guitar hero

Am I upset? A little.

Am I going to get over it? Of course.

Don't think you're special. Don't think I'm going to waste another second thinking about you. I've got better things to do with my time. I've got places to go and worlds to conquer - I have no time for silly little boys in silly little bands.

But that doesn't change the fact that for a brief moment, you hurt me. You almost made me cry. And that's not something I'm going to forgive or forget easily. So congratulations, you made it past years of carefully constructed defenses, only to remind me why I built up those defenses in the first place. Don't think I'm going to let you get away with that again.

Don't even fucking try.

This is the last you'll hear of it, though. It's been two hours. I'm already over you.

"I can't believe you thought I wouldn't kiss you"

not because it was me, but because I was there. did it mean anything?

My week in review:

QUOTE OF MY LIFE:

"You broke his fragile heart, Elle. He's distraught. He's been drinking and writing free-verse poetry and weeping 'neath the unforgiving moon. He may never recover. He's crying right now, in fact. With all the despair in his empty, meaningless soul."

"Really? 'Cause it's sounds like he's beating you at Mario Cart."

according to little alicia

I'm having textual relations.

in with the old (polaroid post #1)

In The Lab With Skeleton Elle

+ contact sheet from 4/17 & 4/18, outside The Congress in Chicago.

+ I really want to print #10 (the first negative in the third row down.)

+ a test strip of a photo that was never properly printed.

around through a lens

+ stairway to heaven
taken with a Nikon FM2

+ in potentia
taken with a Nikon FM2

+ the street, midnight
taken with a Nikon FM2

Chicago 4/17 & 4/18

+ amanda
taken with a Nikon FM2

+ the end.
taken with a Nikon FM2

+ skeleton crew
taken with a Nikon FM2

F*ck Authority

www.savechicagoculture.org

Even if you don't live in Chicago, or don't go to concerts in Chicago, you need to go to that website, read the article, and leave a comment voicing your disapproval. This is bullshit and needs to be stopped.

finder's keepers

new old photography

+ iamaghost
Taken with a Pentax Spotmatic, 2004
Models: Skyler and Chie

+ "It's always winter here"
Taken with a Pentax Spotmatic, 2006

+ Sic Transit Gloria (Glory Fades)
Taken with a Pentax Spotmatic, 2007
Model: Kelly

I like babies best when I can give them back at the end of the day. Portland is green and wet and wonderful. I can stand under my own umbrella (ella, ella).

I think I just found my future.

Rock and roll, baby.

ALSO.

I can officially no longer sing soprano. So much for years of training?

I'm sure if I worked at it, I could get it back, but I was frankly never keen on being a soprano in the first place.

Maybe it's just my voice today. I'm hitting a ridiculous number of sour notes, even in the easy registers. Boo. That inspires me to start practicing again.

State Street, Madison, WI 2.26.08

Taken with a Nikon FM2
55mm lens
ISO 100 (Kodak T-Max b&w)
Late winter afternoon light

Kill Your Television

Law & Order: SVU marathon on USA all day today. There goes my plans of getting anything done. I'm really ridiculously hooked on this show. Makes me wanna be a detective when I grow up.

Josephine Collective

Kickass band. Kickass video. Also, they share a name with my grandmother.

1:30 AM

Do you ever worry, when you've had a glass of water and you're crunching the ice cubes, that you've accidentally bitten off part of the glass and when you bite down it will cut into the soft parts of your mouth and bleed everywhere?

I worry about that, sometimes.

I mean, not in an emo way, but in a wouldn't-that-totally-suck way.

Original fiction can be found over here:

http://next-best-lie.livejournal.com/

another year older, not much wiser

It's my birthday.

Youth in Memoriam

His name is Jesse. He's my age, but was a year behind me in school. We were friends, more or less, since the fifth grade. We even dated for a while, that special sort of Junior High dating that involves awkward silences and surreptitious hand-holding. He wrote me letters all that spring, even though we lived no more than a mile away from each other. For years I carried the dragon he drew for me in my wallet, the paper soft and creased, the green crayon flaking off in waxy scales. Even after that, he trusted me enough to come to me first when he though he had maybe gotten a girl pregnant, when he needed someone to lean on for a while.

He didn't come to me when his life started to fall apart. He didn't have to - we all saw it happening.

Jesse had the sort of smile that made you fall in love with him. It was huge and happy and open, and flashed across his face like summer lightning. He was a wild thing, made of energy and emotion and bold, bright ideas. I can't pinpoint the date when that boy started to disappear, but it must have been around his sophomore year of high school. I can, to some extent, tell you what caused it: bad home life, hard time at school, shitty relationships, drugs.

I have more regrets about Jesse than anything else in my life. More guilt. I knew he was falling, we all knew it. We stood by and watched the smiles disappear, the spark fade from his eyes. We watched.

It was like Jesse was an anonymous homeless man on a street corner. You see him there, spare him a pitying thought, maybe a handful of change, but in the end you walk right on by. You don't care, not really, not enough to actually do something. You probably don't even think about him again.

Jesse deserved so much more than that. He was our friend, not a random stranger, and we failed him utterly. Someone should have done something. I should have done something. I could have helped him, I think, could have saved him if I had tried.

It's too late now.

(The boy didn't know what his life would become. Think of this as a memorial, of sorts, for a time when he was closer to whole.)

Photo Post #1 - 森の池

Rampant Consumerism

If anyone was wondering what I wanted for my birthday, a gift certificate to bodyartforms.com would be fantastic.

In the morning, in the sun and the snow

I love your voice when you've just woken up, scratchy and rough and warm. I want to curl up in the sound.

(The internet is my dumping ground. A landfill of thoughts. Word vomit.)

Hey Cris(tal)

English is a very strange language.

I think I communicate better in f-stops and orange lights. The words spoken yesterday mean less than the pictures taken three years ago.

20 is not the new 30

Shit, son. Let's talk for a minute about how apparently they don't teach Hipster 101 in the eighth grade anymore. My kidneys are feeling it.

EMPIRES

Made of win.

Music Post #3

LEATHERMOUTH. Go listen.

http://www.myspace.com/leathermouthlives

First week of the spring semester has gone well. Had photography last night, and saw their photolab for the first time. It's so fancy! Makes me miss Smith's nasty ghetto lab. I was talking to my professor about my previous photo classes and he was like, "So I guess you know how to work all this machinery!" to which I replied "AHAHAHA LIKE I'VE EVER USED ANYTHING MANUFACTURED AFTER 1980 DON'T BE RIDICULOUS."

I can't tell if my writing teacher is hilarious in a very ironic way, or is just kind of an asshole. There seem to be some interesting people in the class. It will be weird not being the best anymore.

In other news, I'm feeling very sick today and smell overwhelmingly of eggnog, for absolutely no reason at all.

Babies!

Welcome to the world, Sam Milverstedt!

You are going to be the most loved baby in the whole world. I'm so excited to meet you and see you grow up.

Congratulations, Max and Sara!

(For those who don't already know: My older brother Max and his wife Sara had their first child tonight, a beautiful baby boy named Sam. I'm an aunt!)

Suprise Skyler and Sydney! Raining in Madison. New haircut! Very cute.

Monosyllabic blogging is the new black.

Sometimes, when I'm at hotels, I find myself terrified that there is a corpse under the bed. It keeps me awake, thinking about it. I don't sleep very well at hotels.

I don't know what made me think of this. I am very safely in my own bed, which has nothing under it except another bed.

I am suddenly very "grr" about the world. Real life is approaching at an alarming pace. I know where I am, and I know where I want to be, I just don't quite know how to get there. Helpful life advice isn't as helpful as you hope.

Maybe it's because of the baby coming. My big brother is helping to start a whole new life, and I've barely started mine.

It's midnight. I can be as maudlin as I want.