Slimming The Crowd

Hey everyone!
This is (technically) my 100th post. But since I have only actually posted 51, its not all that big of a celebration. It also says something about my ability to commit to my posts: 49% of them never get seen. That's right, the screening process is pretty tough over here at Starburst! (Also, this may be the first time that I've ever referred to this blog by name. Go figure!)

Anyway, I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had been sort of talking to a guy on the phone. I was really indifferent as to whether or not things would have progressed from there, because in all honesty, the guy somehow tweaked my number one nerve numerous times inside the "getting-to-know you" phase. This nerve? Its the one that is the pre-cursor to my Creeper Alert. Its the one that sends up the red flag probably much sooner than deserved, but is usually right on the money. It separates the pretentious from the well intentioned, and has saved me from much trouble. The nerve is... when a guy I just met (or anybody, really) thinks they "know" me.

Its easiest to figure out early on. The guy is so secure about himself that he is totally confident making complete assumptions about your person, days after first talking. Frankly, anyone who wants to try to recommend me a movie, book, or band ("I thought of you when I saw this, you'd really like it!") is a red flag in the first week. My reasoning? Because A. You should NOT be thinking about me as a function of your daily life, we've spoken twice. and B. two conversations are not nearly enough to tell you what my tastes are, or vice versa. So what is supposed to be this really fantastic, thoughtful "line", becomes a blind stab in the dark. And yes, this makes me a bit bitchy, but I firmly believe that I am a complex, thought-filled person, whose tastes are not easily understood when the combined time of conversation is equivalent to about four hours.


But I will be completely honest, I let this slide when talking to Boy. I was trying to be open to new people, and I am constantly remembering that I myself, make horrible first impressions, so to expect more of others is unfair. Erego, I ignored Boy's attempts to recommend gory, cheesy, over produced horror films to me and instead tried to focus on other things. He was looking to meet new people, he liked to read, etc. etc. Okay, fine. But neither of those things ended up boding well for this kid either.


It turns out, he wanted to "meet new people" because he desperately wanted to get over his last ex. I can understand that, obviously. In November I was doing all sorts of boy-crazy, idiotic things. But then I realized what I was doing (largely, making an ass out of myself and viciously confusing the other person) and decided to take a step back. What I was NOT understand about, was his favorite sentence: "Girls are bitches." To which I could do little else to reply: "I'm sorry, I always found us to be wonderful."


The latter interest, his love of books, had the potential to be endearing but died sooner than I expected. I received a message one day telling me that he had found three new books, so that he had something to talk to me about. "A" for effort, of course, although I was admittedly weirded out, because at that point, we hadn't spoken in a week (because he had called daily at times where I couldn't answer, and then would text when the phone went to voicemail. After day three of this I began to avoid the calls) and he was putting in WAY more effort than I was comfortable with. Once again, after maybe four hours of conversation.


So the whole thing seemed to have fallen flat as an inappropriate match. Which I was totally okay with, because it gave me some damn good stories to tell Topher. About two weeks ago I assumed that I had heard my last of Boy. But oh, I was wrong.


This morning I got back from my friend's college (late and cold, thanks NJTransit!) and opened my laptop to a message on facebook. Apparently, Boy had been im'd by a girl Sarah a week ago, and thought it was me. Which is cool, mistakes happen and the name's popular. The strange thing was that this mistake took him a week to figure out (so much for knowing me I guess) and when he did, he made a date with this new girl. I was definitely relieved to figure out that he found some other girl. Although I can't help but cringe at all the things he probably now associates with me, particularly since he spent a week talking to someone else and thought it was me. Why he felt the need to let me know about the mistake, and his date, was really strange to me at first. We haven't spoken in two weeks, I officially had walked away from it. It wasn't until Topher told me that Boy was informing me that he was moving on and that I had "missed my chance" that I understood.


Looks like I really lost what could have been True Love!

Today

When I was in high school I would wake up with just enough time to shower, get dressed, and make a breakfast to bring to school with me. But here, particularly since none of my classes start until eleven, I try to wake up three hours early every day. By 7:30, I'm pretty much up and semi-functional.
So far today I showered, folded my laundry, packed (mostly) to go to my friend's college overnight, ate breakfast, read some of my Philosophy homework, watched a short film, watched most of LOST, cleared out my camera, talked to Jer and Wyoming and Daytona, Cleaned a decent bit of my dorm, and wrote a number of blog entries before deciding to continue with this one.
Who says you can't be productive before noon?
After myPaleoanthropology class tonight I'm heading a few hours south to spend the night at another college with Pookie, K, and Anne. I'll post more when I'm safetly in Philadelphia and tell you all about my adventures!

There's Always Time

Over the weekend I had a slight breakdown. Nothing all that major, just the general "ahh what the hell am I going to do with my life" sort of thing. It lasted a few hours then passed. But as a side effect to the freak out, I've ended up feeling sick for a few days. My stress has actually begun to show long-term effects. Because of this, I've decided to start to take some steps to relax.
For example, I decided last night to drop one of my unnecessary classes. Now I don't have any more than two classes most days of the week, except for Tuesday when I have three (each class separated by at least an hour). Also, while I've planned out my homework over the course of the week, I purposely left tonight empty. Instead of worrying about homework, I watched a movie in bed while I choked down my 8th glass of water. Because when I called my mom in tears due to a hypochondriac freak out this morning, she said to drink more water. This actually keeps the brain from shrinking or something crazy like that. Personally, I believe that drinking water wards away the crazy.
Also, I'm not worried about cleaning right now. Usually I spend 20-30 minutes every day agonizing over dishes and keeping my clothes away and making sure all of my books and papers are stacked by size. I decided that I'm just going to let it go for the night.

Today's Pick 5:

Older Chests: Damien Rice

"So pass me by, I'll be fine. Just give me time. Older gents sit on the fence,
with their cap in hand, looking grand, they watch their city change. Children
scream, or so it seems, louder than before. Out of doors, and into stores with
bigger names."

Gathering Dust: David Gray

" Now the wind it is blowing, blowing leaves from the trees. I got no use
knowing, that with time it'll ease. I don't know where I'm going, hope I get
there soon, 'cause my soul's as hollow as the sorrowful moon."

Bowl of Oranges: Bright Eyes

"We'll keep working on the problem we know we'll never solve, of love's uneven
remainders, our lives are fractions of a whole."

Movie Script Ending: Deathcab For Cutie

"Whenever i come back, the air on railroad is making the same
sounds. And the shop fronts on holly are dirty words (asterisks in for the
vowels). We peered through the windows... new bottoms on barstools but the
people remain the same, with prices inflating."

Birds: Kate Nash-

"He said 'let me try and explain again...Right Birds can fly so high and they
can shit on your head, well they can almost fly into your eye and make you feel
so scared. But when you look at them and you see that they're beautiful, thats
how I feel about you.'"

Slipping

I am one of those people who hates Valentine's Day, even when I'm in a relationship. Yeah, I know, add that to my dislike of Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, and the Fourth of July and I'm pretty much a regular scrooge. I've always done my best to escape attention and affection on February 14th. But particularly this year, after the entire Alex fiasco and my inability to tell my parents about my bisexuality and some very recent (and heartbreaking) realizations in my personal life, I'm just really not in the mood to spend a ridiculous amount of money on furthering Hallmark's annual revenue so that I can hand someone a slip of paper with pre-recorded sentiment on it.
Maybe that makes me a bad person, but with all of the insanity and malcontent in my life and among the people that I know, I just don't have the heart to care anymore. Realistically, I'm just trying to get through this month without a complete mental breakdown. But taking into account this weekend so far and last weekend in addition to the weeks in between, I really don't think that my wish is going to be an amazing success.

Today's Pick 5 (selected from 'Recently Played' in itunes):

Gray or Blue: Jaymay-

"Don't second guess your feelings, you were right from the start, and I know
that she's your lover, but she's nowhere near your heart. This city is for
strangers as the sky is for the stars."

Landed: Ben Folds-

"Back when I was still in love, 'till I opened my eyes and walked out the door,
and the clouds came tumbling down"

Her Morning Elegance: Oren Lavie-

" And she fights for her life as she puts on her coat, and she fights for her
life on the train. She looks at the rain as it pours. And she fights for her
life as she goes to the store, where the thought she has caught by a thread. She
pays for her bread and she goes. Nobody knows."

Shine: The Morning of-

" Never felt this way in my whole life. Never had this feeling before tonight.
Can't get you off my mind, 'cause you shine oh you know you shine."

A Lack of Color: Deathcab for Cutie-

"This is fact not fiction, for the first time in years. And all the girls and
every girlie magazine can't make me feel any less alone. I'm reaching for the
phone, to call at 7:03 and on your machine I slur a plea for you to come
home. But I know its too late, and I should have given you a reason to stay."

Cast of Characters: Philly Edition

Every person has a core group of people they're around often. When I moved up to the New York area I kept in touch with a handful of my friends from back home, some of whom I've mentioned before and some who will be mentioned in the future. I realized this afternoon that I had never bothered to introduce most (if any) of them, so here we go:



[Wyoming]

Probably the person I see the most from my South Jersey group. She's the sort of friend that just knows when you need something, and just wants to be there for you. Our relationship is special because we drive each other nuts, but we've both reached the point where we understand the situations and we don't let stupid shit get in the way. I've known her since I was seven, which is a really long time, although we've only been close the last few years.



[Dayton]

This kid drove me insane for three years. We met junior year in high school when I got switched into his study hall one day a week. He is easily the funniest person on the face of this planet, wittier than anyone can possibly imagine. Wyoming and him are together, and I see them both pretty frequently. We've gotten to be pretty good friends over the last few months, and he and Wyoming pretty much keep me from throwing myself off a cliff from boredom and loneliness.



[Topher]

I have to work to keep this one short because Topher and I have a friendship that I don't know what I would do without. There isn't a single thing that I can't tell him or ask him. When my life is at its hardest I run to him, and he has never turned me away. I have learned more about myself through our friendship than I could have hoped to by myself. He challenges me to be a better person, and to overcome the shittier aspects of my rabidly depressing personality. In fact, the only truely unkind words he's ever said to me (that were unprovoked) were: "Don't play Left4Dead on my username, you'll ruin my score".



[SM]

Reality really defies this kid. You all know him as Halfcyborg, the film boy-genius whose struggles with the Bolex become the focus of multiple "RAGH!" texts every few weeks. I've known this kid since kindergarten, when I convinced my little 5 year old self that we were meant to be best friends because his cubbie was on the opposite side of mine. Fast forward a few years later and we are mached up once again, this time by our mutual interest in Art (Him being rather talented, Me being that kid who throws paint on canvas and screams "Masterpiece!") as well as our mutual terribleness at Halo and most other Xbox related ventures. He pops up every few months with a full beard and a christmas shirt to remind us all that we're really not as creative as we think we are, and that our colleges are really Mucho Suck compared to his. He's a great guy, and I realize now that I should tell more stories where he is involved.



[Jereality]

This chica probably gets most common mention on here, because we've been friends for quite awhile and our online ventures have always been pretty hilarious. We were largely inseperable in high school, and people had a tendency to get nervous when they saw one of us without the other. My personal belief is because they knew that while together we could inflict plenty of damage, it was better to have us both present and accounted for than to only know where one was.



[Alex]

I'm not delving too far into this one, because it just isn't all that worth it. Alex is a great kid who I have been involved with off and on for probably six to seven years. At some point we'll hopefully be able to have a real friendship again, but for right now the jabs and yelling (most often on my part) have led to us keeping our distance from one another for a bit. But Alex has always been a funny, well-intentioned guy who is working his ass off trying to be the best Mad Scientist that he can be in as nerdy of a way as possible.





So there you have it, the "Cast" of characters for my Philadelphia life. This is an incomplete list, of course, and I will certainly have to write a part two or three and probably even a cast for my New York side of the week.

New Beginnings

Week one of the second semester is almost over. I must admit, I believe that I am probably in way over my head.
Because last semester was so easy, I decided to challenge myself this time around. Hence, half of my classes are upper level classes, and a fourth class is a language. I have two other one-oh-one's, Literature and Philosophy, both of which I had experience in during Senior year of High School so I'm not expecting too much trouble as far as those classes go. Of course, as I attempt to read my Paleoanthropology book and fail to recognize 1/3 of all of the words on the first page, I feel my heart sink. The sheer amount of work belonging to my Politics class in addition to trying to learn Mandarin Chinese in fourteen weeks is daunting. All of this is stacked neatly on top of technical difficulties in my dorm building, where there is no wireless Internet access anymore, and the only port for the Internet that works in my room was hidden behind my closet for an entire semester. Its secret remained until my roommate and I, desperate for Internet access, moved both our closets today in hopes of finding a port. We were successful, and now we can take turns getting online. This is a relief for me, because I haven't been able to get an in-depth look at the news since I left Philadelphia on Monday. And of course, during the course of the week, some things have happened.
The most important of these things is the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Yes, I know that I haven't written about the election much (if at all), partially out of business and mostly because my personal beliefs are not meant to influence others, particularly in the realm of voting. Because of this I didn't want to discuss politics before the election, and with the post election whirlwind I just never got around to discussing some thoughts.
Now, I created a blog based on politics so I won't delve too deeply here, but I would like to express my relief. The damages done by former President Bush and his Vice President were horrendous and damaging to the psyche of the American spirit, as well as our reputation and ability to act as a part of international affairs. Our Constitution went largely ignored for the eight years that these two turkeys ran around in Washington. Obama's Presidency is already turning around some of the damages bestowed upon the people of the world with an Executive Order to close Guantanamo in exactly one year. All trials (part of the Military Commissions Act- but we won't get into what a joke that was) have been suspended and will be re-evaluated, the writ of Habeus Corpus has been instated for these prisoners, and even their cell conditions are being re-evaluated within the next thirty days. (If you want to read the Order yourself, go to www.aclu.org where they will link the pdf file to you). Also worth mentioning is Obama's focus on science in his speech... "we will restore science to its rightful place". This could mean many things. Speculation among the people I know believe that this is either an obvious reference to environmental policy or an indirect reference to Stem Cell Research. The latter is a field America has fallen far behind in, because while European countries spent time and money developing Stem Cell technology, the American Government had all but halted all research and funding.
Either way, Obama's first 100 days seem to be off to a very productive start.

The New

Yesterday I was hit with a terrifying sort of reality (in a good way) when my friends Wyoming and Dayton and I began to talk seriously about moving in together. Me and Wyoming have been talking about living together for months, and because I spend so much of my time with her, I inevitably see her boyfriend Dayton pretty often as well. Granted, I knew Dayton from high school, because we had classes together, but we actually get along now, which is a recent development. The whole plan is half hypothetical, because I don't have steady employment (I usually managed to make cash during the summertime through internships, but no year-long employment yet) and a few other things have to sort of fall into place for everything to go well.
I said that it was terrifying because as exciting as it is, I can't help but be kind of scared when everything comes down to it. Moving out of my house ASAP has always been my plan, because my parents moved out of their parents' house when they were 18 and I've already got them beat by a year, and if things don't work out this summer I'll probably be 20 when everything comes to fruition. But change has never been something that I've taken to well and when it comes right down to it, the thought of being financially responsible for keeping myself, well, alive... its not completely cheerful all the time. Actually its a little be more like.. "oh fuck... I'm going to forget to feed myself and then I'm going to starve like the fruitbat I've always known that I am".
But in the same breath, I am unbelievably excited. This is something that I've wanted to do for years and years and years. Wyoming and Dayton are two people who I trust. We have similar interests and are all equally responsible when everything comes down to it. Living together feels like it would be an amazing experience to share. To even be able to talk hypotheticals with the two of them has been thrilling and exciting and when I think about it I almost become giddy.
Now all I have to do is find a job to pay my share! (And to stop watching A Haunting, which features plenty of episodes about apartment buildings built on an axe-murderers old hunting area from the 1800's which now feature angry spirits who somehow always prey on the teenager.)