nobody ever said shit was going to be easy.
i'm totally aware of this. and i'm aware that i run the risk of pushing the "blistering" thing a little too far, portraying myself as some sort of whining emo beast who thinks the world owes her something. (not the case. i don't own a pair of chucks, i don't have assymetrical hair and i'm not so sure i even like death cab.) i hate that sort of thing.really all i want out of adult life is a little bit of respect.i'm twenty-five now, and i've done my time. i've played the precocious, wise-cracking vessel of potential role. i was a corner store rebel for awhile. then i threw that aside to be the weathered college droput almost but not quite hipster enough to be in the middle of the scene, though i played on the fringes for a few years. i drank too much, tried some things that would have been better left untouched, frittered away the days and still managed to escape without having made too many major mistakes (and the ones i did make have since been fixed, easily at that.)none of those shoes really fit well, and i had a hard time seeing in the dark and smokey clubs.i've never felt so much like myself as i do at this moment -- a college degree in hand, umpteen professional and semi-professional projects, volunteer opportunities and such. more importantly, i'm happy more than seventy-five percent of the time.so why is it that i feel sometimes that i still haven't completely delivered? and why the hell do i care if i've let people down anyhow?it's possible i'm hardwired to consider the larger implications and the oh-so-important other people's feelings factor. that personality tendency is one of the reasons i chose my career, and why i'm good at it. it's also possible that i'm impossible to please and am destined to replay every choice i make on the jumbotron in my head, fretting over the unchosen pages of my choose your own adventure story. i'm relentlessly anal retentive like that.somehow i still feel that on a certain level i'm expected to be frivilous, despite my own distaste for being that way. that gets me respect from my friends close to forty, my friends my own age not so much. and i have enough flavor of immaturity to feel like i'm missing something even though i'm fairly certain i'm not, because when i show up i wind up being irritated by some drunkard or attracting a herd of inappropriate mini-morrisseys.it's walking a fine line between responsibility and pleasure in life; i'm not always convinced i'm doing so well.
So it ends.
just as it should, with the penguins in pittsburgh. and thus begins the most beautiful of mornings.
i'm aching for tickets to tonight's game. however, being that the next game i'm going to is this friday, i'll probably still get my share of the carnival atmosphere. i sense some serious arena tailgating in my future...
let's go pens!
you're a pain in my ass.
other people, as a rule, are pains in the ass. let's not play it down in some sort of face-saving gesture -- it's a fact of life. not only that, but it's a fact of life that grows in truth as i slay the dragons of the few remnants of idealistic youth i have left. (though i think they're mostly gone now as i rarely have time to shave my legs let alone deal with asinine, unrealistic crap that will only cloud my judgement.) whether it be people on an exit ramp who stop at the stop sign and accelerate only to slam on their brakes fifteen feet later where the lanes merge, or the drunken and screaming fool i have to share an armrest with at every sporting event i've ever been to in my life, or the guy in front of me who orders a triple whopper with large fries, an oreo pie and a bucket of diet coke...it's all the same. they are all lesser beings in my secret self-centered world, and definite pains in my ass.pretty frequently my family and friends do things that combat my efforts to spare them from this designation. it may shock you to know that calling me three times in one day without leaving a voicemail garners you an ass pain rank (how am i supposed to screen my calls if you force me call you back?!). as does making me repeat everything i say in a single conversation. and arguing with me over my choice of pizza toppings until i bite the bullet and get my own damn pie which then disappears overnight despite my only eating a mere two slices. ass pains, all of you.i can only hope that in some small part my habits of stopping to read nutrition information on the back of everything i touch in the grocery store before i put it in my cart and dog-earing my library books are repaying the favor.
to be or not to be
so i don't know what to make of the latest "impasse" of the pittsburgh arena talks (aka governor ed rendell and mario lemieux: who's dick is bigger? round three). no matter how i twist it, scrapping this and starting over somewhere else at this late point in the game doesn't make a damn lick of sense. the fact that it's been three months of "we're close, we're close" negotiating and yet nothing's been put in ink doesn't make much sense either.despite being a lifelong penguins fan, the only emotion i can come up with is that i'm disgusted and bored with the whole thing. it's a riproaring shame that what could have been one of the most enjoyable hockey seasons of the last decade has been forever tainted with business powerplays.and it's a shame that a private corporation and a government striving to reach the same goals for the benefit of the city and fans can't check their egos at the door long enough to reach an agreement. shame on you all.i propose handcuffing all parties involved to chairs in the conference room in philadelphia tomorrow, with an armed brigade of concerned citizens outside to ensure the deal gets done. we could always enlist the help of the state police, since that's the number that our pennsylvania governor has rerouted his calls to as of yesterday, when the constituent masses began phoning about the situation. i don't know, fast eddie, but that seems to me to be a major part of this problem.and it's only one of the lengthy list of reasons that i didn't vote for you.
