Those Nights

So . . . Sunday night was one of those nights. I've had them before and they're not always nights, but they seem to happen every year or so. Maybe they've happened more often; I can only remember a few. Fact is, I'm getting tired of them and the thoughts they bring. After the last one-which occured sometime in January 2007-I thought I was done with them. Well, on Sunday night, I was proven wrong.

I find myself just sitting around, wondering why they still occur. It really confuses me. I've made so many changes in my lifestyle over the years; everytime a change is made I think it will be the one that finally makes it all stop. At this moment, it hasn't fully gone away (even though it sometimes feels like it has). Where I was a couple of years ago is a lot worse than where I am now. I've come a long way . . . I'm proud of myself.

I love this song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bX2IyXejGk

Lauren is the most amazing person ever.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cq-S5hGkPo

Expect a video response to her's on Thursday. It will probably help explain this blog a little better.

Dear blog,

Since the last time we talked, I've fallen in love with a girl. Her sexy drives me insane. Here's a taste:



I can't get enough. Our conversations are always so deep and meaningfull, I can tell she's the one.

[3/22/2008 1:40:24 AM] Hayley says: jerk
[3/22/2008 1:44:42 AM] Hayley says: you're a bastard.
[3/22/2008 7:43:42 PM] Hayley says: ass face
Be quiet heart. There is no need to beat that fast.



This has been a parody of:
http://www.charlieissocoollike.net/

Sirens

I'm working on this little by little. The song below inspired this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDLynKFYTLg


Hearing them was one thing, seeing them was something else entirely. Ever since the sirens had begun earlier that week, you could hear the rumbles in the distance but never actually see what was happening. I hadn't left my house when they had started. It was forbidden, and now I understood why. My room was illuminated by the warm colors of what was occurring in the distance. I stared bug-eyed and speechless, knowing already that this would be something I would never forget.

Looking to the streets down below, I could see a large amount of ambulances and fire trucks racing off toward the disaster that awaited them. Even at the age of twelve, I knew there wouldn't be much they could do to help. Nothing ever withstood what I had just seen . . . at least that's what the movies taught you.

The door behind me forcefully burst open and my father rushed in. "Jake! Get away from the windows!" As he closed the blinds shut, I could see more rockets falling from the sky. "Jacob, I want you to listen to me." He had grabbed ahold of me, forcing me to look directly into his eyes. The sounds outside were deafening. "Do you have the bag with all your clothes ready?"
"Yeh-yeah, it's under my bed."
He got down on all fours and pulled it out from underneath. "We've been over this before. You still remember where to go, correct?"
How could I forget? My whole family had practiced the same route for what felt like months. I knew now that it had all been in preparation for this night. "Yes," I stammered. "I remember."

Books

Alright, so I've had this notepad filled with books I want to purchase and read sometime in the future. I figure I might as well put it on here, incase anything would happen to it. These are in no particular order. Forgive me if I spell the author's name wrong or completely come up with a book that isn't real haha, most of these book ideas were picked up at random. :)

*Books crossed out have recently been purchased.*

The List:
Cirque 9-12 - Darren Shan ( Loved the first 8 and never finished it. *sigh* )
I am Legend - Richard Matheson
I, Lucifer - Glen Duncan
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - Mark Twain
Walden and Civil Disobedience - Henry David Thoreau (There are other Waldens, apparently)
Self-Reliance & other essays - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Looking Backward - Edward Bellamy
Giants in the Earth - O.E. Rolvaag
Gates of Fire - Steven Pressfield
Heart-Shaped Box - Joe Hill (Note to self: He has other books, look them up sometime.)
Various books by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut (some of his other books, too)
Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
1984 & Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Lottery - Shirley Jackson
An Abundance of Katherines & Looking for Alaska - John Green
Twilight, etc - Stephenie Meyer (If only to make fun of the terrible.)
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Alas, Babylon - Pat Frank
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
The Giver - Lois Lowry (You have this somewhere, find it)
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
William Blake Poetry (A Poison Tree)
Various Shakespeare
The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch
The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
Various C.S. Lewis books
Fyodor Dostoevsky - Demons, The Brothers Karamazov, and others (Graham says to take notes)
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
The Road & No Country for Old Men- Cormac McCarthy
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke
Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri
Ernest Hemingway
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The House of the Scorpion - Nancy Farmer
The House on Mango Street - Sandra Cisneros
Blindness - Jose Saramago
The First Law trilogy - Joe Abercrombie
The Realm of Possibility - David Levithan

The Children of Men - P. D. James

Stephen Crane
T. S. Eliot and E. E. Cummings

Yes Man - Danny Wallace

Michael Crichton

The Postman Always Rings Twice - James Cain

Ghost Story - Peter Straub
H. P. Lovecraft

The Best American Short Stories 2007/2008

Various Joseph Heller

"The Lies My Teacher Told Me."

And The Earth Did Not Devour Him - Tomas Rivera

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

The Things They Carried

Just an Ordinary Day, and other stories - Shirley Jackson

Various Tim O'Brien

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse & The Living Dead

Mark Z. Danielewski

Rudyard Kipling

"The Bear" - William Faulkner

Philosophy-esque Books (Heard of during my AP US History, Humanities, & Philosphy courses):
Biblical Paradigm Shift - Jason Bourne
God is Not Great - Christopher Hitchens
The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
Atheism: The Case Against God - George. H. Smith
The End of Faith & Letter to a Christian Nation - Sam Harris
Social Contract - Rousseau
Critique of Pure Reason & Critique of Judgement - Kant
The Communist Manifesto & Das Kapital - Karl Marx
Summa Theologica - St. Thomas Aquinas

Create in 2008 - February

Not really proud of this(personally I think this story fuckin' sucks), but oh well; I had to start writing sometime. I hope to write more short stories and maybe even poems in here later.

The Prompt: You come home. It’s late and so dark you can barely see your hand in front of your face. What you can see is that the back door of your home is wide open. Suddenly you are consumed with the feeling that something…someone, who doesn’t belong, is in your home.


-I had never seen the roads this dark before. Then again, I had never been out this late before. With the whole milk calling shotgun, the clock read off 1:32 A.M. and James Mercer sang melodically on the burnt CD. I took a right into Boulder Run and kept moving toward 32nd, passing the abandoned local park. Very few of the houses had their lights on. And why should they? It was one in the morning for Christ’s sake! If I hadn’t wanted my Wheaties tomorrow morning, I wouldn’t even be on this little venture.
-My house was coming up soon and that meant going to bed after dropping the milk in the fridge. I took a left passing the Nelson’s shack and then laid eyes onto my very own.
-“Tharr She Blows!” The nice thing about driving alone was that you could say whatever the hell you wanted.
-But something wasn’t right. . . Is that the back door open? No, it couldn’t be. Shit, it was.
-I had gone to Stan’s house to complain about his mutt pissing on my lawn and had probably forgotten to close it.
-Yeah, that’s it. I forgot to shut the door.
-I hung a left, paused half way up the drive way, and allowed the garage door a second to catch up before proceeding to pull in and shut off the old gal. I stepped into my two floor house, shook off the shoes, and hung up the jacket. Walking toward the kitchen to set the milk in its rightful place, I turned on the lights as I went along. After the milk was put away, I headed toward the back door. I stepped outside and looked around before closing it. I’m not going to lie, I was a little scared. I know it had just been an accident leaving the door open, but still, someone could have came in and stolen something. I checked the floor for tracks or any sign that someone had entered.
-No muddy footprints, no hair strands, no green ooze.
-I had a good chuckle over the last one. My imagination was getting the best of me. I started to head toward the stairs. At the top, the hallway was perpendicular to the staircase and you could either take a left towards the guest room or a right to the master bedroom and bathroom. I took a quick look around the second floor to make sure nothing was gone and more importantly to calm myself down. All the rooms seemed to be untouched. Nothing looked like it was out of place.
-If someone had come in with the intention to steal shit they wouldn’t have left everything in such good condition.
-I went back downstairs to watch some TV before bed. The fact that the door had been open was unnerving.
-Just turn on the TV and relax, Drew. Nothing is in the house. Relax.
-Reruns and infomercials seemed to be the only thing on at this late hour. Fuck the writer’s strike. My eyelids grew heavier by the second. I didn’t have the will to stay awake. It was useless to resist. I slowly drifted off. . .


-I was startled awake by some hardly audible noise. I wiped off the dribble running down the side of my chin. My watch read 2:25.
-It must have been the TV.
-I grabbed the remote and turned off the tube.
-There it was again. I know I heard something.
-Something was upstairs.
-But . . . I checked didn’t I? Nothing was up there. Nothing had been out of place.
-There it was again. Something was moving up there. My heart began to race.
-Drew, you checked. Stop being a paranoid bitch. Get over it.
-I wasn’t going to stand around either way. I got up and headed toward the kitchen. Pulling open the cabinet drawer, I extracted one of the cutting knives. If something besides my imagination was upstairs, they were going to regret ever coming in here.
-I stopped at the start of the staircase and began to listen while attempting to contain my breathing. I hadn’t heard anything since right after waking up.
-This is silly Drew. Just fucking go upstairs, calm your nerves, and go to bed.
-I crept up the stairs trying my best to not make a noise. Every time the stairs made a small creak my heart skipped a beat. I was slowly getting near the top and I still heard nothing.
-This is fucking stupid.
-I quickened my pace while getting closer to the top. There wasn't going to be anything up here. I looked toward the left.
-Nothing in the guest. . .
-There was a quick movement to my right. A baseball bat flew through the air and struck my right shin with incredible force. I could barely hear the snapping of the bone over my sudden shriek of agony. My body collapsed to the ground. I continued to screamed in shock and pain. I looked up and the last thing I saw was the bat heading towards my face. Then everything went dark.


-He was still alive. Out cold, but definitely still alive. I had made sure the blow to his head didn’t have enough force to kill him. I picked him up and started to head toward the basement. The only thing I could do now was wait. Then the fun would begin. . .

(Worst.
Ending.
Ever.)