The Space That's In Between Insane and Insecure

That is how one might describe my mood of late.

I feel as though I ought to have something to say here, but I just can't form the words.  

In time I will understand, if I'm meant to understand.

God is good. He does not hold back the good food, the coldest drinks, the best chair, the clearest view of the movie screen.

I find myself undone when I decide what is going to happen in my life.  It isn't for me to decide, which is both frightening and sublime.

And I Been Workin' Like A Dog

I've gotten a job.

Well, two jobs, but the second one hasn't started yet.

And I know you're dying to hear how my first one has been going.

Ha, listen to me as I drivel on as if my two followers are actually 2,000, and even then that my 2 followers actually follow.

Anyhow, I am an esteemed member of the Chesterton Feed and Garden Center, specializing in flowers, shrubs, shrubberies, shrubbage, foliage,  trees, bushes, bushy trees, mulch, dirt, and animal food.  and gravel, i forgot that.  Anyways, the good news is, if the Knights Who Say Ni show up and ask us to get some shrubberies, we've totally got it set.  Hopefully they don't ask us to cut down a tree with a herring.

 Anyhow, I dont mean to make fun of it, I enjoy it alot.  The people rock and the pay is above minimum wage for a fun job.  Beyond getting paid, I've learned something as well.  Cue the contemplative guitar chords, softly please.

I used to avoid getting a job like the plague.  I figured it'd just leave me with absolutely no time to do anything.  Well eventually all my friends got a job and I had nothing to do and all the time in the world to do it.  Thus, it was worse than having a job.  Having time but nothing to spend it on SUCKS.

So this coming week I will be receiving a whopper of a check after a nearly 12-hour shift today, among other days.  Anyhow, I realize the excellence of an hourly job.  The more I work, the more I get paid.  It is awesome.  But the job gives me something to do, and I get to work with people and make money for it.  It's pretty legit.  I realize that avoiding work was a a stupid idea.  Work is both inevitable and rewarding, and I'd be so much awesome-er if I had been working for longer.

But, you will rightly say, "Evan, what do you mean awesome-er?!  Your Awesometer is already cooler looking than the Flux Capacitor!"

Well, think awesome-er like this picture.

In My Time of Dying, Want Nobody To Mourn

You know what makes me go bonkers?!

Oh jeez, you say.  Rolling your eyes, you pull the tarp up over your face, peeking precariously in my direction as you await the refuse of a watermelon smashed in fury whilst I rant.

I think I also just used 'whilst' incorrectly. Great.

Anyway, what makes me angry is when someone famous dies, they automatically are so much more liked than they ever were when they were alive by EVERYONE.  Like when M.J. died, preppy girls at my school who never knew he started out black were like "Oh My GAWD Stacy, can you believe he's dead?!  I mean, I never really listened to him, but it's only cus I knew I loved him already!  What's your favorite song of his?  Mine's Love Shack!"

And then we all remember the Facebook quizzes: "Which MJ song are you?"  "Which of the 11 Dropped Accusations from MJ's Kiddie Scandal Are You?"  "Which inanimate object on MJ's face are you?"  "If you could Time Travel, You'd Go to See MJ."  Apparently that last one was more of an answer than a question.

Anyways, I think it's funny that the whole "You never know what you got till it's gone" has seeped into pop culture.  It's like people were planning on listening to MJ's music one of these days but always put it off, and then when he died they were like "Oh crap!  I took him for granted while he was here and kept putting off his music!  It's just not the same if I listen to his discography while he's dead!  Now, to make up for it, I'll pretend that I've always loved him, and jump on the bandwagon.

Hey, who let that bandwagon into the funeral procession?

It happened for Patrick Swayze too, and Farah Fawcett, and Billy Mays, and...wait.  Billy Mays was always awesome and loved by all.

Anyways, you get my drift.  Everyone is fully prepared to let someone famous pass into obscurity even if they are amazing at what they do.  The minute they die, we roll out the red carpet and make collages and write acoustic tributes and cry into our coffee mugs.  It just annoys me, being the highly tuned cynic that I am.  If you're gonna like someone, do it all the time.  You think I only like Gopher Claw because Billy Mays died. Heck no, what's not to love about the Gopher Claw year-round?!  You think I like Dirty Dancing any more because Patrick Swayze died?  No, I don't, it still sucks and still makes me wonder how an entire generation of males passed their genes on to the next.

That said...I'm planning on taking full advantage of this death-after-fame nonsense.  I know that all you millions of people out there are just waiting till I die in some big scandal, like maybe old age or hitting a banana peel while driving and careening wildly into a gorge, and then you'll read my blog in droves.

If 6 Was 9

 

Tonight I watched the film Donnie Darko.

Good gravy.

What a trip.  Between the clear tubular trails emitted from the solar plexus, to the woman who can't stop looking into her mailbox, and of course, Frank the Rabbit, I am utterly at a loss for words.

At least for a few seconds.  Now that it's sunk in, I'm prepared to start babbling as is germane to my persona.

SPOILER ALERTS!!!!!!  If you want to watch this movie and haven't seen it, watch it before reading this.  I'm interested to see what your thoughts are without any outer influence.  And I do recommend watching it.  I already am planning on watching it a second time sometime soon because each time I watch a movie, I get it more and more.  And this film is the first one that I wanted to watch again for the sole purpose of enjoying that sort of gradual enlightenment or periodic understanding.

Now that you've been warned:  My review and thoughts.  Donnie Darko, if I were to summarize greatly, is an investigation into the question of "What If?"  Every sequence, or nearly so, has a part that either makes absolutely no sense - with comedic effect or otherwise - or makes you seriously wonder WHY a director would choose to do something a certain way.  Certainly there must be a purpose?  Or is there no purpose to some of the choices made in the film?  This seems absurd, but would be an ironic parallel that not many people would pick up on, connected to the short story in the movie, "The Destructors", which is about a gang who have no motives other than to defy the norm.  Upon discovering enormous amounts of cash in an old man's house, the characters of the short story do not take it; they burn it.  Do the filmmakers proverbially "burn cash" when they add seemingly random things to the movie, thoroughly bemused when people seek purpose in the nebulosity?  So maybe the director is asking us "What if a movie had things for no reason, as opposed to everything we've been taught to seek in the arts?"

The largest "what if?" in this movie is the Wizard of Oz-like film gimmick where the end rewinds back to before everything began, revealing that it was all a dream, or in this case just a parallel sequence of events.  In the beginning, Donnie evades death by sleepwalking to a golf course where he meets Frank, an enormous bunny with a face more terrifying than the thought of Nancy Pelosi in a bathing suit.  Speaking in a normal voice laced with computerized twinges and groans, Frank beckons Donnie "closer. closer."  Upon arriving, he tells him when the world will end: in 28 days, 6 hours, some-odd minutes, and 12 seconds.  Everything from then on centers around Donnie phasing in and out of normality, medication or depression-induced trips(he is suggested to be a paranoid schizophrenic), and slowly encountering Frank more, learning more about how the world will end, how Frank can exist, etc.

Now, on the first night, when being beckoned to the golf course, he avoids being killed by a random jet engine crashing through his roof.  No plane was traced.  It literally just fell out of the sky.  From this sleepwalk that ends up saving his life, along with other indubitably correlated events, Donnie begins to realize things happened for a reason.  He grapples with ideas of predestination, time travel to change your destiny, and time travel along your set destiny (aka, not able to change anything, just go forward or back like on a VCR).  By the end of the film has rolled around, he's got himself a pretty girl despite his overwhelming social quirks, and has enjoyed his last 28 days of life with, as far as we can tell, more joy than he's had in a long time.  Oh, with some trips of terror and vandalism/arson/destruction of property mixed in.


Hold the phone.  The film ends with - SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - (sorry, I hate things being spoiled, and would hate to be the blight of humanity who forgot to document his spoilage at the expense of a poor soul) Donnie laughing hysterically, then going to sleep...no sleepwalking.  Then, as the scene pans out just as it did when we see the jet engine crash in on Donnie's empty room, we realize what's coming.  Donnie's in his room.  The jet engine will soon be in his room, and it wasn't even invited.  Epitome of rude.  Regardless, Donnie needs to make like Beethoven and roll over.


He doesn't.  He dies.  And his girlfriend (or WAS in the other sequence of events, I'm not sure yet) comes riding past the house with the crane and police cars and fire trucks out front.  Stopping next to a little boy (who by the way plays the son of Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich, another great movie), she asks him what happened.  He explains.  He asks, "Did you know him?"  She pauses, and replies "No."  She then looks extremely contemplative, as if she DID know him.  Or something.  I have no clue.  Then the biggest "wait...what?!" moment in movie history, she waves at Donnie's mom who is barely crying and dragging on a yummy skag.  She waves back.  The little boy waves at his mom.  The film ends.


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That's what I felt like.  Anyhow, I've no clue if it was a dream, if Donnie discovered how to time travel as he'd tried to for the whole movie practically, or if something else crazy happened.  I intend on watching this bad boy again soon to investigate more.

The Real Me

Who doesn't like a good introduction?

 I don't, that's who.  Only joking, I'm quite good at introductions.  I prefer to begin each one with a sweaty handshake, looking wistfully at the person and craving physical contact, from which I've been distanced for quite some time.  Wanna be best friends?!

Don't worry, I'm not one of those stalker best friends.  One time, my BFF Stacy didn't wanna be BFF's anymore, because I had memorized her blood type...Like, come on!  I memorized it, so like, when she got hurt or something, I could like tell the medics her blood type and they could like totally save her life!

Enough jokes.  I will fling onto tangents more than a high school math course.  So be prepared.


I'm currently 18, finishing high school, and looking forward to my career at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Illinois.  I currently attend a high school in Indiana.  I play drums, write songs and stories, hunt wolverines with my uncle in Alaska...gosh!, and hang out with friends.  I am conservative, fiscally and religiously.  I do not approve of the current administration, and think that the promises being made are like when Mommy mentioned ice cream just to get us to shut up whilst we screamed and flung jars of mayonnaise around the grocery store.  By the time you get in the car, and fall asleep like kids do, you forget all about the ice cream.  I've just been making this up as I go, but now that I narcissistically admire my work, I see that it's a pretty good analogy.  I will quote an old friend:

---

"Evan, if you were a superhero, your superpower would be analogies."

---

She was a girl.  That's why it's in pink.


Moving ahead:  I love soccer, and I will back Manchester United in thermonuclear global war any day.  This summer, I will be vehemently supporting England and the United States in the World Cup, basically the best sporting event known to man.  The Super Bowl?  The Toilet Bowl in comparison to World Cup.  And just like a toilet bowl, every so often people rush to it, and discover that it stinks and is filled with crap.  
Analogy Man - 1; Super Bowl - 0.


I am deeply in love with Classic Rock.  The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, as far as I'm concerned, are all you need.  Or maybe Love is all you need.  Either way, The Beatles are involved, which is alright with me.  I also like alot of modern rock, mostly Christian rock.  House of Heroes is solid, I recommend checking them out.  Relient K is never a bad choice, though I've declined in my listening to them due to a plethora of personal memories associated with like every song.  Gotta love breakups that ruin a perfectly good band.


I play drums, and was in a band for awhile, which was alot of fun.  Due to the incredibly politically correct "creative differences", I left the band.  In real terms, one member was impossible to work with due to his utter superiority in all things music.  I mean, I'm just jealous because he's so awesome, and I'm so not.  It is a sore spot, me and a friend started the band with the intention of letting nothing get in front of the music, and then this diva shows up and blows it.  Meh.  I'll start a better band soon in college.


What else, what else....I like pizza.  And meat.  As of right now, that's all you need to know.


So, can you see the real me?  Can ya, Can ya?

Everybody's Got Something to Hide...Except for Me and My Monkey

 I am cool.  That is me ^^^.

I am a veritable blog newbie.  So bear with me through my learning experiences - although I'm not sure I can make mistakes considering it's MY blog.  That's right folks, MINE!  And if you come all up in here trying to take it over, I'll just let you know I am well-read in military history and tactics, and an excellent marksman with a rubber band and V-dart.

 This blog will serve as my catch-all, or land fill if you will (that rhymes), for all of my thoughts.  That's not to say that I keep my thoughts restricted in day-to-day life; quite the opposite actually.  You just get to see them sprawled out on the floor that is the internet, and on a platform where I've had plenty of time to assemble my thoughts, build my arguments, and solidify my snide remarks.


As the title suggests, I've got nothing to hide.  Well, almost.  Some things are a bit underneath the radar for what I will talk about.  But who knows, maybe in time I will become more open, if that's possible.  Also, I'm going to try to begin each post with a song title or song lyric because I am a huge fan of many types of music, and my mental database is brimming with good titles, lines, etc.  I'll also use this blog to post any creative endeavors I have undertaken, am undertaking, or will undertake.  Poems, songs, stories, screenplays; all are fair game.


With no further ado, please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times.  No one likes a rule-breaker.  Or a limb-breaker.