Dear Hipster,

Hey man, how’s it hangin’? I saw you on the street yesterday and after the little “show” you put on, I just wanted to touch base with you about some things you might consider working on.

First, your enormous noise-reduction, studio quality headphones are more than gratuitous. Here’s the issue with noise-reduction headphones: they reduce noise for you, not the other passengers. The secret to noise reduction technology is that it reduces ambient noise by making the music louder, therefore louder for people sitting near you, which, ironically enough, has an uncanny resemblance to fucking noise.

There is literally only one place where you need studio quality headphones: in a studio. Let me make this point clear: you are listening to unreleased Radiohead songs, not mixing them.  You look like you should be hunched over in the back of a van with a reel-to-reel recorder, monitoring phone conversations for the NSA. Unless you’re making beats for Jay-Z or loading a 727 with baggage on the tarmac at O’Hare, headphones of that size and authority are unnecessary, at least in public.

Yours Truely,
Annoyed

Favorite Quote

Drowning

We’re told when it rains, it pours. So we have to learn how to dance in the rain. I’ve learned to do so, but now I’m swimming in the flood. Looking up, each drop plummets directly into my eyes as tears come forth… or perhaps it’s just the rain. I’m waist deep, water swirls around me as I feel like every step forward is deadening. Every movement is resisted. My fingertips graze along the surface as the cohesion pulls at my skin with the friction of fine silk. Now chest deep, my lungs filled with air warmer than my drenched skin and the feeling of being alive and breathing is the only thing that urges that warmth within me. My arms anchored by this relentless weight that surrounds me from all sides, suffocating my energy and freedom. The water clears the top of my head as I struggle for the surface, hoping that perhaps I can catch a break, one little stolen gasp of air to prolong my suffering… then the calm sets in. I’m pulled to the bottom and I can only keep looking up as I hold my breath. The refracting light casting rays of memories down upon my torso. The surface glimmers and it’s light is the last sparse source of beauty and I can’t even reach it. I will never reach it again. The calm stage of observance begins to fade as panic sets in, my last reserves of air in my lungs drift from my lips and glide past my eyes as I see the reflection of fear in the bubbles. My body tenses and searches itself for scarce parcels of life left within me but I’ve already begun to fade. My body goes on with it’s hopeless and primal attempts to not give up, yet my mind has already gone. My eyes fixated on the surace, body movements slowing, and finally peace…

Are these lights growing effulgent or is it just me? Everything in sight becomes a blur as my eyes unwillingly lose focus. My body begins trembling excessively and nothing can seem to bring it to a halt. All of these voices are rushing at me from every direction but I cannot seem to interpret any of them. I hear, “you’re okay sweetie… You’re okay.” Feeling so helpless, next I am gasping for air, as if this serpent has me in a choke hold with his lies and fear. Right when I feel like this is going to take me under, my heart begins to slow until the pounding, pound pound pound, begins to fade. I am left with a weak body, a crazed strand of thoughts, and a streamline of tears making their way clear down my cheek.

no, i don't have it all together, but I'm trying

Happy on the outside, a smile spread across my face;
little did you know, its a fake smile filling the space.
Keeping myself occupied, busy, constantly on the run;
hoping if these hands are full they can't hurt anyone.
I'm calm, cool, collected, (almost) appearing composed.
Keeping that fake smile plastered on my face hoping nobody knows.
There’s more to me than meets the eyes;
the only way I can cover that up is with lies.
Letting people past these walls is a foreign concept to me
I would never show anyone the door, much less give them the key.
At some point its good to learn,
you have to stop living for everyone else, and watch the bridges burn.
Remember that  night i confessed my feelings to you,
you said you felt the same but its just a matter of time before you fall through.
Just like everything else in my life, i cant depend on it
deep down i always know when to call "bullshit"
Don't actions speak louder than words?
If thats the case then your completely unheard.
I'm dreading the day you say you have to go,
the only thing i'll be able to say is i told you so.
I'm smart enough to know that day will soon come
It's something enevitable, something i cant escape from.
I would rather figure this out sooner than later,
hopefully it leads me to something greater.
Now i'm screaming, ranting, raving, crying.
No, i don't have it all together, but believe me babe, im trying.

Adversity

I seriously think that the phrase “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”, embodies all that is wrong with modern society. When life gives you lemons you should savor them, what is life without adversity? No matter how sugary you make those lemons, the sourness is still there, its just masked. Only by confronting your troubles can you overcome them. You know those kids whose parents helicoptered around them, cleaning up all their messes? They end up as helpless adults who can’t do shit for themselves. All our bad emotions serve an evolutionary purpose. They are part of our genetic coding, which has helped us to thrive to become the species that we are. It’s like a roller coaster, if the roller coaster started off high and never deviated, it would be pointless and boring. Only by experiencing the lows do the highs feel so amazing.

Dreams

Dreams are afraid of me. There must be a reason for them to escape the grasp of reality. They are all populated with distant sounds, blurred images. And people. Many people, some faceless, others distorted. They all live in me — no, better yet, they live again inside of me, tall figures of smoky movements, fogged in the warm bizarro of the unconscious.
I reach for them, they speak in tongues; I decipher them, suddenly I am fluent in their gibberish and ready to share their fuliginous secrets…

— but then the dream is dead, only to revive with newborn figures, my achievements forgotten every night.

A Review of Mick Jagger's Face (for mountaineers)

Climbing Mick Jagger’s face doesn’t come with the same level of kudos as, say, a Barbara Streisand or Sarah Jessica Parker, simply because his nose isn’t as steep or tall, yet it was no surprise that experienced climbers voted him as their top choice for Challenging Terrains in this year’s Rockface Magazine survey. For years, the breaks and bulges that form Jagger’s cheeks, forehead and nose have provided a stern test for all comers.

The approach itself, along a neck that is fast losing its stability, is graded as Hard Very Difficult, with very few pathways available for beginners or intermediates. This means that, whilst countless travellers have famously explored Jagger’s body, his face remains a place that most people fear to go. Climbers are urged to negotiate the steep but steady Adam’s Apple Boulder rather than attempt the sagging and unpredictable outskirts.

If you can avoid being swallowed up by one of the folds in Jagger’s neck, you will discover, first-hand, the terrifying beauty of one of the most untouched faces the world has to offer. It really is a rock climber’s wonderland. No matter what your speciality - climbing, traversing, bouldering, bridging or abseiling - Jagger will push you to your very limits. So what makes this face so notoriously dangerous? Whereas other faces incline gradually and seamlessly towards the tip of the nose, Jagger sports an unprecedented magnitude of extreme downclimbs. To get anywhere, you will first have to conquer a series of huge, life-threatening drops before climbing up the other side.

Advice to newcomers would be to keep a map close at hand. Whilst most faces are symmetrical and easy to negotiate, Jagger does not follow any such logic. You might think you are ascending to the nose, but if you are not careful, you will find yourself deep inside one of the crevices of his eyebags. Thanks to his tough, leathery skin, it really is hard to know where you are half the time.

This location is a Must for all serious climbers and a Must Avoid for everybody else. Go at your peril.

Sometimes

I like to pretend that I am a poet. Some nights I will sit myself down at my desk and claw my eyes out trying to find the right words. Most of the time it doesn’t work, but sometimes it does. I guess all things are like that. Sometimes they do work and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes I work and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I cry and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I care and sometimes I don’t. But I always seem to love you, no matter if I’m working or not.

take a deep breath....now.....read

i am best friends with the past when it collides with the future, with sonic booms and tonic tunes that soothe the soul like rock’n’roll and rocks that sing of stoneage trends with string theory hammers and other assorted tools like purple octupi with enhanced vision laser beams in perfect towns with soma fountains and mountains of molehills that ask about crowvilles like unfortunate intent when smashing porcelain Christmas gifts over fires of cards that once meant something until the hands that clutch decided to change the stakes again.

LOVE

I am a walking contradiction.
Buried, deep inside me, dormant, a hopeless romantic can be found but atop layer after layer after layer of endless reality, sits a rather deviant cynic.Walt Disney wants us to believe in true love, Walt Disney wants us to believe in soul mates, Walt Disney wants us to believe in happily ever after.
Fuck Walt Disney.
Not to say I don’t believe in love because I do, wholeheartedly. I believe in love, in compassion, in humanity, I just don’t believe in fantasies. It is extremely depressing to live a life filled with unfulfilled fantasies, it sucks. Why do you think in the US, one of the most luxurious, richest and laziest countries in the world, depression is so rampant? Unfulfilled fucking fantasies.
It’s okay though, there’s a pill for that.
People need to face the open abyss that is reality, not look away from it. If fantasy is a seduction than reality is the realization. The realization that there are no happily ever afters, just ever afters, there are no soul mates, just mates and there is no such thing as true love, only love.
For the dormant hopeless romantic in me, a realization that somewhere out there, right now, there is someone just as excited to meet me as I am to meet them, my soul mate, my true love

Lose

And I feel like I’m losing—or I’ve already lost. Any action eludes me. I’m surrounded by this storm of abashing distortion. Every calm moment is simply the eye. The waves are smothering my cries, as soon the water takes me. There it is, that aquatic desert, that blue oblivion. I’m left to mull over long turned about thoughts, to reposition my every act. There’s something more, I know it. Just a word, for the red morning sky is breaking.
Lend me an oar, I’ll be your lifesaver.
I’ll give you hope.

And one day you’ll wake up and realize you’ve lost the best thing in your life.
No, I’m not vain in saying that. It’s not vain when it’s the truth.
Or perhaps you’ll never realize it. Perhaps that’s for the best.
I guess I could live without your pain.

The question is, could you possibly live without mine?
How would you feel if you knew I was happy again?
I imagine that’s the worst blow I could bring you.
Funny how these things work, isn’t it?

i am illusion—i hide in the places you never think to look, in your best friend’s tears and your mother’s silence. maybe i don’t make the wisest decisions or the most heartfelt ones—i am rash and thoughtless and utterly lacking in discretion—but here are my words, my thoughts, because i am too young to restrain them but too old to have lost them in this frenetic web of mind. follow, follow the downward spiral that is simply me because it isn’t brilliant or shocking or revolutionary, but it is honest, it is true and sure and young in ways far beyond words.

WORDS

I find it weird how words have so much effect on us. They can be vibrations in the air, made by some weird organ, hidden deep in our throats. They can be ink scratched on a page, or paint splashed on a sign. They can even be particles of energy travelling through fiber optics cables, like the ones you are reading now. Words can galvenize us, cause genocide,  bring tears of joy or pain, inspire fear or incite love. But words are words, nothing more, they are constructs of our minds. We apply our own meanings to these meaningless entities and somehow they become all powerful. Defining us as people by how we use them. I dunno, I just find it weird.

ArtSpeaks

At the end of a long day, where so much has gone wrong, I never seek the comfort of friends and family. For you see, it makes no sense for them to know what I’m going through. And I don’t want to seem self-centered, their thoughts are occupied with greater problems than my own. Not wanting to be a bother, I rant on about some irrelevant things that happened that day. Perhaps crack a joke or two. They like those. My goofy sense of humour has always drawn people to me. I find it slightly amusing, because sometimes it feels like I’m this venemous snake in a swan’s body. People see a bright, cheerful young lady that they can have a pleasant conversation with. I can be rather charming, in the shy and quirky way that the heroines in teen TV shows pull off so well. It all seems so wonderful on the surface that people just want to be more involved, and that’s where the danger sets in. Because underneath it all is an emotionally unstable wreck that doesn’t know how to let others in. One that desperately seeks true, unmasked closeness with another human being, but shall never attain it.
There are those that get close though. They get so very close and then they burn. I burn them. I unleash every weapon at my disposal, and push them right back out. Because even though there’s nothing I want more than to be completely vulnerable with someone and to just be accepted for who I am, I simply cannot allow myself to go there. It’s my nature.
So I seek my comfort elsewhere. In words of poets, lyrics of musicians and the graceful poses of ballerinas on the stage. Art speaks to me in ways that another human being simply can’t, and there’s no danger there. It’s safe.

MyBucketList:

To free myself from the causal chains that bind me to the shared experience we call reality; to allow my dreams to escape my head and meld with the world I experience in my waking hours; to replace our institutions with an organic oneness that springs naturally from the core of our beings. To replace monotony with absurdity, apathy with love, and simulacrum with truth. To maximize our collective freedom under the banner of passionate compassion.

To make everything gloriously incomprehensible, yet completely understood.
To bend myself to the will of the world, only to find that the will of the world is indistinguishable from my own.
To love fiercely, fully and openly. To unify the universe within me and the universe outside me under the banner of this love.
To find the truth and, in so doing, find myself.