"Well I talk too much to myself
And I turn my back on my faith
It's like glass when we Break
I wish no one in my place
I can't stand I can't see my way
I feel blind On my feet
I can't stay too long
Am I wrong?"
So Ive been pretty much driving myself crazy the last 2 weeks for really no reason what so ever. There is no real rhyme or reason to my angst or frustration, and it all feels pretty much misplaced. I mean, I try to look at it critically, but then it gets even more confusing. And sometimes people can tell, and they ask, "Whats wrong?" And honestly, I don't know what to tell them, cause outwardly I don't know if anything is...
1) Job: I love work. I have absolutely no job security, get paid next to nothing, and there is no guarantee everything is going to work out and I am going to be making it rain in 6 months, a year, whatever. But I still look forward to getting in to the office of everyday and I look at Monday morning with hope and promise instead of dread.
2) Friends: I have a great group of friends that have my pack and prove time and time again why I can count on them and why I am so thankful to have them in my life.
3) Location: Ive wanted to live in Chicago since I was a little kid, and now I am moving into a new place, in a cool new area of the city that will allow me to immerse myself even more into this crazy cool city.
So I mean, I look at 3 of the more important factors in my life and they are all pretty copasetic. For once, I don't have major gripes about the female gender. They still are spell binding and infuriating, but I have a temporary zen and am just letting them, like the rest of life, come at me at whatever pace is decided. But I can't shake this nagging feeling that there is something missing. Like I have the urge to be extraordinary or do something significant besides being a typical employed 23 year old college grad. One blatant factor is monetary. As much as I hate to let it keep coming back, when you work in a job and an industry thats completely centered on money, not having any is a smidge obnoxious. And that in turn makes it a bit hard to be patient. Not saying I need my mansion and my Ferrari right now, but I would love more disgressionary income. You create this faulty mental assumption that being out of college means having the means to do some awesome stuff you couldn't do when you were stretching your summer job money over the next 9 months. So readjusting that idea is a bit grating. I just want to go out and buy shit that Ive had my eye on for months, while instead I'm busy calculating how I am going to get out of the debt I accumulated when I had no income for months. Fuck me.
Maybe thats the problem, to escape the minor annoyances and inconveniences of daily life, I get wistful and expect something earth moving to come along and change the focus of my attention. But thats also tied in with my worry that I am one of those people that gets too bored too easily. I feel like I constantly need to be re-engaged. For example, one of my fears when it comes to relationships is that I get stir crazy. I am not a commitment-phobe persay, but sometimes I wonder if I am, because I like the new, the fresh, the something to watch for around the corner. So some people, when they get into relationships, like to settle in. They get comfortable with the other person and look for that stability. Thats what always shook me. Edges and quirks that initially drew me in get eroded over time, and suddenly the situation has changed and I'm looking at why I am in this in the first place. So Ive tried to pump the brakes a bit on the initial dalliances. I am notorious for falling into infatuation real quick, and then 2 weeks later when the other person has come around, I get the "oh shit I rushed into this" moment. So I need to mature there, and I feel like that could bleed elsewhere in my life. Being more content with the present and fully living in that. I don't know how thats gonna happy, but I'd like to believe I can try. I think thats why work is so fulfilling for me right now. Every day is a complete crap shoot as to whats going to happen, its completely dynamic, its IMPOSSIBLE to get bored. And if you are, you should have never been doing this to begin with.
So i really dont know what to say, I probably just should stop thinking about it so much. Ill have these spells where I am just on autopilot, zoning out cause my mind is going a mile a minute, planning, scheming, thinking, dreaming, etc... and the rest of my faculties are pretty much muted. And people always say when you find it, you'll know it; whether they are talking about the right job, the right relationship, etc... I wonder how that is. And I guess I fear I will be too dense or too preoccupied with stressing about my future to realize when its at my doorstep. So basically I stress about being stressed and worry about worrying about the future. I think I'm a fucking basket case. Reading back over this, it probably makes no real sense and is just the rambling thoughts of someone with an overactive mind. Welcome to my world, take a seat and be patient, we'll get this sorted out eventually...
Luckily, I can still escape into music. That never changes. I have decided the last week to revisit the awesomeness which is the Arctic Monkey's first CD. It never ceases to just jack my mood up a few notches. I still think I Bet That You Look Good on the Dance Floor is one of the best "radio singles" of the last 10 years. That song still blows my mind, its just brilliant. But the intro song, A View From the Afternoon, is what gets me. I bought the CD, put it on in my car, and I honestly replayed that song 3 times before even going any deeper into the CD. There is just something about the changes in tempo, the spring and pep to the chorus, the unsheltered awesome Britishness to the lyrics and melody. I am jealous I am not them, that I am. If your day needs a jolt, these lads will give it to you
"Anticipation has a habit to set you up, for disappointment in evening entertainment but, tonight there'll be some love, tonight there'll be a ruckus yeah..."
JW
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
Who needs running water? Pssh, obviously not me
So I am moving into a new apartment down in Old Town in July. I am pretty freaking excited, but my excitement has crescendoed at a rapid pace in the last month as "renovations" in my building have rendered all the common spaces with an appearnce to that of a bombed out Sarajevo in the mid-90s. I mean, be it the 8 foot by 5 foot hole in the wall in my hallway that is now boarded up like an abandoned warehouse? Or the piles of new and broken drywall taking up most of the lobby? Maybe the plastic tarping cutting a ghetto path through this same hallway since there is dust everywhere and they don't want the mid-40s era carpeting to be damaged. I was talking to a kid in the elevator and he said he has had trouble sleeping and is constantly coughing like he has tuberculosis cause of all the dust on his floor.
And that is just the common areas. In my apartment, everything related to plumbing is FUBAR. My bathroom sink is clogged, and Draino had no effect (maybe I should have just chugged it). One day I flushed my toilet and it kept on flushing...for 3 hours. Both my kitchen sink and shower shoot out random brown water for extended periods of time when I periodically turn them on. And now my shower flat out just doesn't work. It has a flow similar to an old man with an enlarged prostate. And when I contacted my building manager to administer Flomax to said shower? I was told someone will be by within the week. Are you serious?!?! Within the week? So I get to look forward to bathing in water droplets like some emaciated contestant on Survivor for the foreseeable future. My apartment once had an old-school, pre-war charm. Now it feels like its going to be condemned. This move can't arrive soon enough.
Seeing as yesterday was Father's Day, my family came down to Chi-city for the day, which was sweet as I didn't have to drive up 94 to MKE like I always do. We decided to go to the Shedd Aquarium aka The Best Place in the World. So we decided to CTA it up, for adventure's sake, and get on the Red Line down to Roosevelt. Now its an easy trip, you get off at Roosevelt, head due east and BAM, you're there. Well, my mother is one of the most outgoing and social people you will ever meet. So naturally, she starts chatting with people on the train. Well her gregarious nature was noticed by one of the Red Line's many resident crackheads. So as we depart the train, my mom is being approached/chatted up by a woman who I think starred in that leprechaun video. Well as we are trying to get away politely and expediently, I manage to point us due south and we start walking. All of a sudden, I realize that we are well into the South Loop and have walked way too far south, and not east at all. No big deal, except my dad is in a walking splint since he broke his leg a few weeks ago and it was not reacting well to all the walking. So I got a big fat dumbass label on my forehead and gifted my father an awesome inflamed leg for Father's Day. Love you Dad!
The Shedd was amazing per usual, except for the one thing I always neglect to recall when fondly remembering the joy of the Shedd...the horrible little children. Seeing as it was a Sunday afternoon, every exhibit looked a filming of Jon and Kate plus 8...plus another 25. Kids climbing the walls, and tables, and anything with a flat surface. All those cool interactive screens where you can scroll through fish names and facts and such to get an idea of what you are looking at? Pretty much all either malfunctioning due to being treated like a Whack-a-mole or occupied by grubby little beasts with one hand up their nose and the other smacking the LCD. It was a lesson in how not to parent. It was also an awesome unintentional ad for birth control. I could feel all my sperm committing suicide in my body's attempt to provide me with sterility to avoid such pint sized disasters. I literally had a kid pop up from between my arms as I was holding a railing and looking downward, scaring the hell out of me and nearly causing me to swat him like a fly. I did see one father pulling his son off a display and scolding him for acting like a savage. I wanted to go give the dude a hug or a high five or something. He clearly deserved to celebrate Father's Day, while the rest stood idly by like prison guards as the inmates brawl. But fear not, I still had an awesome time and think that fish are still cooler than most girls I knew in college.
So Ive had The Offspring- Half Truism stuck in my head for awhile now. The little rise he does in his voice in the verses "show in your eye-i-eyes" just really makes me happy for some reason. But it also made me realize that they were a band I love that I never really mention. Like everyone has a band or two that they know a million songs from and really crave from time to time, but never mention among their favorite bands and don't really own a CD from. My dad's band of this description? Scorpions. I can't even talk about how awesome that is especially if you know my dad. And I did find an old Scorpions album, but they didn't have ITunes back then, so it still fits. But yeah, ive always loved the Offspring, though I hate Pretty Fly for a White guy. The Kids Aren't Alright is one of the most badass intro riffs of the 90s and its just awesome and upbeat music. Not to mention the lead singer was once a PHD student in Molecular Biology at USC. How nuts is that? Most lead singers of punk bands have advanced degrees in regrettable tattoos and dropping out of High School, so booyah. So go figure out your fav band you never mention and rock out to their catalog.
"Your self-liberation will leave this behind, beyond slings and arrows, that rain on your minds..."
JW
And that is just the common areas. In my apartment, everything related to plumbing is FUBAR. My bathroom sink is clogged, and Draino had no effect (maybe I should have just chugged it). One day I flushed my toilet and it kept on flushing...for 3 hours. Both my kitchen sink and shower shoot out random brown water for extended periods of time when I periodically turn them on. And now my shower flat out just doesn't work. It has a flow similar to an old man with an enlarged prostate. And when I contacted my building manager to administer Flomax to said shower? I was told someone will be by within the week. Are you serious?!?! Within the week? So I get to look forward to bathing in water droplets like some emaciated contestant on Survivor for the foreseeable future. My apartment once had an old-school, pre-war charm. Now it feels like its going to be condemned. This move can't arrive soon enough.
Seeing as yesterday was Father's Day, my family came down to Chi-city for the day, which was sweet as I didn't have to drive up 94 to MKE like I always do. We decided to go to the Shedd Aquarium aka The Best Place in the World. So we decided to CTA it up, for adventure's sake, and get on the Red Line down to Roosevelt. Now its an easy trip, you get off at Roosevelt, head due east and BAM, you're there. Well, my mother is one of the most outgoing and social people you will ever meet. So naturally, she starts chatting with people on the train. Well her gregarious nature was noticed by one of the Red Line's many resident crackheads. So as we depart the train, my mom is being approached/chatted up by a woman who I think starred in that leprechaun video. Well as we are trying to get away politely and expediently, I manage to point us due south and we start walking. All of a sudden, I realize that we are well into the South Loop and have walked way too far south, and not east at all. No big deal, except my dad is in a walking splint since he broke his leg a few weeks ago and it was not reacting well to all the walking. So I got a big fat dumbass label on my forehead and gifted my father an awesome inflamed leg for Father's Day. Love you Dad!
The Shedd was amazing per usual, except for the one thing I always neglect to recall when fondly remembering the joy of the Shedd...the horrible little children. Seeing as it was a Sunday afternoon, every exhibit looked a filming of Jon and Kate plus 8...plus another 25. Kids climbing the walls, and tables, and anything with a flat surface. All those cool interactive screens where you can scroll through fish names and facts and such to get an idea of what you are looking at? Pretty much all either malfunctioning due to being treated like a Whack-a-mole or occupied by grubby little beasts with one hand up their nose and the other smacking the LCD. It was a lesson in how not to parent. It was also an awesome unintentional ad for birth control. I could feel all my sperm committing suicide in my body's attempt to provide me with sterility to avoid such pint sized disasters. I literally had a kid pop up from between my arms as I was holding a railing and looking downward, scaring the hell out of me and nearly causing me to swat him like a fly. I did see one father pulling his son off a display and scolding him for acting like a savage. I wanted to go give the dude a hug or a high five or something. He clearly deserved to celebrate Father's Day, while the rest stood idly by like prison guards as the inmates brawl. But fear not, I still had an awesome time and think that fish are still cooler than most girls I knew in college.
So Ive had The Offspring- Half Truism stuck in my head for awhile now. The little rise he does in his voice in the verses "show in your eye-i-eyes" just really makes me happy for some reason. But it also made me realize that they were a band I love that I never really mention. Like everyone has a band or two that they know a million songs from and really crave from time to time, but never mention among their favorite bands and don't really own a CD from. My dad's band of this description? Scorpions. I can't even talk about how awesome that is especially if you know my dad. And I did find an old Scorpions album, but they didn't have ITunes back then, so it still fits. But yeah, ive always loved the Offspring, though I hate Pretty Fly for a White guy. The Kids Aren't Alright is one of the most badass intro riffs of the 90s and its just awesome and upbeat music. Not to mention the lead singer was once a PHD student in Molecular Biology at USC. How nuts is that? Most lead singers of punk bands have advanced degrees in regrettable tattoos and dropping out of High School, so booyah. So go figure out your fav band you never mention and rock out to their catalog.
"Your self-liberation will leave this behind, beyond slings and arrows, that rain on your minds..."
JW
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Mother Nature? A word please...
So this has honestly been one of the worst Springs I can recall in a long time. Granted, the last 5 of them, I was a few hundred miles south, so the climate was a bit different, but still. Spring officially ends in less than a week, and I can't recall a stretch of nice weather that lasted more than a day or two. For instance this morning, I check weather.com at around 6:45, find that it is a BALMY 68 degrees, and immediately am pumped that I don't have to wear a jacket to work in the morning for once. Whilst riding the train, the sun is shining a bit and I am getting all ahead of myself planning on maybe doing a little reading on my building's horribly underutilized rooftop deck after work. Well, naturally, I leave work and its raining. I mean, come on. April showers bring May flowers. June showers bring an apathetic outlook on life and an insatiable desire to nap...which I did. Lame. Lets have some fun with analogies.
This year's spring is:
...the fiancée who pushed hard to get you to believe marriage was the right idea, and gradually you came around, against your better judgment, and got damn excited about the idea...then she left you at the alter like f-ing Julia Roberts.
...the delicious bag of peanuts that finally arrives on the plane's snack cart after 2 hours of a flight in which you are in front of a screaming baby and you are absolutely famished...but you are allergic to peanuts and you break into hives and other assorted unpleasantries.
...as much as it pains me to say it, the Cubs every fall.
So spring, you can suck it.
In other random news, I was riding a crowded train home last week and naturally I was wearing my bag since I was coming home from work. Well I accidentally brushed said bag against an older African-American woman's arm as she was sitting. As any sane and calm person would do, she aggressively pushed it as hard as she could and it nearly came off my arm and I stumbled a bit due to the shift in balance. I turned around to apologize and was met by a horrific glare.
"Im sorry, I didn't realize I bumped you, my bad."
Her response?
"You slammed it into my head you selfish idiot. This isn't your personal damn train."
I was so bewildered that I got off at the next stop, Sedgwick, and just waited for the next train. Fuck that noise, I don't need an angry ass BBW trying to beat my ass for accidentally occupying her plus size bubble for a moment. I love the CTA.
In case you hadn't heard, Blink-182 has reunited and a full concert tour is scheduled for the summer. Now I was not a huge Blink fan until much later than most. Enema of the State came out when I was a freshman in HS and to be honest, its my least favorite of all their releases. So Take Off Your Pants... came out a few years later, I liked it much more, so then I picked up Cheshire Cat, Buddha, and Dude Ranch, and then I suddenly understood the buzz. Its so rough, and out of key vocally, but yet so earnest and without pretension, and I think thats whats the best. Though, I don't know how I feel about seeing them in concert now playing songs they wrote 10-15 years ago about girls and bathroom humor when they are in their mid-30s with kids. But hey, as ridiculous as it sounds, they are the equivalent of the Ramones or Iggy and the Stooges for this generation, so rock on. I listened to Reckless Abandon today. That song rules and its pacing is just amazing. Just never lets up, pure musical energy.
"Nothing to hold on to, we'll use this song, to lead you on..."
JW
This year's spring is:
...the fiancée who pushed hard to get you to believe marriage was the right idea, and gradually you came around, against your better judgment, and got damn excited about the idea...then she left you at the alter like f-ing Julia Roberts.
...the delicious bag of peanuts that finally arrives on the plane's snack cart after 2 hours of a flight in which you are in front of a screaming baby and you are absolutely famished...but you are allergic to peanuts and you break into hives and other assorted unpleasantries.
...as much as it pains me to say it, the Cubs every fall.
So spring, you can suck it.
In other random news, I was riding a crowded train home last week and naturally I was wearing my bag since I was coming home from work. Well I accidentally brushed said bag against an older African-American woman's arm as she was sitting. As any sane and calm person would do, she aggressively pushed it as hard as she could and it nearly came off my arm and I stumbled a bit due to the shift in balance. I turned around to apologize and was met by a horrific glare.
"Im sorry, I didn't realize I bumped you, my bad."
Her response?
"You slammed it into my head you selfish idiot. This isn't your personal damn train."
I was so bewildered that I got off at the next stop, Sedgwick, and just waited for the next train. Fuck that noise, I don't need an angry ass BBW trying to beat my ass for accidentally occupying her plus size bubble for a moment. I love the CTA.
In case you hadn't heard, Blink-182 has reunited and a full concert tour is scheduled for the summer. Now I was not a huge Blink fan until much later than most. Enema of the State came out when I was a freshman in HS and to be honest, its my least favorite of all their releases. So Take Off Your Pants... came out a few years later, I liked it much more, so then I picked up Cheshire Cat, Buddha, and Dude Ranch, and then I suddenly understood the buzz. Its so rough, and out of key vocally, but yet so earnest and without pretension, and I think thats whats the best. Though, I don't know how I feel about seeing them in concert now playing songs they wrote 10-15 years ago about girls and bathroom humor when they are in their mid-30s with kids. But hey, as ridiculous as it sounds, they are the equivalent of the Ramones or Iggy and the Stooges for this generation, so rock on. I listened to Reckless Abandon today. That song rules and its pacing is just amazing. Just never lets up, pure musical energy.
"Nothing to hold on to, we'll use this song, to lead you on..."
JW
Monday, June 1, 2009
Funny the way it is, if you think about it
So I recently went home for Memorial Day and was hanging out with my sister and some of her friends. Being 20 years old and clearly not well versed in politics, the arts, and literature such as myself, they were talking, dare I say gossiping, about some others within their little circle of friendship, specifically the interesting dynamic between my sister and her ex. Now my sister and her ex, B, dated for a long ass time. From the end of 8th grade through the beginnings of their freshman year of college last year. As high school breakups normally do, it ended on sketchy terms and their relationship has been strained to say the least. They are cordial and hang out due to their copious amounts of mutual friends, but in the future, I don't see them frolicking in fields of daisies or playfully shoving in each other in a promo for TNT's newest show about best friends. Anyways, they were talking about how ex's can never be friends, too much history, blah blah. The struck me as patently immature and very much indicative of that black and white teen mindset. Its a mentality that never really resonated with me.
Maybe its because I didn't have my first serious relationship till I was 18 and a freshman in college, or maybe because by that time, I had created such a caricature of what I was looking for in a relationship that I couldn't help but be friends with who I was dating, regardless of the situation or outcome. Of the 4 significant relationships Ive been in (dating for 3+ months), I consider two of those ex's some of my closest friends. Now in both situations, it was not break-up and then... *poof*... we were homies.
One of the relationships was a long distance ordeal at the end so we had the, funny enough, benefit of not having to see or speak with each other except via phone or IM or whatever when someone really wanted to have something to say. It kind of eased the cooling off period and then allowed us to kind of test the proverbial friendship waters and enter at our own pace. Then it got to the point where we were talking a couple times a week and got past our history as an awkward point and realized we were invaluable to each other as friends as a result of the 9 month relationship and the transparency such a situation offered.
The second was completely different. Took place at school, break actually occurred just before school reconvened and we had tons of mutual friends and obligations which put us in contact almost daily. To say it was tense and awkward at times is an understatement. It was ugly at points, but again, once you approach the whole situation with the understanding that there is a transition period and it doesn't always have to be this ridiculous, then strangely enough, things improve greatly as the weeks pass. Rarely is one side completely vindicated of any "wrongdoing" (there was no cheating involved in either of these situations) and thus both parties are equal in blame for whatever fallouts occur. So while I felt I was handling everything with grace and poise and maturity, my inability to end a relationship properly at that time in my life probably caused most of the riffs that happened early in the school year. But then again, as in the previous situation, we realized our value as friends and that really helped get on and frankly, I couldn't be happier with how it turned out.
Now this whole little spiel isn't to seem all philosophical and it does seem awfully contrived with the talk of "friendship value" and such, but its more the idea that good friends are hard to come by, its something I value tremendously and deeply as anything, and to let one go for something as trivial, in the grand scheme, as you once dated, seems like a waste. Now extenuating circumstances are of course divorces, infidelity, breaking off of engagements. Thankfully I've never experienced those, so I don't feel qualified to comment for or against anything related to that. I just feel like if you are close enough to date someone for a period of time, you obviously like spending time with them and you have enough in common, it has to stretch past just the romance. You can't date someone you aren't friends with, am I wrong? Well, idk, you could, I dont want to get into that, haha.
But the whole reason I address the question is that Ive found it to be quite a point of contention. Some people either find it completely foreign and abnormal, or are completely turned off or threatened by it. For example, I had a relationship, about 6 months after the second break up I referenced, where the new gf was so completely against any friendship I had with my ex that it became a stressor on the relationship and was one of the reasons for the eventual dissolution of the relationship. And to clarify, at this point, we were both dating other people, and were still starting to explore the whole being good friends thing. It was not a BFF situation where we were going to dinner and spending tons of time 1 on 1. We were simply talking, being cordial, hanging out when mutual friends were together, etc... Well the new gf just couldn't take it. It was not a hatred of my ex, maybe it was jealousy (I don't know of what?), but she just was baffled as to why we were friends. I found nothing wrong with it, and her outrage to be strange, especially since I never put her second to the ex, but who knows. And then recently, this mentioned ex just got out of a pretty long (in college terms) relationship in which we didn't speak much unfortunately. However, upon their break-up, she called me and apologized for the recent distance between us and mentioned how her bf during that time really didn't like the thought of us talking and being friends, so she scaled it back for his sake, and then realized the utter stupidity of it all post break up. And for clarifications sake, this whole time they were dating, they were in Oxford, OH, at Miami...and I was living in Chicago. I wasn't even around?!!? Are people really this insecure and scared? Im not some Lothario who was making an impassioned attempt to get her back, just ridiculous. Add it to the list of relationship issues and problems I never will understand and hopefully can manage to dance around the rest of my romantic life...bah
Speaking of ridiculous, time for some CTA gems. I have compiled my top 5 from my recent blogging absence:
5) Girl on the train today actually:
"If a bitch wants to sell her p****y for cash, thats her damn choice. If a playa is gonna give me some green to tap this, then hell yeah."
Umm, seriously? This is why the Red Line frightens me, cause this shit is normal.
4) I have not been keeping stats, but I imagine I am batting about 85% in terms of winning the fucking "Being the first person chose to sit next to on the entire train, leading to an awkward ass ride home" lottery. I guess I have kind eyes or because I'm thin, but I have no idea. Without fail, whenever people get on the train and there are no open double seats, they make a beeline for me, its absurd...and uncomfortable cause sometimes when I have a rough trading day, the last thing I want is my bubble being awkwardly popped.
3) Couple on the Purple Line home last week. Probably around 19-20, most likely Depaul students. Managed to make out for about 10 min straight from Merchandise Mart to Fullerton. I almost wanted to give them a standing O as they left. I guess the smell of masses of people and flatulence turns some people on.
2) Older woman reading the paper. To her left and directly in front of me, a man of Middle Eastern descent was talking on his phone, probably in Arabic, at a low level, completely non-invasive. She remarks to nobody in particular, but quite audibly:
"Damn towel heads. Always blabbing in Hindu or some shit. Speak fucking English."
Hooray intolerance! This man wasn't wearing a turban or being obnoxious. What an old skank.
1) Finally, a similarly aged couple to the one mentioned below were talking about YouTube videos. The girl excitedly remembers one she had seen but can't remember the title:
Girl: "Have you seen the one about the city in Ohio? Its like talking about how bad it is. I don't know which one, its not Columbus. But its all dirty and broken down, like Gary."
Guy: "Cincinnati?"
Girl: "No, its way worse than that..."
I almost wet myself holding my laughter in. Of course she was talking about the brilliant Cleveland Tourism videos, but her frank and horrible comparison of Cleveland to Gary fucking Indiana was hilarious, only because of the tremendous amount of crap my friends from Cleveland get even before this video.
So Dave Matthews Band's new CD comes out tomorrow. The whole thing is streaming here www.pandora.com/davematthewsband . Give it a listen for sure if you are even a casual fan. Its awesome, but it got me thinking. They were my fav band in early HS and I listened to tons of other stuff in that genre. The Ben Harpers and the like. But then I heard a couple of songs that basically turned me into the pop-punk/emo kid fiend I am today. Like, people always joke about a song "changing your life" but these songs literally did. Turned me on to a completely different scene and got me going to concerts all the time, instead of the DMB show every summer. The one that stands out to me cause I hadn't heard it in awhile, but then I heard a month ago and play it all the time now, is The Juliana Theory-If I Told You This Was Killing Me... I still remember the first time I heard it. When that first line comes blasting in, I was just floored. I was never the same. So thank you TJT, and Brand New, and TBS, and Alkaline Trio for making me the music junkie I am today. But also, thanks DMB for making me love music that wasn't on the radio for the first time.
"Watch your mouth, hold your tongue boy, because you're running out of breath, running out of time before every callous word that you utter, renders you utterly useless..."
JW
Maybe its because I didn't have my first serious relationship till I was 18 and a freshman in college, or maybe because by that time, I had created such a caricature of what I was looking for in a relationship that I couldn't help but be friends with who I was dating, regardless of the situation or outcome. Of the 4 significant relationships Ive been in (dating for 3+ months), I consider two of those ex's some of my closest friends. Now in both situations, it was not break-up and then... *poof*... we were homies.
One of the relationships was a long distance ordeal at the end so we had the, funny enough, benefit of not having to see or speak with each other except via phone or IM or whatever when someone really wanted to have something to say. It kind of eased the cooling off period and then allowed us to kind of test the proverbial friendship waters and enter at our own pace. Then it got to the point where we were talking a couple times a week and got past our history as an awkward point and realized we were invaluable to each other as friends as a result of the 9 month relationship and the transparency such a situation offered.
The second was completely different. Took place at school, break actually occurred just before school reconvened and we had tons of mutual friends and obligations which put us in contact almost daily. To say it was tense and awkward at times is an understatement. It was ugly at points, but again, once you approach the whole situation with the understanding that there is a transition period and it doesn't always have to be this ridiculous, then strangely enough, things improve greatly as the weeks pass. Rarely is one side completely vindicated of any "wrongdoing" (there was no cheating involved in either of these situations) and thus both parties are equal in blame for whatever fallouts occur. So while I felt I was handling everything with grace and poise and maturity, my inability to end a relationship properly at that time in my life probably caused most of the riffs that happened early in the school year. But then again, as in the previous situation, we realized our value as friends and that really helped get on and frankly, I couldn't be happier with how it turned out.
Now this whole little spiel isn't to seem all philosophical and it does seem awfully contrived with the talk of "friendship value" and such, but its more the idea that good friends are hard to come by, its something I value tremendously and deeply as anything, and to let one go for something as trivial, in the grand scheme, as you once dated, seems like a waste. Now extenuating circumstances are of course divorces, infidelity, breaking off of engagements. Thankfully I've never experienced those, so I don't feel qualified to comment for or against anything related to that. I just feel like if you are close enough to date someone for a period of time, you obviously like spending time with them and you have enough in common, it has to stretch past just the romance. You can't date someone you aren't friends with, am I wrong? Well, idk, you could, I dont want to get into that, haha.
But the whole reason I address the question is that Ive found it to be quite a point of contention. Some people either find it completely foreign and abnormal, or are completely turned off or threatened by it. For example, I had a relationship, about 6 months after the second break up I referenced, where the new gf was so completely against any friendship I had with my ex that it became a stressor on the relationship and was one of the reasons for the eventual dissolution of the relationship. And to clarify, at this point, we were both dating other people, and were still starting to explore the whole being good friends thing. It was not a BFF situation where we were going to dinner and spending tons of time 1 on 1. We were simply talking, being cordial, hanging out when mutual friends were together, etc... Well the new gf just couldn't take it. It was not a hatred of my ex, maybe it was jealousy (I don't know of what?), but she just was baffled as to why we were friends. I found nothing wrong with it, and her outrage to be strange, especially since I never put her second to the ex, but who knows. And then recently, this mentioned ex just got out of a pretty long (in college terms) relationship in which we didn't speak much unfortunately. However, upon their break-up, she called me and apologized for the recent distance between us and mentioned how her bf during that time really didn't like the thought of us talking and being friends, so she scaled it back for his sake, and then realized the utter stupidity of it all post break up. And for clarifications sake, this whole time they were dating, they were in Oxford, OH, at Miami...and I was living in Chicago. I wasn't even around?!!? Are people really this insecure and scared? Im not some Lothario who was making an impassioned attempt to get her back, just ridiculous. Add it to the list of relationship issues and problems I never will understand and hopefully can manage to dance around the rest of my romantic life...bah
Speaking of ridiculous, time for some CTA gems. I have compiled my top 5 from my recent blogging absence:
5) Girl on the train today actually:
"If a bitch wants to sell her p****y for cash, thats her damn choice. If a playa is gonna give me some green to tap this, then hell yeah."
Umm, seriously? This is why the Red Line frightens me, cause this shit is normal.
4) I have not been keeping stats, but I imagine I am batting about 85% in terms of winning the fucking "Being the first person chose to sit next to on the entire train, leading to an awkward ass ride home" lottery. I guess I have kind eyes or because I'm thin, but I have no idea. Without fail, whenever people get on the train and there are no open double seats, they make a beeline for me, its absurd...and uncomfortable cause sometimes when I have a rough trading day, the last thing I want is my bubble being awkwardly popped.
3) Couple on the Purple Line home last week. Probably around 19-20, most likely Depaul students. Managed to make out for about 10 min straight from Merchandise Mart to Fullerton. I almost wanted to give them a standing O as they left. I guess the smell of masses of people and flatulence turns some people on.
2) Older woman reading the paper. To her left and directly in front of me, a man of Middle Eastern descent was talking on his phone, probably in Arabic, at a low level, completely non-invasive. She remarks to nobody in particular, but quite audibly:
"Damn towel heads. Always blabbing in Hindu or some shit. Speak fucking English."
Hooray intolerance! This man wasn't wearing a turban or being obnoxious. What an old skank.
1) Finally, a similarly aged couple to the one mentioned below were talking about YouTube videos. The girl excitedly remembers one she had seen but can't remember the title:
Girl: "Have you seen the one about the city in Ohio? Its like talking about how bad it is. I don't know which one, its not Columbus. But its all dirty and broken down, like Gary."
Guy: "Cincinnati?"
Girl: "No, its way worse than that..."
I almost wet myself holding my laughter in. Of course she was talking about the brilliant Cleveland Tourism videos, but her frank and horrible comparison of Cleveland to Gary fucking Indiana was hilarious, only because of the tremendous amount of crap my friends from Cleveland get even before this video.
So Dave Matthews Band's new CD comes out tomorrow. The whole thing is streaming here www.pandora.com/davematthewsband . Give it a listen for sure if you are even a casual fan. Its awesome, but it got me thinking. They were my fav band in early HS and I listened to tons of other stuff in that genre. The Ben Harpers and the like. But then I heard a couple of songs that basically turned me into the pop-punk/emo kid fiend I am today. Like, people always joke about a song "changing your life" but these songs literally did. Turned me on to a completely different scene and got me going to concerts all the time, instead of the DMB show every summer. The one that stands out to me cause I hadn't heard it in awhile, but then I heard a month ago and play it all the time now, is The Juliana Theory-If I Told You This Was Killing Me... I still remember the first time I heard it. When that first line comes blasting in, I was just floored. I was never the same. So thank you TJT, and Brand New, and TBS, and Alkaline Trio for making me the music junkie I am today. But also, thanks DMB for making me love music that wasn't on the radio for the first time.
"Watch your mouth, hold your tongue boy, because you're running out of breath, running out of time before every callous word that you utter, renders you utterly useless..."
JW
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