Thursday, May 31 (Added: I have decided to attempt and create an animated picture, and have actually successfully created my first, titled "Boys". It's based upon four boys/men/males that I admire and adore for their acting/singing skills as well as their sexy bodies. You may have to refresh it after it goes by once, since sometimes the photos don't completely load the first time around.)
Since November 9, I have been carrying a notebook around with me nearly where-ever I go. It's brightly colored and has designs of flowers on the cover - not too hard to miss, especially if you add in the factor of my own personal touches (ie, writing) that are strewn across the borders of the thin cardboard covering. And though most of the writings inside the notebook aren't even near personal - mostly dotted with homework assignments - there is still some personal insight every few pages, just to keep with my personality and perhaps sanity. On the last day of school, during second period, I began to look through the booklet and took note of the person I was in there: the lyrics, the poetic attempts, the doodles. All of them in between the lines of some Algebra assignment that I never did. There was one empty page left.
Patsy started it first. She started writing in a notebook, and I followed suit with my less elaborate version of what she was writing. I was writing my life goals. Things to do before I die. There were only fifteen items on my list; that's a little less than half of what Patsy finished at. I wrote down most of them during that class period. I didn't make my list out of things that I knew would never occur, and I made sure that they were things that could actually happen and weren't just wishful thinking. My overall goal is to do at least seven of the items on the list before I die. And, for some reason, I feel I can do it.
Life Goals
1. Graduate from high school.
2. Attend (and graduate) college, minoring in women's studies.
3. Work for Rolling Stone magazine, for any reason. (Including internship.)
4. Have a child. (Of course, at a time that I feel adequate for the position. An added note to consider is naming the child Corky, just because it sounds all cute and quirky.)
5. Play a guitar and a bass.
6. Play in a band or group.
7. Get a job.
8. Become happily married. (It doesn't not have to necessarily become number 4, especially in the case of donor sperm.)
9. Own a beat-up pickup truck.
10. Drive cross-country.
11. Tie all loose relationships before high school graduation.
12. Sleep on a beach for one night.
13. Travel to Germany and Scotland to discover family roots.
14. Patent an invention.
15. Live in the mountains.
Last night, the six of us (which is basically the group I always mention on here: Stribling - a new face, Ophelya, Kelly, Patsy, Meredith, and myself) spent the night at Kelly's grandparents' beach house. Around midnight, the six of us wandered down to the beach with chewy cookies, non-alcoholic wine, a paper bag and folder full of Chemistry and Algebra notes, and the hopes of doing something very cool (and very illegal, for that matter) for the last night of our sophomore-hood. We (or, if you wish to be techical, everybody but lazy me) dug a hole into the sand, threw some of the classwork papers into the hole, and lit it on fire. This surpassed for three hours until the fires had begun to fade out and the paper ran thin. As it began to flicker into a burnout, we all screamed and cheered and danced around the redness from within the pit. And, for the first time in awhile, I felt somewhat infinite. Somewhat.
You see, this school year wasn't even close to the best year I ever had. In fact, it was a somewhat miserable attempt at an all-American high school lifestyle. There have been a lot of (not to sound depressed) wasted tears and bad thoughts to take into account to even think that it was all worth the struggle I went through in the past year to keep my sanity, as well as everyone else's. There have been times where I honestly wanted to say "Fuck you" and jump off a cliff, but I didn't have the courage... or the cliff, for that matter. There have been times where I felt that part of my soul had been run over and there have been times when I felt like I could fly. I don't want to talk about it anymore. It's over with, right? That's all that matters. »
Sunday, May 27 I haven't cleaned my room in weeks, it seems. I've tried to "tidy" the sucker up once, but the attempt was soon abrupted and dropped. Pity, too, because now things are falling off the walls and the piles of clothes encircling the room are getting larger and messier. And I have not the dignity nor the urge to actually clean and impress anybody because I feel that He was the only one that I had to impress and now there's no real reason to go forth and clean it. I gave up cleaning my room after He exited, stage left, and for some reason I feel it's beginning to describe me a little better. I might straighten it up a little bit today, though. The clothes tend to hurt when you fall over them in pitch darkness.
Lots of the good people at our school are leaving because the principal's an evil lady. One of the group that is leaving is my English teacher, whom hopes to retire and become a bartender. I don't know whether or not to take the idea seriously, considering the idea that he claims to be a recovering alcoholic. Another that is leaving is the only assistant principal whom was willing to slightly bend the rules. A drama teacher is leaving, the other drama teacher will be having a kid next year, an algebra teacher will be also having a kid, a history teacher is giving it one more year before he can claim his social security, and perhaps a few other teachers are expected to depart but don't want to have their students flourish in their exeunt. But, man, the fact that my English teacher is leaving kind of gives me a lack of feeling to next year. I don't know whether or not to expect anything really promising, since their doing lots of bad reconstruction over the summer that includes: 1) moving all the classrooms from the second floor to the third floor; 2) making the lunchfield into a parking lot so that the board of education (as well as the local Savannah Symphony) can have their own parking space for their offices, which will be located somewhere in the school (!); 3) separating the lunches into two periods, thus taking away the idea of us actually being all together to gossip midway through the day, and; 4) not even considering the idea of putting pavement on the already-existing parking lot so that errate drivers such as myself know where in the hell we're supposed to park. Two more days this year to protest... just two more days...
Yesterday, Patsy, Meredith, and I went to the big library downtown. It was recently renovated to sort of give it a chic and up-to-date feel. Fabulous looking, too, because I could've spent hours in there, looking through all of those books. In the end, I checked out five wonderful books. Currently, I'm reading Feeling Sorry for Celia (best-seller in Australia) by Jaclyn Moriarty. Basically, the book is composed of (fictional) letters that tell the story of a girl named Elizabeth whom has a best friend, Celia, that ran away to join the circus and then encounters a lot of different scenarios (and people) due to that. It's pretty good so far, but that's only speaking that I've achieved only to page 76 of 272. I'm trying to read all five books in two weeks and then go back to the main library so I can check out a lot more books to read during a trip my family and I are taking to Blood Mountain (Helen, Georgia) in mid-July. In between the typical mountain escapes (tubing down a river, horseback riding, hiking, the like), I plan on reading at least one classic book and one book for fun.
Anyways, back on topic. After Patsy, Meredith, and I went all the way in town (and experienced me accidentally running through a red light in a very small intersection, followed by a tiny string of curse words) and back, it was determined that we'd teach Patsy how to ride a bike. Patsy has described her childhood as "inside playing with her dolls and listening to kid's songs", so it was evident that the time had come to teach. I myself was taught how to ride a bike at the age of eight (none the less, by a friend at the time), and so I was sort of familiar about the broad range of techniques used to make this a successful attempt. Lots of improvement had begun, and it's sort of still in the first lapse of work. We're planning on working on it later on today, just to see if it will be an improvement. I really hope so - she did very good yesterday and was able to survive without Meredith or I holding onto the bike for a few seconds. She might be able to do it today, if she just doesn't think too hard of the idea that she's actually tackling it alone. She can do it. Really.
Totally unrelated to the prior paragraph, my father got his second tattoo on Friday, perhaps in a drunken slurge. It's similiar to the one my mother has, except it says my mom's name in the heart and not my father's. I don't know whether or not it's a good thing that my parents may begin to go tattoo-crazy. I told my father that his next tattoo should be of a stomach that was actually anatomically correct in size and positioning. He just gave me a look of unsatisfactory and I just smirked back at him and wondered why his mid-life crisis escapade wasn't over yet. How long do these things last, anyway? He got the earrings nearly three or four years ago (I think he has two in one ear, one in the other), and the first tattoo's getting around to being two or three years of age. It's a shame, though, that my parents are able to get all of these tattoos and earrings (including the short-lived bellybutton ring that my mother possessed), and yet I'm not allowed to get my tongue pierced just to see how it feels. I think they're afraid I'd choke and die on spaghetti or something.
So maybe I should take a moment, since I was (slightly) on the topic of choking and dying, to speak about the entirely overplayed Kaycee Nicole incident that occurred in the past week. To those who are clueless about what exactly is the problem, let me give you a small version: Randall van der Woning (better known as "big white guy", or "bwg") designed a website for a 19-year-old girl with the name of Kaycee Nicole (Swensen was later determined as a surname), whom was supposedly dying of leukemia. A website for Kaycee's mother, Debbie, was also made. This went on for a year, and many people have spoken to both Kaycee and Debbie (as well as Kaycee's alleged younger sister) over the phone, but no one actually met her. Soon, Kaycee unexpectedly passed away and the web went a'buzzing with goodbye messages. Shortly afterwards, questioning erupted, and thus it all came down and ended knowing that for all this time, there was no Kaycee Nicole Swensen, no one knows who they talked to on the phone, and no one knows what actually occurred with the donations and gifts that they sent to the girl dying of leukemia. The photos that were featured on Kaycee's (mostly now-defunct) webpages were actually of a high school basketball star with the name of Julie. Everyone's been putting their two cents in over at MetaFilter, and I guess I should add in my two cents here and just say that it's over and I didn't know of this Kaycee character except for once, and it wasn't anything that, unless if you were in the situation of Randall van der Woning or John Styn (another close person to the alleged Kaycee), you should be outraged about. Everyone's lied to in their lives, and this is just another one to add to the slice of cake. Get over it, visit the links and make your comments, and move on. But, besides that, I don't know what to think of Debbie Swensen (who came clean about writing the webpages about Kaycee) -- is she a genius or a crazy? Thoughts?
Also related to the topic of dying is tied in with why I didn't post much this week. Two of my friends tried to poetically end their lives this week by (ironically enough) slashing their wrists on the same night of the week. It's completely unimportant to say whom it was, as well as to try and take up much space to decipher what the hell was going through their heads. It doesn't matter, and they shouldn't feel sorry in the slightest bit for what they've done because if they were, then they wouldn't have done it to begin with. I personally don't have the courage to ever do anything so drastic as to attempt to kill myself in such a gruesome manner. I can't say that I know what the full extent of depression is, either, because I have never even considered myself to be that way. But I got sad, none the less, knowing that they tried to kill themselves. It made me feel as if I wasn't a good friend, as if I was a bad person and not worth it, and that they'd be able to die and I (as well as everyone else) would live to face the way things turned out afterwards. I don't know if it's considered to be cowardly or courageous to try and kill oneself. It's cowardly to think that it's that easy to get out of life, but it's courageous to have the willpower to do so. All I know, however, is that every deep cut, every scar, they have on their arm (both of them on the left, incidentally) takes a bit away from my self-pride. Every cut they make to make themselves feel better puts more strain on me (and others) and makes me (and others) feel worse. And the extra thing is, they both said that they had at least one good day after doing it. What if they cut too deep? Then they wouldn't have been there to enjoy that happy moment or that good day, and it would've been pointless. Think about that. They both read this page. I ask them both, as well as anyone else who feels sad, to read and bookmark this page. It doesn't matter if you feel happy or sad when you read that page, but just bookmark it. And don't give a fuck what people think in what you say, just say it. It could save your life in the end. »
Tuesday, May 22 Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road.
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to do.
So make the best of this test, and don't ask why.
It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time.
It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right.
I hope you had the time of your life.
So take the photographs, and still frames in your mind.
Hang it on a shelf of good health and good time.
Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial.
For what it's worth, it was worth all the while.
I hope you had the time of your life.
I hope you had the time of your life. »
Wednesday, May 16 Right now, I'm forcing myself to type something. In fact, I'm not really looking at what I'm typing half the time because, in all honesty, I don't want to write a new entry. But it seems that some little tidbits in my life have alienated into new and exciting things, so thus I guess I should mention all of these while they're all in my head. It's better late than never, I suppose. Or maybe not at all. But it doesn't matter because I'm already typing and it's pointless to turn back when you're so far ahead. Well, no. I'm only, say, a few sentences into this entry. But you get the basic idea. The hardest part in starting a journal entry - whether it be a private or public, both of which I make use of - is to start it. That's why in my private journal, I design each page (Yeah, I get bored sometimes) and then write a letter in the top left corner, usually in the same style as the design. That way, I have a little bit of a starting point of what I would write about. But I can't really do that here because it would just seem very pre-planned and dull. Plus, not all letters perfectly represent the image in your head that you want to start something out with. It's kind of like the designs that I decorated on that page don't really fit the mood of the actual writing on there.
In first news, I've begun production of my summer design on here. Yes, there will be seasonal designs from now on, just to keep the place a little fresh and clean in the feel of it all. I hope that no one will be disappointed in how this sucker turns out. All that I've really considered doing thus far is trying to pick out a general font to use for the title and perhaps a general color scheme to follow along... I hope to suddenly become inspired by megnut.com's simplistic look and bluishorange.com's somewhat deep and personal feel. Of course, if you mix those two opposite websites together, then you get something really funky looking. I want it to look sophisticated and... well, me. That's not to say that I am or am not sophisticated. It's just the fact that I never really thought about it. But I find myself once again changing the topic. To end this topic, actually, I would like to say that I cheat by using FrontPage (evil thing, too) and that I'm only good in HTML and know of nothing else. And, for an added thought, I've realized that I can't make up my mind about what art/photos/whatever should be on these layouts. But maybe it's just a paranoia.
In other news, my article was published online for the world to see. And to just clarify a lot of things, yes my last name is Scott. And yes I go to Savannah Arts Academy. Feel free to track me down and kill me now, but there are over 200 people in Savannah with the last name of Scott, so it might be a little difficult if you don't know me too well (or at all, for that matter) to find me. But I wish you luck anyway. Getting back to the topic, that's the actual chick that I ended up interviewing instead of that other guy that works with "Fred". Her name, in case if you just completely skipped over the entire article, is Colleen. And the photo was taken by Mark (whom, by the way, ended up interviewing his sister) in his car and not at the place of work. I actually had to crop the thing a little bit so you don't see the "big hugs" written on the sleeve of her shirt. It probably would've been taken less seriously (as if it had any serious tone thus far) if I had kept it. But, you know, whatever. I get paid for writing things like that. Don't worry, you're not missing out on much of my dinero -- I only get $30 a pop. (Side note: Isn't it odd that dinero is the word "diner" with an "o" at the end -- and it also seems awkwardly like the last name of a 57-year-old actor?) It's going to be gas money.
Which brings me to my final piece of new ewy-goodness: I got my driver's license. Yes, I am now a "provisional" (meaning: used of partial or temporary arrangements) driver and a nominee for "most resembling a deer in headlights in photo" win. But I got a 100 on the test. Which is good. And then four hours later, I ended up (in this order) hitting a curb, forgetting my blinker was still on, and forgetting that I was still going in reverse. Two occurred with Patsy in the car. (To make it clear: Neither were her fault. It was just a "moment" thing.) The last occurred while leaving Patsy's. Thankfully, no one was behind me, or else they'd be a little bit dented up by now. This morning, however, I took a trip over to Mark's house so that he could fix my hubcaps because I ended up denting the rim of the wheel when I hit the curb. After fixing that, Mark proclaimed the cow design inside my car to be "ghetto" and then He appeared out of nowhere and thought it'd be all hip and cool -- it wasn't -- to try and push my car with His. Humourously enough, He ended up breaking his confederate flag license plate. After I laughed at Him and called Him a pathetic redneck (and muttered other things under my breath), I left for school. And that's really it.
Tomorrow's Thursday. Where has the week gone? »
Friday, May 11 It was a good song. We were at a stop light on the bus, and I was sad. I was sad that I was missing out on my "glory days" and how everything seemed to be okay if I just forgot about Him and how everything ended up. I was going to cry. But I didn't. I was going to think about the dreading idea of suicide again, but I pushed it away. If I was able to forget about crying and suicide, why couldn't I stop thinking about Him? Why wasn't there the picture-perfect ending that I expected so much? The yearbooks were distributed today. When I saw them, I felt sad that I was missing out on this. I know that when I'm thirty, there won't be any rememberance of my high school years besides amateur photos with fingersmudges in the corner and perhaps a few special notes that I decide to keep. It was a good song -- a happy song, in an awkward way -- and I was sad.
Someone had gotten in a car crash on the Truman Parkway. There was a straggly wooden cross on the edge of the road, and the metal border was still mangled with the car marks. And, for some reason, it made me feel better. Things could be worse than they were at the time. Things could be better, too, but I guess that no one should expect a perfect lifestyle in today's world. There will always been downfalls, and there will be catastrophes, and there will be tears. Everyone has their sob story. Everyone has their happy story, too. Neither of them should affect the outcome of their day -- live for the moment. Smile even though you want to cry. You never know when you'll get the next opportunity to do so.
Everyone looked so happy today. All of the seniors gazed over their yearbooks, pressing the memories in their head for the future. I just stared out the window and waited for the chorus of the song to come. I looked at the cars pass by the cross on the Truman Parkway. And I imagined a family dressed in black putting the cross on the speedy highway, having to look at the dented metal border that lined the road. I see them crying, and I feel better. They could have had it worse. They could have had it better. This is just another chapter in their sob story, and one day they'll all move on and pretend that the boy or girl was still alive. And one day that cross will be removed and placed in the coat closet and the metal border will be fixed and nothing would've ever happened there. People will smile again and nothing would feel different than it would before, besides the fact that the person wasn't there anymore. Soon, special anniversaries will pass and they'll sigh and wonder. And they'll think. I hope that the family feels happier someday.
When the song's chorus finally began, we had begun to moved. Birds flew up in the air across the street. And everything, once again, felt normal. I just hope it stays this way for awhile. »
Monday, May 7 My original idea, when I had an older design that featured shorter entries, was to just display the (erotic, I believe) first entry with the final word, being "Nothing", having the link to the permanent setting of that entry. Unfortunately, I had changed the purpose of this weblog (that purpose, if you missed it in the press meeting, is to have a deeper and more intimate look in my life rather than just the "shaved top" of it all), and thus made the front page only have one long entry on it rather than tiny ones. So, that didn't work out. But, anyway, happy birthday to this website. It's one year old today, minus a day for living over at an alternative Tripod hellhole when this page was considered gone. But, you know, whatever.
I sent in my interview with the lifeguard last week. The original interview (featured on the previous entry) wasn't used because I couldn't find any more commonground information to write for an introduction. So, at 10:00p on a Sunday evening, I interviewed one of Mark's friends, Colleen, over the phone. I met her the next day while Mark was taking us home from school. (In the reality, I told him to take me home, just because the bus didn't look too tempting that day. He actually didn't want to, and if I had listened to him and went back to the bus, then the following wouldn't have happened.) As we were leaving the school, I decided to check my voicemail messages. Seeing that I was on a phone, Mark turned the radio down and wasn't really looking at where he was going. Thus, a car crash, finalized by my voice saying "Mark, slow down..." It was a bumper crash - nothing that I'd be impressed with, nor was it hard enough to ignite the airbags - but none the less it was still a moment and feeling that runs fresh in my mind. The whole time that Mark was questioned and questioning the person he hit, I just sat there with Colleen and laughed. I mean, what else could you do in a situation like that? By the way, Mark and I blame the entire thing on Him, because if He didn't leave a voicemail message then it wouldn't have caused the radio to need to be turned down and thus Mark could've been watching the road.
Quick update on Him: He and Girl A are still an item. He stopped by last night, actually, but was seemingly drinking. He had been working at a family friend's house all day, and that family friend is a drunkard. Before He came to my house, "Judy" (I don't know if you remember that far back, but she's "Fred's" ex-girlfriend) got the pleasure of seeing Him show up suddenly in her front lawn, wearing nothing more than shorts and hiking boots. When He came over here, He made obscene gestures and rude comments. But, none the less, He was a fun person. I guess. I don't know what to think of that boy anymore.
I'll write a longer entry later. Promise. »
