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Walking hand in hand, Stan and Evelyn paced the steps to their front door. It was just past dusk, and they were returning from walking down by the lake. There was a little ice cream parlor called Benjamin’s that Stan and Evelyn loved to go to during the summer months. Every Thursday since they were married was their date-night, and they religiously upheld Thursday night as date-night for each other, because with children – and now grandchildren! – life can get hectic and they never wanted to forget about the most important person in their lives.
Tonight was Thursday, and they spent the night walking down by the lake with an ice cream cone in one hand, and each others hand held tightly in the other. Stan always went with Black Cherry ice cream, and Evelyn got Chunky-Monkey.
It was just past dinner time and children and teenagers were starting to gravitate towards the lake. The lake served as a social spot for most kids during the summer. Stan didn’t like all the noise.
“Kids! So many kids! I’ve had my children, and I still have to deal with them.”
“Come now Stanley,” Evelyn was the only person in the world to call him ‘Stanley,’ “it isn’t too bad. They aren’t causing any harm. Remember when we were teenagers? Remember when we would sit all night by the lake with our friends – even before you decided to finally ask me out on a date? We were these kids once.”
“Sometimes I wish we could just have the lake to ourselves, its harder to kiss you like I used to when there are so many people around.” And with that Stan freed his hand, and wrapped his arm around Evelyn , pressing his waist into hers, and kissed her gently but growled low and deep with a want and a need in his tone. He released her, grasped her hand again, and continued walking down the path with Evelyn as though nothing had happened.
Evelyn smiled. She never lost the feeling of butterflies when Stan kissed her.
Stan and Evelyn weren’t young anymore. Stan’s once dark brown hair had turned a soft shade of gray, and his hair was a bit thinner. His beard, once lush, was kept clean shaven and Stan noticed that he no longer had to shave as often as he used to. That simple fact made him feel old, but his face was still youthful. Lines started to form around his mouth, that became much more pronounced when he laughed, and he also had lines in the corner of his eyes, but his eyes were not dark and sullen like many people his age. Evelyn wasn’t much different. They say as you grow old with someone, you start to look like them, you look like you belong together, and that was truly the case with Stan and Evelyn . Evelyn only stopped dying her hair three or four years ago, and now it was a dark gray with a hint of blue – still thick, and just past her shoulders. Her face has started to show the sign’s of aging, but she liked the wrinkles on her face. Her grandmother always told her that her wrinkles were formed from wisdom she received from over the years and from seeing many moons – and Evelyn always wanted to be the same way her grandmother was when she was older. Her creases were just beginning, but so were the lives of her grandchildren. Evelyn was beautiful though, he face always bright, rosy, and smiling. Stan and Evelyn were truly happy.
Up on their front porch, about to head in for the night, Evelyn pauses for a moment and directs Stan over to their cozy porch swing, where they sit and rock back and forth as the last of the day’s light vanishes from the sky. “I love you” Evelyn whispers to Stan. And Stan leans over to kiss Evelyn on the cheek.
“I love you more.” Stan replied.
Evelyn smiled.
Chunky Monkey
Haven’t been here in a while. What a shame. I was going strong for a while. Good thing I have a job meow where I have to sit and wait for customers for hours. It gets quite exhausting. But a perfect opportunity to sit and write to all of my avid readers. So the topic for today is fantasy.
Why did I choose this topic? Well I have been reading the fantasy series Codex Alera by Jim Butcher, and its bringing me back to the summer days where all I would do is read Harry Potter. There is something about fantasy novels that make me regret being human. I didn’t really have a choice in the matter, but fuck – I would love to have powers over elemental forces, or wield a magical wand, or be able to turn into a bear! I WOULD LOVE TO BE A BEAR!!
I am none of these things though. It actually makes me sad. Humans are so boring. We are simple and fragile. That is kind of why I never really liked Batman. He isn’t super like Superman. He is a human like you and me… only with no parents and lots of money. I could do the same things he does if I was faced with the same situation. People tell me all the time that Batman is their favorite superhero. Their ignorance frustrates me. Batman is a vigilante, NOT a superhero.
I like to think about super powers a lot. What would your super power be if you had a choice?
One of my biggest fears is growing old. So that has always played an influence in my choice of superpower. A lot of people say that they would love to fly, because they could go anywhere they wanted to. I have to admit, flying would be pretty spectacular. But I don’t really want to fly. It’s not that I am afraid of heights or anything like that. I would rather be more powerful. Power is sexy. I would love to have control over time and space. I would be able to travel through time, teleport, and have the ability to speed up, slow down, or completely stop time. I think that is probably the best superpower you could have. Think about it. You want to sleep – stop time, sleep, start time. You will never miss a moment. It would really free up your day!
Power over time and space is a very close contender to being a werebear. It’s like a werewolf, but better because you would be a bear. Bears are fierce. Basically I want to be Beorn from The Hobbit. I don’t know if I would want to be a great black bear… I’d probably be a better Grizzly. GAHHH WHAT IF I HAD WOLVERINE CLAWS, COULD FLY AND HAVE CONTROL OVER TIME AND SPACE AS A BEAR!! I would be unstoppable.
A friend asked me this today:
Better sex or better sandwich making?
Here is my response:
This is actually a tough question. See, you have to understand the chemistry of a sandwich to make a good sandwich. You can be taught how to make a good sandwich, but there’s a lot to say about the discovery of perfect sandwich combinations. Basically, you can’t teach creativity. When it comes to the sack… I think over time you learn what your significant other likes, and you can learn and grow together. You are born with the tools to have sex, and the animalistic code to reproduce. Sex comes more naturally to humans than sandwich making. So I would have to say I would choose a woman that can make a sandwich over an animal in bed… because you can always bring out the animal in a person, but you can’t always bring out a sandwich maker.
Can you even disagree?
Wuddup world. This is your friend, AnarchistParty. I have been utterly depressed for the past couple days… or has it been weeks? I don’t really know, thing is I have been depressed for a while. And I am sitting here at my computer listening to a mix between Elton John and Radiohead, and I am contemplating my life. It has been a bit of a ride hasn’t it? I mean after nine months of brewing in a belly I fell through a hole into this dark abyss. If that isn’t a miracle in itself, I am still alive in my 20’s! That’s pretty impressive considering I was the coolest of kids and found fun in locking myself in the trunks of vehicles.
I talk a lot about being a child. Children are so much better than adults. I mean us adults, we take things so seriously… and we work non-stop… and we are grouchy in the morning without coffee… and we have road rage… and we have all these rules! RULES! Man, am I ready for a revolution where the working class might just take back a bit of their freedom? Yeah. Yeah I am. I feel so constrained! But children! Damn, they are useless sure… but they have real freedom! They have an imagination! Well, maybe not anymore. Kids are raised by TV’s and video games now. What are we doing to the youth of the world?
I am sitting here, and I am down on the world because I am wondering what is next. After all this education I am going through… what is next? I really want to be a writer, but education seems to be killing me. Me and my imagination. I want to write more than a blog, in fact I have written a children’s book before, but I come home from class most days and my brain doesn’t want to work anymore. I have no imagination anymore. I can sit for hours thinking and waiting for something clever to write about, but nothing comes. I just sit, and think, and sit, and…….
What is this? I need to do more than just keep on keeping on.
AnarchistParty
The Flower contrasts a utopian society that freely farms and consumes a pleasure giving flower with a society where the same flower is illegal and its consumption is prohibited. The animation is a meditation on the social and economic costs of marijuana prohibition.
Animation by Haik Hoisington
http://www.blackmustache.com
Music & Sound Design by Ion Furjanic
http://lavajumperstudios.bandcamp.com/
You can download the music here:
http://lavajumperstudios.bandcamp.com…
So you may be thinking, “Hey AnarchistParty, just because you deleted Facebook doesn’t mean EVERYONE else should have to delete it too! Why are you so down on Facebook? I like all of my un-genuine Facebook birthday wishes and I like thinking I have 2000 friends!” Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but you might not have those 2000 friends for long, because Facebook might actually kill them.
Mark Zuckerberg, best known for having over 500,000,000 friends, has been making some important decisions lately. One of them being how to power Facebook’s first data centre, located in Oregon, United States. This facility, which is said to require the power demand of 30-40,000 homes, had the option of being fuelled by wind and green energy, or by coal. Mark Zuckerberg, in all his wisdom, thought it be wise to poison his 500,000,000 friends and power his facility using coal. Foolish Zuckerberg. It doesn’t really take a genius to realise that the largest demographic of Facebook users are between the ages of 18-24. And what is the most popular fad for people of that age range right now? One word: GREEN.
Get with it Zuckerberg, or your 500Million friends might unFriend you, they might unFriend Facebook, they might not keep on keeping on.
AnarchistParty
Unfriend Facebook until Facebook unfriends coal.
Deactivate your account now.
Alright, so there should be another post on this blog about how I deleted Facebook and whatnot. Well, truth be known, I ended up reactivating my account about a month and a half later. Move ahead 5 months, and I have committed Facebook suicide for a second time. This time though, I literally killed my virtual self. I went through every “photo album” and deleted every picture. I went through all of my “interests” and deleted those. And doing that wasn’t very difficult. I didn’t really care. But then, I went into delete mode, and started deleting every single wall post.
It wasn’t until I started deleting every wall post did I really feel like I was erasing a part of me. I had Facebook for a solid 4 years. In that time, I have left high school, I have made friends, I have lost friends, people I have known passed away, I have adjusted to university life, I have adjusted to life with a dog, I have started this and three other blogs, I have been hired and fired from jobs, and every single thing that I have been through has in some way been documented on Facebook. I never realized it, but if I died, someone could have written a four year biography on my life just from the information they could gather from Facebook. Piece by piece though, I erased it, and I killed my Facebook identity.
While I was going through, erasing everything, I actually felt sad. I felt like I was really losing something. I felt like I was losing a friend. I find it surprising that I felt that way, but that is really the generation that we live in now right? We spend hours and days and weeks and months developing our virtual self. We create a side of us that we want to project to the world. People get to know our online identity well before they really get to know our real self. A term has actually been created for that too – Facebook creeping. You always “creep” people you think you might like before you add them as a “friend” and then you converse virtually before you really meet face to face at all. So, while I feel sad, and somewhat incomplete now, I feel good knowing that instead of working on a part of me to project virtually to the world, I will now work on my real self. Instead of hiding behind a screen, I will find out how I really want to be projected to the world, and I will fashion myself that way, without the help of a virtual persona.
A lot of people have asked me why I deleted Facebook. And for these people I have a few answers. First being, should I ever decide to pursue a political career I feel it wise that I get rid of Facebook for a few years before that happens. Things have a way of creeping up behind you and catching you off-guard when you least expect it, so this is my way of protecting my future-self from anything that people might try to dig up on me from Facebook. I know that regardless, my past will come up in a political career, but why make it easy for people to dig something up?
Secondly, I have spent way too much time on Facebook in the past, and I think that it is much more important to focus on my real relationships, and put real time in for my friends and family, and go out of my way to meet up with people for coffee or a movie, rather than just posting a message on their Facebook wall. For about 3 out of my 4 years on Facebook, I have refused to write “Happy Birthday” on anyone’s Facebook wall. And I have felt insulted when people wrote “Happy Birthday” on my wall. How utterly impersonal is that? I am not a huge fan of birthdays to begin with, but if you can’t see the person on their birthday, give them a phone call! Sure it only takes 5 seconds to write on their wall, but how about taking a minute and a half to give them a quick call. I mean, if you really care about them it shouldn’t be that big of a burden.
Third, I feel that I have had a good run on Facebook. I have had a good time, and there are fond memories associated directly to Facebook. But, Facebook is adapting and changing constantly, and I am tired of constantly changing for Facebook. Facebook used to be a very simple platform for communication, and over the past few years it has changed into a place where people can play games, every interest has now been associated with a “page,” and frankly I am tired of Facebook suggesting I be friends with people just because we have a friend or two in common. This might sound petty, but hey, it’s a reason nonetheless.
Cheers to my virtual self – you will be missed by few, and to others you will just be one less “friend” that they will have to make up for. Either way, I know I will keep on keeping on.
AnarchistParty.
“MySpace and Facebook have created a generation that, supposedly, has many friends but little sense of privacy and a narcissistic fascination with self-display.”
Dear Dr. Suess,
Where is Whoville? Is it on the speck that Horton found, or is it on a snowflake floating in a snow storm? I appreciate both Horton Hears a Who, and The Grinch, but I have a few concerns that I want to address.
Firstly, in Horton Hears a Who, Whoville is celebrating their centennial of nothing bad EVER happening in Whoville. But in The Grinch, something bad definitely did happen. The Grinch happened. Now, you could argue that the story of the Grinch was hopeful and heart-warming, seeing as the Grinch’s heart grew three times its size (or was it seven?), but what happened to the Grinch when he was a child was traumatizing and terrible on the part of the other Who’s. So did the Grinch come before Whoville on a speck – 100 years before – or after the centennial of nothing bad ever happening? Also, are Whoville years the same as human years? How long do specks usually last for? Snowflakes only last for the winter season, or shorter!
Secondly, from Horton Hears a Who, they have a motto “a person’s a person, no matter how small.” In The Grinch, though, you have the mayor of Whoville telling everyone to hate the Grinch because he is different, and not to listen to Cindy Lou Who because she is just a little girl. Should this be the same Whoville, would they not have the same values? Or does the Whoville motto not apply to colour of people. That isn’t spreading a good message. Alas the Grinch is accepted, though, so racism is conquered? This still doesn’t answer the question of why the mayor wasn’t listening to Cindy Lou Who, is she not an equal contributing member to the society of Whoville?
Here is the main issue: Horton Hears a Who-ville is on a speck which is on a flower. This speck does float along though, so you could argue that The Grinch Whoville is also the speck, but on a Snowflake, but nothing is said about the speck on the snowflake… just that Whoville is on a snowflake. Now, if Whoville is a snowflake, and the snowflake unexpectedly found tropical weather, what would happen? Would Whoville – essentially an entire mini-world – cease to exist? I am not quite sure where Horton lives, but he lives around a Kangaroo, so I am assuming Australia. Are there elephants in Australia? And Australia is mostly warm, but it does snow there in the mountains, but that is a far way for a speck to travel… unless carried by an elephant… hmm.
Maybe you were unhappy with Horton Hears a Who-ville (which you wrote first), and decided to rectify it with The Grinch’s Whoville? Horton Hears a Who-ville seems like a much nicer place though.
Dr. Suess, I am lost and I am confused, and I would really like some clarification.
Please advise,
AnarchistParty
“wtf are you even talking about?”
Remember when you were a child? When you played outside and made up your own games? Not everyone from my generation did this. Most have been consumed by video games from a young age. But I have been sitting, thinking to myself today: “what happened to me?” Instead of making my own games and having fun outside, I am making my own video game maps and killing zombies online (which come on, its probably good practice for the inevitable… but still.) I sleep until noon, I work, I spend too much time on msn “chatting” or on Facebook, but when do I go outside? Today I decided I would go outside for a morning coffee at the bright hour of 1130am and it really hit me. I forget the games I played as a child. I remember a summer where I biked into town every day with my mother (we live in the county so its quite a bike ride before you get to town), and I remember swimming in my pool and racing to find loonies my father threw to the bottom. But what else did I do? What else did I play? Is this what growing up is about – losing your imagination, your creativity, your childhood memories, your innocence?
As I am writing this right now (on pen and paper), I am listening to the neighbourhood children pretend to be roosters… random, I know, but how fun! I am sure they are laughing and having an awesome time! If I were to do this though, what would people say and think about me? Isn’t that a question you never asked as a child…
I am sitting and looking at the clouds. So fluffy and white. They don’t seem to turn into animals and dance for me anymore. My skin is starting to burn a little bit, but as sadistic as it sounds, I like it – it makes me feel a little more alive. The wind blows gently in my face… everything is so simple outside. The chaos from my day to day life seems unnecessary and unimportant. I know I have to return to the chaos, but everything inside me is telling me not to – to stay. Is that the child inside of me, crying out for attention? I just want to see the clouds dance once more. Is this growing up? I guess we all just keep keeping on anyway…
AnarchistParty
dear journal,
my day has so far been less than pleasing. i woke up. i was still tired. my head hurts. i got a coffee. that was going well for a while until i noticed there were weird looking fragments of something unknown attached to the bottom of my mug. i am now drinking out of a christmas cup. we all know how i feel about christmas. i feel like santa is mocking me with his ho ho ho’s. i work today at 330 until 1145. i feel like i cant shake this sleepiness. maybe its depression?! i hope not. maybe i am just tired. that sounds more logical. i am listening to david bowie -that flamboyant man… he makes me happy most the time… but hes just not living up to his expectations today. i wanted to make me a sandwich, because i apparently have no woman around to make one for me, and we don’t keep meat in this house anymore. i am thinking about maybe killing the cat and getting my protein from there. shes been a good cat though, so i think i would feel bad. i could blame it on natural selection i guess. i wonder what cat tastes like… is it white meat or dark meat?! so many questions…
well journal, i think thats all i have for now. thanks for always being there… i can always count on you. i will keep keeping on, only if you keep keeping on…
anarchistparty
AnarchistParty 