Gobble the grenade.

A year ago I was in Jersey, spending the holiday with her family. I spent most of the day playing with Pete and Bridget. Dickens Days in Clinton.

It's not so much her I miss, because I don't. She isn't worth it.

It's her family I miss.

It's the memories I have of times I should be treasuring forever that will never shine as brightly as they once did.

They're in the pictures I look at when I'm reminiscing with a little bit of disgust that I never felt before.

It's the sour taste I get in my mouth when I have to answer the same goddamn question over and over in the most polite tone I can muster because I know it's being asked out of genuine concern, when I just want to scream "because she SUCKS" just the one time and have it over with but I can't. Even if it's completely true.

After all the analysis, soul-searching, and explanations I can come up with are exhausted it all boils down to the fact that she's a five year-old who would have rather wallowed in her drama and have taken me down with her than to have actually talked to me like a human being.

Seriously, fuck you. Choke on your goddamn turkey.

God bless us, everyone...but you.

Just Because.

I'm just writing in here because I want to get something down on here. I'm just not sure what. Ideas just come to me.

For instance, did you know that I used to volunteer at a battered womens' shelter back in college? I just took calls, talked to people, gave them lists of places to go/call...that sort of thing. I've seen the excuses women come up with to "justify" the fact that they are physically abused.

1) All he does is push me.
2) Don't worry about me; I fight back.
3) If I didn't do (insert benign action here), he wouldn't have had to hit me.
4) He does it to show me he cares about me.

I've heard a lot of excuses in my time. AND NOT ONE OF THEM MAKE IT OK. So when a woman says that she is strong enough to take it, that she fights back, I say to her "sure, you fight back...until the next time when he uses a fist, or a belt, or a bat." And if a woman says that her guy would never do that, tell her to look back to a time when she said they'd never let a man hurt her. It's the idea of diminishing returns, only what diminishes is sanity, control, and self-worth.

A woman who is truly strong either a) doesn't take that shit from anyone, regardless of relationship; or b) knows to ask for help if and when it happens, if and when they can't fix it on their own.

I guess that's all I have to say about that.

USE YOUR HEAD.

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I'm not really sure on the stages of grief/loss, but I'm pretty sure I'm at "anger" right now. I didn't really do "denial" because I'm the one who broke it off and really, how silly would denial be at this point? ("I did it! No I didn't!" See how stupid that sounds?) I'll probably get to the "depressed" part when it gets closer to Christmas, but for right now I'll take the anger. Feels pretty good, actually. It's what's getting my ass around the lake four times a week in this weather.

Which one is after anger? Sleepy? Dopey? Whatever; I'll enjoy "anger" for a while.

Funny enough, the one thing I could always count on to take me to a happy place was acting. I haven't done a show since Love of a Pig, and the last time with that show was at EMACT back in June 2007. I auditioned for a show a few months ago and didn't get in, which was a bummer. I'm going to jump back in for Acme's New Works Festival and their auditions for Picasso at the Lapin Agile. I just need to be able to get onstage. I need to be able to let go of everything else (control, the thoughts constantly in my head, work, stress) and just be told where to go and what to do. Say this line, move to this mark, project to the audience, don't fuck it up. I was actually asked to direct for the NWF but I just couldn't do it. I am too much in my own world to tell other people what to do with theirs. I need direction right now. Strong, confident, organized direction. That'll snap me out of this johnny-come-lately bullshit funk that has been festering in my brain the past week or so.

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Work is...what it is. No holiday party. Possibly no bonuses. You're a Mean One, Mr. Wall Street.

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Alright, I'm spent. Auditions tomorrow, trivia Wednesday, peace and quiet after that.

Sweet dreams, kids.

Words of advice.

For the life of me I couldn't tell you why, but I read this and cried. Maybe I'm just overtired; I don't know. It made me so happy and so sad at the same time. Where you go, I go. Anyway, here it is.


So there's this guy who's walking down the street when he falls into a hole. The walls are so steep he can't escape. A doctor walks by and the guy asks him for help. The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down the hole, and leaves. A priest passes by and the guy asks him for help. The priest scribbles out a prayer, tosses it down the hole, and walks away. Then one of the guy's friends walks by and the guy asks him for help. Without hesitation, the friend jumps down into the hole with the first guy. The first guy asks, "Are you stupid? Now we're both down here!" The friend says, "Yeah, but I've been down here before and I know the way out."

A Moment of Morbidity

I've always been fascinated with death, mostly because it scares the shit out of me. I am so afraid of dying that I can barely step into a doctor's office or a hospital. Of course, that's also partly attributed to my fear of needles and being "under".

Still, even being as big a pussy as I seemingly am, I think about death. Not in the same way a goth kid does, or an elderly person, or a doctor. I think more about what really happens. Who knows if there really is a God? I don't really subscribe to religion as I genuinely feel that early religions were invented as a story - a story meant to explain "that which cannot be explained" - and which grew to be an escape for people from the harshness of real life. Religion used to be the panacea for anything and everything; diseases were punishments for sins and recoveries were miracles, seemingly the work of divine intervention. It has also evolved into a force of control over the masses, a way to keep the poor from killing the rich and to keep the outsiders just behind the borders of the norm.

Who is right? Who is wrong? And what right do people think they have to judge others based on their beliefs?

I guess I mull these ideas in my head because I don't know what's going to happen when I die. If I even get the chance to reflect on my life as it fades away, what will I see? Will "God" be revealed to me? Will I have flashes of my life, my accomplishments, my failures before I pass? Will I have time for my last words?

I think about my last words more than I probably should. I think about what I need to say if and when I realize that I'm going to die. I've always imagined that my last words will have to be something comforting to my family and friends. Maybe it will be profound, but I'm less worried about that. Will I be surrounded by people I love who will hear my words of comfort? What if I die at a diner or on the train to work? Who will care what I have to say? Who will tell my family I love them?

I just want to be able to tell the people I love that I love them, that they're going to be ok, that I'm going to be ok. And then I think about how many people don't get that chance. People who die in car accidents, or from heart attacks at restaurants, or in botched carjackings; these are people who have lived their lives and have loved and whose flames get snuffed out before they can tell people the people they love that it's all going to be ok, even if it's not.

And maybe I won't be able to say what I need to say. Maybe I'll be too busy crying like a little girl and begging for my fading life. Maybe I will be so preoccupied with fighting against the dying of the light that I won't be able to comfort those I love.

It's scary and it's stupid, I know. But it's what I think about.

So I try to tell the people I love that I love them. My family, my friends...the people who make me happy, who make me love life - even if it's only for a little while and only in small doses. If you really love someone, then go ahead and say it. Don't worry about hurt feelings or reactions; don't let other people pound self-doubt into your head. Love can be so many different things to so many different people, and the idea that love is somehow sacred and only available to certain people in certain situations is ridiculous.

I love my family, I love my friends (new and old), I love the people who make me feel like I matter. I do what I can, though sometimes it's by use of sarcasm and humor, to tell those people that I don't exist without them. I wish more people would get over themselves and just say it to someone - even if you're afraid, even if it's just the love of friendship, even if it complicates things. In the end, you're going to find out what you're made of and what the people around you are made of. Love really will do that for you. It will change you life and make you a better person. And who doesn't want that?

Don't wait to tell people you love them. Don't put it on hold; don't assume that you'll be able to say it tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day. You may never get the chance to change yourself for the better by just being honest and admitting that you're in love with your life and the people in it. And you'll be happier, I promise you.

Love never fails.

Love: An Obituary

It started at a party.

At first, I didn't want to go and Mike did. Then he didn't and I did. After all, it had only been four days since September 11th. No one wanted to move, breathe, leave their beds; why on Earth would anyone want to dance, drink, and yell at each other over loud music when there was so much sorrow in the world? What would be the point?

But as we got to the 12th, and the 13th, and so on the world took on a different feel. People were emerging from their flannel-sheet cocoons with a new mantra, "live now". The world could end at any time, we could be bombed into oblivion, our loved ones might be asked to fight and die abroad. "Live now"...go on and meet people, love life, let go of old fears and old grudges.

And so we decided to go.

And that's when I met you.

Later, we'd omit the part about the "party" being one of the frat variety, and how I met you and two of your friends by being flashed for beads. We spent the night on the dance floor, kissing and talking. Later, we lay in bed and whispered to each other, basking in the glow of the moment.

Alas, our first go-around was destined to fail. You were at school two hours away and I had enough on my plate with work, school, and a semblance of a social life. I only saw you twice in three months, communicating mostly through AIM and the phone. I broke off our then-short dalliance with a phone call right before winter break.

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We started talking again in March. You'd had a failed fling with a friend and I'd missed you. We talked about making an effort to see each other because there was a palpable attraction. I could feel it through the phone. We got back together at the end of that month.

Things were great for a while. The summer was tough, with you living down the Cape with your Nana and me living in Wakefield and working two jobs, but we made it work. Once school started, we were seeing each other all the time until winter finals. After that, I was doing my show and you were living your life. We barely saw each other; add to that the fact that we were still young and I was still stupid, and it equaled a break in April of 2003.

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I was shocked when you decided to come to my college graduation party. We couldn't keep our eyes off each other all night. Once everyone left the party and you stayed behind, I knew that this might be my chance to make things right. We talked, we kissed, we made up and made love, and all was right with the world. We could make this work.

The next year was incredible. I was home, finally close enough to see you on a regular basis. You were finishing up your senior year. That time was bliss; I'm not sure I was ever happier for a longer continuous stretch of time than I was for that year. We laughed, and played, and loved, and dreamed about the future. We even moved in together once your original plan fell through, assured by each other that it was you and me for the rest of our lives.

That would turn out to be a colossal mistake due to the fact that we had no money and you had no friends left up here. Salem was a nightmare. We were broke and we had no social lives to speak of. We fought constantly. We patched up the relationship over and over again. I think we were more scared of leaving each other because of the lease than of the relationship itself. I moved back home but we were too damaged by then; we kept it together until that July and then called it quits. We fooled around for a few months more, unable to let go, and then stopped talking in October.

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I can remember calling you in February of 2007. I was distraught; I'd had a little bit of a medical scare and I needed someone to talk to. You were the most comfortable person I could think of. At the time, I thought that was a compliment.

We started with talking. We moved on to dating. And then we slipped back into love as we had so many times before. And it was wonderful. I was convinced that this was it; you were The One. We had jobs, our own friends, shared confidence; it seemed like everything was falling into place.

March 23rd, 2008 is still the happiest night of my life, even if there has been a little bitterness injected into my memories since then. I asked you to marry me, and you said yes. You looked so beautiful that night. The stars were aligned, the night went as smoothly as I could have ever hoped, and by the time we fell asleep that night the world was ours for the taking, together at last.

Life was great after that. We were ecstatic, telling people left and right that were were engaged. We began making plans for a wedding date, for our children's names, for invitees to the reception.

Finally, my dream of becoming a family man with you was being realized.

And then you began pulling away.

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It started with your workload and school load during the summer. You were taking three classes, working two jobs, and suddenly the time spent together began to dwindle. We went from seeing each other four nights a week to three, to the weekends, to one day a weekend. You were stressed out, but you chose to spend your time off with your new friends. I understood why you thought the way you did: I'd always been and would be around; you wanted to make your own friends and keep them.

So we spent less time with each other. That was frustrating, but I dealt with it. Then you started pulling away further, making plans with your friends and family on the few days we both had free to see each other. You became emotionally distant. Our phone conversations became shorter and less lively. It seemed that you had time to talk and text to everyone except me.

You were attached at the ear and fingers to that goddamn phone. No matter where we were, it was a guarantee that there'd be no meaningful conversation as long as one of your friends was texting you. My family and friends noticed, too; every time you were out with us or over at the house they'd make comments to you about your obsession with your phone. People began pulling me aside and asking me if we were having problems.

I brushed off the criticism, even when the truth was staring me in the face. You were detached, distracted, uninterested. What I took for your desire to be more independent blinded me to what was really happening: you were giving up on our relationship because you stopped feeling the same way about me that I felt about you.

I struggled to keep us together and to understand you. You told me I was suffocating you. You lied to me about why you were feeling the way you were. I believed it because I had no choice. If someone can just fall out of love with someone else without provocation, what does that say about the other person? Can love ever be "forever" if it can be so quickly tossed away?

I had the creeping suspicion that there was someone else. Eventually that was confirmed by an outside source, someone to whom I will be forever indebted. Confronting you about it, I couldn't help but notice the total lack of emotion when you admitted to the elephant in the room. I don't know why I expected more crying or begging or explanation; I hadn't gotten anything real out of you in months.

This time, it was easier. I'd been dealing with a shell of my fiancee for the past few months; the woman I was dealing with now, I didn't even know. Breaking up with someone you don't know is easier than the alternative.

I don't know if you ever would have told me about the other person, but I wasn't willing to wait for you to figure it out.

So here I am now, trying to live my life without your helping hand; unable to converse with your family, to share in the joy of your new cousin, to be included in the love that you so willingly give to others.

I'm doing alright; I have the best family, friends, and co-workers a guy could ask for. I'm going to get back on my feet and try to remember how to start living as a single man again. My stomachaches have disappeared for the most part. I'm probably drinking a little more than I have in recent times, but that's because my amazing support system has sounded the alarm and tried their hardest to help me move on, and that means taking me out. Things will settle soon, and I'll be a better person for it.

And so we've come full circle - from a national tragedy to an emotional one; a story about a man and a woman who were so deeply in love that they couldn't see inevitability when it was staring them in the face.

I don't bear ill will towards you. I'm sad about what has happened but I know you had your reasons. I'm sure that someday you'll figure yourself out, meet someone, and be happy. Maybe you're already on your way there.

Maybe you'll realize in six months that you've made a huge mistake. I won't be there for you if that happens. I can't afford to be.

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So now I lay this story to rest. A story that spanned seven years of our lives, full of passion, tears, laughter, family, broken promises, and love. A story whose time has come and gone.

We'll learn from this experience and become stronger people. We just have to make sure we don't gloss over the time we spent together. Thank you for the wildest, most passionate, most emotionally-immersing seven years I've ever lived. Here's hoping the next seven have a better ending...for you and for me.

Cheers.

Are you FUCKING kidding me?

Let me set the scene for you:

People can't afford to pay their mortgages. Or their oil bills.

A financial institution that's been around for 158 FUCKING YEARS suddenly goes bankrupt. Another one went the way of the dinosaur last month. Yet a third is bought by Bank of America to keep it from following suit.

Inflation has gone way up while the relative growth of salaries has gone way down in the past eight years.

Everyone who doesn't make six figures is feeling the pinch, no matter who they are or what they do.

The former Federal Reserve chair, a man revered by economists and financial minds, stated this week that the current economy is "the worst [he's] ever seen".

And one candidate is so FUCKING OUT-OF-TOUCH WITH REALITY that he said today (the same day that Lehman goes belly-up, Merrill Lynch gets bought out to keep it afloat, and the market drops 500 points - the most since 9/11) that our economy is "fundamentally strong."

You want my reason why this delusional, quasi-senile, double-talking, soul-selling, vile shell of a man shouldn't be our president?

That video says it all. THAT'S my fucking reason.

If you want to sum up a man who gave up his integrity nearly a decade ago in order to get to where he is today, that video is all you need.

Here; I'll post it again in case you missed it.

This man should not be our president. This man keeps lying and distorting the truth to pander to the dumbest among us. The man knows that there are enough moonshine-swilling hillbillies, enough close-minded bigots, enough brainwashed tripe-swallowing cretins to get him into office as long as he keeps throwing 9/11 in our faces.

It makes me fucking SICK.

Those who tout his tax breaks won't see the vast majority of them. They won't. The average American WON'T SEE THEM. Period. Voodoo economics, the "trickle-down effect"...it's all bullshit that the GOP spoon-feeds the mouth-breathers among us and they gobble it up like candy.

Listen, you decrepit, senile old man: I get it. You want to calm peoples' fears so that they'll vote for you. You don't want to throw Dubya under the bus because it will make you look bad. But let's face the goddamn facts: PEOPLE ARE SCARED.

People don't need smoke blown up their asses; they need solutions. They need to know that you understand their plight and that you're here to help. What they DON'T need is for you to look like fucking IGNORANT in front of millions of people. Admit that the economy sucks; admit that it needs to be fixed; admit that you're going to do your best to do the job right. DON'T patronize people.

Seriously, I hope you lose in a landslide.

Fuck you, John McCain.

I'm Andy Boncoddo and I approve this message. Asshats.

Palin don't preach; you're in trouble deep.

I was planning on going to bed tonight. I wanted to write about McCain's surprising (and incredibly cynical) pick of Sarah Palin to be his VP choice tomorrow, or perhaps Friday. Hell, it's 12:30am and I should be in bed.

But fuck that; I'm pissed and disgusted and I'm going to do this now.

McCain's pick of Palin, a first term governor from that hotly-contested and vitally important swing state of Alaska (with it's whopping 3 electoral votes having gone to the Republican party for years), is a pick that should be insulting to members of the GOP and women everywhere. Here is a woman who was picked because she's a frisky outsider, a down-to-her-bones conservative who is anti-abortion, anti-gun control, and pro-Big Oil. Oh, she'll tell you how she's stood up to special interest groups, oil companies, and terrorists as the governor of Alaska over the past 22 months, but really, who the fuck is she kidding?

How did you stand up to terror when neither you nor the leader of the Alaskan National Guard have any say whatsoever as to when or where Alaskan troops are deployed? How did you stand up to Congress with the "Bridge to Nowhere" after your state had already pocketed the money budgeted for the project? If it stopped going to the bridge then where did it go? She's so eager to drill for oil in Alaska, but who the fuck do you think is going to be doing the actual drilling? Or the building of the pipelines? Or the refining of the oil? OIL COMPANIES, YOU DUMB FUCK.

Here's what we know about Palin: she's preached abstinence-only education for Alaskan public schools for the past two years. She's rejected sex-ed and handing out condoms in schools. She and her husband were active in the Alaskan Independence Party which, among other ideals, believed that Alaska should secede from the Union. That's right, the Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States of America once belonged to a political party whose main objective was to have Alaska BREAK OFF FROM THE UNITED STATES and become its own country.

But the best part about Palin? The fact that while she's out and about in East Buttfuck, Alaska warning parents and their children about the evils of sex without actually teaching those people how to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies and STDs, her daughter is actively getting knocked up by some redneck high school hockey player in the back of his pickup truck. I couldn't make this shit up if I tried. And now the Republicans and evangelicals are actually spinning this garbage to make it look like a GOOD thing, going so far as to APPLAUD this 17 year-old for keeping the baby and marrying the father. Are you fucking kidding me? The Republican party is trying to tell people that they only want to teach teenagers that it is not ok to have sex before marriage under any circumstances, but in case they get knocked up at the young age of NOT ABLE TO CONSENT that their best bet (and the only morally right option) is to keep the baby and marry the father? As if a 17 year-old is mature enough to decide that the person they're sleeping with and getting knocked up by is the right person for them with whom to spend the rest of their lives. Does that sound reasonable? You're fucking right it doesn't.

So Palin was really picked because McCain needed someone youthful behind him. He needed someone to take away Obama's votes from disenchanted Hillary supporters. He needed someone who would call forth the extreme right, a group that has wavered on McCain over the last eight years no matter how hard he has tried to reinvent himself to please them. But Hillary supporters aren't going to vote for her; just because she has a vagina doesn't make her the "woman's choice". Her views differ fundamentally from Clinton's; they are from different backgrounds; Clinton has experience on a national and international level.

Palin is a gimmicky pick that negates any possible ground McCain had to stand on when it came to Obama's inexperience. The amount of spinning the GOP has done to make Palin look like a legit choice for the 2nd highest office in the country is making the lamp post outside my window dizzy. I can't imagine that any sane person would actually trust the country to a person with no real experience if something were to happen to McCain, a man who has had melanoma four times and who would be 73 years old at the time of his theoretical inauguration. It's crazy, but then again so are Southerners. And residents of the Midwest. Fuck.

Now I know what you may be saying: Biden is from Delaware and they only have 3 electoral votes. Why are you being such a prick just because Palin is from a who-gives-a-flying-fuck state? Two reasons: first, fuck you; don't interrupt me again. Second, because Biden carries a reputation with him; a reputation of foreign policy experience, of fighting for women who are victims of violence, of leading the way in his home state for fostering new energies to be produced and researched. People know who Joe Biden is; they know what they're getting when they vote for him.

What are you getting with Palin? A woman who was mayor of a town with less people than I lived with in the Central section of UMass, and still managed to leave it with a $27,000,000 deficit when she became governor. A woman who became governor of a state whose entire population is a mere 70,000 people less than the number living in the CITY OF BOSTON. A woman who demands that only abstinence be taught in classrooms but can't even teach that same lesson to her own daughter. A woman who fired Alaska's public safety commissioner because he wouldn't fire her sister's ex-husband after a bitter divorce and custody battle, which the ex won. A woman who still believes that God told Bush to wage the War on Terror.

Hypocrisy, crony-ism, mismanagement of funds, religious zeal...wow, she IS the ideal GOP candidate. But she was also a terrible choice for McCain to make, especially when his first priority should have been to pick someone with economic, environmental, and civil rights experience...all are areas in which John McCain is severely lacking in the experience department. Those hoping that Palin will "learn on the job" are deluding themselves. America isn't Burger King; you can't do fries before you've mopped floors. You can't learn on the fly because no one will take you seriously. Even Palin says that whoever takes office needs to be prepared for anything:

"My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of 'personal discovery.' This world of threats and dangers is not just a community, and it doesn't just need an organizer." - Sarah Palin, September 3, 2008

Well said, Governor Palin. Those without experience in the areas of national and international affairs, as well as the workings of Washington politics, should not be running for a job that entails that exact experience.

"The American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of 'personal discovery'."

Those are her words; will she heed them?