Don’t Get Your Hopes Up

I realize why I don’t get my hopes up on things and the like, its become pretty apparent considering that when I do or don’t do it, the result is the same. Things typically don’t go how I would have hoped. I think that hoping would have actually made it worse.

Angry

I want to tell you how I really feel about everything, but thinking about it makes me angry and I really don’t want to be angry with you. I’d much rather just stay angry with myself and never let this out.

On the Ball

I realize, what good is it with me telling you I have faith and to push through when I won’t even try to do the same myself. I need to get on the ball.

Best/Worst of the People

I just heard the most selfish fucking thing I have ever heard come out of a minister's mouth.

He was talking about the economy and saying basically that the reason why he doesn't believe in socialism is because he is "not of this world" and therefore the problems with the economy don't effect him and aren't his problem.

He went on to say, "When they are having their worst of times and its my best of times, why should I help out?"

How can anyone talk like that?

Wikileaks Video

Well its been all over the news and the web, the military has been accused of shooting some people who appear to have been journalists in Iraq in 2007. People have been pretty quick to call fault on the military, but most of them don’t really know jack shit about war, so let’s begin there.

I talked to several service people on a forum, one them who owns an RPG launcher himself, (Israeli) and they all said they couldn’t tell that it was a camera. I showed some military people I know personally, they couldn’t tell either. I couldn’t tell, though I am not that well versed in every type of rocket propelled grenade launcher. The tripod, which people also claim to see isn’t any  kind of sign that a camera is in use, snipers use tripods too.

People forget, that a bow and arrow can shoot a helicopter down…an RPG can utterly destroy it in mid air. And everyone is so quick to blame the soldiers, but you’d have done the same thing.

Let’s be honest, you're out there and not just in charge of soldiers. You're in charge of someone's son, and someone's father, and someone's husband and someone's friend, perhaps your own. The saddest part is that if that helicopter had been shot down by and RPG launcher, no one would post that story, no one would give a flying fuck and some might openly mock the military for the losses.

Then an unmarked van pulls up, of course they shoot that too. The van could have had a rocket launcher or worse inside of it. Even if it picked the people up, it doesn’t make the van not connected.

The kid in the back of the van, I can say with with a great deal of certainty that the helicopter didn’t shoot him…do you know why?

Because the bullet that goes in a 20mm machine gun would more than likely rip the kid in two and he wouldn’t have survived for them to evacuate him. So either he was injured earlier or it was shrapnel. Why do people think that medics wear those red crosses? For the symbolic nature of a red cross? No its because it keeps you from getting shot while doing your job. The same goes for ambulances, medivac choppers and the like.

So what we have here is an honest mistake blown out of proportion by a website whom had to have gotten this video through some illegal means and has been accused as such by other governments. We have a video where there appears to be someone with a gun, at least once and some news people standing near them. People, you can’t stand in a warzone and hold a gun without someone trying to shoot you and you can’t expect the military to have a helicopter wait around by a potential rocket launcher for someone on the ground to jog over and confirm.

Be realistic people.

The Kind of Case That Makes You Worry About Our Culture…

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-teen-sister-sex,0,3357813.story

Long story short: A fifteen year old girl went to a party, her seven year old sister, worried, followed her. At the party, the older girl was having sex with someone and it somehow led to her taking cash in exchange for letting the men gang rape her sister…

I don’t think I can say anything good about any of the people involved in this. The reports say seven people joined in on the rape—let’s excuse the fact that gang rape makes little to no sense to me in the first place—how do you wander up and see someone raping a seven year old and take any action other than leaving or trying to intervene.

There are some crimes where you are excused or even expected to join in. Looting, riots, fleeing an area when cops come in a little too enthusiastically…

Rape is something that should disgust and bother anyone so much that they should be going to call 911 right off the bat. Let’s take another case: A fifteen year Irish girl who lived in Massachusetts was sexually harassed, assaulted and stalked to the point of committing suicide. 

Many school officials saw some of the behavior going on, while they didn’t join in, no one stopped it. I remember the whole “Don’t Snitch” thing that went around for a long time in hip hop culture and how people were so quick to make fun of it. But the culture of the land seems to be at best based on “It’s not my problem” and in some cases we just join in. The issue shows up time and time again, people being mistreated in public and no one saying anything about it. No one even caring.

I understand there are times you don’t butt in and its not your place. But it should be obvious when someone is being physically hurt for no reason or no good one, that’s not one of them.

Issues in the Dark

The other night when I drove home it was around eight at night. In the winter it would have been pitch black by then, but it’s just getting really dark at that time. Even then, I noticed I could hardly see. It seemed so hard to drive and just see the road and I mentioned it to my dad.

He blamed the lack of the moon.

Then last night it happened again, under the biggest moon I’ve ever seen in the sky. Now I am getting scared I might have night blindness, I’m hoping its something else or just my imagination. But we shall see tonight.

Long Road

Having someone with whom to bounce ideas off of has been pretty good when it comes to writing because I can get a sense of what I need to do to make my own work come out better.

A lot of my work with the story has been concentrating on the second novel but I think that I realize that now I need to refocus on the first and getting it into a workable product for someone to read.

Things that I had planned and wanted to do before in different stories, I figure I should do them now. I think I should make everything I think should happen, happen and not hold back for some later thing. Most importantly I think that if you hold all of your ideas for some later tale, why wouldn’t someone just read that if all the good ideas are going there?

To those out there that have edited, helped me sort things out and read over something—thank you. There’s still a long road to go.

A Measure of Progress

I found a story that I read when I was younger and first coming into my own as a writer. It was around the time I stopped writing fan fiction and started writing my own characters and worlds…

It was a story from the perspective of a soldier killed by Snake (the main character from Metal Gear Solid). It went on in detail to describe the soldiers feelings and thoughts as he died and it painted him as remorseful and someone to be thought of as more than a useless pawn…

…reading it now it’s like pretentious garbage. I can’t believe that a younger me would be taken in by this kind of thing. It’s a measure of maturity and of progress. Back then I thought it was so deep and so beautiful and poetic. Now I almost laugh to read it. Which I know is wrong, but I think that this says more about me than my old writing compared to my writing now.

Back then I thought, “If I could just write like that I would be set.”

Now what I am aspiring to do is so much more.

Random Facts About John Mayer #1

Fact #106: The fragrances used in Axe Body Spray were all extracted from John Mayer’s sweat.

Fact #233: It’s said that if 44,000 people gather with guitars and strum an “E” all at the exact same moment, John Mayer will be summoned.

Fact #14: John Mayer’s not dead, but he’s preformed concerts in both Heaven and Hell before.

Fact #77: Mayer prefers to sleep on couches, but in a pinch he’ll take where ever it may be that he passes out.

People

I realize more and more every day how little I am coming to care about people online and just in general. Everyone wants to be the exception, they want you to treat them differently than you do others. They want to be able to do something to you and get away freely with it while you get bitched at for everything you do to them.

People are pretty much scum. There’s few exceptions and there are times when people can seem good but they’re mostly selfish, probably all selfish and few are worth the amount of water you’d have to drink to piss on them.

Grow Up

I can’t call you friend anymore and the worst part about it is: I don’t know why.

I’ve facebook messaged, emailed, IMed and sent messages on sites we both go to over the last couple of months and there’s been no response since practically Christmas. It’s not like you haven’t been on or have made an effort to hide that you’ve been on. If you don’t want to talk to someone, be a grown up and just tell them.

A real friend can make time to say something back, to at least say hi. I’ve got busier friends under more pressure that do it.

Yet you seem to make time to talk to everyone who doesn’t know you and to make small talk with people whom you, yourself would have admitted mattered. You could make all of the excuses you want, but its plain to see you don’t want to make the time and its shitty that I’ve wasted this much of my time trying to keep up with you.

If this is the fickle way you treat friends, why would anyone worth a shit want to be your friend?

Just…No

I had a girl ask me out, she was mildly cute and a little bit funny but this girl couldn’t spell. And when I say couldn’t spell, what I mean is couldn’t speak. It wasn’t any better in person and it was worse over text.

I’m sorry, I can’t date a girl who can’t spell as well as my youngest niece. I refuse to put myself through the emotional torment of being subjected to constant stupidity and bad grammar.

Sorry, just no.

Fullmetal Alchemist

Just like the old days, I sat down and conquered this show and I am happy I did. Forty episodes in a little under two days. That’s fourteen hours of the show, basically down to a T. And I forgot how it felt to watch something like that where I cared about the characters and was ready to celebrate with them and overly eager to see what happens next.

I’m glad I watched it.

Declaration

Today I’m putting pen to paper, figuratively, but the writing is literal and there’s no time for person commitments and nothing else can come first except God. This needs to be done to completion and it needs to be seen through because I didn’t promise it to myself. It’s not a personal commitment, its a commitment I’ve made to whatever it is that drives me, call it faith, call it a muse, call it the story in my head fighting to get out.

But today, I’m writing with as little fear as possible and I’m writing with a determination and goal I’ve not possessed in some time.

This is my declaration.

Care? It’s hard to…

-snip-

Good Month?

I kind of get the feeling, it might be a good month.

No Title

Whether what I saw was a mistake on your part or a lie, I think that it might have put a nail in the coffin of friends I can trust these days.

I can’t say that I actually thought I would get what I wanted this year. It was silly for me to even consider it a possibility.

Cutting Away

It looks like I might need to do a little house cleaning, its time to cut some of the things I have clung to away. Not in the literal, real life sense. But in the sense of my writing. Some of the ideas I have bonded with over the years in terms of my writing have grown more and more unnecessary with every rewrite. More than ever I’m seeing that now.

So when I edit or get back to writing, I am doing away with a lot. A lot of characters, a lot of concepts and I am taking things down to a basic level again and writing about a smaller group of people.

So its going to be a long road and the rewrite promises to be even harder when I have to cut so much away and as Stephen King put it murder my darlings. There’s a lot of contemplation going into who should stay and who shouldn’t, because in my head I want to keep all of them but I know if I do, it won’t be as good.

Pulp Fiction

It’s like a bad dream,
Something from the back of a magazine
Black and white and cheaply put together
Like a Slasher Film
I’m torn in opposite directions
The plot sucks
But the killings are gorgeous