I dunno

I don't know what this is, but I found it on my external hard drive. I think I wrote it earlier this year? Not sure. Also not sure if it was supposed to be a shitty song or a shitty poem, but its one of the two, and most assuredly shitty. Hmm.

O believer, O Sineater, who do you fear?
You've had your share, your share of tears
Do you fear god? Do you fear Jesus?
Do you fear man? Do you fear Ephesus?
Well it seems the Seven Sleepers never woke
And Theodosius the first never spoke
And handed you the world
Well, now you play the Lord
Of earth, water, and sky
This time there is no Decius to bring you down from on high
Apparently you miss the obvious irony
Of your new persecution
A reversal of roles
and this time, Sineater, there is none so bold
to bring you down from your throne

Dude.

Being happy is really fucking awesome. I should have tried it sooner.
Unfortunately I seem to be in a dry spell for writing, I think it's the happiness.
Hmm.
-AP

I feel really good.

Not good, purposeful. Like stuff is about to go very right. I can't say any more until things develop a little more. But I think it's a good thing. And it is making me very, very happy. I am rarely this happy. It is giving me a headache. Turning down the happy now. This will hopefully be clarified a little later.

All along you've been asking what's wrong with me/All along you've been asking what's wrong with me

So, it's been quite some time since I've posted here. Things, although not really different, are better. They weren't bad before, I just feel better about 'them.' Things are better with my friends, and although things are worse creatively for me (I am at a writing standstill, and haven't added to any of my own zine work in awhile, which is disconcerting to say the least), I think I'm starting to get the hang of this thing.

Both during the same week this month I was accepted to college (Evergreen State College, huzzah!) and turned 18 (huzzah?). That, needless to say, kicked my senioritis into full swing (I've had it in some form since the middle of Junior year). Fortunately, I've resigned myself, if I do any of my homework on a given night, to staying up all night to do it. This makes things really fun.
I'm gonna go do that now.

-AP

I actually had homework tonight

Which is pretty weird, because, and I don't know if anyone has told you this before, but senior year is basically really awesome. Yeah, it's not necessarily straight up all-around easier, but I have noticed fewer nights where I am up late due to homework. Whatever that even means.

Before I say what I am about to say, I should clarify that I am not a harpy for Obama. I am not one of the little teenage shrills babbling on generally about "change" and bandwagoning on the Bush-bashing, but I am legitimately worried that if John McCain is elected, it will very likely mark the beginning of my loss of any shred of hope for the future of America. Again, whatever that means. This is something I've heard from a lot of very moderate people, as well as almost all of my friends that could be considered liberals of the mainstream variety. It's quite stressful, I assure you. Having optimism, despite ample evidence to suggest my optimism is misplaced, in America's potential to be something much better. To not stop where we have long ago. To continue being progressive and a symbol of the future. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like that is the place any of controlling parties wish to take America in, and I doubt that will ever change. I hope beyond hope that we'll just "snap out of it" and become more aware of the potential in America. Again, unfortunately, if Americans can't even put responsible people in control of them, how are they ever going to be able to control themselves, even for themselves? Selfishness does not equate to independence, and it's quite foolish of me to confuse the two. 

Oh well, stress is not going to change anything at this particular impass.

-AP

Bury me with it: OR, nobody knows you and nobody gives a damn

As I sit here, blaring Modest Mouse and coughing myself into oblivion, I ponder what the future will hold for me, and my friends.

I don't know if I will ever be not angry.

Did this come from my father and his father? Am I spinning my wheels? I can't help but worry that some day I'll just give up and say fuck you to everyone else in the world. That I'll stop worrying and resign myself to work and a family and merely that. That I'll someday find security and happiness in normalcy and not find it so goddammed boring.
I can tell which of my friends this will happen to. I worry about the other ones as I worry about myself. I worry that it is merely adolescent yearning that tells me that no, age will not simply dampen my spirit into nothingness.

Perhaps I am delusional for believing that I won't someday be just as clueless and stubborn and stupid as what seems to pass for maturity these days.

I worry I am delusional for believing that I am not alone. It's happened to me before. Why would it not happen again? That I am indeed wrong for hoping for more out of those around me, and perhaps stupid for expecting anything else? The worst that could happen is that this syndrome would expand to everything else- not just specific cases. That the whole world will be torn asunder before me and I'll be the only one left, standing in the middle, with only the paychecks from a lifetime of wasted work and a gun with a single bullet in it. By then I would know who is to blame. By then it would certainly be clear. But the question would inevitably form in my mind- should I kill those who are responsible or myself for giving in to them? There are no right answers.

Only time will tell. This is not meant to scare you. This is a writing exercise of the purest self-aggrandizement and is based solely on the illusion of self-importance.

So much progress, so few blogs...

Well, I guess this blog is seeming more and more like an account of my zine progress, I'll try to keep that to a minimum. However, that is oftentimes the most interesting thing I'd care to talk about, because it is probably one of the few legitimately worthwhile things I am getting to do with my time.
Over the past week, I've probably spent 8 or so hours doing various things for the zine (whether writing or researching about it), and I've finally decided upon a name.
The Blast.
The Blast is what Alexander Berkman called his periodical waaaaay back in 1917, and I figure it's a good enough name. Although now it feels like there's more pressure to deliver properly upon it's legacy, however minor. Also I feel a little guilty that I am turning a short-lived revolutionary labor circular with heavy anarchist leanings into an adolescent masturbatory exploration of creativity. Sort of a content change.
Hopefully tomorrow I'll make more finalized physical progress. I've already made what appears to be a very satisfactory cover, very plain, with only typed text, but the fact that I now have 29 issues of essentially hijackable original content, the possibility of using the old Blast's graphics for my purposes is very tempting. I worry that I will have too many pages of introduction and fluff and not enough content. This will be remedied by making them too long for their own good. I don't know how I'm going to really bind them, as anything of decent length will be a rediculously boring thing to fold together in a traditionally zine-y way.

Submit stuff for the zine!

If you have literally any visual or written work you might like to see printed in a creative zine, I'd love to see it.
Please email anything you might have to
anthonypreciado@gmail.com

-AP

Little person words

Today, I took my little brother's fat happy dog for a walk.
It was very nice.

-AP

Sick, man. Sick.

Today I was rather "sick." I spent the day being super "sick" with my mother, and the harvest for the day's outings includes:
1. 16 vinyl records, all purchased at Goodwill for mostly 99 cents a piece.
2. A fully operational and ink-loaded typewriter, for $12.99 (thank you again Goodwill).
3. A copy of John Hodgman's newest book, "More Information Than You Require," which has already made me giggle quite a lot in the little bit of time I've already spent reading it.

Overall, an awesome day, as I acquired both a significant piece of the equipment required to produce the zine, as well as plenty of inspiration for the creative process.

Now I have to go write an ass-load of AP Gov cards I won't use for a test I don't necessarily need to study for and that I might not have to take tomorrow. That, and fiddle with my typewriter, which has already proven to be all sorts of fun.

-AP
(Whose spelling is likely to get a lot better the longer he spends on the damn typewriter.)

"Man: Party time!"

During the summer, I started work on a movie script that has yet to be finished. I am in doubt as to whether or not it will come to fruition, but I figure, once the script is done, I could see about making it during the school year this year. Unfortunately, it seems so far to be a little bit out of my means to create. Without much further ado, I give you the opening scene of the secret agent/news team action/comedy

Super Sexy Secret Agent Action News Team Squad.

[Panning over city windows and streets from moving car, voice-over delivering generic news lines faintly in background, upbeat music starts and plays over panning, title appears slightly above center screen, then fades out, panning continues for a few seconds, then whole picture fades to black completely]

[Cut to shot of back of couch, we can see the back of a man in a suit lounging on it]

Man: Another successful edition of Faketownville's own Channel 9 Evening News at 4, Quincy!

[Cut to shot with man's leg covering left side of screen, with a cat looking up at the camera laying on the man's right side]

Man: You know what that means, don't you?

Cat: ...

Man: Party time!

Cat: ... [is busy being a cat]

Man: Aren't you going to say anything?

Cat: ...

Man: Of course not. And that's because cats can't talk.

[Cut to shot of generic stereo system, with a finger turning it on, music starts]

[Cut to shot of cat, with ears pointing backwards from head, clearly disapproving of the man's choice in music]

Man: Those schmucks over at Channel 11 never knew what hit them!

[As music continues, man dances awkwardly to music]

[A noise is heard in the background, the man stops dancing and leans down to turn off the music]

Man: [We see him from the front, standing next to the stereo, with his back towards the couch, wearing seedy suit jacket and undone tie, breathing heavily and with fists clenched] I didn't think you'd come so soon...

Voice: You should have known better, assface.

Man: [He has turned to face the voice, shot has the top of his torso centered, he frenetically jabs his pointer finger outward to emphasize his words] I am NOT the assface here, AssFace.

Voice: I hate it when people call me that.

Man: [confused] But... it's your name...?

Voice: I'm going to make you pay for that.

Man: [On knees, hands clenched in front of him, begging for his life] Please, please, don't kill me!

Voice: Don't worry, you won't die. Not technically.

[The man is sobbing softly to himself as the screen cuts to the cat, then returns to the man]

Man: NO! Please! Anything but that!

Voice: You should have thought about that before you tried to beat Channel 11, assface.

[We see a pair of arms grab the cat, which has obviously been replaced half way through his grab with a stuffed animal, and the mysterious figure proceeds to beat the man with the cat.]

Man: [screams] Noooooooooo! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssfaaaaaaaaaaaacccceeeeeeee!

[Cut to black]

Senior Project

I just found out that my senior project proposal was approved. I figure I can put down some things I come up with here. The plan is to fully design, layout, and partially write and draw my own zine, and although I know very little else about it so far, I do know that I want it to stand alone, to be able to be read and understood completely independent of any particular time line, which unfortunately means it won't be particularly topical.

If anyone reads this that would want to put some of their writing, poetry, drawings, pictures, or otherwise in a zine, just let me know and I'm sure something can make it in.

Seriously, it doesn't even have to be really big and impressive, it's all about the presentation- it will be thrown in with lots of other stuff, and the zine becomes good when it is full of interesting things to look at I need both big central things to put in and plenty of little bits to stick in the margins.

I exist.

It's true. I now am a small part of that blog-o-sphere everybody is always talking about. Hurrah.
-AP