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.