Response to: This American Life - #1 Party School

          Waking up has never been more laborious. The draining vacuous light of day slices through my crudely obstructed dorm window. I look at the jail-like bricks that surround me, but don't see my Salvador Dali "Swans Reflecting" poster. I surmise I ended up on the bed below mine, unable to make it to the top bunk. I check the clock, it's one thirty in the afternoon. I begin to pick my head up, yet it seems this idea is unattainable, for it feels my brain is throbbing, pushing up against the barriers of my skull. I examine by feet at the end of the bed, still suited up in my newly ruined grey suede boots. This is a reasonably typical way to begin my Friday. Known by most, the university I attend, Plymouth State is a notorious party school. It's ranked number nine in the country, thanks to The Princeton Review.
          I lay, like a sack of potatoes, disheveled in bed. How productive my weekends are. I try to recall the events of the prior evening. It's as if tiny snippets of my night begin to appear, like small pieces of cloth you would use to patch your jeans, although there is never enough to cover the holes, your bare skin peeking through, unwanted and awkward. A vision looms in my mind. I vaguely remember pouring my Jack Daniels whiskey effortlessly into a red solo cup around five o' clock last evening. How the liquor flowed, with its poignant smell, making sweet harmonious splashes into the plastic bottom. I mixed in a relatively small amount of Coca-Cola. As the sun fades into the horizon line, and the moon begins to rise in these early winter months, warmth fills my being.
        The next few hours blur and fade. Comical moments, my comrade's and I find more funny than most. Dinner is but a dream, the mix of people, some I know, some I don't. All of whom I greet, and some I begin conversing with. It's time to go back to my current residence in the Pemiwagesset Hall, which I consider close to the word "home". Starting to get dry, like a feline going mentally insane over its cat-nip, we begin cascading our needy throats again. Carl Rossi Sangria, Absolut Vodka, and my Jack Daniels are now sitting admiringly on the weathered dresser. Clothes are flying everywhere in this intoxicated universe, cosmetics are being applied, and hair is being curled, our world still bound by feminity.
        We travel place to place, like nomads, offering nothing else than our company. We don't come bearing gifts like the usual drifter, our euphoric potions, hidden in our purses. Back to the reality of my dorm room I gaze upon the fresh red taint of skin on my wrist. Virgin cuts, only existent from my imbalance when the clock had past midnight. Recollections arise of the sensory, boreal ice under my skin, lightly piercing my flesh. Remnants of my warm blood must have leaked on the earth, along with my pride, or any I had left. My memories continue, coming and going in flashes throughout my day. The surreal atmosphere of it all, yet it's like a calendar, highlighted and routine. Everyone speaks the same language, academically fluent Monday through Thursday (day), inarticulately intoxicated Thursday (night) through Sunday. The world is in the selfish palm of our hands. It's still spinning on its axis, but we shift it as our weeks do. We re-align the stars and the planets to suit our needs. The chemical consistency of life itself is reborn, as if in a scientific laboratory, containing a poisonous, yet loving combination of the desires of someone in their youth.

Response to : The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved. By: Hunter S. Thompson

                    "But now, looking at the big red notebook I carried all through that scene, I see more or less what happened. The book itself is somewhat mangled and bent; some of the pages are torn, others are shriveled and stained by what appears to be whiskey, but taken as a whole, with sporadic memory flashes, the notes seem to tell the story.”-Hunter S. Thompson

                     Isn't this how all of our lives are? Hunter S. Thompson slipped in an unintended metaphor. Aren't we all like his big red notebook, disheveled imperfect creatures, living a life full of unplanned occurrences? We are somewhat bruised, but strong like the whiskey that stained his book. We remember bits and pieces of the most important and the most humdrum moments that shape our being.
                     It seems as though we find out the most about ourselves when we don't intend to. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a film divulged in the strange yet extraordinary life of Hunter S. Thompson, and by far one of my favorites, ties in so well with the feeling of belonging. Raoul Duke, a character in the film says, "..No explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time in the world."
                     His words lead me to believe we are more than just monstrous products of society, we are the saviors of humanity, something so powerful, and something so dominant. It's as if we are Mount Everest, an entity so grand, we can admire and analyze the confusion around us. Even with everything that goes on in this constantly spinning world we call "home", the devastation and manipulation, we can fight the urge to conform and find our path, our journey. We may even be able to answer the age-long philosophical question, "Who am I, really?"
                    Raoul continues to say, "And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave." Even though Thompson and Steadman's drunken nights in Kentucky were blurred and jagged like the edge of an old, dull chainsaw, it still managed to slice through them and stir their insides. Even though so exhausted from their constant binge drinking, they were finding themselves, they were reaching their peak. Always exploring ways to depict people in pictures, Steadman, not particularly liked by many, created new images expressive of his own desires.
                   Self-discovery. Ugly, it's always ugly. Yet beautiful, it's always beautiful. The two men explicitly used illicit drugs and substances to find their inner light, or darkness, in their case. I personally feel both are important to know. I must know the darkest corners lurking in myself to find my lightest most heavenly qualities, and vice versa. It's like searching for the needle in the haystack. The soft golden hay crunching as you continuously prick your finger, drawing blood, in order to grab hold of the needle.

Response to : This American Life - House on Loon Lake

              The podcast of 'House on Loon Lake' was both eerie yet fascinating. The hypnotizing voice of the narrator, and real-life encounters with the neighors and family of the Nason's, gave me chills up my spine. The dim music playing in the background struck my fantasies of life in the 1970's. Life then seemed so much more original, something untouchable today. New Hampshire raised, I've always had my suspicions about the true mysteries that lie around every corner in this desolate state. I grew up relatively close to Freedom, N.H. the town which is the foundation of this tale. It both intrigues and frightens me to hear such strange unsolved stories. I pass through Freedom occasionally during my summers, and never have I taken more than a passing glance. From now on, I may do more than gaze out my window, anticipating my arrival home.

              The man who experienced everything first hand reminded me of the young boys in the movie "The Virgin Suicides". In the movie, a small group of neighborhood boys becomes infatuated with the lives of their neighbors, specifically a family called the Lisbons. The boys are obsessed with the five Lisbon girls, young women who are mysterious and beautiful. Suicide strikes, one by one, and the boys lives become nothing more than finding the clues to what put the girls on such a brink in life. What made them feel their ride was over? How do families detach so much that everything is a hazy blur? Or even a commonplace object, that seems so distant, and unwelcoming?

              Now that I know the unknown lies so close to me, I wonder what mysteries lie within my own town. What happens to the forgotten? Or, those who were never able to salvage their family's mark? Such a strange thought. I must consider the comptemplation of life after death, the surreal and the supernatural. Hearing this case certainly leads me to continue my skepticism, and curiosity about such events. I would have loved to at least drive by the house of the Nason's, as Adam, the man who discovered everything up close and personal, describes the frightening, yet charming mystique, that this property possessed.

              I am surrounded by questions and unsolved mysteries, that are calling for people, for the living, to unlock them. The more these stories begin to unrise from the bellows of the universe, the closer we come to distinguishing a more defined perception on the supernatural. It took something as small as a story, to make me feel as if I had been living eyes closed in such a truely interesting area. New England, New Hampshire specifically, is but a small glittering diamond hiding among cubic zirconia's.