Five hundred feet from the pavement.

It's 1300 overcast today. 1200 feet above ground level still qualifies as a VFR (visual flight rules) flight, but is excessively stupid. So I have one thing to say: Winter, fuck you.

I lied. I have more to say.

You ever wake up and think that you could be trying 30% less hard, and still fall in with the rest of the crowd?
It's not worth the effort, or the missed sleep.

Eighty-nine point three is such a stupid number.

At least she screwed Mark McClure out of his A, too.

So:

"I have died so little today, friend, forgive me."
--Thomas Lux

Caved!

I generally don't fill out surveys because I think they're annoying. Then I found this one, describing what songs you'd play in the scenes of your life. I caved:

Opening Credits: Poe -- Hello
Waking Up: Iron and Wine – The Rooster Moans
Strutting: The Refreshments - Banditos
School: Green Day – Walking Contradiction
Work: Pink Floyd – Welcome to the Machine
Driving: Joe 90 -- Drive
Partying: Modest Mouse – The Good Times Are Killing Me/Monty Python – The Philosopher’s Beer Drinking Song
Love At First Sight: The Decemberists – Of Angels and Angles
First Date: The Refreshments – Down Together
Sex Scene: James – Laid
Breaking Up: Iron and Wine – Bird Stealing Bread
Long Night Alone: Ben Folds Five – Evaporated
Friends: The Counting Crows – All My Friends/Butthole Surfers – Pepper
Graduation: R.E.M. – It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
Growing Older: The Counting Crows – Long December
Happiness: Guster – Barrel of a Gun (couldn’t tell you why)
Life Flashing Before Your Eyes: R.E.M. -- Hope
Death Scene: The Unicorns – I Don’t Wanna Die
Closing Credits: Grateful Dead – Box of Rain

Find him.

I flew to Little Rock today, and I was thinking.
I was thinking, as I landed with the setting sun at my back, if I knew anyone in Little Rock. I think Eddie and Miranda are in Little Rock.
So then I thought about telling you that I'd been to Little Rock today, and the fact that my feet really didn't touch the ground there. I didn't even breathe Little Rock air.
Does it count?
Everything seems weirdly surreal in an airplane.

So then, as I flew back home (twice as slowly, with the wind from the front this time) in the dark, staring at the lights illuminating what I couldn't see but what I assumed to be houses.
And I came to the conclusion that it means nothing at all.

The most concrete thing about the trip is the permanent ink in my log book, or maybe how some disembodied male voice asked me to relay a message to the guys at Riverside.
"Tell 'em Nick said 'hi.'"

Chicago

Sitting on a bench, waiting for a ride. Cigarette smoke curls around her fingers, then up into the glare of the streetlights.
"What school are you from?" I assume she's asking after my connections to the band. Maybe I should have noted the cigarette, but then all of my friends were smoking, too.
"Edison."
"Huh? I've never heard of it. Is it around here? I dunno that much about colleges. Just a freshman at TU."
"Ah. Yeah, it's a high school in town."
"Oh. You look much older."


I don't look that old.

Things to be happy about: guitars, retirement.

With a Bang. Then Came the Whimper.

Probably the last swim meet in which I'll ever participate. Yay?
Divin entered the diving (he'd never done it before, and had to be told the rules.) Crazy Divin and his gymnastics. Kid has no fear. None. It'll kill him one of these days.
Taylor dropped her water bottle, towel, and cell phone behind the bleachers. One at a time, in progression.
The Oologah swim team has no modesty, which causes a lot of screaming fresh(wo)men. It gets old.
On the way home, there was a Sonic/Subway stop. The kids at Sonic nearly got arrested in what we will, henceforth, refer to as the "Sonic Incident" for some business involving ALL OF THEM mooning the workers. Coach threatened to let the manager call the police on them.
Oh, and the other great thing was that they were all wearing shirts with the name of the school on them. Geniuses.
The swim team may never be allowed to go anywhere again.

But then, I'm good as gone.

Cross my DNA with something reptile...

Help me out here.
Every time I can ever remember listening to "Falls to Climb" (R.E.M.) I have this memory that I'm not entirely sure I didn't make up.
"Who cast the final stone? Who threw the crushing blow?"
Does anyone else remember, on the show "Doug," the characters actually throwing rocks at a house, until it falls down?
All I can get is a guy in a leather jacket walking away from a crumbled house.

Square One

Solo to TIP again. As it was in the Beginning, so shall it be at the End.

Today's experiences include seeing Nicki, playing Katamari Damacy, listening to Ani DiFranco and Dogs Die in Hot Cars, and reading (the beginning of) the Iliad.
Does that go in quotes, as a poem, or get underlined, as a book?

Tomorrow's include getting up at ridiculous hours, chlorine, repetition, redundancy, and repetition.

Foiled Again

I'm overqualified for Duke TIP at KU. That disappoints me way more than it should. I should be happy about my test scores.
So I'm thinking Duke East or Duke West..."Primate Biology"? It has lemurs, galagos, and lorises. "A Cross Cultural Study: The Vampire Theme in Literature". "Knights in Shining Armor: Fact vs. Fiction." "Philosophy in Literature and Film." "The Science of Science Fiction."
Eh? Any suggestions? Probably Duke East.

Two episodes until I'm Buffyless again. One episode in two parts, really.

Suddenly, I feel like a real nerd.

In Dental Terms

It's been a sorry day.
We beat Skiatook and Grove, got our asses kicked by Claremore and lost to Pryor by two.
It all seems pretty lame, if you think about it too much. A bunch of kids sitting in an unheated library, next to a window, on a Saturday morning, each trying to know about more trivial things than the others.
I return to guilt trips and unanswerable questions.

Jonathan was right when he said I couldn't carry other people's drama.
There's too much of it.

And then.

It's eleven, and I just walked in the house, returning from that damned swim meet. Went straight there after academic practice...

Today, I realized something. Or, rather, I acknowledged my having realized something. I'm not sure if it's sad or not, or if it's sad, if I'm the only one who thinks it's sad, and if it's not sad, if everyone but me thinks it is. Sad, that is. Or isn't.
Now, with that confusing preamble: I've got so much stuff to do that I never actually get involved in any of it. So much homework I didn't go to IHOP with the team at ten thirty with the team. Because what's better than that? So many clubs during advisory that I can't make any of the meetings. And all of this takes away from my ability to read or learn anything outside of the regular confinement we all have to suffer through.
Yesterday, in English, we talked about death imagery. A-fucking-gain. (See? An infix. Something I learned from an English teacher, not in English class.) She wouldn't call on me. Apparently, my cup runneth over with participation points. I have a ninety nine percent in her class, and I haven't tried on anything in three months. Anyway, instead of listen to her, I read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," which was immensely more educational, and least for the, "In the room the women come and go. Talking of Michelangelo," line that comes up in academic bowl.

Moral of the story is that I really have nothing interesting to say about anything because I'm too busy having something interesting to say about everything.


"Well the sword-swallower he comes up to you and then he kneels
He crosses himself and then he clicks his high heels
And without further notice he asks you how it feels
And he says 'Here is your throat back, thanks for the loan'
And you know something is happening but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?"
--Dylan.

In the Bible-Black Predawn

My weekend was filled with airplanes.
Bad news and worry abounded, today.
My weekend was filled with airplanes.

Pilots and Cookies

In the lounge of the jet center is a case that is continually filled and refilled with cookies, which are, most of the time, warm. Pilots walk in, out, and around in the lounge, continually eating cookies. Non-pilots toss their cookies. This is a theme. It has been Noted.

Last night was insane. The second part of the Rogue meeting was cancelled due to unfathomable drama. I went home, watched two episodes of Buffy, then came downstairs to check my e-mail. Ended up talking to my brother. Dad tells me to turn the volume down on the still-looping Buffy DVD. So I start wrapping up the conversation. He storms back to the TV, talking about how he's going to cut the power cord. I stand, walk through the den, and am accosted by my mother. The Question of the Year: "Who were you talking to?" (No, more suspicious than that.) I tell her, "My brother." She asks again. Obviously there's someone other than that. It can't be that simple.
An already long story I'll attempt to abbreviate -- she ended up storming into the back room, where I was watching the finale of season two, and asking me, "Why are you so rude?" I have no answer. What do you answer?
She tells me she's assigning me an essay with that topic sentence. An essay.
She says I won't fly tomorrow if I don't write it by noon.
She asks again. I begin trying to explain why she pisses me off. I figure that's the closest thing to "why I'm so rude" because it usually results in me dismissing anything she has to say from that time forward. She goes to her room, after giving me the I-can't-believe-you-say-those-things-I'm-about-to-cry-look. Which made me feel sufficiently guilty.
After a few minutes, I resume the show.
When it's over, I walk to the kitchen to put some dishes away. Dad's sitting in the dark, staring at the glass of wine he was rolling in his palms. We had a long talk, there, in the dark.

Was that anticlimactic or what?

Went to see the Life Aquatic with Jordan. Hadn't seen her in forever. Saw the little brother of one of my friends who was shipped to a boys boarding school in Maryland. Walked across the street to the mall to bear witness to the sad testament of how lame our town really is. Mall closed, locked, and dark at ten o'clock on a Saturday night.

I Came As a Rat

I just got home from buying Modest Mouse tickets. February 21st, Cain's. Go, and give Albertson's or wherever your money, because it's Modest frickin' Mouse.

Today was better than yesterday. Except maybe for the sickly worried feeling that today might not, in fact, be better than yesterday.
But it was.
We didn't have to read Red Badge of Courage out loud in sixth hour, so I listened to my iPod and read yesterday's and today's assignments, then wasted seventh hour in Easter's Spanish class, not really seeing any of the answers in Campbell's Quiz Book.

Mayfield's even thinking about killing the block schedule because it caused attendence on Tuesdays and Wednesdays to drop by twelve percent -- and, in case you forgot, we're on Bush's "Needs Improvement" list for attendance.
Oh. And I was nominated for Most Studious (again. Which Drover said was the "kiss of death"), along with both of the other people that were in my math group today (he split us up to work on something). Jane, the person I "ran" against last year, and Frank, the Math Guy on the acateam.

Of Counsels and Progress

I spent three hours being counseled today, and the only thing I got from it was the feeling that there is clearly not enough education required for high school counselors.
It's funny how the old friends and the passing acquaintances step forward in a crisis, not so much to help as to give the appearance of wanting to help.
I don't think it's over, but I really hope it is.

[End Vaguery]

Valuable Lessons

Tonight I learned from Buffy that, at frat. parties, you will inevitably be seduced, drugged, and sacrificed to a giant jack-in-the-box-like-reptile-being that lives in a well.
So never go to frat. parties.
Also, all monkeys are French.

We spent almost thirty minutes in AP Government and Politics talking about blogs as the next major addition to news media. Only then did I realize that I can't think of any..."peer" of mine that doesn't have a xanga or livejournal or some form of blog. Weird.

Driver's ed is done. I'm continuously amazed at how one can just get in the car, close the door, and turn the key. It's remarkably simple. Why aren't airplanes as foolproof?

I'm told they publish Harry Potter in Latin. One of these days, I'm going to decide that there is nothing to be done except to read that. And I shall.

Come to think on it, I'm also continuously amazed at the way I never stop talking...or rambling in this thing I usually name writing, but is really just stringing a bunch of words together in a not-so-interesting way (what can I say? I'm not Douglas Adams). (Ironically) I believe I say most every coherent thing that pops into my head (and some of the incoherent things) at one point or another. I need to work on that. Rarely is it interesting.
Like just then. Did you see that? I did it again.

It's a vicious cycle.

It's time.

A friend's birthday today. Seventeen.
Things seemed simpler when I used to write him letters in orange crayon, and ask my mother which side of the envelope the stamp went on. Don't suppose they really were. Relatively.
Funny how time always works the same way, but I'm continually surprised by it.

Mom invited some people over for dinner. Lucy got sick and didn't come. Watched less than a quarter of the orange bowl, then retreated to the back room to watch the first disc of the second season of Buffy.
Nice to have an obsession for a while.

I can hear the rain outside. Everyone's claiming there's an icestorm tonight. School starts again in eight hours. Still haven't adjusted to the schedule. I'm going to open my window and listen to the rain for an hour or two.

I'm dropping swimming for the second half of French II. There are only eight kids in the class. Three eighth graders, two of which went to Eisenhower. One kid from my own class there. One with French parents. Seven girls and Matt. Should be a much better class than the one that drove me to independent study and then to Latin last year.

I'll miss the smell of the chlorine, my allergy to which I've ignored.
No, I won't.

The New Year is Ruined!

The dinner guests for New Year's Day leave, having been exhausted by the previous night's activity (or lack thereof), and Reconstruction begins. San Andreas is scowled at, and ordered turned off, and I to bed. A complaint is lodged, though not in Her throat. I woke up eight hours ago.
As we argue the customary argument, the garbage disposal finally decides to end it all.
And then the customary shouting breaks through the house, as soapy water fills the kitchen: "Shit! Shit, shit, shit! Fuck."

I can't help it. I smile. "The New Year is ruined!"