For S.H.B.C.

Hey there Delilah
What's it like in New York City?
I'm a thousand miles away
But girl, tonight you look so pretty
Yes you do
Times Square can't shine as bright as you
I swear it's true

Hey there Delilah
Don't you worry about the distance
I'm right there if you get lonely
Give this song another listen
Close your eyes
Listen to my voice, it's my disguise
I'm by your side

Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
What you do to me

Hey there Delilah
I know times are getting hard
But just believe me, girl
Someday I'll pay the bills with this guitar
We'll have it good
We'll have the life we knew we would
My word is good

Hey there Delilah
I've got so much left to say
If every simple song I wrote to you
Would take your breath away
I'd write it all
Even more in love with me you'd fall
We'd have it all

Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me

A thousand miles seems pretty far
But they've got planes and trains and cars
I'd walk to you if I had no other way
Our friends would all make fun of us
and we'll just laugh along because we know
That none of them have felt this way
Delilah I can promise you
That by the time we get through
The world will never ever be the same
And you're to blame

Hey there Delilah
You be good and don't you miss me
Two more years and you'll be done with school
And I'll be making history like I do
You'll know it's all because of you
We can do whatever we want to
Hey there Delilah here's to you
This one's for you

Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
What you do to me.

How do words even exist?

I've been trying to get to this for a while but every time I do I just get so frustrated because I don't know how to even begin saying what I want the words to mean. But since it'll bug me til judgment day if I don't... here goes, as far as words that come to mind will allow me to say.

Face it Lunchbox. I love you in the most a)heterosexual, b)masculine, c)high-five-after, d)soul-owning, e)borderline-unspoken-questions-of-sexuality-in-tender-moments,
f)fraternal-to-friends, g)unbelievably-queer-to-strangers way possible.
Now to explain...

a) neither of us are gay and we can both prove it numerous times. you more than me but that is entirely beside the point.
b) we can both grow facial hair, although you by far have the most magnificent mane I've ever seen
c) nothing is gay if you sincerely high five after. and we do.
d) you do in fact own multiple pieces of my soul. WoW being the largest as it consumed a massive chunk of my free time, cost a decent bit of funding, led to computer upgrades, accelerated the collapse of a bad relationship (thank you Blizzard), kept me from collapsing out of sheer boredom and loneliness during breaks where I was the only one on campus for a week, and was more fun than beating alex at smash brothers and yugioh (yes i'm a huge nerd, we know this, move it along). there is also the cheesecake factory and an entirely separate list but it's not nearly as relevant as the almost 2 years I spent playing WoW
e) yep. i've totally spooned with you... and picked a different tune every day to bump your chair to (starting with Good King Wenceslas, and yes I checked the spelling). good times.
f) you really are the closest thing to family I have for 8 and a half hours and 5 states while I'm in Rock Hill. You look out for me, chill with me, tank for me, roll your eyes at Alex when I can't because he's looking at me, talk to me about just about everything, and most frequently give me a place to crash.
g) yep. I may have hugged you in public in a not entirely Man-Law-kosher way. I may have lovingly scratched your beard in the grocery store on a number of occasions. I may have also smacked your butt and said "good game" in a very nice restaurant. for any random bystanders we may have looked like spelunking buddies on more than one occasion, but that's fine by me cuz we know whats really going down.

Of the things I will miss the most on my mission you are easily within the top 2. I love your honesty about not wanting me to go but the way you are willing to support me enough to not get hypocritically malignant about me living my life (no one we know I assure you >_>) and sacrificing for something that I believe will only make me stronger and help set the rest of my entire life in order. It will be unbelievably hard to wake up and not be able to bear hug you, stroke the glory of your facial majesty, or touch the mango. However, I have no intentions whatsoever of losing touch with you at all, both while I am off in Fuzzy Wuzzy Land or after I get back. I have too much less-than-three for you to let you go that easily.

After all, you promised me my own islands when you got sick of humanity and were able to access the right stuff to fix the problem. Don't think I'll forget.

Guy Love, yes another Scrubs thing

[J.D.]
Let's face the facts about me and you,
A love unspecified.
Though I'm proud to call you "Chocolate Bear,"
The crowd will always talk and stare.
[Turk]
I feel exactly those feelings, too
And that's why I keep them inside.
'Cause this bear can't bear the world's disdain,
And sometimes it's easier to hide,
Than explain our
[J.D. and Turk]
Guy love,
That's all it is,
Guy love,
He's mine, I'm his,
There's nothing gay about it in our eyes.
[Turk]
You ask me 'bout this thing we share,
[J.D.]
And he tenderly replies,
[Turk]
It's guy love
[J.D. and Turk]
Between two guys.
[Turk]
We're closer than the average man and wife,
[J.D.]
That's why our matching bracelets say Turk and J.D.
[Turk]
You know I'll stick by for the rest of my life.
[J.D.]
You're the only man who's ever been inside of me.
[Turk]
Whoa, I just took out his apendix.
[J.D.]
There's no need to clarify,
[Turk]
Oh no?
[J.D.]
Just let it grow more and more each day.
It's like I married my best friend,
[Turk]
But in a totally manly way.
[J.D. and Turk]
Let's go!
It's guy love,
Don't compromise,
The feeeling of some other guy,
Holding up your heart,
Into the sky.
[J.D.]
I'll be there to care through all the lows.
[Turk]
I'll be there to share the highs.
[J.D. and Turk]
It's guy love,
Between two guys.
[J.D.]
And when I say, "I love you, Turk,"
It's not what it impies.
[J.D. and Turk]
It's guy love
Between
Two
Guys

Waiting on laundry

Otherwise I won't have clean clothes for work in the morning... And if some of this doesn't make sense, I say it'd because it'd 1:30am and I have to get up for work again at 6. Enjoy

I could be called many things... Huggy, a "cuddler", clingy, sometimes obsessive, whipped, and (my favorite) chivalrous almost to the point of being handicapped by it.

Huggy and cuddling I can bundle up together. That's just how I roll. Even in high school I have generally been with my very hug-oriented and low-personal-space group of friends. I have no problems being physically close to people and I think if I were forced to physically avoid others I'd go a touch more crazy than I already may be. Hugs may not be some all-curing panacea but I bet 95% of the time they'd help a situation somehow.

I have an addictive personality. Fortunately this is balanced by fits of laziness so I don't latch onto anything that floats past me. However when I do get hooked into something (maybe I don't know, like WoW or way back in the day Pokemon) I really tend to lose myself in what I'm doing. For example, I totally acknowledge my addiction to World of Warcraft. I have sort of sidelined people at times for it, for which I apologize and have tried to get better with. Most people who know me well enough will get a kick out of the fact that I have been sans WoW for a few days now and have been so bored I don't know what to do with myself (I miss my phans!).
On the bright side I also "obsess" over my friends. I've been told a couple times by different people that I may be frustrating because I will stand up to a friend and call them out when they go too far but that I will also be the one to stand up for that same person when no one else will.
I may take a ton of crap from someone and then let them know exactly what I think about it but when all is said and done I will be more likely to defend that person than just about anyone.

In conjunction with clingy/obsessive... Am I "whipped" in relationships? Heck, I'm whipped even when I'm not in a relationship, but in one? You'd better believe i am. Will/Do I get made fun of? Wouldn't surprise me. Am I a bit more willing to please someone I care about than I should be? I could see the case being made and probably not refute it too well. But will the person I'm with have any doubts whatsoever about how much I care about them? Will a friend, girlfriend, and eventually wife ever question the lengths to which I would go for them? Absolutely not. Maybe it's a bit archaic and unrealistic but I try and act like every relationship I'm in could be "it" because unless I try and see the ending I want as a possibility, why bother even trying? After all, how can you know if you love someone completely, without reservation, with every part of you, if you never try? And no I don't want that whole "really really liking someone and it makes perfectly logical sense to be together" speech, although if that's how it happens then awesome. I just don't want that to be the ending point. Go ahead and take a Dr. Cox moment to call me a girl's name and mock my masculinity but when I kiss my wife someday I want one of those fairy tale, fireworks-blazing, rose-petals-back-on-the-magic-flower, bring-you-back-from-the-dead-in-front-of-seven-midgets, knock-your-socks-off-through-your-shoes kisses. Maybe it's selfish but I want one of those moments where afterwards you can look her in the eyes and all you can say is "Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn!" Is it unrealistic? Of course. Am I gonna waste away looking for that moment to come to me? No. But one thing is for sure, it'll never happen unless I am trying to hit that fairy tale level of loving someone and go past it. Frankly, having grown up with my parents as an example, anything less would be a disappointment.

And yes, i do have a bit of a chivalrous streak. Blame Papa, although I'm sure my grandparents played a role in there too somewhere. Blaming Papa is easier though cuz he's closer.

Quote from Scrubs, and yes at 1 in the morning

Not much of an issue anymore cuz I don't think I'll be hearing any more relationship complaints from a certain someone but just to get it out of my head...

"Honestly? The only thing that gives me comfort, you guys, is while I'm sitting at home, staring at the ceiling, just wishing that I had someone to talk to, is knowing that none of you idiots realize how lucky you are!"

Pretty self explanatory I think. Before you complain about issues you are having with someone you care about think about how fortunate you are to at least be within arms reach. It's hard on those of us who have to listen to your complaining and constantly be reminded of how separated we are from people we would give a great deal just to be able to see once in a while.

Apathy

Can't shake it.
Stuck with it.
Getting weighed down by little things.
Not caring enough about big things.
Letting chances slip by.
Confused, lost, unsure, but don't care anyway.
Walking is annoying.
Dealing with certain people gets harder and harder each day.
Don't want to sleep.
Don't want to be productive.

I'd find myself again but that would be adding so much more to what I'm already being buried under...
And I don't even know if I'd like what I found when I started looking.

Another paper, enjoy... maybe ^_^

When the Bell Tolls for a Salesman

Few would argue that Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman is not tragic. While it lacks in royal characters doomed by fate to fall below the common man, the play still reaches out into the hearts and minds of the audience in a way that even today audiences see and connect with the disastrous unfolding of events. However the impact, source, and longevity of its tragedy are not beyond contestation. In his article for National Review, Undying Salesman, David Klinghoffer summarizes the essence of the tragedy as he sees it by saying that Willy “has failed as a man, and he knows it” (Klinghoffer, Undying Salesman). This is not necessarily an incorrect statement but it limits the range of the tragic influence, essentially asserting that males are the only ones for whom the bell tolls in Miller’s piece. The true power of tragedy is that it possesses the power to transcend race, gender, and dogma and Death of a Salesman is a strong example of what happens when such a role is fulfilled.

Klinghoffer states that “The play works agonizingly well. Not as any type of socialist harangue, but rather as a meditation on manhood.” He then challenges readers to attempt placing a woman in the shoes of Willy Loman, with daughters instead of Biff and Happy and the husband at home and left destitute at the play’s conclusion instead of Linda. The immediate response he offers to his readers is that gender reversal is impossible with Death of a Salesman. What Klinghoffer is trying to assert is that the genders of characters under the circumstances of this show are as important as the characters themselves and he justifies this stance by saying that “Devoted though they may be to their work, women unlike men are not deeply humiliated by a tumbling career” (Klinghoffer, Undying Salesman).

Most people today would take some degree of umbrage to this assertion, to which Klinghoffer concedes. The retort to his claims one would expect to hear on the news may very well be not unlike Annie Oakley and Frank Butler, bouncing back and forth with one side trying to outdo the other as a means to prove their adeptness (Irving, Anything You Can Do). In The United States of America as it is known today women can work, be politically active, drive, and further their educations just as well, if not circumstantially better than a man. Does a single chromosome render it impossible for them to comprehend or empathize with the devastating failure heaped upon Willy Loman? Klinghoffer seems to be saying that although women make competent coworkers and are quite capable of caring for their vocation, to truly understand the calamity that has befallen the Loman family, one must have been fortunate enough to have been born with a penis.

Arthur Miller himself wrote Tragedy and the Common man, an essay on the lack of modern tragic drama and literature and the application of tragedy to the more recent struggles of the average human being. He says “I think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing--his sense of personal dignity. From Orestes to Hamlet, Medea to Macbeth, the underlying struggle is that of the individual attempting to gain his "rightful" position in his society” (Miller, Tragedy and the Common Man). Unlike Klinghoffer, he does not place a barrier around his work to restrict its application to men only, even mentioning Medea specifically. Miller would argue against confining tragedy to any one demographic, as evidenced by his tearing down the wall that, until Death of a Salesman and works like unto it, had prevented tragedy from trickling down to the proletariat. After asserting that the true nature of tragedy is that calamitous events can befall anyone, be they commonly born or of regal heritage, barricading women from experiencing a connection with Willy Loman’s circumstance seems a bit ridiculous. The impact of Miller’s tragedy is that it opened the doors for anyone possessing humanity to become a viable candidate for consideration as a tragic hero in times of duress, despite mankind consisting of different colors, sexes, and creeds.

Klinghoffer suggests that “A man's descent to failure is horrendous to contemplate. Whatever line of work you are in, we are all salesmen, selling our products, our services, our selves” and that when a man cannot provide for his family and/or finds himself failing, specifically in the sense of failure at one’s profession, “in some fundamental way he has failed as a man, and he knows it… We may repress this instinctive knowledge, but ultimately it pops up like a rubber duck in a bathtub” (Klinghoffer, Undying Salesman). He argues that the tragedy stems from a man’s need to excel, to provide, and to pass on a legacy and again, while this statement fits Willy Loman without question, it is once again Klinghoffer placing an impediment on the core of what Miller tried to clarify in Tragedy and the Common Man.

On the true source of the emotional connections made with theatrical tragedy, Miller said “the quality in such plays that does shake us, however, derives from the underlying fear of being displaced, the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are in this world. Among us today this fear is as strong, and perhaps stronger, than it ever was. In fact, it is the common man who knows this fear best” (Miller, Tragedy and the Common Man). While the nobles of Elizabethan times or the Rockefellers of today might be more similar to the Greek tragic heroes due to their amassed status, wealth, and power, this definition of tragedy extends the possibilities. Before, tragedy was centered on the smallest percentage of the population but in the world of literature and theater after Death of a Salesman it is applicable to all, from the pristine kings to the basest dregs of human life. Miller did not simply renew tragedy; he gave the very source of tragic material a complete overhaul.

Where Klinghoffer and Miller do agree is on the immortality of tragic drama. Klinghoffer explicitly that “Fifty years from now, whatever new varieties of social progress have been inflicted on us, we can be sure that… Death of Salesman will be alive and well” (Klinghoffer, Undying Salesman). Likewise, Miller’s claim that the common man can be as much the protagonist of tragic tales as the ancient kings leads to the conclusion that tragedy lives even in an era without monarchs subjected to fate and the gods. As long as the world remains in a state of imperfection and there is failure, sadness, and natural shortcomings to which mankind is susceptible, tragedy will provide a means of theatrical catharsis largely due to Miller’s works which have broadened the characteristics of the genre.

What is the point of seeing shows in which we are reminded of the frailties, weaknesses, and disappointments that dwell in the “damp, drizzly Novembers of the soul” (Melville, Moby Dick)? The answer is simple; that which binds us to others more so than any honors society or PTA organization ever could is the capability to feel and share that sensation with peers. The aforementioned catharsis of tragic theater provides a bonding opportunity between the audiences, a healthy release of tension heaped onto shoulders in the day to day toils, and a time for subconscious healing. Sharing in emotion is one of the rawest connections human beings can make with each other and those evoked by tragedy are some of the purest emotions one can feel. To ask why a tragedy should be seen is like asking why people feel the need to cry, to interact with others, to share experiences, and why people feel.

The effects of seeing a tragedy do not discriminate, to find a source one needs not look beyond the self, and it will survive for as long as mankind is imperfect. Speaking of tragedy, Miller closed his essay by saying, “It is time, I think, that we who are without kings took up this bright thread of our history and followed it to the only place it can possibly lead in our time--the heart and spirit of the average man.”

Don't die of shock from the sudden burst of activity...

2 days and 3 posts! Oh noes!

I just think this is absolutely hilarious and wanted to share.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=X_U2yG3uZp0

And yes I have changed just about everything at least a little... Try not to be too surprised.

Not easy, but worth it.

Most of you know that I plan on leaving for my mission this summer. I'll be gone for 2 years, I don't know where yet, and unable to facebook/text message/etc. Hopefully I'll be able to get emails out to everyone and I'll still have good old snail mail.

Say whatever you want here, support, questions, disagreement, etc. or ask/talk to me in person.

Busy again, but not entirely bad

First off, some good news: Auditioned for One-Act plays last night and got 4 callbacks! Bad part is that I have a midterm tonight so will have to rush from class to callbacks and gonna be up late working on stuff.

Second, dork news: Colbert Nation is doing great! 1st guild run of Kara down and got it about half done. Big grats to Jason for picking up some nice new purples! Also, new Smash Bros is out and AMAZING! Already getting whined to about how much better my favorite character is "so overpowered and unfair" even though it's much easier to kill Metaknight with Pit than vice-versa. Lunchbox, would you vote in favor of less QQ?

Third, misc. stuff: Gonna be incredibly swamped as writing for the play winds down. Just got a paper back for a class i loathe (critical thinking, questioning, and reasoning) with a D on it, although I was told explicitely that my reasoning and writing was almost flawless. When transferring from notebook or whatever it is I wrote the paper on into Word apparently double space wanted to be retarded so the spacing got all wonky. That and not citing in text what I put in the works cited page (the info takes up 2 paragraphs about a page long all told, and I can't stand when people use trite intro phrases as a means of introducing the same source over and over)... So basically I'm learning that perfect content with questionable format is "D" material. Fortunately there is a rewrite so I can fix all the stuff that happened. Guess for the citation I'll just have to pretend like I'm not an English major who knows what he's doing and make it sound like another run-of-the-mill, half-assed paper only written to appease. Although since I cant stand the class appeasing is all I'm really doing anyway.

So I'm about to die again for a little while.

Just some heads up. I am ushering for Shiloh Rules this weekend, teching Ophelia next weekend, auditioning for one-acts after that, then teching for Baby with the Bathwater... all while writing a script and working on other classes.

Fun! >_<

So for my EDUC 275 class...

We are using blogger to keep track of stuff. Laugh it up pops. Laugh it up...