Standin’ here, admirin’ this bit of snow, that bit of grass. How it came to be here without any help, its aesthetic properties all shinin’ just as beautiful as anything that lot useda spend their whole lives constructing. That lot. Ain’t much left of ‘em now.

The last ones- the stragglers- they were all afraid of this, calling it “the end”. The end. All their concrete and an’ glowing lights an’ clocks an’ fences, they disappear, and it’s the end. But I look around here, an’ it’s not the end- it’s an infinite number of beginnings. Guess it was hard to see that from inside their fences, their glass caves an’ whathaveyou. Never did see many look up before all this happened. Hell, even when they realized all their so-called “oneness” with each other was for naught, that in “the end” it was of no more use to ‘em than a shitbrick, well… Guess they wouldn’t understand how to cope with somethin’ they done labeled as “nothing”.

Most of ‘em didn’t have the stomach for it, I suppose. They just kinda festered in their anthills, dying all slowlike, as if eatin’ by a cancer. Saw it comin’ from out here- little devices in their ears all the time, eyeballs attached to glowing shitboxes, and all their obsessions with each others. That was the most peculiar thing from out here: Their constant want of each other, an’ how they’d fit one another into molds all specific-like, afraid if they didn’t it’d be all unbearable. It was almost like they were settin’ themselves up for ruin, you know, all interconnected and comingled. I suppose, it could be said, their individuality died ‘fore they did.

But a few, they stumbled out. All grey skies and dead browns from their perspective, no doubt. And of course they strapped everything they could to their backs- that level of hypocrisy wasn’t lost on me. No sir. Had a good chuckle over it.

One of ‘em stopped here. Standin’ there, on its road, looked at me with the most ghastly ordeal of pity on its face. It kept sayin’ how much it wanted to take me with it, how it wished it wouldn’t have come to this. Wanted me to go along, play whatever role it thought I should have, be comfortably normal in its eyes. What a horrid notion.

It finally left- on its little road with its little belongings, more than a little embittered, no doubt. I feigned no sign of interest, an’ that seemed to unnerve it. ‘How could anything, standing out here all alone not want to be part of my lil’ world?’ I imagined it thinkin’ all over its precious concrete.

If I had to venture a guess, I’d say sometime after they done amalgamated into one another, they decided that there was nothin’ left to want outside their own selves. That constant interaction, their facades to sustain that interaction, the rubble after those facades collapse, and the never ending cycle thereafter. All that bein’ wrapped up in each other, gets to the point where yer just terrified of the vast.

See, they can’t take standin’ in the infinite. Infinite. It’s pretty literal out here- the colors and features spread out ’round you, shoot up in the distance, maybe roll down a few places; a stand of trees here, a prairie there, a glacier here. It’s everything. But that lot, lost in their growing and glowing specks, never could see that. Was the end of ‘em.

I stand out here, lookin’ at their failing structures and dying lights, and I wonder how anything could be so terrified of this beautiful, quiet nothin’.

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Horror movies suck. If you were to take a sample of any twenty films labeling themselves as horror, chances are most of them would be awful, a handful would have some “ok” parts, and maybe one would creep you out for a moment or two.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of horror, but I firmly disagree with the current notion in popular cinema that movies need only copious amounts of gore and cheap loud-noises in the soundtrack to be frightening. Sure, these can be fun to watch (I honestly enjoyed The Hills Have Eyes remake), but scary? No. For that, they need atmosphere; they need to suck you into the reality of the film- via character, situation, use of imagery, or just sheer distress on your senses. This, is rare.

So in honor of Halloween, I’d like to share a list of what I feel are five great films that do just that- suck you in, and have their way with your senses. Don’t get me wrong, these aren’t “classics” (we’ve all seen those)- more like films you may have missed or overlooked that, in my opinion, deliver the sort of experience worthy of the season. From bottom to top:

- Signs. I remember seeing this in a theater the first time- some run-down thing in downtown Kalispell. But from the opening music until the last scene, I was completely taken in by it. Granted, I’m somewhat of a sucker for aliens and the “spiritual” overtones were lost on me at the time (I find them mildly irritating now), but in terms of making you feel the fear of isolation with something unknown all around you, Shymalan did it brilliantly. The way the wind moves the fields when you know something is out there, the focus on hearing “them” rather than seeing anything… And in addition to that, unique characters and a fairly compelling plot. If only he could still make movies like this.

- The Descent. Cave divers run into “something” while spelunking in an unmarked cave. I wouldn’t blame anybody for skipping over this, and honestly I would’ve done the same if I hadn’t seen Dog Soldiers (Neil Marshall’s first, and fucking brilliant, B-horror film). So glad I didn’t- it eschews all horror character cliches right from the get-go (all female cast, varying ages, mostly British) and drips with atmosphere as soon as they hit the surrounding woods (if you’ve ever found yourself in the middle of a dark forest on an overcast day, this is spot-on). There’s also none of that “caves are all wide open spaces” horseshit either- this place is claustrophobic, and only gets worse the further it goes. Sadly, there’s some obligatory “loud-noise” fake-out moments, but I can forgive that. And after the way they introduce the creatures, you probably will too.

- The Strangers. Like The Descent, The Strangers seems to have been dismissed by the general public, probably on the same grounds that the basic plot isn’t terribly clever (and it’s about as “true” as Fargo). But again, it’s extremely well done. Tension built through noise and subtle imagery (sans the few moments of gore, which was fairly used), antagonists that are surprisingly creepy due to lack of identity, and one of my favorite shots ever in a horror film (spoiled on the poster, but oh well). It’s a pretty simple concept- couple terrorized by some unknown psychotics wearing masks outside their remote cabin- but again, it’s all in the way it was executed (quite well).

- Mothman Prophecies. The first time I watched this I had trouble falling asleep afterwards. I was at least 15. All horror aside (this is probably better listed as a thriller), this is still the creepiest film I’ve ever seen. The imagery is outright eerie, the ambience equally so, and combined it produces this rather (wonderfully) unnerving atmosphere. What’s really well played, however, is the Mothman itself. Sitting somewhere between a physical entity and a purely psychological issue, it never manifests in full-form at any point during the film, leaving it largely up to your imagination. If this film doesn’t get under your skin even just a little bit, we clearly don’t understand each other.

- The Blair Witch Project. This is one of the most brilliant horror films ever made, and I don’t throw statements like that around for just anything. Yes, it’s shakey; yes, the characters swear more than they use real words; and yes, it just ends. But this film asks you to suspend your disbelief in a wholly different way than normal cinema: You’re not viewing a stylized story through a wall, you watching a recording intended to be real life. If you can’t accept that, you’ll be sorely disappointed. If you can, it’s an incredibly engrossing experience. By using no-name actors and largely unscripted dialogue, there’s a sense of fluidness to the characters that feels quite real; I don’t know how many of you have ever been stuck with other people in a panic, but in my experience it’s not a time when there’s a lot of intelligent conversation. It sucks you in. And the sound… If you have headphones or surround, crank up the volume. In no other film has sound so convinced me of the images on screen- crashes in the distance, the way voices echo through trees, even just the ambience is simply spot-on to real life. And finally, there’s no shitty latex monster, no cliched figure seen at any point- everything is implied. And for those of us with vivid imaginations, that’s the greatest gift a horror feature can bestow upon us.

These are, of course, opinions- normally I wouldn’t bother pointing that out (especially here, of all places), but horror is so ridiculously polarizing and subjective that I refuse to have the tired “oh that’s not scary” discussion with anyone. You may love these, you may hate them. But at the very least, they’re worth giving a look.

Happy Halloween.

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See those leaves up there? Bein’ all golden and still under some blue sky? I do. They’re not actually there, and in fact may be some amalgamation of photos and distorted recollections, but I still see them.

Some basement underneath those leaves. School. Smells like paint. Not exactly high-art but hey, it’s the “fun” class. Walked down the street one time- mid-afternoon in September. Inane small-talk with some older kid who listened to vaguely the same sort of irate teenage-angsty metal I was just getting over. Ended up being better friends with his little brother three years later. Weird. But there we were, leaves rattling in the wind across the street while we marked up the side of a hardware store. Six years ago. Still there- ripped off Microsoft Office clipart blown-up on a wall, our names immortalized below them in what could probably be considered copyright infringement. Don’t know how many other bodies even notice it anymore, but I do. Grin and read the names every time I see ‘em.

…There’s a heat to the sun coming off the afternoon sky. It’s apparent after stepping off a bus ripe with the smell of diesel and chitlins tired from school, quiet on their way home. But I step out, onto pavement, and it’s all the same to me. Grass is still green, maybe the tree out front has lost it’s leaves already but, eh. The dogs bark. They’re retarded like that. But we love ‘em. You see ‘em? I see ‘em.

It gets colder. Golden brown lying dead on the ground, under an equally dead sky. Maybe it was growing under that weather, not thinking it was “sad” like art conditions everyone to, but grey skies and cold fall weather feel like home. Feels like waking up early enough that Dad isn’t home from walking his gun yet, playing Tribes in an excited haze all morning because I have the winning ability to wake up before my brother.

Some late evening. It’s dark out, it’s a little early for such tomfoolery but so it is. Clearly the summer is over. There’s no doubt school tomorrow. Same bodies parked in the same chairs, same actions going on on television. It’d be on late, I’d get locked off to bed and then what’s a kid to do? Radio, bitches. Wave of the future. Laying straight up, headphones on, still feeling like I’m “up” and out in the living room. Can you hear it? I still do. If you need a glimpse: Helps Both Ways. Mogwai.  Nostalgia for my American tradition from a group of Brits. Ironic.

Working evenings, you can see it dim outside. Puddles grow in the parking lot outside the florescent cart-corral, gaze out at it on my way to move small colorful objects around a large, colorful building. On some masochistic level one can enjoy it- don’t have to worry about anybody but you, the task is simple enough and… For awhile, there was that one. Didn’t think anyone could be so giddy with half a sentence, it was adorable. And innocent. Leaving early, but not before it’s dark and brisk out- football season, mind you- to find a receipt taped to my window with the proper change amount circled with entirely too many arrows on it. I still see it.

I like to believe, sometimes, that if only the geographical entities that these things occurred in were still legally “home” to me, everything would be alright. Like the other normal kids who can still “go home” in a physical sense. But those things above? They can’t be repeated. It’s hard to accept- and I still don’t half the time- but physically, home “was”.

Home is in a memory. And I can live with that, because I still see it.

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Broken. It’s that feelin’ of wellin’ up like so many irritants inside are tryin’ to rip your mouth open and scream the apocalypse. What would they scream? Hatred, death, somebody help me, a hug? Somethin’. It’s a convolution of shit that’s mostly incomprehensible and it’s easier to just sleep it off than to actually sittaown and deal with it.

I didn’t even know the dude. Really. Sure he hung out at my place, but he mostly said a lot of stupid shit for attention and all we ever did was make fun of him. He was too gooda soul to do anything but shrug it off in real life, though. Only ever saw him snap once at someone and it was rightfully so. Hard to be backwards in a backwards community, that was always a point of respect. But who am I to patronize ‘im? I didn’t even know him. Still affects me.

Somma us like to pretend we’re invincible. It’s really only ever to a point. I can watch ‘em die off in the distance all day long, but as soon as it comes within grasp, there’s a certain pressure attached to it. Can’t shrug it, can’t just say “fuck it, didn’t know him”. ‘Cause the truth is that we did know each other- hell he was aware of one of the biggest plights of my life, more so than any friend I’ve made in the last three years ever will be. But I still didn’t know him.

Existence gettin’ stamped out is no big deal in itself. Your neurons stop shootin’, the brain quits sending signals to the body, physical functions cease, you grow cold, you bloat, you decay. There is nothin’ fantastical about this. It’s the stamping out, that’s the real thing. An active memory turning into a stale re-run. That’s what gets me every time.

I still dream in Troy. It’s the most wonderful thing. It was such a vibrant, familiar part of formative life that there really is no going stale. All this death, it’s somethin’ similiar. These existences that crossed into mine- however briefly in some cases- were tied to my view of reality, and a bit of the world that was otherwise going to continue on for a long while is crumbled up, and tossed out.

This reality of mine, of yours, it’s all there is. And it exists only as long as those who partake in it stand within it as well. But one by one, it will disintegrate out of memory. And after this place is over-run by the next one, nobody will recollect it.

It’s really a bizarre concept to blame these consequences, this welling of emotion, on somebody I didn’t really “know”, but whom I knew. And it prolly wasn’t even proper to do so today. Somethin’ of a lie really.

‘Cause today was a mishmash of wrongs, not just the one. You get to a certain point- all these things you don’t wanna be doing, but that you feel you “have to” do for people you tell yourself you care about but really, you don’t. Obscure childlike crushes and high school-ish jealously? A class whose politics and idiocy has shockingly spilled over and encompassed your every free moment and you don’t even LIKE the point of it? It’s like being forced to paint a really shitty picture with half a brush.

I realized today that there’s was no why for all of this. The “how”- the too distraught with life to even speak to an old-friend I never see in person these days, the mental collapse shortly thereafter, being within five seconds of grabbing my shit and leaving town, the wasting of two hours on a beautiful afternoon doing shit for a doomed project and another four in some half-cognitive sleep-like state trying to forget the whole affair- is just foolish. I find myself in the “golden age” of my life, doing this. This.

Broken. That’s what it came down to. It wasn’t workin’, so I stopped the bleeding. Maybe there’s consequences for all this, academic/social ones for this micro-reality I call school. But maintaining sanity and peace-of-mind is larger than that, and sacrificing either for anything so unsubstantial is an utter waste of life.

Eight. Eight bits of my reality severed and tossed out with uniform speed. That’s the thing with all this death… Makes you wanna live. Sounds a little cliche, sure- but when I look ’round and see these walls, these politics, these uncaring minds…

I can’t help but wonder what I could find elsewhere.

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You may be wondering (yes you, both of you) about my definition of “rebooting” a site when I haven’t been arsed to update it in two months. So! Here’s an update on just why that is:

In the last two months, I’ve been attached to three different film projects. Given that this is what I intend to do with the rest of my life, I’m quite content to spend all my energy on such things before anything else. Those projects are:

- A web series that, I think, will be online by the end of the month. “I think” because there were apparently some legal issues with the Native population (sadly, it didn’t involve blankets) last week which forced one episode to be canceled completely. We still have two left, so, maybe I’ll be able to share that eventually. However, there’s very much a reason I refer to it as Project Clustfuck- the concept is, for lack of a better term, retarded, and three-fourths of the class cannot participate in the weekend shoots (jobs, having lives, etc) which causes all sorts of lovely scheduling and pre-production issues. But aside from that, it’s dandy.

- A documentary I wrote and directed concerning Yaak, Montana. It’s not eating my timestuffs right now, given that I’m not editing it, but it was for most of February/March. We also shot it in full-HD while it was actin’ all wintery up there, so it. Looks. Gorgeous. And I will most certainly be spamming it online when it’s done.

- A short film a friend of mine did locally. Shot on film, which is quite an adventure in backasswards technology. It has been a hilariously long weekend that ended today with our crew of about 12 crowding a sidewalk and having a gun waved around. It was fantastic.

I also pitched a senior film for next year, had it handily rejected, and have since worked the system into allowing me to do it under the guise of “independent study”. But yes- it involves monsters and people stranded in the forest after an apocalypse. Sounds like win to me.

And throw onto that a healthy dose of other classes with homework and regular exams, a job five nights a week, and you have the very reason I usually choose to collapse into a fit of House or Atlantis during my nightly hour of free time.

But there’s light at the end of the tunnel, so I believe there are actual updates coming. In the meantime, I’d like to say Happy Easter with the following trips down memory lane:

March 27th, 2005 – Happy Easter!

April 14th, 2005 – My public flogging of a mentally incapacitated commenter on the above post.

And here’s Raptor Jesus:

Good day.

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Have to go to nowhere. Why? ‘Cause it’s dark an’ I can. Specks up there in the black hangin’ above the cold air with a crescent night-light. There’s a sense of warmth right now- love, even. For anything an’ everything. Lotta people don’t get that on their own, but I’m not a lotta people. And it’s not satiated by other folk, but by an aimless wander into the dark. Me, a bright yellow strip, some post, the specks above, and a bit of gas.

Useda have to answer to somebody when I did this. Sneak it ’round, pretend I was over-worked. Nah. Maybe it began with after-hours, I dunno. Iron Creek. Freeman. Lake Creek. Home. Then it became a contemplation of her… And then just a ride into the sunset, or a dead-of-night excuse to listen to something beautiful in the middle of awe.

Some folks call it nowhere, like they’d rather be somewhere. I don’t understand that. It took a good 15 minutes, but I finally got out here to nowhere, outside lookin’ in. Golden ants. Buncha dots herded around an even bigger dot, way out here on a part of our big dot that everyone forgot. Most of ‘em down there have no desire to wander up and look down. Even fewer would be grinning like an idiot while they did it. I’m not most of ‘em, though.

Iron Creek. Freeman. Lake Creek. Home. That’s where it used to be. The specks in the sky were innumerable back there. You look at ‘em and you can’t really think of your spot in it all, just that there’s so many. So many things you haven’t explored. And it’s wonderful.

Houses, lotta them dark. A few lit, mostly dim. Families inside, prolly calmly watching somethin’ together. Seven years ago maybe- a truck, a CD of bands I’d never heard the likes of then, and the ability to use a credit card, but they’re still like mirrors, those houses. I see a kid in military fatigues hanging out in the back, standing on the wet grass looking up at the stars with some airsoft and a camera in his hands, askin’ “what’s next?” and talkin’ about life with the most unlikeliest of best friends. That’s really how I came to be out here, in nowhere.

But in the journey here, there was a road that played out like this one looks: kinda patchy and dark an’ lots of potential for a furry innocent creature to completely ruin the trip. I wasn’t looking at the sky- well, maybe at first I was, ’cause that’s where I saw it all going. Layin’ there with Of The Room and letting it wash over… But my eyes got tripped down. That’s when that loop became an after-hours release for the head. Autumn to Ashes. Nothing peaceful. Lotta people do horrible things to ‘em selves in those times, out there in the dark starin’ at the road with nothin’ for you but some headlights, and I coulda. But I didn’t. Music, it seems, was self-flagellating enough.

Sparowes. Red ones. I don’t really even care for the album but this song fits the mood. A plodding sense of wonder at 45 miles an hour, yeah. I miss her. I really do. All that miserableness passed- not as long ago as I woulda hoped and it’s still a lil’ bit of a ghost wound, but I can live with that. There’s a coupla white bags sittin’ there in the side now, but there’s still snow outside. Maybe it wasn’t dark and it was a few months earlier in the season, but insteada my sustenance for the week sittin’ there it was an adorable thing trying to get out the door with her seatbelt on. Mosta those memories- the stalkin’, the crack-addled convos, the floor sittin’- get overshadowed by the latter halfa the road, but they’re still there. Thankfully.

It got past all that eventually, drivin’ about in the dark. Or maybe it never really changed and I just got used to it, saw the beauty in solitude. Iron Creek. Freeman. Lake Creek. Home. There’s no golden ant-farm out in the distance, no endless valley before you; just trees, imposing mountains- the occasional rabbit with down syndrome- and a few random dark residents (save that crazy big property at the bottom of Freeman and everyone’s favorite Rankin plot). I’m not saying what it is now is bad, just that the old road felt more welcoming, like a piece of family. You know where you can and can’t go, what has guns and what’s an empty frame built by rural whores, and so on. It’s like sittin’ in the dark after the shows over and starin’ at the last coupla burning embers in the fire at the side of the living room. You’re never lost there.

It all starts to look the same when the geography is made of vanilla. I certainly wasn’t trying, but I got lost. Gigglin’ at it. Like I said, most people wanna be “somewhere”, but I’m content to explore nowhere. I don’t recognize these hills, this pavement or these turns an’ it’s a little unnerving since I wasn’t trying to get here, but nothin’ to get desperate over. Happenstances like this are worth pursuing, and maybe my greatest fault is turnin’ around like so. Used to do that outta fear, but tonight… Nah. A grinning nod. I’ll come back, ’cause I don’t know the whole path, maybe never will, but one night I’ll take it as far as possible just ’cause I can. But I got things to contemplate, and a monster-high to work off. Next time, lad.

I still revisit the old roads, wander down ‘em and try to see ‘em anew. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Mostly an excercise in nostalgia, which can be maddeningly sad. I ‘member drivin’ up that driveway to hang out in a pack-rat living room, ‘member when that kid lived in their trailer closer to the road with a batshit crazy sister, ‘member sleddin’ down that hill with a formerly straight-A and sober friend, ‘member the jaw-droppingly gorgeous (older) girl that lived down that hill an’ sat quietly on the bus for years. Strange is wishing these things would go on, stay there and never bugger off into the recesses of my mind. But what’s life if it just stays the same? Would these memories mean anythin’ without time and distance between them and I?

So I turns around. Steps with Christmas as a Christmas gift bangs outta the speakers like it did after Dead Winter day and a few days before the first of many disappointing run-ins with a certain midget. But I’ve had my turn of grinnin’ like a kid at the moon and stars with Laura from the speakers, Sparowes, Esmerine. I coulda kept goin’- maybe I should have (and I certainly wish I had now, but that’s the come-down talkin’ I think)- but I’d had my share and I wasn’t feelin’ greedy. I’ll explore that road in good time. I got the sense that there’s plenty left.

I derive inspiration from this. Don’t needa companion for it- another presence and especially a talking one would ruin it. As it is, the only ruiner is that out here- next to a big golden ant-farm- you can’t stop an’ chill, look up at the skies like that kid in the fatigues in his backyard, ’cause somebody will bother you with misguided philanthropy. Yeah, I’m fine, no, I don’t need assistance; get back in your 4×4 diesel and keep ignorin’ those stars up there in the cold night sky, those things that make some-a us understand how beautifully small we are and how wonderfully long the road out ahead is.

…You know, I useda sit here like this, in the glow with them stereo-phones playin’ something calming, talkin’ into this box with inspiration for revolution and ire, or just contemplation, like here an’ now. It’s a wonderful return to a road I kinda forget sometimes- one that has all sortsa off-ramps to other ones. One of those ramps was a handful of poor words that I stomped into a retreat, then a few months later those words weren’t so poor, an’ I started to listen to ‘em. Already talked about that road, though.

Thing is, all of ‘em are intertwined like that. Lotta folks call it nowhere out here, above the dots and in the black, lookin’ backwards and upwards all at once. But I can’t help smilin’ at all this. It’s somewhere to me.

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I said I was actually going to post. Hah.

The “about” page has been updated with more relevant details, so now it reads like a mini-biography of this place. Self-indulgence- and how.

More posts are comin’.

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McCain supporters:

Scientology supporters:

Xenu would totally vote McCain.

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Trampolines are a subtle way for parents to try and kill their children. “He accidentally launched off the side and compressed his spine” is easier to deal with than “I accidentally threw the little shit off the roof” I guess. But somehow, almost invariably, the kids with trampolines were the ones you wanted to hang out with as a wee tot.

Before living in Troy, one of my best friends in New Meadows had an enormous rectangular one (in addition to a SNES and an RV that we used as a fort- fuck, that kid was awesome), and it was always a matter of begging my mom to be able to play on it. As long as somebody was watching. Not that we needed supervision- Christ, I was five, maybe six years old. Practically an adult. So we’d bounce up and down, getting ridiculously high (stop giggling), and accidentally steal each others’ bounces. On a side note, I always found that damned terrifying- here you are, being innocently thrown up and down on this rubbery material, you land, and then fucking LAUNCH high enough to see your mom in your house five miles away yelling “you’ll break your legs on the way down!”. Here I am, 21 years old, and I still don’t understand the physics of that. Probably why I’m a film major.

Anyways, despite the fact that I loved hanging out with that kid, that trampoline was a big deal in itself when ever I went over to his house. So when we moved to Troy, I gravitated towards a neighbor who had all of the same cool shit.

I remember the first time I saw the Ramondellis- 250 Hummingbird Lane was a freshly tree-decapitated plot of dirt with a massive hole in the center. They (I’m not sure who “they” were, only that in later years it became obvious that “they” suck at building basements) were just starting to do the concrete for the basement, and I was standing in the backyard (though it was still just a bunch of entertainingly malleable dirt/clay). It was cloudy I think. Anyways, from up the back hill come these two unfamiliar big kids that my brother apparently knew, but I didn’t. Jeni and Griffin. They had left Shan below (typical game of “let’s see if we can get rid of the little one”), and a few minutes later he appeared.

Shan was a douche. I like him fine now, but not everybody is a little ball of sunshine as a child (myself obviously included). But we were neighbors and I was new, so a friendship was “encouraged” (after all, the only other person my age in the neighborhood was Jordan, and wimmins were gross). And it was ok, because he had cool stuff like a console and, yep, a motherfucking trampoline.

So we hung out occasionally. That’s how I came to know Rich, as “Shan’s dad”. A large man (at least when you’re seven years old), a scary man (when he yelled at Shan), and a man with a hammock.

Trampolines. One summer day we were bouncing- typical day really (if only fucking around on a trampoline were a common activity for adults). Something happened that caused me to swear. Like most kids by the age of six, I had a full vocabulary of swear words (as much as parents will try to pretend it’s not possible, sorry, we were all swearing at recess by kindergarten) so it wasn’t a huge shock to Shan or myself. But just to be a dick, as his dad walked by, this happened:

“Oh and Dad, Chris is swearing.”
Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no, he’s gonna tell my mom.
There’s a fretted brow and look of dismay.
Rich: “How old are you Chris?”
“…10”.
He shook head, then went back inside.
No parents were informed.

I figured he was an alright dad at this point.

Flash forward to Junior High: One of those bullshit days where we don’t get P.E. and are forced into Health stuff in the library (Health: where, prior to broadband, all adolescents got exposed to childbirth, successfully killing masturbatory needs for a week). We walked out of the doors by the library- you know, the ones that take you through the last little vestiges of Jr. High lockers, the half lockers stacked on top of each other where those unfortunate souls with last names at the end of the alphabet are relegated to. Nowhere near as cool as a locker in the hallway.

Anyways, it’s myself and Matt Etienne. He’s on about something, I forget what, and I probably wasn’t paying attention anyways. Mr. Ramondelli was though:

“You talking to yourself Matt?”
I snicker.
Matt sputters.
“Hey you know what Matt, that’s ok. You know, some of the best conversations you’ll ever have in life will be with yourself.”

That quote has stuck with me as clearly as the day he said it (at least six years ago). It was just… True. Even before he said it and certainly to this day, I’ve always been able to figure things out better (or just amuse myself) via self-discussion. I guess it was just refreshing to hear an adult say that.

So what’s the point of all these trampolines and swearing and schizophrenia-in-denial anecdotes? Childhood. Growing up. Troy, MT. These are the things that Mr. Ramondelli has been and always will be inextricably linked to for me and, I believe, for most of the kids that grew up with me.

Living in a town of one thousand people means that you see the same faces almost daily for the duration of your stay there. For me, Mr. Ramondelli was “there” for 13 years of my life. Around the neighborhood, at school, at the store where I worked- and the fact that he no longer is, well, it could be sad and I’m sure it is for a lot of people. But for me… It serves as a catalyst to all sorts of great memories I hadn’t thought about in years: Line-driving a softball at him in P.E. and getting that “holy shit” look in return, busting out the scoreboard with a kickball and wondering if he was gonna flog me, watching him try to deal with Kenny (“my dog eats popcorn”, “…That’s great Kenny”), having to do those hilariously-bad plays in World History (solely for his amusement, I’m convinced), his curiously wandering into Mr. Jones’s class when he was bored across the hall, and just that enthusiastic voice that no one who ever hears it will be able to forget.

Mr. Ramondelli.
Yeah.
The next generation of Troy kids will be missing out.

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78 posts. 432 comments. Barely three years.

Way back in August 2004, I made the first post for this site, and somewhere between the infamous “Suicide” rant garnering the attention of Jr. High kids, the eulogy for Eric Groff, and the lambasting of Troy’s then-Principal Rodney Smith, I carved out something of an identity for myself. Teachers told me how much they enjoyed my writing, local police spied on my pages for fight footage, a meeting was held among Troy High School’s staff to discuss shutting me down (my favorite), random people from other towns knew my name, and over a dozen students at THS partook daily (willingly or not) in the flame-war-extravaganza that is the Stupid Chronicles Forum.

And then I graduated high school.

For awhile there- about a year- I honestly felt like this was a part of me that was over. I mean, it’s just angry ranting, right? And the heated, mockingly pessimistic bastard inside of me felt gone. It really did. I felt like I grew up, that the drive behind these posts was gone- because I figure the only reason I ever posted here was to vent.

But I’ve come to realize something lately:

Yes, venting is wonderful, and doing so knowing that other people are deriving joy from it is very rewarding. However, the real reason I came here… The true reason I’d kick back for several hours and pour my mind out into a Wordpress textbox?

I’m a writer.

I have a notebook somewhere with over 20 pages of fan fiction for Tribes (which was just the beginning of a single story). Handwritten. I was about twelve years old when I wrote it. Probably as many pages for the “screenplay” (more like third-person short story with camera plots) for War, and twice as many for the story forms of the sequels (not including the screenplays). Then there were short stories that three and four years later became A Vulture’s Reward and Dead Winter Day, a fully written (but only half-shot), 35 page sci-fi/horror short (Hybrid), which was then reworked into a 7 page never-shot short, intended to be entirely from the helmet camera of a soldier. Few people I know have done that much creative writing for fun at all, much less by their junior year in college. I did it before graduating high school.

This is all very horn-tootery of course, but the point is that I’ve always been a writer; I can remember as far back as second grade having mini-contests with one Jake Jones about who could write longer fiction stories (and if I ever find those, I swear I’ll post them). Long-fiction, short stories, rants, commentary, reviews, even fucking Myspace bulletins, it doesn’t matter. I enjoy doing them all in one way or another.

I recently read something as part of my fiction-filmmaking class, where the author pointed out the best way to be a writer is to, well, write. Sit your ass down at specific time every day, for a specific amount of time, and do it. Even if you get three pages of absolute garbage, it doesn’t matter.

I’ve begun doing that, because atrophy is the greatest way to kill your mind. And starting around May- upon finishing my sophomore year at MSU- I started to feel it, and it got to such ridiculous heights that I had to shit-kick myself back into gear. Sitting on Myspace and the-horrible-place-we-don’t-speak-of for embarrassing amounts of time, not being able to adequately defend my point of view in class, finding more joy in sleeping than creating? Who the fuck IS this person? Certainly not the one who wrote those 78 posts that generated over four times as many comments. Christ, that’s the sort of person I used to eat alive during high school on here.

I won’t bullshit though- that person isn’t quite here anymore. I look at the “Suicidal” post and understand that it’s quite immature (though the reactions were even more so), as was quite a lot of what I wrote here. No, the person that writes here now is in some ways (possibly) more accepting, but certainly more bitter, callous, and hopefully, more creative.

So this site is no longer about ranting- specifically, anyways. It’s about whatever spews out of my mind and into a page. Shorts, rants, reviews (there will be a form of album reviews on here for sure, more on that later), random lines, anecdotes, bits of screenplays, bile, vehemence, love, things that’ll piss you off (yes, even you), make you giggle, make you wonder what I’m smoking (Jed’s hair), whatever the hell I feel like. I’ll try to keep things entertaining, though mostly just for myself (which has been good enough for most people in the past).

It’s been just over one year since the last post on here, and I felt like today was an appropriate day to begin again. After all, as of today I’m legally an “adult”, and I enjoy the irony of rebooting a place where I refuse to act like any sort of proper, functioning member of adult society. The layout has also changed a bit (now in delicious widescreen), and there’s a few kinks still to be worked out so bear with me. Much thanks to Speedkill for the redesign- over the last few years my other interests in life have beaten the shit out of the knowledge I used to have of PHP code. Also, the forum will remain in its current state: Registration is locked to combat spambots, and until I figure out if it’s possible to upgrade the code without losing 3 years of posts, it’ll remain the way it is. I’d love to see the regulars return, but I fear Myspace has killed activity for most forums like mine.

I don’t expect the likes of an audience that this site had at its height, and if there’s only two people that bother to read it regularly, so be it (that’s all I expected when I started this place anyways). I’m here to write. Do what you will with it.

Good day.

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