Shelter from the Storm: Oral History of One Single Night of Our Youth

Joe is rewriting all his old Xanga posts from 2005 onward, and this rewritten teenage angst is our punishment for the blog falling into a pit of despair.

October 29, 2005, 11:58 PM

There are some nights in a young man's life that render within him the inability to properly express the majesty and wonder of what happened, what it means, what life is, and why it feels so integral to live it the way he lived it on that night. I have lived such a night, and I will always remember it. I don't even need a Xanga post to remember it, but I'm going to type about it anyway, for posterity. In examining the events of the night, I actively feel my words failing me, but I am going to work through it. If it feels like I'm just listing things that happened, well that's because I am. I haven't let the events soak through yet, and I haven't yet given myself the space to consider the WHY and WHAT IT ALL MEANS. That will come in time. For now, a list of descriptions.

We were at Burholme Park.

We hung out at the fire pit, that place of worship in our sacred woods. There was no fire.

Mary introduced her boyfriend... excuse me, "Boo," Kyle, which, yes, the sobriquet of "Boo" did sufficiently add enough irony to the otherwise sincere and sappy idea of having a significant other in high school. He was cool.

Remember these coordinates, keep them safe, remember them always: #49; D.

Spotting a bunch of my former grade school comrades doing their own ritual walking-around-the-neighborhood thing, exchanging hellos, crossing paths in the night at the local Chinese food eatery.

Oh god, the Razor scooters!

Bailing on the Razor scooters, injuries, oh god!

Elizabeth was there, in front of me, as she often is.

Our once and future pal ANDREW FUCKING R*****!!!

Can you have a reunion if you are still actively involved in that thing? Because if so, my bandmates and I meeting in the middle of the street in the middle of the night in the middle of our youth was a reunion of reunions.

Gordon, who in many years from now will lose his job at Wawa, for reasons too unsavory to even predict at this time, looked me in the eyes and told me the truth, a truth that I will bury and forget about as soon as I can.

I did eventually walk home, by the way.

But the sensations remain with me. The spicy hot Hot Fries, Sir Andy Capp and crew.

The cops were a constant and persistent presence in my night, haunting our travails like a specter.

I have a brief memory of a strange man or boy farting in my or someone else's kitchen.

Another brief memory of visiting a gymnasium at a school I will never attend.

A flash of a vision of the man who aids in our crimes, not even noticing us even though we noticed him, he's sitting in a car, passenger seat, red light, cigarette in hand, slowly taking a puff and then the light turns green. What are you thinking about, Andy? Tell us.

Oh so many cameos throughout the night, I can't list them all, and if I did then eventually the list would become meaningless anyway.

But Chris Clark was there. You remember that dude?

I always got the sense that he was annoyed with me, not incessantly, but more in the way that you'd be annoyed that the shower is never clean and always has some gunk in the corner where porcelain meets wall, which is a normal thing to happen, just annoying.

Stealing his friend's eggroll did not help matters.

I was warned of the cops. I did not listen.

The cops and the eggroll incident are not related.

I return in my mind to the firepit, though I'm not there now. I'm comfortable in my room. Harry's asleep on a sleeping back on the floor. I'm staring into the blue screen of my desktop computer.

My brain is swimming, but I remember.

Okay, fuck it, let's try to make that list of people I saw tonight

• Harry (obviously, he's here every weekend)
• Mary
• Boo/Kyle
• Kyle's anonymous male friends
• Keelan (v. cool)
• Maryrose
• Elizabeth (aforementioned)
• Cathleen
• AFR (Andrew Fucking R.)
• The other Ed, not our Ed
• LA FEVER [sic]
• The guy with him, name unknown
• Chris C. (aforementioned)
• Other Kyle, still not our Kyle
• Guitar Mike
• Bass Kev
• Hot Alexis
• Guitar GF Brianna
• Kyra [sic!]
• Michelle
• Amanda
• The whole fucking LF crew
• Tired Wawa employee (aforementioned by assumed name)
• Passerby in ghost outfit (see: date)
• Cops who chase (me; anyone)
• Andy (rat; aforementioned)
• Tina (Laf)
• Remove the parenthetical: everyone from the Laf!
• Including: Michael Myers [sic?]
• Chris Cheesesteak (sobriquet, unknown origins)
• Jenn (family)
• Jenn's two friends
• My parents (beginning of night, end of night, definitely not in between)
• The spirits that watch over the firepit
• Stringy-haired man at Wawa [no order to this list]
• Weird Guy
• Guy in baby costume
• Hot girls on the way to their costume party
• Laf: British Lady
• Laf: cup of lentil soup lady
• The ghost in the reflection of the door of the Chinese food eatery
• THE MAN ON THE MOON [apocryphal]

I hope I didn't miss anyone.

COMMENTS

xOkEeLy07oX: wow, i cant believe i wasnt one of the coolest things tonight,  and i was with u the whole time, i hate you

❤ Keelan

Anonymous: I went to my friend's birthday party last night and I got pretty tipsy though, but I didn't drink that much anyway. Early this morning I went out to the gas station and I saw a guy looked like Bob Dylan. I thought it was the real Bob Dylan, but it must be somebody else look a like Bob Dylan. are you going to trick or treat this year? I probably not since I'm too old for going trick or treat. lol I haven't go out trick or treat in a last couple years with my neice Talia, she's just turns 7 years old a few weeks ago, she's really special to me and I love her very much.

I love you,

Justin "The Entertainment" Clark

Anonymous: check it out my new background on my xanga. it's looked really hot sex indeed. Did you had a good halloween yesterday? Bunch of kids ring the door bell at my house and give them candy. I didn't go trick or treat with my niece because my sister take her to trick or treat instead. 3 more days till my 4th year on xanga, I can't believe that I still using xanga since my aim is not working on my friend's computer. I can't wait to get a new computer as soon as possible.

I love you,

Justin "The Only One" Barrett

Shelter from the Storm: I Shake the Dirt from My Sandals as I Run

Joe is rewriting all his old Xanga posts from 2005 onward, and it's been a little distressing to tap into that teenage angst on a weekly basis.

October 27, 2005, 9:28 PM

This must be torture for you. Why are you here? You visit my Xanga to, what, hear me complain about having to go to school? Something that literally everyone in America has to do at some point? My annoyance at academic obligations does not make me special. There is nothing unique to my story. And yet here I am, typing and typing and typing. Even when the school week goes well... then what? That just means that I was slightly less of a whiny little bitch this week. That's not newsworthy. That's just me looking for attention, and flailing around to get it when I have less to complain about. UGH!!!! It's the weekend.

Here's something that has not been going well: WEXP. For those who do not attend La Salle College High School, WEXP is our TV station. It puts together a morning show every morning during homeroom. Mostly for small announcements from around the school. I'm not a tech wiz but I've found that it's been pretty fun to just hang out down there, maybe learn a thing or two. I was on camera once as a fill-in anchor, that was fun.

But it's been a drag recently. I dunno, it just feels less like a fun thing to do and more like an obligation. And it's not an obligation! I'm choosing to do it. I have just started wondering why that's been my choice, and whether I should make another choice soon. The authority figures down there have been weirdly strict. And I'm talking about other students! An example: they'll put me on like Second Video Mixer or whatever. I don't even know what that is, but they say push a button, and so I push the button. This is something a three-year-old could do. I do it. I might pull out a textbook and study for a test while I'm waiting to push my button. But lately, it's been all "Joe, you gotta be ready!" and "Joe, stop studying and pay attention!" and "Joe, wake up, it's your cue!" Kevin B. is breathing down my neck, like literally I can feel his hot onion breath from behind me, and his mumbling "are you sure you know what you're doing...?" and the like. I'm not a moron. I can push a button. Way to have faith in me, pal.

The irony is that the actual TV program is looking really good these days. Cippy is killing it as the new anchor. I'm just wondering why I'm putting up with the mundane-ass bullshit behind the camera.

If you're looking for News in the Life of Joe, then you came to the right place, because here's some news: I got detention. Oh yikes, watch out everybody, badass coming through. It's actually pretty simple how it happened. I bought new shoes. These shoes are, by definition, sneakers, which are, by definition, not allowed to be worn during school hours inside of the school building. But I dunno, I kinda thought that maybe they were close enough to being not-sneakers (in look and in spirit) that I could pull it off and wear them throughout a full school day. I figured, ya know, why ask for permission when I can just ask for forgiveness... while in detention. So that's how I ended up there. And Drew P. tries to shame me for even attempting it! Hey best high school friend—fuck you!!!!!!!!

All weekend plans have been cancelled, as I have obtained a new indie rock album called Illinois by a mysterious dude named Sufjan Stevens, and I will now feel obligated to listen to this thing over and over obsessively for the next two days straight. Sorry, friends, sorry, alcohol, sorry Burholme Park woods. It's all Sufjan all the time now. Go buy or steal this album NOW.

See y'all next time for more updates about Sufjan Stevens my life.


COMMENTS

MadeFromRecycledPaper: Joe, I love how you manage to get cool again AFTER we break up.

VinylVixen89: How about you let me burn that CD instead?

Anonymous: My dad leave me a message last night on my cell and he let me know that he had a new phone number so I call him back early today. I got a lot better today acutally. I’m going to New York visit my cousins, uncle and aunt for christmas.

I love you,

Justin "The Entertainment" Clark

Rugby_Drummer_07: ha fuck you joe k*** is what i say, fuck you. haha. i like the last post. and also i fuckin hate kevin b. and what hes done to WEXP. be a h****, quit. you wont do it. pussy.

Shelter from the Storm: Let's Get Physical

Joe is rewriting all his old Xanga posts from 2005 onward, and it's been a real good time-waster lately, let me tell ya.

October 23, 2005, 12:31 PM

It's not a crime if it's physics, baby.

PURPOSE

I'd like to find out if alcohol can be utilized as a positive force in our social lives. If so, how? If not, why?

RESEARCH

I've always been in search of the idea situation when it comes to the elixir that we're all craving. The assumption is that, when kids like us are consuming alcohol, that it must be done in a "shady" manner, due to the nature of it being a crime. It's a cliché to say that underage drinking is done in the dark back alleys of America, but clichés are called so because they are true. But is it possible to make a change in this regard? Can we have our beers and cocktails in good, clean, safe environments, free from danger and harm? Even if we are *gasp* breaking the law?

From my purely anecdotal experience, I'll say: no, you probably can't. At least not at this age. I've seen drinking all over this neighborhood. I've viewed it through the lens of sobriety and I've matched it with equal BAC levels, and every night, in every corner of Northeast Philadelphia, I witness people at their worst while under the influence. It feels like alcohol brings out the worst in people. Just a few examples off the top of my head:

— I met a girl of a similar age one time wandering near the fast-food strip on Cottman Ave. She was alone, so she assimilated into our crew. After chatting for a while, she told me that her so-called "friends" had collected her money, ostensibly to "chip in" for an additional liquor purchase. But once money had exchanged hands, those friends ditched her in the Wendy's bathroom, all in the name of bogarting the liquor for themselves. With her money! They were ignoring her calls! How fucked up is that!

— I was honored to be invited to a party one time at a friend's house. She had the party holed up in the basement while her parents were upstairs. You would think that the parents would be okay with a little rule-breaking of the alcohol variety. They probably were. I mean, they let a party happen in the basement, so it makes sense, logically. Except, my friend whose house it was couldn't enjoy the party. She spent the entire night running around paranoid over the possibility of her parents coming down the basement to check on her and her friends. They never did, and she wasted an entire party for herself.

— This is a hearsay example, but I've heard plenty of stories of keg parties going off the rails as the night heats up. The stories usually go that a group of friends will drink a little too much and get the bright idea to throw down their red solo cups and beat the shit out of some poor unexpecting peer. Just for kicks. You know how it goes with the youth these days, and their violence. I'm assuming alcohol plays a big part in it.

HYPOTHESIS

Though there is ample evidence that alcohol is usually used in service of making the night grim and dark and dirty and dangerous, I still hold out hope that I'll be able to find an alternative path one day, a path that leads to good times and strong comradery and groups of likeminded folk who look out for each other.

PROCEDURE

1. Just don't be stupid about it. Alcohol use goes sideways when you push the limit, when you test boundaries, when you ignore the warnings. Before you attempt to buy alcohol illegally, maybe take a quick glance up and down the block outside of the store to make sure there are no cops parked in the vicinity. If your parents are going to be home when you arrive home fifteen seconds before curfew, maybe make sure that you're drinking at reasonable volumes and you have ample breath mints to share on that walk back. The intense consequences for being caught underage drinking are not worth some petty bullshit, so just watch your back.

2. Don't be paranoid about it either. If you're not stupid and you get into good habits regarding creating safeguards for yourself, then grab a beer and relax. Accept a little risk into your life. Don't ruin this for everyone else. The beer is there because it can help enhance the good times, right? Well lean into that. Don't worry about the What Ifs. You took precautions, now chill. How do you expect to have a good time if you spend your life worrying about what happens if you don't have a good time?

3. Above all, be respectful. If we're making the case that a little teenage drinking doesn't make us bad people, then don't act like a bad person. Look out for each other. Be fair. If someone pays for a beer, go out of your way to make sure they get a beer. If they chip in for the keg, then share and share and share. If someone is brave enough to show up at a drinking party even though they themselves do not want to drink, then DO NOT pressure them to drink, under any circumstance. We're all on a level playing ground. We're all comingling at the same party. We're all young and free. It doesn't have to be about who's drinking and who's not. It's not about what divides us, it's about finding commonalities and coming together as a chosen family.

ANALYSIS

These rules provide a baseline for a good time. However, what I'll now do is paint a pretty picture of a hypothetical situation in which I imagine what would happen if alcohol was used to its fullest, most positive potential.

Imagine if La Salle College H.S.—or any high school, for that matter—were to establish a Drinking Club. Now, obviously it wouldn't be called "Drinking Club," because what high school admin would allow such a preposterous thing? You'd need a code name. You'd need an excuse to meet up during school hours. The excuse can't be drinking alcohol, because this needs to happen during the day. Maybe you can just sit there and play board games. This is all under the guise of some other bullshit, but y'all know that the true reason that you're gathered is to make plans to gather again, at night this time, and commit some light underage drinking.

And now imagine the range of folks that we could get into this kind of thing, if everyone checked their egos at the door and dropped all pretenses and just wanted to hang out and have fun. Imagine a room full of nerds, jocks, philosophizers, slackers, musicians, artists, dweebs, goths, stoners, all joining our little club. It's evening now, and everyone is chilling around some campfire in the Philadelphian suburbs, all these kids from all different corners of our school's ecosystem. The first beer is cracked open, and passed around.

Don't you see? Can't you see what would be happening? The quarterback and the lab manager, sharing a beer! Our self-imposed social hierarchy would crumble into the ocean! Alcohol, the great unifier!

CONCLUSION

To be determined.

REBUTTAL

That's where you come in. State your case in the comments. Tell me what you really think.


COMMENTS

VinylVixen89: Interesting question. Now only if this could actually be achieved to find a conclusion.

follow_the_butterflies: joe, i love u! ahah were all just trying to find a happy medium

JFingers88: I hate on you. What kind of stupid phrasing is that anyway?

Anonymous: The incompetence of others is always bound to screw up a good thing.

Katy_IS_mc_Cool: WHERE’S MY BABY?!?!?!?!?!?!? OMG!!!!! BARABAS! Hahaha that was sooo fun... we should definitely hang out lol and just act stupid lol. Ttyl

~Katie

xOkEeLy07oX: i agree with you.

Love, Keelan

PS- Exactly how long did that take you?

ImitationGarfield: do you know what i realized today? i dont have your number! ::gasp::

x_bannon_x: joes pretty funnyy... ahaha u hit ur head so hardd!! i was dyin laughin!!! ur the greatest! ...laurr =]

Anonymous: Heh its funny, in Italy there is no drinking age and yet there are very few alcohol problems and teenangers don't look to get wasted all the time. Maybe some day America will be like that too...

Anonymous: I'd just updated little while ago just letting you know, my friend. What have you been up to lately? I were in Boone, North Carolina for couple days I went to the mall bought Madden 2006, I'm so addict to that game now. lol
I love you,
Justin "The Entertainment" Clark

Shelter from the Storm: A Record of Our Wicked Ways

Joe is rewriting all his old Xanga posts from 2005 onward, one at a time, until we reach Xanga's demise.

October 18, 2005, 10:13 PM

I left a little morsel of information at the tail-end of my last Xanga post, one designed to evoke intrigue and mystery. It's time to reveal what I meant when I boldly claimed that I'm "going to be on fucking MTV." How does one boring-ass white-bread pseudo-suburban jabroni end up on national television? The same station as the Buggles, Beavis and Butt-Head, and Total Request Live, no less?

Here's the scoop: I have learned that the popular tween television program known as My Super Sweet 16 is coming to Mount St. Joseph Academy.

Now, I don't attend this school, seeing as it's an all-girl private institution. In fact, I've been banned from the grounds on multiple occasions by bloodthirsty disciplinarians, because I'm a sick freak with a taste for the paddle and nothing to lose. But My Super Sweet 16 is not literally taping at the school, so I'll have no problem getting around my ban. The nuns wouldn't approve of that MTV tripe anyway. Too sexual.

But there is a girl—no, woman, she's turning sixteen, after all—who attends this vaunted institution, and she is apparently rich enough to attract the buzzards at MTV, and, so I've heard, they'll be setting up cameras on tripods at her lavish celebration to capture the insanity. And they need drama, right? That's what the TV reality show execs are craving. That's what pays the bills. No one wants to see anyone suffer through a very nice and pleasant and uneventful party. They want stakes. They want some unruly drunk moppy-hair shitstain to... I dunno, jump in the pool naked or something, right?

Tell me what I need to do. I'm down for whatever.

You might say, "Well, Joe, they aren't just going to allow anyone into this party. You're gonna need an RSVP. And who the fuck are you?" This is true. I'm a fucking nobody. But I do appear to have an invite as a plus-one with a friend-of-a-friend. This has been confirmed via casual conversation on America Online Instant Messaging (colloquially known as AIM), and, as we all know, digital word is bond. Hence my confident statement of: I'm gonna be on fucking MTV!!

There will be more news on this as it materializes.

Any more updates? What do you say, young Joseph? Anything beyond the wild dreams of national fame and stardom via trash reality television?

I suppose the thing worth noting on Xanga for posterity is that I recently had a meeting with one of the Vice Principals. Or head of Student Affairs, something like that, I forget her title. This was a meeting that I scheduled. I wanted to discuss the idea of starting a Scrabble Club here at La Salle College High School. She seemed to be into the idea.

I've mentioned this before, but I'm immune from all punishment and rebuke from authority figures if I state it on Xanga so I'll mention it again: "Scrabble" is a code word. For underage drinking. I don't know if I have any actual motivation to move the idea of "the LSCHS Scrabble Club" forward, or if it's just some winking joke that I told for Xanga fodder. Probably more the latter than the former. I just don't know if the joke of "ha ha we're drinking at school" is worth the pretty likely possibility of expulsion and a downward spiral. Maybe I'll just stick to playing Scrabble in the woods.

If I'm being honest, I think this is probably wrapped up in my authority complex, like maybe I've seen too many movies in which the witty teen pulls the wool over the dumb adults' eyes. I think that would feel good. I also think that it's mostly a fictional ideal. Never gonna happen. I won't start a Scrabble Club. Brother Tran won't be our moderator. We won't be drinking secretly any more than we already are. This will all blow over in time.


COMMENTS

Anonymous: Tell me where this party shall be held at, so I can send it to eternal damnation, for my hatred of mtv is so great...

Anonymous: I'm back
love you,
Justin "The Entertainment" Clark

Shelter from the Storm: Ode to the Weekend

Joe is rewriting all his old Xanga posts from 2005 onward. Yes, still. Fuck you.

October 16, 2005, 9:39 PM

I am in mourning.

I have not lost any person close to me. I've been lucky in that regard up till this point in my life. No, it's an idea that I mourn. I am standing at the open grave of this weekend, and the tears are streaming down my face as I pound on the coffin and yell "No!!! No!!! It isn't fair!!! Take me instead!!!" My weekend is over. It's dead. It's buried. It's over. I'll miss it so goddamn much.

I know what they say. They say to remember the good times. And I will, I promise thee, I will. This was a good weekend. I hung out with some dear friends. We shared a laugh or two; we shared a drink or three. The comradery was there, as it always is, on weekends like this. I feel at peace. I relax when I live such a weekend. I needed this. I need weekends as a buffer between a week of school that sucks and another week of school that sucks. I don't take it for granted. I enjoy every moment. I know that this is good, and I loved it. Every minute of it. I acknowledge the love.

That's what they say to do. That's the healthy way to handle grief. I try my best, I really do. But then there's this little matter of the culprit. Who killed the weekend. I mourn and now my mind turns to revenge. Who could do such a thing? It was Sunday night. That's who. That's what killed the weekend. Sunday night like a stab in the fucking guts. It's unavoidable. Groundhog Day-type shit. Living the same nightmare every goddamn Sunday night of my life. I'm born anew every Friday afternoon and then Sunday night comes along and snuffs me out. And now it's Sunday night currently, as I write this, and I'm dead. Fucking dead.

Goodbye, cruel world. Goodbye, weekend. See you again next Friday. I'll miss you.

God, I'm so fucking sad that I mixed up like three different metaphors in that Xanga post. Ah shit. I really do hate the end of the weekend. But let's be optimistic. Here's a little preview of a future weekend that I have lined up, a little morsel of a preview that I'll have to explain in more detail the next time I sit down and visit the ol' Xanga page. Here ya go: I'm gonna be on fucking MTV!


COMMENTS

JoeMac_89: Who are you gonna be fucking on MTV?

MadeFromRecycledPaper: Joe is going to be on “Date My Mom”.

Baby_C: HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU GONNA BE ON MTV ?!?!?!??!?!

JFingers88: I agree with the others. Why are you going to be on MTV?

Shelter from the Storm: I Wish

Joe is rewriting all his old Xanga posts from 2005 onward, and he will continue at a pace just fast enough that he's writing them before each post's 20th anniversary at the very least.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

October 8, 2005, 8:23 PM

Here are all the albums on my wish list currently. I know Christmas is coming up, and albums are pretty much the only thing Santa Claus brings me anymore, which is awesome, but still. Figured I'd put this out into the universe now, see if anyone has any CD burning capabilities to save Santa the trip.

• Fun Trick Noisemaker by the Apples in Stereo
• Funeral by Arcade Fire
• Desire by Bob Dylan
• The Basement Tapes by Bob Dylan & the Band
• Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. by Bruce Springsteen
• Circulatory System by Circulatory System
• The Pizza Tapes by David Grisman, Jerry Garcia, and Tony Rice
• Daisies of the Galaxy by Eels
• My Aim Is True by Elvis Costello
• The Soft Bulletin by the Flaming Lips
• F♯ A♯ ∞ by Godspeed You! Black Emperor
• American Beauty by Grateful Dead
• Volunteers by Jefferson Airplane
• Pink Moon by Nick Drake
• Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse by Of Montreal
• Cacophony by Rudimentary Peni
• Oh, Inverted World by the Shins
• Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth
• Everything Goes Numb by Streetlight Manifesto
• Michigan by Sufjan Stevens
• Wild like Children by Tilly and the Wall
• Pinkerton by Weezer
• The Who Sings My Generation by the Who

I just love the possibilities that such a list contains. I don't know if I'll actually ever listen to all of these, but I hope to. I don't know if I'll like all of them. Maybe I'll like half. Maybe my favorite album of all time is in this pile of album names. Maybe this is a list of future disappointment. Maybe I'm sitting in front of this same damn computer in twenty years, and 2025 Joe is like "damn, there's one album on here I haven't gotten around to yet, maybe I should make that a priority." Who knows! That's the fun in it! The search. The adventure. The discovery. I know what I like today, but these albums make it so that I have no idea what I'll like tomorrow.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Comments:

MadeFromRecycledPaper: I have Oh, Inverted World And Pink Moon... on vinyl. Sorry that doesn't help.

follow_the_butterflies: ive got bruce on record... u can thank my mom for that...

Anonymous: Check it out with couple people I've interviewer in a last couple days. I hope you enjoyed my latest post because you're an awesome person.

Justin "The Entertainment" Clark

vllyb128: you were too entertaining friday

ImitationGarfield: i can burn you pinkerton, but i dont know when ill see you

Anonymous: awesome songs list, my friend. thanks for the comment on my site. I argree with you we must stick together.

I went to the mall the other day and they were selling couple Fred Sanford t-shirt says "You Big Dummy" and "How about 5 cross your lips". I thought it's really funny though. It almost make me pee my pants I don't usually pee my pants, my friend. My birthday is 3 months away I'll be 20 years old. We should a party someday at my place and rock the party it's like 1969, baby!

Justin "The Entertainment" Clark

tank1189: i have greetings i can burn it for you

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October 12, 2005, 8:45 PM

I am despondent. I am sad and despondent and depressed and all the other words you can find in the thesaurus. I am despondent because I am a student in high school. It comes with the territory. It also doesn't help when you have after-school job commitments on top of that. I like having a paycheck but it's signed in blood, the blood I sacrifice when I forgo doing homework so that I can spend time with the senior citizens for three and a half hours after school.

I mean, I always get it done, eventually. It's just a pain in the ass. Let me be despondent, please. Give me the space for that, okay? Just here, just now.

And now quickly put the despondency to the side: Elizabeth asked me to the Little Flower formal, which is pretty fucking cool. It's on November 11th. I'm really excited. I figure Elizabeth is probably reading these words right now, so maybe it'll be nice to arrive at Joe's Xanga and get confirmation that he is excited to have been asked.

And now the despondency again: I was going to say that I'm excited for this weekend too, but then I remembered that I have work on Friday and Saturday. Which kinda sucks. I hated having mono, but it sure was nice having an excuse to skip work and hang out with my friends (and infect them all with mono too). I am healthy, so the good ol' days are over, I guess.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Comments:

inmyimage2: joe k***, do not despair for u have given me a new outllook on life and many shall worship u for generations to come

sgtpepper841: cheer up you whore

Shelter from the Storm: Playing Scrabble

Joe is rewriting all his old Xanga posts from 2005 onward, and it's giving him the howling fantods.

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October 5, 2005, 4:55 PM

I am not bashful about my desire to emulate the style of my heroes. I love Bob Dylan's music, but part of my admiration is the fact that the man looks fucking cool. There's nothing wrong with that. He looks cool; I want to look cool too. So why not take very small steps to look a little bit more like Bob Dylan? I'm not saying I'm going to be so pathetic as to copy his entire wardrobe. But I think wearing sunglasses in the same way that Dylan wore sunglasses in the '60s is an extremely reasonable step in my quest to be "cool" (with "cool" in quotes as an acknowledgement that I will never actually be cool).

Tell me what you think. Do these look the same? Would wearing these glasses make me even 1% cooler (again, acknowledging that 1% of zero is still zero)?

on amazon

on bob dylan's face

Are these close enough? Should I buy them? I am, for whatever reason, using my Xanga to crowdsource opinions about my appearance. So let's lean into it. Comment below. What do you think?!?!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Comments:

MadeFromRecycledPaper: You are just too damned sexy, Joseph.

Too damned sexy.

JFingers88: The silver thingys on the dge of the frames are vertical for Bob, but horizontal on amazon.

Anonymous: They're pretty close; Bob's sunglasses are so cool. I have some Dylanesque sunglasses.

VinylVixen89: Pretty damn close. I say get them.

VinylVixen89: It would be bitchin' to hang out with you if you (a. didn't have mono and (b. was still in the play

one_orange_sock: hey joe i love you!it was a friendly slap.

Stouoffe: i dont think you were capable of seeing anything coming...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

October 7, 2005, 11:42 PM

It's past 11 PM on a Friday night. I am restless. I had a great night, and I'm here on my Xanga to talk about it. 'Cause that's just how I do it, man. I arrive at the Xanga with lexical guns a'blazin', tryin' to start some commotion at a late hour. I am a teenager. My energy is boundless. I also have a bit of liquor still running through my veins, but we don't have to elaborate on that.

I mean, okay, I don't think I have to worry about any of La Salle's administration reading this Xanga. I'm so beyond caring about what parents (my own, and others') think about me or my life as it is presented here. Gone are the days when I needed to be concerned for whether my girlfriend's parents were going to let her hang out with me in scary Northeast Philadelphia because they were generally aware of my relatively modest imbibing habits. It's whatever, man. I'll keep it mostly in the shadows still, but you should know where I'm coming from, typing these words, on a Friday night, after just a couple drinks.

I played Scrabble before the game. That's code. You knew that already. After Scrabblin', I became what I choose to view as my true, honest self. This is the self that is outgoing, and witty, and attractive. I played the cowbell. This was attractive to women, who giggled at my exploits. The football team did well, and they will each get the girl in the end, but in that moment, I felt as popular as a handsome jock, even though I was just some mopey kid in the pep band. I felt alive. It was a good night.

As for tomorrow, we attempt to continue the party, this celebration of life as we know it in our youth. There are rumblings of a gathering in the exalted woods of Burholme Park. It will be a valiant return. I implore you to join me in the revelry.

I have some other loose notes to share with you, because why not.

I was taking care of business the other day in a half-clean stall at my place of education, and I noticed something that someone had hastily scribbled on the wall with permanent marker. It read: "Freshman Fuck Day — October 13th". This is the first and last I've ever heard of such a tradition at my high school, where boys will be boys but La Salle boys will be gentleman. Certainly it wouldn't be very gentlemanly to assault these poor innocent freshman for some made-up ritual as described in a bathroom stall? If you've heard anything about this, let me know, so I can be the good anthropologist I strive to be and document it for posterity.

Another tidbit from the rumor mill. I've been hearing some bullshit about a neighborhood fight between Rockledge and Abington. I live in Rockledge, and due to transportation funding, I take a bus with the rest of the Abington HS kids to their campus, where I catch another bus to my actual high school. So this is where I'm feeling the rumors out, in overheard mumblings from Rockledge kids who attend school with Abington kids. Who knows what's going on in the halls of that institution. I'll be sure to hide out with the rest of the private kid weirdos when the guns are drawn.

Finally, and most importantly, my least favorite class is cancelled for Monday. AP English. Well, okay, fine, I just don't like the teacher. That dude has blood on his teeth, and he's way too good at hiding it. I like pretty much everyone who's in that class with me. I fear that my friends don't see what I see, though. I fear that the jock who teaches us English is eventually going to shove us all in the lockers, even if they end up being figurative lockers and not literal ones. Anyways, none of that on Monday, so I'm celebrating hard this weekend due to that break, among other things.

It is time for sleep. Goodnight.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Comments:

JFingers88: Joe K***, you are a dance monster. Shawn the cowbellist had a good view of the Soul cheerleaders from his perch almost directly above them.

JoeMac_89: You actually remember last night?

anngi55: Whoa whoa Rockledge and Abington?  When the hell did that happen and why did I not know?

Shelter from the Storm: Transmission/Recovery

Joe is rewriting all his old Xanga posts from 2005 onward, which is pretty strange, when you think about. But then again, life is strange, and so let's lean into it, and see what this sixteen-year-old was thinking, at the time.

~~~~~~~~~

September 29, 2005, 5:22 PM

I take one step out the front door of the split-level Rockledge domicile in which I currently reside, and I am blasted with a scent that I will call "autumn rain." This is a trigger. I smell this smell and I instantly become one with nature. I am awake. I am alive. I walk the same path that I walk every morning of every school day, but today it feels different. I am surrounding by foliage, and I soak it all in. I look down at the sidewalk, I look up at the sky. Both are so beautiful. This is how I start my morning. Refreshed, recharged, reborn. I smiled from ear to ear. It was, I knew, the start of a perfect day.

So you can only imagine just how far I fell from there.

~~~~~~~~~

Comments:

JFingers88: Upside—Mike & Ikes!

Anonymous: I guess you had a bad day? But Bob Dylan makes everything better.

I loved that part, too—"Leopard-skin Pill-box Hat"...genius.

~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~

October 2, 2005, 12:00 PM

I am drawn to Xanga like a moth to the flame. Even when I don't have anything valuable to say, I suddenly become conscious with a fresh blank slate of empty Xanga template in front of me. I hear the call. Xanga is calling me to fill the space with pithy thoughts about my life as I currently know it. I cannot resist.

What is there to say, though? Oh lord, nothing. Nothing important.

I could say that mono has ruined my weekend and will ruin every weekend for the rest of my life (or so it seems). But you already knew that. I've already answered the call to bitch and moan about mononucleosis on my Xanga as much as possible. You're tired of it, I can tell. It's like your soul has mono, reading this tripe.

A secondary thought that I could share with you, if you are the type who might be into a sort of meta Xanga exercise, is that I am committed to carrying around a pen and paper with me at all times from this point henceforth. I have too many jumbled thoughts up there in my rapidly rotting brain. I gotta get 'em down on the paper. My point being that maybe this will help improve future Xanga posts. Instead of attempting to tell you something by framing it around nothing, I could instead look down at the paper's scribbled scrawl and translate it here.

Just a thought. A thought that wasn't from any sort of pen-and-paper note, but it could be, and should be, in the future.

For now: I have nothing better to say.

~~~~~~~~~

Comments:

f_lyingagain: hey whats up...long time no see

ImitationGarfield: so... mono... hows that going?why do you need pen and paper with you?  me and melissa used to carry around pen and paper so we could write down funny stuff that happened so we wouldnt forget.  how cool were we?

Anonymous: Mono...ech. Sorry about that, hope you get better soon!

Anonymous: sorry you have a bad week. I hope you feel better.

Justin "The Entertainment" Clark

~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~

October 3, 2005, 9:17 PM

A dispatch from a slowly recovering boy: I am feeling slightly better. It's helpful, I think, to not wallow in pity so much. It's like when they tell a depressed person to clean their room. It's not that big of a deal, but it's one small step toward recovery. Something you can hang your hat on, so to speak. I cleaned my room, and so I must be feeling a little better today. You know what I'm trying to say. I'm applying this thought process instead to a physical disease. I don't need to run a marathon with mono, I just need to complete small tasks, and I'll feel better.

I finished an essay that was due a week ago (and extended due to illness). I anchored the morning edition of WEXP (not sure how it went, but hey man, I got out there and did it, that's something). I took two tests and there's no way I did as poorly on them as my hyperbolic mind is attempting to convince me I did. Check 'em off the list. I did something. It feels good.

I'm also adding things to the list. Not small tasks, more like medium tasks. On Friday, I am going to attend the football game. I will play the cowbell with the pep band, and I will make small talk with pretty girls, and I will take ample breaks when I find myself out of breath. On Saturday, I am going to be "playing scrabble," as the kids say, at Burholme Park. Okay, maybe that's more than medium. It's certainly not doctor-recommended. But I need to get out there, man. I need to plan something. I need comradery.

I'm taking stock of where I'm at right now in school. I'm completing small tasks. I'm catching up on homework. Homework sucks but I'm doing it because I need to do it and the doing of the things that need to be done feels good. It's sad that Calculus is my favorite class these days. I am doing that homework, getting it done. But I really only say this because it's my least worst class. Spanish is muy diffculto. Physics is a pain in the ass. History is boring. English is taught by a pompous jock. Morality is cool, but are we calling that a class, or just a hangout session?

Doesn't matter. I'm getting it done, man. I'm feeling better, by choice. I'm completing my tasks.

~~~~~~~~~~

Comments:

Anonymous: you will learn alot in ap english, but it wont be fun.mr dempsey is a jackass, plain and simple.do you have roche for calc?

JFingers88: Don't forget: no classes Friday!

JoeMac_89: ...and you were a good anchor/official WEXP slacker.

Shelter from the Storm: A Trio of Mono

Joe is rewriting all his old Xanga posts from 2005 onward, which is pretty harrowing stuff.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

September 22, 2005, 10:30 PM

It's been a few days, so I figured that I would write a Xanga post. This post will answer the question: what happened to Russell's laptop? My physics teacher seems to have misplaced it. Either that, or it was stolen. A lot of you reading this post at home are in this same physics class with me, and so I believe that this is the time and the place to reveal the secret. By the end of the post, I will pull back the curtain, and tell all.

But first! I have not received the doctor's test results back, which will allegedly tell me whether I have mononucleosis or not. Judging based on my own experience with this bag of meat known as my body over the past three or so days, I can say that I'm feeling better. I get worn out a little easily, but if this is how mono is going to be until I get rid of it completely, then I can confidently say that I am going to survive.

And since I'm feeling a little better, and since the doctor has not opened Schrödinger's blood test results yet and I can say that I have mono and don't have mono, I have been stacking up some pretty solid weekend plans. Homework is stacking up too, but c'mon. In nineteen years, it ain't the homework that I'll remember. It's the parties, the hangouts, the outings, the adventures. Looking forward to experiencing life to the fullest from Friday afternoon until the wee hours of Monday morning. What the fuck is mononucleosis anyway.

Oh: I ate Russell's labtop.

~~~~~~~~~

Comments:

JoeMac_89: How'd it taste?

~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~

September 23, 2005, 3:32 PM

I spoke too soon. The test results came in the mail while I was attending my Friday studies, and after that big yellow school bus dropped me off and I dragged my tired ass up the hill to my house to start my monumental weekend, I noticed the torn-open envelope on the dining room table, with the diagnosis written in dripping red ink: MONO.

This fucks with my weekend plans... right? I mean, look, I know that mononucleosis is generally contagious. I have suspicions regarding how I got it in the first place—which I will not publicly speculate on with a Xanga post, to protect the safety and dignity of those involved—but here's something I remember from what the doctor said: by the time I know I have mono, it'll be noncontagious. Or not as contagious, I guess. The contagiousness being like a bell curve, and my mono ride already moving downhill on that curve. So I say to you now: I am not contagious.

I will still be attending the La Salle vs. North Catholic football game tonight, and I'm still going to attend Mary's party tomorrow night, and I'm still going to travel to the Eagles game with Harry on Sunday. All of those events are outside. I don't plan on making out with anyone at any of them either (though you never know). And then, on Monday... we'll see. Maybe I'll just go to the hospital.

I am young, I am free, I am noncontagious.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Comments:

JFingers88: Whew. I was really hoping I wouldn't come down with anything. Anyway, you seemed pretty OK today and yesterday, so it shouldn't really be much of a problem.

lacol_elohssa: wow you lucked out... out not even a week with mono? You got REAL lucky. but wait... you don't know if you have it unless you get a blood test... did you? And who've you been kissing... who has mono?

ImitationGarfield: how is it not contagious?

Shelter_fromthe_Storm: Yeah, I got a blood test, and it was positive. As for the kissing........
And I have no idea how it's noncontagious, but that's what the doc said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

September 26, 2005, 11:29 AM

beep, beep, beep, beep...

Hear the beep of the heart rate monitoring machine hooked up to my chest as I lie in bed after a weekend during which I pushed my mono-wrecked body to its very limits.

Those limits are lower, of course, due to illness, so I'm not describing any particularly herculean efforts here. I am instead describing a very normal series of events that would cause no injury or impairment for those living at full health, but have, for those of us infected with the Epstein-Barr virus rendered, rendered us bed-ridden for the foreseeable future.

Friday night was the football game. I was there with the rest of the pep band. The best part was that the game was played at Northeast HS, so it was right around the corner from me. This meant that hometown heroes Kristin and Cindy and Mary were all able to attend, and we all hung out in between songs (I was needed for my incredible cowbell skills). This also meant that there weren't as many La Salle fans in the stands, since this was "dangerous Philadelphia" and most of my friends from high school and the all-girl schools connected to it were raised in the suburbs and were always told that if you accidentally set one foot into the city limits, you're going to get that foot shot off with an illegally-purchased gun. Their loss. I hung out at Kristin's afterward, and then got a ride to Cousin Andrew's, which was parent-less for the night, and y'all can surmise what that means, and what substances were involved, etc., etc.

It was convenient that I didn't have much to do Saturday, because I was already feeling it, so I more or less stayed in bed until 7 PM. Which sounds insane. What's more insane is that I was out of bed at all, and then used my time out of bed to go to a rager of a party at Mary's house. It was her "birthday party." She's the middle child of like ten siblings, and her older brothers have established pretty clearly what a "birthday party" in that backyard entails. I won't go into the details here. Suffice it to say that none of these are mononucleosis-positive activities. Sorry, doc, I am AMA this weekend.

Then we had on Sunday—yesterday, to all those in the land of living who are visiting my Xanga on a Monday afternoon as soon as you walk in the door from a grueling day at school, looking for the warm comfort of a teenager whining about his viral infection—the Eagles game. I had never been to a regular-season game before, so this was pretty cool. Harry and his pops have season tickets. I guess I should mention here that my parents, Harry's parents, and Andrew's parents were all down the shore together for Irish Weekend. I would've had my own party at home without parental supervision, but it didn't seem like a reasonable proposition, being sick and all.

So we gotta get down to the Eagles game. Harry was originally just going to drive. For whatever reason (maybe they thought we were going to be drinking or something), our parents decide that, instead of driving, we are going to be getting on an Eagles bus. Ya know, like one of those painted jawns, filled with old boomers and hot Italian sausages on rolls and cold pilsner beers that we are NOT to touch. We are to be picked up by two of our parents' friends early in the morning. The assumption is that these guys are gonna drive us to the bus. But then we hop in a car—with strangers!—and these dudes are like "haha nah, the bus broke down" and so now we're driving down to South Philly in the backseat of two mouthbreathers who wanna know what we think about the point spread.

I made out with both of them so I could give them mono.

Just kidding (or am I?). But anyways, thanks Mom, thanks Dad, good plan, sending your son to the opposite end of the city with strangers. Hope you're having fun drinking your green beer on the beach. Speaking of green beer—we didn't have any in the parking lot. We obviously didn't tailgate with the boomers. Instead, we walked around Jetro and Lot K, and tried to see what trouble we could get in. The closest I came was trying to convince a dude dressed like a pirate to let us have shots of rum. No dice. E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES.

So now I'm sitting at home, recovering. "Recovering." The quotation marks are necessary since at least 49.9% of my decision to skip school was based on the fact that I didn't do any of my homework, and, like, the excuse of "mono" was sitting right there, and so why not use it. I know that's fucked up. I am hurting, too. That part is true as well. Both are true. I am just here, lying in bed, writing my truth, while under the dark pall of mononucleosis.

Now let the heart monitoring machine beep us to the end:

beep, beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Comments:

Anonymous: I love your site. awesome taste in music, my friend.
Justin “The Entertainment” Clark

xCRazyTx: joe its tina i found this on maryroses website haha sounds like u had a great weekend. saturday was fun stufff good times good people good laughs

Shelter from the Storm: Mono y Mono

Joe is rewriting all his old Xanga posts from the mid-aughts, which has been an enlightening and also rather frightening experience.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

September 18, 2005, 8:45 PM

Shit... I fell down the rabbit hole of WebMD-assisted self-diagnosing. I'm sorry. I know this is an irresponsible act and pretty insulting to the medical community at large, to "google" my symptoms. I know that eventually, the internet will tell me that I'm gonna die. I know that. But I can't help but read the symptoms of mononucleosis. I'm lying in bed doing jackshit and worried that my life is over and now I'm looking up symptoms on the world wide web. Here are the symptoms:

“The typical symptoms and signs of mononucleosis are: fever, enlarged lymph nodes, sore throat, fatigue, and then a whole bunch of other shit like "jaundice" that seem like second-tier weirdo-cases symptoms. Those are the big four. I got 'em all, baby (assuming I know for certain what a "lymph node" is).

I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow to confirm my suspicions, but this is the type of thing that you just know, you know? I will have a professional doctor confirm this because I'm not a moron or a psychopath, but I don't really need the doctor. I have mono. Fuuuuuuuuuck.

Is this the worst time I could've possible gotten a contagious disease? That would maybe be an exaggeration, but it certainly is inconvenient timing overall. It's the start of the second half of my high school experience. These are supposed to be the best years of my life. I wanted to start on the right foot. Instead, I'm starting on no feet at all, since I'm so tired that I can't even stand.

Life sucks. According to WebMD, depression is a symptom of mono, so... there you go.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

September 19, 2005, 3:26 PM

I still had hope. It was the smallest glimmer, almost imperceptible to the human eye, but it was there, and I was going to hold onto that glimmer of hope and assume I didn't have mono and just go to school like everything was okay. That was the plan.

Then I woke up at two o'clock in the morning and puked. Vomiting was not on that WebMD list of symptoms for mono that I read yesterday, so maybe even the throw up could be viewed in an optimistic light. Maybe I didn't have the disease that I feared I had. I would go to the doctor's and have her tell me, ya know, maybe it's just, like, some passing cold? Yeah, that's it. She could tell me that I had nothing to fear, that I could hang out with my pals tomorrow morning unencumbered by fears of death.

So I didn't go to school. I went to the doctor's appointment. She thinks I have mono.

I'm not ashamed to say that some dark thoughts passed through my mind when I returned home from that appointment and collapsed back into bed. I cried. I thought about the general idea of self-harm (but didn't "make a plan" or anything like that). Is this depression? I think so. A mild form of it that is obviously a symptom of some larger disease, but still. Symptom or not, it cuts all the same, man. I'm feeling low.

I will get the blood test results back tomorrow. If it's positive, it'll feel like my life will have to be put on pause for about a month, which is just a brutal thing to consider. And comes with a measure of irony, I'd argue, especially in the context of this Xanga, which has spent the better part of the past two weeks featuring yours truly bitching and moaning about how much I hate school. That's not accurate. I hate schoolwork. I love being at school, with my own people. Not to mention, my grades are gonna take a big hit if I get behind on that schoolwork I hate so much.

When I say I love being at school, though, I'm talking about having a social life. Even if I somehow crawled to school, I don't think that I'd be up for much socializing on the weekend. I had plans, man. Big plans for the weekend. High school football games, professional football games, birthday parties, a whole town at my fingertips, ripe for exploration when the sun goes down. And if I have mono, how much of that is going to collapse? All of it, I assume.

More irony: I haven't had a kind thing to say about my employment on this Xanga in a while, but since they aren't going to want those old people being served tapioca pudding with a side of mono, I'm gonna be out of a job temporarily as well, which means no money. I'd rather have a shit job that pays me than a life of leisure that doesn't.

Writing this way—the constant complaining about my precious little life showing some cracks in the foundation—makes me feel pretty small. I feel like I'm being immature. It's not like I have some rare fucking disease. I just (maybe) have mono, which is something that plenty of kids my age contract (especially those who are spending time in the wood open-mouth kissing pretty girls).

So I am not asking for your sympathy here. I'm just some kid, stuck in bed, too tired to get up, typing on a blog his dark fears and frustrations. No sympathy required.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Comments:

JFingers88: FFN test today wasn't too bad. Physics lab was easy. Don't worry.As long as you don't kill yourself, I'll be here for you. Otherwise, you're not going to be my friend.

ImitationGarfield: well they dont have to be seperate, id love to combine them as long as they all get done before winter.  i just dont want to restrict them too much by saying ill only have a pillow fight on south street ya know?

will you give me mono?

follow_the_butterflies: maybe u should just watch the lion king, hakuna matata... it always works for me

Shelter from the Storm: Beef in the Heart, Two in the Bush

Joe is rewriting all his old Xanga posts from when he was a teenager, in chronological order, and it's pretty interesting (and a little unnerving) to see how much shit has changed for him, and for us.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

September 15, 2005, 9:12 PM

Oh man... life is good right now. School is exhausting, work is continuing as if school didn't just bulldoze my life, school and work are combining to make sure I'm worn out at the end of the day and no time for homework, my body is responding in kind by inflicting me with any ol' random fucking illness it can think of. Maybe in nineteen years I'll look back at all this and laugh, but now, in the trenches, I feel like things are perhaps beginning to spiral out of control.

Here is a current ranking of my classes from "best" to worst, with a still-single-digit-number of days under my belt.

1. AP Calc AB — It's incredibly fucking sad that I feel the need to place this class into the "best class" slot, jeez.

2. Morality — I guess it's tough to complain about a class in which we mostly just have discussions and do very little work. So maybe this shouldn't be in the ranking at all? Mr. Clark seems cool though.

3. Band — Also not really a class, but I'm ranking it because, honestly, there's irony in the fact that this is the only class I actually want to learn something in and I'm finding it impossible to do so thus far, due to overcrowding of drummers way better than me.

4. Spanish — Right smack in the middle because the teacher seems real nice and helpful and it's a well-organized class and all that, but man, learning a foreign language is so fucking difficult to me for some reason. I find myself dreading it every day.

5. Honors Physics — Teacher seems cool, but his absentmindedness is already a little grating. He'll pretty often look at his own work and be like, "hmmm, now how did I get that?" And he keeps mixing us up with the AP Physics class, which doesn't bode well. Still, I don't know, maybe this is salvageable eventually. Just not yet. It's bad so far.

6. History — The subject matter if fucking brutally boring, and the teacher has, as I'd feared, revealed himself to be a jock first and an academic distantly second. Could just be me being a snob; doesn't make this shit any more bearable.

7. AP English — I have a really weird feeling that the teacher doesn't like me. It's a gut reaction, with barely any evidence, but it's a dark feeling I know to be true. I'm sensitive to that kind of shit. I'm good at picking it up. The fucked up part is that, whenever an authority figure acts this way toward me, I have a perverse reaction of trying to impress them more. I'm getting negged by my goddamn English teacher. Everyone in the class is so much smarter than me, so that's not helping. I should've known this by the end of the summer, but I don't think I'm gonna be able to bullshit my way through this class, and that is frightening.

I should acknowledge here that school is not supposed to be "fun" or "enjoyable." I get that. I hate the idea of complaining so much that I miss the good stuff. I think this is all just whiplash from a summer suddenly killed. I'm adjusting. I'm grieving. Give me my space.

Something interesting happened in band today though, that I think is worth mentioning. Mr. C., out band leader, gave a sort of speech today about some of my peers taking too many tough classes. It's true, some of my pals have like double the amount of AP classes that I do. And even where I'm at now, with two honors and two APs, I'm feeling like maybe I bit off too much. So that's why it was refreshing to hear Mr. C. call this out, and pull the camera back a little bit—GPAs don't really matter that much, grades don't really matter that much, focus on growing as a person, focusing on learning something cool, focus on enjoying this moment as a teenager, since, as the septuagenarian teaching us music can attest, it ain't ever coming back.

I stepped off the bus today and threw up on the front lawn of the school. There's figurative language, and then there's being on the nose, so I won't read too much into the incident. But you should know that I'm not feeling that good.

As my throat gets worse by the hour, an intense sickness coming on that I can feel like a windchill through my heart, I thank the gods that I don't need a functioning windpipe to listen to some good music. Those CDs that I mentioned last time? They have arrived (that was quick, can't imagine any reason to be pessimistic about Amazon prioritizing quick service!). Here they are: Music from the Unrealized Film Script: Dusk at Cubist Castle by Olivia Tremor Control, In the Aeroplane over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel, and Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band.

Preliminary thoughts on two of them. Aeroplane is stunning. It's catchy throughout, but has a weird, out-of-this-world quality that I'm having trouble explaining currently without a few more listens. Trout Mask Replica, on the other hand, is probably the strangest album I have ever laid ears on. That's me being optimistic about it. After one full listen, I sincerely do not know if I will ever understand this thing.

Captain Beefheart, please save me from sickness and disease. Let me socialize this weekend. Please.

~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~

September 16, 2005, 8:00 PM

As we all feared, the sickness has exponentially grown and wrapped its large bony fingers around my frail body. I left after seventh period today, somehow made it home in one piece, and collapsed into my bed like a Victorian-era woman after accidentally sniffing chloroform. Would have been cool to hit the football game tonight, but alas, darling, I'm under the weather. Please excuse me as I change my sweat-soaked sheets for the third time.

I've been laying in bed for hours now and my mind is racing like only a sick man's can. Here is my attempted documentation of those thoughts in semi-real time.

First, I was thinking about George W. Bush, our current U.S. President. What I know about politics right now could be inscribed on the tip of a fucking needle, so that's not what I was thinking about. This is more, like, sociological, or emotional or something. Just how the dude's whole shtick is like "gee willikers, I'm a man of the people cause I can't speak no good." And how that is probably just an act. Right?

The dude went to Yale and then Harvard. I'm not saying you're automatically a genius if you attend either or even both of those schools, but at a certain point, the morons are going to be weeded out. No, I think at a certain age, Bush realized that there was a benefit to acting like a good ol' boy yokel sort. That maybe this would make him "more endearing" to the "regular folk." That no matter his complicity in warmongering, he could still be the "guy you'd grab a beer with."

I'm not even saying that the put-on is malicious. He might have learned this personality affect well before he grew political ambitions. To a certain degree, it really does pay off to have this type of personality. At the same time, let's not all just pretend that this is all there is to him. He's also a fucking war criminal.

I thought about that shit so hard (for some reason?) that I passed out. When I awoke, I reflected on what, exactly, has made me so sick this month. Generally, I think it's something like malnourishment and exhaustion. I don't sit down with the family for dinner anymore because I'm at work, and breakfast is usually some sort of sugary breakfast cereal that doesn't provide for me a single vitamin.

My dad, for some reason, seems to think that I'm doing drugs or something. Just this morning, he says, "Joe, you've been really sick lately, why is that?" His tone lacked compassion. It was more like... accusatory. I didn't have an answer for him and I still don't. What, it's my fault that I'm sick? It sound preposterous. But then he spends one too many breakfasts peering over the sport page to accuse me of getting sick on purpose and I can't help but start to wonder if he doesn't have a point.

I think about the bubble on my foot, the big one, and not to mention all the tiny little ones all over my body, some sort of poisonous infection or something. I was skinny dipping right before that happened. Could that have had anything to do with it?

I think about the chills, headache, diarrhea, etc., that occurred after a party I attended. I chugged a beer and also an Amp at that party, in quick succession. Terrible combination under any circumstance. Could that have had anything to do with it?

I think about the lung issues, exhaustion, vomiting, sore throat after a recent birthday bash. I thought it would be a funny gag to spit water on the birthday girl, a sort of juvenile joke. In righteous retribution, I got a lung full of silly-string gas, which caused me to puke on the lawn, and I've been feeling out of it since. Could that have had anything to do with it?

I'm not a medical expert. It could be that all of these are connected, and it could be that I'm just being obtuse. But for some reason, I'm taking my dad's baseless accusations to heart. Am I at fault here? This what I'm thinking about as I lie in the dark of my bedroom, unable to move, unable to feel, regretful of everything.

My thoughts were interrupted by a ten-minute track by Olivia Tremor Control that comes on the CD player suddenly, a song consisting of what sounds to be noises you'd hear in a sewer. I don't know what to make of this. I didn't have the energy to make it back to the psychedelic sunshine pop that covers the rest of the album.

And then I fell asleep again.

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Comments:

one_orange_sock: OH MY GOD i'm soooo sorry.i was just kidding&i didnt actually think you…inhaled any of it.feel better!

Joe_Mac89: Cheer up and get well soon. We need you.

Shelter from the Storm: Establishing the Routine

Joe is rewriting all the old Xanga posts that he wrote when he was a teenager in high school, which, man, just... why.

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September 7, 2005, 10:19 PM

The school year is long but the first day felt short. New teachers, new classrooms, a new energy pulsating through the halls, following me home as I contemplate what my life will look like for the next nine months. I would argue that the teachers are what my emotional sanity hinges on the most. Teacher selection is arbitrary, a symptom of scheduling and nothing more. And yet, a bad teacher can make for a bad year. Or a good teacher can make life easier. Here are my first impressions, acknowledging that some teachers take a little bit to get comfortable, and some teachers hold their cards close to their chest for weeks or even months.

Mr. Ponisiak — AP Calculus AB doesn't sound like a winner in terms of subject matter, so I'm not holding my breath here that teacher is going to be able to perform magic up there. He seems nice. Meek, maybe a little shy. So let's see how this goes.

Mr. Young — History is so hit or miss, and the fact that the assistant football coach is teaching me history makes me think that it's more likely to go miss than hit this year. I have no interest in history either (hence forgoing the AP class that my pals all took). But he seemed nice on the first day, so it's whatever.

Señora Zoelstch — I make a vow to you now that this is going to be my last foreign language class that I ever take. My brain just isn't built for this shit. Señora seems like a tough teacher, which isn't ideal. But you never know. Maybe she'll inspire me. Either that, or I'll just survive. I am probably still going to miss the joke of a Spanish teacher that I had freshman year, though.

Mr. Dempsey — AP English, so this is the dude that made the last week of my summer so miserable. I like the class makeup, though. A bunch of friends and potential friends. With the right teacher, this could be a good experience. Let's wait and see.

Mr. Russell — Honors physics, so a lot of the dudes in AP English follow me to this class. Teacher himself seems nice. Made a good first impression—kinda dorky in a funny, endearing way, possible very smart. I am not worried about this one.

I haven't had Morality yet, since that's only four days per cycle. I also have eighth free most days, so that's cool. The only other class to talk about is band. I had mentioned before that I got put into "honors band" for scheduling reasons only, which creates a weird sort of friction. I'm not good enough to be in this band, and drumming at a drum kit is not really something that multiple drummers can do at the same time. So I'm probably not going to be playing much? And shouldn't be, because I'm not good? But won't be able to get better, since I'm not playing? What the fuck am I even doing here?

Happy first day of school, everybody.

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Comments:

ImitationGarfield: i have 8th free too!not that it means anything to you.

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September 11, 2005, 6:47 PM

Well, here comes a familiar feeling. I'm three days into the school year, and the dread is starting to creep back in. That nervous everything-is-new energy of the start of the year fades as you fall into routine, and then that routine starts to curdle as the sheer weight of it presses down on you. This is my life until next summer. No matter what your classes or teachers look like, it's tough to deal with on an emotional level. I don't like it.

To follow up on all the classes I spoke of last time, I'll say that AP English (pronounced "A-peng"), Morality, and Physics all show promise, but only in quick spurts. History and Spanish immediately established themselves as torture, mainly due to dreadful subject matter. AP Calc is the wild card, since the only thing bad about it is that it's difficult; it makes me wonder if I've finally reached the upper limits of my mathematics prowess.

A quasi-weekend update for you, since that is what this Xanga used to do, before school and homework bashed me over the head and left me for dead in a broom closet. I did nothing on Friday night. On Saturday, I went to a surprise birthday party for two pals that I had met through Ex-Girlfriend. It's not as weird as it sounds. We had fun. I got out of the house. It was a good opportunity to shake off the schooltime scaries. And the birthday girls appeared to have fun! I'm happy to have friends!

Other than that, I'd say that my life is not that exciting. I ordered some CDs from Amazon. I found them on various lists that music listeners make on Amazon, and they seemed cool. Maybe you'd describe them as "obscure," but only because I'm in the discovery phrase, as are all my peers, and it's tough to know what's popular and what's obscure, all I can do is look at what my friends are jamming out to, and it doesn't look like anyone is listening to Neutral Milk Hotel. But let's see.

Sorry that this post seems like a waste of your time.

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Comments:

one_orange_sock: JOE!thanks so much for coming you're awesome... except for when whole spitting water at me thingthat was seriously not cool.

ImitationGarfield: what, you didnt have a kickass time too?

ImitationGarfield: my friend met peppers ghost.  she cried.