Imperial and Euclid

Growing up next to Skyline Park carries with it some amount of implication. Poor, white trash, loc, Sur 13, etc… My parents moved there from Arizona in the 70’s. They struck out on their own with close to no money and a desire to escape their respective families and landed at 4380 Pala Street. A two bedroom house on the corner of Pala and Rytko with a little yard out back and the cul-de-sac five houses down. It was a bedroom community built before the reach of gangs had really taken hold of the entire southeast portion of San Diego.

By the time I was born in 1982, Lomita Park had been taken over by a set of Crips. Just to the south, Skyline Park was the front line of a turf war between another set of Crips and a bunch of local Surenos. Three miles away was the intersection of Euclid and Imperial, more commonly known as “the four corners of death”. You played in the street no later than when the streetlights came on. You never went to the park without your parents or older family member. You got used to your own backyard. Even still, the neighborhood had its influence.

Grade school was the first time you were out of the house for extended periods of time. I went to Knox Elementary. It was a stone’s throw away from and by way of “the corners”. The school was built on a slope that cut the school into two sections, the lower of which was referred to as “down field”. A block away from school was John F. Kennedy Park, home to the 47th St. Crips. “Down field” was technically their territory. The mostly abandoned apartment complex next to the gravel softball fields separated by a chain link fence with holes big enough to be gates, was their safe house. They operated with impunity for years in the early 80’s and by 1987, the first year I attended Knox, their power was not to be tested. Occasionally, the gravel field on our campus would serve as their own personal battlefield. One night, they shot a rival gang member to death outside of Mr. Dumanil’s classroom. The following Monday, we found shell casings the police didn’t bother to pick up.

By fifth grade, I was relatively immune to my surroundings. The three mile walk from my house to the liquor store at the corners where I would spend the $1.25 my parents had given me for lunch on two donuts and a small carton of milk, to school had become routine. I felt safe. After all, I was a little blonde haired, blue eyed white kid that stuck out like a sore thumb. The only people that ever spoke to me were the guys from 47th street.

Since I was seven I’d made it a point to walk out of my way, down Logan Avenue just one more block so I could walk down 47th. In those three years I’d gotten to know my friend Carl’s older brother, Jamal, pretty well. Jamal was nineteen going on thirty. He had been in and out of juvenile hall more times than I had years on this planet. He was jumped in at nine years old after which he celebrated by committing his first drive by shooting. He told me they gave him the sawed-off shotgun just so they could watch him fly backwards in the car. To their surprise, he took the recoil well and even hit what he was shooting at. Jamal always said it was a Sureno, but Carl told me it was really a Lincoln Continental parked outside of a house, which considering its size was not a true sign of impeccable marksmanship.

One morning, as I was walking down 47th to Carl’s house, I recognized a car driving by. It was an old Cadillac DeVille I’d seen every day across the street from my house on Pala. It belonged to the girlfriend of a Sureno that visited late at night. It didn’t make sense to me that he was driving down 47th until a few houses down I saw the driver step on the brakes. He slowed to a crawl and from out of the windows, three guns were drawn. Two were nickel plated revolvers and one was a black Tec-9, the latter of which I recognized because Carl had shown me Jamal’s. It was 7:10 in the morning.

Every morning I met Carl outside of his house on the corner of 47th and Ladner at 7:15 AM. I was five minutes early that morning because my parents hadn’t given me the usual $1.25. I figured I could kill time with Carl and maybe hear one of Jamal’s stories before we had to head on to school. When I saw the guns being pointed out of the windows, I looked up and saw Carl waiting on the curb with Jamal. At the time it seemed like everything had slowed down; as if when the driver of that car hit the brakes, he controlled not only the car, but time.

I watched Carl and Jamal talking for what felt like an eternity until the first bullets started hitting the cars around them. Carl rolled onto the ground behind Jamal’s Town Car. Jamal bailed the opposite way behind some other car that was getting turned into a colander. I turned my head to the DeVille. I stood wide eyed, mouth agape at what was transpiring a hundred feet from me. Meanwhile, Jamal had taken out his 9mm Beretta. My gaze turned back to him.
There he sat calmly against the side of the car as bullets flew by. Carl was in the gutter beside the car, crying for his mom. All the while, Jamal sat as if he were counting for hide and seek. Suddenly, the driver hit the gas and the tires screeched as they burned their tread into the street. Instantly, as if on cue, Jamal stood up and began firing at the car.

One of his bullets hit a back tire and the car spun out. After hitting several parked cars, the DeVille came to rest on its side about a block down from where Carl and Jamal were. I ran to them and got to Carl just as Jamal had opened the trunk of his car. I asked Carl if he was alright and he just nodded, almost as if he were in denial of what just happened. Above us, Jamal had retrieved a shotgun from his car’s trunk. He turned to me and stuck his hand out. In it was his Beretta. I stared briefly at it before Jamal opened his mouth.

“Hold this. They can’t trace a shotgun.” he said.

I barely had time to shake my head in agreement when he’d already handed the gun to me and begun walking towards the overturned Cadillac. I’d held his gun before but this time it was different. It was warm. It smelled of sulfur. It felt like power. I turned to ask Carl if he was okay when my head was whipped around by the sound of a shotgun blast.

I stared in sedate horror as Jamal emptied five shells into the car. Each blast sent a shiver through my body. Jamal never said a word. He just stood there as he calmly shot all three occupants of the car. After he was done, he turned towards us and began walking back. The gun in my hand suddenly felt heavy. It pulled my gaze down to it and mesmerized me. I wondered how such a little thing could cause what I just witnessed. Just as I felt I was starting to comprehend everything that had unfolded in the last two minutes, Jamal appeared above me and took the gun from my hand. He put it into his waistband and picked Carl up.

I stood up and looked at Jamal’s shirt. It was covered with what in my ten year old mind looked like a piece of spin art gone wrong. Its color was a velvety red and it smelled warm. Jamal knelt down and brushed some dirt off of Carl’s jacket and in a calm demeanor told us “Don’t worry about anything. Get to school and don’t say nothing about this. You understand?”

We nodded in stunned silence and turned around. I looked to Carl and he to me. We shared an understanding look and began walking to school.

Later I found out that two of the people in the car were Sur 13 Surenos. The third person was the girlfriend of one of them, the girl from across the street. Her parents were devastated. They couldn’t understand why she went out with the boy, let alone why she died. Holding that gun in my hand, I understood perfectly well.

Four years later I moved out of the neighborhood. I hadn’t seen Carl since I left Knox but I’d run into Jamal every once in a while. He started working at Huffman’s BBQ about a year after that morning on 47th street. I would pop in on the way home from school and he’d hand me a catfish sandwich and basket of fries. I guess it was his way of buying my silence. I rationalized it by thinking that they had tried to kill him first, but going home and having to look at the empty driveway across the street from my house on Pala made all of that seem moot.

A year before we moved, Jamal was killed by police as he tried to run from holding up a liquor store. He wasn’t armed and they shot him in the back six times. That night I went across the street to the house where the DeVille used to park. I didn’t knock on the door. Instead I sat on their doorstep and thought of what I would have told them.

My thoughts on 9/11

Being all the way across the country when it happened, the immediate impact of the attacks were somewhat lessoned. It hit pretty hard when it finally sank in. My sympathy went out to everyone killed immediately and wanted justice done. I watched Bush's first live speech addressing the attacks and felt like we were one country, united.

As you may know, I'm not a violent person and think war is an absolute last resort and better still, to be undertaken as retaliation and not a first strike. That said, I felt that whichever country or entity that launched, planned or funded the attacks should be punished accordingly. The majority of our country, as well as our world, were united.

Afghanistan was an obvious and quite vocal supporter of Al-Queda. the Taliban's punishment was fair. They deserved to be run out of power and prosecuted as the evil, guilty and disgustingly vile people they are. Our armed forces went in and kicked their asses. The world was behind us. They fought beside us. We were united.

Soon after though, the real agenda came to light with the run up to war in Iraq. The world looked on and pulled away as they collectively questioned our motives. All the while, Sept. 11th was used as an excuse. Worse yet, it had turned 9/11 into a buzzword. In this world of lowest common denominator, that buzzword had turned into a rallying cry. Even worse, it was co-opted as a motive by the very people that were supposed to honor it. Those opposing the planned war with Iraq were labeled unpatriotic, anti-American and worse, sympathizers. Finally, with fault squarely on the shoulders of the administration and its followers, our country was divided.

The division in us came from ignorance and a deep seeded desire to conquer. Not conquer another country, but our very own. When I say "the right" the ones I mean are the neo-conservative arm of the Republican party and their followers. Their followers, in my mind, are less culpable in the struggle for this country because of their general stupidity, but that does not excuse them. The right took 9/11 and used it as a wedge to force their point of view as the "American" one. The right chastised anyone voicing an opposing opinion. The right wrapped themselves in the American flag and used it to draw sympathy instead of inspire pride.

I wish it would never have happened. I wish our country could heal from the attacks they suffered on September 11, 2001. Healing starts with closure.

With 9/11 being used as a buzzword, motive and wedge incident by the right, it's never going to be over. That day that we all stared in disbelief and cried for others more than we ever have. As long as the right keeps using it, that day will never be over. A day that has lasted 43824 agonizing hours. A day that by all accounts, doesn't look like it will end for a long time.

When George W. Bush climbed on the graves of 2,602 people, we were united.

Looking back 5 years later, it was a sign of the division to come.

For the right, I have one simple request. Stop using 9/11. Let us heal. Let us have closure.

Let that awful, horrible day end. Please.

Fuck Libertarians

I've met with and listened to too many of those stupid fucks in the last week

Go fuck yourself with your "personal responsibility trumps government social functions".

Don't fucking sit in your middle class home with your Infiniti in the garage and say that Americans are to blame for the high gas prices because they live in the suburbs and have to drive an hour to work in the city.

Fuck you, you corn smeared asswipes. You want to know why people move out of the city? Usually either a)they can't afford one of the $500,000 high rise condos downtown with the $348 a month HOA fee or b)it's just not a safe place to raise a family.

Fuck you, you mid-range booze sipping cheesedicks. Less government regulations on corporations mean the people get fucked. Human beings have compassion. Corporations have bottom lines.

Why is it that almost every single fucking Libertarian I've met has some cash tied up in stocks or has a comfortable life with some wiggle room and maybe a jet ski on the hitch trailer 'round the side of the house?

Why is it that almost every single fucking Libertarian I've met wants to tell me that they agree with 90% of what I stand for but want 90% of what my republican counter-part wants too?

Why is it that almost every single fucking Libertarian I've met thinks that they can solve every world issue if they could just limit government to a skeleton crew but bitches when their kid can't get an appointment with a counselor at his university?

The Buck Stops Where?

Harry Truman had a motto. “The buck stops here.” It was simple, poignant and effective. Its greatest strength however, was that it was a statement of responsibility. The President of the United States was laying it on the line and proclaiming that his authority had limits and that when reached, he was ultimately accountable. His choice to drop both atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused ramifications beyond imagination. His decisions to enter the Korean War and remove Douglas MacArthur as commander of the United Nations forces when he pushed for the war to enter China as well as his advocation of the use of atomic weapons alienated some Americans and stirred up a bit of a furor. Regardless of what he did good or bad, Truman believed that his post as the executive of our country deserved both credit and fault. His idea of definitive responsibility can be summed up in one word: dignity.

Some might claim dignity was what President Clinton tore out of, stomped on and ridiculed in his eight years in office. Others might know it as the what Oliver North, President Reagan and a great deal of his cabinet pissed on and left to die during the Iran Contra affair or the plethora of equally illegal activities they indulged in. Whatever you believe it to be, its basic premise is that of decorum. It is good manners. It is modesty, etiquette and politesse. Most importantly however, it is restraint; Restraint from partaking in activities that may seem dishonest or deceitful; Restraint from self-aggrandizement; Restraint from excess.

Of late there has been a lack of dignity in our country’s politics. Naturally both sides exhibit aspects of lacking it, but one party has shown its true, bold colors. During the 2000 election cycle, you could hear it at almost every stump for then-Governor Bush. George W. Bush was going to return dignity to the White House. Without pointing fingers (usually at any rate), he and his campaigners laid the claim out that in the eight previous years, dignity was lacking in our executive’s mansion. For all the bad President Clinton may have done, his good far exceeded it. His social conscious extended not only throughout our country, but across the rest of the world as well. Where there was ethnic cleansing, he tried to stop it. Where there was poverty, he attempted to stop or limit it. While his social life may have been immoral to some, it could not be said that his social policies were in any way.

Six years later, the questions remain. What dignity was George W. Bush talking about? Was it dignity or just a prudish sense of morality that he wanted to restore? Where is the dignity that he brought back? What exactly has he done to merit the esteem bestowed upon him as a savior of it?

Since his presidency began in 2001, he has worked at going on vacation more than any other President in our country’s history and still has three years left to set an unreachable record which I have no doubt he will. He has overstepped his bounds as the President by usurping the rights delegated to the people by the Constitution with his personal authorization of illegal warrant-less wiretaps of American citizens. He flaunts his illegal activities in public and says that he will continue to partake in them. Where is his restraint? Where is his restraint from being patently dishonest and deceitful with the American public? Where is his restraint from aggrandizing himself as some sort of rescuer of values? Where is his restraint from excess?

What has he done that has been so much more dignified than his predecessor? If getting a hummer from an intern and lying about it to his wife strips any ounce of dignity from the Presidency, I can only imagine what spying on our own citizens, lying our country into a war which has killed 2,243 of our own countrymen let alone over 100,000 innocent Iraqis and then ravaging our economy to the tune of trillions of dollars in debt and entrusting a country we occupy to a convicted fraud does to it.

If anyone believed that President Clinton brought shame to the office of the President, I encourage you to look at what has been done to it since then. A crook is in office. He is a thief. He broke federal securities laws four times (that we know of) while working for Harken. He has thrashed the 4^th amendment to the United States Constitution. He lied to the American public when he went out of his way to explain that wiretaps always require a warrant while at the same time doing the opposite. He lied about the extent of the Iraqi weapons program in order to scare a country into a war in which over 100,000 Iraqi and 2,200 Americans have died. At what point do we make the statement that the blood of all those who died is on his hands? When can we say to those 2,243 families that their sons and daughters are dead because of the President’s arrogance and lies?

Most importantly, how can we explain the death of their beloved child, the child that they worked so hard to raise, took to birthday parties, to baseball practice, to the park, to school, to visit aunts and uncles, to take to the doctor when they have a high fever at 3 AM, to buy them that new toy that they wanted so badly, to take on family road trips across the country to let them see just what it is all about, to comfort and rock to sleep after waking up from a nightmare, in terms that would make it seem remotely justified?

Of all the questions to ask President Bush, one stands out as the vastest in breadth: When will you take responsibility for your actions? In his farewell address, President Truman set the standard by which all Presidents have since been measured when he said “The President--whoever he is--has to decide. He can't pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That's his job.”

Taking responsibility for your decisions is something they teach in kindergarten. Why our President does not understand that may be more indicative of his level of intelligence than anything else.

Ethical Bankruptcy

Turn back the clock a little more than 5 years ago. It’s late January of 2001. President Bush is being sworn in after the Supreme Court stepped in to void a presidential election and install a president of their choosing. The eighteen year old kid in me who just had his vote stolen from him sits in front of his television and watches in disbelief as the smug face of an ineffectual C student-come-president smirks right before taking the Oath of Office required of him. It’s a short oath, but not for lack of consequence. Its brevity speaks volumes to the inherent idea that overly verbose answers and statements tend to mislead. Simply put it is this:

"I, (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and I will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Since President Washington, every President has taken that oath. Each one save for Tyler, Pierce and Hoover who affirmed it, swore to uphold the Constitution. The Constitution is the very core of our country’s values. It is a timeline that shows our faults as well as our gains over the course of our history. From racism to sexism to limiting the possibility of creating a dictator in the office of the President, the Constitution and its amendments lays out what we stand for as a people.

With that in mind, I never once thought I’d get to see the day that a sitting President would see the possibility of being thrown in jail like a common criminal. President Bush has made that scenario possible and I must say that I am all for it. During the impeachment and subsequent acquittal (the latter a fact that all too often is omitted from conversation) of President Clinton, I was of an impressionable age but even then realized that what was going on was an ultra-partisan attack meant to create a social divide in my country. The Democrats were in the ultimate seat of power and the Republicans went on an all out smear campaign to paint the Democrats as an immoral party; one that could not rule with the values of American citizens in its sight. After Al Gore won the 2000 election by what turned out to be at the time the slimmest margin of victory ever in a Presidential race, Bush was given the Presidency by what ended up being the slimmest margin of victory in a 5-4 decision.

He had come to power claiming that he would bring dignity to the White House as if it were lacking because his predecessor had gotten a blow job from an intern and that had just never happened before. Ever. Never ever. Among his countless campaign promises that ultimately were thrown on the fire the second he entered into the White House, that of restoring dignity resonated strongest with me. This from a man who executed 152 people in his reign as governor of Texas. This from a man who referred to a member of the press who didn’t write well of him as “a major league asshole” with a smile on his face while waving to a cheering crowd. This from a man who when asked what Karla Faye Tucker would say to then-Governor Bush replied “'Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, 'don't kill me.'”

Taking the Oath of Office is a big step. Without it one cannot ascend to that post. Taking it however, is just the first step. Upholding it is the second and even more important. Just as they say keeping a secret is the biggest part of it, without respecting that oath, those who take it deserve nothing less than scorn, shame and dishonor. If a President does only one thing in office, I would hope it would be to preserve, protect and defend our Constitution.

Let me be very clear when I say this: President Bush has trampled on the Bill of Rights by shredding any meaning the 4^th amendment held for over 200 years.

By personally authorizing the warrantless wiretapping program that intercepts calls of domestic nature from American citizens, President Bush has signed his name to the commission of a crime against our country. If his need was so great, why didn’t he just propose a Constitutional amendment repealing the 4^th amendment? Why did he not go to the court created by the foreign intelligence surveillance act? After all, they had issued over 19,000 warrants while only denying 4. I’m sure they would have agreed to let him spy with a warrant had they presented their case. There are two possibilities in which I can see them not getting the warrants and while both are equally believable given the current administration’s penchant for bald faced lying. One is that who and what they were spying for was not actually a threat to the United States and might have been just another version of Nixon’s enemies list. The second and also not so unbelievable option is that they would have screwed up the presentation to the point where the court would stare, slacked jawed in shock at their ineptitude.

What’s even more frightening about the entire situation is that Bush has admitted publicly over thirty times that he broke the law. Never in my relatively short lifetime have I heard of someone proclaiming so many times as the President has in the last month that he broke the law.

In an earlier post I’d asked what would happen if President Clinton were still in power and various scenarios played out. Invariably the response would have been that the Republican held Congress would have fricasseed him on a spit on the Senate floor. Are Republicans in this country so bankrupt of ethics that they cannot admit that our President has committed a gravely serious crime? Will this country have to wait until late this year to give control of Congress back to the Democrats before impeachment hearings are brought to the House? More importantly, will President Bush resign his post due to his failure to comply with his simple 39 word oath that he took twice and his complete and utter disregard for the Constitution of the United States of America?

Whatever the answers are and whatever actions come, I know this will resonates with any American willing to step back from the situation that take a moment to grasp the President’s own thirty plus admissions of guilt. Regardless, I am a mix of dismay and elation with the thought that my President might be thrown in jail for his unethical, immoral and most importantly, illegal actions.

A Show of Hands

If you read this blog, please post a comment. I'd like to find out if there are more than three of you.

Misty water colored stuff I can't remember

People have always been angry with me when I forget things. They think I’m just being lazy. I’ll admit that to a slight degree, I am a bit lazy. I’m not however, as lazy as one would think I’d have to be to not do the things I forget. You see, my memory has always been a bad one. It’s patchy at best, completely absent at its worst.

A good example of its crappiness is when I’m leaving my house. Usually it’s in the morning, but it can be at any point throughout the day. A lot of people might spend their morning shower and breakfast thinking about what they were planning on doing later. Me, I spend it all constantly reminding myself of what I need to do before I even get out of the house.

It should be routine to everyone. Get up, shower, use soap, put clothes on. Odds are I’ll forget one of those. In my 23 years, I’ve gotten the hang of wearing clothes in public (although there have been times that I exit the house in various states of undress) and showering seems to be one of my standards. I don’t want to say that I frequently forget to use soap but it’s happened too often to say it’s extremely rare. Usually I remember as I’m toweling off and realize that my skin is not quite as fragrant as it should be after using soap. So I climb back in and do a quick lather and rinse. I do not repeat.

As I leave the house, I can tell myself remember to take the lunch I’ve prepared that morning. The same lunch I set next to my keys, wallet and phone. The problem is that even after ten minutes of telling myself over and over to remember my lunch, I can be reaching for it when I remember something else that I’d forgotten earlier in the day. I turn for a split second to do or find whatever it is and will leave the house as soon as I finish. Odds are good that I’ve also left without my lunch.

You see, it’s not because I’m lazy, it’s strictly my memory. It’s not for lack of effort, I’ve spent 45 minutes to an hour reminding myself to take my lunch and in a split second, forget it entirely.

The laziness aspect has been hit upon countless times by people around me that see me as such. Let me be clear about one thing: when it comes to cleaning, if someone suggests something to be cleaned, I’m not going to drop what I’m doing (or in some cases not doing anything; i.e. watching football, writing, etc…) and do it immediately. I’ll say I’m going to do it later, after I’m done with what I’m doing. Ultimately I don’t do it 80% of the time.

I understand why people would be upset with me over it, I really do. I just don’t think it’s fair, is all. When I originally said that I would do it later, I honestly meant to. As a matter of fact, I wanted to do it just to prove to them I would. The problem is that almost as soon as I told them that, I’d forgotten it.

When I was applying to UCLA for the film program, I did so with an email address set up specifically for the process. I checked it frequently for weeks, but then one day completely forgot which email address it was. I tried every one I could think of, but it was to no avail. Eventually I stopped even trying to log in. Months later, late at night as I was falling asleep, the address popped into my head. I jumped out of bed and signed in only to find that I had several emails from the school setting up the timeslot for my interview. One of only thirty interviews that year. Interviews where they would decide which of us would be the fifteen students accepted to the program. That’s fifteen out of over 3,500 applicants. I looked at the date of the scheduled interviews only to see that it had been the day before I figured out the email address. It had been sent over a month prior to that, and I found it nine hours too late. It’s not to say that I would have been guaranteed admission to the program, but at least I would have had a 50/50 shot at it.

Besides being born with a faulty memory I’ve had my share of medical problems. Just a few months ago, I received my 7th concussion. It could have been my 8th, but I’m not sure anymore. Regardless, it’s a lot more than doctors would like to hear, especially in a matter of seven years. Those concussions have rattled my brain around enough that I suspect they may have aided my lack of a solid memory. The physical therapist who I saw after my last one told me that he suggests that people stop receiving concussions after their second because the damage it does to the brain. When he looked through my medical records and saw how many I’d had, he joked that I should start wearing a foam padded helmet everywhere.

To a great extent, I feel like people think I’m just making up excuses for being lazy. It frustrates me more than almost anything else in this world that they don’t understand what it’s like to be plagued with this level of forgetfulness. I’m almost positive that people think less of me with each forgetful moment. Perhaps it’s just my draw in life. Maybe I’m supposed to be forgetting these things for a reason. I will say this however, had I gone to UCLA, I might have had a hell of a leg up in the industry but I wouldn’t have met the people I’ve met at UCSD. It’s a trade off that I hope pans out. Otherwise I’ll just be the forgetful old man who could have been.

Opposites Repel

Apples and oranges are the two most frequently compared opposites in literary ways, it seems. With love and hate; peace and war; and black and white thrown in the mix, opposites are useful for not only hyperbole, but many other forms of mockery. They are however, also quite appropriate it seems, in the terms of love. “Opposites attract” sang Janet Jackson while referring (I assume at any rate) to herself and her brother. Time has proven that particular theory wrong with Michael becoming more like her every second of every anesthesia filled day. But the overall principle of opposites attracting is ever present in the fairy tale love.

With the increasing (not overwhelmingly so, but still) amount of relationships starting online at places like Eharmony.com and Match.com, the theory has taken it’s broadsides. Still it has prevailed, but what is interesting is that if opposites do attract, they must for some reason. The reason I suspect, is that two opposites provide a sense of foreignness or exoticism experienced by both parties reveling in a new type of life. It could also be that one has not lived a life that the other has and they want to live it vicariously. Either way, the newness of it eventually wears off. Regardless of how one feels about it in the beginning, it will ultimately become everyday to them. This could be the source of why some relationships fail after a certain period of time. When one has experienced the life they had not previously led, they could begin to tire of it.

Without enough feeling of closeness, comfortableness or genuine emotional attachment regardless of the flaws and demands of the other party, the relationship is bound to fail. The couple may want to stay together and stick it out to see if it will pass, but it seems that is never the case. Weathering the storm can work but only if at least one of those aforementioned factors is present. Otherwise, the couple may stay together but bickering, oftentimes over petty and insignificant (at least to one party) things.

This theory is only relevant to the idea of opposites attracting. I’m not saying that every relationship built on opposites is going to degrade like above, just that normally that’s the reason they do. Relationships can be doomed from the beginning, but usually they start out with promise.

Some other relationships come from commonality. Two people share interests. They could be art; science; math; poetry; clouds; fucking, whatever. The point is that they have several things in common that spurs their attraction. Usually it starts out slowly. The couple may not be attracted to each other at first, sometimes they don’t even notice the other until weeks, months or years after they’ve met. One of them may not even notice the other has taken a liking to them until even later.

What is interesting to me though is that those kinds of relationships seem to be more grounded, more powerful. While it may not be the exotic one that the opposite couple shares, it has its own type of fascination. Two people that share common ideals, interests and tastes; that gel together and engage the other in a way more telling than the opposites do, seem to stand more of a chance.

I think, and I could be totally wrong as well as making an ass out of myself, that it is because the opposites couple is engaged by the other’s unfamiliarity and revels in the new life they are experiencing, they do not know the actual person they are with. They simply know that they are interested but must discover if they truly like the person beyond that surface level. Why the couple that is alike may work better is because they already have grown to know the person by the time they start to take a liking to them. They have already uncovered, provided the other is not hiding their true self, what kind of person they are being attracted to. This lack of shock, this lack of surprise as to what they are, may be the reason for their success. The thrill the opposites couple experiences will end at some point and they must then decide whether or not they care for this person enough to maintain a relationship.


If you think about it, it’s natural for opposites to not function together. Black cannot be white, and white cannot be black without both dissolving the other. Peace cannot itself be war just as much as war cannot exist in peace. Apples seeds are not crossbred with oranges for reasons too scientific for me to comprehend. The exceptions in the binary, mutually exclusive club are love and hate. They exist in relationships. Frequently too often for one, or both of the parties to always exude a level of frustration that causes constant friction. As present in a relationship as they may be, they only work make the relationship an unstable and frustrating one.

Transferring Lives

I just read in the Guardian, one of the many student newspapers on campus at UCSD, an article detailing the findings of a study concerning transfer students and their assimilation to the college culture. The claim was made that they could if they just tried harder. The other point they made was that transfer students have less interaction with faculty. Again, if they just tried harder, they would interact with faculty more.

Bullshit.

If a student transfers from a community college, there are several reasons for doing so. Just a few of which are these:

1. The student did not have the money to go straight to a four year university
2. The student did not have the grades to go straight to a four year university
3. The student did not plan to go to a four year university

For me it was #1. I did not plan on going to a four year university because of my financial situation. I understood my route to a real university was through the community college system. For the last two years of high school I did not participate in the usual frenzy that surrounded college applications and their eventual acceptance or denial. The joy and anguish of waiting by the mailbox for either the little envelope notifying you that your hopes had all been for not or that large one telling you that your life was starting anew, never passed over me.

For the most part, I was pretty blasé about the entire situation. It seemed, at the time, as if I had less pressure on my shoulders. Had I been given the opportunity, I like to think I would have worked my ass off, gone to college tours and applied frantically to as many universities as I could. Not having that chance however, I can’t be positive I would have. My one regret in life though, centers on that very situation.

In another life, in another place, perhaps I would have partaken in that high school experience. If my family had enough money to spend driving around to the different schools, setting up meetings with matriculation counselors and doing what generally people do in those situations. Comic and life changing hijinks may have ensued on every one of those trips, but I wouldn’t know. The thought of working so hard for great grades that would get you into the finest schools and have them pay your way sounds now like something I should have done. Instead I had decent, if not very respectable grades (somewhere in the mid3’s, perhaps 3.3 or 3.4), nothing spectacular. I wish I could go back and tell myself to quit sports at an earlier age, or at least focus more on academic endeavors instead. I regret that everyday. No, really.

Attending UCSD only seems to have solidified that regret. Day in and day out I see fresh faced freshmen as they wander around campus seemingly free from any real responsibility. Sure they attend classes and hopefully pass them, but other than that, they seem for the most part lacking in accountability. The experience to them is not centered around their classes. For them they live in dorms, have study groups, parties in their rooms. They are encouraged rather vehemently to attend on campus activities after hours. They wander the malls of a city new to them in search of what would look great in their dorm room. They are thrust into a situation knowing few people at hand and forced to make new friends, new lives. Some do not adapt as well as others and do not have that trying yet wonderful experience. But for the most part, the majority of students seem to live a life of ease. Their freshman year they are walked through school and given every opportunity to get by. Leniency is granted although it may sound as if those granting it do not wish to.

By their sophomore year, they have made friendships that will last throughout their time at school and perhaps father into life. They have chosen roommates for off-campus housing and have a social network in which they can operate, often times as if nothing has changed since the first year of being together. They are no more adult than they were just one year before, but carry with them an air of being so because they feel more at home, more prepared than those incoming freshmen whose upcoming experience they may quietly envy. Come junior year, just two years from graduation, they’ve got it together and have settled into their social groove. Sure they will continue to make friends, but not at the rate and often the profundity of which they did those first two developing years.

Maybe it was that I dated Gina when she first went off to UC Riverside that I feel stuck between the two camps of transfer students with not comprehension of real college life and those entering freshmen naïve of the world presenting itself. She lived in the dorms and I visited frequently. It turned out to be too frequent and because of that, I ended up taking what amounted to a year off of school. But the one thing it showed me was the world of possibilities afforded the new freshmen. Life in the dorms was similar to how it is portrayed in movies and television, but it has a distinct quality about it that makes it seem so much more real to you. I went up there so regularly that people at the dorms knew me. I stayed the night repeatedly, occasionally several, that it came to the point that I felt I was almost the one enrolled.

Being from San Diego, Riverside was a new town to me. It may have been only a hundred miles away, but it could have been twenty times that for all I knew. Visiting as frequently as I did gave me the chance to explore the city for what it was. Discovering places to eat around the campus, shopping in a grocery store different from the one I went to for ten years prior. These experiences all seemed so wonderful, so full of life, that I wanted so bad for it to be me living them. No matter what the activity, be it going to a movie theater, making out in the back seat of a car, stumbling into Denny’s at three in the morning, it was different from the same experiences in my hometown. Working was never something I heard of when it came to freshmen. They had their living quarters paid for, they ate at the dining hall and some had allowances given to them by their parents. Time not spent in class could be spent sleeping, relaxing and generally enjoying college life.

Her following year, she and three other people from her dorm decided to get an apartment just off campus. Being only 19 and never having moved (outside of when I was 3), moving Gina in felt as if I too were. It was as if I was suddenly living a life not my own, in a place I had never been before. But I knew that it was not mine to live. The parties thrown throughout the complex and the frat and sorority life she partook in were far from what I did when I left for my home.

There it was working part time and going to a community college. A college devoid of social life; of real human interaction. There, the friends you made were more often acquaintances you had from high school that perhaps you hadn’t befriended very well back then. There were no dorms so therefore you were not forced to make new friends. In addition to that, a good ten to twenty percent of your classmates were well into their twenties, if not older. What kind of social interaction can you have as an 18 year old with a 35 year old mother of three who immediately after class has to pick up her baby from daycare and swing by the soccer practice to coach? Student activities are laughable on most community college campuses. The fact that they try to have events is almost pathetic and I personally believe those putting them on felt the same.

The toughest part, I truly and honestly believe, was the fact that I worked over thirty hours a week in addition to school. Instead of being able to enjoy my limited college life, my time off was spent at work. The blessing in disguise of where I found employment was that great deals of my co-workers were in the same community college boat I was. We formed a fraternity of sorts, in fact we even referred to it as such, through which we would hang out and go to parties. It was however, nothing remotely like it was just a hundred miles north for Gina. She worked for a total of two weeks at Mervyn’s before quitting in order to spend more time enriching her college experience. It was not like she was spoiled, though one may say she was, but she did not have the added pressure of making ends meet.

Now that I have transferred to UCSD, I am presented with a new world all to myself. It is that world I vicariously lived just a few years ago, but it is so vastly different from what I had experienced in those formative first two years of school. The school did not seem to care about my experiences, they did not offer any support to me in the area of academia. I was expected, naturally since I had already been in college, to perform as if I had already been going to UCSD for two years. I was expected to know the campus, to know the process for everything and to generally have my wits about me. In a way, the transfer process seems to be a sink or swim trial by fire. Either you grab hold of everything and run with it as best you can, or you fall behind and are perennially screwed.

Due in part to my family’s financial situation, I have to work in addition to going to school. By work I mean work 40 hours in addition to the 35 to 45 a week I spend on school and the assignments given. When asked by a professor of mine this quarter what time outside of class would be good for me to attend a demonstration, I had to tell her that there as no time. If I was not in class, I was at work and if I was not at work, I was in class. She said she did not understand which makes me think it’s not a popular thing this 40 hour work week. Regardless, I must make ends meet and go to school. It is not a situation I enjoy or even admire, but it is my own. It is my college experience.

When I read in the newspaper that transfer students were less likely to be involved in student activities and be less engaged with the faculty, I thought to myself “no shit.” Was that really a surprise to the survey? Was it to the newspaper? Is it to anyone? They spend at least two years working at a school that offers them next to nothing in the form of social culture, only to be thrust into a situation teeming with it. They are expected to make friends with people who have more than likely formed the bulk of their clique by the time they transfer over when they have even less exposure to them than they would have two years prior. It’s not for lack of effort on our part; it’s for lack of time. With everything we have to do, we must pick and choose what we take part in, who we spend time with and what we do on campus. Add to that a lot of transfer students generally do not live close to the campus and commuting becomes an issue of time. Throw in the fact that most of them also work off campus, they probably spend as much time driving to and from school and work as they do attending class.

At least I do.

What else I do is regret every day what I had done. There are saving graces and silver linings to every situation. As much as I would like to change the situation so that at least I had the opportunity to live that prototypical college life, I can’t. I have resigned myself to that fact and will forever regret it. I will not regret my current situation however, because for the most part I am happy. To be clichéd, you have to learn from your mistakes. My atonement will be giving my kids the chance I didn’t have.

Just a few questions

What would happen if Bill Clinton brought false evidence and testimony to Congress to put our troops in harm’s way?

What would happen if Bill Clinton was in office when it came out that officials very high up in the administration had leaked the name of a covert CIA operative to discredit an editorial?

What would happen if Bill Clinton had sent Madeleine Albright to the U.N. with sketches of mobile chemical weapons plants that turned out to be patently false?

What would happen if Bill Clinton came out and attacked the Republican Party for “politicizing” a war?

What would happen if Bill Clinton had been in office when his administration pushed through billion dollar no-bid contracts to his former employers?

What would happen if Bill Clinton had gone to a congressional hearing and refused to be put under oath?

What would happen if Bill Clinton said he would only go to said hearing if he were to receive the questions they wanted to ask in advance?

What would happen if Bill Clinton had been President when it came out that the intelligence given to the Congress was hand picked for the items that best suited his goals and not included the several, and more importantly, correct dissenting opinions in an effort to show the intelligence was unilaterally thought of?

What would happen if Bill Clinton flew onto an air craft carrier to declare that major combat operations had ended in a war that by all accounts was just beginning?

What would happen if Bill Clinton gave speeches with lie after lie and continued to do so for years in spite of the fact that he was already proven wrong?

What would happen if Bill Clinton had snubbed his nose at the rest of our allies in a show of disdain and pompousness?

What would happen if Bill Clinton were the President when it came out that U.S. forces used chemical weapons on civilians?

What would happen if Bill Clinton’s administration authorized and threatened to veto laws banning torture of prisoners?

Now replace Bill Clinton with Al Gore and re-read.

Whiteness

The blue screen of death that is so identifying of Windows is one universally known. When you see it, you know your computer is fucked. Odds are, you’ll call more than a few people before you’re able to avoid getting that blue hammer slammed down on you long enough to fix the problem. The good part about it though, is that when encountered, it can be solved. The Mac users have their own variation called the pinwheel of death that I have experienced for over twenty hours in an editing booth. Unlike the blue screen of death, you actually think that if you let it go long enough it will finish what you started by clicking that damned “Print to video” option. It never finishes though, and you’re stuck starting up the ole beast again.

The blank screen of death is worse. It’s what I call the blank, white, empty screen that automatically pops up when you load Word. Or Sophocles. Or Movie Magic Screenwriter. Or Word Perfect. It’s a punch to the stomach of creativity. If you don’t plow through that first page, the expansive white that seems to grow in spite of every key stroke saps every ounce of inspiration you carry into the project. There it sits, below your flickering cursor. Ever present; never decreasing. No matter how much you write, it’s always there.

It exists between the letters. Inside the loops of o’s and the domes of e’s. It’s above your sentences, below them, in the margins. It surrounds your work. Choking the life out of it. It seems that despite everything you do, it is out to stop you from finishing what you started. It seems to make your fingers heavy. The lifting and pounding of the fingers starts to become a task comparable to breaking the Gordian Knot. The only way you can is to hack your way through with darting clacks of digits hitting keys.

Fighting through the white with the Automatic black of your Times New Roman twelve point font is just as difficult, and often more so, as slashing through the hanging vines in a South American jungle. Looking for the completion of the story is really just the path you take to destroy the negative space that the screen keeps throwing up at you. It’s almost as if the program is designed to block you from you mission by putting that empty space up like a poor man’s roadblock. The only way to get through is to pound your way.

Every time you get through though there are more car on fire, blocking the road. You can see the end. It draws nearer with every keystroke. You’ve already written it in your head, but you can’t bring yourself to put it to paper without the rational for it. That rational is the struggle in place between the letters and the space. The story sometimes because secondary to finishing the project. Sometimes, you just start writing anything to get to where you want to go. It may make as much sense as something really nonsensical, but it puts enough black on the page to justify the insertion of the ending.

The expansive whiteness never leaves you. It is omnipresent. It follows you as you type. It reminds you of its presence as you erase it with your serifs and punctuation. The bitch about it though, is that when you finally get to the bottom of the page and think you’re done, your last word is just long enough to require a new line. That one lonely letter pushes your paragraph into the next page and boom! An entire page of white staring you down again. Your pride takes over and the cycle starts again.

Looking at the blank screen of death is worse than anything to me. I can deal with the constant crashing of my computer. I can even deal with the freezing problem. What I can’t deal with though, is rushing home to start writing something, turning on the computer and then staring at the blank page, filled with white that awaits my words. It sits there, blank as a poker face, daring me to start. It calls me every time and frequently I fold. Sometimes I fight through the bluff and keep going, but in the end I resign my king and close the program. There are times where that white screen is just a banner at a high school football game, easily torn through with the slightest pressure. The other times however, the blank screen of death stares me down as if challenging me to conquer it. Unlike the blue screen or the pinwheel, there is no solution outside of my own mind.

So I say to you, fellow writers, let me be your muse. Let me solve your writer’s block. Let me cash your royalty checks.

Oscar's, Women and little Mexican guys

Sometimes you can trace your life as it is now back to one critical point in time. To some it’s bottoming out on a drug binge, others a D.U.I. on the way home from their ten year high school reunion. Regardless of what it was, it was a moment of your life that prior, you had not been leading the same path.

I was walking up to Edward’s Cinemas to drop off an application. It was the first place I was applying out of high school. It didn’t pay much, minimum wage with no salary increases unless you were a supervisor, but it was a job close to home and school. The fact that I would get to see movies for free was an added bonus and in the long run may have made up for the lack of pay raises. But what happened as I was walking up to drop the application off changed my life to the path I am on now. I say that like it was something big like a sudden hurricane or rabid leopard on the loose in the parking lot, but in reality it was just a touch looking, little Mexican guy wandering around with flyers that did me in.

His name was Eric and was the soon to be kitchen manager of a soon to be built restaurant. He asked what I was doing there that day so I explained that I wasn’t looking for trouble; that was in need of work and just wanted to drop off an application. When he reached for his pocket, I recoiled slightly not quite sure what was about to be pulled out. To his credit though, he didn’t look like the type to shank me in broad daylight. I used to be nervous around anyone approaching me from behind. When he produced a flyer announcing the opening of Oscar’s ninth restaurant, I was slightly more than relieved.

Oscar’s was a family owned and operated restaurant chain when I started working there. It remained that way for seven months until the family sold the company to Sizzler. The parents stayed on as advisors to the board but they cut the son and daughter loose without resolving their contracts. A few lawsuits later and the daughter has her own restaurant chain while the brother is more than set for life. I’d eaten at Oscar’s once, maybe twice in high school. My mom had heard some rave reviews of the Greek salad and breadsticks. I enjoyed it quite a bit. The rest of their menu seemed to be stock order-at-the-register-and-sit-down food. Their breadsticks though, they made me love the place.

Eric’s flyer gave me the heads up about the opening of the Mira Mesa location and in turn altered the course of my life. I interviewed with Kelly the GM, and Juan the company’s kitchen manager. They loved me, but I was going on vacation for two of the four weeks of training. I came back to town and found out that they were still hiring. I called them up and they offered me the job. From there, life started to change quickly. In the clichéd sense, I was meeting new people, having new experiences, partying more in four months that I had in four years of high school. In a way, I was leading a life that I had only dreamt of only months prior.A co-worker of mine, Jaime, introduced me to Gina who subsequently changed my life for the worse. She bankrupted me, fucked with my head and heart more than anyone could think. I left her after a year and a half and she pulled the “But I’m pregnant” card. Since she put out as often as nun in a convent, I knew she was full of only shit. I’ve not spoken to her since I left that night, but from all that I’ve gathered, she’s still petty and unattractive. Not to worry, the bitterness and irony are not lost on me. It was after I left her that I started writing more to get through the sense of loneliness that even I, cold heart and all, felt without her around. As manipulative and emotionally abusive as she was, she was a warm body next to me in bed. I hear a lot of people say that denial and ignoring the problem will not help it. On the contrary, I found it to be quite useful. I ignored my feelings of anger and frustration towards her and delved into my writing.

The other major revelation I came upon after breaking up with Gina was that I was able to switch off my feelings as easy as if they were a light bulb. Not only was I able to focus on my writing, but I didn’t have to worry about lusting after women. Considering I’d just left a long relationship that hadn’t been too good to me, this was a wonderful new tool. For a year and a half I shut off my feelings. For a year and a half I was alone, though quite happy.Then I met Jessica. I should say re-met because I had actually gone to high school with her. She was younger than I was (I can’t actually recall if it was legal, but I think it wasn’t). We had gone snowboarding with a group of Oscar’s (now Pat and Oscar’s as a result of a third lawsuit) co-workers and it was there that I finally noticed that she was not only attractive, but a wonderful person as well. I told this to Clarke as we rode the lift up the mountain and he concurred. We both laughed at Pat’s truly pathetic attempts to woo Jessica and talked about how attractive she was becoming on this one day trip. I asked her out the next month and we had a great month getting to know each other. Then she left me for Clarke. I was twenty years old and had been dumped by a girl who I was really starting to like for one of my friends. It sounds rougher than it was because I had already discovered that I had an uncannily good ability to shut off my feelings.

Another co-worker of mine at Oscar’s, Marv, was a good friend of mine. We had hit it off immediately when at training we both started laughing at the same dumb humor, much like Johnny Knoxville and Tom Sizemore in “Big Trouble”. Through him I met his brother, Crit. We all got along famously and had years of good times. It was on the birthday of yet another Oscar’s co-worker that I met Crit’s college friend who was down looking for a place to live. We hit it off and immediately started dating.

My life now consists of school, work, friends and my girlfriend. All four have been directly influenced by my employment at Oscar’s. My life as it is now is traced back to one point. The moment where I met a little Mexican guy named Eric with his little Oscar’s flyer. Because of this, I always take flyers from little Mexican guys.

The Unexamined Road

The best memories I have often come from driving my car to far away places, driving up the 5 freeway to Seattle; to San Francisco; to Santa Cruz. While it’s good to have a driving partner, be it a navigator, spare driver or a somewhat attractive hitchhiker running away from her boyfriend, I find myself loving the lonely drive more and more. Not that I don’t enjoy having someone next to me, I do a lot, but there is something about the solitude that overwhelms me with a sense of calm. It is a calm that I don’t often experience.

I think in part, it is induced by the lack of dialogue. With no one around, you don’t really have anyone to talk to outside of the gas station attendant every 350 to 400 miles. Sure you may get a phone call here and there, but with reception up the 5 corridor still in its technological infancy; those are few and far between. When I drive alone, I don’t eat in nice restaurants or really take time to enjoy my food at Taco Bell or Subway. In a way I think I’m just trying to avoid interaction with people wherever I stop. Not necessarily in an anti-social way, but in a furthering of the solitude one with my car being the fortress of it.

That stillness of speech lends to an odd sort of interior monologue that never seems to stop. Sometimes it’s the creative part rambling about possible stories which at the time seem brilliant but without the ability to write them down, get lost in the shuffle. Other times I’m thinking back to memories that smells coming through my ventilation system spark. Still more times, I think back to that last time I drove through whatever stretch I’m going through at the time, thus creating a vicious cycle that seems to take over hours of my drive. Mostly though, it’s a time for introspection. The lack of social stimulus gives me a chance to put my guard down (though keeping it close at hand for the seven minutes it takes to eat my #8 combo from Taco Bell (it used to be #9 back when I was a kid)) and look at the person I’ve become since I last passed through.

At 18, I can say that driving up to Seattle was one of the best times of my life. It was the summer before college started and with no job, girlfriend or inhibition at the time, I had nothing to do but drive. It was the first time I’d driven alone up the coast and because of that, it was an entirely new trip. The road felt foreign to me in spite of the dozen or so times I had ridden it. The gas stations I had stopped at seemed to flash back to me in that déjà vu sense. Frequently I would pass the ones that my dad would pull over to religiously over the years just to try one a town away. I’d always seen that town but usually it was in passing at 75. I found little places like Yreka and Tillicum (no really) and stopped for no other reason then to top off the three quarters full tank. In Seattle I had the freedom to do what I wanted whenever I wanted. I wasn’t bound by the familial consensus of where to point the one car. Destinations were at my choosing.

I didn’t take the trip when I was 19. At the time I was dating Gina and was trying my best, and succeeding I might add, to screw my life up. When I was 20 however, I made the drive again. Looking forward to the power of decision, I partook in that solitariness that I had come to appreciate after dating Gina. Only this time, when driving up, I noticed that instead of experiencing places for the first time (obviously, but bear with me), I found myself with nothing going on in my brain (again with the bearing). Most of the time, I wasn’t thinking about script ideas or even sex; most of the time my mind was a bit of a blank. Of course, knowing that the careening of my brain was not known to cease, this was a bit unfamiliar to me. After the requisite moment of lucidity with respect to my sudden lack of brain function, I began to think about why my mind was unexpectedly quiet. It was during the course of that investigation that I started to question myself and the actions I had taken throughout my life. It was almost therapeutic to a degree, but mostly it ended up being unnerving. I suspect that being a twenty years old guy who some would have called headstrong had something to do with my apprehension.

The drive to Seattle is long. I’m not sure just how many of you have made the trek from border to border, but it’s about 22 hours with good traffic and since my ticketing for in excess of 100, I always make it a point to lock the cruise control on the speed limit. Tack on a few more hours for that, maybe one for the shitty Los Angeles traffic, minus one for being able to catch local San Diego radio stations up the 5 and you’ve got yourself at least a good 24 hours of pure self-inquisition. Maybe it was because I had lived in a world of semi-denial when it came to the kind of person I was and where my life was going. So standing on the shoulders of one giant, I examined my unexamined life just to make sure it was worth living.

24 hours of straight introspection. That’ll mess up pretty much anyone without access to valium. Multiply that by sleep deprivation, add in some caffeine pills and you’ve suddenly got one fidgety, fucked up fellow flying fast down the freeway. In the end though, that drive did more for my mental sanity that anything could have. Perhaps had I not started questioning myself, I would still be the cocky, somewhat withdrawn and jaded person I was for so long. I’ve still got that trait in me, and there’s no telling when I’ll be able to stamp it out, or even if I want to, but I think getting it in check was the most important part.

I love the lonely drive. It’s the best way to travel. You don’t have to deal with anyone else for the entire time you’re in your car. There are no expectations of others to fulfill. No one is there to complain that you smell bad. You can cut yourself off from the world with the click of a button. In short, you’ve got yourself, an open mind and nothing to do but drive.

Republicans, Katrina and the Constitution

I finally figured it out. The Republicans are right. Katrina’s aftermath is no problem of the federal government. George W. Bush is not to blame. After all, the proof is right there in black and white (yellowed parchment, but you get the point) that they wrap themselves in so frequently:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Where in the Constitution does it say that FEMA, let alone any part of the federal government is required to provide emergency assistance in the case of the disaster? Where in that oh-so-sacred document written over 200 years ago in a variation of English we no longer use or understand properly does it say that the United States government must aid the states when there is a natural disaster of proportions unseen in the last hundred years? Is there some secret amendment that decrees the federal government is in charge of disaster relief? Of course not. So why should the states be blaming the federal government for a lackadaisical response to something that is so obviously a state’s problem?

I’m sorry, but the 10th amendment clearly, nay I say unmistakably states that the power should have been exercised by the state, not the federal government. The states are at fault for not providing evacuation to its citizens, for not quashing the uproar in the streets created by the massive flooding and for not being able to control the violence that was subsequently spurred. Where was the state in the days before? Announcing a mandatory evacuation but not requisitioning the buses and trucks necessary to do it? Calling for emergency assistance? What, they couldn’t have been bothered to wield the power delegated them by default?

No, the federal government is absolutely, unequivocally and undeniably not responsibly for ANY of the problems resulting from hurricane Katrina.

That is, unless you read the god damned preamble to that oh-so-sacred document.

Katrina or Ann Coulter: Which is more damaging?

A note to the readers about disasters: I do not like to hear about them, I do like to discuss them; I do not like to see footage of them. To be honest, I don’t even like to know about them. Ignorance is bliss when it comes down to it.

With the severity of Hurricane Katrina, I cannot avoid the news and coverage of it. Politicizing the aftermath is the last thing any decent person wants to do. Wanting and needing however, are mutually exclusive in this case. I do not want to write most of what I am going to (with the exception of anything I write about Anne Coulter) but I feel that what has been said and not in the last few days deserves more than some lip service, if not a good ole fashion make out session with ASIA serenading.

Earlier today, Venezuelan President Hugo (You-Go!) Chavez offered support to our country through crude and heating oil as well as monetary funds and aid workers. That’s the same Hugo (You-Go!) Chavez whom Pat Robertson, not ten days ago, called for to be assassinated. I’ll get to that in a minute, but for now let us discuss the hurricane and its effects.

Katrina (why the fuck they name these things, I don’t know) is one of the worst things to happen to our country in decades. The hurricane itself was a mere category 4 when it hit land in Louisiana, but the flooding it brought with it was the thing of nightmares. Nightmares incidentally, that the people of New Orleans have had for years. As it’s been stated probably millions of times already, the city itself is below sea level and was kept as dry as it could be by a system of levees. These levees are the first politically polarizing issue in the Katrina’s wake. Some of those levees were not yet finished. They were not yet finished because of a lack of funding. That funding shortfall was created in President Bush’s budget when they decided that the funds should be moved to the war in Iraq. They knew full well that the levees were being shortchanged and that hurricane activity had increased in the past years, yet they still under funded the contractors who were charged with building them. Is that he knew that his budget had caused the massive flooding perhaps the reason President Bush lowered Air Force One on his trip back to Washington, D.C. (more on that in a moment) instead of inspecting the damage on the ground? Maybe it was a good thing seeing the damage from up high. That way he could see the big picture for the first time in his life.

Speaking of his flight back to D.C., what in the blue hell is he doing going to Washington D.C. instead of Baton Rouge? Or Shreveport? Criminy, I’m sure Ida, Louisiana would have been acceptable. Instead of staying remotely close to Louisiana at his cushy little ranch in Texas, he decides that he can lead better from a thousand miles away. My conspiracy theory is that he’s actually an earnest worker when he wants to be. See, he doesn’t want to work while on vacation. Texas equals vacation and Washington equals work. But he wasn’t technically on vacation in Texas this time; he was just avoiding the renovations on the West Wing of the White House. So he was working. In Texas. Which kills my conspiracy theory about him separating his work life from his private. But then they came out and said that he was cutting his month long vacation short by a few days so he could get back to work. In Washington. Which actually proves my conspiracy theory. So yeah. Moving on.

Consider the following: While George pounds out some golf, the Gulf States get pounded. His aides cut short his trip to San Diego (good riddance) and fly him to Texas, not Louisiana. Or Mississippi. From there, he watches the occasional news story about some big storm that hit Louisiana and Mississippi. Devastation abounds as 80% of New Orleans is submerged and Biloxi is totaled. That night, Bush goes to sleep. In Texas. The next morning, they fly him out to Washington D.C. They detour (yes, it was a detour, not a planned route) over the disaster area and he remarks that the damage must be “doubly as bad on the ground.” He lands in Washington D.C. and makes a speech explaining all the services that are being rendered. His aides decide to leave out the bit about cutting funding to the levee builders. He goes to bed in Washington D.C. Not Louisiana. Not Mississippi.

That’s it. That’s the passed few days for our President. That is what he did during the country’s worst natural disaster in a century. He didn’t bother to fly over to the site and inspect the damage (something almost every President would do. Incidentally, his father did the same thing when Andrew visited Miami). Instead he had them lower the plane so he could make out little ants floating down Bourbon St.

Now get that sick feeling out of your stomach and let’s jump into the next politically prostrating point. In his speech to the country from Washington D.C., Bush said that he was going to be loaning crude oil from the strategic reserve to the refineries. That is something I think we can all agree is a good choice. Perhaps a better one would be to have done it years ago to stabilize the skyrocketing gas prices, but that is for another post. What he said next is something I think has flown under the radar. Over the disaster zone if I may. He said that this would be a temporary solution to the problem of raising gas prices.

Basically, he’s being nice enough to give us fair warning that we’re screwed. Keep in mind that last year, the big oil companies made a net profit of seven billion dollars a month. In zeroes that comes out looking exactly like this: $7,000,000,000.00. That’s 15,031,100,341,796.84 Venezuelan Bolivares. And that’s only a month. In 2003 alone they made $53 billion. 2002 showed $21 billion and 2001, $38 billion. Just from a layman’s view, and that’s really what I am, I can draw a very simple correlation between those profits and the price of a gallon of gas. Watch:In 2001, a gallon was roughly $1.64. Profit: $38 billion.
In 2002, a gallon was roughly $1.51. Profit: $21 billion.
In 2003, a gallon was roughly $1.83. Profit: $53 billion.
In 2004, a gallon was roughly $2.12. Profit: $84 billion.

See how easy that was?

In essence, what Bush was doing in his speech was throwing us an extra crumb but reminding us that the crumbs will get smaller and smaller from now on. You think he’s not being political in the aftermath of Katrina? He’s flat out saying that his friends in oil are going to be raising prices drastically and that he won’t stop them. How could he, right?

That’s where politically point three comes in. The OPEC nations (as scummy as they are when it comes do many, many things. One of which is oil), pledged to increase barrel output by 1.5 million to help offset losses created by Katrina. Bush has gladly accepted. Another country that is rich in oil also came out today and offered support through crude and heating oil, Venezuela. Yes, the same Venezuela who has Hugo (You-Go!) Chavez as President. A President mind you, that was elected twice in elections verified by the Carter Center. A President that has been through two coups and was deposed in one only to be brought back after protests en mass from the people of Venezuela, who it can be said, know what they want. A President that has been likened to a dictator in spite of his democratically elected status (unlike some dictators that have fake elections; the Carter Center doesn’t do fake elections). A President that our President’s administration has labeled a threat to national security because of his leftist leanings, while right leaning theocracies that give us a better deal (if you can call it that) on oil are welcomed. A President, whose assassination was called for on live television by a religious extremist living in the United States. That President, Hugo (You-Go!) Chavez has offered support to our country in a time of its greatest need, yet our own has not decided whether or not to accept it.

Incidentally, Hugo (You-Go!) Chavez is more than likely going to ask for Pat Robertson’s extradition within the next few days. A request that under International Criminal Law should be honored provided they charge him with the right crime. Unfortunately, Robertson will more than likely be left alone because of the Bush administration’s decision, I kid you not, to ignore decisions and orders issued by the International Criminal Court. But as far as Pat Robertson’s little tirade about assassinating the democratically elected leader of a foreign country has started the ball rolling. It is the new issue of the Right, and they will run with it no matter what. While the State Department has come out saying that his remarks were “inappropriate” and that the U.S. “does not share his view”, most of the Bush administration is silent. That silence is all but condoning that view.

That silence also gives the okay to the hate spewing psychopaths to start in. Just today I was listening to The Radio Factor in hopes of hearing Bill’s reassuring voice, which no doubt would have been yelling at someone who lost their family to the flooding, but that was not to be. There was a guest host whose name I don’t recall, but what made the entire 56 seconds I listened worth it was Ann “I swear I didn’t have a stroke or sniff a line of blow five feet long, I just speak out of the side of my mouth…LIBERALSSHOULDDIE” Coulter’s arrogantly arrestable comment:

“I think we ought to have public discussion about which commie rats should be assassinated”

I don’t like everything about Hugo (You-Go!) Chavez, but the fact that he’s still willing to help the American public in spite of calls from (as much as it pains me; oh it pains me to admit this) influential people for his murder makes him one hell of a guy to me right now.

Getting On With Life

A few days ago, our president responded to the Sheehanigans going on in Crawford by reminding the world that he needs to “get on with [his] life.” It sounds like something one would say to the devastated partner clinging to hope that their defunct relationship might be resurrected. In a way I find the Sheehan/Bush/U.S. situation a lot like a failed relationship.

Relationships require a degree of trust to remain in working order. Sheehan ultimately pledged her trust in the U.S. military and its commander in chief by allowing her son to go to war, regardless of how he felt about it. Technically, if she felt so strong about her son not going, she could have given him the old hobbling treatment ala Kathy Bates circa “Misery”. Because she did not join the Bates family practice, she was silently consenting to the decisions her son’s superiors made. She trusted that theirs would be sound ones and that the only way her son would be put in harm’s way, let alone in a situation that he might lose his life, would be if the safety of American citizens or residents was put in jeopardy.

When I say jeopardy, I mean it in the sense of physical harm. Monetary harm is something that President Bush has excelled in propagating lately, but it is not something that should be a case for war. Should is the operative word there because unfortunately, Major General Smedley’s “War Is a Racket” points out that war is indeed, a racket. “It always has been.” Considering Smedley waged them himself (and was decorated highly because of them), his is an opinion that one must afford a certain amount of weight.

With the idea that there is no war without want of profit in mind, we understand that in spite of everything President Bush told us leading up to and throughout the course of the war, Casey Sheehan died for the bottom line. That bottom line is the same one that killed Arthur William Bailey, Jr. Bailey, like our president, was born in New Haven, Connecticut and was less than three years younger than Bush. About a year before Bailey died, all of New Haven celebrated Bush’s enlistment in the Texas Air National Guard (which in acronymic terms was known as T.A.N.G.. You make the call as to how ironic that is). Bailey’s tour in Vietnam lasted less than four months before he was killed in an ambush. Meanwhile, T.A.N.G. had this to say about the now veteran Bush:

"George Walker Bush is one member of the younger generation who doesn't get his kicks from pot or hashish or speed.... As far as kicks are concerned, Lt. Bush gets his from the roaring afterburner of the F-102."

That same F-102 he used to “shuttle” tropical plants from Florida to Texas for an importer. Again, I leave the conjecture entirely up to you readers.

So while American soldiers were dying in the tropical plants of Vietnam, Bush was transporting the tropical plants of Florida. That connection is the only possible one that would make Bush’s statement thirty plus years later of “I've been to war. I've raised twins. If I had a choice, I'd rather go to war." make any amount of sense. Bush had the choice to go to war and he chose T.A.N.G.

Casey Sheehan had a choice as well. Unlike Bush, he did not dodge a draft and instead enlisted without conscription. When he did, he (like his mother) placed his trust in his commanding officers. A trust that is sworn to when he signs his contract. A contract that is only valid if adhered to. When Bush and company started clamoring faster than an auctioneer on some good tropical plant about the need for a war, Sheehan did not run. Instead, he told his mother that it was his duty to go and serve. If only his duty had been to run tropical plants between states, Cindy Sheehan would be back home in Vacaville.

Instead, Casey re-enlisted, went to Iraq, then onto Sadr city where he would volunteer for a rescue mission during which he and several other soldiers would be killed. It’s not like she suddenly became active and vocal in her opposition to the war in Iraq. She always had been, but it was that series of events set in motion Cindy’s grief driven journey.

Americans were not in jeopardy before we went into Iraq in 2003, but since then they have been. With almost 1,900 soldiers dead in a war that has no purpose other than the bottom line, Bush reminds us that he must “get on with [his] life.” Thanks to our president, Casey can’t and that’s why Cindy is.

Searching on a lark

The last post brought up a friend of mine from grade school, Lark Ellsworth. Let me make it clear that the reason I will be writing Lark Ellsworth’s name in its entirety is that apparently Google has “about 12,100” results for Lark Ellsworth but none contain “Lark Ellsworth”. Hopefully this entry will rectify it and in the off, off chance she searches her name in quotes (“Lark Ellsworth”), this blog will appear. Considering my memory is and always has been patchy at best, my rose-tinted thoughts of our friendship may or may not have been accurate. That said, I believe we were good friends, Lark Ellsworth and myself, and I am inclined to believe that if we still knew each other, we still would be.

Lark Ellsworth was the kind of person that you did not meet everywhere you went. She was genuinely considerate, friendly and caring. I don’t believe Lark Ellsworth was that way due to the young, possibly naïve age at which I knew her. I truly feel like she was that way because it was who she really was. Often times I think back to the way Lark Ellsworth would treat me with compassion when others wouldn’t, which tended to be more often than not. As with every grade school class, we pretty much stayed together from kindergarten through sixth grade, so if someone in your class wasn’t the nicest to you in those formative years, they generally didn’t have a high opinion of you when we finally departed company for our next scholastic assignment. Lark Ellsworth though, didn’t have a malicious bone in her body. Instead it seemed to me that she was built entirely of forgiveness and pleasantness. For that, I thank whoever created her.

Lark Ellsworth was talented as well. She played a mean violin and by the age of nine, I have no doubt in my mind that she could have conquered the cello. By the time we parted ways, she also spoke better French than most people I knew. Even the French ones. Including my grandparents. I have no doubt that she has excelled in her life so far and will continue to do so in the future. Lark Ellsworth, or at least her family, sent us a Christmas card one year (I believe it was when we were eighteen, but again, the patchy memory), but that was the last I heard from her, or her sister Robin (who incidentally has left barely more information through Google than her older sister has). I would like her to stumble across this entry if only to see how she is doing. Were I to see her again, I would love to catch up with her and hell, I’d even buy her lunch.

It is not a rare occasion when I think of Lark Ellsworth. Mostly I am sent reeling back into my passed by the smell or taste of something. Generally I find myself thinking about a time of greater innocence, if there ever was one at any rate. That time usually revolves around the complete and utter lack of responsibility inherent to childhood and subsequently what I spent most of my time doing during it, ala school. When I think back to Knox elementary, I have five very distinct memories.

Lark Ellsworth
Getting my front tooth knocked out by Chris Hirsh (who I hope has crabs)
Lark Ellsworth somehow pulling strings to get Tina Evangelou to go to the multi-cultural fair with me
Mr. DiSalvo
Knocking over half of the potted pits our kindergarten class had placed on top of the bookcase dividing the “kitchen” and classroom with a wave of my hand

While Tina Evangelou will be addressed in a later entry, I felt that including her in the “difficult to find through Google” would be a lie since I think I found her, according to Google’s math, in “0.07 seconds.” If it is her, she’s an All-American rugby player and works for SANDAG. Tina, if you find this and remember me, hi. For three years I was head over heels in love with in the capacity that an eight through eleven year old can be. Silly, I know, but still. You would be one of the first in a long line of desperate, albeit truly unreachable crushes.

It’s funny how my memory works. Picture it as a moonlit night with patchy clouds. Most of the time, the moon is partially or completely obscured by those clouds. However, there are times when the moon shines unobstructed and illuminates everything in its pale gray rays. My memory of most events is obstructed, partially most of the time, by something I can only describe as mental clouds. They pass over memories and prohibit me from remembering things clearly when I want to. More often than not, those memories shine clearly when I don’t necessarily want them to.

So back to Lark Ellsworth. If I exude nothing but wonderful praise for her, it is because I believe her worthy of it. Occasionally I look back to the time we knew each other and think that I took for granted a great friendship. Certainly one can argue that we were in grade school and the only thing that matters after that is the alphabet and multiplication tables, but no matter what the age, I think friendships are ageless. Now before I go on sounding like a Hallmark card, let me remind you that my sentimentality goes only so far. I don’t look back to my friends’ weddings and newborns with a teary eye. I will admit though, I welled up when my Chargers went to the Super Bowl. In comparing (how tactless) my friendship with Lark Ellsworth and others I have had over the years, I find that not only does it stack up to some of the best friendships I’ve had, but in some cases surpasses them.

Am I a jerk for ranking friendships? I don’t think so, no. I’m sure a lot of people, possibly some who read this, have ranked their friends. Not only that, but perhaps they’ve even lumped friends into categories. Myself, I am guilty of that as well, but that just makes me a functioning human being. My uppermost tier is the “Who would I bail out of a Tijuana jail at 3 a.m.” group and at the risk of coming across as obsessing in this post, Lark Ellsworth is still one of those included in the group. Always has been. Even if I haven’t seen or spoken to her in eleven years.

Yes, it’s possible that Lark Ellsworth has turned into a different person than the one I knew back then. As much as I hope she is still the same great individual, I understand that people change and blah blah blah. Still, Lark Ellsworth, if you have transformed into a totally different being, I’d still like to know how you’ve been and how you’re doing. If you do happen upon this post, I hope you are able to see it for what it is (a Google powered Craigslist “Missed Connection”) and not what it appears to be (some creepy obsession thing) because as my aforementioned seven friends would vouch, I’m a good guy; which ironically has caused a lot of shit for me over the years.

But I digress. I guess it’s nice that I remember our times together as children. My favorite memory is of her in a flower print dress, looking out through those glasses and me in all my dull glory which I will spare you, running through the house of some person I vaguely remember at a party for something my patchy memory forbids me to recall. Funny how memory works, isn't it?

The Party

The pity party is one that I don’t like to attend often. It’s full of smoke blowing and half-hearted empathy from those that stop by and peek through the window. As a 23 year old, I always try and cheer myself up that I’ve got years and years to enjoy my life. Time enough to go out and make friends, to go to parties and the like. At the same time however, I am constantly reminded that I am 23 years old with a total of 7 friends and never went to parties and the like. I don’t know how I missed out on that though. The few acquaintances I had throughout high school were party animals. They went out every Friday, had house parties while their parents were away and generally lived the lives you see in the movies. I never experienced it, not once. I guess that’s why they were just acquaintances and not friends. I remember one time during the start of my senior year I got invited to a bonfire, I waited. And waited. I put on my black hoodie and Adidas and waited. I sat on a dining room chair in front of the TV for two hours. My parents asked me if I was going somewhere, and I said “Maybe.” The reason I said that is because I knew, deep in the memory of my heart, I knew that I wasn’t going anywhere. I sat silently for two hours, trying not to well up over something that seemed so trivial.


Trivial to most, but to me was a big night in my life. Never once had I even been spoken to by the people who had invited me. I guess though, that’s why I knew it wasn’t to be. In spite of that however, it still hurt that no one came to pick me up as promised. That one day was the one day I felt like a real high school persona. A character in the drama filled laugh fest that was the high school movie. That night when I went to bed though, I knew that I would never be one of that crowd. I know that sounds melodramatic, but you have to understand where I come from on this issue. It’s not like I was a leper or anything, or even one of the weird guys that were so out there that they were automatically outcasts. No, I was just a normal kid going to high school.


The problem started long before that, though. I’ve harped on this before to others and at risk of sounding patently annoying, I do fault my grade school situation as the root of pretty much all that has unfolded upon me in the 11 years since that time. I didn’t come from an abusive, a broken or even a lower class home. I didn’t have massive social factors playing a part in my ostracism like race or religion. The only thing I had was my grade school. Missing the boat seems to be a theme in my life and grade school to junior high transition was the first time I was left standing on the dock watching the harbor cruise sail out. You see, long before I’m able to recall, my parents made a choice. That choice is something I wish to god and back that I could change.


The two options for school were Catholic school or French immersion school. My dad, being a staunch opponent of religion in school was dead set against Catholic school so the decision, it seemed, was already made. I understand my parents’ reasoning for putting me in the school insofar as I am able to comprehend. They wanted me to learn another language as a child so it would be easier for me to understand it. My anguish, and it genuinely is that, comes because that school was 20 miles away from my home. 20 miles seems like a trifle of a drive but to a 4 year old kid, it is a lifetime away. Instead of going to the school that was less than 2 miles away, I was bussed to a school ten times farther away. I’m not sure how many people sit back and think about what life could have been like had they gone back and had a different experience in grade school, but I venture to say not many do. It happens almost daily to me though. I think back to what people I met upon moving to a “normal” school for junior high would say about their grade school. The teachers they all shared, the birthday parties they all went to together. I wondered what it was like, but at the same time I realized that I was already behind. I hadn’t gone to their schools; I hadn’t known them for most of my life. More importantly, they didn’t know me and kids, being the vicious and cruel things they are, made me know it.


Immediately I was the outcast. They asked what school I had gone to. I said “Knox” assuming that they might know it from Jim. They looked at me with a peculiar expression on their face and smirked with a couple eye roll and brow furrow and walked away. All it took was one week for the entire school to know that I had gone to a “special” school where they taught nothing but French. I can honestly say I tried to make friends with people. I don’t know why, but it didn’t seem like anyone cared. Everyone it seemed, was all stocked up on friends and didn’t need or want another one. After all, they had all been together since they were five years old. My friends from grade school on the other hand, were scattered throughout the city of San Diego, and much like the school twenty miles away, the city was just too big for a twelve year old kid to keep friends nearby.


Recently I’ve been trying to find one of the best friends I’ve ever had in my life and I, like Grimace did, type her name out in hopes that she occasionally does Google searches for her name.


Hi Lark Ellsworth, it’s me, Brian Carver from Knox elementary.


She was the one person that I grew attached to as a kid and never wanted to lose as a friend. As life would have it though, she, just like the school we shared, was twenty miles away. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to keep in contact with any of my friends from school. That proved to be somewhat devastating to my social sanity once I moved onto junior high. With no friends to speak of and no aid in sight, I was relegated to the bottom rung of the social ladder.


Over the course of two years there, I stumbled along the path of least resistance in order to get by. While I kept trying to make friends along the way, it seemed to me that I had made enemies without doing anything to deserve them. The saddest part though, is that I got more attention from those who hated me than those who liked me. It was because of those people that for some reason, I was deemed “at risk” by the administration and singled out for attention from the guidance counselor. She was a nice lady, but I think starting her approach to me with “What’s wrong with you?” kind of makes for a difficult guidance session. Through various death threats from Asian gangs and demented white trash (Ian Bare. I hope to god you Google your name from prison some day), I realized that I must have something wrong with me.


I examined myself closely one day after school. Among the bruises handed out to me by said parties, I did not find a birthmark in the shape of a bull’s-eye anywhere on my body. Furthermore, I wondered if perhaps it was my penchant for keeping to myself after being spurned from the lunch tables for a solid year that was bringing this hate down on me. After all, who is going to pay attention to the guy no one pays attention to? A bitch of a cycle, really. Later, I was to learn that the administration did not in fact actually care about me at all. The most blatant example coming when they did not bother acknowledging me after I burst into the office and slammed the door. Ian had told me earlier in the day that he was going to kill me after school. When the last bell rang, I decided the best thing to do would be to wait in my sixth period class for a little while to make him think I left school early. When I explained to my teacher why I was waiting, she said that she had to go so I could wait outside. I tried to explain that as long as I’m in her classroom, I at least had cover under a desk should he try and hit me with the baseball bat he had shaken at me while making his not so veiled threat. She looked at her watch and told me that it was too bad, I had to get out. As soon as I did, I saw Ian at the other end of the corridor. I booked it and he did likewise after me. When I got into the office and explained the situation, the very same guidance counselor told me that Ian was a nice boy. That nice boy however, was pacing back and forth just beyond the campus grounds, bat in hand.


At any rate, junior high seemed to set the tone for what my life was to be like in high school. This time however, the pool of students grew immensely so that those 300 or so from my junior high might be scattered enough for me to evade more persecution. It was and I was able to make a few friends over my four years there, but those few friends were barely more than acquaintances. Don’t get me wrong, they were more than acquaintances, but barely is the key. We would see each other at school, and maybe even hang out a little afterwards, but always on campus. Not once did I go hang out with anyone at their place outside of stopping by on the way to water polo practice. A greater person may have realized that they were not to be a part of that revered high school clique and set aside the life they hoped for pursuit of the greater good. That good, being advancing well in school and attaining impeccable grades in order to ultimately conquer those who did not keep their mental daggers sharp.


For five years, I was not to be deterred in my quest for the life instead of that great good. In those years, my grades slipped and I hid my emotional baggage in sports and mental musings. I hoped that maybe, just maybe if I excelled in one area of school that someone would notice. I did excel but the memory of my tired heart was only refreshed as no one took notice. I guess being one of the only people to letter in four sports over the years isn’t enough to merit his name spelled correctly the three times it’s in the yearbook every year.


What goads me the most though, is that night I spent two hours ignoring the truth I knew was to come that night. It was the night that it finally clicked in my head. My life in high school was not going to be what I had hoped for. My only way to live what I hoped for was to do it out of high school. That night being at the start of my senior year, I decided to try and reverse everything I had screwed up those three years prior.


I hoped that in spite of the fact I had a mediocre G.P.A. and hadn’t applied to schools during my junior year, I would get into somewhere out of San Diego. I worked hard, I studied, I actually did home work. For the first two months of school, I had improved greatly and was on track to put up a respectable graduating G.P.A. It was right before the winter break that they took my counselor away and moved her to the K-P grouping. She had helped me tremendously during the start of the year and promised that my replacement counselor would be just as adequate. It turns out though, that she wasn’t. She was barely out of school two years and this was her first permanent placement. Instead of making the calls and writing the letters my old counselor had promised, she quit after two months. So with five months to graduation, and eight months before I had hoped to attend a real University, the school installed the tennis coach as my counselor. He was a great coach, but a horrible counselor. I kept working hard though and finally boosted my G.P.A. to the level that I was told would get me into at least a state school if not a UC of less than stellar stature. But that still meant I would be able to get out of San Diego. Start anew. Live in a dorm. Party, hang out, and make real friends that I would be able to keep for longer than a school year. But that never happened. The tennis coach counselor was just the latest in bureaucratic let downs.


With no getting out of San Diego and living the college life I had dreamed of, I took the last vacation with no care in the world I would every take. Upon getting back, I took a job at a restaurant and made what turned out to be one of my best friends ever, Marv. Through him I would meet his brother and through his brother I would meet Bryanna. For the time being though, Marv, the rest of our loose knit group of co-workers and I had one of the best summers of my life. Earlier in the summer, I had enrolled in my local community college. A rather dream shattering moment if I do say so myself.


Towards the end of summer, I met Gina. The whore through whom I would eventually get to experience a portion of that college life I wished for.


I feel I should explain that Gina was not actually a whore at the time of our dating, nor do I know if she turned into one after or is one now. What I do know is that she would hang out with an ex-boyfriend of hers and take road trips with him and tell me about them weeks later. She also went on to tell me that on those trips, he would tell her how much he loved her and that he wanted her to be with him. As if that wasn’t enough, she would always remember to bring up how attractive he is and how much she still cared for him. It was all really creepy looking back. The icing on the cake came when she wanted to pledge a sorority at Riverside. She would beat around the bush about the process but never failed to ask if we would still be together if she had to do things to get into the sorority. So let me be clear in my contention that she was a whore is based solely on those factors. But that is beside the point.


For the first year and a half of my time in community college and hers at Riverside, I spent countless days with her. In that time I got to experience fleetingly that first year of college that freshman are privy to in the dorms. What I missed out on though, was experiencing it myself. The intermediary that she provided gave me a glimpse of what that life is like and man how I wish I could have had it. Now that I go to UCSD, I am not bothered by the fact that I missed the time in the dorms or the keggers at frat houses. It’s the friendships that people have I’m envious of. It’s the getting the hell out of where you grew up and forcing yourself to make a new life that I wanted. It’s the ability to go back and meet up with friends from your college days that I wish that I had. Transferring from a community college to a university in your home town doesn’t afford you those luxuries. Being a community college transfer student is just another way of getting left on the dock.


For all the things I’ve missed though, I have to admit that overall I’m happy with my life. Sure, there are times where I get depressed thinking about what I’ve missed out on. The hardest part though, is when I try and justify what I’ve done as being comparable to what I haven’t. What I have now though, is something I would not trade in for those memories and abilities. I would do anything for the chance to go back and do it all over again, this time right, from grade school on and keep the seven friends I have now. And it’s realizing that I would want to keep those seven friends that makes me 51% glad I fucked up so badly.