Regardless, if you want to follow the continued saga, feel free to update your bookmarks and feed readers to my new domain. Anybody subscribingto the feed using FeedBurner (http://feeds.feedburner/moagg) will be automatically rerouted.

Hmm.

One summer on MySpace, two years on Blogger, almost three on WordPress and now a domain of my very own. All the wile, I have been writing less and less. Do I not have the time? Certainly that could be part of the reason. Do I not have the interest? Again, probably not.

Maybe I will be able to change that in the next few months. There are things I want to say, and I’m not paying for this domain for nothing, I suppose.

But hey, it’s been a good, long haul and it’s not even close to being over yet. So here’s to many, many more years of blogging!

I think so.

Regardless, tomorrow I am going to visit my high school for the last time until I come back some time this fall. Hannah demands it of me, and I’m more than willing to oblige. I have to return a few tons of stuff to Mr. White, also, and help him with his new film scanner, which I;m excited about for no reason at all.

My official Dorm Room Book Collection

I’m not packed, put together or at all ready to leave yet. So far, the only thing I’ve done in preparation is worry a lot and pick out the books I’m taking with me. Beyond that, I still don’t have my clothes picked out, my sheets and bedspreads are in a pile on my armchair, my towels are divided between three or four different bags that are either on my bedroom floor or jammed in the closet somewhere, I still haven’t bought about 75% of what I need for my room and I really don’t have a clue what I’m going to do about it.

I don’t know what my problem is, apart from the fact that I feel so detached from the whole thing right now. And I have, for about the last month. It’s that old line about it feeling as though this is happening to someone else, and I’m just spectating.  I need to get it together soon. As in right now. It is upon me, and I don’t have time for my usual shit. I just can’t seem to get this through my head.

I think, maybe, that it’s due in part to the fact that I have no idea how I’m going to pay for the last remaining 3% of my cost of attendance. Which is another matter entirely, but which is also a big factor in all the stress I’m dealing with right now. I owe money on my student account, which I had anticipated, but this is more than twice what I’d planned for paying. Which is both aggravating and alarming, since my parents are, as they have been all summer, operating under the assumption that I had the whole thing paid for already. I never told them that, they just took it for granted that they wouldn’t have to pay anything for my education.

It’s only $629.50, and I can pay that in four installments and it wouldn’t be a big deal to do so. Except  that I don’t have any money, and my parents, who are plenty capable of paying it, will balk at the idea of forking over $180 (the first payment is one-fourth of the total plus $25) by next Friday for expenses they “didn’t know about”. Because I’ve been keeping it a secret, right? It’s a horrible affection they have, of forgetting only the very important things I tell them.

But! I’m going to call the student accounting office later and have a nice chat, and see if I can’t work something out with them. Am I not just so independent?

Anyway.

Today, I’m going to hang out with Ana. Later. We’re going over to her place to spend some time doing I don’t know what.  Having fun? I can only imagine….

MY BEST FRIEND!

Hehe.  I love you, Hannah!

When was the last time I made a proper post to this blog? Sometime in 2008, if I had to venture a guess.

I want to say that I’ve been busy getting on with my life and so busy have I been that I couldn’t be bothered to write, but that’d be a load of horse shit. If I’m to be frank, I’m probably less functional now, not blogging, than I was two years ago, when I blogged upon every whim and fancy. Much to my chagrin, no dearth of material does not equal to an abundance of writing talent, as can be evidenced by anything I wrote in October of 2008. Or November. Or August. Or ever.

At any measure, I did have something to say. If I can remember it all, we’ll see a miracle worked, but I will try.

So, what’s news?

Let’s do this in an orderly manner, shall we?

• I graduated high school
• I went caving
• I turned eighteen
• I visited Richmond
• I went to my college orientation

In that sequence, I think. I’ve anchored those bullet points with their respective anecdotes below. For those of you who don’t care particularly about my high school commencement, or my city travels, or my spelunking, and since this is a sort of combined posting concatenating what should have been a number of separate posts, feel free to skip about as you please.

I graduated high school

The Senior Class
of
Twin Valley High School
announces its
Commencement Exercises
Friday evening, June eleventh
Two Thousand Ten
seven o’clock
Twin Valley High School Gymnasium

Believe it or not, I did manage to graduate. Twenty-second of fifty-four. I would have been much happier with twenty-seventh, frankly. Dead middle, exactly where I belong. Regardless, I’m happy enough to be finished with high school, as all graduates are, and to be moving on to bigger and better things.

The ceremony itself was perfectly lovely. I looked resplendent in my flowing black gown and gleaming white collar, medals making a joyful noise at my breast and cords of distinction more various than all people of the world swaying hither and thither. The hard leather soles of my shoes beat a perfect tattoo upon the parquet of the gymnasium floor as I marched forward to receive that which I have been laboring for so arduously these four years past.

I cried a bit afterward. Large, compulsory tears that turned into larger, genuine ones.

Return to list

I went caving

I went caving in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky the week after graduation. Two days of exploring the largest cave system of the world with Brittany and Lucas Looney. It was certainly one of the most fun things I’ve ever done, and by far the most exhausting and uncomfortable thing I’ve ever paid to do.

The first tour we went on was a spelunking tour, which is a sort of do-it-yourself tour that involves crawling and climbing and exploring in areas that are not open to regular tourists. You do this all in coveralls and hard hats with lights attached. It was…eye-opening, to say the least of it. The other two tours we did were typical tourist things that we were able to walk along for, thankfully.

Apart from exploring caves, we took some time to explore the various restaurants in south central Kentucky. Lucas and I managed to convince Brittany to try sushi at a Japanese place in Bowling Green, and the next day she ordered a whole meal at an excellent Indonesian restaurant called Orchid Flower in Lexington.

We’re so hip.

Return to list

I turned eighteen

My eighteenth birthday was the most unceremonious occurrence I’ve ever experienced, I think. For something most people are somewhat anxious about, my attitude about it was downright boring. I’ve never been a person to get excited about birthdays. Likely due to the fact that my family has never been one to make a big deal of them. So my ascent into legal adulthood came and went with about as much pomp and circumstance would be afforded a Catholic holiday in my house.

I got cake, and gifts, sure. I get to vote, be drafted and buy cigarettes.

But let’s face it, it’s nothing special. I can’t even rent a car.

Return to list

I visited Richmond

Richmond, capital of the Old Dominion state (that being Virginia…) and my future home, is the most awkwardly constructed city I’ve ever been to. And I’ve been to quite a few.

The streets go any which way they please; the buildings look like they were jammed into place by an under-attentive toddler playing with Lego bricks; the buses stop at seemingly random intervals to pick up or drop off nobody; the neighborhoods are not consistently black or white, poor or wealthy; I’ve yet to find a map of Richmond that looks the same as any of the other maps; and I love it to death.

When I first made my decision to move to Richmond, I was warned by and large that the city is dangerous, that there’s crime and gangs and Negroes and all manner of such abominations and in large numbers. And I suppose this is true. But I suppose, too, that the same is true for any city, anywhere. Richmond is hardly the only city in which the crime rate is eight times higher than the national average for other cities its size, right? Right?

Regardless of that, I think I’ll be mostly safe where I live (downtown) and where I go to school (uptown), because those are generally good neighborhoods (i.e., white, to hear my gloriously racist father tell it). I live in Cabaniss Hall, in downtown Richmond, and most of my classes are at the Bowe Street Deck, which is about twelve blocks west. I’ll be taking a bus, or a bike (I’ve not decided).

I’m actually excited. You know how strange that is.

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I attended my college orientation

Virginia Commonwealth University holds several orientation dates throughout the summer, and I managed to get stuck in the last of them. This was July 15–16, just a few days ago. I spent the night in a dorm with five strangers and spent both days walking Richmond until my feet fell off.

I was shown around the Monroe Park campus, in Richmond’s vibrant west end. There are ethnic restaurants on every street. The buildings are all old and made of stone, or old-ish and painted loud colors. The streets meet at odd angles and veer off into whatever direction they fancy. The university people all seemed a bit on the weird side, except for a few who seemed unusually normal.

I registered for classes this fall. As a part of the last orientation group that registered, I was lucky enough to be able to pick from the bottom of the scheduling barrel. Consequently, my schedule is somewhat totally fucked up. On Mondays, I have no classes until six in the evening, at which point I have a single studio class until nine at night. Tuesdays I have art history for an hour and a quarter, at ten. Then nothing until five-thirty. Thursdays are the same. Wednesdays I have art education class from noon until two, then a studio class from six to nine again. On Fridays I have a single studio class all day, from 8:45 AM until 5:30 PM, with a two hour lunch break.

I am so going to fail.

Return to list

It’s two in the morning, and I’m trying to hammer this thing out on my iPod using a Wi-Fi connection I’m almost sure is not free.

But I’m in the capitol of the United States of America, bitch! Which I think is pretty exciting, yeah? It is. I visited all manner of monuments and memorials today. Yesterday, I mean. Tomorrow, the Capitol and the Smithsonian Institute. I’m rather excited.

I’m making a mess trying to type with this thing. So I’ll leave this as it is. Follow my Twitter feed (found at right) for a near-live feed of my trip.

When I get back home, and get my computer fixed, I’ll write out a great big detailed report of the whole thing.

I think this is an excellent insight into my character. I am so damn lame that at ten o’clock this morning, I was on Wikipedia looking for the April Fool’s Day jokes. And I was not disappointed! I mean, come on—wife selling! That’s hilarious!! The In the News section! A real knee-slapper there!

No, really, I thought it was funny. This isn’t even a joke.

Also, Google renaming itself to Topeka and vice versa. HAR DEE HAR!

But seriously, today is known to us nerds as Ignore the Internet Day. You can’t trust anything you read, ever, on April 1. Not even this blog, even though I know so many of you trust it as the final word, the dernier cri in all things Gay Guy…right? But today I could say anything I wanted to, like “I’m getting my nipples pierced!” and totally get away with it.

I like to murder hookers and hide their bodies!

You see? It’s fun, right?

I’m still trying to think of a good prank, but in the meanwhile, I suppose I could round up some of my own favourites from around the web. Those of you who are extra nerdy like I am will have already noticed a change at our favourite webcomic, xkcd. I think it’s awesome. I rarely if ever get to cd directories at my favourite websites. Likewise, another webcomic I frequent, Dinosaur Comics, is oddly dinosaur-free today. McSweeney’s “William Faulkner’s Favourite April Fool’s Day Pranks” was rather funny. As in McSweeney’s funny. Not really—ha-ha funny, even though the idea of William Faulkner dancing to House of Pain does make me giggle a bit. This report of the French government banning the term “2.0″ elicited a laugh or two from me, I’ll admit. And this one about Microsoft asdking for a $20 billion federal bailout almost made me chuckle.

I think my favourite would have to be this one, though, from TorrentFreak, about The Pirate Bay selling out to Warner Bros. That would explain why I can’t get any seeders on my Lady Gaga downloads! The comments on Slashdot are to die for. The number of people who took it seriously. It’s just too much.

Happy April Fool’s Day, ladies. I’ve thought of the perfect prank to pull. Let’s hope it goes over well.

Love,
The Straight Guy

Yes, that’s right. I got accepted. Which means in just a few months I’ll be pulling stakes and heading east, for Richmond. I’ve been kindly informed by most people with whom I discuss my college plans that there are a “lot of blacks” in Richmond. This is what I’ve heard from the football quarterback, my Spanish teacher, my father and most of my peers. There are a “lot of blacks” in Richmond. They’re worried that it might be a culture shock, you know? Moving from Oakwood to Richmond is definitely going to be a shock. But I’m sure I can adjust.

Blacks. What ever shall I do, if I should encounter blacks? Run, screaming, in another direction? Stare inquisitively, with earnest curiosity?

Maybe.

I think people underestimate my adaptability. I’m going to art school. Surely they didn’t think that I was under the impression things wouldn’t change much. I’m well aware of the presence of black people. I know all about the fact that the VCU campus is in the ghetto.
I think I can handle it.

In other news, my academic team career is over. We placed third in the region, having beaten Lee High School, Thomas Walker High School and Twin Springs High School. We lost to Lebanon twice, and didn’t get a chance to play Honaker. So we won’t be going to state. But that’s fine, because it means I no longer have to ever study for quizbowl, ever. I get to return the fifty-pound stack of books I’ve begged, borrowed and stolen from various people at school, and the library. No longer will I be poring over StudyStack tables and art history textbooks and CliffsNotes and lists of Russian novels.

And I’m cool with that.

Oy vey. Let us pray, fellows, that I can post again sooner than I have been. It’s a slow…year, I think.

It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and
they’ll do practically anything you want them to.
—Holden Caulfield

It probably—almost certainly makes me a total phony that I didn’t learn about his death until today. Earlier this week I made a comment to somebody about how surprised I was that he was still alive. And now he’s dropped dead at ninety-one years young. I’m thoroughly convinced that I am responsible for jinxing his secluded life. Had I not upset this delicate balance by realizing that everybody’s favourite forgotten man of letters was still kicking, he’d no doubt still be living and nobody would be any the wiser.

Naturally, now that he’s dead, we’ve all remembered that he was ever alive. I’d give anything to know just how many copies of Franny and Zooey are having the dust blown off them in high school libraries and parlour bookshelves around the country. How many yellowed pages of The Catcher in the Rye are being turned for the first time by curious thirteen year old boys like myself? How many people are discovering for the first time, or rediscovering for the umpteenth time, the tragicomic Glass family or the rambling, anxiety-ridden Holden Caulfield? It’s hard to say, but I don’t think I’m entirely alone.

When I become rich and famous, I’m going to lock myself up in a New Hampshire apartment and forsake the world. I’m going to write great tomes of literature and, like Gogol, burn it all. I want to deprive the world of the next great novel. I wonder of Salinger was familiar with the work of Ayn Rand? In my romanticised notion of him, he’s almost like a Dominique Francon; I’m sure he has a manuscript of the greatest work of literature ever conceived by mankind holed up in there somewhere.

Regardless of whatever works he may have hiding under the floorboards or locked in the proverbial safe, I look forward to blowing the dust off my own copy of The Cather in the Rye. I look forward to reading “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” again. I look forward to whatever posthumous stories may or may not be published, the tell-alls and E! True Hollywood Stories.

I’ll always remember Salinger for introducing me to the great fiction of the twentieth century. I read The Catcher in the Rye in eighth grade because it was reasonably high on the ALA list of frequently challenged books. I eventually finished almost all of the list, but Salinger’s was the first I pursued specifically because it had caused a stir. I think that such is the appeal of the novel for most young people. It does stir.

It’s not the kind of book you can forget when you put it down. Apparently, though, Salinger is the kind of writer you can forget until he kicks the bucket. We can only say that Salinger is noted not because he was a figure of much public intrigue. Not because he was a hero for the American people. Not because he was scandalous or celebrated or infamous or flamboyant. He was remembered because of the sincerity with which he spoke into the minds of people.

Maybe Salinger was the last Holden Caulfield in a great big world of phonies.

Er, just got home from watching it.

Probably my best theatre experience to date. Which is not to say it was necessarily a “good” theatre experience, in most peoples’ opinion. I like to go to the cinema and deal with obnoxious loud-talkers, people who talk back, fangirls and the usual movie-going ennui. That’s why I go to the movies.

Plenty of oohs and ahs when Edward delivered his signature cheesy, vagina moistening dialogue. Sounding slightly short-of-breath and entirely like a bad actor, of course.

When Jacob pulled his shirt off for the first time, at least five dozen twelve-year-old cherries popped in that theatre. I heard them go. It was pretty badass.

Of course, Robert Pattinson is ugly as fuck and Kristen whatserface can’t act for shit, except when she acts like a coke whore. Taylor Lautner is cute as a button (after the haircut) but has entirely too much shirtless screentime. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, for the first half hour. But after so long, it just got a little overbearing. He overacts in the face, anyway. Maybe he’s compensating for Robert Pattinson’s seeming inability to do anything with his face but that goofy smouldering thing.

The cinematography was leaps and bounds ahead of the former movie, in my opinion. On par with some of the better films I’ve seen. The shoddy acting and bogus script did no justice to the obvious talent of the director and the photographer, as well as the special effects crew.

So, overall, 6/10. Stewart’s performance picks up in places, but Pattinson’s monotonic, droning melodrama drags every scene he’s in into a dank pit of acting iniquity. The film was saved from total floppage only by the fact that he was absent from the bulk of the film.
The technical aspects of the movie are spot-on, but even that can’t make up for the still-poor selection of actors for these characters. I found event he most minor supporting roles to be more interesting and engaging than the lead characters.

I went to the 9:20 show at Grundy, and enjoyed it. The movie actually wasn’t as bad as all that. It was geared toward little girls, and endeavoured to make them squeal. And it succeeded. Does it deserve an Oscar? No. But it did what it intended to, and that’s just fine by me.

I only wish I’d come home a little earlier. I’m probably in trouble for coming home at half-past two in the morning, but don’t know it yet.

Oh, and sorry for not being around the last couple of months. Some stuff got in the way.

Maybe I need to start using my sleeping medication again. Actually, the sleeping medication I was prescribed nearly two years ago isn’t an actual sleeping medication, but Seroquel. It’s an anti-psychotic drug that functions as a sleep aid in low doses. Works miracles, really; I slept like a god-damn baby when I was on it. But my parents decided that I was cured of my affliction some eighteen months ago, and I haven’t been on any medication since. So…I just don’t sleep.

I turn seventeen in three days. “Seventeen and insane…” right? Anyone? No? Fuck.
I’m not excited about it. I’ve never been excited about a birthday. Birthdays are almost inconsequential in my house. Always have been. I don’t know what I’ll get, except for what I already got. Brittany got me the most adorable little bobble-headed cow you’ll ever see, and a pillow, and a Galileo thermometer. Which is really very cool.

I’m currently reading Stephen King’s ’Salem’s Lot and listening to Taking Back Sunday’s New Again. Both are amazing. Thus suggested.