David Lynch's critically acclaimed masterpiece, Eraserhead.

More like crapsterpiece.

I don't want to turn this blog into a thread of movies with nothing to say, but I just can't help it. There's not a whole lot going on in my life right now, aside from going to jail in 4 weeks, but this movie doesn't let me stop thinking about it. Which would be great if there were anything to think about.

Yes, Eraserhead. Supposedly one of the most complex movies of all time. I disagree, because in order for it to be complex there has to be something to put together. This movie's got nothing except an awesome hairdo and a gross out factor a la Evil Dead.

I don't end many movies with the phrase, "I swear I'm never watching that movie again." So far that list includes Donnie Darko, Crossroads, and now Eraserhead. But only one of those movies I watched the very next day. Can you guess which one it was?

Yeah, that's right. Me and my big fucking mouth. I tried to watch it again with my buddy Tristan, hoping I might be able to put some stuff together. I thought I had a decent grip for ten or twenty minutes, but once that miniature chicken started having its period after being baked for a few hours, I lost it all again.

So I resorted to looking it up. I figure somebody would be able to fill me in. Come to find out, it has a HUMONGOUS cult following, and everybody seems to know what it's about except me. But on all these fansites, I rarely find explanations. All they do is compliment David Lynch's amazing visionary work and all the genius interpretation with a camera as a mind's eye, or some such bullshit. The most concise, and ONLY insight I found was that it's supposed to be a surreal portrait of a man's worst fears of commitment, husbandry, and fatherhood. I thought "Oh, that makes a little more sense." But I still can't put together what the fuck a showgirl is doing inside the radiator, or what the fuck the hairy carpet was all around the room and on top of the dresser. What's with the bucket in the drawer? Why doesn't the plant have a pot to hold the mound of dirt on the nightstand? WHY IS HIS BABY BIRDO FROM SUPER MARIO BROS. 2?

Either way, David Lynch denied that as being the true meaning of the film. He said 'No one has even come close to what this movie is about,' or something. Don't take that as a direct quote, I don't feel like looking it up right now. I'm too pissed off about shitty movies.

I really like David Lynch. Most of the time. Blue Velvet? Jawsome. Lost Highway? Great movie. Twin Peaks? For the win. Mulholland Drive? Lesbian action, not my thing, but still a wonderful movie. So what's so wrong with this movie?

George Lucas watched it and was so blown away he offered Lynch the chance to direct Return of the Jedi. Lynch turned it down, saying it would be more of Lucas's vision than his own. He also turned down the chance to direct Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Good thing, too. I guess I'm not the biggest fan of that movie (I know, I'm the only one,) but at least I can make sense of the thing.

If you want to argue with me, please do so. I'd like someone to set me straight for once.

My time has come.

To explain my last entry, about that movie, Kids, that I watched and hated so much, I'm going to try to organize all my angry thoughts about it as best I can so that anyone reading this can follow along.

For starters, the movie was not meant as a wake-up call. To me it's pretty obvious that the movie was written by a pedophile. Because the dialogue was so lighthearted about fucking prepubescent girls and staring at a nine year old serving watermelon and wanting to "suck her titties", it's fucking disgusting. I remember being 13, I remember being 15 and 16 and all of the ages of these kids, and I had some pretty fucked up friends. I had slutty friends and I had asshole friends, and it would be impossible for any of them to ever even have those thoughts. AND EVEN IF THEY DID, THEY WOULDN'T GO AROUND TALKING TO THE REST OF US ABOUT IT.

This movie was made to be as shocking as it could be while trying to maintain a story, which people keep mistaking for a purpose. There was no reason for this movie to be made, except for us to be able to say "Hey, life sucks for them", and for the people who made it to be recognized by a wide audience. And us, the viewers, gave them that power when we played their game. Everyone knows when somebody says "Man, that movie is fucked up," everyone else will want to see it. So go die, Mr. filmmaker man.

The only scene in the entire movie that I will give credit to is when the four young young young young boys are crowded in the seat smoking with each other, and the one says, "Yo, man that's awesome, you got Jesus round your neck? That's tight man. That's awesome, he's a cool guy." Or something like that. This could have, if the movie had been MEANT for a purpose, proved wrong everyone who would have responded to the film with "Those boys need Jesus in their lives."

To the rest of the movie, I hope nobody watches it ever again. Not even because you read this blog and think, "Man, I want to see what made this guy so mad." Do NOT fucking watch it.

Just a side note.

I watched the movie "Kids" today.

It blew.


More to come.

The O'Reilly Factor: I ask, I answer, America listens.

I was flipping through the channels tonight and stopped on Fox News. Now, I should have known what I was getting myself into, even if it were only for a few minutes. I caught just a bit of it, but I'm sure you can find it online. September 4th, I think.

It's awfully long, for sure, and I hadn't realized that it was an older video, since it was blaring on last night on "The O'Reilly Factor". I should have known better than to expect Bill O'Reilly to be working on a Sunday. If you watched it, great, and if not, I'll try to fill you in. At one point, Bill O'Reilly leads Barack Obama with a list of facts that are actually false accusations on Barack's policies, and gives him no time to correct. To Fox News viewers, this would result in "OH YEAH, YOU GET THAT NIGGAR BILL O'REILLY, YOU TELL HIM HE DUN WRONG." If anybody with a brain happened to be watching, we'd probably turn it off. Like I did.

This is exactly why the clip was an "O'Reilly Exclusive", because no real news station would mask this as real journalism. When I was editing my high school journalism class, I was accused of doing this exact same thing. We refer to it as Yellow journalism, and I had already taught all of my cub reporters what that meant and how to avoid it. So when Mrs. Jackson came in to yell at my class for being one-sided, it was my fault. I was the one who wrote the article, even though Eric's name was on it. See, the article was written my be in a rush to be timely, and I interviewed myself. Though Eric was on the phone with me, I told him what to ask me and he would ask it, so it wasn't a lie. He conducted the interview with me, I just led it. It might not be the most credible way to write an article, but Eric won an award from Michigan State University. I think they'd know a teensy bit more about journalistic integrity than my administration.

Either way, I wrote a retraction and had one of the other students write a follow-up article with the "other side" of the story. Which would have been addressed in the first place if I wasn't shooed out of the office and refused the story. They told me all I needed to hear to write the article anyway, the only thing missing was their defense. Which they didn't want to give me, it seemed.

This is much different, however. It's not like Obama rejected his own chances to defend himself, he was never given any. And the ones he took, he made for himself by shutting up the talking head across from him. It might not be a secret that I'm an Obama supporter, because I don't believe in keeping that from anyone. But you can bet that if anyone was treated like that, I wouldn't be too happy about it.

For example: A few days after Sarah Palin was announced as McCain's running mate, Barack Obama took a few questions. Allegedly, Sarah Palin had been complaining about slanderous statements made against her. He made the comment that his wife has been dealing with those things for months, but "...she's only been at it, what, four days? And she's already whining?" Although a valid point made by Obama, especially considering Palin was responsible for some of the attacks against his own wife, there were much more appropriate ways to respond to the comments. Sure, the Republicans have been taking cheap shots like that since before the campaign even started, but it's because Obama was on a different level than most candidates that he caught my attention away from Hillary Clinton. As soon as I noticed her acting different and starting to attack Obama the way that fits a Conservative party member. Now it sounds like the people in charge of Obama's campaign want him doing it, too. Maybe we're losing votes, polls are slipping.

We have to remember that electing a President is not a matter of who plays the game better. It's not about who's kinder or more trustworthy. When it comes down to it, our choice should be made to vote for the better (wo)man for the job. People think homeland security is the chief concern of our country, but that's bullshit. Do you really think that throwing money at soldiers will make us safer? This Patriot Act crap has been taking attention from what used to be serious issues for almost a decade now. As far as I can tell, that United 93 thing was a bunch of bullshit. I doubt that our passengers took that plane over. We shot it down to prevent any more damage to our country's morale. I think a lot of these supposed terrorist attacks we thwart are probably orchestrated by the government to make us feel like they're doing something right, or something required. All this to try and keep the White House for another few terms, and if it keeps up, they could have it forever.

Homeland Security isn't so important. If any country makes a threat against us, we have the ability to more than exact revenge. Look what we did to Iraq, and they weren't even our scapegoat for 9/11. Bin Laden was, and he sure wasn't in Iraq. Notice how everyone conveniently forgot who the real bad guy was? In a country where you can stream a video of the hanging of Saddam Hussein, who cares about the guy we said destroyed our buildings and killed thousands of us? The guy who pockmarked one of our greatest cities?

If we don't change the way we're living, pretty soon nobody's going to care about America. We'll be desolate. We won't be able to live without relying on food from other countries. Oil will be the least of our problems. Like the Great Depression we can't come back from. Once the environment is trash and the Earth is scorched, how to we fix that? Vanishing creme? Maybe if we dump precious oil onto our worthless fields it might help us eat. Or kill us even faster, it's yet to be decided.

Who is in the best position to pull America out of an eight year slump? Who is the only person concerning themselves with how this country can be fixed, remedied, steal the baton and lead the march for the rest of the world to do the same? That's right: Ralph Nader.

A toast to the girl in aisle 10.

People tend to have events in their lives that breach implausibility. Everyone goes through them, and once they happen, you never really think about anything as certain ever again.

I don't really know if any of that is true, but I'll tell you, I've had one such event recently.

Think about some stuff you regret. More than likely, within those first three things that popped into your head, there's something from way back in your past that you wished you had done differently. Maybe you accidentally scraped the principal's car with a rock and got detention, and it turned you into a bad kid, and you grew up to be an abusive husband. Maybe while at a friend's house you decided to pocket a cd or movie, and you could never give it back because it broke, and your best friend held it against you until graduation, and you never spoke again.

Let me tell you a story about my life. It will be a long one, but much less boring than anything else I've written so far. When I started school in second grade, I did the same things I had learned to do the year before. I got off the bus, walked inside, followed the hall to my classroom and took off my backpack. Something was different about it. Maybe it's because I was a little taller than before, or because I had my first pair of laced shoes. Maybe it's the fact that a girl tackled me into the coat closet and kissed me all over my face.

This bold little pistol's name was Alison. She was the first girl I ever had a crush on.



I wanted her to like me, too. And she did. I must have known that, too, because I always tried to act very cool around her, so she wouldn't be disappointed with her choice and tackle somebody else, like Cody Thayer. We would talk about things only 8 year old kids would care about. Like what, I don't know, I'm not 8 anymore and no longer care.

One day, near the end of the year, Alison tried to tell me that she really liked me and wanted me to be her boyfriend. I said, "Yeah, I get that all the time." And she walked away from me.

She didn't find me on the playground anymore, she didn't want to help color my very hungry caterpillars or share scissors and Elmer's glue with me. It should have been no secret that I lied to her, I never even spoke to another girl at that age. I was too shy to initiate a conversation about Tonka trucks and Ninja Turtles, and too embarrassed to explain to her that I was a fibber. This has always been considered the biggest mistake of my life.

I overheard Alison telling some others that she was moving away and wouldn't be going to school here anymore. I grabbed the waste of my Mortal Kombat shirt and pulled it down, trying to do anything to keep myself from getting out of the chair and kissing her back. It was the only thing I'd wanted to do after the closet incident. I didn't know why. It made me like her, I guess, so maybe if I did it to her she would like me again. I didn't want her to go. I just wanted her to be around until we were forced to make construction paper penguins together and maybe then I could mildly dissuade her from hating on a player. Of video games.

After the last days of her being at school, there was nothing I could do to keep my mind off of her. It was never anything remarkable in my head, just her, and how she made me feel when she was around. I walked down the hill in front of my house and through the field into town, to Horizon Video, where I planned on looking at Sega Genesis games until I forgot why I wasn't home. While I picked up Wonder Boy in Monster World and Road Rash 2, I looked up to see a man at the counter with his family. He said he wanted to return some movies and pay off his late fees because he was moving away. That's just like him, I thought, to take his young daughter away from all the people here that might have cared about her. I wondered if Alison's dad remembered to pay off his late fees before skipping town. I hated this man in front of me for not putting his family first, just as I hated Alison's father for taking her away from me.

The girl stepped out from the side of her daddy and my heart stopped for a second. I had been here to come to grips with the fact that I just saw Alison Daniels for the last time, and I wouldn't ever be able to make things right. She was just standing there, staring at something. At nothing. Certainly not at me. And I realized that I had the upper hand. She didn't know I was there yet, she never looked. I backed up behind the game pillar and considered the option of trying to kiss her before she left, or telling her how sorry I was that I didn't tell her that I liked her too. I knew that no matter what I did, nothing would keep her here with me. I wanted to tell her that I would miss her, and that I hoped she would have fun in wherever. China, for all I knew. And if we ever got an extra long recess, and I ever did finish digging that hole to Hong Kong, maybe I would look her up.

Whatever I decided that day didn't matter. When I came around the corner he door opened and he began to walk out, his daughter at his heels. Somehow she turned and she looked at me. She smiled at me, like she used to, and she waved. She put her hand and head down and walked out. I stood there, not saying anything, not smiling or waving. I may have put up a vertical hand, but didn't do anything with it. Almost as a desperate attempt to communicate with her to stop. She never saw it.

I knew in my heart that it was the last time I would ever see Alison Daniels.

As the creep that I am, I continued thinking about her for weeks. And even a few months.

And a couple of years. Which turned into twelve. Because I still think about her now, and up until several months ago, she was the one thing I regret most. Every few months she pops into my head and I think, "You know, Alison, if you and I had known each other this entire time maybe we would have been together." I dated a girl my senior year named Samantha on the sole basis that I guessed that if Alison were 18 or 19, she would look a lot like Sam. Something about this girl I never wanted to let go of.

Where did she move to? Did she still live there? Was her name Alison, or Allison, or Daniel or Daniels? Was she alive? Did she live in Paraguay? Uruguay? Zimbabwe? Whenever I would think about her it would drive my curiosity, and I'd search on MySpace or Facebook for anyone named Al(l)ison Daniel(s), if the name I remember was even an accurate one. Her name could have been Faith Evans and I never would have known, since my mind and memories are unreliable. Maybe she never even existed, maybe she was my imaginary friend. And even if she did, what would she think if I found her? "o hay Alison, u kissd me when we were yung and i think bout u a lot". Could she remember me? Would she have been thinking about me, too? It was all impossible. I knew I was acting crazy, and the few people I mentioned my crusade to agreed with that. I was crazy.

The impossibles:
I had 50 states and 4 different name combinations that may not even be correct to search through.
There was no way this girl remembered me.
There's no way this girl would want anything to do with me when she heard my story.
She was probably a figment of my imagination, fueled by Playskool kitchenettes.

Imagine my surprise when I found her on MySpace. Or someone who could have been her, anyway. She matched my age and kind of looked like Samantha. I knew it wasn't her, but I had to try anyway.

<----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: ..Chris Grose (lost his space, get him back!)..
Date: 25 Aug 2008, 04:56 AM


This might seem like a ridiculous question to you, but did you ever live in Michigan? More specifically, East Jordan?
---------------------------------------------------->


Since I didn't get a response, I figured it wasn't her. Or if it was, she thought I was a bot. Or a creeper. I'd never find the real Al(l)ison.


<----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Alison
Date: Aug 29, 2008 5:52 PM


Yeah, actually, I did. Early elementary school. Don't tell me you know me from there? That was a long time ago! Your name does seem familiar to me though...
----------------------------------------------------->

...!! This must have been how Princess Leia felt when Luke took off the helmet. "My name is Luke Skywalker, I'm here to rescue you!"
"Uh, no offense, Skylocker, but I sent that message to Obi-Wan Kenobi as a joke. No one was really supposed to reply back, let alone come looking for me."

What fucking luck is that? I actually found the girl who, despite being a total stranger, always meant so much to me. But that was just about the extent of my luck, I was sure. Once she finds out that I've been digging around for any trace of her for a couple of years, she would be sure to follow Bruce Dickinson's advice and run to the hills.

I thought about lying to her, telling her it was an accident. But lying to her was kind of what got me into this whole thing in the first place twelve years ago. I told her the truth in a few concise sentences. Here's what I got back.


<----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Alison
Date: Aug 31, 2008 2:38 AM


Wow, that was you? You are really the only person I remember from when I lived there. I've thought about you from time to time, I actually have some rather distinct memories of the two of us...but whether they're accurate, I can't be sure. I moved around a lot back then and my memory gets hazy. It always bothered me that I couldn't recall your name. It's funny because your last name in particular has always floated around in my head as the name of someone I used to know, but I never connected the dots. You were the first boy I ever had a crush on, too. It doesn't seem stupid at all that it meant something to you, I feel the same. How did you even happen to find me? I'm really glad that you did, it's nice to know that you've thought about me too.
----------------------------------------------------->

The funny thing is, she knows about this blog. And I told her tonight that I would keep writing in it, and I was going to update it. She had no idea it would be about her, and neither did I. I wanted to write something that would entice her to keep coming back and reading my stuff, but the only thing that's happened in weeks to interest me is finding her.

Maybe next week I'll find a dead bird with a crown or something, and I'll blog about who crowned crow bling king. Until then, just remember that regrets aren't a waste of your time. They teach you from experience to not fuck up again, and even keep you going sometimes. So the next time some artsy bitch decides to act unique, like the 50,000 girls that dress and act identically, and say "I don't have regrets. I don't regret anything," just beat her with her Polaroid and make sure she admits to regretting opening her whore mouth.

The Accidental I.Q. Test.

Yesterday I met with my psychologist again. I gave him his 746 question homework assignment back, we talked for a few minutes, and we started doing some tests. He pulled out ten or so of these black and white photographs and asked me to use my imagination to develop a story about each one, including what happened before the image and what will happen after.

I thought it sounded pretty goofy. Like the kind of thing you'd do when you were a kid.

I messed around a little bit, which is probably not something you should do at a psychologist. I made up a story about the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, and got him chuckling pretty good while he scribbled down notes. For a 71 year old dude, he's got some animation.

Anyway, we started doing word association, and word meanings and stuff. We got into numbers and patterns and backwards repetition and holy fuck it was almost a headache. He asked me if I knew anything about IQ, and I told him I didn't know a lot. I said I think the average is in the 90s and you need to be over 130 to get into Mensa, (which was almost right). He broke it down for me like this:

"The average is 100, mostly between 90 and 110. 60% of the population fits into that category, allowing for 20% to fall above 110 and 20% to fall below 90. As a general rule-of-thumb, you need 115 to get a Bachelor's degree. You'd need 125 to get a Master's. You'd need to score 135 to get your Doctorate. You scored 140."

"To put that into perspective, you scored better than 99.6% of people who would take this test. Out of a random sample of 100 people your age, there would be a 40% chance that one of them has a higher IQ than you."

Now, people have always told me that I'm pretty smart. I used to believe it, but aside from correcting somebody's paper, I wasn't too great at anything else. I gave up being a smart kid in middle school. But finally, to have somebody who knows what they're talking about tell me that I'm set at the bottom rung of "genius" level...

I feel slightly inflated right now. And it's not my wiener.

That puts me above store managers, teachers, professors, attorneys, editors, and even Eminent Professors. Whatever that means. Google says it's good.

I'm trying not to let this go to my head. I know I'm talking a lot about it, but I'm kind of shocked. My psychologist went in a whole new direction yesterday. He was talking about Universities and careers I could look into, and I told him I just wanted a job I would like. "I like my job," he said. "I like it so much I haven't retired yet." I reminded about our first visit. "Dr. Nicholson, last time I told you I kind of wanted to be a psychologist, and you tried to ween me off of the idea."

"Yeah, Chris, but that was before I knew how smart you are."

I was talking to Fivena about it last night, and she gave an interesting view. "This is exactly why I would never let my kids get tested. For one, what does it even tell you? It's so unreliable, it depends on how much sleep you got, how you feel on that particular day...too many inconsistencies. Two, LOOK AT HOW YOU'RE ACTING. YOU BIGHEAD."

And maybe she's right. Maybe if I took a licensed Mensa test I wouldn't make the cut. Maybe this guy gave me some extra points because I made him laugh a little bit. Maybe HE was in a good mood because he knew that for asking me questions for two hours he was going to get $500 out of my pocket.

I think that for something so renowned, we should start using stricter means for IQ testing. I don't mean to make sure every tester is an asshole, but we should at least all get by using the same scoring system and same texts. I don't know, maybe it's just me. Tell me what you think.

Also, now that I'm looking at going to a REAL college, tell me where you're going. Or where you wish you could go. I haven't looked at too many schools, and right now I'm clueless, unless I want to go to the University of Santa Cruz or something.

I had a bunch of good ideas for blog titles this morning.

I'm supposed to come here when something is bothering me, which is damn near every day. Lately I guess I've just been really whatever with everything. If there's anything I learned from getting off my ass and going to college, it's that no matter how much you want to do something with your life, no matter how hard you try to change your routine and become a better person with a more meaningful life, you'll probably just end up thrown in jail.

If, at first, you don't succeed; try, try again. Unless you don't have the means to try again. I'm in debt with my student loans already, all of which went towards me busting my ass off to get a 3.3 GPA at college (which is much higher than my cumulative high school GPA estimated around 1.8 or something ridiculous). But that whole year won't count for anything. Those credits won't transfer, and I can't go into the Education career cluster anymore. So by the time I find a college that will accept me, I won't be able to afford it. By the time I can afford it, supposing they'd still let me in, I will have wasted half my life. Yes, wasted.

See, it's only in America when you have to put yourself substantially in debt to portray the image that your life means something. Imagine meeting a girlfriend's parents. Explain to them that instead of pursuing your degree in dentistry you needed to afford a place to stay and food to eat, so you took a job at a factory. Or Arby's. (Hey, mess up all the Big Montana's you want. They'll just get 'thrown out' anyway. In your stomach.)

So either you're rich as fuck, and don't even NEED a degree to matter to anyone else. Or you need to bust your ass for 6 years to get good grades in school to try and get into a prestigous institute and take out 60 billion double-dollars in loans to pay for it all, ALL without going fucking insane, JUST so your girlfriend's parents will like you. Well, for anything at all, really.

If you dream of writing beautiful music for the popular culture, you're a lowlife. Unless you're a girl, and then you're either a starving artist, hard luck woman or a whore. If you want to paint irritating bitches nails for the rest of your life as a beautician, because you aren't smart enough to make a complete sentence out loud, or even arrange the letters properly in a word, that's a fine career. No one looks down on the skanks that damage your hair. They all went to scool to lern that traid n e way.

In our culture we have to torture ourselves to matter to anyone else, and without mattering to anyone else you become tortured by them. I remember when a girl I used to hang out with told her mom and dad that I had been working in a factory to save money for college, he fucking scoffed at her. He asked her why she was hanging around someone who's life obviously wasn't going anywhere. When she told me about it, I scoffed myself. I apologized for not being born into a family that could afford shit. I wondered why society deemed me a loser for trying to raise myself up out of my situation. For doing the smart thing and working beforehand, instead of paying off high interest rates on loans I couldn't afford, I was unworthy of conversation with his daughter.

Maybe it's a stereotype or something. Maybe all factory workers have wasted their lives. But this chump is an assistant manager of some Alltel store, and probably never did any real work in his life. Fuck, I think the store even got shut down and he had to relocate to a different office across town. I hope he runs that one into the ground, too. Me, giving up slivers of my youth to kill my body day by day in a factory to bring myself a higher education, I'm the useless fucking filth that dredges our culture into the bottom of humanity. Or some such nonsense.

Oh, look at this. I just opened a letter from the department of treasury stating that they awarded me an extra $2,100 this year for Baker College, because I had a really good GPA. However, the elegibility requires that I not be incarcerated. Which I will be soon. So there goes another chance for me to try and succeed at life. Where is the "win" button?

Oh, and as a side note, I went to see Pineapple Express last night. It wasn't too special. Maybe I was spoiled by Step Brothers, and now will no longer laugh at another comedy because it was too fucking funny.