A CONVERSATION ABOUT GREEK GODS... AND THE MORTALS WHO TWITTER BELOW THEM.

6:31pmOscar

what is twitter?

6:31pmZak

WHA??????

6:31pmOscar

i'm ashamed to ask

6:31pmZak

are you for cereal?!

you've heard of it though, right?

6:31pmOscar

i don't think i wanna find out. all my friends have it, but i don't know what it is

yeah, ive heard of it. it's everywhere

6:32pmZak

it's just like FB's status updates, but that's all it is... one long list of all your friends' updates

some people get realllly into it

6:32pmOscar

what...

6:32pmZak

it can be a lot of fun

6:33pmOscar

uh... that sounds like something i DON"t wanna have.

i don't need to be THAT connected.

6:33pmZak

but you'd be perfect.... you always have such witty little things to say

you should try it out

6:33pmOscar

eh...

i don't know.

i'm on my phone enough with texting...

i don't even want a smart phone.

6:34pmZak

oh mon frere

you don't have to be "on all the time" just to tweet

all you do is send out a wee little blurb to the universe

at your leisure.

6:35pmOscar

hahah

that sounds hilarious.

did you watch the Oscars last night?

6:35pmZak

well, it's as simple as that

OF COURSE

6:35pmOscar

are you team Maniston or team Angelina?

:)

6:36pmZak

maniston?

6:36pmOscar

haha - instead of Aniston?

6:36pmZak

bc she's manly??

6:36pmOscar

hehe. yep.

6:37pmZak

oh my

can i be on neither team?

is team membership compulsory?

6:37pmOscar

no, but it's fun to weigh them side by side.

i have a theory about brad pitt and angelina jolie.

it's mythical, really.

6:38pmZak

oh yeah?

what's that?

6:38pmOscar

did we talk about this before?

well - Ancient Greece, they had mythology, correct?

6:38pmZak

i don't think so....

oui

6:38pmOscar

all these gods, and superior beings, who lived in Mt Olympus, etc, etc...

6:39pmZak

oui

6:40pmOscar

well, in modern day society, the media, being so influential and omniscient in our daily lives, subliminal or not, has sort of created this Celebrity thing to be some sort of religion in its own right, correct?

6:40pmZak

true, true

6:40pmOscar

i mean, we live in a world guided by aesthetic produced by the media. we imitate, whether we want to or not...

6:40pmZak

yes

yes

6:41pmOscar

and mythology was make-believe - and so is Hollywood.

tabloids are our new bibles... there are divine hierarchies, etc...

so, in this parallel universe, Brad Pitt is like Zeus, and Angelina Jolie assimilates his Hera, and everything else waterfalls under them...

there is such a fascination with their private lives, and this projected perfection about them, all manipulated by the media...

6:42pmZak

i can see that

6:42pmOscar

i don't know, i just think it's interesting

6:42pmZak

everybody's gotta have something to believe in

6:43pmOscar

how no one really realizes how much god-like status we sometimes tend to give someone just for being in front of a machine as powerful, psychologically speaking, as the camera is...

6:43pmZak

well, it makes one virtually omnipresent

6:43pmOscar

exactly.

and isn't religion the belief of something virtually omnipresent? something we as mortals/humans strive to become because it is assumed we better ourselves because of it?

6:45pmZak

indeed... when all it really does is let us off the hook from truly living?

6:45pmOscar

even the clothes you and i wear are subliminally dictated

6:45pmZak

(ouch)

oh of course

its such a shame

6:46pmOscar

well, not really. we are part of a system; of a society.

and it's neither right or wrong, it just is...

our minds are gradually programmed to evaluate and mimic aesthetic that has been shown to us. "this is beautiful/this is not"

6:47pmZak

well, celebrities in and of themselves aren't bad, sure... but the deification that happens can't be good

6:50pmOscar

no. but who is to stop it? it is in itself a form of life. it is our modern rituals, if you will. Perhaps a bit more reasoned and controlled, but nonetheless, by working out, wearing trends, eating healthy or expensively, by tattooing this, or that, everything that goes into an image is to better ourselves, logically. It all comes down to the excess of it all... but aprooval of peers and society is always on our minds.

it's universal, really.

and in conclusion, dear diary, Twitter is too much. hehe

indeed.

(i just realized that Zeus expelled Maniston from Mt Olympus and turned her into a cougar!)

A FEAR... AS AN ADULT APPROACHING 30.

"Lonely men live like wolves.

Their houses are only a place to come back to at night, to collapse on the forever-unmade bed and lose consciousness. There's nothing for them to do inside those rooms during the day; there's never any food in the fridge, not even fresh milk for a cup of coffee; no comfortable sofa, no soft light filtering through a lampshade, no wood for fire. Only the smell of stale food and unwashed socks.

The bathroom is bare: a tiny piece of cheap soap yellowing on the sink; an old toothbrush, its bristles spread open; a half-empty bottle of shampoo. What else would a man need to get clean? The stark emptiness of their houses haunts them at times. It's not clear how, in which way, but things around them could be arranged differently in order to produce some comfort. They know what it should feel like - They see it all the time in other people's houses. The smell of fire, meat sizzling in the oven, soft music in the background, children running around before going to bed. One can feel the entire household breathe, exude warmth. It's just a matter - they sometimes think - of filling up the fridge, replacing the light bulb, changing the sheets. And in fact every once in a while they attempt to recreate the same warmth they have seen elsewhere and which they secretly long to obtain by fulfilling these small tasks, but the result is always cold, almost inert, as if it had no life of its own. None of the objects gently blend with the others to generate that same secret harmony, not the lampshade with the pillow, nor the books with the shelf, nor the carpet with the floor. Not even the milk with the coffee.

Each molecule of these separate bodies obstinately stiffens and rejects the others. Nothing mates or remotely suggests the idea of an internal rhythm, of a spark of life.

It's only a matter of days before the dirty clothes pile up again on the floor, along with muddy boots, empty glasses, and overflowing ashtrays. It will feel cold and uncomfortable as ever. Everything will have either been flung, thrown or crushed, as if nothing, absolutely nothing, deserved any care."

- Rules Of The Wild, Francesca Marciano.

To The House Of Throop. My family of two years.

This is the end of The House Of Throop.

After this weekend, Andrew "Po' Boy" Lifsey will move back home to New Orleans; Dan "Triple D" Delaney moves in with Sean; and Anthony and I will move into our own apartment...
And the most longing I will feel for will be for someone who never even paid rent, nor cared about groceries. She did not care if the water pressure was low, or the TV too loud, or too many shoes in the living room. She wasn't bothered by drunken late nights and loud music... and yet she occupied the entire house, and our beds, and the garbage cans she rummaged through when nobody was watching... and our hearts - from early in the morning, till the very last light in the house was out, every single day, for the majority of her life thus far.
- In so many ways, this little farewell note is for Parker... I'm going to miss you terribly, my Little Girly Girl.

Sometimes I have gross Robert Pattinson hair, amidst his Twilight flash-rise to
fame... It's getting much too long, my hair, and I'm neither proud nor
ashamed of the shapes it tends to morph into. It just happens. I'll rock it
for a bit longer, I suppose. We'll see when works politely suggests that I get rid of it. (I don't even like Robert Pattinson.)

That, What She Said... (Is What I had in Mind)

The idea of my life as a West Looper diminishing before me, comes gradually more and more into fruition as February approaches. Soon enough, with March, will come change... The dreaded north side of Chicago will be my new home. Really, the aversion (no - too strong a word - yet it was blurted out prior to this blog on a different occasion. We'll chalk it up to a lack of vocabulary to symbolize the "lesser feeling of 'aversion'") to Uptown is present. The geographical distance from all that has been familiar for the past 2 years terrifies me. It makes me unstable when, in ironic reality, this change should cause the opposite.
Stability. Commitment.
The metamorphosis from over-aged frat-living into that of partnership and raw domestication (is there such a word? Still, we'll chalk it up also) feels pretty much present now.

It has been difficult to assimilate myself ccupying a new bedroom that smells of fresh primer, or feeling a different strength of water pressure in my shower. It's all, attached still, I suppose.

In Sandra Cisneros' prose-by-the-way-of-novella, The House On Mango Street, she concludes her story brilliantly, and expresses everything I am feeling at the moment.
In the very last chapter of her book, Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes, Cisneros comes to this self-realization and mixture of relief and melancholy about leaving a place you once loved so much, yet the process of self-improvement also means that perhaps a clean slate, white walls, in this case, is in order... A battle, I suppose.
The House of Throop is perhaps the best apartment I have had to date, and I will miss it terribly.

I like to tell stories. I tell them inside my head. I tell them after the mailman says, Here's your mail. Here's your mail, he said. I make a story for my life. for each step my brown shoes takes. I say, "And so she trudged up the wooden stairs, her sad brown shoes taking her to the house she never liked." We didn't always live on Mango Street. Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and before that we live on Keeler. Before Keeler, it was Paulina, but what i remember most is Mango Street, sad red house, the house I belong but do not belong to. I put it down on paper and then the ghost does not ache so much. I write it down and Mango says goodbye sometimes. She does not hold me with both arms. She sets me free. One day I will pack my bags of books and paper. One day I will say goodbye to Mango. I'm too strong for her to keep me here forever. One day I will go away. Freinds and neighbors will say, Whatever happend to that Esperanza? Where did she go with all those books and paper? Why did she march so far away? They will not know I have gone away to come back. For the ones I left behind. For the ones that cannot out. - Sandra Cisneros, The House On Mango Street