THE FOURTH

It could just be a problem with positivity.

I Am the Walrus by The Beatles

Depressed

I’ve felt so scared about my future, and how others perceive me, and felt that I’m never going to measure up to my idols or even peers. And I’ve been paralyzed. I haven’t been doing much, because of these anxieties. And this paralysis causes me to yearn for my childhood when I made experimental videos and made multilayered music recordings and learned how to draw, when everything seemed new and possible. And then I just want to sleep, and I feel like telling someone about what I’m feeling but I don’t because I don’t want them to feel bad.

And then it feels like my head is empty, like I’m not having any meaningful thought. And it’s weird, because I feel this odd pressure, this pressure to be thinking great, contemplative thoughts. I feel this pressure almost all the time, and it makes me feel stupid and useless.

I don’t know what I’m trying to get at this. I just felt like I should write something and express what I’ve been feeling, because I haven’t been very expressive lately.

To make this more concrete, I’ll say I’ve been having some trouble at school: I’ve been having some trouble at school. I’m failing three of my classes (out of eight). This has caused me worry about getting into college. But then a much worse thought enters my mind: even if I do get accepted into a good college, what if I can’t pay for it? What if I’m not accepted for loans? What if I am and I end up in debt that cripples my adult life? All these doubts enter and fester in my mind, and I don’t even know what field I would like to study or work in. Luckily, the thing that calms me the most when I think all of this is doing my homework. It’s all I can do right now.

Dirty Projectors last night were awe-inspiring.

Really, they were amazing.

kid in my school: DUDE, I'm SO HIGH right now.
me: Oh, you're cool.

Deerhunter makes me feel nihilistic.

Noise rock in general, I think.

misterpeace:

ithreatenedtostapleher:

misterpeace:

ithreatenedtostapleher:

So much. So fucking much.

So then if anyone asks me to be in a band, I can join and play guitar or somethin.

Learn to play root-fifth power chords as diads (two-note chords). Once you learn this simple trick, you will be able to play any punk rock song ever written and about 95% of the rhythm guitar parts on any and all hard rock songs.

This might take a few hours or a few days of practice but once you do it, it will unlock everything you need to know to be in your first band. And it’s so easy, you’d laugh out loud if you knew how easy it was all along. You might wind up losing respect for the bands you listen to now because you’ve just discovered how ridiculously easy it is to do what they do. It’s slightly easier than playing Guitar Hero or Rock Star.

Do it. Don’t wait until you can afford a Gibson, just get a 300 dollar Epiphone and do it right now.

EDIT: That videogame is called Rock Band and not Rock Star. Mea culpa. I am an old, old man.

tytytyty i’ll be sure to do this. :D

No problem. And if you’re unsure of anything I just said, simply ask anyone who plays now, be it a teacher or family member or friend. They will set you straight (if they suggest you add a third note on your power chord, ignore them) by illustrating using a real, live guitar which I can’t do via Tumblr. A good first song is “Blitzkrieg Bop” by the Ramones… even if you aren’t crazy about that song, it’s the absolute most basic representation of what you need to learn and it’s more fun than playing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” out of an instructional manual. ;-)

That’s how I first learned guitar. 2-string power chords, then worked my way up to full guitar chords.

If you look at the bottom right, you can kind of see the fag-o-lantern poster.

Is it that they hate halloween?

The definite highlight of the protest outside my school yesterday was not me wearing booty shorts, or the fact that the counter-protest against the Westboro Baptist Church was about five times larger, but the little kid on the side of the church holding a sign reading “Fag-o-Lantern”.

I just saw Where the Wild Things Are.

It was okay.

In response to the Westboro Baptist church, I am dressing up in short-shorts tomorrow.

Booty shorts.

AUGH

I sweat through my shirt and my “new” (i got it at a thrift store) leather jacket. Now the armpits are stained. AAUGHHH

» GOD HATES FAGS IS COMING TO MY SCHOOL TOMORROW

From their website:

San Diego High School - Quit Telling Kids It’s OK to be Fags 1405 Park Blvd WBC needs to come and show the little brutes what you all have failed to show them - OBEY GOD! Proverbs 1:8 My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother: Proverbs 4:1 Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding. Proverbs 8:33 Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not. Proverbs 19:20 Hear counsel, and receive instruction, that thou mayest be wise in thy latter end. Proverbs 19:27 Cease, my son, to hear the instruction that causeth to err from the words of knowledge. Jeremiah 17:23 But they obeyed not, neither inclined their ear, but made their neck stiff, that they might not hear, nor receive instruction. The only instruction these poor, no-nothing kids have ever received are lies, lies and more lies. They literally begin to moan and wail when they see and hear any little bit of truth because of the poison of the adults in their lives. It is a sick scene, but also marvelous because our God doeth all things well, and we must see the faces to know Jesus Christ will return shortly. Also to be satisfied, having our senses exercised by these events, satisfied I say that these parents will actually be doing the infants a favor if they just go ahead and eat them instead of doing to them what they have done to these pre-teens and teens in this nation. AMEN!

I didn’t actually read all of that above. But you can if you want to.

Apparently the Westboro Baptist Church is on a tour across America to enlighten us on how we’re all going to hell. Tomorrow they’re going to protest outside of my school, so that should be good for a few laughs. The fuckers.

In not-really-related ‘news’ I went to Bible club today, despite not being religious at all, and even slightly nihilistic. You know why? Because they have free pizza. And vitamin water. Hearing them discredit evolution was off-putting, but at least they tried to distance themselves from the God Hats Fags bunch. Being associated with them is like having a racist friend who won’t shut up, so it felt sincere.

So, uh, this is what I look like.

Life's little victories:

Putting off defining my history terms because I’m too busy reading Chuck Klosterman’s Killing Yourself to Live, and finding out I have very few to do.

I am reading Chuck Klosterman's "Killing Yourself to Live".

And I’m loving every moment of it. Especially when he randomly references a Beck or Wilco song. Go ahead, call me a hipster.

Speaking of hipsterism, I generally don’t like to talk about it, but someone I met recently, a friend of a friend, is ardently against it. And also said I was annoying and kind of an ass, both to my face and behind my back, and then added me on facebook. Feelings = hurt.

Chuck Klosterman quote time:

Artists who believe they have any control over the interpretation of their work are completely fooling themselves.