Well that was easy. dang. I thought I had to do something else or somethin. I dunno. To put some faces to names, the "naked" dude with the guitar is "Punkrocker Joe," the kid on the far upper left in the red is "Crazy Crane Ian," the "naked" kid with the basketball is one of my roommates, as is the kid in the purple shirt. I've also roomed with the kid right next to Ian, and the two guys on scooters. Plus others, but not everybody is pictured.

Well once I get to school, I'll be able to share some fun pics. Granted, I don't have a digital camera, but my roommates do. I already have a good picture picked out for my profile from this summer in Iowa, where I'm humping a keg. Ah yes....good times. But until then, I have nothing else. Peace out.

I'm going to try and post a pic on here....we'll see how it goes. Yikes! If it works, you'll see the floor pic from my first year in school. And no, they aren't naked. Close...but not quite.

Right now I'm two days into defeating literally the hardest addiction I'll probably ever try to break. It's comparable to someone trying to quit smoking after going through a pack a day for 10 years. I'm attempting to stop biting my fingernails. Seems simple enough, right? Wrong. I decided like 2 weeks ago I'd slowly stop myself, but it wasn't working. Then, two nights ago I chipped my tooth. It's a tiny chip, but it still happened. It was the first time biting my nails has ever harmed me, and I vowed it would be the last. So here I am. I haven't done it once over these two days. It's rough. I think it'll be the hardest once I get to school. Especially during a test. Especially during a literature test. But as I'm ok for now. I think.

One last thing....I ran across this article tonight about gas prices and gas station workers. As far as I'm concerned this really isn't news...but then again, I guess I AM on the front lines.

I'm sorry if my recent posts have alienated some of you. That was not my intention, by any means. Jess, Saienga, G-Master, Ghetto Bowler...I know I said stuff about friends and Lakeville friends lately....I know you understand other meanings....reading in between the lines, if you catch my drift...do I really need to mention more? I'm just going through some stuff.

I'm thinking of changing my title again.....

The walls had begun to close in. I had to get out. I had to. I didn't care that it was 1 a.m. I grabbed some provisions, made sure I had my newly burned CD of Hardcore rock, and jumped into the car. I wasn't sure where I was going...I just had to get away from Lakeville. Get away from everything. I wanted to go with someone else, but that couldn't happen....but maybe it was better this way. Because we are, after all, alone. No matter how many friends you have or if you have a significant other or if you have children. You're still alone. It's still you against everyone else. You still have your thoughts to get lost in. You were born alone and you'll die alone. That's the way it is. So I left this place alone.

Like I said, I wasn't sure where I would end up...I just needed to not be here. The car turned down Cedar, driving south out of town. I went past county RD 70. All the way until the road ended. And then I took a right. And then another right onto a gravel road and stopped about a mile down. It was times like that where a laptop would've been handy. I was, and still am, in a mystical mood. In the darkness, under the stars, with the quiet swishing of corn leaves around me, my mind was able to flit about without restraints. It was marvelous. I just sat there staring up at the night sky. I even saw a shooting star.

I wrote a poem about that night sky this summer. I only made on copy of it, though, and I don't have it anymore. I wonder now if that was a mistake. If sending it away was a mistake, not writing it.

What I really need to do is not live in the city. Not live in the suburbs. I need to live by myself off in the woods. Uni-bomber style. That's what I would do if I won the lottery. I wish I could do that now. Ever see the movie The Secret Window? I'd be Johnny Depp's character. I'd become a recluse.

It's so much easier to create when there aren't any distractions. And I don't mean distractions like the T.V. or a ringing phone. I mean other people. Family. Friends. Female Friends. I like friends. I like family. But there have been few times that friends have given me the satisfaction I get from writing something great. That feeling of pure joy. Sure family does, but that doesn't count. It's hard to explain. But I've never been let down by creating another world.

Maybe I'm just depressed tonight. Maybe I'm just pissed off. Maybe I'm just sick of the world. If it were financially feasible, I would do what my uncle did right after college....live in a trailer out in the woods. But I can't. I have to drain my soul in the working world. To me, making money is like eating. If I didn't have to do it to survive, I wouldn't.

If you can understand that, then you understand me.

Alright. Tonight I decided that the "book" I've been working on, The Cellar Door, is officially dead. For the last couple of weeks I've been forming a new idea in my mind. I mentioned it earlier, I believe. I think it'll a be good one. It's going to be written towards the young adult crowd, plus it has (Saienga you understand) marketability for it's content. It's based off of my Junior High experiences in Rockford, all mashed into one summer. Maybe it was just "that age" or maybe it was my friends, but I think I went through more growing up during my last couple of years in Rockford than I did while going to school in Lakeville.

There's nothing wrong with my friends in Lakeville by any means, but for some reason they don't really follow my "Style" of friends. I think it's because I moved to Lakeville at an insecure time of my life. If you compare my Rockford and Wartburg friends, you'll find that they're pretty much the same, but if you compare them to the Lakeville friends....they're not the same at all. Strange. There are a few people from Lakeville who fit the Rockford and Wartburg group, but they're the people I became friends with later in my Lakeville "Career."

Take Jess, for example. I think I really first got to know her Soph. year in French class....which is where I picked up her nickname for me "Pierre." But after that we weren't really that great of friends. More aquaintances if anything. Sure there were the "Girls in Bikinis" parties (ask me about them sometime...there are stories, oh yes...there are stories...especially the New Year's parties) but I don't think we became better friends until Senior year....and even then it wasn't super close, though we did go to Homecoming together in order to shake our fists and the evilness of the the Lake Evil Homecoming unwritten policies. Really, though, it wasn't until we both went to school that we were closer...and that was through the strange Blog correspondences. I guess I can't really put my finger on it. Strange. At any rate, my point is that Jess is pretty much the only person who fits the same mold as my Wartburg and Rockford friend "mold." Weird.

The reason why I mention all of this is because through my Rockford and Wartburg friends I experienced a lot of different challenges and questions about who I really am. In Rockford I grew up in the shadow of my brothers. At Wartburg I wanted to break free of the person I made myself to be in Lakeville. And in Lakeville I kind of made myself to be innocent to the extreme. Maybe. I dunno. I always had this picture of myself and it didn't fit who I was while going to school in Lakeville. Towards the end I tried to break free of it all...but it was tough. You know how High School is. I wish I would've been my own person and gave my finger to anyone who didn't like it. Rockford was easier because just by having the "Helland" name, I was popular...plus our class size was like 100 people. At Lakeville I was a nothing...and what people thought meant everything. It was hard to have the guts to be different....especially after growing up in Rockford. Unless you've exprienced that change you don't know what I'm talking about.

The way I like to put it best...especially when all of this "little kids" i.e. junior high kids come into my gas station to buy some candy or whatever (man, they remind me of me & Chad when we were that age) is that in Rockford it was easy to find trouble, whereas in Lakeville it is easy to get in trouble. If I called the cops on one of these kids, a squad car would be there in less than 5 minutes...easily. If some store clerk called the cops on one of us in Rockford, it'd take them like 30 minutes to get there. How do I know? Trust me. We don't need to get into that.

It's all just so different. Completely. I miss my Wartburg Friends. The one's who remind me of the Rockford friends. Not the ones who remind me of the Lakeville friends. Or the ones that fit somewhere in between. Especially those 'tweeners. You put your trust in them and they'll always screw you over. Always.

When I left for Denver for the first time, I put a picture of me and the 4th year girl from the last day we were on campus in a frame and put it on my desk at my internship. After a while things between her and I kind of hit a wall....it wasn't really a big deal to me, but it just didn't seem right to have that picture of us on my desk anymore. So I took the pic out and replaced it with a pic of me and somebody else (taken, ironically, on the very same day as the other pic). That sat on my desk for the rest of the internship. It sat on my desk for all of May Term back at Wartburg. It sat on my brother's nightstand while I watched his house during June in Colorado....and it has sat on my bookshelf for the rest of the summer. But the picture doesn't make me smile anymore. It hasn't for quite some time. It was time to replace it. Now the picture is of me and my childhood friend from Rockford -- Steph Jones -- eating cake on my birthday this year. Even more than making me smile, it makes me happy.

Well....Ghetto Bowler has informed me of a music festival in our fine, fine hometown this friday....which I have off from work....and it actually looks pretty decent. You can find out more about it here. Apparently his band will play, but I'd go even if he wasn't just so I could hear the headliner, Sherbetty....which is, to anybody that cares, Casey Prescot's band. Note that I added their website to the link list, partly because I really enjoy their music....but mostly because I just found out they had a website...and I think that they're an up and coming local band. Now, the only problem is finding someone to go with me.....Jess.....Jesssss....hmmmm....who could go?

The first thing I vow to do as soon as I get on campus (after I track down a computer savy friend and have him get all of those awesome programs and games back on my computer and fix my stupid video card, of course) is figure out how to post pictures on here and then put up at least one good/funny pic of me or an event on campus during the week. I think it'll make the site better.

So tonight at work me and this other dude (whose stupidity annoys me greatly) were sitting around talking during a looooong lull in customers. For whatever reason we were on the topic of my hair (I'm not vain or anything....for some reason, though, it's often in conversation). Anyway, I was telling him that I was going to get it trimmed shorter again, since it's been a while (April) since I got it cut. Here's the conversation:
Me: Yeah, I need to get it cut back again.
Him: You're going to cut it short? Why?
Me: No, just shorter. I'll get it cut way short when I graduate, though.
Him: Why don't you just leave it long?
Me: 'Cause then I'll be preparing for interviews and "The Man" says I need it short for that.
Him: "The Man?" Who is that?

I couldn't believe it. How could this kid never have heard of "The Man." Isn't that common knowledge in our culture? "You gotta fight The Man." "Don't let the man get you down." "The Man always steals your paycheck." But this kid looked at me like I was stupid. Said I watched too much T.V. Unbelievable. Please tell me you all know about "The Man."

I got an email today from a pretty good Wartburg friend who graduated this past spring. It's amazing how a few words from someone like him could put me in a better frame of mind. I've been having some mixed feelings about returning to campus lately...mostly because of who is going to be there and who isn't going to be there....and who I'll hang-out with....and where all my friends have gone. It's just kind of weird to NOT be excited to go back to school. It's fun. I always have a good time. But this fall is different. Everything is different.

"The umpire absolutely, totally overreacted," Hargrove [Seattle Mariners Manager] said. "He's not throwing at anybody, least of all Lew Ford. If we throw at somebody, we'd throw at Joe Mauer."

I love honesty among managers.

I posted something. Then went to bed. But then realized I shouldn't have posted it...and now this is the result. Frustration without an outlet.