Filthy Hippie Shambles into Town, Vomits Words

Hyeeuuuuuurrrrkghrghhllle.

Ugh. Kaff.

Right.

So, the end of summer is coming at me with ever-increasing velocity, and I haven't yet taken the time to educate you, my purely conceptual readers, on the awesome things I have done, and the incredible vitality of my life.

I haven't talked at all about San Diego Comic Con (I met a real-life superhero), or my adventures along the coasts of North Carolina (cutlass duels in surging sea foam), the Wright Brothers Memorial (Scientific adventurers of the highest caliber, as can be shown by the respect paid them by Neil Armstrong in carrying a piece of their plane to the moon*) or the Philadelphia Folk Festival (sex, drugs, folk rock and roll) which even now engulfs me.

*(This is actually true. Also, it took us a mere 66 years from the invention of any kind of powered flight to be dropping men in tin cans on the surface of a giant, airless rock which has loomed over us for as long as we have existed. Mankind can be pretty neat, and a lot crazy.)

Sitting under the stage, two nights ago, I tried to compose a post for this very website about the Folk Festival and what it means to me. I found myself unable to do so. I work (ha!) as a volunteer every year at this festival, and have been doing so since I was a person.

I am twenty-one years old. I have been to the Philadelphia Folk Festival twenty-three times. The crew that I work with are old friends, a sort of seen-once-a-year boisterous and chaotic family who make even more fun of me for being lazy than my ordinary family do.

We do a lot of work. I do less than some, but more than my reputation would indicate. In years past, I earned the reputation. It doesn't chafe, particularly. The jokes are just that.

I am busily earning my reputation again, on this website. Apparently, it's just that comfortable.

The Folk Festival is a mystery, and an enigma, and I intend to return to it later, along with all the other notable instances I mentioned in the first paragraph.

You see, I don't know why I go every year. I just do. There are all kinds of reasons for going, but I don't know which ones have convinced me.

More on that later. I think there might even be something of value buried in all the introspective claptrap and twaddle.

Right now, I apologize for the low volume of posts around here.

I am practicing being a protagonist, which is something of an alien skill to me.

Also, this post wasn't posted when it says it was. This is because I wasn't sure it had a point, yet. However, James must have read the draft, because he said something about it, and now all of you can, too. Expect a real post shortly.

A glimpse behind the curtains of Eleven Names!

In which I rip off of Penny-Arcade horribly.

I do not know what it is about lyrics and I. Perhaps I should not be singing along with a Mr. Nathan Gray when he sings "this world is a cesspool and love has surely died/you've got to bleed a little every day/and let the memories fade/fuck hope, signed me". If you are a boysetsfire devotee (No, seriously, that was his old band, and that band was spectacular.) then you won't recognize the lyrics as any of the bsf lyrics, but instead from his new project, which sounds like the Jam, XTC, Talking Heads, the Cars (but far more importantly) seminal emo bands, Samiam and Jawbreaker.

This new band is called the Casting Out, the song, is called Quxiote's Last Ride. To be sure, that title is a step away from titles like (Compassion) As Skull Fragments on the Wall, Release the Hounds, Suckerpunch Training, Dying On Principle and Falling Out Theme. Suffice to say boysetsfire, like any other band worthy of such a vivid name, played with dangerous, potent and troubling imagery.

How else could I define the shiver down the back of my spine when I first heard him scream "Where's your anger? Where's your fucking rage?" Now it's songs about girls. I'm fine with this. There will always be bands that play with potent and troubling imagery, and there will always be artists that choose that pallate over something more pedestrian, and I suspect I will continue to gravitate towards the former. That's really the only way I can explain that I picked up Persona 3 yesterday.

Persona 3, is, yes, the game where your character brandishes an object that looks suspciously like a pistol at the general direction of their skull to release helpful spirits. Needless to say, the game sounds interesting, at the very least. 5 or 6 reviews devoured later, I figured I could find worse uses for my $50. I may not be able to pick up the Modern Life Is War pre-order with the tshirt, but I figure the story and game will be worth it. To be specific, after reading the reviews, I figured the use of the potent and troubling imagery would be done intelligently and in a way that would fascinate me.

To be honest: I also heard it was a limited run, like all Atlus game, and the pre-orders came with a hardbound art book and soundtrack disc. I am a sucker for limited edition things, and I cannot deny those incentives were incredibly tempting.

In an time where my English professors kneel at the altar of Kerouac, where I am told from all sides that my childhood and adolescnce is incomplete until I walk in the footsteps of people I despise spending their money on other kinds of escapism than the ones I indulge in, a game where one of the core elements is a suicide excites me greatly. You want potent imagery? There it is. It's been overused by a lot of writers, but choosing death is one hell of a mindfuck.

To bring this back to Persona 3. Your character does not actually commit suicide. Skull fragments are not strewn across the floor, and once the battle is over, your character continues moving around the dungeon until morning. Apparently, during the day, the game plays as a dating sim.

But we'll talk more about this when I actually play the game. Until then, the Wii calls.

I'm In Ur Fambly, Judgin' ur Vayoos

Oh, hello there. Didn't see you come in.

Love what you've done with your hair.

City living is, as the song goes*, demanding. All of my adventures revolve around homeless people, though. I made friends with one on the subway last week, when I let him onto the aforementioned subways with an extra swipe of my metro card. He then proceeded to tell me much of the awfulness that was his life. While smoking! His name is Gabriel, and it is tough being him. His wife of eighteen years was leaving him, and his eleven year old daughter hates him. He also has no home, and has been to Jail, where he informed me that they can take everything from you.

*Hurray for the Marcy Stop!

He then gave me a lottery ticket and one of the cross necklaces he was wearing, and gave me a hug when we had to split paths. It was kinda intense - at least a lot more intense than I'm used to.

Homeless guy encounter #2 occurred when I was on a walk with a good ladyfriend (right before we saw The Ten, which was pretty good), and it was considerably more distressing than Gabriel. Nameless homeless fella was trying to scale a wrought-iron fence as we walked by, and right as we passed him, he fell backwards onto the bricks, and was, I guess, knocked out in the same way that can only be accomplished by falling backwards five feet, right onto the back of the head.

He was twitching a little.

Anyway, it turns out that it wasn't anything, er, ah, kinda maybe permanent? Another friendly samaritan stopped by us panicky white folks, and was speaking the Spaniash at him, but to about as much avail as my "Are you okay?". Blinking at us, and having soiled hisself, homeless guy stumbled off into the streets. So what are people to do? We want to be responsible citizens, not to mention, just good people. In other words, we had no idea how to proceed. Ladyfriend calls the nine one one, and gives a description of what happens, and then proceeds to agonize over if this was the right thing to do.

Then we went to Whole Foods, and looked at the models and investment bankers as they bought strawberries and sushi for at least 40% markup! Hurray Whole Foods!

The only other thing I have approaching a new friend in the city is Mr. Woo, who is the superintendent of the building I'm living in for another, oh, week or so. Then I, too, will be homeless. But until that happens, the apartment I reside in is being shown to prospective and profitable renters, who are willing to pay $500 more dollars per month than I am. From about 10 am in the morning to about a little after 6 in the evening, a whole gaggle of people awkwardly walk in, and check my place out. Most of them seem decent folk, though a handful of them are more or less in some kind of paralysis. Mr. Woo, for his part, is probably sick of this nonsense already, and just slumps down on my couch, and we talk about the weather, while the realtor (which sounds like a supervillain name. I mean, I can't be the first person to think this) talks about how much light the place gets. They often neglect to leave out how it's basically a bustling avenue until after the bars close, but that's why I always like to pipe in about how hard it is to sleep on the weekends.

I also don't tell them about my roachy friend, Clarence.
Moowa ha haaa.

One of the worst parts about living in New York is that the whole place functions alot like one big damn college campus, and is concerned solely with New York. I turned on headline news today to discover that the rest of the world seems to be very literally collapsing - earthquakes, mines, and Roberto Gonzales's's's's respectability. I suppose some things are inevitable.