot of quotes – I don’t believe her.

××××The food was mostly good. The soda was excellent. And there weren’t a lot of people there, so we had excellent privacy. I’m sorry if this letter is too long for your attention spans or if it contains words too big for your vocabulary, but I felt like I had to say what had to say.

Have a great day.

Love always,

Miles

The conversation at dinner mostly took this form: (Grumble about restaurant) (Mention embarrassing thing about Adam) (Ask Adam if he remembers) (Laugh at Adam) (Grumble more). It was both pleasing and interesting. A sharp contrast to the devastation we felt at the service. We left the place with an odd, conflicted feeling. Soon, Adam and I were back at the dorms.

�Hey, Adam. Remember that time when we embarrassed you at Pizza Hut?� Look at his face. Ha ha ha. smiley-face. :)

More Changes at Awayken Dot Com!

What do you think? I have a new blogging client which allows my users to post their comments on what I write. And I have complete control. It’s taken a while to get it to look according to my standards, but I finally whittled and tweaked it into this format. It took a lot of tweaking and whittling, though.

This will be, in essense, more powerful and more flexible. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my Pitas account at this time. I’ll see what I have as far as options.

So, this post is, thus far, not funny or insightful. This is merely informational. But the next post will try to be either funny or insightful.

I post almost every day. Try to come back, allright?