Walking

I haven’t made an entry in a while now and I really should be because I think it has been helping me retain my sanity. My only excuses are that I’ve been spending all my writing time working on a story and my existential angst has been a little more spirited than usual. These things may or may not be related. And by the way, the story I’m working on is a sober and hopefully much better written rewrite of a past entry titled “Tonight.”
I always stay up late. But last night I simply didn’t go to bed. After lying around for a few hours, watching T.V., playing video games, and surfing the net as usual, I was feeling a little depressed so I decided to go for a walk. At 5:30 AM I picked myself off the couch, did not grab my jacket and headed out the door with the intent of finding a place to watch the sunrise.
I headed east; walking away from the black and into the blue. I never found a good place to watch the sun but instead observed homes I had driven past but never noticed. Something about walking about alone helps allow me to truly appreciate the simple beauty of the world around me. After coming across a very large, white house I had never seen before, I spotted a silhouette of a man coming down the sidewalk towards me. I couldn’t see any of his features but I could feel that it was a man. His limping but steady gait and ragged outline frightened me so I turned left in front of the white house. Looking behind me I could see that he had made the same turn so I quickened my speed till I had gotten across a large highway on my way back to my apartment and I hadn’t seen him behind me for a couple of blocks. That was the only person I saw on foot. Less than a dozen moving cars. The solitude of my walk was wonderful but it only made the approaching stranger more terrifying. It was as if he had invaded a desolate world that was solely for me to wander.
Something about walking this early felt really euphoric. I realized it was the smells. The smells of the neighborhood were more vivid than usual. I think it might be because nothing had been disturbed yet. People hadn’t started to mask the scents around me with car exhaust, the sun hadn’t started drying the sinuses, and with every step and motion I took I was breaking the hours long build-up of the smell of semi-rural suburbia. It felt as if my nose had been plugged and then instantly cleared.
On the way back I could still see the moon and I paused within site of my complex to ponder how I was between days; the sun and the moon both out. I whispered to myself that another day was here. The world had managed to survive another rotation and so had I. Shortly after this a cab zoomed towards and past me with a sense that I can only call aggression. I normally enjoy aggression but this time it just bothered me.
After getting back to my place I grabbed a chair and my laptop, seated myself outside and wrote this. I think I’m ready to go back inside now. Maybe I’ll even get a couple hours sleep before class.

Stuff That Happened on April 21st

Yesterday was my birthday so I looked up some other neat stuff that happened on April 21st.

Births
1729 Catherine the Great, Russian Royalty
1816 Charlotte Bronte, novelist, Jane Eyre
1838 John Muir, naturalist / discoverer
1926 Queen Elizabeth II, English Royalty
1930 Don Tyson, founder of Tyson Foods
1947 Iggy Pop, Zombie Birdhouse
1951 Tony Danza, actor, “Taxi”
1951 Aleksandr Ivanovich Laveykin, Russian cosmonaut
1959 Jerry Only, bassist, The Misfits
1959 Robert Smith, guitar and vocals, The Cure
1962 Sergei Viktorovich Zalyotin, Russian cosmonaut
1971 Samantha Druce, youngest woman to swim English Channel

Deaths
1910 Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), author, Huckleberry Finn
1918 Red Baron (Manfred von Richtofen), German aviator in WWI
1946 John Maynard Keynes, English economist
1977 Gummo “Milton” Marx, comic, Marx Brothers
1996 Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder, oddsmaker / sportscaster

Events
753 BC Founding of Rome
1509 Henry VIII becomes King of England
1689 William III and Mary Stuart become king and queen of England
1789 John Adams sworn in as first U.S. Vice President
1828 Noah Webster publishes first American dictionary
1862 Congress establishes U.S. Mint in Denver, CO
1865 Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train leaves Washington
1898 Spanish-American War begins
1898 Phillies’ pitcher, Bill Duggleby, hits a grand slam on first at bat
1904 Ty Cobb makes his pro debut for Augusta (South Atlantic League)
1913 Gideon Sundback patents the zipper
1941 Greece surrenders to Nazis
1956 Elvis Presley’s first hit record, “Heartbreak Hotel,” becomes #1
1959 Alf Dean sets record for largest fish caught on a rod and reel, 2,664 lb great white shark
1963 Beatles meet Rolling Stones for first time
1967 Josef Stalin’s daughter (Svetlana Alliluyeva) defects in New York City
1972 John Young and Charles Duke explore the Moon, Apollo 16
1980 Howard Stern begins broadcasting on WWWW Detroit, MI
1982 Dr. Michael E. Bakey performs first successful heart transplant
1989 Thousands of Chinese crowd Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to cheer students demanding greater political freedom

Iambic Tetrameter Section of "Stairway to Heaven"

A while ago I noticed the lyrics on my Led Zeppelin poster had a clearly iambic meter. I've been trying to figure out the rest of the song's meter but I figured I'd just put this up for now. I'm having trouble making this post with the unaccented and accented symbols so I just separated the feet and assumed people understand how iambs work.

And as | we wind | on down | the road


Our sha|dows tall|er than | our soul


There walks | a la|dy we | all know


Who shines | white light | and wants | to show


How eve|ry thing | still turns | to gold


And if | you li|sten ve|ry hard


The truth | will come | to you | at last


When all | are one | and one | is all


To be | a rock | and not | to roll

New Grilled Cheese

Tonight I made a variation on the classic that is the grilled cheese. The other day I made one using some boxing cheddar my dad gave me. It's a white cheddar that's stronger and dryer than normal; with a mildly sweet undertone. Being so dry, it doesn't melt too easy. So the first time I made it I had trouble finding the darkened sandwich in the pan. Upon finding and eating it I was disappointed in the lack of melt in the cheese but as I predicted the flavors were a good match.
So tonight was take two. I started by using less cheese. It's strong enough that I don't need much and I wanted to make sure it melted. I also only have wheat bread, which is fine, but sourdough would have been optimum. I began melting butter in the pan at a low temperature and just before I dropped in the sandwich I decided I needed a little heat to balance the cheese. So I pulled out my trusty bottle of Frank's Red Hot Wing Sauce. I poured in just enough to make the flavor noticeable and the melted butter a bright orange color. With the temperature still low I let the sandwich sit in the pan a little on each side so as to absorb the hot sauce and butter. As soon as the tops of the slices had become slightly soggy and very orange, I turned the heat up to medium-high until the cheese was melted. As soon as the cheese was as I wanted, I upped the temperature to almost as high as it goes so as to dry out the slices and give the bread that porous, crunchy texture that makes grilled cheese so delicious.
The end result was satisfying but I think it needs some veggie in it. So next time, along with the use of sourdough rather than wheat, I'm thinking of throwing in either onion, carrot, or maybe even celery.

Rambling Sentances

As god watches I undergo plastic surgery from a monkey who spent his afternoon being fucked by a psychiatrist with dog sized monkey wrench for a penis. Houses of marshmallow melt into the pavement during a freak snowstorm of Snickers bars and blood. Underground the birds fly through turquoise flavored pudding. A dragon skipped breakfast because he's running late for work at the mousetrap factory. Never again will the feathered prostitute find nickels in her child's teeth when she comes home from battle. Fire erupts from manholes and children dive into them with their ice cream money clenched between her toes. Televisions are assaulted by clones of Elvis impersonators with sniper rifles made of cocaine filled eclairs. A bearded hobo applies for a job as a porn star on Mars because oxygen is a thing of the past. Big bells are trapped in cages made of the screenplays of mice hungry for pussycats. The snow globe is tipped forward onto its sullen face of virgin mushroom clouds. Clouds devour light bulbs and spit mayonnaise into the ears of ants. Fifty and a half midget hairs are being held up on the C train by an AK-47 wielding cans of beans.

Mid-mid-life Crisis

I wonder what it is I want to do with myself. Before this month is over I will be 20 years old. Chances are I'm about a quarter through my life. I think I now understand when people go through a mid-life crisis. I used to think, if these people are freaking out about being old, why don't they use what time they still have left to accomplish something with their lives. Make a lasting impression upon the world. But even if one gets over the crippling realization that no one or no thing will be remembered forever and that the entire concept of Earth could be wiped away at any moment in one big mushroom cloud, there still lies the fact that in the grand scheme of the universe, nothing that anyone ever does will matter. Even if someone tears this dimension to nothing and the mere idea that anything existed ceases to exist, the universe certainly won't care. I could discover immortality or kill all life and what would it matter either way.
So if I'm not going to spend my life trying to be something significant then I think all I want from life is job satisfaction. But before I can do that I need to figure out what the hell kind of job would satisfy me that I have some sort of chance of getting. I'd love to spend my time sitting around and writing short stories but so do a lot of other people and the world will only pay so many people to live like that. A couple of weeks ago I emailed the Travel Channel to pitch an idea for a show. I'm thinking of sending one to the Food Network, too. I enjoy college to a point but I feel like I need to start making as many attempts at finding a way to get through my life, that won't drive me insane, as I possibly can. I'm starting to get desperate.

Materialism

A while ago I decided I wasn’t going to waste my time and money on keeping trendy. I had seen too many people so obsessed with whatever new gadget or thing was out that it was sadly comical. After a while of going along with this materialistic, sorrow circus I realized that the effort was rarely worth the payoff. New toys are fun but they’re expensive. And it seems no matter how much you buy there’s always going to be that next or better thing that you desire. It’s not as if I don’t want things anymore. I’ve simply done what I can to keep it from being the focus of my life. But with the death of any problem there rises at least one more to take its place. Now that material gain isn’t my focus in life, I’m not sure what is.