Updates

I know, I know, I have not updated this thing in quite a while, and lots has happened. So lets go through the laundry list, in super-cool bulleted list format!

• I graduated college. I now have a BA in Literature/New Media Studies with a something-point-something-something GPA, and am currently and only somewhat ashamedly enjoying a stay of unemployment.
• I finished a small poetry collection. This, whenever the editor decides to get off his ass, will appear on Richard Stockton Overdrive. For now, it's available from my free webspace here: http://www.geocities.com/arigato455/chapbook/frameHolder.html. Also, provided I can get more space, I'll be uploading video of me reading some poetry in Ocean City. I also read a few at Stockton and they got on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj-W9xjHREM. Huge-ass thanks to Scott Oliver for filming both, and while you're at it check out the rest of the kids I read with as well.
• I've applied to MIT.
• I'm back in the South of the Jersey, where broken bits of the known universe come to die. It's massively depressing and lonely and I'm somewhat pissed off about that.
• In light of being unemployed I've decided to pick up an old project again. For now I've decided to make writing my full-time work, and set the goal of writing for 8 hours a day, three days a week. I probably won't stick to it since I have horrible discipline when it comes to being home with no actual schedule, but what the hell, might as well try. I missed national writer's month but am going to attempt the "novel in ninety" trial and see where that gets me. Or, where it doesn't get me, as the case may be.
• Against my better judgement, I'm doing EOF again. I just love those damn kids. ... That wasn't sarcastic, I really do. While "The Program" is bureaucratic as hell and it's upper-management staff are a bit less than competent, I did have fun last summer and got a burst of that ever-so-rare sense of accomplishment.

Back to real writing - none of that bulleted Power Point nonsense. So, politics. Obama, like a bulky caterpillar spinning itself in silk, he has begin his transfer from president-elect to president by selecting his staff and putting his stubby, multiple legs down on various issues, and will soon emerge from his cocoon as a delicate winged Arab killing machine. Weren't expecting that, were you? The recent violence in Gaza has little to do with Israeli/Hamas tensions and everything to do with Obama's transition to power. During the Bush years, Israel had a sweet deal. They could get away with almost anything due to the unwavering support of the US. Now that Bush is out, they want to make sure they can enjoy the same "open mouth, insert wang" policy they enjoyed with Bush with Obama. Attacking schools and getting a bunch of dead kids on the greasy face of the NY Times is one way of doing this - no matter how hardened of a politician you are, dead kids still pull at the heartstrings. If Obama losses Israel and says, "Yo man, go nuts," he'd pass their test, and otherwise, the Holy Land would be in some trouble. In about another two years I can see the Obama fans ending up much like the early Jews: lost in a vast desert looking for a paradise that nobody things exists. And his economic plan is bunk: replacing 4 million jobs doesn't make up for the fact that we've lost 5 million - still a million down. That isn't solving the problem: that's lowering the standard for everyone.

Music: I gave two new bands a try - the media-friendly Rise Against and the gay homeless kids in Leftover Crack. Rise Against reminds me of the trend in just about all entertainment media where one book/game/movie/album tries to be everything at once. Imagine if that was done with cake - Rise Against would be a cake trying to be to many cakes at once. Nobody would want to eat a lemon-cherry-apple-crusty-cheesecake with creme topping, made with Soy Milk, ego-friendly Splenda and having a chocolate gelato center with a Cookiepus face. One of the ruling philosophies of my life is that if it doesn't work with cake, it doesn't work with anything else. Rise Against combines a speedy maybe-it's-metal-maybe-it's-punk sound with lyrics that sound like they're making a statement but are too vague and inapplicable that they can't possibly refer to anything that happens on Planet Earth in The Known Cosmos. The latter, Leftover Crack, is just a loud, occasionally varied, pissed off and mildly articulate punk group, and aside from the singer's lack of variety from anything but gurgled screams, I like it.

Now that I have time I'm going to be updating this more frequently, even if I have nothing to say.