22.2.08

Magic Hours

I've been in high school for the last four weeks. Its an on-line school called k12. When I signed up for it I was told a lot of things. It would be self paced, it would be knowledge based not homework based, it would allow me to make up all the credits I needed and allow me to return to albany high next year. All of these proved wrong. In fact, it was almost everything I disliked about high school. My grade is largely based on pointless busy work, made for people with the brains of six year-olds. I have to move at an extremely slow pace with lessons that I should be able to do in minutes. And, to top it off, I will have to work through the summer to even have a hope at making up all the credits. It does differ from high school in someways though. The upside is that I can set my own hours, as long as I get the days work done by midnight. The downside is that it is completely solitary. I have no one to talk to, I am stuck in front of a computer screen all day.
It has become incredibly clear to me that I cannot do this. All my old school habits have returned. I'm irritable, frustrated all the time, depressed, and hopeless. I procrastinate, often getting nothing done at all. I've become prone to shouting at my family for no reason. I destroy things, particularly things that have value only to me. I hate myself for doing all this but when I'm in the moment it seems like the only thing to do.
I feel that I'm left with a kind of ultimatum. On one side I take the GED and go to community college for the next year and a half. All my friends will look down on me and I will feel like a failure for the rest of my life. The other solution is that I grit my teeth , work through the rest of the year and through summer. Then return to albany high, continue to be miserable, and work through next year. On this side I'll feel like I can do it, I'll get back most of the friends I had lost over the last year but I will have no quality of life. Its a lose-lose in my mind and I don't know what to do.

How strange, innocence

20.2.08

Santeria

I generally hate it when someone declares a song's meaning, but I've been thinking about this for a wile. This is just my interpretation, feel free to disagree with me.

Say it Ain't So is one of my favorite songs. Its been generaly stuck in my head for the last two years, and I have probably listened to it and played it a thoulsand times. It is verry lyricly complex and it took me a long time before I came to this interpritation of it.


Somebody's Heiney is crowding my ice box
Somebody's cold one is giving me chills
Guess I'll just close my eyes

The main character (presumably Rivers Cuomo) is out somewhere drinking but something feels wrong. He decides to just ignore it.

Flip on the tele, wrestle with Jimmy
Something is bubbling behind my back
Bottle is ready to go...

So he goes home and tries to amuse himself. Watches TV, plays around with his little brother, etc. He's still very bothered by something and his intial reaction is to drink it away. But as he reaches for the liqueur he comes to a big realization.

Say it ain't so!
Your drug is a heart breaker.
Say it ain't so!
My love is a life-taker.

He realizes that he is not only an alcoholic but that he is everything he hates. He feels that other people's alcoholism destroyed his life.

I can't conform to, I never could do
That witch might hurt you, so try and be cool
When i say that this way is a water slide away from me that takes me farther everyday
be cool

I'm not as sure about this verse, but I think that he's looking for the cause of his drinking. He talks to his father who he's always tried hard to please, perhaps too hard, and he prepares his father for what comes next.

(Repeat Chorus and then:)
Dear Daddy, I write you, despite of years of silence
You've cleaned up, found Jesus, things are good or so I here
This bottle of Steven's awakens ancient feelings
Like father, step-father, the son is drowning in the flood!
(Guitar Solo, Chorus, and then end)

So, as he gets to the root of his resentment he tells his father that even though the father stopped drinking, its too late. The damage he has done to the main character of this song can't be undone. The last line also implies that his father divorced his mother, and the step-father was no replacement.

Sorry that was so long, and pointless, I just needed something to kill time.

Well its love that I need
But my soul will have to wait

18.2.08

My Generation

I got an essay question in school the other day. It asked if I was to live in another time and place what would it be. Initially the answer seemed obvious. In fact a wile ago I had decided that I wanted to have been born in 1950. I would grow up with the blues and the birth of rock and roll. I'd be 17 in '67 for sgt. peppers, jimi hendrix, and the summer of love. I'd be 26 in '76 to witness the birth of punk rock. But when I think about it there was a lot wrong with that period. We had a president that was an asshole a pointless violent war raging, and a bunch of kids with fake ideals running around, talking bullshit. I know that I would just be the same kid couped up in his garage, hating the world. Worse than that, I'd be pushing 58 right now to see how my generation had failed, and become what they despised. You can romanticize it all you want but the truth is, people don't change, and the only way the world shifts is in superficial ways. So I would not wish to live in the 1960's.
But you can't put that in an essay without being called rebellious, so I lied my ass off.

why don't you just f-f-fade away?