OM and cancer, totally related.

I’m finally writing another post, even though I really don’t have time for this.

I just got back from Odyssey of the Mind World Finals at Maryland University, it was awesome. Our score was shit-tastic, but I had fun, so that’s all that really matters to me. My team befriended a team from Saginaw, MI; one of the girls and I got along pretty well, but I was good and stuck with Katie. It was an overall amazing experience, I loved it.

And of course, I set things on fire while I was there. My costume for our skit was literally a burlap sack, so it was itchy as hell. Once we no longer needed it, I decided that fucker had to die. I took my costume to a corner away from the CCTV camera at about midnight, and took out a can of Axe and a lighter. I made a ghetto flamethrower, and made sure that God-forsaken costume died a fiery death. The flames reached the height of my chest eventually, so I guess you could say it got a bit out of hand.

And there was the Relay For Life the weekend before this most recent one, definitely a good time. My mother has breast cancer, so it made sense for me to volunteer at a cancer walk through my Scout troop.
But just because I volunteered doesn’t mean I intend to work.
The walk was at the local library right in town, so Kelan and I got a few of our friends to show up. We periodically snuck off during the event to walk to the gas station for drinks, which eventually got us in a bit of trouble.
You see, our scoutmaster is 77 years old. (Nice dubs, bro) He fought in the 101st Airborne  in Korea, and was an assistant prison warden for many years.  Basically, he can see into your soul. God cannot save you.

He caught on to us leaving pretty quickly, and although he didn’t have enough proof to convict us per se, he read us the riot act, and basically told us that he was extremely pissed. We’re pretty sure he’s killed people before, so we complied.

Scoutmaster's conversation with us in a nutshell.

I only have two weeks of school left, it’s kinda weird to think about. Two more days this week, then four next. Freshman year has been one of the most difficult years of my life in all aspects, so it’s good to finally have it come to a close.

I’ll be spending the first week of Summer Vacation on Mackinac Island in northern Michigan for Scouts, so I can’t wait for that.
It feels good to finally get back to posting, hopefully the upcoming Exam Week won’t anal rape me too badly to write. Here’s to hoping so.

Incoming idiotic stories, prepare yourself.

I’ve been really busy lately, and have had no time to post. On Friday I worked at the local Relay For Life, a 24 hour cancer walk. I was there with my Boy Scout troop, so I have many stories of douchebaggery and whatnot to share when I have time to actually write them the fuck down. Just wanted to get a post in to keep the blog updated, I’ll probably write my long post tomorrow.

Hilarious epic thread always related.

Epic thread is epic.

Hobopalooza, angry art, and Child Protective Services

Today I did something good for once. Shocking, I know. I helped out at a carnival for the less fortunate in a sketchy part of town. So a homeless carnival.
For church. 

Yes, very out of character for me.

And I dubbed this carnival… HOBOPALOOZA.But I feel good about it. Kelan (best friend) told me to go with him even though we’re both atheist little fuckers.
And I feel really good about my actions. We worked generic carnival games in the parking lot of a food kitchen, and I played translator for a few of the Spanish speaking families.
The shining moment for me was one that brought to my attention how fortunate I am, and how much this carnival means to the attendees. A few Hispanic boys around the age of 9 had been hanging around my booth and talking to me since I was the only person working a booth who wasn’t white as snow. A raffle was being held at the end of the carnival with a good few prizes to hand out, including a nice set of tools. The oldest boy, about 12, told me that he had entered the raffle in hopes of winning the set of tools to give to his dad for a Fathers’ Day gift.
It really touched me.

Mfw (my face when) kid wins set of tools.

He won the tools, and I was really happy to see that he did. It was a good reality check for me, and it showed me the importance of the work I was doing, even if I was just working a face painting booth.
The carnival was really what I needed to cheer up after a bad set of events unfolded on Thursday.

Katie had a bad run in with Child Protective Services at school concerning her home life at her mom’s house right where I live. (She no longer lives there full-time, only every other weekend) CPS made it clear that she was never allowed to return to that household, and that her father’s house where she now lives was under scrutiny for the possibility of seizing Katie.
Her father’s house is a very safe environment, and their only reasoning for wishing to take her was that her father allowed her to return on a regular basis to a dangerous environment.
(NOTE: I will not be revealing the reasons for Katie’s previous home being deemed unsafe, because it is private business. No one likes to think or talk about it, and all I’ll say is that it was really fucking ugly.)
After CPS called Katie’s dad, we found out that they won’t be taking her, but that if she came back to her mom’s again, they would. Katie’s dad’s house is only about 15 minutes away from where I live, so I’d rather travel a little bit than lose her permanently.
Katie took it very maturely and calmly, and I really can’t explain how much I respect her for that. She’s easily one of the strongest people I know, if not the strongest.

I… I love Katie. I know that I’m young, impulsive, and stupid. But Goddammit, I just know that there’s something special here. I had a relationship end in November that lasted 13 months, and turned into an extremely unhealthy situation.
After suffering through that, I know that what I have with Katie is different. It’s a good thing. And we want it to stay as it is, because it’s working out wonderfully for us.

I didn’t take the CPS situation very well, which is even more embarrassing seeing that Katie actually dealt with it better than I did.
I fucking flipped out. I bawled for a good hour. I was terrified she was going to be gone. I was so, so scared. I didn’t know how to deal with my feelings, so I did what I did know.
I painted.

I’m still not a very good artist, but I did a bit of work I liked. Things I painted included:
“Justice is a contextual word.”
“Divided, we fall. United, the government tears us apart and calls it justice.”
Stick person with a bomb for a head (with lit fuse) saying, “I believe in our government.”

Faggy anti-establishment shit, but  it’s what I was feeling.

I’ve since felt better about the situation, and got a grip on my emotions. I don’t think they’ll be taking Katie, and if they try, CPS will have to go through Hell and back to retrieve her.
When I cherish something, I don’t let it go easily.

Ghosts exist. And oh, how I wish they didn’t.

Ghosts. I never used to believe in them. Until this weekend. I’ll tell you now that my experience won’t be extremely exciting to read, but it’d be kinda cool if you read it anyway.
See, I’m a Boy Scout. Yes, I am also the most immoral Boy Scout of all time (not including Kelan and Calvin, who join me in my awful yet hilarious actions).   I had to take a seminar on first aid to earn my American Red Cross certification, which required me to spend 18 hours in a class room listening to nothing but boring lectures.
So I went off to the local scout camp with four other guys and some dads to get our certification. The camp is a summer camp, but is used by troops year-round for everything – in this case, we used one of the log-cabin-lodges to teach a first aid seminar.

Anyway, I endured first aid all afternoon Friday, all day Saturday, and a few hours of Sunday morning. At night, however, I walked around in the deep woods that the camp is built in. The camp is literally in the middle of a forest, they’ve just cut down a few trees to make paths, and some to make space to put buildings and a dining hall.
Well, this camp is huge. I mean fucking huge. Hundreds of acres.  Kids get lost in the woods here all the time. Thankfully I didn’t get lost, but that wouldn’t have been nearly as scary as what I experienced.

One of the guys at the seminar was 17, his name’s Nathan. Nathan works as a camp counselor during the Summer, and has since he was 13. It’s his life, his passion. Well after working somewhere long enough, you eventually get to learn a few secrets about the place.
Gerber Scout Camp has many secrets. Some dangerous. Gerber is haunted. Gerber is very, very haunted.

Camp Gerber used to be a normal family campground before the scouts bought it. The first ghost (yes, there are multiple ones) was spawned from this campground. The camp is on a small lake. On the beach of that lake was a swingset. There was a three year old girl whose parents let her play on this swingset as long as she promised that she would go back to the trailer at seven o’ clock, and lock the door before she went to sleep.
One day she didn’t lock the door.
She was abducted by two men. They snuck into the trailer, and took her down to the waterfront. There, they raped and killed her.
Her ghost still haunts the waterfront.
The concrete blocks that the swingset was set in  were left in the ground by the new owners of the camp. Sometimes a few counselors would go down to the beach at night near the blocks, and could hear the sounds of the swings creaking, and the little girl happily laughing.
Then a few years back, the camp had the blocks removed. Bad. Fucking. Move.
Now if you go to where you used to hear the sounds, you instead will hear the sounds of the girl shrieking in agony and terror, and the laughter of her rapists.
Counselors will often see her wandering the beach, and if you ignore her, she’ll leave you alone. Everyone abides by this rule.

But one night, Nathan found out what happens when you piss off a ghost. It was about eight o’ clock, and Nathan was with three other guys (all of them around 15 or 16 at the time), and they had been tasked with cleaning up all of the water toys on the beach that had been left out.
When they got to the beach, they saw the little girl playing with the toys. Harmless enough. Ghosts are white, yet you can pick out the details in them. It’s difficult to explain.
But one of the guys Nathan was with decided to yell at her. He screamed at her to get the fuck away, etc.
Then she turned around, and the image that Nathan described to me is burned into his mind.
The little girl turned around with a furious look on her face. Her eyes were blood red. Her teeth were bared.  She screamed and ran toward them.
All four guys ran for their lives, because if she caught up to them, they might lose their lives.
She chased  them for a mile. The boys ran all around the entire lake, through a few trails, and finally to the cabin where they were staying, which was filled with other people. She kept up with their pace the whole time.
When they reached the porch of the cabin, they looked back to see her slowing down. She stopped about ten feet from the cabin, and stood still for a few seconds. She then turned around, and walked into the woods until she disappeared.
No one knows what would’ve happened to the four of them had she caught them.
None of them like to think about it.

The second ghost is a Native American tribal chief. Simply dubbed “The Chief” by the camp staff. Three tribes used to own the land Gerber is on. The Ottawas, Chipewas, and the Pottawatamis. The Chief is a tall American Indian who is in full regalia. He appears the night before something big happens on camp. The camp director was arrested for photographing and distributing child pornography about a year ago. His name is Scott Herrick. Google him for proof.
The Chief showed up the night before Scott was arrested.
Before every big storm to hit the camp, the Chief appears.
When the dining hall collapsed under heavy snowfall in the Winter, he was seen the night before.
The Chief is peaceful, or rather, he’s passive. He won’t respond to anything you say, he will just pace in circles for hours.

Nathan saw the Chief the night before Scott was arrested. He also saw him on another occasion, for a reason I can’t remember.

Well back to me.
On Friday night after we finished a few hours of training, Nathan and I went for a walk in the woods with a flashlight until a little past midnight. He told me the ghost stories. I nearly pissed myself.
On Saturday, we went fucking ghost hunting. Nathan decided he wanted to say hello to the little girl to see if she really was friendly. We had another one of the Summer staff with us when we went out at 11. Kevin is his name, age 19.

We walked down to the waterfront, and waited for a while. No ghost. We then walked through an area known for activity with the Chief.
I heard some fucking weird shit.
Nathan told us to be quiet when walking through one part of the camp, because the Chief demands respect, otherwise he’ll fuck with your head.
He fucked with our heads anyway.

I heard murmuring in the bushes. There were no other human beings in the fucking camp, they were all asleep in the cabin.
Also, we forgot our flashlight for this outing, so it was all night vision.
I heard weird Indian chants. Rustling in the bushes. It was honestly one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, solely for the fact that I had no clue what the Chief might do next.
We never saw the ghosts. After the noises stopped, we headed back down the trail and went to the cabin.
How I slept, I do not know.
But I do know that as an atheist,  discovering the existence of ghosts has significantly warped my perception of reality. There’s some weird shit out there. Be careful.

Cinco de Mustache

I’ve settled on a look for my graffiti tag, here it is:Of course since this is done in MS Paint, it’s noticeably more messy than it would be in real life. I’ve done a bit of thinking, and I decided on a stencil I like. I’m going to be using this:

I’m planning on stenciling the faces of some political figures (or some well known icons) and putting the cross-hairs over their faces. This’ll also be pretty useful for fucking with ads that have people’s faces on them.

I felt like shit this morning, so I’m staying home sick today. I’ll be backpacking this whole weekend, so I’m hoping I’ll feel better by then.

Today is Cinco de Mustache! For those who don’t know what Cinco de Mustache is, here’s a link to the Less Than Jake song that spawned it. The last twenty seconds should have the Cinco de Mustache clip. I’ve evaded shaving what little facial hair I have for the purpose of having something close to a mustache for today, so it’s kind of a bust that I ended up staying home.

But I have something to definitely be happy about. I’m going to see Reel Big Fish and Streetlight Manifesto together on tour this Summer. FUCK. YES.
I loved Catch 22, and some of Streetlight, so that’ll be fun. But my main excitement is for RBF. They were my first ska band, so I think it’ll be a real ‘coming full circle’ thing to see them. I’m going with Kelan, the show is on July 21, I’m so fucking stoked. I haven’t been to a concert since Less Than Jake, so this’ll be really refreshing.

I’ll be continuing with the street art updates, so if you give a fuck, stay posted.

Worthless “I’m still alive” post

I passed my Driver’s Test today. I’m torn with excitement that I can drive, and the fact that I hate driving and it is no fun. I can finally get away from my family and go wherever I damn well please, so I guess that’s a huge plus.

Bin Laden’s dead! I’m really hoping to see the photos of his corpse, my gore folder could use a new addition.

Not much to say today, just trying to keep the blog going. I’ll be able to write a longer post tomorrow. This one’s kinda worthless. In return for reading this, gay drill. As a supporter of gay rights, I found this hilarious.

BITCH, I’M BANKSY

Today I finally managed to get my hands on some spray-paint! For most people, obtaining paint is no large feat, but for an underage amateur graffiti-artist, this is pretty much the shit.

Seeing as I was pretty much left with no one to hang out with today, and therefore nothing to do, I basically sat around my house all day doing absofuckinglutely nothing.

My family told me that they were leaving for two hours, so I had the idea to walk the 10 minutes it takes me to get into town and see if I could get some paint. I had a feeling the local hardware store wouldn’t sell any to me since I’m a minor, so I utilized my resources.
I called an 18-year-old to buy it for me.

I called my friend Jess (whom I haven’t seen since December since she’s been off at college) , and asked if she’d buy me some spray-paint. Jess reluctantly agreed, and showed up about 20 minutes after I called her.
The hardware store had just closed when we finally walked over to it, so we hauled our asses to Wal-Mart instead.

After Jess secured my paint for me, she dumped me next to a bridge and drove off home since her dad apparently needed her, leaving me with my canvas to paint.

I hadn’t really settled on a tag until today, but I finally found a name I like:
Kite.
I decided to tag with the name Kite. It’s short, and I always used it as my username for everything when I was younger since Kite is the name of the main character in the .hack video-game series. I threw up a tag or two to see how I liked it, and it was easy enough to write.
I only got a few things up though, since people started wandering over.
I finished tagging “Just love.” on some concrete when I heard some people talking and walking over, so I hauled ass and sprinted home across the bridge. I hid my paint in the garage amongst our other assorted aerosol cans as not to have it discovered, and decided to call it a night.

As you might be able to tell by my title though, I love Banksy. His street-art documentary, Exit Through The Gift Shop, is what got me interested in street-art. My best friend Kelan got me into both street-art and Banksy, and it’s really something else. Painting something up on a wall and knowing that it’s there permanently and that people will see it is a great feeling. And the anonymity of graffiti means that if you paint something really shitty, no one can call you out on it.
Graffiti is done neither for critical acclaim nor monetary gain, so therefore it is the purest form of art.
I really believe this. If more people viewed graffiti as art instead of trashy vandalism, I think more people could enjoy art in general. Oh well.

I’ll end this post with one of my favorite of Banksy’s pieces. Fuck authority.

Banksy on politics

Detention? Fuck the police.

Yep, detention. Another staple of high school. I’ve been in detention for excessive tardies before, but I think I had a funnier reason for being in this time.
You see, last Thursday  I called in sick due to lack of giving a fuck. So when I actually came to school on Friday, I had shit to make up. I had a test in Honor’s English that I hadn’t studied for, since Thursday was the in-class review/discussion of the book we’d just read. (Merchant of Venice – Shakespeare)
Well when I got to English, I saw we had a substitute teacher.
And a plot formed in my head.

(At my school, 4th hour is lunch hour. I have English 4th hour. We have a lot of students in our school, so we have three lunches at three half-hour intervals over the hour and a half that is 4th hour. Kids with First Lunch go right to lunch after 3rd hour, then go to their 4th hour class. Kids with Third Lunch go to their class right after 3rd hour, then eat after an hour of class, and proceed to 5th hour. I have Second Lunch. The way that Second Lunch works is that I go right to 4th hour after 3rd, and have a half hour of class. After that half hour, I go to lunch for a half hour. I then go back to class and finish the second half of the
hour. I like second lunch because it really breaks up the hour and makes it seem shorter.)

Anyway, since we had a test that day, we were going to take Third Lunch so that no one would exchange answers at lunch or some shit.
But I had no intention of taking the test.
I explained to the old lady Sub that since I had been gone on the review day, I shouldn’t take the test. After a bit of haggling she believed me, and then had no clue what to do with a kid who wasn’t taking the test. She handed out the tests to all of the other kids in the room, and told me to just go out in the hallway and work on homework from my other classes, and that we’d be taking Third Lunch.

So I was successfully out of the room.
Now it was all too easy. I waited outside the hall and finished my math homework for five minutes (this is all during First Lunch, about 15 minutes in) to make sure she wouldn’t look outside for me. After I determined that the coast was clear, I ran my ass off to lunch and took all three lunches.I wasn’t spotted by any teachers in lunch, and got away with it for the most part.

Except when my teacher flipped shit and gave me detention on Monday. Apparently the Sub thought that I had been kidnapped/abducted (inside the school? The fuck?), so she flipped out and had a total breakdown looking for me until someone suggested that maybe I’d just left, which brought on a fit of rage, resulting in her writing a very pissed-off note to my teacher.
So I ended up with two hours of detention, the most I’ve ever had for one offense. Everyone found it hilarious except for my parents. Weird.

So was this worth it? I’d say yes. It’s definitely a good, funny story to recount, and fucking with subs is always fun.

‘Arthur’ Movie Review

I just got back from seeing Arthur at the theater. This is a re-make of the 80’s classic, which forever holds a place in my heart. Russel Brand played the titular character in this iteration, and despite my previous bias, I though that he did a very good job.
But the star of Arthur, in my opinion, is Arthur’s butler (or nanny in the remake) , Hobson. Hobson is a snobby Brit, and John Gielgud’s original performance won him an Oscar, and was hysterical. Hellen Mirren took up the role this time, and it was still pretty damn funny. No one can ever hope to outdo Gielgud, but Mirren was a good mix of snobby and sympathetic. My only critique of her acting was that the original Hobson was a bit more snobby, cynical, and rude, but since this is a remake after all, I guess that maybe they didn’t want her trying to play the exact same character.
Arthur’s love interest, Naomi (name change this time around) wasn’t much to write home about.  I don’t know the actress’s name, nor do I care enough to learn it. Liza Manelli played the role originally, so this bitch had no chance to outdo her. Basically, whenever she came on-screen, no fucks were given.
Well, at least from my part.
This film was a bit more campy and goofy than the original, but is still definitely worth going to see.
Overall, I’d give the 2011 iteration of Arthur a solid 8.9/10.

I saw the film with my girlfriend, Katie. I met her parents today, and they seemed to approve of me. It made me really happy, as seen in my previous post, Katie and I really feel strongly about each other.
I think I’m definitely going to stick to this girl, she’s really something else.

So this is my first attempt at a review, while short and not detailed on the plot, I hope this’ll be helpful to people considering going to see the film.

Underage (almost) sex, woohoo!

So today is my second post about the weekend. Yesterday was great, and is the day I’ll be covering here.

After my OM team had a celebratory dinner after competition, we all went home. Kelan got dropped off at my house to sleep over for the night right afterwards, so we had a good time fucking around all night.
We watched The Big Lebowski, played Call Of Duty: Black Ops even though we hate that game, and opened up the glowsticks I’d gotten earlier that day. We turned out every light in my basement and took off our pants to have a lightsaber duel at 2 AM, it was the shit.

The next morning, Sunday, we hung out with Katie all day. It was really great, I hadn’t had any alone time at all for 4 weeks, so we had our fun. My mom had left the house, so Kelan played video-games in the basement (or so he told us at the time) while we fucked around in my bed. Most of the time he watched us.
We’ve only really gotten a chance to make out until now, so Sunday was fucking amazing. We started out just making out as usual, until we noticed Kelan standing in the doorway staring at us creepily. I shut the door, and shooed him off to play Black Ops.
Katie’s top came off almost instantly, so that was of course the shit. Awesome, awesome tits.  Seriously, boobs are the most fun toy in the world, any straight guy can attest to that.
Anyway, make out with tits out for a few minutes, my pants come off. Katie starts blowing me. Sweet Jesus, I’ve been blown before, but that was an amazing experience solely because I actually really care about her.
After a few minutes of that, I slid my hand down her pants to finger her. I love when girls moan, so this was like the most beautiful orchestra in the world to me. After she came, I kind of ended up on top of her. I had no pants on. She was ass naked. We kind of looked at each other, and she broke the silence and said it.

“So… Do you want to do it?” She said with a scared breath. I looked at her longingly, and we had a good five minute discussion of us going back and forth trying to decide whether to have sex or not.
In the end, she told me it was my decision. I decided not to.
Now, if you know me, this is beyond out of character for me: This is fucking alien. But I want to make this relationship last. I want to take things slowly so that we don’t do anything we regret.

And y’know, I think I made the right decision. If anyone reads this, please comment whether you think I was a dumbass or made the right choice.

I love this girl. I’ve been terrified to use that word, but I finally did. And I think it was right. I want to make this moment special. I don’t want to fuck her, I want to make love to her.

And I can wait a while for that moment to come. And I hope that when it does, I’ll be ready.