Spite

Today (Wednesday) was my day to have dinner with my mom, which I do every week. As most of you already know, my mom is the most important person to me and so it makes sense that we share a lot. One of our conversations tonight was about my step-dad’s ex-wife’s ongoing struggle to purposely piss off her ex-husband and, by extension, my mother. This time in the form of child support, a horribly flawed system but I’ll cover that another day. We’re talking about spite today.

This woman, we’ll call her Kodi Slutmeyer, lives in a million dollar home (which means a lot in Tennessee), her husband is a pilot whose income is in the 80k range. She purposely holds a low-paying, part-time job so my parents child support is ridiculously high. Eight hundred dollars a month high… for one 15 year old boy. So my mom and step-dad are working their asses off to pay this pampered, spiteful superbitch. And she does all this, why? Because she’s jealous and vengeful.

I don’t understand how someone can have the capacity to want to actively ruin someones life. I know revenge feels good but I only use it when it’s all in good fun; no one actually gets hurt. What do you do when someone is purposely attempting to destabilize you? Do you fight back even if the law is against you? Do you sit back and wait for karma to kick in?

I’m a huge proponent of the karmic, biding of time approach. You take what they dish out with a smile on your face and a song in your heart. That in and of itself will piss them off but then karma kicks in. Bites them in the ass, threefold. It’s fun to imagine (a meteor falls from the sky, as if sent by God, crushing the house and young Kodi. Shame), which makes the waiting slightly easier. That’s not to say I wouldn’t mind giving Mrs. Slutmeyer a proper bat-beating but only if karma put the bludgeon in my hand…

What would you do? What can you do if the (utterly useless) law is against you? Right now all we can do is wait. But I can say this; my dreams tonight will most likely involve a double-decker chocolate moonpie, frozen yogurt, and a karmically charged blunt object.

#iwillneverforget

I love the twitter. Sure, it’s started to lose its appeal now that the MySpace and Facebook crowd have embraced it but it was inevitable. The trending topics are always interesting. Some are relevant, having to do with current events. Some are completely random like when Chris Jerico was a topic for no reason at all. Yet, some are personal and, despite their misleading simplicity, ask really deep questions. The most recent of which is #iwillneverforget.

This got me thinking. There are quite a lot of things I will never forget but I wanted to take the time to point out the things that not only will I not forget, but cause a swelling of emotion and often the sweet sense of nostalgia.

Going back a long way, one of the things I will never forget is getting ready to start/go back to school. The shopping for supplies, picking out your backpack, the smell of the school (mine smelled of Dial soap) on you first day back. It was all very exciting.

To be horribly cliché, I will never forget my mother but let’s narrow that down to a specific moment. I will never forget the time we went to go see the Director’s cut of Alien in theatres one Halloween. She was reliving the time she went to see it when she was younger and the fact that I was part of that.. kinda pulls at the heartstrings.

I will never forget any of my coworkers. From when I started at minimum wage at the theatre to almost becoming a manager at Wal-Mart. I can still name every person I worked with and tell you about all their quirks.

I will never forget my crushes nor will I forget falling in love for the first time and, by extension, the boy who received said love even if he did not reciprocate.

I will never forget Harry Potter, the book that made me love books. Even if you think there are far superior novels out there, you could never convince me of such. Without loving Harry Potter first, I wouldn’t have the extensive collection of books I have now.

I will never forget going to see No Doubt in concert and enjoying one of the opening bands (Lit) better than the headliners.

I think that should be sufficient enough. Reading other people’s #iwillnotforgets on twitter is interesting but you’re really limited. So, if you care to share, leave a comment saying what you will never forget. Make it juicy, those are the best! Thanks for reading, my friends!

Sellouts

I’ve spent a good majority of the day on Pandora, the online radio for those of you who don’t know, and I was struck by how many people leave comments on artist pages calling them sellouts just because they became mainstream. Now, this goes for practically every media creator. Actors, authors, directors, singers. They all start out small somewhere.

Then, and this is what kills me, when they become popular or famous, whatever you want to call it, almost all of their original, self-proclaimed hardcore fans are offended. How dare the rest of the populous know about my artist! They’re mine! I found them! How could you, artist?! I will admit, I feel that sting when someone I’ve known and love steps out into the masses but I realize something. Nothing has changed.. their fanbase just grew. And I get the right to tell people I’ve been behind that artist for however many years before they were huge! Not to mention, I’ve been telling people to watch/listen/visit my artist for years, so it’s partially my fault they’re big news now. You see that, I promoted an artist to stardom all by myself!
-End Hypothetical-

Somewhere in that paragraph is how people really act and how they should act. Unless you’re artist drastically changed what they did just to become famous, then you have the right to bitch. The truth is, the artist had a choice either way and you should respect their choices. It all comes down to whether you like an artist as a person or you just like what they do. If the latter then there are plenty of other underground artists you can turn to and instead of insulting the artist in comments, recommend said other artists.

This would be a much better world to live in (aka internet) if people would stop being ass holes just because they are “anonymous”. I understand the usefulness of destructive criticisms but nine times out of ten, it’s pointless. Thus ends my rant. Take care!

Daydream On Steroids

Recently my creative juices have been flowing and since I never knew I had creative juices I had no idea what to do with the mess. Try telling your dad that the huge white stain on the couch is “creative juices”. I digress. For the last month or so I have been having these epically vivid dreams from which I constantly wake up and think “That would make an awesome movie.” I even have dream “sequels” that are not so much sequels but a continuation of the initial dream. I sit in silence and images come to me. Stories I know and love told in vivid detail or the occasional original idea that plays out like a daydream on steroids.

All of this is very new to me. I mean, sure, I have attempted to write before and my dream is to become some shade of journalist. Putting original ideas to paper have never been my defining trait, of this I’m sure. So far I’m most recognized for a comic I doodled on the back of a divider in my folder about the sweet Asian lady at the gas station turning into a ninja and stabbing me because I accidentally made fun of her accent… not exactly an Alan Moore here. I have the skill. I’m a borderline grammar nazi and my vocabulary is vast. What I lack is the talent or perhaps the knowledge. In school, we were always taught how to put the pen to paper and produce a bland representation of what our idea was at the time but no one actually took the time to tell you what to do when you had a genuinely original idea and wanted to paint striking image for the reader.

So, you either had to have talent or you had to steal the writing style of your favorite author. Bah. Screw the story, I want to write a screenplay! What? Oh, that has an even more meticulous set of rules? Son of a bitch! Perhaps you see my dilemma now. I have a head full of ideas and no real clue as to how to get them out. So, I’ll play it by ear. I have a notebook that already has a few ideas scribbled in it and have even started working on a screenplay (if you want details, you have to care enough to ask me personally) and have started writing one of my more recent buff daydreams down (see previous parenthetical). You’ll definitely hear more about my struggles to be artistic here, so stay tuned! Who knows, maybe you’ll see a Shining-esque descent into madness!