Oscar show for Hop on Pop Culture...

We had no cameraman. Our tripod sinks.
It happens.

Use whichever link you prefer...or both, simultaneously.
Comments are welcome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-34D3im9nE

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=103400213

I raised a flag up into your heart.

You let the winds come tear it apart.

I went to an allergist on Monday because my brother just found out he has a lot of food allergies. Given that he never had any symptoms and I've had stomach problems since I was two, and Upper GIs, Lower GIs, stomach scopes, ultrasounds, etc, found nothing, my mom thought it was a good idea.

I don't get the results back for a month, but my new doctor is really concerned by how many different symptoms I have. He made me fill a prescription for epinephrine injections and I'm to carry them with me wherever I go.
I'm never to eat chocolate again because the reaction could be fatal.
He thinks Celiac disease is likely.

It's not that big a deal and even if I had to eat slop for the rest of my life I'd prefer it to feeling nauseous a few times a day, not to mention other more serious and disgusting symptoms.

I'm actually afraid that I won't be allergic to anything else and they'll never find out what's wrong with me.

I told the people in my immediate family what's going on and I only felt like telling one other person about it, but I sense some new apathy when it comes to me...and it really doesn't feel worth mentioning.

If my throat closes up and I die, I can only imagine a few people at my funeral anyway, most of them to support my family, not out of any affection for me.
I'm such a winner.
...Now with allergies;)

Oh, compromise...

Got a haircut today.
Modeled after this:


When I walked in the door afterward, my mom said, "You look so much like Katie Holmes with that haircut."

Later we watched The Ice Storm and she said, "Nope. Holy shit. You do look just like Christina Ricci. I used to say, 'everything but the eyes,' but no, especially the eyes."

I get both frequently and maybe it's a little true and more obvious when I steal their haircuts and watch a movie which features them both...but it's still, "Hey, you look like them only not as pretty," right?
If either of them ever need an uglier little sister in a movie, I'm up for it.

On an unrelated note...I was thinking about will and how easily it can break or... grow stronger.
When it comes down to it, it's really a matter of what you want, sometimes even without understanding it.

There was a guy I used to talk to online when I was in high school. We met once when we were kids and hated each other, still for some reason (which would become clear in time) all those years later he insisted on talking to me.
Eventually we were talking almost everyday, but when he visited my home town it wasn't a pleasant experience and when he visited a second time, it was worse to the point of being disgusting. Both times he treated me like crap, but the second time he blatantly sexually harassed me and I'll spare you the details.

I hadn't talked to the guy in years, on purpose, and with good reason. I signed on to an old screen name when I couldn't sign on with my usual one and immediately received a message from him. I could've ignored him, but I didn't.
Soon it was evident that he hadn't changed at all. Still the same creepy motivations. And why was I talking to him?
I didn't know.

He asked if I'd talk to him again tomorrow and I said I would.
In fact, he made me promise.
Today, I blocked him on that screen name too and I have no intention of ever talking to him again. And even though it might be wrong or spiteful, I think I did the whole thing on purpose.
Even when we were just chatting, early on, when he said things that were off-putting, he was always the type to plead my forgiveness. Someone who couldn't stand to be hated.
I don't hate many people, but I do hate him, and I thought it fair that he should live with it after what he did to me.
Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Funny, but it seems like the people you most want to talk to, the ones you obsess over, are always the ones who aren't there to talk to you...whether they're getting revenge on you or not.

I know who I wish was here to talk to me...and it sure isn't him.

"There's only one conclusion to every story...We all fall down."

I've heard tales of mothers who got an adrenaline rush and lifted a car to pull their children to safety after a crash.
I've heard mothers say that after you have a child, everything else matters less...you, your husband.

I know my parents don't think they're compatible anymore, or maybe they think they never were. But they don't realize how similar they are.
My dad has this quality about him, an inherited trait, he's conceited. He's belittling. He thinks himself superior to everyone and he's very open about.
My mom has low self-esteem. She has for years and she always lets him get to her.
He's selfish, but she doesn't realize that she's no different.

She resents all of us because she didn't do anything with her life...or because she thinks she didn't. She made sacrifices, I know that, but it's her reaction to that which makes her selfish.

There are stories about your parents that as their child, you should never hear and I heard them all, several times, even as a little kid.
I know about every instance infidelity in their marriage.
I know every harsh word that was ever spoken and every bad thing that ever happened to either of them, in graphic detail.

My mom made sure I knew how much she hated me for ruining her life at five years old and I've heard that sentiment repeated every time she got drunk for years. Which was at least once a month and during the bad times, once a week or more often.

There are things she can't cope with, so she drinks, and then she spills them to me. And as much as she wants to think herself a martyr, making a kid cope with the things you can't handle makes her something else entirely.
She's as selfish as he is and she always has been, and neither of them love me as much as they love themselves or as much as I love them.

A couple times when he was drunk, my dad locked me and my brother in the basement.
My mom once cut my leg with a beer bottle.
They were so sorry.
Not sorry enough to stop.

My dad's the VP of a beer distributorship.
He's a millionaire.
But alcohol helped to ruin them before it ever helped to make them.

I don't really blame it.
They look for excuses to drink, excuses to say all those things they've been aching to say, to me, to each other.

I've never taken a drink and I never will.
People judge me for that. They think I'm square or that I'm judging them, when I don't care what they do.

My Uncle Gary's dying. People from Hospice care were there today and implied that he didn't have long at all. My mom walked into the house at the wrong moment and heard the sobs and all the terrible things his loved ones should've kept to themselves in front of him but didn't.

She came home, and she got drunk, and she reported it all to me.
She talked about her mom and what it was like to watch her die of cancer, how she'd asked my mom to kill her.
Stories I've heard a hundred times, maybe more.
And listening to her make it about her again, I just got so mad.
I told her to go bed.
I sent her to her room like she was a little kid.

My big brother used to go to his room and lock his door when she did it. But I sat and listened to her and held her when she cried, because I loved her more than he did and still she prefers him to this day. They both do.

My parents are killing themselves, and they're killing me, and they don't care.
But maybe I'm the selfish one.

"Ain't love grand?"

"You're not really a writer unless people are readin' your shit."

"I'm an aspiring writer."

Another huge blizzard today.
I shoveled the driveway twice before my parents got home and it barely made a dent. It just kept coming. I almost hopped on the 4 wheeler to do it, but I'd never used the plow and it's been awhile since I'd driven the thing in general.
It finally stopped snowing.

So while I was locked away inside, I made flyers for this benefit my family's having for my uncle Gary and printed them out.
I printed up my screenplay too and got it all set for shipping to the Nantucket Film Festival.

Austin's submissions are due in June and I want to send in both the one I'm submitting to Nantucket and the new one I'm working on, so I gotta get crackin'.

I only have six fans and even my biggest fan hasn't read the last one or didn't like it, so she didn't want to review it, so I guess I'm not really a writer.
But no matter what happens, I can't seem to be discouraged from writing, which is both good and bad.
I'm glad I love something, but I'd like to know if I'm wasting my time.

I have to get through this new one, but the story challenges me at every turn...not because it's difficult to write or I don't know what to put on paper, but because it's stuff I'd have trouble talking about, even with close friends.
In any case, I want to get it out because I have another story idea eating at me.

I think much of the time I give the impression that no amount of encouragement could change my thinking, but somewhere along the line, something must have sunken in...now that everyone's given up on me.

Why I can no longer stand Bill Maher...

To me, part of what makes a person smart is an ability to weigh pros and cons and make their own informed decision about something...an ability to recognize a valid point in an argument that opposes their own.

Years ago, when I used to watch Politically Incorrect, Bill Maher was a bit more moderate and because of this, I agreed with him much more often than I do now.
In agreeing with him, I failed to see how closed-minded he is. Regardless of whether or not someone has a valid point, he doesn't consider it. He just keeps talking.
I really feel like the Bush administration ruined him.
He calls himself a libertarian, but it's obvious he's now extremely left wing. It's like he's gone off his rocker.
A lot of people don't like that he attacks religion and I don't care about that. What bothers me is that he's now embracing the silliest arguments and generalizing, attaching them to tons of people and labeling them all republicans and suddenly all conservatives are the enemy on every issue.
This video really bothered me.


Why do people insist that people who support the tea parties are all racists?

I think it's a stupid analogy because it's not taxation without representation, as we do have representatives, but to me it's as if the current administration is labeling those who don't want to pay high taxes racist as an attempt to scare these citizens into keeping quiet and discredit them, and Hollywood fell for this hook, line, and sinker.
If these groups of citizens, which included democrats, independents, libertarians, and republicans alike were simply to adopt the "Don't Tread on Me" flag as their symbol, would one of the great symbols of American liberty suddenly be considered a racist symbol?

I get my news from PJTV, a moderate website, not Fox, not CNN...and they interview plenty of black people at these tea party conventions.
Could they really all hate their own race?

I doubt it.
It insults our intelligence and it really burns my toast.

Why don't you put your hair back on and come on back?

Just come on back...

Sometimes I feel I'm wearing a mask I don't remember putting on.
Most see me as quite reserved, and always aware of my position with regard to the implications of my interaction with other people.
But sometimes I wonder if my behavior doesn't exemplify my true intent. Sometimes I think it acts as a defense mechanism, one more powerful than even I can understand.
I haven't dated in awhile, but usually when I do, if I get too many phone calls I just stop answering the phone.
I don't know if I cherish "me time" more than most, or if my behavior is self-destructive, ensuring that I will remain alone.
Still, there are exceptions to the rule. People who cause me to rack my brain for an excuse to start a conversation with them. These people afford a glimmer of hope.

One such person seemed equally fascinated by me in the beginning, and the effortless ability to hold a conversation for hours or carry it over for days made me wonder if I too was worthy of companionship.
Now the conversations are fewer, shorter...and I find myself fanning a dying flame while the other person waits for the embers to go dark. The thought that I could need something that isn't essential to my being makes me feel pathetic. And when my thoughts drift back to the fire, I wonder if it's ever in the mind of that other person or if I am completely alone in this.

I wonder how something that seemed to fit together so perfectly could be broken apart and slip away without warning, how one could be left with a void and the other think nothing of it.
And if I was unworthy, I wonder why this person was ever a part of my life, why one would be made to seem so perfectly compatible with me, only to be lost.
I wonder if in knowing me well, all interest faded away.
I feel abandoned.
I wonder if some people exist, beautiful, distant, perfect...just to make us suffer.
And I marvel at the idea that someone who once made me feel intelligent, interesting, and significant could make me feel so much less than before they entered my life.