Good things:


+ The new Lifetime 7 inch. It's beautiful and highly recommended.
+ Having a manager that's really into underground rap and is very into trading and letting you borrow.
+ Being with old friends and not skipping a beat.
+ Being able to talk to my Hot Topic family.
+ Having a conversation with a 44 year old man about the Puerto Rican feud between Carlos Colon and Abdullah the Butcher, which took place quite some time before I was born. I already knew about it, and he was surprised that I was able to keep up and talk about it.
+ Talking about the "Von Erich Curse" to someone and having them completely understand. Wikipedia it if you don't know it.
+ Having every Alkaline Trio song.
+ The latest Atmosphere CD.
+ Everything Ring Of Honor puts out.
+ Friends coming to work to meet me for lunch.
+ Coffee and breakfast sandwiches from the Gate station at 6:00am.
+ Senior privileges.
+ Lady Sovereign.
+ Toys R Us being open until midnight.
+ My aunt moving close to us.
+ The blow up Santa on a motorcycle we have in our front yard.
+ The holidays in general.
+ Scrubs. What a great television show.
+ Cover songs. Definitely.
+ Starbucks water. It's free. Take advantage of it.
+ Getting closer to the wrestling business.
+ Wanting to see the new Rocky movie. I didn't think I would want to, but now I believe I do.
+ Getting paid.
+ Krispy Kreme donuts.


I am physically and mentally tired from everything that has been going on. Another day in the life.

Sometimes I can't believe that I am as old as I am, acting how I am acting, and being who I am being. It's almost funny to think that if me now would've known the little runt I was five years ago, I would've hated myself. Polar opposites to the highest degree. It's also kind of scary to think that in just a half a decade, everything can change. Five years ago today, I had just moved into the new house in Maryland from Virginia, but still recooperating from the move from Florida. Now, I'm here in Florida, wishing I could be anywhere else just for a little while. That's all I'd like. A little bit of a vacation.

Instead, I get to wake up at 7:15 AM every weekday morning, climb out of bed, get in the shower, and leave at around 7:55 AM to get to school. I go the same way to school every day, I get stuck in the same traffic every morning, and I pull into the same spot (456, I believe. I could be wrong. My parking pass is not my main focus.) I walk the same route from my car to the school, and go to the same study hall to talk to four wonderful people, but everyday it's the same. I leave school at 2:04 PM, get home at around 2:25 PM after getting stuck in more traffic, and I walk through the same garage door to get into my humble abode. It's almost funny to think that life is this repetitive. Best four years of my life? Hardly.

For as much east coast pride as I have, I can never support the south, besides the occasional "Drrty Souf" reference. Other than that, the Confederacy can kiss my Yankee behind.

When I say I really don't like my senior class, I'm not lying. I'm not saying that out of some sort of teenage angst because my dad doesn't let me go out past curfew and my mom won't let me get a new pair of shoes. I say it because I mean it. My school is full of bigots and the unintelligent that just aren't willing to learn. I just want out of here.

Please get me out of here.


Jake.

When you find the part to play, don't let it get away.

Things I have been doing lately:

1. Watching a whole lot of wrestling. Being a member of a wrestling torrent site is killing my harddrive. That's okay. I'm learning a lot, and it's making me want to attend wrestling school even more.

2. Considering going to wrestling school. Okay, okay. I know I'm little and whatnot, but still, it has always been my dream to go. I still would like to be a Literature major at Florida State, but wrestling is just my passion.

3. Making a monumental senior year mix. This thing is going to be perfect, if I do say so myself. It'll have everything from the anticipation, to graduation, to life after high school. Is it wrong to be so excited about something like this? It's the little things.

4. Dying. I've come down with some sort of cold, which I have decided is just Mother Theresa messing with me because I tell so many female jokes. Or maybe it's Helen Keller. Or maybe it's the weather? Either way, it's killing me.

5. Getting a flat tire. So how about I drove almost all the way to school today on a flat? I knew it was flat after driving for like a half a mile, too, that's the thing. I was honestly waiting for it to fall off, just so I could have a story to tell. Instead, I parked it at a gas station and had Luke pick me up, and then had Caity take me back so I can get my iPod. It's my baby.

6. Listening to a lot of music. The new mewithoutYou is just awesome. I didn't think I'd like it as much as I did. The new New Found Glory is okay, and the new Saosin is just horrid compared to anything Anthony Green has done ever. I bought Audio Karate's "Space Camp" because the version I had was warped, and I just got the Bouncing Souls' self-titled after all these years. I'm trying to diversify.



There's not much left to say. I have resorted to video games and my laptop, and it's my life, now. Please help me.


Jake.

It's my senior year.

Somewhere it's written that I am supposed to have everything figured out: where I want to go to college, what I want to major in in said college, my career path, my...life. That's how it goes in the movies, right? We randomly get acceptance letters from Harvard, Stanton, Yale, you know, all of those "no-name" schools that are so easy to get into. I wish my life was like the silver screen.

What directors don't show you is all of the hard work that has to go into your senior year of high school. The three years beforehand where you work your butt off, thinking that it will all do you so much good in the end. Let's be real here: even the smartest of the intellectuals have the possibility of flipping Whoppers at Burger King or unclogging drains at the local gas station. Grades are nothing more than a letter. They are nothing more than what I am using to type this up.

We are all born with the same capabilities. Even the handicapped can win the Olympics. Be that as it may that it is the Special Olympics, but, nevertheless, it rings true. What we make of ourselves is what matters, and that's what people don't realize.

High school was stereotyped for me as a bunch of jock bullies walking around, having sex against lockers, cheerleaders giving head to the kids in the bathroom, and anarchial rules (I know that doesn't make sense). I have never gotten into a fight, and when I was bullied, I fought back and shut them up. That's when I was a freshman, and I fought back to a senior. High school is a waste of time if you think of it as a movie. Think of it as four years of your life and see how that goes.

I have just lately been realizing that I think of this experience as a movie, and in many ways, it has been. Drugs, sex, alcohol, cheating, failure, moving, lies, deaths, etc. It's like KIDS all over again.

High school is just a waste of time for me. That's why you can often find me working on my notebook collages instead of taking notes.



-Jake.

When I look at that picture, it makes me want it as a tattoo more and more. Look at it. The happy smiling boy with the non-chalant female, looking as though she didn't want to be there. Shel Silverstein basically summed up the feelings of most people in relationships. Someone always feels as though they are the only one that cares in their relationship, and their significant other is just there for the photo-op. I don't know why I ever just wrote all of that. I'm very tired.

As of today, August 1st, 2006, I have lived in my North Florida abode for exactly two years. I just wanted to give you a little update on that.

I start my senior year of school on Friday, and I'm either really scared, or really excited. The fact that I get to leave Bartram Trail High School forever gets me very excited, because going to get a parking pass and going to registration, I realized that I can't stand a majority of people there. Maybe this is the irrational Jake talking, but if I never saw them again, I don't know how sad I'd be about it. Stuck up rich kids and rednecks just aren't huge in my book.

I just have nothing else to write.



-Jake.

I was flipping through the channels tonight when something on A&E caught my eye. A documentary on an Aryan group in Alabama was plastered all over the television. Normally, the sight of a Swastika is enough to make me turn away, but tonight was different. I remembered watching part of this show a couple of months ago, and tonight I was able to watch the majority of it.

Hey, do you remember when Lincoln freed the slaves? Do you remember when Hitler was defeated in World War II? Do you remember how Martin Luther King Jr. took a stand for what he believed in, and ended up being one of the greatest men to ever grace this earth? Do you remember when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989? Didn't all of these events signify the end to that sort of ignorance known as racism?

It's incredible that we still have racism in the world, after decades and decades and decades of fighting it. Are people that ignorant that we can't even have equality without someone being unhappy?

I don't even know who to blame in this sort of situation. Obviously, these people were raised to have hatred in their hearts, which leads me to blame their parents. But, where did they learn it? I can't point fingers without the exact trace.

It just sucks that whenever I start gaining faith in humanity, I have to watch something like this and now let it all back down the drain.

Cynic by choice, apparently.

When I'm at work, I always try and think of something to write about. I guess it really helps me pass the time. Working at a car wash is not ideal, nor is it good in any way, but it gives me money, and that's all I need right now. I have to save up for college, for a car, for too much. I'm saving up to give away, to put it in simpler terms.

I have really been pondering the idea of going to Florida State for college, just so I can leave Jacksonville and my house and have some sort of freedom for once in my life. I don't want to be so dependent on my parents that I can't leave my home and feel like I can't succeed without them holding my hand. I've always hated how people can rely on their parents for their entire lives. Case in point: the children of J. Howard Marshall, the wealthy octogenarian, as well as the late ex-husband of Anna Nicole Smith. Those children never had jobs, never made their own money, and they just sat around waiting for their father to die, so then they become millionaires for doing nothing. I'm just glad that they didn't inherit that, because in some sick way, Smith deserves the money. She had sex with a senile dinosaur.

If I go to FSU and leave Jacksonville behind, I have a feeling I won't feel any discomfort in it. Though I do have plenty of people here that I'd miss, there is nothing here that I am emotionally attached to that couldn't come and see me. Leaving Jupiter, I missed bike rides on dirt roads, thunderstorms at 3pm during the summer, and skating at the elementary school. Leaving Chesapeake Beach, I missed snow days, late night Wal-Mart with Ben, Shannon, and Morgan, my basement, and skating the curbs with Ben, Shawn, and James. Leaving Jacksonville, I will miss...people. People can always visit, but Mother Nature has never let the weather come and play.

I would love a house to call to call my own, as well as a lawn. I would love my own couch, my own television with my own Playstation 2 connected to it. I would love my own windows, my own flooring, my own rooftop.

I have a feeling I'd treasure everything quite a bit more if only I bought it. Then, maybe, I'd have something to miss here in North Florida.

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=C9C0CFEA2659B120
Waxwing:"Records"


Everything in your house holds some sort of memory to you. Whether you realize it or not, everything is held in your heart as either a good or a bad memory. It may be the couch in your living room that housed your first kiss, the lamp in your basement that you had in your first house when you were a young child, or that Cure record that you remember listening to in your girlfriend's father's truck. Your brain is able to conjure up an incredible amount of recollections, but most people don't use their minds to their full potential, making it hard to expand your "power center", if you will.

No matter how hard it is for us to block out memories, there is always something around us that will kickstart our brain and bring it back up for us. Like elephants, we never forget. But, somehow, like goldfish, we never remember.

Yes, nice guys finish last. We understand. We get it. It has been burnt into our brains eversince middle school when, in the sixth grade, Lisa Smith wanted to ride bikes with the boy that gave you a swirlie rather than you. Do you remember how you felt when you laid in bed that night with the thought of Lisa's hand holding his hand as they rode down the street? Do you remember how it felt to have your heart sink to your stomach when the same thing happened to you in high school, though, of course, it was under different circumstances?

For some reason, girls are still attracted to the "bad boys"; the "rebel" type. Every girl would love to have the 'James Dean meets Colin Farrell with just a touch of Marlon Brando' boy rather than the 'John Cusack meets Seth Cohen with just a touch of Rivers Cuomo.' This danger aspect that the "cool guys" put forward is apparently so arousing and unpredictable that girls fall for it like drunks to a lit neon Budweiser sign.

While these females are out enjoying themselves driving fast cars, egging houses, or doing whatever those rebellious ones do, the "good guys" are always left alone on Friday and Saturday nights, because they are the ones that the girls would rather call to talk to about those motorcycle-riding tough guys to than actually opening their eyes and realizing that the good guy is not a bad choice. They'd rather go shopping with the boy than to actually wear the clothes that they purchased to impress them.

I'm sick of this. I'm sick of the fact that there has been no "good guy" that has taken a stand and flipped the metaphorical bird to the old phrase, "Nice guys finish last."

And then there's me: sitting behind a keyboard and trying to think of what to write for this, though I know that I will never have the guts to speak up and change my lifestyle if it means that I'd have to exert any type of energy at all.

But, hey. At least in the end, even though I'll be last, I can say that I finished at all.

Though, I don't remember Dawson being too happy with that fact when Joey got with Pacey.