Selfishness Part 1 Posted by Sad Blogger , 23.7.12 at Monday, July 23, 2012, in

I feel like I bring up Ayn Rand and Objectivism far too often and just assume people automatically know what I'm referring to. Maybe not in the writing that I do here, but I know they're subjects I touch on regularly because they're extremely important to me and my intellectual development coming out of high school. I think most people tend to finger Atlas Shrugged as Rand's seminal work and thesis on Objectivism, but I have to admit I haven't read it and really much more prefer The Fountainhead. I've always related to Howard Roark's character and his attitude/approach towards happiness really influenced me right around the time that I was transitioning from that awful whiney, depressed, me-me-me phase that comes with being a teenager.


What I took away from The Fountainhead and have tried to apply to my life is that selfishness does not always deserve the negative connotation that is typically tagged onto it. People who have fostered a predilection for selflessness their entire lives will obviously not be able to think of it in this way, but if you really break down the word "selfish" and ignore the notion of it having something to do with greed or apathy, it really is about your self. When it comes to the big picture, your self is the most important thing in your life. It is your life...without your self, you're just a breathing machine. Self is personality and sentience and taste and emotions and dreams. And selflessness would literally imply having a lack of self. I mean we're told by certain types of people to "give of ourselves" but if you think of your self as that thing that makes and defines and is you, why would you give pieces of it away? So for me, the point of Objectivism is that you value your self before all other things. AS LONG AS it's not hurting other people. That sort of selfishness is just an absolute lack of consideration for the selves of others and that's more like what you'd call cruelty.


So that's what I meant when I was writing about my school and work decisions a couple posts ago. I still like to think that I quit school because it was starting to choke out my love for writing. It took five months for me to find a job because my "search" was constantly cockblocked by my need to find something that wasn't going to bore me. As though cash wasn't a sufficient incentive to get off my ass for almost half a year. Writing that feels like I've just completely given up on the validity of the argument for selfishness, but I really haven't. I still feel it's something worth yelling about if it comes up in conversation and I'll continue to make references to it as an attitude I feel is worth adopting...it's just also a possibility that it might have kind of fucked me in terms of my academic career and progress as a human being.


I wrote all of this in order to introduce an idea that had me tossing and turning for an entire night. That was a week ago and these three paragraphs have been sitting around for about as long in addition to another three or four that had more to the with the idea I just referred to. However, I've started to lose faith in the direction of the idea so I'm just going to be posting this part for now. Doooooon't worry, the second part will be going up eventually, but I want to take some time to work on the logic of it so that it sounds less like the ravings of a sleep deprived fool and at least resembles a something like a coherent argument. So I hope that for now this enough to go on. Honestly, it's far enough back in the timeline of writing things this week that I can't remember if I've even said anything. And I'll be damned if I'm about to go back and read it all.


Be a little less self...less,
Sad Blogger

sleep sounds/the way things change pt. 1 Posted by Sad Blogger , at Monday, July 23, 2012, in

I wanted to write poetry and I had an idea and I ran with it. I'll find my groove again someday.

when i was a little boy my 
pulse was soldiers marching through
my white and blue striped
mattress. and when i was a little boy my
fluttering eyelashes were dogs
sniffing and searching through my
blankets. and when this poem
began it was going to end
up being about you but poems
written for people named
you are just like every other
poem. so instead it's about how silent
my bed is these days. because
nobody writes poems about that

Bleh Posted by Sad Blogger , at Monday, July 23, 2012, in

Lately I've been fixated on worrying that I might be mentally challenged. I feel like my whole life people have been particularly friendly to me despite how socially awkward I can be and how often I'm just babbling nonsense. In terms of my education, I've always been treated like I was slightly ahead of the curve compared to everyone else even though most of the time the work I would hand in was just a graffiti-like decoupage of ideas about nothing. In what I've always considered intellectual conversation, people act overly enthusiastic when responding to my contributions. And I know that in grades two through four, I was taken out of my regular classes to attend a class of maybe six other kids in which we drew pictures and talked about what we did at home and what we like to watch on TV and whatever else. My mom always said it was class for brighter kids, but I really have no evidence back up to that claim.


I dunno. I've spent the past few years exercising a spectrum of feelings of superiority compared to my peers and other people in general, but in the last month or so I've just started to wonder if I've had any right to. I mean probably as a general rule and as a decent human being, I don't. But in accordance to my way of thinking, I just have to question whether my narcissism, smugness, egoism, and eccentricity have all be justified.

Ugh. I just did some research on Narcissism and now I just feel ashamed and gross. I don't know how to end this and I don't know what the title should be. So I'll just call it how I'm feeling.


Here's some words to take the place of a salutation,
Sad Blogger

PS - the music sharing post below didn't work out at all like I had originally crafted it. All the sharing sites I was using only worked if I was signed in. And obviously I'm not going to make people sign up on the sites just to hear a couple songs. I'll figure it out.

This Makes It Seem Like I Only Like Sad Songs Posted by Sad Blogger , 21.7.12 at Saturday, July 21, 2012, in

I created the Aural Stimulation panel from the outset of this blog because I like music a lot and I like a lot of music. Actually, before it was added and back when we had maybe two posts and a pile of ideas for stories and songs and poems we've never written, it was just a single song embedded in the code of the website that would play once and drift off into an uncertain silence. The intended effect being that readers would have something pretty to listen to while they browsed through our fantastic contributions. The problem with having the song embedded, however, was that if you happened to be on the page for longer than the duration of the song (which I believe was Crime Window by Grand Archives and is not even 4 minutes long), it would just abruptly end and leave the reader itching for more if the reader was a decent human being. On the other hand, if you weren't particularly interested in hearing any music, there was no way to stop it other than navigating away from the page. Which is bad for business. That being said, if you didn't happen to have you speakers on or headphones in, there was no indication that music was being played if you were in any kind of mood for some.

So it just did't work all around.

Enter the Grooveshark playlist! It allowed us to construct a mix of whatever sounds we were particularly obsessed with at the time and let us just drop them into a simple, pre-assembled player that any buffoon could figure out. There's the songs, there's who's playing them, hit the button with the big triangle, noise comes out!!! Which meant that I wouldn't have to toil over figuring out how to design my own player. Which meant I was extremely relieved. Which is good. So the problem of giving readers some sort of control over the music was solved as was the impotence of only having a single track playing. I know that in another website I put together for a friend, I was able to link a playlist with over 600 songs. So the sky's the limit in that regard.

However, despite having to do more with my own burgeoning ambitions for the blog than anything else, a new snag presented itself. See, if I were to write up a supplement for one of the playlists--a listening guide...AN ABSTRACT if you will--it would be a splendidly relevant read but only as long as that specific playlist was posted. As soon as we chose some new songs to go up, there would be a meaningless entry floating around the site going on about a bunch of songs that nobody had any links to. I think that there is actually still a post up that does just that.

So now just three years or whatever since the site went up, I've finally put some effort into finding a way to share music that is both comprehensive and full of options for us but intuitive and effortless for you all. And after an afternoon of wasting money on a couple of subscription-based hosting sites, I think I've finally found a method that will work for everyone. As such, this will mark the first of hopefully many posts full of songs that I just haven't been able to stop listening to.

Because goddamn it if sometimes I just can't suck it up and write out an entire post. I've got a couple of drafts piling up now. Like spinning plates. I'll log in and add a few words, get frustrated with the concept, and angrily exit out of the browser completely before realizing my mistake and opening it back up to browse Tumblr and Imgur for a few hours. With the introductions of this fancy new music posting stuff, now I can just pop on, upload some new songs, and vomit out a few lines to go with each one before mashing the POST button and feeling like I actually achieved something. So without any more ado, I present you with 10 songs that make my heart and face go all gooey (cuz they're awesome):

PS - Hopefully I can find a more convenient way to embed actual MP3 files within the next few days. Until then, just play with the YouTube links.

1. Cat Power - Good Woman 

This one isn't that much of a newcomer to my radar, but towards the end of my most recent music reconnaissance mission, I started picking out some similarities between Cat Power and some of the other gals that I'll be posting below. I just had to go back and experience the almost sort of non-music that she creates. I was originally going to post Metal Heart as a perfect example with it's out of sync guitars and barely audible vocals but I really have always been in love with Good Woman. So here it is. There's just something so heartbreakingly simple about it. The meandering, overdriven guitar and choppy fiddle are almost drunkenly emphasizing the regret in her voice as Chan sadly breathes out her poetry. I hope it can become as much as a staple for you as it has for me.

2. Alex Turner - It's Hard to Get Around the Wind

This one I discovered last weekend with the help of a movie called "Submarine". One of those slow, quirky coming of age stories about a teenage boy falling in love and falling apart at the same time. I think I kind of sold it short there, but really if you can find a way to watch it, do. The soundtrack for the film has a sweet late-60s/early-70s folk-pop sort of sound that I was surprised to find was all written and performed by Arctic Monkeys lead singer, Alex Turner. Naturally, I chose one of the gloomier of the set, but I think it gives a better overall impression of the tone of the film. So if you like the song, check out the flick.

3. My Brightest Diamond feat. DM Stith - Everything is in Line

I was driving just after sunset a few weeks back and this song came up on the radio and just so perfectly complemented the twists and turns of the road with the street lights flashing by overhead and the tumbling indigo folds of the twilit clouds beyond. The DJ described Shara Worden--My Brightest Diamond is her stage name--as having a fixation with various forms of visual art and having taken specific inspiration for her most recent album (and this song) from Japanese performance art...kabuki theater, traditional puppets and masks, etc. So I can't help imagining a dark, bizarre marionette show being acted out to this song with their voices portraying two different characters. I always picture DM Stith's belonging to a crow. I dunno. Close your eyes, give it a few listens, and see where your mind goes.

4. Lykke Li - Dance, Dance, Dance

I've been a fan of Lykke Li for years so this doesn't really count as a new discovery, but I wanted to integrate something a little less gloomy into the mix but also make a transition from My Brightest Diamond that didn't seem awkward and forced. So I have nothing really special or insightful to say about this song other than it's a fun song to softly bob your head to and maybe even tap your toe a little bit.

5. Dawes - Million Dollar Bill

We'll bring it back to the sad and pretty now with a song that was recommended to me by a guy I met when I was on a road trip across the States. Despite having a small laptop filled with a few thousand songs, this song became one of the fifteen or so that I had on almost-constant repeat. It's a great song by itself, but when you're rolling through the endless green hills of Oregon or the barren nonsense that is New Mexico or up some east coast Interstate, head pressed against the cold window and staring at the moon, this song is the perfect soundtrack for whatever forlorn, romantic garbage is tugging at your heartstrings. Just the lines:

So when she steps out into the night
and finds the light that makes her prettiest
she'll be facing me every time she shines.

are every crush that went nowhere in grade school, middle school, high school. That longing just to be noticed or thought of or cared for. I'm pathetic, but this song is magic to me.


6. First Aid Kit - The Lion's Roar

Okay here's an actual fresh one! I first heard this song maybe a week ago and have had it on an endless loop on my iPod, phone, and computer since. Until forty seconds ago I would have told you it was about a relationship gone wrong blah blah blah. But I popped over to songmeanings.com just to see what other people were saying about it and if you take the first verse and apply it to the rest of the song, it really does sound like a bitter love song for the Church. Now I'm not here to interpret lyrics for one song out of ten. I actually want to get up at some point and enjoy the day. So all I'm going to say about this song is that it is just goddamn brilliant. Listen to the harmonies and the feeling in the chorus and agree with me. Also, as much as I've linked the official video, I would really recommend checking out this version.

7. The Milk Carton Kids - Michigan

I'm going to be honest with the next few songs. I just heard them either yesterday or the day before and haven't listened to them enough to write any essays on. This particular one I've heard enough to say I absolutely love the David Rawlings-style guitar picking and the sadness in the chorus. Other than that, it's just a gorgeous song that I should probably learn a little bit more about. I should also say this is the last of the folkey songs for this entry. Hopefully this song will transition well enough to the three lead-out songs. Probably not.

8. Metallic Falcons - Four Hearts

This one is just floaty and drifty and haunting and nice.

9. Soap&Skin - Turbine Womb

Some more pretty. Some more piano.

10. How To Dress Well - Suicide Dream 2

This is not the version of this song that I would have preferred to use, but I really just can't remember where I found the original version or how to find it again so this version will have to do. It's still pretty. As much as the whole thing is just an airy, dreamy cacophony, the "no air, no air, no air" at the end has always been my favorite part and hopefully it will make for the perfect conclusion to this entire playlist. This is one of those songs that I often fall asleep to. Don't worry...it won't actually make you dream about suicide. Give it a try.

So that's the first attempt at embedding songs. My fingers are really crossed hardcore. Let us know in the comments if there are any improvements we could make. Otherwise I just hope you enjoy the songs.


Happy listening,
Sad Blogger

I Hate the Weatherman Posted by Sad Blogger , 10.7.12 at Tuesday, July 10, 2012, in

David Spence stinks. I want someday for him to suddenly fall over in the middle of a weather forecast and explode.


I suppose I should append that I don't wish him any harm. I don't want him to die or break any bones or even get a paper cut (although a few paper cuts wouldn't be so bad...especially on his face. I would enjoy seeing little paper cut nicks all over his dumb face). But I'm in no way advocating any sort of injury or death to David Spence.


I would simply enjoy watching him fall over and explode.


Now, I've never much cared for David and his protruding belly. I met him once on a tour of the CFCN studio and he was surly and brutish. But today is the day I've finally had enough because today I saw a new side of him. As we're in the middle of Stampede week, Mr. Spence and his ragtag crew of newscasters are all decked out in their High Noon best. Except perhaps "best" is a stretch. While it's true that the majority of said newscasters have put an effort into cowboying up, Ol' David Weatherman decided it was fine to just show up in a poofy pair of jeans he bought in 1992, a shirt made from the wallpaper in a 19th Century plantation house's bathroom, and the glasses worn by the old man who fixed Woody in Toy Story 2. With his awful, distended abdomen and his crop of vulture hair, I just wanted a little Mexican boy to whollop him with a stick and watch candy come pouring out of a ragged, unnatural vent in his torso.

I feel pressured by my own standards of quantity over quality to add more to this. But there really wasn't any moral or message to this entry. For the time, I'm going to use the excuse of my intention to write daily to justify the quantity AND quality of this post. Pray for your own sake it gets better from here.

Coming Soon: The In Between 2.0? Posted by Sad Blogger , 9.7.12 at Monday, July 09, 2012, in

I get paid to sit at a desk for ten hours and peruse websites that I'm hoping won't set off an alarm while occasionally crawling up to one of twelve floors to pick up or drop off mail. I'd like to draw attention specifically to the amount of time that I spend doing this. I've spent each of the past twenty-five days in my spacious, tidy, air conditioned office with its excellent view and I've only now had this revelation: I have absolutely no excuse not to be practicing this thing that I've proclaimed for so long to be my art.


(Writing, if you didn't catch it)


I had a minor panic attack/fit of depression the other day as I gleefully completed my five-year financial plan and upon checking the printed version for errors, was struck by the realization that I'm kind of going nowhere. I understand, of course, that I'm currently too young to feel as though I have nothing to look forward to in my life etc. However, as much as I want to return to school, I don't see that happening for another year or two, and if that's case, I will be entering school and either almost 23 or almost 24. Which would therefore have me graduating a four-year program at either 27 or 28. Now I don't know about you, but brushing up against the ol' THREE-OH and only just starting to step into the professional world makes me want to pull my own skin off with my teeth.

So taking all that into account, I've elected to commit to updating this thing daily. I know that I've most likely made similar promises before now, but this is the first time that I'm actually forced to sit in the same room for hours a day without the eternal distraction that unregulated internet browsing used to provide me with. But I want to practice "my craft". The major theme of my nervous episode had been my inability to stick with anything. I'm a quitter. The moment I feel the least bit disinterested or irritated or miserable about some preoccpuation, I immediately drop it and forlornly seek out the next new thing. Up until the last few months, though, I'd never seen it as a negative thing. Never saw it as quitting. I always thought I was just "being true to myself" and doing what I had to do to stay happy.

And that's where I start getting insecure. The result of me doing my utmost to stay happy is that I am happy. I've considered it to be taking a cue from Ayn Rand and her Howard Roark character.

[Enter identity crisis]

Now I'm thinking that I've just been avoiding putting any real effort into growing up and becoming a functioning adult.

Which is why I need to get back into this shit. It's what I do. I have my never-want-to-do-it-again phases, but it needs to be done. Whether I can get some kind of training eventually or just happen to have the luck to "break", it's only going to happen if I stick with it. So today, as you can see, is going to be another one of those long, pathetic, self-pitying, reflective hunks of garbage. Hopefully, though, it will grow to be something impressive and meaningful and perhaps even entertaining (god forbid).

Thanks for reading this if you did and thanks even if you didn't.
Sad Blogger.

Imported Posted by Sad Blogger , 21.6.12 at Thursday, June 21, 2012, in

I was going to write something on Tumblr, but it got really long so I was going to just post it here. But I wanted it to be on Tumblr so I just copy+pasted it here for other people to read. Yay.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Today I genuinely debated walking over to a woman on the fifteenth floor and crying for like an hour. Not about a specific thing. Not even because of some ambiguous thing I’m feeling. Just because it feels so goddamn good. I did it once at a camp ground the summer after the eleventh grade.

When I decided that I was going to type that, I thought it was going to be a short little thing that fit nicely amongst the recycled garbage that is my tumblr. Then I was gonna tag it with some obnoxious shoulder-shruggy thing like I dunno why I’m even typing this cuz nobody even follows me, but then I’d just be an acting-like-he-doesn’t-realize-he-only-has-one-follower-whom-he-doesn’t-even-know cunt. Which opened up the terrifying chasm of self-consciousness that comes with assuming said follower is actually going to read your neurotic drivel.

Cuz see, there’s writing like you’re ejaculating your fractured ego into the pages of a journal you assume nobody will ever see (but secretly hope somebody will so that once you get over your self-righteous proclamations of broken trust and invaded privacy, you’ll have one of those “confidantes” people in Nicholas Sparks-esque movies are always gurgling about). And there’s writing an essay or a short story or a script that you know will have a specific audience that you constantly have to keep in mind; always hold its hand and stroke its hair while you tend to its every need. The clueless, needy audience.

But then there’s writing on the internet. You have to think of it like you’re releasing a cat with a note on its back into the crowd at a European outdoor metal festival. It might be a cat and just stand there unnoticed…it might prowl around quietly, drawing the attention of a few easily-distracted types…it might scratch a few toes as it dashes toward what it thinks is freedom…it might have rabies and hurl through the crowd, slashing and clawing and menacing hordes of angry metalheads, driving them away with obscene, beard-muffled shouts. Or it might write a boring, repetitive, longwinded metaphor that nobody cares about.

My stupid point, though—despite having become lost in the woods following a trail of what it thinks are bread crumbs but are actually the unfortunate leavings of a devastatingly constipated deer—is that while the writing itself can feel personal and private, you realize that SOMEBODY is going to read it and now you have to doctor it up for them so they’ll be impressed or sympathetic or entertained or et cetera and suddenly a piddly little comment about crying at work is a shitty, pontificating manifesto about a notion that nobody really even cares about that you read back and completely regret even thinking about.

Actually, I take back setting that last paragraph up to be my point. My point is that you have to wonder what this entire thing is. I refer back to the part where I introduced the matter of having a single follower. Does that make this a letter? If nobody else is going to see it, is it direct, private correspondence? Or does the mere property of existing in an open forum drag it down into the arena of something more akin to a “blog post”? I mean at this point am I addressing you as an individual taking part in an intellectual dialogue or am I still pretending that a loose collection of curious readers might happen upon this dumb thing and take the time to read and connect to it?

That being said…did I just want to share a maybe-endearing, maybe-amusing moment from my day with the voiceless ether?

Or did I subconsciously hope that I would be offering some kind of awful emotional fig leaf to a person that I don’t know, don’t intend to communicate with, and frankly have no interest in associating with at all?

You know what? Fuck this thing. Point. Click. Create post.

Fetch me, the Melon Posted by Happy Blogger , 20.5.12 at Sunday, May 20, 2012, in

Think it sweet

Think it kind

Think beyond the rind

Round edges, green with envy

Traces of sour, bitter development

Ignore imperfections

Ignore cruel intentions

Ignore what it doesnt want you to see

Harvest it and bring me home

to the cornacopia of death

Forgive the journey

Forgive the time

       Oh the time.

Gather around the feast of fruits

Indulge in its overbearing presence

Remember in haste

Remember the taste

Remember (the) Me

                                     -lon

-Happy Blogger

The Grand Adventure Posted by Happy Blogger , 6.4.12 at Friday, April 06, 2012, in

Australia
40 days
2 cousins
1 hell of a time.

I can remember counting down the hours until I left for the airport. I had my shoes and my backpack on atleast an hour before we had to leave. When we got to the airport, we approached the check in kiosk, not really knowing how to prepare ourselves for such an adventure. We waved our parents goodbye, ready to head for the land down under. 19 hours of flights and we were in Australia. When we arrived in Australia, we were really lucky because we had our Australian relatives come and pick us up, and house us until we left for our tour 4 days later.

While we were in Sydney, we were adjusting to the new time and doing the usual tourist things. Sydney Harbour Bridge, Sydney Opra House, Botanical Gardens, the Zoo. It was great.

Early one morning, we got on our tour bus. The place where we would find refuge for the next 21 days. When we got on, my understanding is that everyone would be on the tour for all 21 days. Apparently not. It was a whole bunch of small tours combined, so the majority of people would come and go. On the entire bus, there were only 3 of us doing the whole 21 day tour. Myself, my cousin, and a British girl named Laurie-Ann. When we learned we would be on the same tour for 21 days, we figured we might as well get aquainted. Luckily, we seemed to hit it off right away.

Being on tour was a lot of fun. I had never been in such an environment before. Being in a small little bus with people from around the world and staying in hostels. Our first night, we hosted a "Garden Party". It was a fun time. The second night we had another "Garden Party" which consisted of a bottle of wine per person and several beer. I'm pretty sure when we were waking up at 5:30 the following morning, we were all still drunk. Ooh the life of a backpacker.

From Sydney to Melbourne, we had a 'sensational' Aussie tour guide named "Squatter". Some of the highlights of the trip was hiking up Mount Kozsiosco (up and down in 3 hours!), the 90 mile beach, and a 'Bush walk' where we got to get 5 ft away from wild kanagroos!

From Melbourne to Adelaide, we got to drive along the Great Ocean Road, got to see the 12 apostles, and got to see wild Koalas. In my opinion, this was the most calming part of our trip. Great accomodations, the weather was ideal...etc.

Once in Adelaide, we spent 2 days there as we had a free day. On our first night in Adelaide, Myself, Rachel, Laurie-Ann and Lindsay all stayed in the same hostel room, 222. It was Lindsay's birthday that evening, so we decided to have a night on the town. There were pre-drinks in our room, and then we headed for the Woolshed in Adelaide. Let's just say there was mischief to be had that evening. I was the first to head home around 1am. Laurie-Ann followed. When she got in, I was completely passed out. Rachel and Lindsay didn't make an apperance until almost 7 the following morning. Let's just say, the ladies of room 222 spent our free day recovering.

From Adelaide, we hopped on the Stuart Highway and made our way to Alice Springs. Along the way we stopped in Quorn where we got to see the Flinders Ranges and large Huntsmen the size of your hand on the wall, then off to Coober Pedy which was the BEST part of our trip in my opinion. It was the coolest little town in the middle of the outback, where it can get so hot there, that the vast majority of the houses are under grounds in 'Dug out's'. In Coober Pedy was where we got to sleep underground, eat the best pizza in Australia, buy my Opal Ring, and noodle for opals ourselves. Did I mention we got to sleep underground? I must say, that was the most comfortable I slept the entire trip. Off to Marla for Valentines Day where Laurie-Ann and I wrote poems for everyone on our tour.

I like chocolate
I like cake
give it to me now

Then up to Ulara where we got to go to Uluru and Kata Juta. While we were at Uluru, it was 50'C around the rock, and we weren't allowed to walk around the base of the rock because we could die of dehydration. Gotta love the Australian Outback. Then up to Kings Canyon, where we stayed overnight at a campground where there were wild dingoes and we slept out in our swag bags underneath the most beautiful night sky I have and will ever see in my life. Being the the middle of the outback, no cities for miles, the sky stretching out right above you. I honestly have never seen stars look like that before. It was mesmerizing. It was as if the sky was putting on a show, in that moment, just for you, showing off its depth and mystery.

Our tour from Adelaide to Alice was a pretty crazy bit. Sexy Aussie tour guys, Ratti Boy and Shano, caused infatuation amongst certain girls in the group. Not the mention, being on a 24 seat bus where almost every seat was full, and the bus with no air conditioning, I thought we could pollute the world with our foul stench. Proper mingin'!

Once in Alice, we settled in our room. Our first night out, we went to Annie's where I indulged in massive amounts of potatoe wedges. Laurie-Ann and I split 2 pitchers of cider, so I was surely feeling the buzz. We danced around, left for the Casino, danced at the Casino. At one point, I look over and Dan is pouring a pint of beer down Laurie-Ann's dress. I could barely believe that just happened. We went outside,and a group of german boys we had met were leaving. "See you next sunday..... I mean.... TUESDAY!" I can recall Laurie-Ann saying that as if it was just yesterday. Tooo funny. Then it was time to cab home. Dan renamed my camera "Fucking Napolean Dynamite", ran into an aboriginal fire, and could barely mumble his english. We finally got back the hostel, luckily I was the most sober and helped Rachel and Dan get to bed. The next day in Alice, we spent in our Hostel Room, where I decided to air out my stinky clothes. I swear we were all drugged from the stench. The only time we left our room was to go get food. Finally at 5, we emerged from our room for a swim. We were in the pool when Laurie-Ann suggested we play a game. "Let's play cars! Don't crash into me... I don't have insurance!". Still intoxicated with the stench of our room, I almost drowned from laughing so hard!

Then off from Alice in the morning we headed up to Darwin. We went to the the Daly Waters pub, where people from around the world leave souvenirs. Rachel and I left Canadian pins with our names on them. One of the days, we were at Mataranka (or Matti-tar-tar as Laurie-Ann called it), which was a natural hot springs, however we couldn't go in because 3 million bats had flown in and litterally shit everywhere.

We got dropped off in Darwin, and spent the night in a crummy little hostel room. The next morning, we were off again to tour Kakadu and Litchfield national park. I vividly remember saying at Uluru, how can I get more sweaty than I am now?! Our tour guide warned us of Darwin. That the humidity would really get to us. After about a 45 minute easy hike, I was drenched with sweat. How my body could produce so much was beyond me. I was going absolutely mental. I recall writing in my diary... I'm loosing my mind... It appears to be slipping away from me just as the copious amounts of sweat. I actually had a little breakdown. I needed to get off the tour. I mean, it was lovely, and it was probably the best decision we made, however.. I needed to get off a bus! I needed to have a bed, not a bunk in a tent! I needed non- tour food.

We finally got back to Darwin, where Rachel and I decided to upgrade our room to a private room. BEST IDEA EVER! I unloaded all my stuff and did all my laundry. Our room smelled regardless of the fact that this was the cleanest our clothes had been in almost 3 weeks. Our first night in our room, we decided to allow ourselves to sleep in the next morning. Rachel managed to stay asleep until 8:30. I woke up at 5:30, as I was programmed, but then went back to bed until 7:30. I got up, and had some time to myself before Rachel got up, so I decided to straighten my hair. By the time Rachel got up, my hair was a frizzy little poof on the top of my hair. Humidity hates my hair. What the point of even packing the straightner... oh well. Rachel and I by accidentally spent $18 dollars on gelato, so we couldn't afford to eat anything but our rice crackers and peanut butter for a couple days. Oh the life of a back packer. Oh, and because we decided to upgrade in Darwin, we couldn't afford our third night of accomodation, so we slept in the international section of the Darwin Airport.

Off the Cairns. Finally we can relax. Or so we think.
We got to our hostel, Tropic Days. It was the furthest hostel out of central Cairns, however it was the most lovely place we could have spent our 8 days in Cairns in. The staff were so nice, and we ended up becoming good friends with some of them. Not to mention, they had FREE WIFI! Which was a huge deal, considering we used to be spending $1 for 15 minutes of internet before. We decided that we would go for our sky dive on leap year, figured to do something special on a day that is already special. However, because it had been raining in Cairns, it was cancelled. Rachel, Laurie-Ann and I were so bummed. The hostel suggested we rent a car, and drive to Milla Milla falls. So we did, and we ended up having the most fun! At one point we had the water falls to ourselves, and lets just say, What happenend in Milla Milla falls, stays in Milla Milla falls...The next day, Rachel and I were off to the Great Barrier Reef. It was so beautiful and amazing, finally we could swim in the ocean without getting eaten by a crocodile. While we were looking at the reef, we did see 3 reef sharks. I also managed to burn the tiny bit of my face that wasn't protected by the UV Ray suits/face mask and become severely hydrated to the point that I was hallucinating that night. I spent most of our day trip to Cape Tribulation drinking water and catering to a horrible migraine. Luckily the rehydration tablets kicked in, because the next day I would be throwing myself out of a plane at 14,000 ft. It was probably the craziest thing I will ever do. I was so unbelievably buzzed, I had so much adrenaline pumping through my body. I was like Leo, the King of the World. I remember being in the plane, and not being scared, even though I figured I would. I remember angling myself out of the plane, and not being scared. I remember the moment when the guy tilt my head back, and the next thing we were soaring down to the smalls stretch of beach down below. There is no real way to describe the feeling of free falling. You almost feel like you are flying. I'll be honest, my ears were hurting so bad, but I couldn't even care. Another Happy Landing. What a life I have. What an exhilirating feeling.

While in Cairns, we were fortunate enough to get free evening meals down at the Woolshed, which was party central cairns at night. Many drunken moments to be had at the Woolshed. Mexican Mondays, Tropical Tuesdays, Wet T-shirt Wednesdays... Drinking goon behind a bush, dancing on the tables in the club, and Miss/Mr Backpackers competitions. Crazy craziness.

I think one of my favorite days was when we spent the day by the lagoon and made a BBQ by the ocean side. It was absolutely stunning.

Laurie-Ann had to leave for the coast, which was devesating. After spending a month straight with her, I knew I was really going to miss her. We really clicked, and I know I will proper miss her. I vaguely remember saying Bye to her. I was so embarassed because the night before she left, we had Tequila by the poolside, and everyone eventually left, and I remained in the pool sipping on a bottle of Tequila. 5:30 the next morning, I was still drunk saying bye to Laurie-Ann. I'll be honest, by 2 in the afternoon, I still was drunk. No more tequila for me...

Eventually Rachel and I had to head back to Sydney. By this point, I was ready to head back. I mean, I love travellilng and I will miss everyone, but Rachel and I were getting sick, and I longed to be home. Our last 3 days, we laid on our aunts couches while we past the time watching sitcoms on the television. Thank God the dogs, Bronte, Boston and Mia were there to keep us company. The only time we got up was when we went to Woolworths to spend our last Australian notes on Tim Tams, Cherry Ripes and Fantales.

We were dropped off at the Sydney Airport, and we said our final goodbyes to Australia. We had a long day at the airport; a 14 hour flight to San Franscico, then an 8 hour lay over where we mainly just slept in the airport because we were so sick, and then a 3 hour flight back to Calgary.

Our families greated us with open arms from our trip. It was really nice for Rachel and I, because I honestly thought that this trip would be a "Make it" or "break it" trip for us. I was pretty convinced that we would come back from Australia, and not want to talk to each other for a long time after, however Rachel and I became closer while we were in Australia. It was really nice.

Getting adjusted once I was home was really difficult, because I was so sick that I couldn't sleep properly, and I didn't adjust to the time change right away. I went to the doctor soon after of being home and was diagnosed with acute laryngitis and a sinus infection. I figured it was some cruel and unsual punishment. I mean, I just got home from the trip of a lifetime, and I couldn't even share it with the world? How fair is that?!

Oh well.
I met amazing people from around the world.
I gained a new bestfriend, whom I proper miss.
I was pasty and cold, and then I was warm and tan.
I was dependent, now I feel independent.
I was fearful, and now I'm fearless.

It was a Grand Adventure.
My grand adventure.

Until next time,
-Happy Blogger

Finding My Way Back To Here - Chapter 1 Posted by Sad Blogger , 29.3.12 at Thursday, March 29, 2012, in

Listening to the doctors' chattering is unnerving.

You know when you're on the bus downtown and you've got some Asian kids babbling on one side and a Puerto Rican couple yammering on the other side you can't understand a single word of it? You know? They could be plotting my assassination for all I can tell.The doctors, too. Poring over their clipboard, pointing and nodding and deciding whether a gunshot to the head or poison in the ear would be best. I'd probably go with poison. It would make for a better story.


Body of Poisoned Mental Patient Found

Brain Melted Down And Leaked Onto Pillow

Not that I would mind if that happened. Like, yeah, maybe it would suck for whoever found me. I don’t know what brain matter smells like. Probably not good, though. Especially if the poison reacted with my brain and made some sort of brain-poison soup. Like brains and bay leaves. That would suck I guess. But still, I wouldn’t complain.

I think about these things a lot.

The main doctor, the one who never wears a lab coat, Dr. Mahoney, eventually shakes the other one’s hand and turns to me. I don’t know the other one, but he’s looking at me too, even though he’s walking away. Doctors always look at you the same, like you’re a math problem that they know they can solve but you’re just a really hard type of math that they haven’t studied since math school. Even if you’re doing better, they still kind of just study you like any moment now you might be not-doing-better again. Mahoney walks toward me and tries to cover up the doctor look with an awkward smile. He’s just trying to be a normal human being, but the guy’s a doctor and you can’t hide stuff like that.

I go back to watching the window so he doesn’t feel like I’m waiting for him. There’s not really anything out there I haven’t seen before, but if you concentrate on just the glass and move your eyes around, it looks almost like the whole building is moving and you can pretend there’s something out there other than the hemlock tree and the broken park bench. It’s funny. Before I came here, I always imagined mental hospitals to be ominous brick buildings with overgrown lawns and single trees and broken park benches. I guess that’s because that’s what they are.

“Hey,” his voice sounds like Spock’s, “you ready?”

I nod and he gestures toward the inpatient medical counter. Today’s nurse, the Wednesday nurse, smiles at me and hands Mahoney a bottle of pills. Her smile is way more convincing than Mahoney’s but it seems so out of place. Why would the Doc get his meds from the psych ward? Maybe her smile isn’t so out of place, though. In her situation, why wouldn’t she be friendly? Smile for the crazies! “Smile for the crazies, Beth. Just keep smiling for the crazies and they won’t drool on you.” I return her grin with what I hope is sympathy. I can see how the ward might be disconcerting for some people, but I imagine it’s entertaining for the hospital staff most of the time. I mean, when they’re not on their Cold War-era super-spy missions dealing with one of the real fargone dopes.

But the guys that are good old fashioned cuckoo, they’ve got to be a treat after a day of wiping down that old bird whose only method of communication is to shit on herself and bellow a single note until she can’t feel it anymore. She seemed to have had a stroke. It makes me wonder if she is actually crazy, or just trapped inside her brain, without a way to reach out. Maybe her family just decided to leave her here to rot.

There are guys like Ted, though, who reminds us nightly that he is a tractor and absolutely must get back to Annabelle for the derby. Or Alastair, who maintains that he has been giving Fidel Castro a piggyback for the past four decades, and won’t stop until the floor stops yelling. It might actually be interesting to see the world through his eyes for a day. He can tell a hell of a story, too. Apparently Cuba has great weather this time of year.

A bottle tapping my shoulder snaps me back to the med counter.

Oh. They’re for me.

Nurse Beth-Wednesday is still airing her teeth while Dr. Mahoney waits to escort me out of the ward. Today I get to go back to my old life. Except it’s not my old life...or it’s the same life but in a different world...like the planet and my life are still the same, but I’ll see them different or something? I don’t know. I guess everything I’ve learned in here, I’ve only applied to where I am and everything else outside the ward will be new or something? So same life, same world, same everything but I get to start all over again.

I’m not a brain doctor. Like I'd have any idea.

I’d done most of my rehabilitating by myself apart from what amounted to maybe twenty cumulative minutes with Melly. That’s what everyone calls the therapist on staff, Dr. Melissa. I actually like her. She speaks like she holds you accountable for your own actions, but she’s also personable and gets to the point without making you feel like a math problem. If I would have had more time with her, I think she’d be one of those people get me to care enough to figure out what makes her tick.

“So it says in the notes from Dr. Mahoney that you wanted to kill yourself.”

“Well, that might have been what I wanted, but I don’t really know.”

“Generally, when you pull your chin up on the uncomfy end of a gun, we don’t assume your head just needed a place to rest for a minute.”

“I don’t know.”

“You seem to like that phrase: ‘I don’t know’”

“I guess.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

I think we were quiet for a while here. Either we were quiet and I was trying to figure out how to say it, or we weren’t quiet and I just want to imagine it was this big dramatic “Good Will Hunting” moment. You know, lots of yelling and tears: “I DON’T KNOW! I DON’T KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT ANYTHING, HOW I’M SUPPOSED TO FEEL ABOUT ANYTHING! I don’t UNDERSTAND anymore how I’m supposed to react to ANYTHING!”

It wasn’t that interesting.


“Don’t know. I don’t want to know. I don’t feel anything anymore and I don’t want to. I stopped feeling stuff ‘cause all feeling does is make you hurt. It works. I was getting by. And without feeling, I wasn’t hurting. ‘Cause everything hurts. It’s how I cope with-”

“You have to start letting yourself feel things again.”

“But my way works.”

“Then why are you here?”

See? She’s smart. Stupid me sat there and let the realization sink in for what felt like ten minutes. The scariest part isn’t that I let myself forget how to feel things, it’s that I had this thing inside me that made me want to just die and I couldn’t understand it enough to even question its presence. It had been so easy to just let go of everything and revel in the anesthesia. That’s what it was, you know? Like an emotional epidural. I guess it’s stupid to have thought that not feeling felt good. But it wasn’t working, wasn’t easy. What I’d thought was armor was the shell of a giant, emotional time bomb. At that point I realized she’d continued talking and I forced myself back into some state of awareness.

“Mr. McColl... Mr. McColl... Tyler?”

I guess she realized I’d been zoned out into what she could only assume was some anti-depressant, anti-anxiety medication-induced stupor.

“You’re an intelligent person, Tyler. I doubt many people would be capable of unlearning the ability to respond to their emotions. However, in doing so, you unlearned any chance you had at wisdom. To be wise is both your emotional mind and your rational mind working together. Depriving yourself of either is foolish.”


And so I spent two weeks in this dump just to figure out that I wanted to die because I was stupid. I guess I have Melly to thank for figuring that out, though.

So, uhm, thanks.

I mean I never really considered myself much of a “therapy person,” you know? They’re such clinical, anesthetic word. Therapy. Therapist. You can’t help picturing some tweed-swaddled mo with a notepad murmuring to a middle-aged elementary teacher who can’t get over the night her dad threw a plate of spaghetti at her mom on her sixteenth birthday. But the doctors want me to go find some now that I’m leaving. I guess after Melly, I could slide into it a little better. The nightmare is going to be incorporating it into my new “real life”. Fitting it in with a job that provides a paycheck that’s only slightly more appealing than living in a cardboard box and fishing for littered soda cans.

And they want me to “get out” more?

Why not pat me on the head and hand me a lollipop when they say it like that? Like I’ve been watching Captain Kangaroo for too long and need to spend more time out in my No Gurlz Aloud fort made from plywood and Kleenex boxes. To be fair, though, running through the woods to my fort and chasing after girls with my slingshot should give me the 2-4 hours of exercise I’m supposed to be getting each day. So my days will consist of working, exercising, and getting out. Which I guess is not the same as exercising? If I go outside and exercise for two hours, do I then have to go somewhere else and not exercise in order to fill my getting out quota? Oh and college! Make-up homework for the last two weeks on top of classes, getting out, working, and exercising. Unless going to class counts as getting out. Not clear on that one yet.

And in between all of that, I’m supposed to feel. Not even between, I have to feel stuff while I’m doing those things. I mean working doesn’t have a feeling associated with it. School doesn’t have a feeling associated with it. Exercising doesn’t. Honestly, if you bounce around wearing a sweatband, grinning all over the place and saying things like "oh yeah!" and "wheeeee!", go fuck yourself. But seriously, certain things are supposed to make you feel a certain way, right? These things, though, they just seem like they’re more things. More things to keep me from doing things that might actually give me a chance to feel some stuff. I don’t have the sort of friends who want to go out and do things with me. Our unspoken contract is that they go places and I come along to keep up appearances and we let me call it a social life. Are we supposed to now sit around my living room afterwards so we can discuss how we felt about it? I’m a very Point-A-to-Point-B kind of person. I mean except for the brush with the ol’ tres-deuce. Point A to Point A1/2? Necessity seems like the only thing that’s really...necessary. You go see friends because otherwise they won’t see you. You go to school because your job stinks and there aren’t many better options to finding a better one. You work because school costs a metric shload and as we already covered, you kind of need the school. Necessity’s a driving force.

I guess Mahoney decided the pill bottle hadn’t conveyed the degree of persuasion that he’d hoped for. A heavy hand budged its way, not unlike an overweight cab driver at 7-Eleven, onto my shoulder and gave me a squeeze that was probably supposed to whisper something like, “Alright, whenever you’re ready, let’s make those steps forward we’ve been discussing,” but sounded more like, “My wife asked me to pick up her dry cleaning on the way home and I don’t need a night of explaining why she’s going to have to pick up herself in the morning.”

We sign a packet of last-minute legal papers and the Doc slides me an envelope with his notes for whoever ends up being my therapist. We push through the doors to the ward together and commence our obligatory trudge down the long, 1920s-style, aquamarine-tiled hallway that maintains the mental image of an asylum in your mind so that the reality of it being a run-of-the-mill hospital remains slightly blurred. I mean it was legitimately spooky. There was an unsettling disconnect from the polished look of the rest of the hospital and the hallway to the psych ward. Like they wanted to scare away any wandering normal patients. But it really wasn’t so bad as like a prison in an old French Revolution film. Just spooky.

To be honest the hallway could have been a mile long. Being out of the ward was like crawling through the wardrobe to Narnia for the first time. It was a new place, but it wasn’t really all that new, but I knew that the door on the other end held something foreign. We stepped through the door at the other end, though, and it wasn’t really all that strange. But my parents were there and that was odd. The people who admitted me waiting to take me away. I mean it wasn’t weird the times when they visited. That’s what people do to people they know who are in hospitals. But it feels weird that they’re picking me up. Is that significant? I broke into their house because I knew that the gun cabinet was there and that the key to the cabinet was there and that everything would go according to plan. Easy peasy. I didn’t expect them to be awake at 1 in the morning. They’re like, old people.

I mean obviously they heard me break in, my dad rushing into the room with a baseball bat, all on edge while my mom stood behind him, scared. Since then, there was being dropped off and having a hot lunch and doing slow laps around the ward. Most of the time just sprinkled with a light smattering of lame conversation.

“Gramma won $40 on the penny slots at the casino last week .”

“Oh, cool.”

“Your father finally fixed that ceiling fan in the basement.”

“Yeah, finally.”

“We care about you, you know.”

“I know.”

I knew. But still, to see them standing there now, smiling like anything other than a smile would hurt me. Underneath the smile it’s clear my dad’s still on edge and my mom’s still standing beside him, trying to pretend she’s not scared. Seeing them that ready to coddle me is almost sickening, but I do appreciate them being there because things are already starting to feel different.

The reception area was just another drab room when I got here. A collection of walls that people had filled with the stuff they needed to use to do the things they needed to do. Now, though, it’s bright and noisy and full of people waiting in chairs. Phones going off and screaming reminders at the people that they’ve got busy lives and important shit to do. Maybe it’s the medication, but everything seems like it’s telling me I don’t belong out here. The waiting room wants me to know that my unshaved face, my unkempt hair, my general aesthetic resemblance to a missionary that spent the past decade living with a primitive tribe of native Peruvians...it all gives off a strong scent of belongs-back-in-the-psych-ward. Maybe I did fit in better there, shelled off from the world in my bubble of moaning, babbling misfits. I guess there’s really no going back now, though.

It’s time to go home.