I just got done spending the evening with my old friend Melissa and had a great time.  I’m glad I finally got to talk with her and hope things are going to get much better between us.  It’s weird because despite the initial awkwardness I felt completely normal around her.  Aside from that, however, I’ve managed to do absolutely nothing today.  I sat around upstairs, listened to the Mallrats commentary (again) and read the first half of the Dark Phoenix Saga.

Now I’m watching the commentary on Garden State, which I completely forgot to listen to when I first bought the DVD.  So far it’s really funny and my man-crush on Zach Braff is growing.  Oh yeah, and that Natalie girl too.  Wow, I love this movie so much.
I think Brandon’s comment in his last entry about working at Wherehouse Music was a slap in the face to me.  Elitist bastard!  Me and my Merle Haggard CDs don’t need you and your “job that actually helps people”.  Psh.  Just because you’re not good enough to work the register at a record store you don’t have to blame me….how’s that for starting a massive fight?

Ok, I don’t feel like writing any more.  I thought I had something to say, but I don’t.  I think we should start having more themed parties soon.  I’ll think of one to have this weekend, maybe.  I have a weird feeling that Almost Famous may be my favorite movie when I’m 50.  It’s not my favorite now, but I love it more every time I see it.  We should have a ’70s themed night, watch movies about rock n’ roll and listen to records.  If anyone gets bored tomorrow, I’m working from 8pm to 4am.  Come visit.

I just realized the last entry was dated in the year 3005.  I wonder if we’ll be around in 3005.  I think we will, but it will be a very different place.  1000 years ago most of the world was starving, uneducated and miserable.  1000 years before that was the height of the Holy Roman Empire (neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.  Discuss).  Maybe 4005 is the year that things will be great.  Either way I hope that they still have the Real World.  Maybe by then we’ll have Real World Friendswood.  Those Quakers can get down, that’s for sure.  I hope one of my distant relatives gets drunk and throws down with a cast member on the first day, breaking his face in seven places.  Actually, I really just wish one of my relatives could last more than five minutes in a fight.
I wonder what the television soaps will be like in the future.  As long as they continue to produce the O.C.s and Dawson’s Creeks, I’ll be more than happy.  Speaking of which, I saw my one of my favorite Dawson Creek episodes today, “You Had Me At Goodbye”.  I really liked it back in 8th grade, but it is much more symbolic to me now.  It’s all about *SPOILERS* when Seth and Ryan get into a fight to the death in the season finale of the O.C. and aliens, led by Zach, come to Newport to shave Peter Gallagher’s ginormous eyebrows.  Also, in Dawson’s Creek when Andie decides to leave Capeside. *END SPOILERS* So basically everyone dies, gets knocked up or becomes addicted to Jesus.  Anyway, the episode was pretty much identical to what I went through when I left Belgium.  So now I’m really depressed and miss all of my Belgie friends.  1000 Damn-Damns to anyone who lived in Belgium with me.  Oh, and 666 Damn-Damns to Ve-Ve for getting me Sin City on pirated DVD!  Piracy is fun and easy, kids!  But back to the Creek, this episode reconfirmed the idea that anything and everything can be understood through the magical drama of Pacey, Joey, Dawson, Jen, Jack and Andie.  The Friendswood version of Dawson’s Creek would be much better, though.  Instead of forcing people to sit through years of Dawson vs. Pacey, they’d get none of the drama with all of the annoying…me!  “Who will write my college recommendation?” No need to bother deciding between two people, Ryan is your only choice!  I love referencing things that no one will understand unless they have seen the most recent episode of the Creek. 
I really want to learn to digitally edit photos to look good black and white.  Converting them to grayscale and then playing with the contrast is alright, but they never look the same.  If anyone knows how to do it, please let me know.  Also, I want to make my own Dawson’s Creek soundtrack with songs they’ve played that I used to love back in junior high.

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

Last night I was catching up on my friend Emily’s LiveJournal and I found this site.  This guy asks people to anonymously send in postcards that have a secret on them and people have come up with very clever and artsy ways of conveying their secret.  Some of it is disturbing, some of it is funny, but you can’t stop looking at them.  I read every entry on the site and really wish I could contribute.  I couldn’t think of any good secrets that no one else knew, however.  That, and my secrets were all juvenile and irrelevant.  I feel like I don’t know enough secrets.  Unlike gossip, secrets are things that you don’t tell.  You don’t even think about telling them to anyone else.  It’s just something that makes your friendship that much stronger because you share it, blah blah blah.  Or maybe people don’t keep enough information for themselves.  Either way, I don’t have many secrets.

I decided to make the font on my website smaller.  I don’t know if it is too small for ya’ll to read, but I HATE bulky text.  I prefer to have things be small and simplistic when it comes to websites.  I really don’t know why I didn’t have it this small from the start.  Either way, expect small text from now on.

I don’t really have anything else to write about.  I just got on to write about Dawson’s Creek.  I’m glad Brandon isn’t in the hospital for his liver.  I’m sad that Papa B is.  I think it’s awesome that my friends want to volunteer at the hospital.  I could never do it.  Hospitals have always made me very uncomfortable and being surrounded by death would be too much for me to handle.  As shallow as it is, I prefer to watch shows about hospitals because they always make it look better than it really is, even when it looks bad.
Crispin Glover should play The Joker in the second (new) Batman movie.  Mark Hamill is too old (it’s the beginning of Batman’s career, after all).  I think Mark Hamill would be near-perfect for The Joker in a Dark Night Returns movie.  He’s older and more seasoned.  Both he and Batman are crazier than they’ve ever been and I think Hamill would be amazing.  For now, though, Crispin Glover is younger, creepier and has a better face.  The guy is so weird, he looks like the Joker with flesh-colored makeup on his face.  I think he would be able to play the pathetic side of Joker (before the accident) as well as the homicidal/crazy side afterwards.  He also takes acting extremely seriously and views all of his performances as art.  Sounds perfect for the Joker to me.

I always lose steam towards the end of my entries and just feel like ending them, so I’m just going to stop writing.  Oh, did ya’ll check out the rufie sale at Westwood yesterday?

June 23, 3005: 4:14 PM

Last night was the most fun I’ve had all summer. After work, I ate at Ziti’s and then called up Brandon. Bored, we called Katie, Katherine, Veronica and Kistie. Unfortunately, only Ve-Ve and my sister were able to come play. We finally left my house at midnight to have a scavenger hunt, but that quickly turned into ice cream at Stevenson Park. After taking some artsy pictures and meeting a random kid who went to military school with my friend Winston, we left to go take a Garden State picture on this abandoned bulldozer by Wal-Mart.

Before we went to take our picture, however, we stopped off at Wal-Mart to get some trash bags. When we entered, I noticed the scooters for the elderly and disabled. There were three of them, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to take one for a spin. I can’t believe we haven’t thought of it before! It made Wal-Mart and entirely different place. After taking turns playing disabled, getting “talked to” by a crazy black lady and body diving for bargain DVDs, we decided to go take our Garden State picture. We forgot our trash bags, however.

Still, it was fun to get up on the tractor and take pictures. They didn’t turn out as good as I had hoped, but we have the rest of the summer to get it perfect. By the time we finished taking those pictures, it was 2:30. We weren’t even half-way through with the evening. We returned to my house to plot our best (and most childish) prank of the summer. I can’t tell you exactly what we did, for fear of being arrested, but here are close ups of our costumes. Oh, and don’t worry, we didn’t steal anything or break into anyone’s house, despite the masks.

When we had finished, we cooled down for a bit and then headed off to Ihop. Our waitress, Rubber Duckie, was the best waitress I’ve ever had at my favorite late-night location. Brandon and I both got the Big Country Breakfast, which was amazing. Ve-Ve got the Club and onion rings the size of her face. After eating our food, we began to wax intellectual. The bulk, if not all, of our conversation was about the nature of friendship. I was interested in why it was that I could give up on friendships when I know the “right” thing to do is stick around. After much discussion and revelation, we noticed the sun was coming up and our parents wouldn’t be thrilled to see us return after they had woken up. Our conversation ended there, but I continued to think about it for a few minutes before I went to bed.

I think that it is important for me to feel respected in a friendship. (By friendship, I’m really referring to a close friendship.) I believe that friendship should be beneficial to both people. Sure there are times when one person must give more than they take, but in the long run I think it should be balanced. If I feel like I’m just being used by the person or that they are dragging me down emotionally it becomes more difficult for me to want them in my life. For me, the best solution is usually distancing myself until I feel enough time has passed for me to start fresh. Unfortunately, that time appears to be longer than most people. Like Veronica, Brandon and I discussed last night, it is being closed minded, but only for a time. However, I choose when the time has passed. Whether or not the person has changed doesn’t change the fact that I still have strong feelings that would get in the way of starting new. So, while it is easier for me to become friendly with someone it is much more difficult for me to become close friends. I don’t know if that was coherent because I just wrote it in about two minutes, but I hope it is. It’s the best justification I could come up with last night for why I don’t always stick things out.

So I’m finally going back up to Austin this weekend. I can’t wait to see the apartment! Oh yeah, and those kids living in it, too. It should be fun, even though it’s much shorter than I would hope for. Maybe I’ll be able to go back up within the next two weeks. Anyway, I’m tired of writing so I’m gonna go get something to eat. Take care, assclowns.

This is Ryan’s sister, Jaz.  Unfortunately, the reason Ryan hasn’t been able to update for the last month is because he is in the hospital after being hit by a drunk driver.  Ok, not really, but it would be great if I had a real excuse for the reason I haven’t updated.  Oh, this is Ryan now.  A lot has happened in the month since I last updated, but actually less than I expected.  Summer has gotten off to quite a slow start and I can’t wait for everyone to get back so we can have more fun.  You think the Wood boring when we’re all here, try it when only four people are here and their schedules rarely match up.  The horror….

So I went to California about two weeks ago, which was amazing.  The first three days we spent in Disneyland, which was fabulous.  The Indiana Jones ride alone was worth the price of the ticket to California.  They also had these awesome photo mosaics all over the park, each representing a scene from a different movie.  Also, the new park, California Adventure, is awesome.  It’s much less “Disney” but the rides make up for it.  California Screaming is one of the coolest rides ever.  The only disappointing thing about that part of the trip was that Space Mountain was closed for renovation.  On the third day there we also drove around SoCal for half the day.  It really should’ve been called the O.C. tour.  We went to Laguna Beach, Newport Beach and Huntington Beach.  After seeing all of the beautiful people on Huntington Beach I wanted to shoot myself in the face.  Oh, and that was the day that Laguna Beach had all of the landslides after drinking too many champagne supernovas.  We followed a Fox News truck up the side of a hill and found a perfect view of the wreckage.

On the fourth night Lauren’s boyfriend came to pick me up from my hotel (Lauren was still working).  I expected to hate him, like I did almost all of her previous boyfriends but thankfully he was a great guy.  He’s from Texas, 24 years old and has a really thick accent (which rubbed off on me soooooo much).  After talking with him for an hour on the ride back to Redondo I was ready for Lauren to marry him.  He made the trip better than I could’ve imagined by providing me with another guy to talk to when Lauren and her friend Sam got all girly.  He also taught me how to surf, which was much harder than I thought it would be.  The highlight of the trip, however, was just hanging out with Lauren.  I can’t believe that we hadn’t really spent a lot of time together in over a year and a half.  We went to Hollywood, her school (Cal State Long Beach) and hung out in Redondo/Palos Verdes almost every day.  The pier in Redondo is also the home of the Bait Shop, and visiting it was a near-religious experience for me.  It’s not open or being used for anything right now, but you can still see the sign and pretend to be Seth while reenacting all of his scenes outside on the pier.  I mean…..weird.  Anyway, it was awesome to be back in California and I can’t wait to live there.  I found so many perfect homes…all I need now is about 10 million dollars and I’ll be golden.

That was a huge part of summer so far.  Since I got back we haven’t done much except work on making the Chrismukkah Video into a DVD.  I also started working at Wherehouse Music yesterday, which is fun and easy.  Now I’m just waiting for my shift to start by updating a bit.  Everyone needs to get back to the Wood so we can have so real fun.  I think we should plan lots of themed parties (two per person maybe?) so that we have an exciting final six weeks of summer.  I think we should have a huge picture viewing party to start it off and catch up on everyone’s travels.  Anyway, I’m bored of writing and I’m definitely not feeling the funny vibe, so I’ll go eat my feelings.  Later bitches.