urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide Jordan Jordan 2006-06-17T05:58:13Z urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:33181 2006-06-17T05:17:39Z 2006-06-17T05:58:13Z Leonard Cohen All work and no play makes Homer something something...<br />Go crazy?<br />Don't mind if I do!<br /><br />Our vacation is longer but in any practical sense it is much shorter as we lose half our lives to a timeclock.<br />And then when we do get a day off, it just so happens to be "National Can't Catch a Fucking Break Day" and everything in the world that is inconvenient happens.<br /><br />Today's observation:<br />Everyone that's pissed off is pissed off for a reason. <br />Don't fuck with them, they could snap at any second.<br /><br />For example: The waitress that's always in a bitchy mood at work might be married to a Mexican piece of shit that won't take care of their kids and instead pawns them off on her mother, who is dying of cancer at the age of 46.<br /><br />Read Bukowski, listen to Leonard Cohen, watch Adult Swim, consume mind-altering substances, sleep in late, swim and drink like a fish, sweat in the 90 degree weather while Michigan is generous enough to let us have it, and never let anything get to you.<br /><br />Because nothing<br /><br />matters<br /><br />any<br /><br />ways. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:32985 2006-06-06T18:37:56Z 2006-06-08T02:41:41Z The Devil HAPPY DEVIL'S DAY EVERYBODY!<br />It only comes once a century, so make it count.<br /><br />-Sacrifice an animal<br /><br />-Carve a pentagram into your flesh<br /><br />-Burn down a church<br /><br />-Go see The Omen<br /><br />-Put on a Devil costume<br /><br />-Buy and read the Satanic Bible<br /><br />-Sacrifice a human<br /><br />-Carve pentagrams on everything else.<br /><br />-(Get drunk and play Spite and Malice/Tetris Attack with friends)<br /><br />Just a few suggestions. Now get out there, you little heathans, and be as evil as you can be. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:32733 2006-06-03T07:41:02Z 2006-06-03T07:41:26Z Nothing, it's all in my head From Memory:<br /><br />Old Godzilla was hoping around Tokyo City like a big playground when suddenly Batman burst from the shade and he hit Godzilla with a bat-grenade. Godzilla got pissed and began to attack, but he didn't expect to get blocked by Shaq, who proceeded to open up a can of Shaq-fu, when Aaron Carter jumped out of the blue and he started beating up Shaquille O'Neal but they both got flattened by the Batmobile but before he get back to the Batcave, Abraham Lincoln jumped out of his grave and pulled an AK-47 out from under his hat and blew Batman away with a rat-a-tat-tat, but he ran out of bullets and he ran away, 'cause Optimus Prime came to save the day! (Have you ever seen such a run-on sentence?)<br /><br />This is the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny. Good guys bad guys and explosions as far as the eye can see, and only one will survive, I wonder who it will be. This is the ultimate showdown...of ultimate destiny.<br /><br />Godzilla took a bite out of Optimus Prime like Scruff McGruff took a bite out of crime and Shaq came back covered in a tire track, but Jackie Chan jumped and he landed on his back, and Batman was injured and tryin' to get steady when Abraham Lincoln came back with a machete, but something (uh...caught his leg and he fell and he tripped?) Indiana Jones took him out with his whip, and he saw Godzilla sneaking up from behind so he reached for his gun which he just couldn't find because Batman took it and he shot and he missed: Jackie Chan deflected it with his fist. Then he jumped in the air and he did a sommersault while Abraham Lincoln tried to polevault onto Optimus Prime but they collided in the air and they both got hit by a Carebear-stare!<br /><br />(Chorus)<br /><br />Angels sang out in immaculate chorus, when down from the heavens, descended Chuck Norris, who delivered a kick that could shatter bone into the crotch of Indiana Jones who fell over on the ground writhing in pain as Batman changed back into Bruce Wayne, but Chuck saw through his clever disguise, and he crushed Batman's head right between his things...<br />And then Gandalf the Gray and Gandalf the White and Monty Python and the Holy Grail's Black Knight and Butinni Mussolinni and the Blue Meanie, Cowboy Curtis and Jambi the Genie, Robocop, the Terminator, Captain Kirk and Darth Vader, Lo Pan, Superman, every single Power Ranger, Bill S. Preston and Theodore Logan, Spock, the Rock, Doc Oc and Hulk Hogan all came out of nowhere lightning fast and they kicked Chuck Norris in his cowboy ass. It was the bloodiest battle that the world ever saw with civilians staring on in total awe. The battle raged on for a century. Many lives were claimed but eventually the champion stood, the rest saw their better.<br />Mr. Rogers in a blood-stained sweater.<br /><br />(Chorus) urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:32509 2006-05-31T15:11:56Z 2006-05-31T15:11:56Z Rob Zombie - Educated Horses Last night, I dreamt of buying shirts with blue collars. I had over a dozen, all different lengths and widths. Some had racing stripes, some were black, some were plaid, but they all had blue collars.<br />At the end of the rack of shirts there was bookshelf. I picked out a large book with the word "FICTION" engraved on the spine in golden letters.<br />When I opened it, I found myself reading the bible.<br /><br />The lakes are warm and when we jump in them they hug us with the idea that summer is here.<br />The drive home from the beach in the dark night air, damp from the water and still warm despite the wind through my open windows, is a feeling I was looking forward to all winter.<br /><br />Hail Summer<br />Hail Satan<br />Hail Molly<br />Hail Something urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:32177 2006-05-01T23:56:30Z 2006-05-01T23:56:30Z Sonata Arctica New Things:<br /><br />Assassins. Grant Hyde, Matt Robinson, Ryan Wood, Drew Funni, Dan Lowe, Ryan Newer, myself and a few others are trying to kill each other for a fifty dollar prize.<br /><br />Molly. My brand new baby rat. She's just about as small as a mouse and she's badass. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:31858 2006-04-28T19:12:05Z 2006-05-16T21:02:45Z The Black Dahlia Murder Home for the summer.<br />No more cafe food.<br />No more dorm room.<br />No more papers.<br />No more tests.<br />No more hair.<br />No more cold weather.<br />I have a car, a job, and a house now.<br />Commerce has never looked so good.<br /><br />The Boys I Mean Are Not Refined - E.E. Cummings. (Released in 1935)<br /><br />The boys I mean are not refined<br />They go with girls who buck and bite<br />They do not give a fuck for luck<br />They hump them thirteen times a night<br /><br />One hangs a hat upon her tit<br />One carves a cross in her behind<br />They do not give a shit for wit<br />The boys I mean are not refined<br /><br />They come with girls who bite and buck<br />Who cannot read and cannot write<br />Who laugh like they would fall apart<br />And masturbate with dynamite<br /><br />The boys I mean are not refined<br />They cannot chat of that and this<br />They do not give a fart for art<br />They kill like you would take a piss<br /><br />They speak whatever's on their mind<br />They do whatever's in their pants<br />The boys I mean are not refined<br />They shake the mountains when they dance urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:31725 2006-03-28T05:15:45Z 2006-03-28T05:15:45Z Dead Silence Dear Police,<br /><br />Please stop trying to arrest my friends.<br /><br /><br />Fuck the police <br />Comin straight from the underground <br />Young nigga got it bad cuz I'm brown <br />And not the other color so police think <br />They have the authority to kill a minority <br /><br />Fuck that shit, cuz I ain't the one <br />For a punk muthafucka with a badge and a gun <br />To be beatin on, and throwin in jail <br />We could go toe to toe in the middle of a cell <br /><br />Fuckin with me cuz I'm a teenager <br />With a little bit of gold and a pager <br />Searchin my car, lookin for the product <br />Thinkin every nigga is sellin narcotics <br /><br />You'd rather see me in the pen <br />Then me and Lorenzo rollin in the Benzo <br />Beat tha police outta shape <br />And when I'm finished, bring the yellow tape <br />To tape off the scene of the slaughter <br />Still can't swallow bread and water <br /><br />I don't know if they fags or what <br />Search a nigga down and grabbin his nuts <br />And on the other hand, without a gun they can't get none <br />But don't let it be a black and a white one <br />Cuz they slam ya down to the street top <br />Black police showin out for the white cop <br /><br />Ice Cube will swarm <br />On any muthafucka in a blue uniform <br />Just cuz I'm from the CPT, punk police are afraid of me <br />A young nigga on a warpath <br />And when I'm finished, it's gonna be a bloodbath <br />Of cops, dyin in LA <br />Yo Dre, I got somethin to say <br /><br />Fuck the police<br />Fuck the police<br />Fuck the police<br />Fuck the police <br /><br />M. C. Ren, will you please give your testimony to the jury about this fucked up incident.<br /><br />Fuck tha police and Ren said it with authority <br />because the niggaz on the street is a majority. <br />A gang, is with whoever I'm stepping <br />and the motherfuckin' weapon <br />is kept in a stash box, for the so-called law <br />wishin' Ren was a nigga that they never saw <br /><br />Lights start flashin behind me <br />But they're scared of a nigga so they mace me to blind me <br />But that shit don't work, I just laugh <br />Because it gives 'em a hint not to step in my path <br /><br />To the police I'm sayin fuck you punk <br />Readin my rights and shit, it's all junk <br />Pullin out a silly club, so you stand <br />With a fake assed badge and a gun in your hand <br /><br />But take off the gun so you can see what's up <br />And we'll go at it punk, I'ma fuck you up <br /><br />Make ya think I'm a kick your ass <br />But drop your gat, and Ren's gonna blast <br />I'm sneaky as fuck when it comes to crime <br />But I'm a smoke 'em now, and not next time <br /><br />Smoke any muthafucka that sweats me <br />Or any asshole that threatens me <br />I'm a sniper with a hell of a scope <br />Takin out a cop or two, they can't cope with me <br /><br />The muthafuckin villian that's mad <br />With potential to get bad as fuck <br />So I'm a turn it around <br />Put in my clip, yo, and this is the sound <br />Ya, somethin like that, but it all depends on the size of the gat <br /><br />Takin out a police would make my day <br />But a nigga like Ren don't give a fuck to say <br /><br />Fuck the police<br />Fuck the police<br />Fuck the police<br />Fuck the police<br /><br />Police, open now. We have a warrant for Eazy-E's arrest. <br />Get down and put your hands up where I can see em. <br />Just shut the fuck up and get your muthafuckin ass on the floor. <br />huh?<br /><br />and tell the jury how you feel abou this bullshit.<br /><br />I'm tired of the muthafuckin jackin <br />Sweatin my gang while I'm chillin in the shackin <br />Shining tha light in my face, and for what <br />Maybe it's because I kick so much butt <br /><br />I kick ass, or maybe cuz I blast <br />On a stupid assed nigga when I'm playin with the trigga <br />Of any Uzi or an AK <br />Cuz the police always got somethin stupid to say <br /><br />They put up my picture with silence <br />Cuz my identity by itself causes violence <br />The E with the criminal behavior <br />Yeah, I'm a gansta, but still I got flavor <br /><br />Without a gun and a badge, what do ya got? <br />A sucka in a uniform waitin to get shot, <br />By me, or another nigga. <br />and with a gat it don't matter if he's smarter or bigger <br />[MC Ren: Sidle him, kid, he's from the old school, fool] <br /><br />And as you all know, E's here to rule <br />Whenever I'm rollin, keep lookin in the mirror <br />And there's no cue, yo, so I can hear a <br />Dumb muthafucka with a gun <br /><br />And if I'm rollin off the 8, he'll be tha one <br />That I take out, and then get away <br />And while I'm drivin off laughin <br />This is what I'll say <br /><br />Fuck the police<br />Fuck the police<br />Fuck the police<br />Fuck the police<br /><br />The jury has found you guilty of bein a redneck, <br />whitebread, chickenshit muthafucka. <br />Wait, that's a lie. That's a goddamn lie. <br />I want justice! I want justice! <br />Fuck you, you black muthafucka!<br /><br />Fuck the police<br />Fuck the police<br />Fuck the police urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:31319 2006-03-14T01:31:30Z 2006-03-14T01:31:30Z Radiohead Quote of the day:<br /><br />"If you can blame a gun for killing someone, then I can blame a pencil for my spelling errors." - An excerpt from a conversation I overheard while walking through campus. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:31060 2006-03-01T09:30:53Z 2006-03-01T09:38:27Z I suppose the rest of the insomniacs have something better to do than sit online this late at night. Well, I'm tired of videogames and I'm saving the last twenty pages of Galapagos for tomorrow and I don't feel like writing, so I end up doing something very stupid.<br />I read my old deadjournal.<br />I think it's because there's no one on to talk to right now, and reading all the entries and comments kind of makes me feel like I'm making contact.<br />They're good for looking back on, but I must say I'm a little surprised at what the 15 year old me thought it was okay to say on a public internet forum.<br />I'm also a little surprised at how long I've thought the same way.<br />I've been saying the same exact things since I was 15.<br />For example, an excerpt from a rant entitled Human Filth Parade:<br />"Things go as they will, just live like you want to live, don't get so fucking caught up in the set path like so many angry drunk divorced men and women in America thought they should do. There is no exact answer. There is no perfect choice, no perfect person, no perfect job, no perfect life, no perfect goal, no perfection anywhere. Life is nothing but imperfection, mistakes, failure. Why is that so bad?" <br />I forget over and over again what a cynical little bastard I was and am.<br /><br />What a sad, sad thing to be doing at 4:30 in the morning.<br />Maybe I'll look back on this one day, and everything will have come full circle.<br /><br />(Also, to add to this incredibly pathetic night of reflection, I just realized that I've been making almost all of my subject lines the lyrics of songs for over a year now, which comes as an incredible shock to me. I had no idea I'd been doing it that long.) urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:30878 2006-02-23T01:46:37Z 2006-02-23T01:46:37Z Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here America<br /><br />America I've given you all and now I'm nothing. <br />America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956. <br />I can't stand my own mind. <br />America when will we end the human war? <br />Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb <br />I don't feel good don't bother me. <br />I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind. <br />America when will you be angelic? <br />When will you take off your clothes? <br />When will you look at yourself through the grave? <br />When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites? <br />America why are your libraries full of tears? <br />America when will you send your eggs to India? <br />I'm sick of your insane demands. <br />When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks? <br />America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world. <br />Your machinery is too much for me. <br />You made me want to be a saint. <br />There must be some other way to settle this argument. <br />Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister. <br />Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke? <br />I'm trying to come to the point. <br />I refuse to give up my obsession. <br />America stop pushing I know what I'm doing. <br />America the plum blossoms are falling. <br />I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for <br />murder. <br />America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies. <br />America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry. <br />I smoke marijuana every chance I get. <br />I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet. <br />When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid. <br />My mind is made up there's going to be trouble. <br />You should have seen me reading Marx. <br />My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right. <br />I won't say the Lord's Prayer. <br />I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations. <br />America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over <br />from Russia. <br /><br />I'm addressing you. <br />Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine? <br />I'm obsessed by Time Magazine. <br />I read it every week. <br />Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore. <br />I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library. <br />It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie <br />producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me. <br />It occurs to me that I am America. <br />I am talking to myself again. <br /><br />Asia is rising against me. <br />I haven't got a chinaman's chance. <br />I'd better consider my national resources. <br />My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals <br />an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and <br />twentyfivethousand mental institutions. <br />I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in <br />my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns. <br />I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go. <br />My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic. <br /><br />America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood? <br />I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his <br />automobiles more so they're all different sexes <br />America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe <br />America free Tom Mooney <br />America save the Spanish Loyalists <br />America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die <br />America I am the Scottsboro boys. <br />America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they <br />sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the <br />speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the <br />workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party <br />was in 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother <br />Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have <br />been a spy. <br />America you don're really want to go to war. <br />America it's them bad Russians. <br />Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians. <br />The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take <br />our cars from out our garages. <br />Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our <br />auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations. <br />That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. <br />Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help. <br />America this is quite serious. <br />America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set. <br />America is this correct? <br />I'd better get right down to the job. <br />It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts <br />factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway. <br />America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel. <br /><br />-Allen Ginsberg, 1956 urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:30621 2006-02-09T20:43:08Z 2006-02-09T20:43:08Z Big Brother and the Holding Company - Combination of the Two Well, this is how the world works.<br />All energy flows according to the whims of the great magnet.<br />What a fool I was to defy him.<br />I was going back to Tech.<br />I had no choice. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:30061 2006-01-05T07:14:02Z 2006-01-05T07:14:02Z Dust For Life - Bitten The tattoo on my back reads "MURDER AND CREATE"<br />I must say, I like it quite a bit<br />The parents aren't big fans of the word MURDER being etched onto my back for the rest of my life. No surprise, but nothing can be done about it now, to say the least.<br />Sonata in 23 days.<br />School in 4 days.<br />Guess which one I'm looking forward to more.<br />The break was short. Much too short. I imagined all this free time in which to be productive and see so many people, when really I saw too many too scarcely, if at all. And as for being productive...well, I should've known that wouldn't happen.<br /><br />King Kong should've been titled "Everything Goes On Way Longer Than It Should On The Island Of Very Big Things."<br />What an awful movie. If you can't get the audience to give a fuck what happens in three hours, you should get the fuck out of Hollywood.<br />We're all looking at you Peter Jackson... urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:29937 2005-12-31T09:06:39Z 2005-12-31T09:06:39Z Sonata Arctica - Abandoned, Pleased, Brainwashed, Exploited Is it really that time again?<br />Do I really get to see Sonata again already?<br />Oh hurray!<br /><br />If you have seventeen bucks and a free night on Saturday, January 28th, you would be a fool not to go see Sonata Arctica in concert. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:29647 2005-12-23T09:08:32Z 2005-12-23T09:13:02Z The Mars Volta I just read way too many old Plynth livejournal entries.<br />I believe that's all these things are for. They're for nostalgic purposes only. So on a Thursday night at 4 A.M. I can sit here and read my past and want it back.<br />Maybe I should just delete this thing. I've thought that from the very beginning. I thought it four years ago when I was using a deadjournal. These things allow you to feel at least some connection to the world outside your computer on late, isolated nights. So you write with a feeling of communication, even if the only people that read it are people you see every day, so it's absolutely meaningless. You do this, and then later you look back on it, and it slows you from moving forward. I've noticed that most people write these entries, especially serious ones, to a wider audience than who will read it. Everyone knows who reads their livejournal, and the audience probably isn't all that big. But some people, myself included, act like they're writing for the whole world. That's for the future-you, I'm convinced. Or maybe I just do it because I'm conceited and think that everyone in the world really should read what I have to say, because I'm fucking right.<br /><br />The track forever moves us forward when all we want is to look back.<br /><br />It's dangerous to have so much documentation of life so easily accessible. I have journals laying around here somewhere. Real ones with blurbs and thoughts in them. Those I keep tucked away in drawers and boxes. But this thing is right at my fingertips if I get bored online.<br />The past is always more appealing than the present when you're alone in your house at this hour of the morning. Even if your present is better than your past, you don't care, because the past was familiar and comfortable.<br />Forge ahead, you weak mother fucker. If you look behind you all your life, you're going to fall off a cliff eventually.<br /><br />How sad. <br />I could be writing a novel right now.<br />Instead I'm writing in a fucking livejournal. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:29225 2005-12-17T07:30:26Z 2005-12-17T07:31:18Z Mastadon - Workhorse Not like anybody gives a fuck...<br />Subject lines:<br /><br />Weezer - Beverly Hills<br />T.S. Elliot - The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock<br />Leonard Cohen - Closing Time<br />Simon and Garfunkel - Sound of Silence<br />Sonata Arctica - Broken<br />Queens of the Stoneage - The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret<br />The White Stripes - Seven Nation Army<br />System of a Down - Prison Song<br />Sublime - Badfish<br />Jimi Hendrix - Castles Made of Sand<br />Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Who is This Child<br />Prince - Purple Rain<br />George Carlin - Heckler<br />Rob Zombie - Superbeast<br />Sublime - Badfish (again)<br />Bad Religion - We're Only Gonna Die From Our Arrogance<br />The White Stripes - Little Ghost<br />Marilyn Manson - Irresponsible Hate Anthem<br />Queens of the Stoneage - Burn the Witch<br />Sonata Artica - Black Sheep<br />Coldplay - The Scientist<br />Fear Factory - Slave Labor<br />The White Stripes - The Hardest Button To Button<br />Sonata Arctica - The End of This Chapter<br />Mindless Self Indulgence - Prom urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:29171 2005-11-23T04:54:12Z 2005-11-23T04:54:12Z Gang of Four They were crying when their sons left<br />God is wearing black<br />He's gone so far to find no hope<br />He's never coming back<br />They were crying when their sons left<br />All young men must go<br />He's come so far to find the truth<br />He's never going home<br /><br />Welcome to the soldier's side...<br /><br />Mesmerize/Hypnotize is finally complete<br /><br />I can't wait to see everyone back home.<br />I can finally watch Adult Swim again urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:28744 2005-11-20T00:12:52Z 2005-11-20T00:12:52Z Opeth - The Funeral Portrait Venice Beach - Charles Bukowski<br /><br />the lost and the damned<br />the wounded and the intellectual<br />the boozed and the debauched<br />the negative and the<br />uninspired<br />and the police<br />and the police<br />and the police<br /><br />this a poem that, while it may capture Venice Beach in the writer's eyes, flawlessly captures college life<br />and you know what we say?<br />fuck the po-lice urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:28360 2005-11-01T22:49:27Z 2005-11-01T22:50:07Z Outkast - Bombs Over Baghdad More upcoming concerts.<br /><br />Trans-Siberian Orchestra: Palace of Auburn Hills, Dec. 9<br /><br />Sonata Artica: Harpos, Jan. 28.<br /><br />Not quite as close together as I generally prefer, but I'll take it.<br />Both bands are so epic and so amazing. I am so fucking excited to see Sonata again.<br /><br />The newspaper is going well, I've had two stories on the front page. All my grades are up to par and I haven't gotten in any legal trouble, so I'd say I'm having a pretty successful college experience thus far.<br />I'm looking forward to Lindsay's coming home bash and an upcoming double-Christmas because Matt and I skipped Christmas last year due to a lack of funds. Of course, now the lack of funds is more lacking because college has taken our wallets and then slapped us across our faces. Ah well, life goes on.<br /><br />Time for class. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:28085 2005-10-10T02:04:44Z 2005-10-10T06:37:24Z Rage Against The Machine - Ashes In The Fall Pacheco and I drive full-speed towards heaven in a bright yellow car, the marijuana kicking in just in time for me to be able to fully appreciate the scenery. On any other day I would say we are driving to Detroit, and on any other day I would acknolwedge the significant difference between Detroit and heaven, but this is an exceptional day. This day is magnificent. After the joint had been stamped out in the parking lot of some gigantic religious office building, we spotted a rainbow. Now on the freeway, speeding towards the city skyline, I could actually imagine us driving under this rainbow like the St. Louis arch. The clouds are all bright pink and blue and purple and they swell up out of Detroit like Candy Land just went up in flames. Black clouds, what I suppose are the remnants of the storm clouds that loomed earlier in the day, hang lower in the air like giant mythological beasts. I see ravens the size of sky-scrapers screaming through the sky alongside dragons and low-flying airplanes.<br />And we hadn't even gotten to the concert yet.<br /><br />Queens of the Stoneage attacked the audience with a spectrum of colors and songs. They let no album be forgotten. No familiar faces graced the stage but long-time singer Joshua Homme, but songs going all the way back to their first, self-titled album were played. And while the new bass player, in my own personal opinion, can't hold a candle to Nick Oliveri, he was very reminiscent of some caricature of an angry lumberjack/trucker/biker in some bar in northern Michigan. Juxtaposed with the black suit and red shirt-wearing, black hair-having, punkish guitar player, the new Queens of the Stoneage might even be weirder than their previous formulas.<br /><br />Nine Inch Nails were...ok.<br />Closer was good.<br /><br />The trilogy of concerts and the most amazing week of music in my life is over. May another one come all too soon.<br /><br />Oh, and I work for a newspaper now. It's the Western Herald, but hell, it's still a newspaper. I'm not actually hired, but hell, it's still work. After three weeks I'll be considered for actual employment which includes $12.00 a story and two or three stories a week. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:27676 2005-10-03T20:17:17Z 2005-10-03T20:20:57Z The White Stripes - The Nurse The theme of the night pretty much boiled down to this:<br />Jack White will do whatever the fuck he wants.<br />He first appeared on stage in a mariachi outfit, shredding out a distorted version of Dead Leaves On The Dirty Ground. He all but refused to play a single song the way his fans might recognize them from the albums. And some songs, like I Think I Smell A Rat, simply bored him and he quit in the middle, quickly moving on to Passive Manipulation, which required he and Meg to completely shift to the left of the stage to a giant pair of drums. Perhaps the the most impressive song of the night was The Nurse, in which a loud, feedback-heavy guitar part plays on the third beat of each measure. This guitar part was played through a pedal on the floor of the stage just below the xylophone that Jack White played while he sang. The pedal was hooked to his guitar, which he left facing his amp throughout the song, and then picked up and played for the rest of the set afterwards.<br />At one point Jack randomly ran off the stage and reappeared without his mariachi coat, but instead with a black t-shirt three sizes too small, showing off the gigantic arms that had the Von Bondies singer looking like a punching bag a few years ago. The encore was prompted by a few minutes of shameless begging from the thousands of people that packed the Masonic Temple. The most ear-piercing noise of the night was not the screeching of Jack White's high-pictched, distorted guitar solos, or even the banshee-esque voices of the young children in an opening band by the name of The Maldunes. It was the sound of the crowd as Jack and Meg walked back onto the stage to their instruments to accomodate the crowd's demanding cry for more.<br /><br />Next stop: Queens of the Stoneage and Nine Inch Nails urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:27624 2005-09-30T05:11:40Z 2005-09-30T06:22:51Z The Mars Volta Imagine a gigantic tapestry that covers the stage. A spotlight hits it from behind and there is a silhouette of a man holding a guitar. He begins to play and sing, welcoming you to the soldier's side, where there is no one but him, and where people all grow up to die. The crowd sways and cheers, the anticipation builds like water boiling. The last note rings as the tapestry drops and chaos begins to screech out of the speakers. When it hits the ground, you see him. You see them all. You see heroes standing before you. You are breathless.<br /><br />To actually see them, my god, I can't even describe it. It was different from Mindless Self Indulgence or Sonata Arctica or Rob Zombie. Being that close to the people that wrote the music you obsess over always has a very humbling and overwhelming effect, but to see Serj Tankian and Daron Malakian only feet away from me...I could hardly believe my eyes.<br /><br />While The Mars Volta opened, we watched a kid standing directly in front of us get dragged out of the concert fighting two security guards. The guards thought he was smoking a joint. He was smoking a cigarette. Not a hand-rolled cigarette, a plain old cigarette with an orange filter, clear as day. They carried him off kickig and screaming and we all laughed. The Mars Volta frontman was out of control. He is undoubtedly the best showman I have ever seen in my life. Their back drops were insane and hallucinogenic while their presence was both menacing and calming.<br /><br />System of a Down played for nearly two hours, and all of it was the best two hours of my life. Daron Malakian sang sections of Violent Pornography and Cigaro in a slow ballad manner before the songs were played. When War was played, a synthesizer was used and a new part was added to the middle. "We must break through the rhythms of war. We must break through the rhythms of violence." They played so many key songs. They let us have a preview of the new ablum, reinforced the old, and pushed the current.<br /><br />Pacheco and I used to talk about going to see System purely as a fantasy. It was always a joke. "We have to see System before we die. We have to."<br />It was a life goal, and it was accomplished tonight. My only regret about seeing them is that now it's over, like Christmas Day. It builds and builds and builds and then it's all over. Now it's just a matter of waiting for the next time they roll into town.<br /><br />Next Stop: The White Stripes urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:27340 2005-09-11T10:13:23Z 2005-09-12T23:44:35Z Sublime - Grand Grove There's a reason why my soul's unsound.<br /><br />It's you<br />It's that shit stuck under my shoe<br />It's that smell inside the van<br />It's my bedsheets covered in sand<br />Sitting through a shitty band<br />Getting dog shit on my hands<br />Getting hassled by the man<br /><br />Waking up to an alarm<br />Sticking needles in your arm<br />Picking up trash on the freeway<br />Feeling depressed everyday<br />Leaving without making a sound<br />Picking my dog up out the pound<br />Living in a tweaker pad<br />Getting yelled at by my dad<br /><br />Saying I'm happy when I'm not<br />Finding roaches in the pot.<br /><br />Oh, all these things I do<br />They're waiting for you urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:27122 2005-09-01T06:25:09Z 2005-09-01T06:25:09Z Crickets It's as though I've entered a city that has been completely overrun by young adults. The streets and sidewalks overflow with them; the masses with their oversized sun glasses, shaggy hair, sandals and trucker hats. Some on cell phones, some with cigarettes, some drunk by one in the afternoon.<br />Oh yes, I am certainly deep into the college jungle by now.<br /><br />Some things are going very well. Some things did not go according to plan, or even in the vaguest direction of what I foresaw.<br />The Great Divide was, as I predicted, the most earth shaking experience of my life. Not that it was so severe, just that it was an experience that can be paralleled by no other in my life. To have not seen my parents' faces in over a full week's time is an event both heavy with nostalgia and loyalty, but also bursting with excitement. <br /><br />My mind faltered, I suppose. Things are different here. I can hardly describe it to you. Everything changes. Everyone's new, and even some with familiar faces present new personalities.<br />I think I may have. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:26879 2005-08-18T06:45:10Z 2005-09-01T06:01:51Z Adult Swim The end of an era, as Adam Boggs put it when I couldn't find the words.<br /><br />So many cliches exist for a reason. Our lives will never be the same. What a weird thought. In less than a week my life will change forever. I'll move out of my home into a small room with a good friend and seperate from many others. Josh is gone and Matt leaves Friday morning. One best friend is ten hours north and another is ten hours south. I'll be back to my old home on vacations and summers, but eventually it will become my parent's house, no longer mine. This is more the beginning of the end than anything. If you think of our lives as a line of rising and falling action, I imagine this point as a small plateau before things start to decline or incline. The small grace period before REAL life comes at us. <br />Our lives have been so strictly linear, going to a series of public schools that we've been forced to go to. Now we can quite literally do anything.<br />I could pick up and go to Hawaii tomorrow if I wanted to.<br />If you've been working as long as I have, you could too.<br /><br />To the following people, thank you for making my summer possible:<br />Matt Robinson<br />Ryan Pacheco<br />Jaimie Dorris<br />Josh Rosenberg<br />Adam Boggs<br />Grant Hyde<br />Lindsay Holbrook<br />Andrew Defever<br />Kasey Carlson<br />Joel Sanders<br />Joe Godell<br />Zach Anderson<br />Jessica Navarro<br /><br />and of course, Adult Swim<br /><br />Take a look. This, in thirty years, is what I will be calling "the old gang". You people keep a small faith in humanity alive in me. I wouldn't care to lose touch with anyone on this list. We'll party mother fuckers, we'll party hard. Have fun living life everybody, I'll hunt you down on Christmas break. And next summer really ought to mirror this one.<br /><br />I'm not touching this thing again for a while, it's rotting my mind. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:happy_homicide:26470 2005-08-13T19:13:50Z 2005-08-13T19:13:50Z In Flames - The Quiet Place The great divide has begun, and it did so with one of our best. <br />Josh Rosenberg.<br />Purple Rain and The Scientist could be theme songs for this summer. I hate that you have to part with something you hold so dear to embark on something so new and exciting.<br />May North Carolina treat you well Josh. Michigan will miss you.<br />You were the connector Josh, there are a lot of people I wouldn't be friends with without you. But you were more than a connector.<br />How did your house become the party house?<br />How many times did we break your mother's heart?<br />How much broken property?<br />How many heated debates?<br />How many good times?<br />How is it all over already?<br />Here's to October, to the breaks, to next summer, and to the summers and years after that.<br /><br />I can't believe what a cliche our lives became this summer. It's fucking heart-breaking.