Alternate title: Why highschool really was the best time of your life.

If you were to ask me what really separates humans from the other animals on the planet, there's only ahandful of things I could offer. A big one, however, is our understanding of the concept of time. For better or for worse, we are keenly aware of the fact that every moment is one more step towards an inevitable ending that we can't backtrack. This awareness makes living something akin to being in a speeding car heading for a cliff, or a brick wall - ultimately it's how we cope with this understanding that shapes who and what we are.

You'll be saddened to know the train tracks you once walked as a young boy are now nothing but a graveyard.
Please don't forget how small we really are, because nothing really matters when we're gone. -The Ataris

I remember being told that highschool was the best time of my life, right around the time I graduated. I couldn't believe it - after the drama of highschool myself, and the few friends that remained, wanted nothing but to escape into college. Many other people have agreed - stating they wouldn't return to highschool for any millions of dollars. So if it was so bad, why does the idea that its the best times of lives - and not college - persist?

I think now, that it's because highschool is the last time in which we were still naive to our speeding-car situation. Teenagers are said to behave as though they were immortal - regardless of consequences - they don't know there's a cliff just up over the horizon that they're speeding toward with each moment. It's the last time we live day by day and aren't pondering the past. Somewhere after Freshman year of college, it changes, most people come keenly aware of how these wonderful moments just can't be gotten back again.

I'm not really sure how I handle it yet. I thought of it last year, when I heard of Scott's death, and now, as the Goob house comes to an end. It's odd - people I never really knew except in passing, as friends of friends, a place I only went a handful of times, are the things that make me pause and grow nostalgic. I suppose they're monumental events in their own ways, death, the breaking up of a group, akin to the end of a television series, that cause me to pause. And then I think of the box of photos in my closet, not touched in years, the semi-hastily made prom photo book, and the Madrid photos never put into an album despite my intentions, all memories of things past that won't ever be quite the same.

We hold onto these things, pictures are so common now, many people take tons and tons of them, I only take a few. We frame them and hang them and put them on mantles. We keep objects and books and make albums that tell visual stories of our past. All in some vain effort to say to the universe "hey! I existed!" as if we could frame the past and keep it with us as proof of good times. Yet there are countless more good times, especially if you're not a picture taker, that we don't stamp down into something we can touch, feel and hold. We just know they happened, we remember.

I've been keenly aware of this passing of time of late, and it's why my time feels wasted. The memories made from the last month haven't been anything that I'll remember in a year, or five, or ten, and that seems to make them somewhat wasted. I feel like I should take pictures of these non-events as though it will somehow make the time less wasted. But would it really help? How much of our time, so important that we rush everywhere all the time, is really wasted in the end if we weigh it in things we really remember?

This feeling is w hy I drive home most nights at the speed limit, watching others in such a hurry despite it being late, and I have the urge to avoid going home, but rather go to a school park and sit on the swings and talk under the stars with anyone who'd feel like listening. I wonder how people would react if I were to dial them up at 10 or 11 at night and ask if they wanted to go to the park after not talking to them in about 2 years, I wish I was on campus where I can just go for a long walk and find people along the way.


( The Ataris - So Long Astoria )

I had a long day. I spent 4 hours and 45 minutes driving 100+ miles around Rochester on a temp job that ultimately paid ok thanks to good gas milage on my car. Was frustrated beyond beleif at shitty directions and lots of U-Turns and swerving and poor drivers. And I got a driver's arm SUNBURN while being hungry and dehydrated. Then I come home, flop into my chair, and see this on my homepage.

And all I could think was: "We have a horrible economy, goverment spending out of control, we have bigotry running rampant, we have violence, we have over 100,000 kids waiting for adoption and even more animals, we have not one but two wars going on, we have soldiers dying, others snapping and murdering civilians, we have global biological and ecological problems, we have cities unprepared for the weather disasters heading their way, and HE'S CONCERNED WITH TWO MEN FUCKING EACH OTHER????"

What the FUCK is wrong with these people?
Oh fucking no, two men want to fuck, oh no, two women want to kiss, oh for crying out loud what the FUCK does that have to do with anything?

How about we fix the economy, the government, and the environment, before butting into peoples personal lives and worrying about how they get off?

Seriously.

At least some others did more ranting for me

If the GOP can energize the shrieking ultra-conservatives and at the same time suck in everybody else and distract us all from the really important issues ... the next election will turn on the issue of gay
marriage, and not on those more important issues.

Such as: Who really screwed up in Iraq? Such as: Where did the budget surplus go? Such as: Why is the Bush White House the most secretive in modern history? Such as: What's happening to individual privacy and freedom in America? Such as: Where's bin Laden? Such as: Is Bush really as stupid as he seems? Such as: Enron, Plamegate, KATRINA, Abu Ghraib, and on and on and ON.

But ... gay marriage?? As THE burning issue at this moment in U.S. history? You have to ask yourself just how desperate these guys are.

I'll hope the Dumbocrats will have enough on the ball to turn this thing on its head with something like "Yeah, you guys go ahead and fill your campaigns with the dangers of gay marriage. The rest of us are
going to talk about the IMPORTANT stuff."

Seriously. Please get fucking real.

This isn't even political labels anymore, there is no such thing as a covservative or a liberal anymore, both sides are so over run by incompetancy and morons slapping labels on themselves and saying they're one thing while turning around and behaving the opposite that the words don't mean shit anymore.