I was “experimenting” in the iTunes Store this afternoon… Every once in a while, I buy albums or whatever from iTunes, and I don’t get the full download. I get all the songs, but I don’t necessarily get the entire song.
The amount of shit iTunes customer service puts me through before they finally release the song back for me to re-download is ridiculous. I purchased it. The only authorized computer on my account is trying to download it… why do they have to be so bitchy about it? (And as I write this—one of the six I just bought cuts out early. Good thing for my new bestie, Lawrence, the “delete song, sign out of the store, close iTunes, open iTunes, log into the store, download” dance worked this time. First time in months.)
At any rate, I’m not going to talk about what I purchased - only that between ABDC and Girl Talk, I’m starting to buy the weirdest crap. My recommendations look like those of several people now. I have a hard time believing that my musical tastes are THAT diverse. But with the exception of the random country song. they are all mine.
So… to circle back to where this all started:
I’m screwing around in iTunes, looking for stuff to buy and see if they will download without a problem.
I decide to see if Black Mountain Symphony’s album is available on iTunes… and what do I spy with my little eye?
Other people who bought this album also purchased: Jason Mraz’s “We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things”.
Guess what song is on that album?
I’m never going to escape that damn boy and the song that haunts me…
Or like a thousand others whose voices cry out for help, day after day, hour after hour, ad infinitum.
I’ve never posted what I felt was a cry for help. I post facts about the bipolar’s affect on me. If it was a true cry for help, it would be obvious, like so many others are.
People wonder where the parents are, why aren’t the friends helping out, why isn’t anyone reporting these things to Tumblr, YouTube, whomever…
That, my friends, is a call for help. Plain and simple.
I think we’ve all been burned by people on the internet falsely representing who they are…
But the fact remains, when it is so obvious that there is something wrong, someone needs to do something.
I’ve made mention here about the fucked up kids I’ve met on tumblr, and I do go out of my way to message them and try to help them feel like they can get through this, they can stop cutting, they can fight through the Ick…
I’m only one person.
And it sucks.
If I had seen her video on my tumblr dash, you can bet your ass I would have said something to her.
Would it have helped her?
I don’t know. Probably not.
People that desperate to end their lives normally do succeed.
The internet is a fucked up place, full of fucked up people… but that’s no excuse to ignore something like Olivia’s video.
All of my expiring domains are being moved to a new registrar.
All of my old blogs have been moved to my local server, here in the house.
This very blog has moved to a new host.
I’m designing a new site, tumblr-like, in EE 2, just because I can. It (like my real tumblr account) will hold stuff that is important to me, but I don’t want here. I’m hoping that Pinterest (and possibly ravelry) has an API I can use to bring my posts there into the blog. I’m definitely using a new public twitter account that will pull into the new site, too. It’s been so long since I’ve actually worked on a site from the ground up that I’m finding myself less interested in the graphics (which is odd) and more into the programming. It might have something to do with the pain in the ass my MAMP / PHPMyAdmin install was on the localhost… but the sites work, so I did something right. (Pwning Terminal FTW!!!!)
I’ve managed to whittle down a 100+ song Violate fan mix to 36 songs, so I’m feeling pretty good about it. I’ve even got the songs in episode order, more or less. I actually made it for someone, as part of an “YOU NEED TO SEE THIS SHOW!!!!!” care package. I’m bummed I didn’t get to give it to them yet, but I’m glad I have the extra time to really refine the playlist.
I turned in all my homework early today, so I am all about working on the new site… after I drag J to see “The Hunger Games”. I just finished rereading it - for the third time - and want to see if I can find the differences that caused one friend to go on an angry twenty minute cuss fest. (Of course, said friend is looking forward to “Catching Fire”, so they can’t be too pissed off.)
I may take the summer off from classes - my only option is to leave work at noon on Thursdays and take a class in Manchester. It might be worth losing a Saturday or Sunday if I need to make up the hours. My change in meds has made being online after work harder than usual… the eyestrain is ridiculous. If I don’t take the class on Thursdays, I’m stuck until the fall semester. Everything hangs on me taking this stupid prereq, and they never seem to offer it!!!!
Oh well… it is what it is and it will be what it will be. Can’t do anything about it, so I might as well just move on.
black mountain symphony :: two boots pizza, bridgeport, ct :: april 29, 2012
I had quite the weekend… one that I’m not sure I’d exactly like to EVER repeat. I mean, parts of it were awesome, and other parts, not so much.
Friday, I headed to CT to watch BMS at Sully’s Pub. Sully’s is a weird place. I don’t know how to describe it any better than that. But it got super duper weird after BMS’ set. The other bands reminded me of this little indie club in CT I’d go to when I was in college. There was the ska sounding band. More of a ska-ish, really, but it was close enough. Then the hardcore NYC group. Then, the group that claimed to be influenced by Fugazi. (If Fugazi meant to sound like Frogboy or BiG MiSTAKE. *ahem*) Seriously, I couldn’t shake the deja-vu the entire night. The vibe of the club, the music, all of it just hit a nerve and suddenly it was the mid-90s again, and I was hanging out with a vegan boy who not only stole my heart, but introduced me to the wonders of the CT indie scene.
Of course, on the trip to my hotel, the iPod had to spit out “Back In The Day” by Blues Traveler.
I close my eyes and feel like it was back in the day.
Indeed.
Saturday, before I hung out with the band, I needed to do a deep spiritual cleansing. That sounds so disgustingly New Agey, but there’s no other way around it.
I started at St. Mike’s cemetery in Glastonbury, which is where the entire Ukie population of Hartford County is buried. Or at least MOST of them, but I’ll get to that in a minute.
Of course, I go to the most obvious place first - the family plot where three out of four slots are filled. Two things struck me immediately, both of which really made me sick. Like physically ill.
1) There were flowers on my mother’s side of the stone, but not Nicholas’. I’m assuming that they were from my aunt and cousins… the fact that they chose to bring the evil bitch flowers, but not the son/brother they lost so tragically just bugs the piss out of me.
2) The ambulance we placed on his headstone is still there. That stupid little matchbox car is still in excellent condition considering it was left there in the 80s. (Even more surprising, I guess, it that it’s still even there… but like I said, the entire Ukie population is buried there, so maybe someone knew/knows of Nicholas and has kept it there? I don’t know…)
I bawled when I saw that damn thing - the memories of how it felt in my hand, playing with it - they all came back. Hard.
Now, this is the part of the story where I prove just how fucked up I really am. I’ve always been able to sense ghosts. Although we didn’t talk, I knew he was there with me. Thirty years. He’s been dead thirty years and I wonder every year what he would have been like had he not died of cancer. Would he be crazy? Cool? Hot? Gay? He didn’t have any answers for me, but knowing he was there with me was insanely comforting… which was good because then I turned to my mother.
She got an earful from me. I vented out loud, and didn’t get a response. I wasn’t expecting one, to be honest. I can never feel her there. I wonder if she’s ignoring the pain she’s caused me as well as she did when she was alive. She’s been dead for twenty years. A nuclear bomb was dropped on my world twenty years ago, and I STILL struggle to clear up the wreckage and put things back to some semblance of normal. Once I calmed down, I literally felt a little hand pull on my fingers.
Yup. Time for special guest number three.
As I stood there, looking at the disturbed ground and thinking that only a month ago that grave wasn’t there, everything I had felt towards my uncle came spilling out. I finally got the fucking closure I needed. He was a good man for the majority of my life pre-March 1992, and I mourned that. (Not unlike mourning the mother I wanted, the one that was within reach, but determined to spend her days hiding in the bottom of a vodka bottle.) Then, I let him have it. How could he stand by while my aunt stole from me? Hurt me in ways family should never be able to? It got ugly. REALLY ugly. He deserved every word of it and I feel a thousand times better for it.
I decided to take the long way to my grandparents’ grave - my godfather died in 2009 so I wanted to pay my respects to him. I didn’t find him where I thought he would be, but I stumbled upon the grave of one of my mother’s friends… the one who decided to take a walk into a lake with her pockets full of rocks. I never knew her personally, but as soon as I saw her name, I could hear my mother’s passionate pleas to her that day on the phone. I could feel her as well… tortured. Full of regret. She missed out on watching her kids grow up. I couldn’t offer her any consolation. I didn’t know her, and honestly, truth be told, I think she deserves whatever she gets. I will never understand suicide. Never. It’s bad enough to kill yourself, but to drown yourself? That shit’s just twisted in a way I can’t even begin to try to understand.
No matter how dark I get, no matter how seductively the voices whisper, I can’t go there. I WON’T go there.
At any rate, I left her and looked for my grandparents’ stone. It never fails - no matter how many times I visit them, I can never find the damn stone on the first try. It might be because the English translation is missing and I forget what the surname looks like in Cyrillic. As I wandered, I found myself getting frustrated that I could never remember where they were. I heard my grandmother call my name, clear as day. I turned my head in the direction of the sound, and BOOM! One gravestone, three names - two familiar, one belonging to a person I never knew. Like Nicholas’ grave, there were no flowers there. Nothing that showed their blood had swung by to pay their respects… it made me sick and I had to ask my grandparents what they thought of their daughters. If they were disappointed.
I wish I spoke Ukie because that’s what my grandmother responded in. I wish I could tell you that I was able to infer what she was saying, but she just sounded tired. Like she’d had this conversation before. Like I was a little kid who asked the same question again and again and again. My grandfather waited for me to say my goodbyes before making himself known. I knew exactly what he was saying, even though it too was in Ukie. The stern disciplinarian I remember from my childhood let his displeasure with his children come through in the angry tones and clipped words.
Clarity. Closure. Cookies.
Almost.
I suppose there are weirder things to do than wander around a cemetery yelling “WALTER! WHERE YOU AT, WALTER?”. but nothing comes to mind easily. I covered the entire cemetery while calling for him. Out loud. It was like some warped game of Marco Polo, but Polo decided he wasn’t playing. I looked at every single stone and if it was there, I didn’t see it. I don’t know how I missed it, but it’s possible. I guess.
From there, I headed to the Vets’ Cemetery to see my Dad’s stone. I know he’s cremated. I see his ashes every day, but I needed to see the stone. I needed to contact him somewhere that wasn’t home. I can’t explain it. And he was there… He never leaves my side lately so I wasn’t surprised. In this case, I needed to lean on him more than ever. They were holding a service for a deceased member of the Air Force. In the section where the bodies go which just happened to be close enough to my father’s stone so that every word carried on the wind. (There’s the sections of just stones - the simple white markers in their endless rows - and then there is the graveyard. Dad’s stone overlooks the graveyard.) The casket with the flag on it. The cries. The soothing murmur of the priest. it was too much for me and I broke down like I haven’t in years.
After I pulled myself together, I drove to Wethersfield Cove to calm myself down further. All the random memories that popped up - that crazy night with R where we totally fogged the windows, the days spent throwing bread to the seagulls, the attempts at fishing, that crazy night with R. (Hey! I can’t help where my head went. Apparently, I needed to relive the happy, crazy, night that should never really ever be mentioned… Ah, memories.)
I posted on Facebook that it was definitely the old HAUNTS tour, and it really was.
It needed to be done, and I did it.
And I can’t even begin to tell you how much better I feel.
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