Epic Mofo.

I am suuuuuuch an epic mofo. Like, honestly. I'm not even being sarcastic, either. Just now I was looking up some of my earlier files from when I first got Pancho (my Macbook Pro), out of boredom. I was supposed to go watch Tangled at a friend's house, but those plans died horribly, so I needed to keep my attention occupied.

Yeah so. I found this file. And it really blew me away. I surprise myself. All. The. Time.

Here goes:


"I find myself falling more and more into the insatiable, undying disease of wanderlust. I need to explore the world. I need to find myself in my roots by leaving those whom I know, and that which I live. I need to drive endlessly with myself, and get a taste for some small dosage of the world, if only a short drive up north California. More and more inspires me for this travel - this new freedom that is adulthood. Dr. Seuss said “Adults are obsolete children.” This is true for some cases, however I find myself falling more into the “absolute” child stage. I feel that I will forever be “me” - Shalica Mariee M. Riley. Five foot, one-and-one-half inch. Dark brown hair with the amazing bang flip. Full cheeks with a shiny white grin, and happy dark brown, essentially almost black, eyes. I will retain my love for skinny jeans, brushing my hair when I probably shouldn’t, smirking at a witty (or not so witty) joke, and thinking that I’m clever. I will keep my expressions, I will stay “cute”, I won’t change. 


I know who I am, so I know that if I leave, I’ll forever know where I was from, who made me, who formed me - my malleable self - and how I was produced into the person I am now, and who I will be. I want to walk the concrete jungles of New York scope out the Empire State Building, I want to listen to legitimate country music in Nashville, Tennessee. Hum along to the jazz of Harlem, blink in awe at the voodoo of New Orleans. I want to sail the seas along Baja California, walk the grade up to Mount Fuji - learn kendo and make a garden of sand and tranquility. Grow a bonsai tree, live forever if not in the physical form, but the spiritual form. I want to attend classes and seminars in San Jose State University, buy a Volkswagen bus - old hippy status, no doubt - and drive endlessly.

Knowledge paves the way of life, but knowledge doesn’t mean you have experience. Experience is gained when one is witness to a consequence - either good or bad. Humans are slaves to emotion - emotion causes consequence. With experience you gain knowledge, and a new wisdom for the world.

Despite what some may disagree, I believe that life is fantastic. As well, I can honestly say that I am wholly afraid of dying. I can’t comprehend how terrified I am of leaving this earth, and all its beauty. Why were we made and set into such a big world just to leave it at some time? I don’t know when I will pass on. I don’t know when any of my friends will pass on (oh God, I pray it’s of old age - I don’t think I could take any of my friends passing on at this age). There is just so much to do, and there is just so much I can do, and so much I can’t. This shouldn’t even be considered a blog post, if I ever decide to upload it. This is my thoughts, my journal, my diary. I don’t care what others say - this is me in written form. I cannot enunciate, nor pronounce any better than in writing. I cannot say what I want vocally without sounding like a complete moron. I hold contempt for myself at times. I wish I was smarter. You can call me smart through writing, but I will hold it in low esteem - this is not genius. This is me.

Even a genius is just a normal person.

Thus so, I am wanderlust. My mind travels where my feet cannot. It’s a charming thing, this idea, this vicarious sense. You can call me deep, you can call my shallow, you can even call me stupid, moronic, or even vain. I’m as vain as I allow - you don’t own me, you cannot comprehend the convictions of my mind. You cannot break into my skull and steal my thoughts because they are solely mine, and that I love, I shall not part with. 

And thus the contradiction occurs. “And that I love, I shall not part with”. I am a liar, yet I speak the truth. This falls back to where I am at personally, and spiritually. I want to leave this place, my “home”. Yet, I will always stay. This is my place. It cannot be taken from me. I’m a writer, and artist, I sketch with pen and I paint with, well, paint. You can beat me and throw me in a gutter, rape all that I am with all that you are, and I will never be broken. I want to believe this - and I am sure I do - but doubt always flutters around the air.

You know, maybe I should write an autobiography, or like, a memoir. I’ve started a few times, but I never got a hold of it. I never grasped what it truly means to write about yourself, and the personal evolution that comes along with regaining lost memories, and reliving the past. I’ve written essays of personal experiences that have changed me, but...did I really understand them? Maybe I did...maybe I forgot. Doubt. A great emotion, because it makes you “doublethink” things. It makes you reevaluate how you act, and why you act the way you do.

Sure, I sound stupid when I talk (or speak, whichever floats your boat). But who doesn’t? Who doesn’t make that occasional slur of the tongue, where all consonants and vowels fail at making sense, and become such unintelligible jargon that you can’t help but throw a hand over your eyes in shame?"

Yo, so that's all I have. And it's kinda funny too since my thoughts have changed sooooo much since then. Like, the document was written months ago. Since then my thoughts on dying has changed, I don't really want to leave hella far away anymore (though exploring the world is definitely still there). It's amazing because my writing is so...intense. Epic. "Sophisticated" and stuff. I should write philosophy textbooks or something, cuz I kinda sorta own face.

Yeah well anyway, that's mah post. Yes there are typos, but I'd like to preserve the richness of it all by not fixing them.

Human Connection w/ Foghorn Leghorn

    After waking up from a congested 7-hour sleep, a sleep where I couldn't breathe due to phlegm build-up and a sore throat, I get up and opened my laptop (which I deemed rightly so "Pancho") to finish some college application sheets. After logging into the SJSU site, and calling the Housing Department/Orientation management and shiznit like that because they screwed up on my payments, I look up to the top right corner of my Safari browser in exasperation (Mac computers for the win, screw PCs) and see that I Google Searched "Foghorn Leghorn".

    That made me go "wft".

Foghorn Leghorn

Looney Toons? Why would I do this? What was this connection, where was the liaison? Where did this concern my life? Was I just curious, or on crack (or did I overdose on tea, like usual)? Well, thinking back upon my congested 7-or-so-hour sleep, I fell back into the thoughts of earlier this morning. 3am to be exact, and a blurry flood of memories returned back into the pores of my wrinkly brain.

    I was staying up late with two of my good friends, because the other two I was Skype chatting logged off for the night/morning. I was talking to one friend, Ari, and the other, which of course, was Katie. I was busy being artsy, so I didn't reluctantly stay up with Katie like normal (cuz I want to go to sleep, dammit), I went with it willingly. I had something to keep me preoccupied (because I was...artsy. And I'm not too bad, either) so I was chill with the all-nighter. Ari was on Skype call, while Katie was only on the chat.

    So, around 1-2am both Katie and Ari get quiet - you know the "quiet", where nobody talks but you know they're there. However, Ari's cat kept walking over her keyboard, and turning her computer off, so she kept unexpectedly logging out of Skype. For those random periods of time, it was just Katie and I on the chat - and that's all it was, type-chat. Not voice-chat.

     And here is where I came across this feeling:

     One can be on a voice-chat and not say anything, yet still feel that a person is there with you. You don't have that lonely feeling, where one is on just a text-chat, and nobody types anything. With text, you know that a person is there, but you can't feel them. Here is where I feel that some modes of communication, such as text and IM and things, fall obsolete to the original call. Even if you're not saying one word, or making any noise, you can still feel the human connection with the person you're with. It's a more intimate feeling, where just sitting there with a screen full of typo-ed and slangy IM terms seems a little more desensitized. I personally like the phone call. I like hearing my friend's voices, I like being able to pick up the tones in their voices, if they're sarcastic, happy, sad, bored - anything. You can even read their faces, just by listening to their voice. That, my friends, is a pretty cool thing.

     Now don't get me wrong, sometimes texting is just the better choice, and even the faster choice, but nothing beats that personal human connection with one friend to another with just a simple call.

[Yeah so Foghorn Leghorn was the catalyst to my semi-serious topic. And I still have no clue why I Googled him. But thinking about it made a good point; I hope I wrote it well enough so people could understand it.

     "Doo-dah, doo-dah, lump-teen-dozen and a doo-dah day!"]

The Importance of Being

Today my English teacher encouraged us to write and read blogs. This is kind of funny because I do "write blogs" (derp, whaddaya think this is??), but when I thought about it, they are nothing of real importance. Sometimes, there are more things to write about than the small instances in my life - a CD, for a concrete example. In past posts, I was writing for the sake of talking, and not for the sake of thinking. So, here's my feeble go at something "important", or rather, something that's serious.

We're reading 1984 in my class, and my teacher brought up the discussion of fears. Julia, one of the main characters in the novel, seemingly has no fear - she's an all-for-nothing, "Screw you Mom, I'm gonna blast my music loud and piss you and dad off!" kind of girl. She is, essentially, a rebellious teenager in a woman's body who flips Big Brother the bird, not giving a damn of the consequences. Winston, the main-main character of 1984, has many fears (getting caught by the Thought Police, getting vaporized, etc), but one of his biggest freak-outs are rats.

Rats.

It's like, really Winston? Rats? You're a pansy-ass...

Tying-in all of these facts made a great discussion, so my teacher, Mr. BadDragon, asked us:

What do you fear? 

Naturally, no one raises their hand (ironically, I was going to say some of my fears, but public speaking is one of them).

Are you afraid of snakes? Spiders?
Are you afraid of public speaking?
Are you afraid of losing a parent, or a pet?

Here, it hit me -

Are you afraid of never finding love?
Are you afraid of losing a loved one?

My heart skipped a beat, then began to anxiously flutter - the normally cold room started to get nervously warm. All throughout BadDragon's questioning, I was quietly glued to my chair, afraid to say out-loud to the class that I was afraid of death - not others' death, but mine; not exactly how I die, but what happens afterwards when you seep into nothingness, a memory. To those who are spiritual, yes I believe there's Heaven, but I don't want to stop breathing because I don't want to stop thinking. I can't imagine myself gone. The words of my teacher dawned on me - never finding love, losing a loved one, and even losing a parent...

These all made me feel that my fear of death was inferior.

I can worry all my life about when I die and what happens after it, but just thinking of love...either losing or never gaining it, makes a sad life, and makes me think that my own fear is utterly selfish. We all want love, and even if you want to deny it, we need it. It helps us carry on, it helps us grow. Like Julia, we're here to live in the moment, but like Winston, we still need to be careful and watch our next step. We all need to cherish what we have, and just go for it - why should I get freaked-out by the menial thoughts of me dying, when the thoughts of losing a best friend, never finding that special someone, and the truth that everyone dies at some point, are the harshest realities of all? I am a person who feels; I need to be reassured of the little things, as well as the big. Love brings you life, and those who don't have it are dead. But, worrying about dying, which is an obvious fact of life, is just a waste of time.

The amazing thing about it is that acceptance comes hand-in-hand with time; however, some don't even make it that far, and you can only come to terms with it, hoping that it'll all get better.

I'll say it again: Love brings you life, and those who don't have it are dead.

Stupid reflection rant is stupid.

Imma Get Your Heart Racing in my Skin-Tight...Green Sweater

Alrighty...aha I actually kind of like the idea of writing out some of my mishaps/thoughts/ideas/experiences in blog posts. It's therapeutic, just like driving and wasting gas for the sake of resting your mind. Like, typing - and I really hate to say it - is so much easier than writing with pen and pencil. The words flow just like a melting ice-cap stream in Spring, where writing with traditional media is like an overweight woman falling (or, rather suspended in perpetual motion) down/up an upwards escalator. It just gets you nowhere.


[By the way, that was a horrible, horrible inside joke.]

Yo, I like how most of my posts have an intro-esque paragraph before I get into the actual meaning of the post. I'm amazing, dude.

Anyway, today I went to San Luis (our local "shopping city") with my mom because she needed a haircut. And, since there's a SuperCuts near the Best Buy, I was like, "Dude, Mom, let's buy the new Katy Perry CD today, since we can kill two birds with one stone." So, we go to the Best Buy, and get the CD. But! When I buy things that have a separate limited edition I go all out and pay the extra money - I'm special this way. SO I BOUGHT THE LIMITED EDITION KATY PERRY "TEENAGE DREAM" CD.

IT CAME WITH FREE BOXERS. IT'S LIKE OMFG.

Neon Dance, YEAH BUDDY.

So last night was our high school's Neon Dance (which, is basically, "a rave without the implications of drugs and alcohol"). Though, thinking about it, I'm pretty sure there were drugs somewhere in there...under the bleachers...along with the pervy freaks who were giving HJs and BJs. I mean, trouble always follows the fluorescence of glow stick bracelets and necklaces.

Anyway...

The dance was pretty freakin' sweet. I regret not going last year - I had SAT testing the day after last year's dance, and it wouldn't have been a good mix for my test, but mannnnnn I should have went. The dance was sick. Fist pumping, flashing lights, glow-in-the-dark paint, ripped open glow sticks everywhere...definitely a high school "highlight" (aha pun). My body hasn't felt this sore in a while - like, my calves hurt like a mofo, my arms kinda ache, and I still can't hear out of my left ear.

So the dance was Saturday (yesterday, as previously stated), and at about 12pm my friend John and his sister Sierra picked me up, along with Eliane and Katie to prep for the dance. So we go to Michael's (a craft store) and get a bunch of supplies to make our own shirts. We get neon paint, glow-in-the-dark paint, and white shirts; we then traverse Big 5 and purchase white headbands, and then make it back to John's house. We make the shirts (the freakin' drying time was like 4 hours...3 if you use a blow dryer), fix up the headbands, and proceed to the dance.

Raveglowsticksraveglowsticksravefistpumpfistpumpravefistpumpfistpumpraveraveglowsticks.

And so the cliche "Time flies when you're having fun" enacts: the approximate 2.5 hours of dance time flew by in a blink and a splash of water, and we made our separate ways as the music died down into the YMCA. However, Eliane and I split up with the Sierra-John-Katie team and merged with our other friends Ari and Karina, and we hit the beach. It was only like 11pm at this point - and the night was still young. So we chilled at the beach for a while, then decided to walk to Taco Bell because we're hungry and thirsty. However, they closed early ("Closed till midnight or later" our asses) so we were all like WTF and went to the liquor store instead and bought soda, beef jerky, ice-cream, and cookies.

Our bodies are super sore now, and it looks like we just had a hardcore session of anal sex. Or, if you want to sound optimistic, we had the complete swagger of a cripple. And, even though I'm really sore right now, it was all worth it, because the Neon Dance and all of the adventures that followed it really added to my list of great high school memories. I'm glad we all went, guys - it's really nice to let loose once in a while.

[Reason for blog post title: I put glow sticks in my tank top. And I'm..."well endowed".]

NEEYEAH :3