Dehydrated, beat-up and bedraggled was a good answer to the question 'How are you?' last night after attending my first Rancid concert in almost three years. But every bit of the pain is worth it.
My roommate and I took off from Columbia right after work at 5, and made good time to stl, landing at Mississippi Nights before doors even opened (which was a little after 7). The line outside Miss. Nights was packed and upon seeing the building my roommate commented, "man, with all these people the building might collapse." I responded: "Well, better to die seeing Rancid than Great White at least, right?" He concurred and we walked into the venue.
The show began at a little after 8, or maybe right at 8, I'm not sure; I had left my cell phone in the car and no longer wear a watch (my last one was exploded while seeing Dropkick Murphys about 3 years ago). The first band, named Ultraman (I believe), didn't have much going for it ... they didn't control the stage well and lacked any kind of connection with the fans in the audience.
The second band, The Unseen, is a great hardcore band I saw once before. They played a pretty decent set, but I didn't know most of the songs because I only own their first album. I had a few drinks by this point so I hit the pit during "What are you gonna do?" and "Are we dead Yet?" two of their pretty well-known songs. After this, I was dead. I felt sick to my stomach and on the verge of heat exhaustion because it was so hot in the club. So I ran back to the bar and immediately began drinking glass after glass of ice water, intermittantly going to the bathroom and dunking my head in the sink. Luckily, it paid off and by the time the lights went off for Rancid to start playing, I was back to the land of the living.
While I have to admit I haven't been as big of a Rancid fan since Indestructible came out and Tim formed Transplants, the set they played was amazing. Starting with Roots Radicals, the band blazed through roughly 20 songs which included Hooligans, Gunshot, Rigged on a Fix, Reconciliation and several Operation Ivy songs: Soundsytem, Junkie's Runnin' dry and Knowledge. The encore was good, with the band slowing the pace and playing a few accoustic songs, which I gather they do most shows, and then ending with, what else, Radio. The band was even accompanied by Davey Havok of the now-horrible AFI for the song, but Havok did a good job with the guest vocals. I made it into the pit after about 5 songs, and hung around the periphery most of the set, stopping to get drinks as the situation necessitated.
Luckily for my roommate and I, our ears weren't ringing when we hit the streets after the show. Drenched in our and other people's sweat and sore, we loaded back into his car and headed to his parents' place to shower. We then met up with his fiance and my cousin, which is the start of another story I will divulge later.
Yesterday, Paul & I hopped in the car with Tony & Kyle and left for the state's capitol city to visit historical monuments such as the Slackers near Wal-Mart, JT's record store and Little Caesars. Paul bought a few SNES games but was later disappointed when he discovered that his SNES is currently not working. I think someone has been shoving bologna in it - I won't name any names. Tony picked up the NES game by Wisdom Tree, Spiritual Warfare. I can't possibly describe this accurately, and certainly you would need to see pictures of the game, so redirect yourself to the Encyclopedia Obscura, needless to say, it was a good find.
I picked up four fantastic cds: A*Teens, the Clueless soundtrack, Marc Anthony's 'Libre' and Ace of Base's 'The Bridge.' Right, well then. I remember a girl telling me that one day I would grow up and out of my pop music 'phase' when I learned to appreciate music. She said that when I was first starting college and I was actually older than her, I think. Either way, I am still snickering at the comment.
Ah, before I forget, I should also mention that Tony and Kyle have a radio show on KOPN 89.5 on Saturday night - Sunday morning. It begins at 2:00 am and ends at 5:00 am. They also have a Myspace profile for the show: Mystery Science Radio 3000. I would like to note that my profile is currently down on the site due to the Myspace outages. Fortunately, my friend Jon had his profile wiped and then it was fixed and all the old information had been saved - I hope this is the case with my profile.
Tomorrow I am picking up my 127 film from Columbia Photo! I am excited because it is the first time I had ever used the 127 film & Brownie (not the Brownie in the previous entry, but the one I bought from Helena). Some photos have been exposed twice, and I made sure to tell them not to worry about it, to print them with flaws and all because that is why I got this particular camera.
This rant is in no way organized. It was brought on after watching an episode of 30 Days on illegal immigration.
I am uncertain as to why people take such an uncompromising stance against immigration in the way that suggests some sort of animosity toward immigrants.I am of course talking about illegal immigrants, and realistically, it is not simply illegal immigrants who are the target of all this antipathy, but it is Latino(a) immigrants and above all else, Mexicans.It amazes me to see people up in arms over Mexican immigration and the illegal workforce, because so many of these people – in my life – rarely have anything to say on sweatshops and low wages.Actually, of all the people I have heard complain about these low-wage Mexican workers, I have not heard one complain about Wal-Mart’s treatment of its employees, nor have I heard any complaints about companies such as The Gap or Pepsi. Why are these people not arguing the fact that these jobs, those that are offered overseas to workers who earn next to nothing to make overpriced apparel for the citizens of the US, are not also jobs for Americans?
It’s true that people complain about outsourcing, but I do not think it is to the extent people complain about illegal immigrants taking random odd jobs in the States, and certainly, as I said, I rarely hear people complain about overseas sweatshops.
Along with complaints about immigrants taking American jobs, there are various other accusations made against immigrants.
1) They do not want to learn English.
I always find this one amazing because it comes from people who have little experience with immigrants or language. Now, as a Spanish teacher I suppose it is obvious for me to say that most of the people I have come across who were learning another language were doing so in a formal setting. That is, they were taking courses at the university or had taken courses in their high schools and were given explicit instruction on grammatical items, context, etc. I will also say that as a Spanish teacher at the university, I have seen that there have been many teachers at the secondary and lower levels of schooling who have not had as much experience with the language.Just recently I met a girl who had received a degree in education – a Spanish emphasis – and yet all her credits were from high school. She admitted that when watching television in Spanish, she could not quite understand what was being said.
My point in saying all this is that even in formal education, particularly at the lower levels (read: not college) many students are not being exposed to the language in a way that fosters fluency.Even worse is the fact that their teachers do not necessarily have that much experience with the language either – but schools are desperate, I think, for any sort of language teacher, even one who is not all too familiar with the language which s/he is teaching. With this in mind, if we understand that students are given formal instruction, however bad or good it may be, in say the Spanish language, and yet cannot reproduce the language with much accuracy, why is it that difficult to understand that learning the English language would also come with some difficulty?I cannot help but feel that people who accuse immigrants of not wanting to learn the language have a rather unrealistic understanding of the time it takes to learn any one language.
Furthermore, there are aspects of the language – terminology – which do not present themselves in every day conversation. It may be unlikely that even while learning the language that any illegal immigrant will find the formal wording of government forms familiar if they have not had much contact with such terms. I think reading ballots and filling out forms can make anyone’s head spin.
Now, another point is that I do not know many immigrants who come to this country and who do not try to speak English. Mind you, it isn’t even the official language of the country – something the citizens of the United States tend to forget. I do think that as in the past, it is much easier for immigrant children to pick up the language.I know that Paul’s grandparents, immigrants from Russia, had encouraged their son, Paul’s father, to learn English as they struggled to learn. When you have known a language for so many years, you can imagine that learning a new one with new rules may be made more difficult when you do not have a formal education in regards to that language.
My fear now is that someone may respond to this with ‘Why don’t they get a formal education in the language?’ I have already made my case, I think, with grade school and secondary language education.The next level is college – and do you think that college is cheap or even affordable? If your answer was yes, or anything remotely similar to ‘yes’ then you are from a completely different social class than an illegal immigrant who is working odd jobs for low wages.If it was inexpensive to go to a college or university, then we would all get to go, right?
2) They wave their flags around and it’s disrespectful to this country.
I have one Colombian flag, three Brasilian flags and two Spanish flags. I also can’t think of a place I’d rather live than the States even for its flaws. I find it offensive that people cannot celebrate their heritage and ethnic pride – and honestly, it’s not ‘people’ it’s Mexicans, isn’t it? Has anyone ever complained that cities with a large Italian or Irish population have their flags up? Well, I’ll be fair, I’m sure people have complained many years ago, but now? Isn’t that a bit hypocritical? How can anyone claim that what they love about this country is that it is made up of such a mix of people, yet expect all those people to assimilate into some uniform standard which negates their background. Why should all people ONLY speak English? It seems to me that this is turning into some attempt to preserve some ‘pure culture’ which has never existed in the history of this country. It seems a bit ludicrous to have a country filled with xenophobic mutts.
There are so many issues I probably should address, but I just want to sum everything up by saying that I suspect that racism and discrimination are behind all this animosity. There are so many unfounded assumptions about Mexicans, about immigrants, and about illegal (Mexican) immigrants.I highly doubt anyone thinks for a minute about any illegal immigrants from Europe, from China, etc not only because while they do not make up the bulk of immigration, many people just don’t look at them like they are ‘low-life criminals.’ I’m very tired of all the stereotypes being placed on the Latino(a) population.
I can’t imagine anyone would listen to what I have to say though because I checked ‘liberal’ on my facebook profile.
Yeah, I thought it was a pretty witty title myself.
Today was rushed, or at least it felt rushed. Got up at 10 to punch my alarm clock and go back to sleep. Woke up again (and for real, this time) at about 11 and rolled around until Monique calls me to get ready cause we're going out. So I grab a quick shower and shave (which is never quick) but I'm way ahead of her so I sit down to play some Uno on Xbox Live, which has for some unknown reason been the only thing I play on XBL recently. It's so mindless that I can enjoy it without having to put this enormous focus on it and work into; it's a great sit down and play for 10 min game. Anywho, I play until Monique arrives and then we go to Olive Garden for lunch. I like the OG because it's simply and fairly inexpensive if you know what to get, although it's no Pasta House :'( As with all of our meals, our conversation over the course of the next 45-50 min covers all the topics you can think of, from weird dreams to music and people in our lives. . . . Good lord this sounds like a newspaper article. I should probably kill myself.
Uh, yeah so rushrushrush and then I'm at work at 4. So that's a lot of rushing.
On another note, I had the most domestic dream I think I've ever had last night, involving Monique and I at the supermarket. We were shopping and I got really excited because I thought the coupon said buy 1 pizza, get 2 free. I was slightly disappointed (but still far too excited) to read it again and find out it said buy 2 get 1 free. I put three into the cart. Upon telling Monique about this today, she looked at me like I was crazy
...and maybe I am
until next time... (paul)
EDIT: I hate this thing for not letting me change my font ... good god people
Today Paul suggested that we go to the Antique Mall in town. I haven't been to an antique mall in quite some time, but this one is not too different from the ones I've seen before - there is a lot of clutter and a lot of dust. Even so, there are always opportunities to find something nice under all that. I bought this Kodak Brownie for 7 dollars, for example. I really like toy cameras. I have a Brownie that I purchased from Helena (myredself.org) and while the film is a bit hard to come by and generally costs a bit more because I have to order it, I think it's worth it. Really, the results are somewhat of a mystery it seems - and it's almost unnerving thinking about how film might be overexposed, etc, but whenever I see shots from toy cameras that are done well, they're really so beautiful that it's worth the risk. At any rate, I will most likely have to get a bulb for this if I can find one - I'm sure I can online and there is always ebay. I do appreciate manual cameras because they seem to be much easier to fix. I hope this one is no different in that regard.
Because we are those sort of nerds, we initially went to the antique mall to find Marvel figures - he found two Spider-man comics that interested him, while I bought a Spiral & Omega Red figure as well as a few Marvel cards and one Batman card that was surprisingly not from any Batman movies! There were tons of cards there from Batman Forever, which was an awful movie - maybe not as awful as Batman & Robin, but it was still pretty bad.
I dropped some 127 film off at Columbia Photo - we'll see how it turns out tomorrow. It's C-41 processing. The girl did look with some curiousity though. I hope everything is okay!
For dinner, Paul & I went to Moe's Southwestern Grill which is infinitely better than the Chaputle nearby. I never really liked Chaputle - as far as fast Ameri-Mex (I really don't know what to call it), Moe's is pretty decent. I can't remember if Chaputle has fish tacos? Everything seems a bit too complicated and pricey at Chaputle so I tend to avoid it. The first and perhaps last time I've even there was when Paul and I started dating nearly three years ago. Anyway, what I like about Moe's is that the fish isn't fried and I like the corn tortillas. The music that is played overhead makes the environment that much nicer too - I appreciate the mix of oldies & jazz.
I'm surprisingly tired & I still need to go get gas for my car. Tomorrow is going to be a day of running errands. Hopefully my Internet isn't down the whole day like it was today - I really don't like Charter. Their digital cable package is no good either. They don't get any Spanish channels save HBO Latino (what?!) and MTV Español. That's fairly obnoxious. Their sports channel selection is horrible! I really wanted to see fútbol games from La Liga & Paul wanted to watch Premier. I also want to be prepared for when Copa América 2007 plays. I wish I had Fox Soccer!
Yeah, ccgs. And video games, and all other sorts of random things that some people don't care to read about. If those aren't your cup of tea, be glad Monique will probably be writing most of the entries, because I don't necessarily have a lot to say. Anywho, this is what I do with my spare time as of late; I got back into playing ccgs after spending most of the late 90s (high school) doing so in St. Louis, and decided that I wanted to start playing after an almost 5 year hiatus. I play video games competitively, and have traveled to places like Vegas just to play Street Fighter and Guilty Gear. Also, as this is already hopping between topics with the quickness I'd like to point out that I'm so glad that blogger allows you to indent your paragraphs. A lot of these web sites don't allow that sort of thing, leaving my tangled monologues looking even more like one huge blob of unconnected thoughts. This irks me to no end, being in newspaper design. That, I suppose, is a decent lead-in to my current jobs, which are working at an arcade in town and for one of the local newspapers. I got into design accidentally, taking a class for it during school only to enjoy it much more than reporting ... so I switched behind the scenes and have been enjoying that ever since. Sadly, it's only a temp job for the moment, so by the end of summer I'll be searching for another job, which is the suck. Other than that, there isn't too much to say. I'm wishing I had Fox Soccer Channel right now because the Premiership starts in a couple weeks and I'm going ot miss it; I need a Nintendo DS Lite but am too broke (well, more procrastinating for a better color) to get one; probably going to buy the new L5R exclusive expansion, Test of Enlightenment, in the next few days; and really behind on my music purchases, as I've been meaning to look into the new Rise Against and Good Riddance albums but just haven't ... bleh
After having left this blog sit, motionless & unused, for quite some time, I decided that it would be best to start blogging in a different way. Currently I have three other blogs that I use frequently, a personal paper diary, and two more blogs that I don't so much use to update but so that I may keep in contact with others in the city (I really hate using the telephone). With this many blogs, anyone might suspect that each is difficult to maintain, but on the contrary, I find that I am able to spread out my posts without driving my readers insane because I have never suffered from a lack of words, not when it came to writing (you won't hear me speak that much).
Blogging for me has been therapeutic - not really in the sense that I have a lot of problems and I need to talk them through on a regular basis, but rather my need to just get words out. I need to write. I think that at any given moment we have over one thousand simultaneous thoughts in our heads and I need to express that. I think of it as letting the air out of an overpacked tire - yes, I am letting air out of my head, I am an airhead.
At any rate, what makes this blog only slightly different from the others is that one) I have no option to make any of these entries private (curse you, blogspot!) and so it is not that I am totally exposed, but I most post with a bit more caution. This is why I have other blogs that allow me to have private entries. The second reason is that I am sharing this blog with my partner of nearly three years. Because we do not live together (admittedly, he spends most of his free time here, but we are not sharing a closet which is of utmost importance), I thought that this could be a space we shared. He does not have the urge to update nearly as much as I do, so my posts will make up for a majority of this.
On to me: Most people I meet will never see nor imagine me dancing as obnoxiously as possible in my car to something like Funkytown on the local radio station. I am easily amused by small things - I like to narrate the life of my birds who, according to my narrations, are obsessed with my roommate. I think that the Family Circus is infinitely more funny if you read it aloud and in a goofy voice. Some people have suggested that I am insanely negative (well, I do complain a lot) and a total killjoy, but my idea of fun can be very subtle. I love taking pictures, and I love conversations, long ones that I would otherwise have to carry out in my head - that is my idea of fun. I don't like parties and really, I don't like being drunk. I still have a lot of stuffed animals.
There is a lot more, but you can't get that all in one entry. I can't even keep it in one blog.
