Douche of the year, strikes again...!
I love how when someone doesn't want anything to do with you, they delete you from everything, woohu, myspace, facebook, etc. But then when you comment on a friends post that they are also friends with, they feel like they just haaaaaavvvvveee to be a dick to you...
so i had this really really fucked up dream last night.
I was at this party down the road from my house, it was apparently at jamie henteg's house, wich i've got no idea where he lives. but he was there.
anyways we get there and hang out with some people, and music is playing
and then jamie comes down the stairs with a shotgun and points it at me, and i'm like "WTF DUDE?!" and eventually he shoots me in the chest with some of those bean bag things, twice, and it didn't bruise. eventually he calmed down and everything was cool lol. so i go outside and todd kopkau(sp?) is singing and amy waller is playing the tamborine.
Not about anything
I didn't expect it to be so strange when I merged worlds. It's not bad, but it's different. I brought Poland, Australia, and America into the same place. I have Kara, who is experiencing what the real Shelton family is, and marveling at how I came from it. I have Prudence, who counts as both Polish and Australian to me, who is experiencing the American life. And then I have my American friends, who are experiencing the people I spent most of my time with abroad. Surprisingly (or maybe not,) I make friends with a similar type of people anywhere I go. Not that everyone doesn't have their own unique qualities, only that I tend to surround myself with people who will get along with each other. I really like my friends.
We're going to be traveling soon. Next trip will be about two weeks and we'll see Boston, New York City, Washington DC, Cincinnati, and Columbus, as well as everything in between. I'm really excited about this because I've always wanted to see New England more than ANYWHERE else in the USA. I know it's not a really thorough trip, but it's going to be great nonetheless. It's sad Prudence will have to leave about a week after we get back to Cedar, and Kara will leave in about three. I wish I could go with her.. I really hope I can. It all depends on the Australian government. I've already applied for residency; all that's left is waiting.
I'm going to miss my friends and winter Christmases. But Melbourne gets colder than Brisbane, so it will feel a little more like home. I can't WAIT to start studying, but once again, I'll have to wait. Two years. :S
I don't want to think about the future. My life is made up of a lot of phases. I'm always in a position where I can't do one thing until I've done another, and usually, it's time that's holding me back. Such as, a visa needing to be approved, or having a visa that won't let you study for two years. I'm not really in a hurry, but I like to feel like I'm working towards something. At least it never hurts to save money for a while.
I'm not going to complain about anything, or say anything contemplative, because I don't really feel like it, even though God knows I could. But it's been ages since I've written, so I thought I would. I used to keep a journal that I wrote in regularly, ever since I was little, but I haven't for the last year. I've never lived with anyone before in the sense that your lives actually affect each others, and ever since Kara and I moved in together, I haven't needed to write. Not much, anyway. We used to go to bed every night and just talk while laying there. It's harder to do here in America, where my mother is creeping around, making sure we're not being ourselves. That must be why I feel like writing right now. But also, Kara and Prudence are taking quizzes on some website right now. Instead of joining in, I went to woohu. I even forgot my password. I had to ask Kara--good thing she stores memories like a computer.
Well, we're going to drink some vodasz tonight, and watch Harry Potter movies (god help me.) The wine will help. :P
I hate you. I don't even know why we are friends. You only hang out with me because you wish you were me. Plus you totally want in Justin G's pants and ditched me for him. What ever happened to sisters before misters?
There are some things nobody needs in this world, and a bright-red, hunch-back, warp-speed 900cc cafe racer is one of them - but I want one anyway, and on some days I actually believe I need one. That is why they are dangerous.
Everybody has fast motorcycles these days. Some people go 150 miles an hour on two-lane blacktop roads, but not often. There are too many oncoming trucks and too many radar cops and too many stupid animals in the way. You have to be a little crazy to ride these super-torque high-speed crotch rockets anywhere except a racetrack - and even there, they will scare the whimpering shit out of you... There is, after all, not a pig's eye worth of difference between going head-on into a Peterbilt or sideways into the bleachers. On some days you get what you want, and on others, you get what you need.
When Cycle World called me to ask if I would road-test the new Harley Road King, I got uppity and said I'd rather have a Ducati superbike. It seemed like a chic decision at the time, and my friends on the superbike circuit got very excited. "Hot damn," they said. "We will take it to the track and blow the bastards away."
"Balls," I said. "Never mind the track. The track is for punks. We are Road People. We are Cafe Racers."
The Cafe Racer is a different breed, and we have our own situations. Pure speed in sixth gear on a 5000-foot straightaway is one thing, but pure speed in third gear on a gravel-strewn downhill ess-turn is quite another.
But we like it. A thoroughbred Cafe Racer will ride all night through a fog storm in freeway traffic to put himself into what somebody told him was the ugliest and tightest decreasing-radius turn since Genghis Khan invented the corkscrew.
Cafe Racing is mainly a matter of taste. It is an atavistic mentality, a peculiar mix of low style, high speed, pure dumbness, and overweening commitment to the Cafe Life and all its dangerous pleasures... I am a Cafe Racer myself, on some days - and it is one of my finest addictions.
I am not without scars on my brain and my body, but I can live with them. I still feel a shudder in my spine every time I see a picture of a Vincent Black Shadow, or when I walk into a public restroom and hear crippled men whispering about the terrifying Kawasaki Triple... I have visions of compound femur-fractures and large black men in white hospital suits holding me down on a gurney while a nurse called "Bess" sews the flaps of my scalp together with a stitching drill.
Ho, ho. Thank God for these flashbacks. The brain is such a wonderful instrument (until God sinks his teeth into it). Some people hear Tiny Tim singing when they go under, and some others hear the song of the Sausage Creature.
When the Ducati turned up in my driveway, nobody knew what to do with it. I was in New York, covering a polo tournament, and people had threatened my life. My lawyer said I should give myself up and enroll in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Other people said it had something to do with the polo crowd.
The motorcycle business was the last straw. It had to be the work of my enemies, or people who wanted to hurt me. It was the vilest kind of bait, and they knew I would go for it.
Of course. You want to cripple the bastard? Send him a 130-mph cafe-racer. And include some license plates, he'll think it's a streetbike. He's queer for anything fast.
Which is true. I have been a connoisseur of fast motorcycles all my life. I bought a brand-new 650 BSA Lightning when it was billed as "the fastest motorcycle ever tested by Hot Rod magazine." I have ridden a 500-pound Vincent through traffic on the Ventura Freeway with burning oil on my legs and run the Kawa 750 Triple through Beverly Hills at night with a head full of acid... I have ridden with Sonny Barger and smoked weed in biker bars with Jack Nicholson, Grace Slick, Ron Zigler and my infamous old friend, Ken Kesey, a legendary Cafe Racer.
Some people will tell you that slow is good - and it may be, on some days - but I am here to tell you that fast is better. I've always believed this, in spite of the trouble it's caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba....
So when I got back from New York and found a fiery red rocket-style bike in my garage, I realized I was back in the road-testing business.
The brand-new Ducati 900 Campione del Mundo Desmodue Supersport double-barreled magnum Cafe Racer filled me with feelings of lust every time I looked at it. Others felt the same way. My garage quickly became a magnet for drooling superbike groupies. They quarreled and bitched at each other about who would be the first to help me evaluate my new toy... And I did, of course, need a certain spectrum of opinions, besides my own, to properly judge this motorcycle. The Woody Creek Perverse Environmental Testing Facility is a long way from Daytona or even top-fuel challenge-sprints on the Pacific Coast Highway, where teams of big-bore Kawasakis and Yamahas are said to race head-on against each other in death-defying games of "chicken" at 100 miles an hour....
No. Not everybody who buys a high-dollar torque-brute yearns to go out in a ball of fire on a public street in L.A. Some of us are decent people who want to stay out of the emergency room, but still blast through neo-gridlock traffic in residential districts whenever we feel like it... For that we need Fine Machinery.
Which we had - no doubt about that. The Ducati people in New Jersey had opted, for some reasons of their own, to send me the 900ss-sp for testing - rather than their 916 crazy-fast, state-of-the-art superbike track-racer. It was far too fast, they said - and prohibitively expensive - to farm out for testing to a gang of half-mad Colorado cowboys who think they're world-class Cafe Racers.
The Ducati 900 is a finely engineered machine. My neighbors called it beautiful and admired its racing lines. The nasty little bugger looked like it was going 90 miles an hour when it was standing still in my garage.
Taking it on the road, though, was a genuinely terrifying experience. I had no sense of speed until I was going 90 and coming up fast on a bunch of pickup trucks going into a wet curve along the river. I went for both brakes, but only the front one worked, and I almost went end over end. I was out of control staring at the tailpipe of a U.S. Mail truck, still stabbing frantically at my rear brake pedal, which I just couldn't find... I am too tall for these new-age roadracers; they are not built for any rider taller than five-nine, and the rearset brake pedal was not where I thought it would be. Mid-size Italian pimps who like to race from one cafe to another on the boulevards of Rome in a flat-line prone position might like this, but I do not.
I was hunched over the tank like a person diving into a pool that got emptied yesterday. Whacko! Bashed on the concrete bottom, flesh ripped off, a Sausage Creature with no teeth, fucked-up for the rest of its life.
We all love Torque, and some of us have taken it straight over the high side from time to time - and there is always Pain in that... But there is also Fun, the deadly element, and Fun is what you get when you screw this monster on. BOOM! Instant take-off, no screeching or squawking around like a fool with your teeth clamping down on our tongue and your mind completely empty of everything but fear.
No. This bugger digs right in and shoots you straight down the pipe, for good or ill.
On my first take-off, I hit second gear and went through the speed limit on a two-lane blacktop highway full of ranch traffic. By the time I went up to third, I was going 75 and the tach was barely above 4000 rpm....
And that's when it got its second wind. From 4000 to 6000 in third will take you from 75 mph to 95 in two seconds - and after that, Bubba, you still have fourth, fifth, and sixth. Ho, ho.
I never got to sixth gear, and I didn't get deep into fifth. This is a shameful admission for a full-bore Cafe Racer, but let me tell you something, old sport: This motorcycle is simply too goddamn fast to ride at speed in any kind of normal road traffic unless you're ready to go straight down the centerline with your nuts on fire and a silent scream in your throat.
When aimed in the right direction at high speed, though, it has unnatural capabilities. This I unwittingly discovered as I made my approach to a sharp turn across some railroad tracks, saw that I was going way too fast and that my only chance was to veer right and screw it on totally, in a desperate attempt to leapfrog the curve by going airborne.
It was a bold and reckless move, but it was necessary. And it worked: I felt like Evel Knievel as I soared across the tracks with the rain in my eyes and my jaws clamped together in fear. I tried to spit down on the tracks as I passed them, but my mouth was too dry... I landed hard on the edge of the road and lost my grip for a moment as the Ducati began fishtailing crazily into oncoming traffic. For two or three seconds I came face to face with the Sausage Creature....
But somehow the brute straightened out. I passed a schoolbus on the right and got the bike under control long enough to gear down and pull off into an abandoned gravel driveway where I stopped and turned off the engine. My hands had seized up like claws and the rest of my body was numb. I felt nauseous and I cried for my mama, but nobody heard, then I went into a trance for 30 or 40 seconds until I was finally able to light a cigarette and calm down enough to ride home. I was too hysterical to shift gears, so I went the whole way in first at 40 miles an hour.
Whoops! What am I saying? Tall stories, ho, ho... We are motorcycle people; we walk tall and we laugh at whatever's funny. We shit on the chests of the Weird....
But when we ride very fast motorcycles, we ride with immaculate sanity. We might abuse a substance here and there, but only when it's right. The final measure of any rider's skill is the inverse ratio of his preferred Traveling Speed to the number of bad scars on his body. It is that simple: If you ride fast and crash, you are a bad rider. And if you are a bad rider, you should not ride motorcycles.
The emergence of the superbike has heightened this equation drastically. Motorcycle technology has made such a great leap forward. Take the Ducati. You want optimum cruising speed on this bugger? Try 90mph in fifth at 5500 rpm - and just then, you see a bull moose in the middle of the road. WHACKO. Meet the Sausage Creature.
Or maybe not: The Ducati 900 is so finely engineered and balanced and torqued that you *can* do 90 mph in fifth through a 35-mph zone and get away with it. The bike is not just fast - it is *extremely* quick and responsive, and it *will* do amazing things... It is like riding a Vincent Black Shadow, which would outrun an F-86 jet fighter on the take-off runway, but at the end, the F-86 would go airborne and the Vincent would not, and there was no point in trying to turn it. WHAMO! The Sausage Creature strikes again.
There is a fundamental difference, however, between the old Vincents and the new breed of superbikes. If you rode the Black Shadow at top speed for any length of time, you would almost certainly die. That is why there are not many life members of the Vincent Black Shadow Society. The Vincent was like a bullet that went straight; the Ducati is like the magic bullet in Dallas that went sideways and hit JFK and the Governor of Texas at the same time.
It was impossible. But so was my terrifying sideways leap across the railroad tracks on the 900sp. The bike did it easily with the grace of a fleeing tomcat. The landing was so easy I remember thinking, goddamnit, if I had screwed it on a little more I could have gone a lot farther.
Maybe this is the new Cafe Racer macho. My bike is so much faster than yours that I dare you to ride it, you lame little turd. Do you have the balls to ride this BOTTOMLESS PIT OF TORQUE?
That is the attitude of the new-age superbike freak, and I am one of them. On some days they are about the most fun you can have with your clothes on. The Vincent just killed you a lot faster than a superbike will. A fool couldn't ride the Vincent Black Shadow more than once, but a fool can ride a Ducati 900 many times, and it will always be a bloodcurdling kind of fun. That is the Curse of Speed which has plagued me all my life. I am a slave to it. On my tombstone they will carve, "IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME."
::
2009 20 June :: 2.29pm
:: Mood: StOkEd!!!
:: Music: Self Esteem - The Offspring
Tonight!!!
K, party tonight, my house! Celebrating my birth-week! There will me plenty of booze to share just pitch in a couple bucks. We'll also have hot dogs on the grill and probably some chips and stuff. We will probably be by the fire for a while so bring a chair or something I guess. All are welcomed unless you're questioning whether I like you or not, then you should probably ask someone. lol. =) So dont be dumb, come hang out!! And we have plenty of room in the house for drunks to sleep too. =) Call the cell for directions. 6168353680! Starts around 7:30-8pm so come over damnit!!!
no one laughs at god in a hospital
no one laughs at god in a war
no one's laughing at god
when they're starving or freezing
or so very poor
no one laughs at god when the doctor calls after some
routine tests
no one's laughing at god,
when it's gotten real late,
their kid's not back from that party yet.
no one laughs at god when their airplane
starts to uncontrollably shake
no one's laughing at god
when they see the one they love
hand in hand with someone else and they hope that
they're mistaken
no one laughs at god when the cops knock on their door
and they say "We got some bad news, sir."
no one's laughing at god when there's a famine,
fire, or a flood...
but god could be funny
at a cocktail party while listening to a good god-themed
joke
or when the crazies say he hates us and they get so red in
the head you'd think they're about to choke.
god could be funny
when told he'll give you money if you just pray the right way
and when presented like a genie who does magic like Houdini
or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus
god could be so hilarious
HaHa
HaHa
no one laughs at god in a hospital
no one laughs at god in a war
no one's laughing at god when they've lost all they got
and they don't know what for
no one laughs at god on the day they realize
that the last sight they'll ever see is a pair of
hateful eyes
no one's laughing at god when they're saying their
goodbyes
but god could be funny
at a cocktail party while listening to a good god-themed
joke
or when the crazies say he hates us
and they get so red in the head you'd
think they're about to choke.
god could be funny
when told he'll give you money if you just
pray the right way
and when presented like a genie who does magic like Houdini
or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus
god could be so hilarious
no one laughs at god in a hospital
no one laughs at god in
a war
no one laughs at god in a hospital no one laughs at god in
a war
no one laughing at god in a hospital
no one's laughing at god in a war
no one's laughing at god
when they're starving or freezing
or so very poor
no one's laughing at god
no one's laughing at god
no one's laughing at god, we're all laughing with
god.
And a nice review of the song
http://www.dailymusicguide.com/Reviews/regina-spektor-laughing-with-single-review-09052009-1332.aspx
1. The Calculation
2. Eet
3. Blue Lips
4. Folding Chair
5. Machine
6. Laughing With
7. Human of the Year
8. Two Birds
9. Dance Anthem
10. Genius next door
11. Wallet
12. One more time with feeling
13. Man of a Thousand Faces
I already have a decent number of these, in low quality live recordings. Nevertheless, I'm ridiculously excited!