rorschach

I haven't been able to get in the mood to write much lately and when I'm able to muster the effort, it often feels forced. I've been in a funk lately, even moreso than normal and without any normal way within my own means to cure it.

I've gotten myself addicted to...new pop songs. Yeah, I know, I know. Fluff, no substance.... I'm more retro than fashionable in terms of my tastes and maybe once every year or two, there are a couple of songs that come out that I like. Katy Perry last year, Sean Kingston's Beautiful Girls (hey, it's an old skool sample so maybe it doesn't count!) two years ago and Fallout Boy three years ago. That's one song or CD a year...for a guy that probably owns well over 5000 CDs...and not the burned kind, the store-bought kind.

Anyway, evidently Lady Gaga is a gateway drug. It's better than getting in to pot I guess and I have to be really careful now with addictive substances since I've decided to abandon my sXe status. I'll write about that on another day, another journal, if anyone cares. Right now the strongest thing I'm "taking" is caffeine...not a big deal to most people but it was to me.

For laughs, (your laughs at me) here's the list I'm hooked on right now...

Black Eyed Peas - I Got A Feeling
(Actually this was the first song but Bad Romance was the one that put me in the CD section at Best Buy)

Lady Gaga - Bad Romance
(I never realized but she's put some of the dirtiest lyrics ever on to the radio...which is amazingly entertaining)

Jason Derulo - Whatcha Say [Klubjumpers Radio remix]

Jay Sean Feat. Lil Wayne - Down [Bobbyass Dance remix]

Boys Like Girls Feat. Taylor Swift - Two Is Better Than One [Mike Rizzo mix]
(Thank you, song, for introducing me to Taylor Swift!)

Britney Spears - Break The Ice [Kaskade mix]

Jesse McCartney - Leavin [Bimbo Jones Downhill Special]

Taylor Swift - Teardrops On My Guitar
(What resonance...I'm going to download the lyrics and re-write the song just a bit to fit my own mood right now)

Plus a ton of stuff from the last ten years, Michelle Branch, Natasha Bedingfield, Ingrid Michaelson, Bic Runga, KT Tunstall

I've probably picked up 30 CDs in the last couple of weeks, scouring dance mixes and compilations for sweet songs to sooth my sad spirit. That last song has been killing me as it's so sweet but I've been finding myself in tears in very inappropriate places...heck I'm youtubing it right now, listening to the 5th different cover of it by an amateur, a really nice one, and the tears are coming again. I know, so bad...

Ok enough sin for now.



Outside My Bedroom Window

Lately I've been thinking about something that happened to me when I was a younger teenager in junior high. One day my mom had a visitor (she has a whole crew of friends with whom she plays tennis like four days a week. My mom is in better shape now than I ever was I think... After he left, she asked me over and in a giant bucket she gave me this really pretty although mossy turtle. Yes, a turtle in a bucket. She went on to explain that the guy caught it at one of the local public lakes and couldn't really keep it as a pet so he thought with our big yard, maybe her son, me, would like it. To say I was a little excited was an understatement. All of the romantic "me and my best buddy" ideas floated in my mind.

But at the same time, I was trying to figure out how this could work...I know our neighbors had this cool tortoise they kept as a pet and it roamed free in their yard, but one of our dogs always like to jump fences and bite the shit out of it. One day when it was trying to go gangsta, we heard a large yelp and realized the tortoise managed to bite our dog. Our dog never touched that tortoise again, which is good. (Later that dog got himself killed when my parents were walking him some strange place and he bolted the leash, crossing a street, and got struck by a car.)

Anyways, so I had this turtle, I tried to figure out what it ate. This is way before the Internet so there were no online turtle tips. After a couple of weeks of the turtle generally not eating much and being fairly lethargic, and being tortured by our dog constantly biting it's shell, I came to the idea that despite my strong desire to want to take care of this thing and have a cool pet, a yard is really no place for a turtle to live. I wanted my mom to drive us to the lake so that I could return it back to where it belonged.

My mom suggested that in the meantime, just put it in the front yard for now, in an depressed area, and we'll see if we can go to the lake later. So I did and went back inside to do stuff (probably sorting comics or baseball cards or whatever) and she did gardening work in the front. I thought she was watching the turtle since she was in the front yard but she left and went to the back yard (our plot is like half an acre...not sure how we were able to get such a big place in a relatively crowded area). Long story short, the turtle crawled out of the indented area.

It crawled on it's belly over several layers of obstacles, tall grass, concrete, curb, etc. I'm guessing it was searching for a body of water, it's home. It got all the way in to the middle of the street, the two lanes on each side road in front of our house, and was run over by a car. When I came out to check on my "pal," I saw his pink guts and shell chunks spread all over the road and motorists trying to drive around it. I got my mom and she stopped the traffic while I scooped up all of the parts on to a tray. I dug a hole outside my bedroom window and buried him and he rests there to this day...a turtle way out of his element. (I don't know if it was male or not but I wound up thinking of it as thus.)

Later at dinner, my dad asked what happened and I just broke down crying for hours...luckily for once, my parents were understanding.

I came away with things from all of that: first, never let my mom take care of any living thing, she's terrible at it...probably because her parents pretty much ignored her all her life, she was the Jan Brady of her family; second, I have this lasting regret that I was never able to return him back to his lake. Every time I see one of those documentaries where they show thousands of little turtles crawling to the shore and getting eaten and killed by a million different dangers, I think of that turtle outside my window...usually a thousand young turtles die in order for one to live...and and this one died in my care so violently.

This is just one of the many things that shape how I feel about freedom in general for living things, letting animals just be, chips fall where they may. There have been many, many times when I've been really depressed and wanted to get a pet salamander or some other exotic animal to be my substitute pal, one who won't break my heart or be the one who makes the teardrops fall on my guitar as Taylor puts it so poetically. But I've always resisted. I think one day when I'm financially independent, I'll move to San Diego, a couple hundred miles and hours away from here, and visit the San Diego Wild Animal Park every week.

Oh and BTW, fuck Sea World for making large, roaming sea animals live in little tanks and perform for our trifling entertainment.

- R