Friday, July 29, 2005

"Why Do They Call This Place 'Magic City?'"

So I've had a pretty good last week or so. Went to Johnson City to see As I Lay Dying and Killswitch Engage. Both bands were awesome. Killswitch had the better live show with all of their running around and antics, but both bands musically were in top form. Great show all around, even the opener was good.

Tuesday we went to the Warped Tour. That was a ton of fun. Highlights for me were MxPx, The Offspring, the second half of Emery, Dropkick Murphy's (and the dancing), and Atreyu. Checking out other bands was also good. The only bad thing was the huge storm that came and cut Thrice's set short because they were the band I most wanted to see. All in all though, it was still a great time.


Jim was up for like 5 days, so that was a lot of fun too. It was nice having someone to hang out with. It's kind of funny (in a sick, Kyle's life sort of way), I'm bored out of my mind lately and I don't really do too much of anything. If I had stayed home in Endicott this summer I'd be making double the pay and working a solid 40 hours a week, but would have only a few friends, who are busy and work different schedules than I would have. So basically I'd have a lot more money and not a whole lot going on, with friends anyway. Instead I opted to stay in Buffalo for several reasons, one of which was I knew more people up here, but they all have different schedules or live further away so the we don't hang out all the time. I'm also broke as fuck. So I can't even do much of anything even if I had the opportunity to. It's quite the catch 22. My "To Get List" has not turned into my "Christmas List." I don't know if I made the right decision or not.

This brings me to my next point: I don't believe people when they tell me "I don't have any regrets." To me, this means one of two things: 1. They are lying to themselves 2. They haven't done/tried to do anything (which should be a regret anyway) . I get the argument too. When people say "I don't believe in regrets because they, like all of my life experiences, make me the person who I am today." I believe that wholeheartedly because it is a fact, except that you can still regret things. That's how we learn. Learn from mistakes and past regrets. I don't regret a lot, but what I do regret seems to have deep impacts on my life and how I think. I think it's good to face regrets, but not allow yourself to become obsessed, because we still can't change what happened in the past. But I digress.

Random:

"The rain smells bad. Seriously, smell your hand."
Sniff, sniff.
"I don't smell anything Matt. I think the rain smells normal. Your hand must just stink."



"Matt, we didn't buy any videogames!!"

Saturday, July 16, 2005

Okie Dokie Artichokie

Media Play is going well. Tomorrow I am on my own for the first time. I'm not sure which department I'll be in though, but I don't foresee any problems no matter where they put me. I really like the way the uniform looks on me...even if I do look "too corporate" (which I do). I can't wait to get some cash and use my discount. Here is my "to get" list:

-Uncle Buck
-The Great Outdoors
-The Jerk
-Caddyshack
-Blazing Saddles

And the two non-comedies:
-Lean On Me
-Citizen Kane

Possibilities:
-Dragnet
-Ghostbusters II
-The Office (British and American)


I went out with a few Social Studies people Tuesday night. We had a really good time. I ran into Slater there too. It was definitely one of those "Small World" sort of things. It was really nice catching up with everyone and getting "lose." I won a Labatt t-shirt and beer cozy, and I would have won a hammock if I had my phone on! Stupid (read: "drunk") me turning it off after I filled out the raffle form (I think they called me because I wrote "call for a good time" on the form). I played some pool and was instantly reminded of how bad I suck at it. Then I accidentally pumped into a table and spilled a real little beer on this girl, who I then called by the wrong name when apologizing, and then she "accidentally" spilled her entire beer on my leg. I think it really was an accident because she kept apologizing afterwards. It was a good night.


I hung out with Greg last Sunday. That was a lot of fun. We watched entirely too much MTV then went out for some pizza where we met up with one of his buddies/Fraternity Life Star who worked there. Later on we went to a party at his ex-roommate's new place. Again, it was a good time.



Now a word about me and the kind of guy I am:

I'm the kind of guy who listens to Thrice, reads C.S. Lewis, and "gets it." Speaking of Thrice, some people I know have reduced them to "a band that just yells a lot." That's like saying the Beatles just wrote pop songs or that Nirvana just wore flannel!



In Music News:

I'll be home for less than 24 hours this Friday to see As I Lay Dying and Killswitch Engage in Johnson City. Then that next Tuesday is the Warped Tour. Looks like it will be Jim, Kris, Matt and I going. I still need to ask for it off though, but I was told it shouldn't be a problem. It looks like Jim will be up for several days around Warped and Kris might be as well. So I'm super excited about that.


Random:


Last night Kim and I were watching that Sex Talk show with that old lady. Anyway, this lady calls in and says how her boyfriend wants her to lick his asshole, but she doesn't want to. As the old lady is telling her to tell her boyfriend, very clearly, that you are not into it, the lady caller mumbles about how her boyfriend also wants her to shit on him. I would have told her to dump his ass...sorry for the choice of words.

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Marc Summers: Double Dare!

Time for an update:

Two Saturdays ago I was outside all night and got over a hundred bug bites. It sucked.

I had a group interview with Media Play. It went well and I got the job. I have orientation tomorrow. Anyway, the group interview was weird. When we got there, there was a piece of paper and a pen in front of everyone. The manager asked us to draw a pig. After the initial shock wore off we all began our pig drawings. When we were all done he told us that it was a personality test and depending on how your pig came out, there were different characteristics. Mine was scarily accurate. If you want to try it, get a piece of paper and a pen and draw a pig. Then go here http://quizbox.com/personality/test2.aspx and answer the questions.
Here is my analysis:

1. You are a realistic person, you are likely to be practical minded
2. You are direct and know how to stay on course. You are confused when others complicate things that seem so clear to you.
3. You are secure, stubborn, and stick to your ideals.
4. You are a good listener.
5. You are analytical, cautious, and distrustful.
6. You make a point to remember important dates.

That is really accurate.

I bought C.S. Lewis' "The Screwtape Letters." I'm about a quarter of the way through it and I really like it. If you don't know about it, look it up.


This weekend I went home and to my grandparent's cottage on Cayuga Lake. It was the most bi-polar experience of my life. I was either miserable or extremely happy. When I got home I was supposed to be meeting my mom to go out to dinner and then maybe to a cousin's baseball game. When I got there the house was empty and there was some pizza sitting out, so I figured she had to go somewhere and left that out since I would be hungry(thinking we were going out to dinner). Later I found a note with directions to my cousin's game. She had gone there and expected me to meet her, which didn't happen. Later she calls me from a cell phone and asks me if I wanted to meet her out to dinner. I told her I ate the pizza she left out for me and she told me that it was bad (it tasted fine to me). She then said she would just see me when she saw me. 20 minutes or so later I was reading on the couch and she came in. I went to get up and she told me not to bother. I then tried to start talking to her and telling her what's been going on with me and asking her about herself. She seemed very off. I told her that I seemed to not be amusing her and then said "oh, you were trying to amuse me?" To which I replied, "well, I guess not." Then she said I should just try calling my friends and making plans. We had only been sitting there for 10, maybe 15 minutes. I made an extra effort to make sure I got home at dinner time and made special arrangements to go to the lake on Saturday so I could spend the evening with her. I then retired to my room to make some calls, of course none of my home friends were around, so I went back to reading. After a little while I decided to just go to my dad's house (where no one was) away from my mom who was obviously trying to make me feel unwelcome. I went out to the living room to tell her I was leaving and to see if I would be able to see her again before I left to go back to Buffalo. She said she wanted to talk to me, but wasn't sure if she should. I told her that if something was bothering her that she should and could tell me. I didn't think it had anything to do with me. I figured it was a case of misdirected hostility. She then tells me that she is disappointed in me that I did not come home for my sister's graduation last weekend. There were two separate graduation parties, on two separate weekends, at two separate loactions, roughly an hour and a half apart (the one I went to was this passed weekend at my grandparent's cottage). I told my mom that I didn't come to the graduation party that she threw for three reasons: I was under the impression that Blockbuster was going to be calling me any day now and I needed a job so Iwanted to be in Buffalo just in case, that Matt's cousin was coming up and I wanted to hang out here, and the most important reason was that I didn't see the point in driving an extra 7 hours to go to my sister's graduation when she would have rather not seen me to begin with. She has made it painfully clear to plenty of people that she would rather not have them around. It doesn't make any sense to me to drive all that way for someone who doesn't care about me at all. My mom then gets into how it was not for my sister but for her. Maybe I'm crazy but I think my sister's graduation was more about my sister than it was about my mom, but she has her feelings and that's fine. She kept interupting me and not listening to what I was saying (which angers me to no end). She also made me feel bad about a lot of things that I have no control over. The fact that of all 150 some odd girls who graduated, only three did not wear dresses under their robes, one was my sister and the other two were Muslim and had to wear their traditional wardrobes. How the fuck is that my fault? What am I supposed to do about it? And even through all this shit that she was giving me I still thought to myself that when I'm married to make sure they do "girlie" things together so my mom can have that experience with a daughter figure. Can you believe that? As my mom is sitting there blaming me for not coming home, even though the reason I didn't was because of the way my sister treats me, I am still thinking of ways to help her. Then she tells me how she is going to be alone when my sister goes to college, which is her own fault because she made the decision to not date anymore. What am I supposed to do to not make her lonely? She then makes a point to tell me that it "kills" her that the only two people she has don't talk (my sister and I) which is 100% my sister's fault and I don't care to try anymore to change that. As I said, she has made it painfully clear that she doesn't like me and I don't care any longer. My mom started crying which just killed me. Then she told me that the whole time my sister told her that I wasn't going to come home for her graduation. Well what does she fucking think I am going to do? Waste my time for an unappreciative bitch? Not anymore. The only reason I went to her graduation party at my grandparent's cottage is because I was planning on going there for the Fourth of July for quite a while now anyway. She's going to have to learn that people won't take her shit with a smile. My mom needs to learn to not let things build up and to not take them out on me. A lot of other stuff was said and the whole ordeal was really bad and left me feeling a lot of things, none of which were good. The worst thing though was the fact that the one person that I totally let into my world and into this whole world isn't in my life anymore and all I wanted was someone who knew about everything to just be there for me to talk to and I don't have that. Nothing frustrates me more than trying my hardest and failing and it seems lately that, that is excactly what is happening. Like I said, it was a pi-polar weekend.

The other bad parts were trying to fall asleep as I just laid there thinking about everything. I used to have trouble sleeping up until a couple years ago because I would just lay there and think about everything that is wrong. I was able to get away from that because for a while I felt that things would work out and I didn't use that time to worry. If I was laying alone I simply thought about the fact that there was someone out there thinking about me and caring about me as much as I was about them and that comforted me. Well, I don't have that anymore, but I still have been sleeping fine (for the most part)--so I've got that going for me. Another bad thing was my grandmother crying to me about my absuive, drunk (Great) Uncle Alan crashing my sister's graduation party. What the fuck? I'm sick of people not being held accountable for their own actions. I'm sick of being the one that has to be the ears of all the complaining and then have to sit and watch nothing happen. I have to be perfect so my dad doesn't feel like a failure because of the way my sister turned out. I have to sit there and act like I agree with my mom that my sister is just "wired differently" and that is why she is the way she is. Maybe it's because everyone has always babied her and let her act like a bitch. It's not all genetics. When someone does something wrong you can't blame it all on genetics. My Uncle Alan is a bastard and if he wanted to he could stop drinking and become a contributing member of society instead of a failure. He chooses not to. He chooses not to. He chooses not to! Other people I know have been sober for years, so go fuck yourself.

Anyway, other things were really, really good. The rest of being at the lake was awesome. Lots of card playing, drinking, water-tubing, and fireworks. My Uncle Dave got real drunk Saturday night and got real funny. He went on a 35 minute rant about my Aunt Michelle's girlfriend not making a no-egg chocolate cake. He called my dad his "bitch" and demoted him from the Molson Ice to the Keystone because he lost his beer (in reality my Uncle Dave, without knowing it was actually my dad's beer, drank his). I decorated for my sister's graduation party with my Aunts, Grandma, and Uncle Dave. That was a lot of fun. Thankless, but we had a lot of fun. My Great Grandma came up for it too. She made it over an hour and a half before she said something about me shaving my head. We got talking about New York City and she said, and I quote, "Why would anyone want to go there? It's full of people who look like Kyle walking around--It's scary!" She's an odd one. When I went tubing I hurt my right nut (the bigger of the two) real bad from the bouncing up and down, and then my back hurt too. It was cool though, my dad and I did doubles because we had two tubes behind the boat. I also got to take Molly (the sister who doesn't hate me) out tubing, which was nice. Her and I also played a lot of Mario Kart. My dad told me that she said she was going to bring the Gamecube up to the lake because she knew her and I would play it and she wanted that. It was cute. I broke my flip-flops which I've had since I was a freshman (it seems like everything from freshman year is just dying). I bought a new pair at Walmart yesterday when I went to talk to Jim. They have a palm tree decal--pretty neat.

I guess that is about it. I changed my plans and stayed an extra day in Endicott so I could hang out with my mom again after we "made up" or whatever you want to call it. It was a lot of fun. We went out to dinner and had really good conversations. Then we saw War of the Worlds. It was a good movie. She loves sci-fi so she really liked it. When we were walking out of the theater I asked her what she thought and she told me she was acting like we didn't know each other so I wouldn't get embarrassed. I made her promise to never do anything that ridiculous again. What am I, in middle school? Come on. I don't care if I'm in public with my mom.

Well that's all I can think of for now. Leave a comment.

Random:

"These bugs have gosta peace out."
"That dog's pussy."