Look at me! I made a blog!

Wow, this is exciting! I'm experiencing a sensation of awe!

My real name is Mike and I started this blog for a number of reasons:

-I'm done with college and I want to explore a possible career in writing, but I didn't take the necessary internships while I was a student and so I hope this will eventually look good to potential employers.

-I like to think and observe the world around me and it's nice to have a place to read my thoughts. That said, I wonder if we're one step closer to manufacturing the human consciousness by way of blogs revealing our subconsciousness?

-It gives me power, and soon I will rule the world.

-I'm bored and it gives me something to do while I look for work.

I suppose I should explain who I am as well. I'm twenty-seven years old and I finished college just a few months ago. I would have finished sooner had my dad backed off when he insisted I join the IUOE (union of HVAC-related engineers). I absolutely hated it, and when I was knocked off of a ladder and had my arm shattered, I sort of took that as my cue to leave for good. There's no injury like irreparable damage, eh? And to give you an idea of what kind of guy my dad is, even as I was recuperating with my broken arm in the hospital, he visited me frequently to not only stop me from injecting pain killers in my IV, but also to tell me why the union is so great.

Why am I against the union? Actually, I admire unions; it's just that I'm a musician. I've studied music since I was six or eight. I mean, I went from studying Wagner, Debussy, and Stravinsky to sitting in a dank basement with a tattooed brute regaling me with tales of him starting bar fights and going to prison while drinking sink water coffee. I even majored in music when I went to college (U. of Illinois at Chicago).

You probably guessed that, as a musician, I play an instrument. I started playing piano when I was eight and, at thirteen, I picked up the guitar. I basically learned tablature and practiced out of magazines until I went to a family function and saw my cousins play along to Dream Theater's "Metropolis Pt. 1" verbatim. I was inspired to take serious lessons after that, and my teacher schooled me in the ways of classical guitar. As a result, I keep the nails on my right hand long and filed; the pinky nail on that hand and the nails on my left are all kept short. I eventually took jazz lessons for a while, too. While recuperating with my arm in a sling, I decided to take acting lessons because, well, you don't need a functioning right arm as much for acting as you do for music.

If I'm talking about my being a musician, I should probably name the bands I like. I think it's safe to say there's probably only four people on this planet with the same tastes as me. I've loved Billy Joel for as long as I can remember, but through my brother Matt, I got into Def Leppard, Guns n' Roses, Metallica, Van Halen, Anthrax, Megadeth, King Diamond, Mercyful Fate, and Judas Priest. Later, I got myself into Iron Maiden, Ozzy, Dream Theater, Garbage, Alice in Chains, and Eric Clapton. Oh, and through my classical studies, I got into Mozart, J. S. Bach, Beethoven, Fernando Sor, Isaac Albeniz, Nikita Koshkin, and I forget who else. Gotta give props to Berlioz, Debussy, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg, though. In college, I got into Oingo Boingo, David Bowie, The Cure, Depeche Mode, King Crimson, Spock's Beard, Porcupine Tree, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, surf music, Iggy and the Stooges, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Talking Heads, Squeeze, Crowded House, Split Enz, Sonata Arctica, Nightwish (up to when they fired Tarja, the bastards), and probably a few other bands. Jazz rocks my world, too. I especially like the bebop era because that's when musicians bled, sweat, and cried to create art for the moment. Oh yeah, and Muse rocks my socks, too, although they do a good job of inspiring me to consider giving up music altogether.

I highly think Oingo Boingo is WAY underrated, though! I mean, c'mon, Danny Elfman's old band? Do you think all their songs sounded like "Weird Science"? Some of their stuff is the most touching, humanistic music I've ever heard, and some of it is some of the most insidious, wicked sounding stuff I've heard (and I've heard King Diamond).

Maybe my writing style seems somewhat formal. Even so, I do like silliness. I love cats because they have pointy ears, pointy noses, they're covered in fur, they have four feet and no hands, and they're perpetually confused. Also, when a dog barks, it just wants to get someone's attention and make noise. When a cat meows, it's actually trying to enunciate a word laden with emotional subtext. That just makes them all the more hilarious. Oh, and they're mature enough to be low maintenance. I also like silly internet crap like Talk Like a Pirate Day. If and when I ever get married, it'll be on that day (assuming I can somehow convince a girl to be my bride).

As far as religion goes, I was baptized Roman Catholic, but I'm basically an agnostic. When I went to church for the last year or so that I went, I only did so to flirt with the girl in the choir. Sadly, attending mass with my mom made it difficult to go up and say hi.

Politically, I'm left of center. My views of democrats and republicans are sort of like this: both sides actually think of the same things. It's just when democrats say "We should take military action against Al-Quaeda", they're doing so over beers in a bar and adding "We should just nuke the whole Middle East! We did that to Japan, and now they love us!" in their drunken states. Republicans, it seems, think the same way when they're sober and addressing rooms of reporters. When democrats are sober, they realize that glib plans for retaliation should be thought over carefully while other, less war-inspired options, are considered. Well, this is how the sides compare and contrast in terms of dealing with terrorists in the Middle East, anyway.

You might have guessed that I'm a bit of a dork who likes comic books, horror movies, video games, foreign and indie films, and using proper grammar and spelling. I can't help it. I mean, accuracy prevents confusion and degradation of our language. Also, I seem to have a knack for spelling well (I did win a spelling bee in the third grade. Came in third the following two years, though). This also means I'm socially inept: I didn't go on any dates or dances in high school and I only lost my virginity after placing an ad in Craigslist going for broke. Thankfully, the one legitimate reply to that ad is still a close and dear friend to this day.

Finally, I should point out that I have A.D.D. I don't include the "H" because, while I was hyper enough as a kid to power a city block in Las Vegas, I've become quite docile in high school and I hadn't gotten any more energetic since then. This post is mostly stream of consciousness, if you couldn't tell already. I still don't really know why I'm doing this, but all too often I tell myself "why should I do this?" to only later look back and say "I should've done something". So, here I am, probably a decade or so too late.