Richard wants to be an astronaut

I grew up in, what I at least consider, the golden age of Nintendo. My cousin gave me his original Nintendo Entertainment System when I was three years old, and I remember the whole occasion vividly. My aunt brought it over to our house on some rainy night, along with a good few dozen of games. My dad couldn't even figure out how to connect it to the television the next day—I remember my uncle came over to help him and it was a big ordeal. Regardless, I spent an extreme amount of time in front of the TV playing that little gray box of a machine. To this day, it still functions, and I ocassionally play it on a day to day basis.
The point is, I was introduced to video games early on in life, and they played an integral role in my childhood. Growing up, I always said I wanted to make Nintendo games for a living. Obviously, this idea, vision, or goal, whatever it is, would evolve and change over time, especially after gaining more knowledge of how the real world works.
Somewhere along the line, I learned how to draw and took a liking to it. I think this combined with my video game obsession and started paving my future. I took art classes through elementary school and kept up with it until eighth grade. My art teacher at the time formed an art club, and long story short, ruined the experience for me entirely. I changed my mind.
One thing that is true is the fact that I have always been an indecisive person. Even when I go shopping, it takes me at least a solid minute to decide whether I want the $1.39 pasta or the $1.62 pasta. I'm also one of the thriftiest people I have ever met, but that is not the point. I gave art a second try towards the latter part of high school. I was going to college—I knew that for a fact. My parents drilled that into my head. But what for? I was good at art, why the hell not? Graphic Design was where it was at.
I had no idea Graphic Design did not exactly constitute character design and animation, which is what I ideally wanted to do. I ended up at Seton Hill because I wanted to stay somewhat local, and I think that was my first mistake. Seton Hill did not have what I wanted—I joined the Graphic Design program and slowly, over time, realized that magazine layouts aren't the same thing as three dimensional video game and movie characters. No big deal, I still slightly enjoyed what I was working on. Good financial aid trapped me into staying at this school.
Now during all of this, my love of music and playing music was growing immensely. I started playing guitar in ninth grade and kept at it ever since. I have been in and out of numerous bands, and now have a good grasp on five different instruments. This was all on my own, no pressure from any outside sources. Music has always been a fierce competitor with my schooling, and I do have my regrets in not going to school for some sort of music career. What this all comes down to is the obvious “what do I want to be in my future?” What do I want to be when I grow up?
What do I want to be when I grow up? What don't I want to be? I do not want to sit in some white collar office with over-cranked air conditioning for some company with no emotional or creative drive. I do not want to crunch numbers. I do not want to be a part of a business where their only need for you is to help spread the master plan of the whole scheme and make the higher-up executives their “hard-earned” dollars. What do I want to be when I grow up? I want to be an astronaut. I want to magically acquire the skills and physique to be able to be catapulted up into space, walk around on the moon, and make it back to this planet in one piece. I want to magically acquire the skills to throw together million-seller video games.
Unfortunately, though, this whole future thing really isn't too far away. It basically starts in about a year and a half. That is entirely too soon. Now is when I have to start thinking realistically. I have to be rational. Logic is key. I want to “be” me. When I graduate from this school, I do not want to jump headfirst into a career as I jumped headfirst into school and I regretted it. I want to take time and do what I enjoy doing. I want to play music. Sure, I want to try and find my way into a career, but I do not want to be tied down and restricted by a job that I will be working for the rest of my life.

senor and the queen?

Sorrow.

Sometimes inspiration runs a little low in this world. In turn, it is sorta tough to keep up on this thing every single day. Last night I was trying to think of something to come up with today and I was drawing a blank. I went to WalMart with my roommate Joe and I was told that this could be the cure to all my problems. Something ridiculous about the trip would spark an idea or some sort of rant about life and my life and how it all sucks.

Did anything come up throughout the night? Did WalMart help? Does WalMart ever help? Hell no.

One thing did happen though right after Joe was checking out. I was pacing around the store aimlessly like I always do and I saw him start walking away from the register with his bags. He didn't walk straight to the door though, he veered. I knew something was up when Joe veered. Joe then bent over to pick something up. I then realized what was going on. The summofabitch found a coin on the ground. I walked over to inspect the situation and it turns out he found a shiny new quarter of a trinket. Mixed feelings of anger and regret shot down my spine. Why couldn't I have paced in the other direction? This quarter was pretty damn shinny. I would have seen it on the ground for sure.

Why couldn't it have been a penny? Or even a nickel or a dime? I bet he wouldn't of touched the thing. I know what he would have done. He would have eyed it up, while tucking his receipt away in his wallet, and said something like, "Hey Jon, there's a ____ on the ground." I would have walked over, happy as a puppy chasing a soft new squeeky toy, and picked that fucker right up. There would have been no conflict or regret in the story.

I've been told I am uptight penny-pincher. Not at all.

Fuck you Joe.

Hi, how many?

Last night we did something we planned on doing for (what Anthony says has been) two years. Jobs, school, and lack of money always hindered any possible trips. We being Zach, Kayla, Anthony, and I. We took a well-deserved trip to Shogun in Monroeville. For the unaware, Shogun is your typical Japanese Hibatchi restaurant, with a little extra class and it costs a little extra cash. I've been there before, and luckily, it was a birthday gift when Kayla and I were dating, so I never had to experience the pain of paying. This time though, we figured it would be mean to split the check at such a nice place, so we went all-in with cash. The question was, how much do we really need?

To prepare, we made a pit stop at the bank on the way, which was a pain in the ass, along with finding Shogun afterwards and doing an unnecessary u-turn that my GPS insisted that I do. It was raining, it was night, I hate driving in the rain at night, etc. What made it worse is A.) I hate driving to/through Monroeville all together and B.) I hate driving in the rain at night on unfamiliar roads. Multilane highways that you really can't tell where the lines are due to much glare from business, street, and car lights and rain drops clinging to car windows. No major problems, but enough of an annoyance to bring up questions such as, "Where the fuck is the lane?" "I dunno, just trust the fucking GPS." Especially on turns and at intersections. Fucking rain.

After turning around once or twice, doing the unnecessary, magic u-turn, and waiting outside, then inside, then outside for Kayla, we got seated. We got seated with a mom/2 sisters/big sister's boyfriend, whom which we were talking about and hoping we wouldn't get seated with. They enjoyed our company, and our conversations about girls shaving, I'm sure. We all tore through the complementary soup and salad, which were good as always, and not too filling.

I wanted my fucking sushi. California rolls... which, I dunno, may technically not be sushi? I don't care, I have been craving them, and even thought I ate 3 of them, they were damn good. A good hold-over until the main fucking event. God damn, was that wait painful.

At once, it all began. I knew shit was going to get ugly when I saw a larger, middle-aged, white guy wheel a cart over to our table/grill. But maybe he is just getting things ready for our cook? No. Anthony took advantage of our (assumably) Pennsylvanian native and told him to surprise him on his meat-cooking. Not medium, not well, not rare. Surprise him. Go fucking kill a cow and bring it in, throw it on a plate. This guy looked just burly enough to where he could probably do so with his bare hands.

This guy never told us his name. He didn't even have a name tag on. He wasn't foreign. We will name him Brice. He looked like a Brice, or a Lloyd, or a Greg. Lighter colored brown or blonde hair, sideburns, some facial hair, etc. He looked like he played football in high school, didn't quite cut it out for the big college circuit, and ended up majoring in Culinary Arts. He never quite worked off those extra lineman pounds. "Dudes, guess what?! I get to be a hibatchi chef at Shogun! When I'm not working, we can go back to my place and play Madden on my fuckin' 360. And I can bring us assloads of good food home from work." Good job Brice, make mom (and yer bros) proud.
Let's get to the bottom line... Brice wasn't too entertaining. Everyone says, "hopefully you don't get the white dude." We got the white dude alright. No questions asked. He choked on pepper and smoke mid-cooking. He made a joke out of it, but the abundance of coughing and arm-flailing was a little unnecessary. Come on, you're a chef. You should be used to this shit. His dices were a little sloppy. His grace wasn't top-notch, he flung a raw slice of carrot on my plate at one point. He diced the shrimp tails off of five or six shrimp, but it looked like he accidentally mixed a few into the pile.

Brice also did way too much shuffling with the metal spatulas. Excuse me for not knowing the name of these things, but anyone who has ever cooked or been to one of these restaurants should know what these are. He did the whole "shuffle-the-food-around-while-making-metal-clinging-noises" a bit too much, while it seemed we were all sitting there thinking, "ok, when does the real show start?" Where is the flame? The onion volcano? The tossing the scraps in the hat? Oh wait, he did do that with one shrimp tail, but he sure as hell didn't do it gracefully.

After some time, we got our complementary giant flame of oil. It must be a requirement bundled into the expensive check. Great. But no fucking onion volcano. I was watching other nearby chefs, noting their performances and accuracy. One guy to the right of me gave his table TWO giant flames. And I saw the onion volcano, too. What a daredevil. Another guy was clinging his metal spatulas around against the salt and pepper shakers, making a shit-ton of noise, but doing it to a beat, making a neat little jingle out of it. Sorry guys, Brice plays it safe.

Brice left us with hefty plates of quality food. The food was damn good. I got shrimp with my meal. I normally do not eat shrimp, let alone shrimp that is not breaded. They use so many spices and flavorings at this place, though, they could hire an asian to squat over the grill and take a shit, piss while shitting, and then wipe a few times and throw the paper down on the grill, throw some sesame seeds on it, and serve it, and it would still taste amazing. Hell, scratch that, they could hire an illegal immigrant mexican to do the previously-mentioned procedure, after he's shingled a house all day, and ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner consisting of nothing but bean burritos. I am not racist. I believe in illegal immigration and I am 100% serious. Anyways, Brice may not have been as entertaining as the other cooks, but he did cook up some good food. And at the end, there was no climactic finish, he just grunted, said something like, "Ok? Enjoy your meals," and walked away.

In the end, after gratuity which was arguably too high, especially for Brice, the grand total was... $153.00. We evened it out at 160 dollars solid in cash, since we're nice restaurant goers, and Kayla's waitress experience rubs off on us all, making our consciences tell us to tip above the required tip. Roughly $40 per person, which, if we would have had a better cook, would have been totally worth it. Still, the food was fucking good, so I wasn't too worried about splooging the extra money out for the night. It was a great dining experience, and I wanna get back there again, preferably within the next two years. The weird thing is though, afterwards, we drove to the movie theatre to see The Spirit over a half-an-hour early, and all decided to go to Eat N Park for dessert. $160.00 dinner and we still had time and the money for molten lava cake. And smiley face cookies. Amber, the nice raspy-voiced cashier, gave us those for free, but that's another story for another day.

A story to pass the time.

I used to have my mom drop me off all the time at my friend Zach's house back when we were in elementary school. We hung out a lot during the summer, and what made things better was he had a decent-sized pool that we were always in. It wasn't heated, but who cares? It was fun. We were kids. We had a good time.

When we weren't sitting in the family room watching Ren and Stimpy or Power Rangers, or scanning R-Rated movies for tits, or playing with his Marble Works sets, or looking through his dad's box of old 70s porno mags, we were swimming.

One summer day, we were having a good ol' time in his yard. It was a bright, sunny summer afternoon. The birds were chirping. We were floating around on the rafts, trying to make wave pools, sticking our dicks in the filter jets. You know, all the good things that young kids do in an above-ground swimming pool. For whatever reason, Zach was getting pissy with me. I have no idea why... this was at least a good 12 years ago.

One factor to mention was the pool was always directly in front of the back porch of the house. Not too far away, and not too close. My mom was always an avid public pool goer. When I wasn't at Zach's in these early elementary-scool summers, I was more than likely at the Elk's pool in Apollo with my mom and my brother, idolizing the lifeguards and being exposed to great 90's music on the radio. This is one thing that really sticks out from my childhood. Going to the pool and listening to the radio.

I'm off subject. As I said, my mom loved going to the pool. She would always buy us a shitload of pool toys. Some were cool, some were lame, cheap plastic that never really entertained our pre-pubescent minds. This particular summer, though, my mom bought us some sweet ass diving sticks. These sticks were filled with sand, and of course, the caps of them eventually cracked from hitting into the bottom of a cement public pool. The sand would soak up with water, and these diving sticks would get heavy.

I probably wanted to go in the house and play with his damn Marble Works. These were basically stackable tubes that you put together in any way/shape/form and rolled marbles through. Bad fucking ass. I must have said something to piss him off. He was on his back porch drying off, and I was still wading around in the pool. He pulled a diving stick out of a plastic bag on the porch and threw it at me. I ducked into the water, but the motherfucking stick still hit me in the head.
We must have been arguing about something, because at this point, while underwater, I remember thinking, "That's it, fuck this. Piece of shit. Suck it." I grabbed the stick off the bottom of the pool - it was the fucking orange stick - jumped back up out of the water, and whipped it back towards the house as hard as I could.

I never played too many sports growing up, let alone excelled at any sports. I quit playing tee ball only three years in. I never went any farther, didn't enjoy it. It was something I did for my dad. I played basketball 3rd grade through 7th grade. I sucked at running, I have always had horrible coordination, I was never strong, and I sure as hell had terrible accuracy.

But anyways, all hell broke loose. The diving stick flew into the sliding glass window, first making a loud, echoey DONK noise, producing a few seconds of panic that seemed to go on for hours, and then the whole fucking pane of glass shattered. I was fucked. Zach stood there in disbelief. It just got worse.

Apparently Zach's mom was in the kitchen working on dinner for us at the time. The kitchen was the room that these sliding glass doors led you into. There's the kicker though. Here's the true irony and the plot twist. This is what makes the fucking movies Oscar winners. Zach's mom was 8 months pregnant at the time. The glass from the door shattered and scattered in all directions, with shards of it cutting through Zach's mom's stomach.
All of the screaming and yelling apparently sped up the incubation process, and Zach's mom went into labor. I was still standing in the pool, having no fucking idea what to do. Zach was standing on the porch crying, since, you know, we were still young kids. He didn't have any idea what to do either.

Zach's dad had just came home from work minutes before this happened. I'm pretty sure he was in the garage or coming through the basement when the actual door shattered. He made his way upstairs to the kitchen, and he definitely heard the conflict a-brewing. I feared that when I saw his truck inch up the driveway, and I knew it was going to happen at some point. George came running up the steps into the kitchen.

Just as he screamed something incoherent and ran to his wife, the baby dropped to the kitchen linoeum. No pushing or effort needed.
A+++ determination of the baby, will do business again, great eBayer!

THE BABY WAS FUCKING GROTESQUE. The glass apparently took a toll on his body, so in addition to the typical gross birth-juices that was making this purple fetus ugly, there were also cuts all over him/her. Zach's dad, more than likely in shock and acting on instinct, did what he had to do. To my amazement, he wasted no time and ran to the door frame, ripping the largest chunk of glass from the pile. He proceeded to cut the umbilical cord with this glass. He picked up the baby, ran through the door frame, out onto the patio, down the steps, past the pool, and through the yard. He made his way to the woods. These woods in Zach's back yard are on a hill, and at the bottom of the hill is a pretty busy highway, especially during the day time. A main route for mac trucks and pedestrians alike.

I never did really see what happened, as it was mid-summer, the leaves were thick, and the brush was high. But all I know is I heard Zach's dad let out a grunt, heard the baby screaming and crying the whole time, and then the cries quickly grew fainter into nothing. Zach's dad emerged from the brush and staggered back to the brush, his head down the whole time. I stood prune-y in the pool, staring in disbelieve. What the FUCK just happened?



This never happened.

i once met a girl on a bus
she didnt seem to know where exactly she was going
and i had no direction either,
but i knew what i needed to do
commenting on her hair
i offered her a seat, she agreed to share
and she said,
there is no god
the world is more peaceful that way
there is no god
and the world seemed to be so much better than it ever was
if there was no religion
there would be far less war

Busy. Doing nothing.

I feel tired and restless.
I'm growing old and bored.
Are we aging? Are we maturing?
Are we doing both? Are we doing neither?

What the fuck do we know?
What the fuck do we know?

My chest is on the brink of explosion.
Filled with words and emotions that can't reach the surface.
My hands shake too much.
All they seem to write is repetitious.

What the fuck do we know?

Most listened to artists of 2008

1. The Gaslight Anthem - 2589 plays
2. Fake Problems - 1692 plays
3. The Lawrnece Arms - 1660 plays
4. Sundowner - 836 plays
5. Hot Water Music - 810 plays
6. American Steel - 796 plays
7. Misfits - 721 plays
8. Against Me! - 532 plays
9. The Ergs! - 529 plays
10. The Loved Ones - 511 plays
11. Jawbreaker - 496 plays
12. Alkaline Trio - 452 plays
13. The Clash - 442 plays
14. The Falcon - 432 plays
15. AFI - 415 plays

Last.Fm

I'm tired of procrastinating.