President

I'm sitting in my room, enjoying another cup of green tea before I pass out. I'll be waking up tomorrow at the usual time, ten minutes before class. Not getting up at 7:15, not going to the gym before class. I guess I'll do it later. Homework:not urgent, House Events: Steadily being planned, Green Tea: In full supply. Yeah, I'll have plenty of time later.

This is such a different life than four or five weeks ago. Routine is still in limbo and trying to figure out how to fit itself in appropriately. This means you have ample time to go meet these new exciting strange individual people. They know your name because of position. They know what house they live in, and where their loyalty lies. They genuinely want to know everyone else. This is what you have plenty of time for, going around and talking conversing trading information. It's overbearing sometimes, when there's such thin ice to make assumptions. Needless to say, me and my "craving attention" complex are both quite content.

You're still friends with the friends that were friends last year, and you talk to them enough, keeping up appropriately. They've surrounded you, but there's some new fervor of social interaction. You never realize who's exactly like you until you start asking everyone. That's what one of my first years taught me, he unconditionally introduced himself to any individual he happened to be near enough. It was almost incredible to watch, the process repeating itself. A benevolent approach working every time. This allowed me to expand my horizons.

It's like I live in a tv show when it's political time. All the house executives living in this sort of drama, wrapped up in the flooding of first years. This got broken that got broken this guy put his head through a window. All stories creating the perfect setting for a television reality show. We're out here, not getting any real benefits for being the "ring - leaders", risking our rooms every day. Naturally we're the protagonists in this television plot.
We could be personified as perfect beautiful people with flawless histories. No scars to make bigger stories about.

Sorry, don't wanna go back to preaching fatalism or anything. (Chuck Palaniuk to a number on me.)

Anyway my condition of life is perfect right now. I like the chaos of it. It's like an excuse to just run frantically and stir up everything you can for at least a week or so. Then when it all settles in, no one walks away any different. Is that weird?

Construction Work

I've got about two weeks left of construction work. Of moving dirt from point a to point b in different forms. I hate to say it, but I've learned quite a bit.

THINGS I LEARNED THIS SUMMER:

-> How to shovel, rake, and sweep dirt in many different ways
-> How to attach and detach different things to a back hoe.
-> The names of several pieces of equipment required to move dirt to point b from point a.
-> That even people with degrees have to work 12 hour days, or more.

There are probably more, they just don't seem to come to mind right now. Let's look at some other things I've been thinking about, as long as I feel like a minimalist.

THINGS I'M GOING TO DO FIRST SEMESTER:

-> Gym every day
-> Pool a couple times a week
-> Quit smoking
-> Be a good house president
-> Raise my GPA 0.2 points.
-> Find a good girl to marry.

A think it's a humble list, considering I have four months to accomplish all of this. Now, let's look at some things, while I'm on the topic of lists, that I consider to be good practices of a good house president of a good house.

THINGS A PRESIDENT SHOULD DO:

-> Get underagers drunk
-> Get people who prefer not to drink to be included
-> Drink responsibly
-> Provide a good example
-> Lead proudly
-> Drink less than four times a week
-> Drink twice a week
-> drink...
-> drink...

Everything seems to be surrounded by alcohol to me. This isn't good, so I'm going to come right up front and admit that I believe a university house president has to be all about liquor. This is wrong wrong wrong, and this me recognizing it. I guess this means I'm going to have REALLY figure out what this is all about.

THINGS I HAVE TO DO AS A PERSON:

-> Stop obsessing over fame
-> Use Dan Mangan as an example
-> Marry Steph Pike
-> Be less self-concious
-> Work on your addictive personality.

I feel like I'm making one of those drunk phone calls to myself, reminding myself what myself did in myselve's drunker stupor. Someday I'm going to look back and this and remember how motivated I can be in my time's of strength.

I think I'm going to start writing techno drums to record acoustic guitar and vocals over. Potheads will love it.

When I die

When I die, I want my tombstone to read...

I don't know what it is about this place. It's like there's no potential to grow into anything culturally. I'm stuck in this place. I'm Saint John fodder, home grown, home eaten. I'll probably go to school, four years of learning, four years of growing. Then I'll get a job with the government. Good pension, good health care, good dental care. Denchers at 50, the kinda thing people dream about.

There aren't a lot of venues. There aren't a lot of artists that decide to put themselves out there. I've led a very dramatic and public life so far, just so I can get a tombstone with no ending on it. That's what I want.

I want my tombstone to read, Jeff Cook 1991 - ????

It's like I've tried everything. I've put some back bone into every form of expression I can, and it's almost like it doesn't matter. I just haven't found the right way to speak. I play music, I drew things when I was younger, I've written since I could hold a pencil, and I'm even thinking of making a film. This is what I do, I live publically, so that when I die, I can get something on my tombstone. Something real special, that reads like I never actually died. So that all the things I made public are still going to move on when I'm rotting in the ground.

Jeff Cook, 1991 - ????,  May he live on

He live on

He lives on

Something catchy like that. Some people passing by will think that it was a typographical error. The people at the tombstone making factory forgot to ctrl-A backspace key. That kind of thing. The people that knew me, or those that decided to read this will understand a little more clearly. It'll be like my final aspiration. It'll be like the album I never released, the film I never put out, the poem I never got published. But this time, it'll actually work. It'll live on. The one thing that time will take hundreds of years to completely wear away.

Thing about construction work is, you gain a whole new respect for how durable rocks are.

I seem to be spending less and less time on music. I seem to be spending more and more time with shovels. It's the other side of this whole dream of mine. If I want to give up on the reassurance of the put on my tie everyday and go do math in a building, then I may have to spend a lot of time with dirt and shovels. I may have to spend less time with the band I want to be in. I may have to spend less time with the people I love.

Thing about construction work is, you get a lot of face time with gravel.

There's an incredible feeling inside me that I'm meant for something bigger than all of this. Maybe it's because I talk about it so much, or try so damn hard to be the best at something. I thought that maybe if I did just like momma told me, got good grades, went to school, stayed away from hard drugs, I might be able to get my dreams to come true. There's something about that that's flawed. To make my dream come true I'd have to work work work and do less time procrastinating. To work on music, you have to have a band, and a lot of time and a lot of paper and a lot of pens pencils crayons sheet music. This means you need money. As dad said, in order to exist in this life, you need money. To get money, you work construction.

The thing about construction work is, you learn how to beat things mercilessly into the ground in all sorts of ways. You're still going to be the doormat in your next relationship.

I live in the maritimes, and I don't like hockey. I live in the maritimes and I don't particularly enjoy sports. I live in the maritimes and I was never exposed to any sort of art culture until I took it upon myself and met some people who played these things called guitars. Your parents are going to think you want to play sports, are going to think you want to be sydney crosby, are going to think you'll want to be Gretzky. Don't blame them, all the other kids want that, and not a guitar. It's still 1998, and rockband hasn't been released yet.

The thing about meeting life-time construction workers is, you start to realize that there's a balance between having nice things, and having time to appreciate those nice things.

The thing about construction work is, you're the sun's best friend. You wake up with it, you go to bed with it. You're the sun's girlfriend. You cook it breakfast, you great it with your morning cigarette. You spend lunch under it, and you're just a little bit glad when it sneaks away for an afternoon so you can beat off to the idea that you might get off early.

I'm sorry about all of this. I just want to get all of this off my chest. I just want to be famous. Anyway, when you walk by my tombstone now, you'll know why it says what it does!

Walt; the learn'd astronomer

WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;	5
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars. It's when I see something like this, or hear about something like this, that my firm belief of never being a scientist of some sort really takes it's hold. I confine myself in the safe learnings of whatever whatever so I can maybe some day have a stable income for a family. Something like that. Little fence. Little feet. Painted yard. Painted house. Little house. Little neighborhood. Little dreams. It's like you watch it from afar when you think about these things. It's not something I necessarily want to settle for, but it wouldn't be so bad. Still, I'd like to keep the aspiration of being an active family man at least on the back burner so I have some inkling of believing I'll be a musician some day. I've grinded away at this for years. Honing my talents, spreading my name, keeping up a facade per say so that some day my reach might extend into the echelons of the stars. Fame doesn't even matter at this point. I know it sounds radical, but all I want is a shitty apartment and a band who'll play for me. This is all I want, yet it's too much to ask. I spend hours a day looking for new music to listen to, looking for something new and exciting to worship with my ears. It's the buzzing and the static of new music that frustrates me most. I just want to get out there, I want to hear my own music, plastered across the lobes of youth and old alike. It's all I want to do. My piece will play a part in this. I will not be forgotten that easily. I don't want to be talked about in the past tense anymore. It's all these quotes and phrases that I steal from others that embody exactly how I feel. Here I go whining about the same thing again, two blogs in a row, I'm on a roll. I think it's this city that does it to me. The wasting away music scene. The dying demographic. The wasted talent. The apathy the apathy the apathy. No one gives a fuck anymore. Everyone can feel free to show your support, yet you can't come to the shows anymore. It's too much for you to do to go see a band who doesn't have one of your personal friends in it. It's too too too much, but maybe it's our own greed causing this. Maybe we have to reach out a little bit further. Maybe that's all we have to do to get the ears of the greedy to listen, and relent. Maybe that's what I'll do. I'll start so humble I'm barely alive musically. I'll hand out CDs, won't ask any price at all. Make capital investments. It's all I want, is to be heard. I could care less about the support right now, or the financial out put. Maybe I can just throw my music and people and hope a few of them catch on, a few of them enjoy it just enough to listen again. Anyway, I'm sure I'm burning ears off at this point. BYE

"What are you doing next semester?"...

"I'm taking computer science, with a minor in pure math."

"What are you gonna do with that?"

"Probably try for a double major if I can, go to grad school for my master's in math. They pay good at google and IBM for people like that."

"As long as you're doing something that makes you happy."

"Honestly..."

Sometimes, we just wait for something to come to us. Sometimes we sit and sit and wait. We just make up little excuses, build bridges, take the other way around. I've never been good at taking risks. Sometimes we sit and and we sit and we watch. Sometimes we let other people act out the risks we'd love to take ourselves so that we can become satisfied by association. It's like watching some one fuck the celebrity you've always had a crush on. The primal grunts and thrusts, that would be you, if you had it your way, but you still get off knowing it happened at all. Sometimes we sit and we sit and we wait.

We make up excuses and never do exactly what it is we want to do because there's only the radicalists telling us we should do that. Sometimes I don't bother to spell check, because I like to think it makes me seem more "pure" in my words. Sometimes we sit and we sit and call people stupid. Then they do something, and they mess up and sometimes they sit and they sit but then they get up and try again.

"If I could take that fifty thousand dollars I'm going to invest in university, and put it into touring with a band, I think I would be a lot happier, even if I didn't make it."

"But when you've got your education, you can fall back on something. Let that debt sit there, nothing's going to happen to it."

"But that's not how the natural progression goes. You learn, and you go to school, and then you work for the rest of your life."

"Just get an education."

Sometimes we listen and we listen and we don't hear anything at all. We don't hear the few people telling us to fucking do something. They're screaming in our bleeding ears to do what you love to do, and all we can do is listen to the cut that you were forced from on that day you celebrate every year. They know best best best. They know best best best. Sometimes we sit and we sit and we fucking keel over and die. Eighty years later. This is after you get to work, and contribute to a dying economy, and be proud of what you did while you're sitting in front of your nine hundred inch LCD screen. This is you sitting.

Oh god, the excuses. No one wants to hear my music. I don't have the time. I don't have the money. I don't have the talent. I don't have the connections. I don't have the scene. I don't I don't I don't. I sit and sometimes I sit and I sit and I wait. Nothing is EVER going to come out of me just doing nothing but for some reason that's all I do.

My aspirations are as follows.

-> go to school

-> Work for the rest of my life

This is all I seem to have any motivation to do. And you couldn't even call it that. There's no room in there for dreams. I think I just have to face it. Face the music. Curtain's closing. My dreams would've started and ended if I'd only taken a risk. A risk I should've taken in the youthful momentum provided by graduation.

This is the gratification you get from sitting and sitting and enjoying your favorite bands more than anyone else, because they're famous, and because everyone loves them like you want to.

You work and you work and you go to school and you work and you work and the world keeps turning. This what you do when you grow up. I can now consider myself an adult, because I have come about the realization that dreams don't exist anymore because I can't stop sitting.

Goodnight.

formspring.me

Will do calculus for entertainment: http://formspring.me/g3tmoneyg3tpaid