A few days ago, I told myself that if I found A Musical History of Disneyland in a store, the next day I would listen to the whole thing without skipping any of the tracks while I cleaned my room.
Well, yesterday, I found it. I dropped the $100 I had as a Christmas present on it without thinking. It was the happiest purchase I can remember doing myself.
And like I promised to myself, today I cleaned my room while listening to it. In fact, I cleaned areas that haven't been touched since 1993! Somewhere around the audio track for the Tarzan Treehouse, I had to open the doors to my room to let in some air. At great risk of being told to turn down my music, I opened a window to help the dust flow out. Thankfully, nobody minded that I was literally blaring the audio from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride as if I was watching the movie in full Dobly surround.
I found a lot of treasures in my room. Old address books with no addresses in them, sketch pads that were falling apart with drawings from a time I forgot about, even a fan fiction I was righting once upon a time. I even found, much to my shock, evidence that I had a mullet when I was younger!
When the dust was cleared and everything put back in a more organized space, I realized that I finished three hours before the last track in the box set was to play. So, I tended to my laundry.
As time past on and as the music got closer and closer to the audio track for their 50th anniversary fireworks show, I found myself getting more and more excited in the most uncontrollable way. When the track finally started to play, I was in another place. I closed my eyes and saw everything I saw on any of the videos of the attraction at the real Disneyland. I felt this strange sense of pure, magical joy that I don't ever remember having felt before. I found myself smiling just because the track was playing loud than I would ever be able to hear it in my lifetime!
It was heaven. Pure and simple.
When the CD finally ended, I sat there in the stillness of my clean room. I looked around, got up, and then placed the CD back in its proper place. As I left the room to come here, I realized what I had just experienced.
I've never had a more rewarding moment in my life than what just happened no more than 25 minutes ago. And I wanted to share that with you few that read this.
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Something Odd and Unexpected
My sister told me to get on AIM so she could send me something, but I got something I didn't expect as a result of her request.
A short time after getting my sister's IM, another window came up. It was from Josh. My hands ran cold, and I got a knot in my stomach that made the gases inside me feel like poisonous substances. I couldn't feel anything below my hip and found my eyes to be straining as I read the screen name. In short, I was nervous and scared for my life.
This has been the first time in two or three long years that I've talked to them. At that moment, I couldn't help but feel very apprehensive.
The conversation started out innocent enough, but slowly the doubt and my feelings for them came to the foreground. I told them flat out my concerns that I posted here recently. Eventually, I had to stop myself, apologizing at least three times, having lost myself to the doubt. Josh said that he doesn't think there is a way to change my mind, to make me believe they are for real. I know better. I know he is smarter than me and knows how to fix things. He just won't act on it for whatever reasons he may have.
With that out in the open, you would think that would be the end of it. I frustrated the hell out of Josh, and if all goes like it has been, that should have been that. Surprisingly, it wasn't.
I asked Josh one question to prevent me from losing it again: Was I missed? Apparently, I was missed by nearly everyone. In one fashion or another, I would come up in conversation. They wondered what the hell happened to me. They thought that since I've been gone for so long from AIM that the screen name was probably deleted. Same thing for the e-mail address I gave them. Ironically, they didn't check this place, or they would have known what the deal was with me for the last few years.
Even now while I time this, the idea that they actually missed me when I could have sworn the didn't give a damn about me just feels awkward. I like the fact that I made such an impression on them to the point where after this long they miss me, but I've never really been missed by anyone. At least anyone that I put emotion towards. It's a new sensation that my lonely mind is having a hard time grasping. The attention whore, however, loves it and is living it up right now.
The conversation then pretty much came to an end as abruptly as it started. As usual, Josh had business to tend to, but he made sure to tell me to IM one of the others if I see them online. Provided they don't IM me first when they see me. I wished him a Merry Christmas, and with that, he signed out.
In looking back at this, I really wish my emotions and doubt didn't manifest in the way they did. I can't help feel like I insulted him when all he wanted to do was just say hello and catch up. But, this is Josh I was talking to. For someone that used to be so animate about not liking me to say that he has no grudge against me seems out of character to me. Then again, it has been a long time since I talked to him, so who knows what changes may have happened. Maybe that Golden Heart Dan told me about is now being worn on Josh's sleeve.
Now that I think about it, I wish I went about the conversation another way. Confronting Josh like that was completely uncalled for and rude. Stupid emotions, why is it you have to get in the way all the time just because I'm an artist? Where is my common sense when I need it?
A short time after getting my sister's IM, another window came up. It was from Josh. My hands ran cold, and I got a knot in my stomach that made the gases inside me feel like poisonous substances. I couldn't feel anything below my hip and found my eyes to be straining as I read the screen name. In short, I was nervous and scared for my life.
This has been the first time in two or three long years that I've talked to them. At that moment, I couldn't help but feel very apprehensive.
The conversation started out innocent enough, but slowly the doubt and my feelings for them came to the foreground. I told them flat out my concerns that I posted here recently. Eventually, I had to stop myself, apologizing at least three times, having lost myself to the doubt. Josh said that he doesn't think there is a way to change my mind, to make me believe they are for real. I know better. I know he is smarter than me and knows how to fix things. He just won't act on it for whatever reasons he may have.
With that out in the open, you would think that would be the end of it. I frustrated the hell out of Josh, and if all goes like it has been, that should have been that. Surprisingly, it wasn't.
I asked Josh one question to prevent me from losing it again: Was I missed? Apparently, I was missed by nearly everyone. In one fashion or another, I would come up in conversation. They wondered what the hell happened to me. They thought that since I've been gone for so long from AIM that the screen name was probably deleted. Same thing for the e-mail address I gave them. Ironically, they didn't check this place, or they would have known what the deal was with me for the last few years.
Even now while I time this, the idea that they actually missed me when I could have sworn the didn't give a damn about me just feels awkward. I like the fact that I made such an impression on them to the point where after this long they miss me, but I've never really been missed by anyone. At least anyone that I put emotion towards. It's a new sensation that my lonely mind is having a hard time grasping. The attention whore, however, loves it and is living it up right now.
The conversation then pretty much came to an end as abruptly as it started. As usual, Josh had business to tend to, but he made sure to tell me to IM one of the others if I see them online. Provided they don't IM me first when they see me. I wished him a Merry Christmas, and with that, he signed out.
In looking back at this, I really wish my emotions and doubt didn't manifest in the way they did. I can't help feel like I insulted him when all he wanted to do was just say hello and catch up. But, this is Josh I was talking to. For someone that used to be so animate about not liking me to say that he has no grudge against me seems out of character to me. Then again, it has been a long time since I talked to him, so who knows what changes may have happened. Maybe that Golden Heart Dan told me about is now being worn on Josh's sleeve.
Now that I think about it, I wish I went about the conversation another way. Confronting Josh like that was completely uncalled for and rude. Stupid emotions, why is it you have to get in the way all the time just because I'm an artist? Where is my common sense when I need it?
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Christmas Rant
I haven't had a reflective rant in a while, so I might as well let my conciousness flow and see what happens.
For starters, with my sister home, my social inatiquacies are brought more and more into the foreground. Being a dreamer and an imagineer (for lack of a better description), I don't think that I'm very much compatible with the social world. In fact, it's hard enough trying to get it into my head that I'm not selling my soul every time I look for a job when I feel like I am. The lines are clearly marked and run deep as to who is the better of the two of us. While I sit in bed with my eyes closed trying to escape a reality I hate and cannot conform or shape, my sister is becoming what she calls a local celebrity.
I don't know why I can't continue dreaming. Compromise doesn't seem to be much of an option. It's probably why I feel the way I do when the idea of looking for a job hits the forehead of my gray matter. I have yet to see any kind of proof where I dreamer can work in a capitalistic world and still do what they do best. Well, outside of Walt Disney, but even his biography borders on the fantastic more than non-fiction.
And people wonder why nutcases like me spend countless hours on the computer playing games. It isn't because we are lazy; it's because we can't deal with reality.
In the video games, I can actually enjoy the effort it takes to get from one point to another. Hell, in the online games that run on a capitalistic idea, I don't mind doing what is considered work for the money you need. It could be in the form of playing a game, but at least it is enjoyable and I don't have to deal with people that will ultimately make me want to rip their heads off. Well, most of the time. Oh, how I wish life was like a video game, but alas, I have better sense. Life is not a video game, and if it is, you only get one life and there are no save points.
I don't know, maybe I'm being selfish. But then again, how can I be selfish when this past few weeks with little to no thought I bought so many Christmas gifts almost impulsively without thinking about price. I mean, my sister's gift alone costed me $100. When you total up the other gifts I bought for the rest of the family, I spent a total of $200 on just four people. I could have been very cheap on the matter and double up on gifts for my parents or even pay for half like what I did last year. But no, I actually spent money knowing full well that I didn't have enough to begin with. Even my sister said that my gifts blow the ones she got out of the water! At least the ones I told her about. Maybe I'm looking for credit where credit isn't due. After all, I don't like how this holiday brings out the worst in people while bringing out the best in others. So who's to say that my gifts are not selfish?
Oh, what I wouldn't give to just be an artist and nothing but with the ability to create and learn how to create the things I want.
I want to say that it's been four years or more since I last talked to the boys, but I'm no longer sure. The emotions are still there event though the events are getting foggy. And even now, I'm not even sure they were ever real to begin with. For all I know, my naiveity took over and want to make them real. But if they weren't, what did I put so much emotion into? A fantasy? Some kind of sick joke? I'm not bitter so much as I am more careful these days. Just in need of closure that I know I won't get. It's probably why I'm so hesitant now to move on so many of my crushes, why I'm afraid to love. I don't want the same thing to happen again. I don't want to think that there is something there when there may not be anything at all.
Why am I bringing this up again? Of the people that I've talked about this to, the few that I trust to actually drop their real name, everyone has said that they were jerks. Even I know they were jerks towards me. Completely heartless, self-absorbed, egotistical, sheltered, perverted, sex-hungry, ignorant, incestual, foul-mouthed bunch of dicks up a son of a bitch's ass if I wanted to be nice with the insults. Yet the emotion is still there wanting to die and move on. I guess I'm attracted to pretty people that will treat me like shit. Presuming they are real, of course.
I think I just answered why it is so hard for me to act on my crushes. So why is it still a mystery to me?
Since the end of the semester, I've been wanting someone in my bed. Not for sex, but someone to cuddle with. The shallow side of me wants someone beautiful and with a very nice body. The deeper side of me wants someone that is accepting to the fact that I argue about stupid things, have insecurities out the ying-yang, and is overall just a big baby in the body of a 22-year-old college student. I have yet to have a dream about this person, but I know my comfort pillows have lost all their fluff as a result of me constantly waking up in the morning hugging them.
Okay, now I'm getting into trivial stuff.
I don't feel like spell checking. Half of the words I would need a spell check to would just come back as not being found in the dictionary anyway.
For starters, with my sister home, my social inatiquacies are brought more and more into the foreground. Being a dreamer and an imagineer (for lack of a better description), I don't think that I'm very much compatible with the social world. In fact, it's hard enough trying to get it into my head that I'm not selling my soul every time I look for a job when I feel like I am. The lines are clearly marked and run deep as to who is the better of the two of us. While I sit in bed with my eyes closed trying to escape a reality I hate and cannot conform or shape, my sister is becoming what she calls a local celebrity.
I don't know why I can't continue dreaming. Compromise doesn't seem to be much of an option. It's probably why I feel the way I do when the idea of looking for a job hits the forehead of my gray matter. I have yet to see any kind of proof where I dreamer can work in a capitalistic world and still do what they do best. Well, outside of Walt Disney, but even his biography borders on the fantastic more than non-fiction.
And people wonder why nutcases like me spend countless hours on the computer playing games. It isn't because we are lazy; it's because we can't deal with reality.
In the video games, I can actually enjoy the effort it takes to get from one point to another. Hell, in the online games that run on a capitalistic idea, I don't mind doing what is considered work for the money you need. It could be in the form of playing a game, but at least it is enjoyable and I don't have to deal with people that will ultimately make me want to rip their heads off. Well, most of the time. Oh, how I wish life was like a video game, but alas, I have better sense. Life is not a video game, and if it is, you only get one life and there are no save points.
I don't know, maybe I'm being selfish. But then again, how can I be selfish when this past few weeks with little to no thought I bought so many Christmas gifts almost impulsively without thinking about price. I mean, my sister's gift alone costed me $100. When you total up the other gifts I bought for the rest of the family, I spent a total of $200 on just four people. I could have been very cheap on the matter and double up on gifts for my parents or even pay for half like what I did last year. But no, I actually spent money knowing full well that I didn't have enough to begin with. Even my sister said that my gifts blow the ones she got out of the water! At least the ones I told her about. Maybe I'm looking for credit where credit isn't due. After all, I don't like how this holiday brings out the worst in people while bringing out the best in others. So who's to say that my gifts are not selfish?
Oh, what I wouldn't give to just be an artist and nothing but with the ability to create and learn how to create the things I want.
I want to say that it's been four years or more since I last talked to the boys, but I'm no longer sure. The emotions are still there event though the events are getting foggy. And even now, I'm not even sure they were ever real to begin with. For all I know, my naiveity took over and want to make them real. But if they weren't, what did I put so much emotion into? A fantasy? Some kind of sick joke? I'm not bitter so much as I am more careful these days. Just in need of closure that I know I won't get. It's probably why I'm so hesitant now to move on so many of my crushes, why I'm afraid to love. I don't want the same thing to happen again. I don't want to think that there is something there when there may not be anything at all.
Why am I bringing this up again? Of the people that I've talked about this to, the few that I trust to actually drop their real name, everyone has said that they were jerks. Even I know they were jerks towards me. Completely heartless, self-absorbed, egotistical, sheltered, perverted, sex-hungry, ignorant, incestual, foul-mouthed bunch of dicks up a son of a bitch's ass if I wanted to be nice with the insults. Yet the emotion is still there wanting to die and move on. I guess I'm attracted to pretty people that will treat me like shit. Presuming they are real, of course.
I think I just answered why it is so hard for me to act on my crushes. So why is it still a mystery to me?
Since the end of the semester, I've been wanting someone in my bed. Not for sex, but someone to cuddle with. The shallow side of me wants someone beautiful and with a very nice body. The deeper side of me wants someone that is accepting to the fact that I argue about stupid things, have insecurities out the ying-yang, and is overall just a big baby in the body of a 22-year-old college student. I have yet to have a dream about this person, but I know my comfort pillows have lost all their fluff as a result of me constantly waking up in the morning hugging them.
Okay, now I'm getting into trivial stuff.
I don't feel like spell checking. Half of the words I would need a spell check to would just come back as not being found in the dictionary anyway.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
I just realized something.
I didn't claim my T-Square from the school when I was cleaning out my studio space. Oh well, I could never get a decent right-angle from it anyway.
Friday, December 09, 2005
Christian Christmas and Heathen Holidays
Something has been bothering me about this holiday season for a while now, and I feel the need to address the issue... again.
Recently, I posted another entry explaining my distaste for how ignorant some people are about the history of Christmas as a major holiday. To be perfectly honest, I don't care anymore if a person believes whatever they want to believe about the holiday.
I'm just getting sick and tired of people saying that some group of people somewhere are pushing religion out of Christmas because Wal-Mart decided to greet people by saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." I'm also not buying into the claim that people are calling Christmas Trees "Holiday Trees."
You have no idea how much this pisses me off. For nearly 11 months out of the year with probably only a weekend to give thanks for being alive, someone somewhere is hating someone else. There is always some group, religious or cultural, that is offended by some other group for some stupid reason. And the only escape used to be this time of year. At least in this country.
But now? No. Every time I turn on the local radio to listen to Christmas music, I hear some religious Public Service Announcement saying that they should boycott this store because they are doing this to take Christ out of Christmas. I know it's a minority, but do you think the people that celebrate Kwanza are this bitchy about the holiday season? Hell, none of the Jewish people are upset about this whole "Christ out of Christmas" crap so far as I have heard!
If I could be a holiday special, my Christmas wish would be for everyone to just get off their high horse and celebrate the season for what it is. A time where people can for one month out of the year can get along with everyone even if they fucking hate their guts because they did something stupid like ran over their puppy. I just want the Christians that celebrate Christmas being about Christ's birth to do that. I want the people that think Christmas is about Santa and presents to do that. I wan the people that celebrate Kwanza to do that. I want people that don't have anything to give or get on Christmas to not feel like complete losers. In other words, I just want people to leave everyone else well enough alone and stop trying to make people celebrate the holiday they way they thing the other people should celebrate it.
I guess that's just asking too much, however, so I guess I'll just stick to asking for a Digital SLR Camera. People are never going to leave others alone when they are offended by something as stupid as how they practice Christmas. It's just human nature to try to conform everyone to their way of thinking an nobody else's. Very few people are as open minded as they claim they are.
Myself? I just have the curiosity of a cat but the attention span of a small rodent.
Recently, I posted another entry explaining my distaste for how ignorant some people are about the history of Christmas as a major holiday. To be perfectly honest, I don't care anymore if a person believes whatever they want to believe about the holiday.
I'm just getting sick and tired of people saying that some group of people somewhere are pushing religion out of Christmas because Wal-Mart decided to greet people by saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." I'm also not buying into the claim that people are calling Christmas Trees "Holiday Trees."
You have no idea how much this pisses me off. For nearly 11 months out of the year with probably only a weekend to give thanks for being alive, someone somewhere is hating someone else. There is always some group, religious or cultural, that is offended by some other group for some stupid reason. And the only escape used to be this time of year. At least in this country.
But now? No. Every time I turn on the local radio to listen to Christmas music, I hear some religious Public Service Announcement saying that they should boycott this store because they are doing this to take Christ out of Christmas. I know it's a minority, but do you think the people that celebrate Kwanza are this bitchy about the holiday season? Hell, none of the Jewish people are upset about this whole "Christ out of Christmas" crap so far as I have heard!
If I could be a holiday special, my Christmas wish would be for everyone to just get off their high horse and celebrate the season for what it is. A time where people can for one month out of the year can get along with everyone even if they fucking hate their guts because they did something stupid like ran over their puppy. I just want the Christians that celebrate Christmas being about Christ's birth to do that. I want the people that think Christmas is about Santa and presents to do that. I wan the people that celebrate Kwanza to do that. I want people that don't have anything to give or get on Christmas to not feel like complete losers. In other words, I just want people to leave everyone else well enough alone and stop trying to make people celebrate the holiday they way they thing the other people should celebrate it.
I guess that's just asking too much, however, so I guess I'll just stick to asking for a Digital SLR Camera. People are never going to leave others alone when they are offended by something as stupid as how they practice Christmas. It's just human nature to try to conform everyone to their way of thinking an nobody else's. Very few people are as open minded as they claim they are.
Myself? I just have the curiosity of a cat but the attention span of a small rodent.
