True to her name.

Sorry I haven't updated this thing like I promised, but frankly I've been too depressed. I know that's no excuse, but I don't think anyone reads this anyway so I'm just letting myself down more by caring.

Anyhoot, here's a little something I wrote about my recent depression:

The small windowless office somehow came to represent freedom. The white walls and stacks of broken technology somehow gave me power. With them, I was the leader of something good, something with purpose. I was an editor, the editor of the arts section of the greatest paper you could ever work for. The Maneater is one of a kind; writers can work for any section, they can design and take photos. They can dictate much of their own work. As an editor, you are seen as the best and that's what I was. The best arts editor at the Athens of journalism, Columbia, Missouri. And like in Athens, the founding place of competition, you have to be the best or get out. So I devoted life to the section, and as a result, had to choose between it or myself. I chose it. The choice cost me my standing with the harsh School of Journalism, which stripped me of my spirit.I had to give it up. Now these walls represent failure, the office a constant reminder of my inability.Everyone inside succeeded when I could not. I am no longer of importance in this room that dictated my life. True to her name, she chewed me up, and spit me out. Touché, Maneater.

growing up is rough, but better than the alternative.

The news hit me like a freight train. I was the first to know; my brother showed me the ring alone when we were visiting our grandparents.
My face said “oh yay,” but my insides were screaming.
My brother I grew up with, that I heard so many times say that girls are dumb and gross, the brother that used to want nothing more than to torture me with rubber snakes?
We played Legos, he taught me to play hockey, he made a guy's nose bleed for making me cry. This brother is starting his own family?
I'm not ready for this. We can't be adults yet. I had a hard enough time when he graduated college and got a full-time job as an elementary school teacher.
Don't get me wrong, his now-fiancée is awesome and perfect for him. It’s just a fear of my brother and I doing adult things. I've been having to do a lot of adult things lately adjusting to living on my own and taking responsibilities, and now he is starting a family. He’s only five years older than me, and she is a senior in college. Will this be a decision I will face in the coming years? Marriage!? Committing my entire self to one person? It seems like a lot at this age, but then again, a few years ago it seemed like I had to pick a career to last me a lifetime.
What really scares me is he’s creating a new idea of home for himself, like Zach Braff said in “Garden State.” It’s a cycle. Soon I will not be what he thinks of when he thinks of “family.” He will think of his wife and children.
My brother and I are very close. He takes me out with his friends, we go to bars and restaurants and concerts together. I know our parents have committed their lives to us, how it seemed like they gave up all their time for us. Now my brother will be giving up time for his new family. He won't have time to have fun with his lil’ sis.
This brother that chugs egg nog and plays card games and calls all my college friends “hot coeds.” This brother that I am closer to than anyone else. This brother will be a different person.
But it is a fact of life that I must accept. We are both growing, and soon I will have to take on the roll of Auntie Meg. And although we may not have as much time for each other, I know that we will still be as close as we are now.
He will always be that boy that tortured me as a child, and grew to become my best friend as an adult. He will always be the crass, joking older sibling. He will always be my definition of home.

Death to The Fall Out Boys

Rarely does a New York Times article have the same effect on my stomach as a month old plate of sushi, but when I read an article by Kelefa Sanneh entitled “The Glamour (Sigh, Whine) of Heartbreak,” I could pretty much feel the chunks rising in my esophagus. The article addresses the issue of emo music becoming the new glam rock. Sanneh compares modern-day fashion--not-so-friendly bands such as From First to Last, My Chemical Romance, and Fall Out Boy (who were once featured as models in the Rolling Stone) to glam-bands of the ‘80s such as Poison and Mötley Crüe. The article also addresses the leak of nudey pics of Fall Out Boy’s bassist Pete Wentz and compares that to the Tommy Lee sex tapes. The article goes as far to compare these emo-glam bands to David Bowie, one of the fathers of glam-rock and a hero to the entire genre of rock and roll!
This article made me realize that emo is going to be the music that our generation will be remembered by. The ‘60s had the Beatles, the ‘70s had disco, the ‘80s had hair metal, the ‘90s got grunge, and we get emo? Has rock really taken this turn for the worse? Are my grandkids going to look back and say “Holy crap grandma what were you thinking?” Just like we now look back and frown upon the mullet and parachute pants, someday our kids are going to look back and see a bunch of whiny boys covered in eyeliner and black hair dye. At least ‘80s glam boys were bad-ass and sang about getting laid instead of getting dumped.
With the early nineties came grunge. Thank the lord for Nirvana. Suddenly people realized it’s not what you look like that counts, and ‘80s glam rock died.
So what happened? Where did music go wrong? When did modest emo lyricists like turn into this? When did emo go from Goodwill sweaters to girl pants? Did Conor Oberst breed some sort of music love child with RATT and suddenly we have From First to Last? Every generation has its rock music where suddenly “the look” is more important than “the sound,” but how did our generation end up getting stuck with this crap!? Why will we be remembered with boys who whine and cry over nameless and countless numbers of women?
I, for one, am not going to stand for this. This poorly written, glammed out whiney excuse for music needs to go down, down in a earlier round. Even if it goes down swinging!

hello all.

This is my for real blog where I will post my weekly writings. This is to prepare myself for the real career of a professional columnist and do get a lot of practice writing.
This isn't what happened in my day, or my whiny little diary. Each column will be about 450 words in length and will be posted weekly-ish.