i am here to be your hero, with a perfect body, straight teeth, and strings swelling every time i bleed.

yes. its true. the title is referring to me, just to clarify for all of those who were wondering. actually, i lied. i don't have a perfect body, but my teeth are somewhat straight, thanks to the amazing technological advances in dentistry and orthodontistry (is that a word?). i do hear strings swelling, jerking tears from the eyes of onlookers, whenever i do hurt, but whether or not they are truly there is yet to be determined.

yesterday i was a substitute teacher for a friend named susan over at sms, yet the students were high school students enrolled in some weird program named upward bound, not to be confused with dctalk's heaven bound, which is completely different and induces vomiting blood and leprosy. well, during the course of the day, some students mentioned that i was cute, and when susan returned for her last class, she said that some students liked the sub because he was cute (referring to me). why cant i find girls my age that will tell me that i am cute? i mean, i know my main goal as an educator is to make sure that my students are physically attracted to me. afterall, that is the main reason i wanted to be a teacher: so i could have fifteen year old girls fawning over me. not really. although, i must admit that it is a bit flattering. but like i said before, i would much rather have girls my age telling me that they find me attractive. for example, the cute waitress at the lounge should talk to me and let me know that she is interested in me, then i can ask for her number, rather than asking when she walks away and is unable to hear my utterances.

on a side note, i just got back from new york on sunday. i took some tests that were most likely a waste of my time and money, but they were easy. i also had a few opportunities to see my nephew, caleb, who is three months old. i always knew that i would like my own kids, but never really liked other people's kids. however, i suppose since he is family, i love my nephew. i am gonna miss him. i was surprised by how much i truly enjoyed holding him and singing to him so he would calm down and go to sleep. it hurt to let him go and i just hope that he can somehow remember me and remember looking into my eyes for the majority of the ride back home from the crimson crustacean. but he is moving to virginia, along with his mom and dad. i will not be moving to virginia. at least not as of right now. chicago seems more appealing, and i hope i like it there.

on another side note, bram stroker's dracula is a great book. if you like vampires, then i suggest you read it. if you don't like vampires, then you should still read it cause they kill vampires. i like reading about vampires and also watching well-made movies about such a topic (like interview with a vampire, but not any of the blade movies). the un-dead are just entertaining. but i don't think that snape is a vampire, like some believe. that's just unacceptable.

when you penetrate to the most high god, you will believe you have gone mad

it turns out that mike is alive and kicking. no bullet wounds either, which i found to be quite interesting. there also was no awkwardness or hard feelings. he actually seemed nicer and more friendly than before. so, one can surmize that taking a vacation then being pumped with lead will ease tensions and make you a more amiable person. personally, i do not plan on incorporating the latter in my relaxation methods, at least not willfully.

so now that mike's back, and we are talking, life can go on as planned, but a little bit easier and with many more congenial mettings. thermodynamics, here i come. watch yourself.

would jesus support a bad haircut?

so last night i decided to do something. i shaved my "beard". before getting rid of all of my facial hair, i gave my self big mutton chops, left the mustache, and made soul patch. it was scary. i looked like i might actually belong to NAMBLA. after this adventure ended, i was reminded of a question posed by a loyal reader of "the bocks": would jesus support a bad haircut?

the answer, obviously, is an emphatic no. no, jesus would not support a bad haircut. why would the king of the jews be in favor of terrible grooming? people are supposed to look their best for the big jc. i mean, thats why so many humans get all gussied up for church on sundays.

however, there are certain qualifiers for the bad haircuts that jesus does not support. naturally, what's "good" or "bad" or "acceptable" is very, very relative. the bad haircuts that i am referring to, which are undoubtably bad, are those that an insane person would wear. one such example are the stupid kids who cut their hair with a knife cause it "looks cool", when in fact they could have done it a lot faster by taking a weed-wacker to their heads or ducked under the blades of a lawn mower. yet they do this all in the name of fashion. missing chunks and looking like you are retarded is now the cool way to wear your hair.

this also extends to the "emo hair" which is something that my jesus would not support. you know what i mean. those kids who think they look great with hair in their eyes, so they grow it the front long, but are too sissy to grow out the rest of thier hair, so it's short in the back. kinda like a reversed mullet. why would anyone want a reversed mullet? cause they are dumb. jesus does not support their bad hair.

soon after the reversed mullet came the fake mohawk. some refer to it as a "fo-hawk" or "feux-hawk". real mohawks (where you actually shave your head and leave a line of hair straight up, usually 3-12 inches high) were part of a movement more political than fashionable. now it has been bastardized with this socially acceptable "fohawk". its really sad, and jesus definitally doesn't support that haircut.

now if a person had no other means of styling their hair, and it looked like they were run over with a lawn mower, then that is fine. or if someone's hair just naturally falls into a fake mohawk, this is not bashing you. maybe the only hair you can grow is in the front, so you have a reversed mullet, but it is hardly by choice. this is not aimed at you and your hair. jesus supports you and your hair. but when you choose to blatantly have bad hair, such as the afore mentioned styles, you have lost jesus's support for your hair.

this may sound like i am the kid with the right hair and look awesome or something. that is not at all true. i used to sport the liberty spikes and a tri-hawk, then i grew it out long, cut it short, and now i dont know what i am doing with my hair. i just put gel in it and let it do what it wants, for the most part. but i dont think that my hair is the shiznite. i dont spend hours cutting it with a dull knife just to impress the local indie-rock scene. my hair is just there, with the support of jesus. sure, some people can pull off a bad haircut, and some people even look good or attractive (this little essay is for guys and girls, both), but i dont think that jesus is with them, at least not their hair.

this all boils down to vanity. i'm pretty sure that jesus is not a fan of vanity, but he probably can tolerate it to a certain extent. what really gets him off (i think) is when a person is completely vain about their hair, yet they look like they should be committed due to thier entirely awful haircut. its a combination of vanity and stupidity. jesus didn't die to support the haircuts of the vain and stupid. i know i wouldn't have.

no donnie, these men are nihilists

i think i need to clarify some things, as well as retract/reword some things.

clarification:

i do not hate coldplay. i like some of their songs. good writers, just not enough variation for my taste. all three albums could have been one super-long album. when in the mood, i do enjoy some coldplay, yet i can't remember what songs i like. pitchforkmedia.com put it best: coldplay is "listenable but not memorable. It may be pointless to hate them, but with [X & Y], they've almost certainly become the easiest band on the planet to be completely indifferent to." that about sums it up for me. if you like them, then listen away. this is just my two cents.

retraction/rewording:

i have to take back my statement, or rather hypothesis, that all people named chris write bad music. since stating that hypothesis, i remebered a one-time favorite band of mine: twothirtyeight. the frontman's name is/was chris staples (it is still his name, but he is no longer the frontman of twothirtyeight cause they broke up). he wrote some really great stuff, both musically and lyrically. not so much on their first cd, but you arent supposed to be amazing on your first cd, cause then you have a lot to live up to. i dont like his new stuff, under the moniker "discover america", but that doesnt mean that he didnt write some good things in the past. also, a friend of mine named chris wrote some really kicking music when he was with the mcclurg family singers and also with other bands that i cannot remember. but it was good, if i remember correctly. so, new hypothesis: people named chris either write great music or not so great (good to begin with but then doesnt grow as a writer).

maybe your name doesnt determine the quality of music that you write. maybe coldplay is a great band but i just want to go against the current. maybe i shouldn't have deficated in carmen's lower, left-hand drawer of her desk. maybe someday i can be sure about these wonderings. maybe.

if it aint broke, dont fix it.

this philosophy is applicable to 99% of the things in this world. why would anyone try to fix something that isn't broken? some would call that insane if one were to try. however, i believe that this philosophy cannot, and should not, be applied to music. obviously coldplay frontman chris martin feels the exact opposite way about his music. the stuff they released before was "good" so why the hell would they try to grow musically and write better, different material? i'll tell you why: cause they suck. the new album could be considered a b-sides to 'a rush of blood to the head', which also could have been considered a b-sides to 'parachutes', thus making 'X & Y' a c-sides to their virgin release, if there is such a term. maybe 'extended b-sides' or something is a better term. either way, the band continues to write the same song over and over with mediocre lyrics and virtually non-existent tempo changes between songs, completly lacking ingenuity and variety. i think that all three albums could be merged together to form one insanely long shoot-me-in-the-face-with-a-double-barreled-sawed-off-shotgun song that the masses would still cling to and love like an ugly dog that craps all over itself everytime you pet it. now, at times, i do like to dance with the devil and listen to a few tracks from 'a rush of blood', but thankfully i burned the first two cds at such a low bit-rate that they sound even worse than the originals, thus preventing any long-term listening.

i can honestly say that if i had $200 million, i would not buy the first two coldplay cds. write another ballad about that chris martin. right now, you rank right up there with chris carrabba (deuche-bag confessional). from the looks of it, people named chris just end up writing shitty music, even though at a first listen it sounds good. but then it doesnt change, becomes trite, and i lose all respect for them.

and everyone covets my respect.

the battle at burgess

day 13.

the mob began to meet at burgess. i was chosen to be an insider since the leader was my brother. after having a dive-off in the pool to see who would control the family business, my brother just assumed he won and started taking over everything. now he became the very thing we were fighting. for some reason, before setting out to bring my brother down, tina and i kissed. i felt weird because i wasnt sure if i wanted to have a girlfriend now. it was, and still is, odd.

i set up camp about a mile away from burgess, across the rail yard, by the motel 8, or 6, i dont remember. all i can remember is the long walk from camp to burgess, which was an adventure in itself, what with the moving machinery and the skate-able rails and such. also, crossing the highway was a treat. i just wanted to whip out my pistol and shoot up some cars. but that would blow my cover.

i eventually made it inside the great hall, all the way up to the meeting room. i slipped into the security room and there was my brother and the butler and the cat. it all happened so fast that it is just a blur in my memory. i called out my brother, got mad and threw down a wine glass. but it was right in front of the cat. i fet bad. i picked up as much glass as i could as my brother ran from the room. i couldnt get the little shards out of the rug so i told the butler to vacuum them up, but i knew he wouldn't do it. he didnt want to disturb the meeting that was still going on. i cursed him and the glass shards inside my hands.

i was furious. i shot up the whole meeting. my first taste of death from my own hands. it was thrilling and sad. i ran and ran back to my camp in the parking lot of the motel. i couldnt stay there any longer. but my mission wasnt over. i had to go back and kill my brother. i didn't want to face him, but i had no choice.

i forged my way back to burgess, but couldn't get in unless someone came out. afterall, its a girl's dorm, and my proxy won't work there. but my brother could get in. and i had to kill him.

i made it inside as two girls walked out into the evening sun. i found a slew of paramedics and blood in the lobby. then i was hit over the head with a clock. i dont remember anything after that or how i made it back to my bed. but i awoke with the scream of my alarm and the guilt of murder and failed assassination on my shoulders.

i need to take more allergy medicine at night.

park that car. drop that phone. sleep on the floor and dream about me.

day 7.

we chased those buggers for all they were worth. finally we were able to trap them in a ravine. i shot one in the leg as he ran. his name was mike. mike ran away from his crew due to the lead in his leg. he ran to a tree and climbed up it, sitting in the 'v' of the branches. i took aim with my pistol and shot the sitting duck right in the side of the neck. by that time, my company had already caught up with the enemy and they were on the way back with the new captives. we all sat around talking, just shooting the breeze, finding out that we didnt want to kill each other and that we actually were friends. i apologized to mike for shooting him. he said it was okay, and he turned away, bleeding profusely. i turned to my fellow warriors and spoke to them of how akward it would be from now on since mike was my physics professor and i had to take a class from him this summer.

i have yet to get a hold of mike. maybe he died from too much blood-loss. he seemed to be fine, despite the slugs in his leg and neck. i've never killed anyone before. this is all too much. i feel terrible. poor dr. mccorcle. i won't be able to do thermodynamics without him.

day dreams and rock stars

lately, more like a few weeks ago, i thought that i was going to become a millionaire. i was going to win the $220 million powerball and be the envy of everyone around me. i began dreaming what i would do with the money. naturally, i would pay off all my loans, give a few million to mommy and daddy, spread a good layer of cash over my close friends, get a new car, new computer, actually buy all the cds i have burned over the past few years as well as any other one i would want, and have the best dvd collection ever. then came along the musical instruments. nothing too extravagent. just a taylor 314ce, a nice keyboard, fender jazzmaster, gibson sg, probably a mesa boogie 1x12 amp, a fender acoustic amp, a bass (even thought i just sold my old bass, my baby), and an ampeg 1x15 or something. then i could have all the time in the world to write music with the kind of equipment i want and become a rock star. but i dont want to be a rock star. at least not like those disgustingly famous tools we see on mtv and vh1 everyday. more like a small time rock star who has a good handful of loyal fans. maybe i didnt win 200+ million dollars because i would have become famous and then pull a kurt cobain or something, so really the almighty in his infinite wisdom was protecting. however, i, in all my infinite wisdom, think that i could deal with it and live a good life with that much cash in my bank accounts (plural because i would have to get a swiss account cause thats just what we rich folk do).

so, omnipotent one, i think that you should allow me to get that kind of cash. just leave it under my pillow for me. just like your sister used to whenever i lost a tooth.

then i could drink all the strawberry orange banana twister i could ever want. pure bliss.