Tin Man

And this is what you've failed to see
Your father's coffin pulls on me
Your eyes, a boy just turned fifteen
They fall down to the floor and bleed

Ears deafened to the hymns they sing
Your mother twists her wedding ring
You're so far away you're smiling
As if it hadn't changed a thing

But then your vision comes back clear
And you are standing lonely here
Remaining so for six more years
Heart awash in unshed tears

Until the dam is broken down
And rages six feet underground
You're left for dead and hollowed out
A tin man standing empty now

But my dear, I too know death
I've clutched the blood unto my chest
And willed it life with every breath
I cursed whomever called me blessed

Yet for the one that I love best
To give you life, I give you this:
My heart beats inside your breast
So keep your eyes on me, and rest.

life as a house

So I've been stricken with the plague. Acute tendinitis in my right wrist, so my hand of choice is currently wrapped up in a brace. The restriction of movement is even more annoying than I thought it would be. Also, I stepped on glass Thursday night so I've got a big ol' gash on my left foot that I got to walk around on all yesterday and again today. And some kind of weird hive/welt/rash on my neck that itches and burns whenever my bloody lanyard is around my neck. Which is whenever I am at work.

Worked a double yesterday. Made a hundred dollars =/ My feet still hurt. Tonight is going to be a fucking zoo though on account of Jackson State homecoming. Even worse than yesterday. Lots of impossible to please young bastards that think a good tip is a dollar per person. I for one am not looking forward to busting ass for fifty bucks. Maybe I should call in and say my ass got attacked by the birds and the rest of my body is continuing to deteriorate. Umph.

I'm so goddamn bored around here. All I talk about is work so lemme see if anything interesting happened, if not to me, then at least in my general vicinity. Hmm...Melissa came back to Logan's, then quit again. Kid had surgery on his ass, but the pain pills they gave him are nada mucho. Will is advertising for the business at a car show today.

Nothing at all has happened to me lately. My life is so incredibly boring. I need more friends.

so here's a non-emo post.

got kicked out of my house the other day. wandered in a few days later and it was like nothing ever happened.

i have a cold sore and it's really pissing me off.

having a caribou lou party at my place tuesday or wednesday night. if you're reading this then you're invited. i'm totally serious. 151 rum, pineapple juice and malibu caribou baby. and much, much more. be there, or suck.

i think i might actually like a guy. what the fuck is that about. that never happens to me. usually a prick convinces me to date him and i fall in love with no intermittent 'like' stage. but yea. probably not happening anyway.

what do you do when you have nothing to live for?

do you just keep drudging through your empty and colorless life hoping that a purpose will appear and find you?

what do you do when you live for love and have none?

not for any person or any thing?

when you are utterly and entirely empty?

do you give up?

do you die?

is it really life if it has no meaning?

am i already dead?

narcissistic asshole

You ruined my life, you hateful, lying, despicable old man.

smoke

The stage is dark and empty. Jeremy, Rebecca, and Will stand in a line upstage of Bernard and Ann-Marie, with even spaces between them of about an arm�s length. Jeremy is at stage right, Rebecca in the center, and Will at stage left. Rebecca and Will are holding hands with arms spread slightly to accommodate the space. Bernard and Ann-Marie stand downstage of the others, next to one another, but not directly in front of the other characters so that each character can be clearly seen by the audience. Both of them keep their faces toward the back wall of the theater. None of the characters look directly at each other or the audience when speaking, and should act as though each line is internal, with minimal to no movement. A spotlight is shone and left on each character upon speaking, dimming when the line is finished but left on.

Rebecca (turning head to Will, but looking down toward the floor rather than at his face): I love you.

Will (turning head to Rebecca, also looking down): I love you.

Jeremy (looking toward Ann-Marie): I am not in love with you. But I do love you.

There is a pause. When Ann-Marie begins to speak, the spotlight on her is dim, and builds to the same intensity as the others only when she delivers her final line in the play. She alone is permitted to look at the audience when speaking.

Ann-Marie (to the audience): I used to rub salt in my wounds. I remember watching straight and stone faced as the knife would saw through my skin. Once was never enough. It had to be done hard, and back and forth, and again and again and again until the pain would finally roll in, sharp as dawn air, and the blood would leak out with each little drip drip drip until it cooled and hardened like magma. Then I would spit in my hand and pour salt into my palm until I made a filthy paste that burned even my unblemished skin, which I then took and scrubbed my cuts and seared myself like fire. The smoke was invisible, but I could feel it rising from the raging fire on my arms that stabbed and hurt and healed. I felt like I was letting the devil out. It�s all we ever wanted, just to let the devil out. The devil that burns our hearts up with pain and rage and desire. Let the smoke out. Breathe in. Breathe out. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, and the smoke, it overtakes me.

Another pause.

Bernard (facing the back wall and tilting his head slightly upwards): Can you love me?

The spotlights should now be shone with equal intensity on every character and then begin to fade a few moments after Ann-Marie speaks. The curtain is to be drawn and closed at the same time as the theater is finally left in darkness.

Ann-Marie: Do you love me?

my life

so this is my life as of now.

i work at logan's. mornings and whenever i feel like working a double. currently work is all that i do.

my roommate went psycho on me saturday morning after a long night of partying so i had to move back in with my parents. i need a new roommate and i'd prefer someone i knew. nick introduced me a while back to this girl named christina who had some roommate issues. she works at sal and mookie's and has really curly hair. i asked him to get ahold of her for me but i haven't been able to get that contact yet.

i need a new apartment.

my psycho ex roommate/friend has been telling lies about me to everyone that we know. so the kid and will and melissa may or may not think i'm crazy. but i'm trying to convince them that it is in fact he who is crazy. mr. psycho also says i made up the whole thing as some twisted way of getting back with the kid. but that would be ridiculous and counterproductive. if you know the person to whom i am referring, i warn you now to stay far far away.

living with my parents again sucks. but i don't think i can afford a new place on my own. if you're reading this and you need a new place to live holler at me.

i owe everyone money.

i need a slutty halloween costume.

i'm bored.

i watch too much espn.

mainly though, i just want to have a new apartment...

a lack of color

Everything that I used to do, to be, I now go through without feeling. The drugs, the drinks, the sex. Even the music. Go to work. Go home. Sleep. And everything I see, everything I do, I look upon with a gray sadness and know to myself, no, I do not love you. My dearest friends, my family, my life...no, I do not love you...I do not love you...I do not love you...

I look at my life and I pity myself. You drunk, you drug-addled whore. You brokenhearted wretch. You miserable fool. And for what, for what? What did I do to cause my life to be so meaningless? So lacking in anything resembling love or joy that its only worth is being worthless? Love is happiness, love is beauty, love is the most magnificent of the illusions. But pain is the truth. And I...I seem to exist solely for the purpose of drawing in and breathing out the truth. I am so unhappy, and will forever be this way, because I insist upon living and demanding and drawing out the truth. No, I do not love you. I do not love you. I do not love you. The only truth that there is.

And so I sit here and I pull my necklace and I pull my hair and I bite my fingers and I scratch my hands and I cut my arms. If you rub scrub salt over blood it bubbles a little bit. Did you know that? Did you know that you can pull five hairs at a time out of your head and won't feel any pain? Did you know that you can gnaw the skin off your fingers without feeling anything? When I was little I used to take needles and jab them through the thick-skinned parts of my hands to scare my friends. It doesn't hurt. But everything else does.

All of the questions I have ever asked have been answered, and answered truthfully. I do not love you. I do not love you. But the one question, the one that matters, the one that drives at me and bites me and burns me and plagues me, the most important question...why is it like this?

I don't know.

I love nothing anymore. I will never fall in love again.

And it makes me sad, to know that things must always be this way. To know that my life will forever be gray. Colorless. To know that I only exist in the negative space.

Without love, nothing else remains.

I do not love you.

Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.

sadnesses

These things make me sad.


The sadness of being drunk.
The sadness of being sober.
The sadness of not feeling sad.
The sadness of sex.
The sadness of knowing the truth.
The sadness of believing a lie.
The sadness of pride.
The sadness of humiliation.
The sadness of feeling righteous.
The sadness of being depraved.
The sadness of work.
The sadness of passion.
The sadness of being passionless.
Gray sadness.
Anger sadness.
The sadness of knowing the future.
The sadness of knowing the past.
The sadness of remembering.
Friendship sadness.
The sadness of being alone.
The sadness of being surrounded.
The sadness of being lonely.
The sadness of beauty.
The sadness of unbeauty.
The sadness of being lovely.
The sadness of being unlovely.
The sadness of music.
The sadness of sleep.
The sadness of being awake.
Dream sadness.
The sadness of not being in love.
The sadness of being in love.
The sadness of loving nothing.
The sadness of loving everything.

where the heart is

let me tell you about a place called home.

home is the only place in the world where you can be without having to be anything at all. home is the place where you are loved and can have your love accepted in return. home is the place where you belong. home is a safe place. home is where you go when you have nowhere else to go. home is where you are wanted. home is where you feel whole. home is beautiful and lovely and completely imaginary. home is where the heart is. where the heart belongs. there is no place like home. there is no place like home. because home does not exist. home is a fantasy.

i sometimes think i have finally found a home, somewhere i belong, somewhere that won't cause me pain. i am so happy when i am there. i start to grow roots again. i start to believe in hope again. but then i am dug up, and uprooted, and thrown away, and it is always the same every single time. i am in so much pain i can't even begin to describe it. i can't even fathom it myself. even my broken hand can't distract me from it. to have to hear, over and over and over again, "i do not want you here. why won't you leave?" from the mouths of the place i once thought of as home, from the place where i was happy. to know that once again i am rootless, drifting aimlessly with nowhere to go. to know that i truly belong nowhere on this earth. i do not want you here. we do not want you here. a lost sheep, a kicked dog. i am more animal than man. the pain is more than i can bear. to be left with nothing yet again. to have my things packed for me yet again and told to leave the one place i finally thought i had found to belong. it is true. i don't belong here. i am always searching, searching for someplace to fill up the aching pit that eats away at my ever-shrinking heart, somewhere i belong, but always my searches are fruitless or the fruit they yield is poisoned. i do not know where my heart is. it is at home and home is lost to me forever. they do not want me here. and it is becoming again that i do not want to be here. i do not belong here. i do not belong anywhere. there so no such thing as a home for me to return to when everything goes wrong. i have no home. i do not belong. i do not fit anywhere on this planet. always searching and reaping nothing but pain again and again. i do not want you here. i do not want you. i do not want you.

stray dog, starving mongrel. feeding out of garbage cans to gain some kind of sustenance to last the day. eating whatever pill comes across my path to last the day. anything, anything at all as long as the pain will go away for enough time that i can fantasize being at home. that i can pretend i belong. that i can believe in the illusion of happiness. none of it is real. it will never be real to me. you do not want me. i do not want me. i belong nowhere and there is nothing i can do. broken hand, broken heart, broken dream. dream of being alive. i do not dream anymore. i do not see signs. i have nothing to make me believe that there is any reason to hope. home was all i wanted but now i understand it will never exist for me. you do not want me here. you do not want me. i do not belong. i am so tired of searching.

got my heart broken again. he dumped me and packed my shit. why does it always have to happen this way

---

I wrote this a month ago. And it's still god damn right

Never go searching for something better, because there is nothing out there. Nothing will ever make you any happier than you already are. Nobody loves you any more than you think they do. Plenty of them love you less. Everything is less than you hoped and exactly what you expected. Don't go through life thinking someone is going to save you. There aren't angels out there anymore. Knock and it shall not be opened unto you. Allelu, allelua.

unlovely

“You don’t care. You don’t love me anyway.”
“I do love you. I’m not in love with you, but I do love you, as a friend. You are a good friend. So you can’t say you’re unloveable because I do love you. I’m just not in love with you.”
“But it isn’t the same. Don’t you understand? Unlovely, and unbeautiful.”


So we sit in silence and I think of all the things you have said, the way you turn away from me in your frustration, the way you told me that if you won the lotto you’d go back and ask her to marry you, the way I told you I wouldn’t be at your wedding to another girl, and then regretted it when you turned your back to me again. You wonder why I am unlovely? Look at the way I love. It is an angry love, a love crawling and struggling and raging like a beast inside my chest, and it is the sadness of love without release that I cannot tell you, that I can never tell you, because I forced you to admit that you didn’t love me back. Because I cannot be happy and honest at the same time. Why couldn’t I have stayed silent, and nourished myself on the fantasy? Instead now I starve on the cold and rocky truth. I cannot seem to allow anything to be imaginary. I had to make you tell me that you don’t love me, and then ask you who you do love. I had to make it so that all the times you snuck the words in and stuck your tongue out at me mean nothing. I had to make it so that I could no longer pretend that you really did love me, that it was only a secret, that you couldn’t reveal it in any other way but to stick out your tongue or carelessly say “Love you,” as you’re closing the door to my car and I cannot respond.


So because I know for certain that you don’t love me, the pain that has been hiding now becomes too close and too strong to bear. The joy and laughter I have allowed myself during the charade now subsides to the tears and fury of the truth. You say, “I will still talk to you, and care about you. I do care about you.” But you don’t see that it is sadder that way, that you cannot build up another façade once you have broken the first and last one down and expect it to beautifully deceive the way it once did. I know you do not love me, and that that is the truth, and that any other lie to be given in place of the pain is just a lie, and that the fantasy will not bring me so much happiness anymore because I know in my mind and my heart the truth of my unloveliness and your unloving.


So when I feel the pain well up and swell inside my throat and stop my breath and burn my insides, I turn to you, and touch you, and remind myself that the fantasy can last as long as I am still here with you, and as long as you do not yet want to leave me behind. I touch your face and your belly and you begin to stir, and I see myself in the reflecting pool of your eyes, see myself as I will be, see myself as I will be if I hold on to this not-love, see myself crying as you walk up the aisle and out the door. See myself as I am, unlovely, and see things as they are, unbeautiful. So I touch you, and I think and I say, “Fuck me,” so that I can forget that you do not love me, “and then fuck me again,” so that I can pretend that everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.


“Who do you miss more than anyone else in the world?”
“My sister.”


And you don’t understand that I love you the more for it, that I love you because you love other people, so I suck in my smoke and my tears and touch you again and say again fuck me, and when your arms wrap around me and you tug at my hair like a dog and you cry softly in the darkness I can pretend that yes, those cries are for me, yes, it is because you love me, and not just what I give to you, yes, I do believe in hope, yes, yes, yes…


And when you ask me, exhausted, quiet, “Can we sleep like this?” it breaks me to have to get up and leave because I cannot sleep, and you crawl onto the bed spread eagled and there is not enough room for me. That is the true truth, the one that is left unsaid, that cold fact that ploughs on without me like a train, that you do not love me, and never have loved me, and never will love me. That I do not believe in hope and yet cannot live without hope. That regardless of the truths that I know, I do not want to believe in them, I want to be happy even if I cannot be honest, that I do not want to leave this place, and I know that you would love me if I stayed. That leaving will not make me happy as it has never made me happy, and that I can only break so many more times before I am broken, and that I wish I could make you happy, truly happy, because that happiness would fill me more than my own not-truth not-real happiness ever could.


I only wish I were a fool, that could be deceived more easily, so that I could continue to pretend and continue to be happy and continue to not hurt, and continue, and just continue, tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Every truth I come across halts my progress, and so it becomes that I both love and loathe the truth, that it sets me free but sets me free alone, and it becomes that I understand that I will always be this way, unlovely and unbeautiful, because I know too much of the truth and the pain makes it so.


So I sit here awake and know that you are in the next room and that if I asked you would make space for me on the bed, but that is all it is, making space. I know that your best friend was wrong, and that you do not love me, and that I should never allow myself to believe that anyone loves me again, because without love there is no pain, and without pain there is no truth, so without love and pain maybe I can be not happy nor honest, but neither, neither, at the same time.

smoke

they told us a story about how they would close the bathroom doors and leave the shower on until the room was good and hot. steamy and heavy. then they would light up their joints and as they blew out the smoke it would settle around their heads, never touching the ceiling. they would sit and pass and puff and laugh and live in a cloud of smoke that never rose and seeped into their lungs with every breath and took them higher, higher, higher. the smoke that never touched the ceiling. smoke that couldn't climb the stairway to heaven, crushed as it was by vapor that they themselves had created to cage it. they lived in the smoke. it was their place. it was what they chose.

we would sit on the front porch with our fried chicken and cigarettes and smoke like chimneys, every one of us, bastard children with no place to be at four in the morning and nothing to do but light newport after newport after red, inhale and exhale, killing ourselves softly and feeling the burn we craved. it was what we chose. the smoke protected us and the smoke delivered us. for me, always so nervous, so anxious, it was hallowed: someplace i could always rest my hand, something i could always have to focus on, a small, insignificant thing to keep my attention and my sanity. it was the smoke, that choking and gray and beautiful smoke. watching it curl up and vanish after i breathed out, like seeing tiny little fractions of my soul disperse and wind around and around with every breath i took. they say one cigarette takes away five minutes of a person's life. but some of us will be dead in five minutes, and some of us choke and gnash our teeth and bleed out our lives in a seething cacophony that is only silenced when we drag in our breath and find something to shut our mouths.

to see the towers on the news after the planes crashed into them. some people swore the devil's face appeared in that smoke. they don't know that the devil has always been in the smoke, and always will be in the smoke. pass the marijuana to the left hand side. people, they make shrines and hymns and devotionals to the devil in the smoke. if you don't like my fire then don't come around. there is nothing new under the sun. the smoke has always been, and each little fracture of ourselves we breathe out comes together in the sky. clouds. we are the ones that made the devil's face appear in the towers. the devil has always been in the smoke, and the devil will always be in the smoke. we inhale god and exhale our demons. making clouds with every five minutes erased from our lives, our sacrifice, offered up to heaven. clouds. and rain will make the flowers grow.

i used to rub salt in my wounds. this is not a metaphorical statement. i remember watching straight and stone faced as the knife would saw through my skin. once was never enough. it had to be done hard, and back and forth, and again and again and again until the pain would finally roll in, sharp as dawn air, and the blood would leak out with each little drip drip drip until it cooled and hardened like magma. then i would spit in my hand and pour salt into my palm until i made a filthy paste that burned even my unblemished skin, which i then took and scrubbed my cuts and seared myself like fire. i'm gonna burn one down. the smoke was invisible, but i could feel it rising from the raging fire on my arms that stabbed and hurt and healed. i felt like i was letting the devil out. it's all we ever wanted, just to let the devil out. the devil that burns our hearts up with pain and rage and desire. let the smoke out. breathe in. breathe out.

to lie in desperation on your bed all alone at night and feel the hot tears falling thick and fast into your pillows and your hair and the miserable snot dripping onto your fingers. and let it rain. and then feeling the dark cloud roll in and overtake you, pressing into your lungs and suffocating you like black smoke. until the tears are dried up and the snot turns to dust and the despair is soft and cold and quiet like a tomb. was this really what we chose? this is our place. locked up in a dank dark room with the smoke floating around our heads, never escaping. breathe in and give up. the devil has always been in the smoke, and the devil will always be in the smoke.

we sinners, we always need to smoke after sex. and after we eat, and when we drive. we are guilty of being alive. cutting and cutting by five minutes each time, but we will live forever because we make the flowers grow. the lord giveth and the lord taketh away, and the smoke, it overtakes me.

So an update...got the new car today. It's pretty cool. Been workin a bit lately, got a super busy week comin up--Wednesday's my only day off till the 26th.

On the weight loss front, down to 120 now. The not eating diet really works, I highly recommend it to those seeking a fast and effective solution. Just get too busy and forget to eat anything for a few days until you pass out on your friend's kitchen floor. Then consume some chips to revive yourself and repeat!

Squee...my life is so goddamn unimportant.

I JUST GOT A BRAND SPANKING NEW CAR!!!!!!!!!!!11one

crank dat spiderman

So I just got back from the most bizarre day at work evAR.

Pretty much everything that could have gone wrong did--the computers went completely down so we had to figure out bills using whatever calculator we had available. I was on my own on drive through (an institution created by satan) so I used my phone. And then we ran out of pretty much everything that people ordered. We made it through the rain though.

AP scores came back...5 in English. Huzzah. I still felt awful about that exam though, maybe it was just super hard and the national scores were low that they graded it on a curve or something.

Saw Harry Potter Tuesday night, it was pretty cool. I still think that mirror thing is going to be important though and they're basically screwed since they left it out.

Saving up some money, still have lots of things to buy.

Blah blah blah I have nothing important to say.

fuck fuck fuck

wishlist time!!

It is coming around to birthday time, so I have assembled a crack team of relatively inexpensive items that might be considered for the gift-buying of you fine people, if you want to get me anything. And here it is:



Just clicky the button to be whisked away to my amazon list!

And any one of these tees in a size small would do just fine as well:

http://www.threadless.com/product/449/Chinese_Peaches
http://www.threadless.com/product/866/Adorable_Disaster
http://www.threadless.com/product/758/Hrududu_The_New_Guy
http://www.snorgtees.com/ushistorycheattshirt-p-361.html

I don't really ask for presents on holidays, but a few people have requested I share my desires and so here they are. ¡Pásatelo bien!

hey there delilah

I'm listening to Hey There Delilah

I wish Delilah was real.

Apparently I am getting a job at Fresh Market, so I don't even have to turn in the application for Sal & Mookie's! Yay.

Second Installment of Random Thoughts

It is currently 4:46 am and of course I can't sleep, so I am updating this blog.

I had my hair done a few days ago, and it is fabulous. A little bit of red, a little bit of cocoa, and a splash of sunny blonde. Y perfección.

My birthday/eye surgery is now a mere two weeks away, so I'll probably be assembling some kind of wish list soon. My god am I looking forward to the day I can snap these specs in half and run naked through the fields. Being as LASIK surgery removes some corneal tissue and all shame. Wait...I never had any shame anyway. Oh wells.

I have deleted somewhere around 100 photos of myself on facebook, mainly because I trashed the ones that featured my ex in a Sex & the City-esque clean sweep. I don't need that mess around me these days (seriously, eurgh), and I should have done this much earlier, but kinda forgot about it until I actually went through and discovered that *GASP* the pictures didn't vanish when they should have eight months ago! Who'da thunk that pictures have no kind of initiative. I need to get more proactive technology.

Soon it will be time to go computer shopping, which for me means finding the place with the best deal on a Macbook, since I have already cast my cards for one. I will be making a number of pricey purchases in a closely clustered period of time, because within the next month or so not only will I be buying the computer, but the BRAND SPANKING NEW AUTOMOBILE and my LASER EYE SURGERY as well.

As far as the car goes, I have my heart set on getting a manual. I know, I've driven two automatic cars in the past three years, but I think now the time is ripe for a stickshift. New Dave tried to teach me how the drive one the other night, and I have the theory down like a clown, but I need a teensy bit more practice than just driving to the Kangaroo and back (a five minute journey). I know I can do it (I know some real dumbfucks who drive stick, how hard can it be), but it will take more practice than I have been getting and I don't want to have to buy an automatic just because I couldn't find the time to practice driving stick. So, if you, reader, are the proud owner of a manual transmission vehicle, hook me up with some time in the driver's seat. I am 100% serious on this.

Been slacking on the workout regimen lately, and so have gained back some weight and am currently resting at an extremely unsatisfied 126. Definitely need to kick out at least fifteen pounds before summer's end, and preferably my original goal of 20. Also I need to start waking up before three pm so I can get in some good sun, as my prom tan has finally evaporated.

Blah blah blah. Your mom goes to college.

So I have been on the warpath for a job lately, I filled out a Sal & Mookie's application but I'm waiting to see if I could get a job at Fresh Market instead before I turn it in.

What else, what else...went to Jubilee Jam last night, it was dull until LUDA came on, and then it was fucktastic. I am glad I spent the twenty bucks.

A minute ago I searched for chat things that were supposed to be similar to Habbo Hotel (a haunt I frequented about five years ago), and I ended up signing up for this "IMVU" thing that proceeded to direct me to a bunch of people's pages that I may or may not know (they grabbed them from my email address I guess), and just generally launched me into colorful, pre-teeny confusion. It is, in fact, not like Habbo Hotel at all, and I am probably going to quit using it in about five minutes. What a waste of a download.

Nothing else to report so far as I know...wait! I haven't told you all yet that I HAVE TEXTING NOW!!!! So you can text away anytime of the day or night, I don't sleep anyway. If you have AT&T/Cingular, harass me at your leisure, since I can text YOU for free!

scams

Recently I entered a poem I wrote into a few contest hoping I could win some money. I was wary of course, and entered very leery of being asked for money in any form or fashion because I knew at any moment someone could be waiting to scam me. After a while, I discovered a webpage that lists some of the most prevalent poetry writing scams on the internet and I wanted to share them because I know some of you have entered them too. Some of them I knew immediately were scams, and some I had unwittingly entered myself. I am just glad no one managed to dupe me for a dollar.

And here are our scammers, ladies and gentlemen:

Poetry.com
FamousPoets.com
aftrk.com/e/Poetry
International Society Of Poets
International Library Of Poetry
National Library Of Poetry
The Poetry Guild
National Society Of Poets
www.poetry-contest.com
Iliad Press (Cader Publishing)
The American Poets Society www.poetryamerica.com
Noble House Publishers
https://www.noblehousepublishers.co.uk
Publishers Clearing House
Water Mark Press
The Poem Place
Hollywood's Famous Poets Society
Pen Pushers Publications
Poets' Guild

If you have entered any of these online contests and are asked for money to purchase a book or for any reason, DO NOT PAY. The letter you got saying "you are a semifinalist" might have felt good at the time, but a monkey naming himself "Hugh G. Reckshun" and titling his poem "Mike Ockenballz" would get the same letter. They tell everyone who enters that they are a winner...and then put their palms out. But don't be fooled.

excitement

Well I checked the scale today, and I am excited to say I am down to 122! That's an eight pound loss from the end of May. So hurrah for me, and only ten more to go!

What else, what else...

I am about to go to the gym again. Somehow going to the gym changed from being a harassing chore into something I look forward to, which is a definite improvement. I don't know what came over me but it's sure good. Cause I plan on being a hard-bodied fox before the summer ends. Laugh if you like. I would laugh too I guess.

We are out of dog food, oh noes!

Oh yea, Jonny's twin Karen is getting married, she says they are thinking of sometime in spring '08. That will be a fun wedding to go to. I want a spring wedding too. So now it looks like Jonny is about to be the only one not married off.

La la la...played the Sims 2 last night. It seems suspiciously similar to the Sims 1.

Nothing else to say right now.

So I just got home from the gym. That was my first workout in quite a while. I did most of the machines that concentrated on the ab/buttock area, and then spent about an hour on the treadmill and exercise bike. I had a heart rate of 191 at the highest point I think. Technically I think that means I should have had a heart attack, since that rate wasn't even on the little chart of heart rates they had on the machine, but I'm still here!

I've been eating good too, tonight's dinner is an apple and some caesar salad. Yummy. If things continue, then one day I will be a superhero! Hurrah!

So I am sitting at Nick's house now, I was recently enlisted in the Army Teh Dustbunnies to clean his room. We didn't make much headway and had to make a hasty retreat but there you are. Supposedly we are going to the gym in a minute if Nick can find clothes suitable for gymmin'.

LIBEL!

I have begun a diet (again). hopefully that will last because the extra tire is getting to be a bit cumbersome--I don't want to end up looking like some other chicks I know. This morning I had chicken for breakfast.

I need to remember to sign up for another elective for this semester so I can drop Psychology. I just keep forgetting or putting it off. No good.

This water bottle sucks.

Well I am going gymmin' now, more updates later. Nick has something to say now:

"I went outside half naked expecting a few cleaning ladies. I was greeted by a fucking church group. Woe is my white ass."

First installment of random thoughts

This new blogspot thing is a little bit more confusing than say, livejournal or xanga. I can't figure out how to subscribe to people. Oh well, I'm kinda bright, I guess I'll see how it works eventually.

Soooo...a real post...let's see, what's been going on in my life. I graduated like a week and a half ago, which was good I guess, and I ended up having like 32 credits or some obscene number like that. You see, St. Joe makes (made!! made me take, cause it's over now!! woo!) me take a whole bunch of unnecessary credits, and in addition I took even more through correspondence. It was funny, because the whole year my mom was talking about how I wasn't going to graduate because I hadn't taken Personal Finance (required to get a diploma from St. Joe), while I was kickin back in the knowledge that even if St. Joe kicked me out, I still had so many credits I could have graduated on the spot at a real school. I think I had the required amount of credits to graduate according to the State in like sophomore year, except for Government, which I probably could've taken by correspondence if I really wanted to get out early. But I'm glad I got my diploma from a fancy-shmancy school I guess, even if they didn't give us very many decorations for our robes. I'm not sure of my rank, it wasn't top five, but I was eighth last year and I think Machado's godawful astronomy/aerospace class this year brought me to tenth at the end.

I wasn't supposed to be able to get my report card without turning in all of my books, but I guess the fact that Cleta retired left the English department in a tizzy, and they didn't realize which of her students had books missing. As a result, it looks like I'll be keeping my senior year English textbook for the rest of my days. Woo.

What else has been going on...let's see here...my ex called me last week and demanded (not asked) to meet with me, in order to talk to my boyfriend because currently I guess I am a blockade between the two(?). He left me a long message, saying that I could either meet him "tonight, or tomorrow;" he kept dictating what my options were and barking orders into the phone as if he had control over me the way he used to. He was talking in the same tone you use when you tell your dog to stop chewing the furniture: stern, angry, and with an absolute belief that you will be obeyed. It was kind of sickening, because I know back in the day I would have called him right when he told me to. I guess the fact that it made me kind of nauseous that I allowed someone to treat me that way means I'm not a dog anymore. So that's good.

I went to Murrah's graduation, which was good, and which went by even faster than my own. Astonishing, considering their class was over twice our size. I didn't party like a rockstar afterwards, oh well.

These poetry people keep sending me mail, because a few months ago I entered this poem in some online contests. They keep saying something about how I can buy the book they're publishing my poem in, but apparently I don't have to. I'm not sure whether it's a scam or not. I entered a few others and one of them was definitely a scam. I hope this one isn't, though, and I hope the poem wins some cash because lord knows I could use it. I doubt it will though; I entered that poem before it was properly edited, so it's kind of a crappy version.

My parents are going to a new church tomorrow, an Episcopal one, so bully for them.

I just got home from a social gathering at Emmett's, which was pretty fun except for this little drunk kid named Scott who was being a real ass. I say that because a. he was annoying and b. he kicked me in the face so I'm biased against him. I got bored after a while and left.

That's all I can think of for now, it's nice to write a long, real post for once. Now if only I knew how to get people to read it.

first post

This is my first post!