I got tired of being alone, so I asked Gentry out on a date.  We’ll have to see how this works.  This might be ridiculous.  In other news, thinking about what has happened in the last three weeks with her and with everyone has got me writing songs again… (yayyyyy…)

Wednesday: Began drinking after FI at 2 in the afternoon.  Was supposed to be writing a ten page paper for RELS340, but wasn’t.  Instead, lost so badly at beerpong that I almost passed out two and a half hours later.  However, more people arrived at 5, and I felt rejuvenated, so I drank more.  Beerpong continued until two in the morning, and the only games I won were with my buddy Emily, but we lost so badly the rest of the time that we were forced to make out anyways.  Hit Schaefer at 11, didn’t eat, and eventually escaped afterwards.

Thursday: Went to Statistics and decided that I wouldn’t go to RELS340 afterwards, but remained on campus to stay and sit in the sun with some friends.  Awkward situation where I was hanging out with Christine and Gentry rolls up, both of who have crushes on me.  On my way home, I tried to text Chris about how awkward it was, but sent it to Christine, who doesn’t care one way or another, but freaked out at me when I tried to explain why it was awkward, even though I was telling the truth.  To be fair, it didn’t sound great.  Got depressed and drank from about 9 to 1, and ended up kissing Gentry anyways because I have no soul.

Friday: Was so messed up that I skipped both classes, even though I was on campus.  I just felt terrible, so I had to go home and recover.  Slept for a while, then had to go to work.  Worked until 10:30, then hauled my ass into the city to repeat past mistakes.  Raided a party where Guitar Hero managed to prove I have a slight tolerance for alcohol.  Did keg stand, felt bad afterwards, but continued drinking because I hate wasting beer.  Made it home safely (which doesn’t seem fair to everyone who doesn’t, since I’m a fucking mess) and passed out.  Alcohol hit me in the middle of the night and I somehow managed to fall from a reclining position out of my bed onto my guitar case.  It was painful.  Guitar is, thankfully, undamaged.

I’m missing work and I’m ruining my love-life.  Christine is great; almost too great.  She encourages me to date other people, which is painful for me because the only thing I want to do is date her.  She’s never judgmental, and she doesn’t expect anything from me, but is entirely into it when I am around.  Gentry, on the other hand, isn’t even human.  The only time I see Gentry is when she is drunk.  Her friends tell me that she is serious about me, which is the first time anything like that has happened in a while.  I can’t believe it, because she’s always just as fucking wasted as I am.  Not just that, but she doesn’t seem to have any substance to her.  I’ve never heard her talk about anything other than drinking, and despite having hung out with her upwards of 50 times, I know nothing about her except her name and that she goes to VCU.  On my way out of the city the other night, I got a text from her that was inviting me over.  She claims there were people hanging out, but a buddy of mine had confirmed that they had just left.  So instead of going back and seeing what was up, I pretended my phone had died so I could take Chris home.  I don’t know; I just don’t feel right about taking advantage of a drunken situation like that.

I need someone to save me from this.  I knew this would happen when I had more free time.

Also, I’m totally loopy because I took sleep meds like three hours ago and am still awake!  YESSS!

At about 10:30PM, when Chris and I finally started hanging out, is when my day got way better. There was only an hour and a half left in the night, but we decided to just say fuck it and played one on one beerpong with Matt, alternating losers. At 11:30PM we cracked open the second twelve, and then decided to go to a party, which sucked anyways, so we were back at Matt’s by 12:30AM, with a slightly bigger entourage. Then we just played beerpong for like two more hours until we were all ridiculously out of control drunk. Normally, I don’t like talking about drinking very much because it makes me feel like a tool, but I feel like the pictures that surface on Facebook later today might need some… explanations. Because I honestly don’t remember all of them, and I’m not entirely sure what happened. I just remember Chris’s bare ass with writing all over it, and Cory copping a feel on me. So…

Contrary to what some might have you believe, Thrice is not a Christian rock band.  At least not in that sense, anyways.  The band members might be Christian, and the songs might have religious themes, but the lead singer Dustin Kensrue didn’t want to have a band that’s looked at that way, especially since it isn’t really the only theme they play on.  Back in 2001, I heard Thrice’s Identity Crisis, and despite that being their worst album, I was floored by the grinding metal riffs and Dustin’s beautifully in-tune, throaty screams.  Back then, metal annoyed the shit out of me, and Thrice was offering something that lied between punk, the elusive, undefinable ‘emo’, and metal, and it was beautiful.  Since then, the band has continued to improve, to jaw-dropping degrees.  2002′s The Illusion of Safety was the album that really sealed the deal for me, and it’s still one of my favorite albums.  I had heard “Betrayal is a Symptom” on one of the Plea For Peace compilations before the album dropped, and I knew then that their next album was going to be nuts.  Then there was The Artist in the Ambulance in 2003 (which is considered by seemingly all my friends to be their best album) which perfected their sound and actually pushed them into the mainstream.  After that point, though, is when they decided that they were going to experiment with their sound.  This is generally when people stopped liking them as much, and when they released Vheissu in 2005, everyone kind of got angry and said that they had sold out.  Which isn’t true, because selling out entails doing something that will push you into the limelight even further and introduce your music to a larger, less focused audience that are more interested in rock radio singles than in having a musical experience.  I think that’s the important part of the issue, because Vheissu was the first time that they tried to do something that really flowed like a poem.  It still had a few tracks where there was screaming and chugging guitars, but it changed so much that the album itself dipped into several different genres.  Finally, they released The Alchemy Index, Vol. I and II: Fire and Water in 2007 and are finishing it off with the The Alchemy Index, Vol. III and IV: Air and Earth on Tuesday.  The two albums are actually four EPs, really, with something like six songs on each one, and each one is distinctively different.  Water is kind of a laid back, slow, incredibly musical EP, with a lot more electronic influence than any of their other work.  Fire, as you might suspect, is their heavy EP, which just is in your face gnashing and grinding of guitars.  Then there is the new stuff, which might be their best work to date.  Air is also a really slow, heavy on instrumental EP, where Dustin proves that he can sing really, really well.  In the best track on Air called “A Song For Milly Michaelson,” Dustin sings, “Here we go/Hold on tight and don’t let go/I won’t ever let you fall/I love the night/If I ignore these city lights/But I love you most of all.”  Earth is my favorite, because it reduces Thrice to acoustic guitar, bass, and a piano, and it really flies into new territory that Dustin’s solo career turned to.  The first song, called “Moving Mountains,” is the best I’ve heard from them, with the opening lines, “I speak in many tongues through many men/Argue with angels and I always win/But I don’t know the first thing about love.” It’s more of a folk-blues type album, and the last song definitely has some gospel influences.  It also is their most religious-feeling work, I think.  And it’s fucking badass.

The guy who opened for Ben Folds is a guy named Eef Barzelay, who was actually a really great singer-songwriter type who just played his electric guitar and sang by himself. He had an incredible folk-blues typed voice, and the opening song he played was about Richmond on an old ukulele. Essentially the song was about him meeting a girl in Richmond, having sex with her and leaving her with child, and then running away afterwards. It was great.

As for Ben Folds, he is by far one of the most entertaining musicians to behold that I’ve born witness to. The man is brilliant; his songs are charming and often hysterical, but never lacking technical skill. I mean, his piano skills are on par with Elton John’s, if not exceeding. I’ve never heard Elton John do some of the blisteringly fast keyboard tricks that Ben uses, and Ben makes them seem effortless. He also played a song about Richmond that I couldn’t quite grasp, because it was so technically mind-blowing that the only thing I heard him sing was about getting a speeding ticket. But he went into the craziest, trippiest solo I’ve damn near ever heard on a piano, and then halfway through switched over to his Moog and kept blasting away. His backing band was nothing short of phenomenal, either. I guess my only real problem with the show his that he only played a few songs from Whatever and Ever Amen. He played “Brick” (I knew he would) and “Kate,” but there a couple songs from that album that I’ve never heard of him playing live after Ben Folds Five broke up. Specifically, “Evaporate,” “Missing The War,” and “Cigarette.” He’s done “One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces” live, but he didn’t do it last night, and that’s one of those priceless ones that would have made the set. Anyways, if you get the chance to see him live, do it. he’s amazing. Everything about him.

I tried to talk to her on the phone, but it was really awkward.  I asked her if she wanted to hang out, and she said she was really busy this weekend, but we could probably hang out for a little while.  Which is okay, but I’m kind of tired of only seeing her for an hour before she has someone else she has to hang out with.  I guess I get really clingy the minute someone likes me; it’s frustrating.  The phone conversation contained a lot of silence, which I explained to her that it had to do with how tired I was.  I wasn’t honestly tired; I just felt really bad about everything in the world.

I’m all loopy.  I’m gonna stop complaining and go to bed (taking a few drinks with me on my way out).

Oh.  And I got VIP tickets to see Ben Folds at the National tomorrow with my mom.  So that’ll be fun.  I can drink myself into happiness afterwards, I think.

Update: The only joke people seem to have in the workplace is when you walk up with lunch, and then your fellow employees see your food and say, “Oh, hey, you brought me lunch.  Thanks.”  Good one, guys.  Never say that shit again.

Scrabulous, man.  Start a game with me.  Please.  Please.

I’ve been on campus since about two o’clock today.  I should have been working, but my friends Chris and Matt wanted to play some pool, so I played with them until about 4:15PM and then tried to break into Hibbs.  I managed to get in, actually, but it was strange because I was wandering around in the dark on the third floor trying to remember where the world language lab or something is located.  I don’t think I was allowed to get in there, but I did anyways.  I’m probably on all sorts of cameras wandering around in the dark, and security will probably identify me and come find me within the next couple of days.  It should be fun when I go, “I thought I was supposed to be watching some movie today.” Which I was, but hey, who cares?

Just watched a kickass Palestinian movie called Divine Intervention that was absolutely fucking hysterical.  I had to write a paper on it, and I feel like I crushed it.  Anyways, I have so much shit to do; I doubt I’m going to be able to write my FI paper tonight.  Which is a bummer, because I’ve been working all weekend trying to get all my shit squared away.  Still gotta write a Statistics Lab Report and stuff like that, so this is going to be an entertaining couple of hours.  Sometimes school really is overwhelming.

Also, I’m listening to Jay-Z’s American Gangster album.  It’s fantastic.  One of the best things about Jay-Z is that all his instrumentation and beats sound real, like they weren’t done with a stupid synthesizer.  I think most of them actually are, because he actually has the money to do that shit.  Give it a listen.