junkie.

a lot of people have their addictions. their vices. lord knows i have plenty myself. i love drinking. i love cigarettes. i love weed. i used to be a major cokehead, but i haven't touched the shit in almost 8 years, and i'm so happy for that. i really think i would have been dead if i continued to shove that shit up my nose at the rate i was doing it. i was about 50 pounds underweight, i was sleep-deprived, i never ate and i was doing coke from almost the minute i woke up until the minute my body was shutting down at night/early morning. it was a brief stint, probably in the neighborhood of two years or so, but it was intense and it was like all day every day status. cutting class to go get yacked up. all that shit. real bad.

anyway, that point of my life is long gone, yet i continue to be surrounded by it. hopefully, some of my friends come to the same realization that i did, because i really don't wanna be putting them into early graves. i worry about them sometimes, but i feel like a hypocrite saying anything to them since i was just as bad for a point in my life. plus i drink to the point of insanity sometimes, so what makes me any better, or gives me the right to judge or say anything. i remember being younger and a kid that grew up right on my street, bought some blow, took one blast and fucking died on the spot because it was cut with rat poison. yeah, its a super-rare situation, but it can happen. i don't know.. i just worry sometimes. i'd like to reach out and pull some people aside sometimes, but i don't think they'd even listen to me anyway. i know when i was all wrapped up in that shit, i wasn't trying to hear anyone that was telling me to stop. i just love my friends and i hope that one day they hit that low point like i did, and put that shit to rest.

regardless, i originally started writing this because i wanted to talk about my strongest addiction, which has been going strong for a good 20 years or so. music. i cannot live without music. i remember being in middle school, and falling asleep every night with a walkman on. walking to and from school with a walkman on. playing tapes until they busted and having to buy the same tape again. riding in the car with my parents to christmas or thanksgiving dinner with my walkman on. radio always on in my room.

to this day, i must have music on when i go to sleep. it will probably be like that until the day i die. sometimes, i feel like all the technology we have nowadays is ruining the younger generation. social networking, cell phones, digital cameras, video games. i mean i love it just as much as anyone else, but kids seriously don't even go out and play anymore. they are plugged in 24-7 and its really not natural. i could go on and on about that topic for hours, but my point is this: regardless of how i feel about the technology and kids, the ipod is one of the greatest inventions of all time, and i feel so fucking lucky to be around to see it.

i cannot live without my ipod. i don't listen to the radio. i don't listen to cds. i have close to 10,000 songs on my ipod, and i really feel like i need so much more. my ipod is hooked up in my house, in my car and it is in my pockets at all times. new music is obsolete to me, pretty much. i'm not up on new bands that come out. well not completely, but i have no idea who's popular in the top 40, hit-radio sense. people sometimes talk to me about bands and they look at me like i'm crazy because i have no idea who they are talking about. yet if they looked through my ipod, they'd be completely the same way. popular music took a real turn for the worse over the last 20-30 years. i'd have to say, there isn't much highly-mainstream music that is really good since the late 90s. of course you get some rare exceptions, but not many.

but man oh man. i don't know what i'd do without my ipod. it can match any mood. over the last couple of weeks, i've been kind of reflective, semi-bummed, mind going a million miles an hour non-stop. thinking about old friends. looking at old pictures. wondering what the fuck i am doing with my life. playing and re-playing situations in my head. waking up to the same face in my mind everyday and wondering if that's a good or a bad thing. just a total whirlwind of things spinning around in my head. so my playlist has been a lot of neil young, radiohead, godspeed you black emperor, built to spill, mogwai, the album leaf and some others. because that's the mood i'm in. and it's so theraputic. i really think i'd die without music, the same way i'd die without love. it truly is a part of my soul.

but that's right now. basically, i can put together a playlist for any mood that i'm in. angry, sad, carefree, determined, whatever. i have it all. my ipod is the soundtrack to my life and i'd rather have my car stolen before i gave that thing up.

this has been the theme song of the last couple days, and it doesn't get much better than this:

Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.

Old man look at my life,
Twenty four
and there's so much more
Live alone in a paradise
That makes me think of two.

Love lost, such a cost,
Give me things
that don't get lost.
Like a coin that won't get tossed
Rolling home to you.

Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true.

Lullabies, look in your eyes,
Run around the same old town.
Doesn't mean that much to me
To mean that much to you.

I've been first and last
Look at how the time goes past.
But I'm all alone at last.
Rolling home to you.

Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true.

Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.



so sad, so true. thank you for your support.