1. TEENAGER - SCREAM-AGER

    TEENAGER - SCREAM-AGER

  2. Hi Kristie. I'm going to SB next year too, but one of my biggest sources of anxiety is the narrow field of majors they have: there's mainly a lot in the science/social science department, but not much else. I'm worried about whether or not they'll have my major when I finally decide on what I want to do. Have you heard anything about academic advising they give for undeclared students? What do you plan on majoring in? Thanks.
    Anonymous

    In terms of my knowledge on the actual school and the depth of the programs offered, I’m sorry, but I am actually quite clueless. What I personally focused on when I talked to current UCSB students and visited was class sizes and personalized learning experience. Although UCSB does have large class sizes and a somewhat impersonal teacher-student bond, what ultimately swayed me was the College of Creative Studies, in which I want to enroll as an English major (which reminds me… I need to get on that CCS application).

    Apologies for not being able to fully answer your question, but I’m sure some research will help, or if you can hunt down any current UCSB students to hold a conversation with.

    Good luck :)

  3. Literary reference

    I am Tom Joad, just as much as I am Jocasta and Linda Loman. I’m running a marathon on this empty road in a competition with Roman gods, or is it the ocean that I’m on and aboard the Pequod? I’ll never know. I’m as happy as Meursault and perhaps just as free as he, with or without bars, even as I’m fighting love and guilt and the judge’s gavel as I travel to Siberia, as I face mass hysteria on the rough streets of Harlem, as I tumble in the sheets with the prince who killed my father. I’m reminiscing on memories that aren’t mine and searching for themes I won’t find, so why bother?

  4. “I can’t sleep. Everyone else is either asleep or having sex.”

  5. Time bomb

    Why it’s called self-destructive behavior,
    I can’t even begin to decipher.
    Not a crime for which exists a savior,
    The danger starts when fear starts to eye her.
    More than standing on the tracks of a train - 
    More than bottles, and glass, and hair, and blades - 
    No three words will ever encompass pain.
    Sick of evaluations and tirades,
    All I want is a power to destroy.
    Destruction is more than want, it’s art
    Art that springs from hate and results in joy.
    Flood and devastation stem from my heart.

    Leave me to my gradual destruction
    How else does one manage reconstruction? 

  6. Dude, you're so talented. It's crazy.
    juliatalavera

    Coming from one of my best friends who doesn’t have any obligation whatsoever to inject fuel into my already over-inflated ego, I almost feel too happy to answer this impersonally online and then publish it.

    I say “almost” because, well, I’m doing it anyway.

    Seriously, though, it means so much coming from you and I smiled in real life when I read it. So I wish there was another, more original and genuine way to say “thankz homie” without actually saying those words, but I don’t think one exists.

    So, thanks, it really means a lot :)

  7. A/C

    The sign reads “Bryant Air Conditioning.”
    A neon beacon in a purple sky,
    Constant as a stone but viewed as lightning,
    It will exist whether we live or die.
    Observed through the metal bars of a cage
    Bryant survives, even if the world stops
    In this place where “All the world is a stage,”
    You and I decay, survived by our props.
    No faltering, flickering, or failing,
    The sign is our moon, emerging at night
    Leaving chills on my skin, my face paling.
    When all else is wrong, how is it upright?

    Even when all our worlds collide and end,
    Look into the purple: it’s there again. 

  8. Nerve cloud

    A rush of adrenaline strikes the soul
    Electricity coursing through a stream
    A flame ignited from smoldering coal:
    I am trapped like a nightmare in a dream.
    One movement, one glance, one shake of the hand
    I’m sailing in the sky or crashing down - 
    I am no longer in my own command
    It’s not my decision to float or drown.
    Along for the ride, a chain reaction
    Crackling static unwillingly transferred.
    The soles of free will are losing traction
    And what does it mean to feel reassured?

    Nothing, because I have lost all control.
    This entity I refuse to extol. 

  9. Larson, Hostetler, Edwards

    I live in a world of words and colors
    A place where creativity runs free
    And there are never concrete right answers
    Where one can fly, live, breathe, and simply be.
    But there is a place that is a jail cell
    For someone who needs to be inspired
    Textbooks that make me physically unwell -
    With answers but no knowledge acquired.
    Rip me away from these numbers and signs
    I want to fall off the page completely
    Freedom from binds is a place where I thrive
    Away from formulas written neatly.

    Calculus: you will never be my friend.
    My life begins when you finally end. 

  10. Passionless

    He loves music but he can’t create.
    This, from a boy seemingly passionless
    More aware than I can appreciate
    He is a lover, and yet so heartless.
    Knowledgeable down to the last punchline,
    Honest to a point of skeptical doubt,
    He might sit with you to watch the moon shine
    And still, you’ll never know what he’s about.
    Man of mystery, boy of innocence
    It scares me because I’ll never know you.
    You are me, but you make slightly more sense.
    And for once, maybe I’m telling the truth.

    And so he will love, but never create.
    Maybe one day, I too will love - not hate.

  11. Playwright

    I want to write a terrible cliché.
    A story where all the girls are pretty
    And boys say what they’re expected to say.
    Because in this life that gets so gritty
    Sometimes all you want is life on a screen
    Where twists are planned out far ahead of time
    And when the credits roll, you know the theme - 
    Instead of this life, dancing on land mines,
    We want false actors and curtains to fall
    Make up and masquerades, clothes from a rack
    Fairy tale ending or nothing at all
    We want to choose when the scene fades to black.

    I am writing a story with black ink.
    Cliché or not, this play will float or sink. 

  12. Crystal ball on blue

    A bulbous yellow orb that fascinates
    Even the most apathetic of men,
    It staggers in the sky and guards the gates
    Until its shift is up - and only then
    Is he free to pursue his wanderlust
    In a place where it’s dark, away from eyes
    Freedom is more than want - it is a must
    For one up high, he hardly ever flies.
    Bound, chained, and gagged by invisible binds,
    Jailed in orbit and trapped in science books
    But remembered by none in hearts and minds.
    He circles earth while cursing human crooks.

    One day, he sighs, people will have to learn
    The true feeling of what it means to burn. 

  13. Of fortune tellers and dream catchers

    For once, I think the cards are mistaken.
    Even though nine times out of ten, they’re right
    Perhaps it’s just the wrong hand I’ve taken.
    For someone famed to have so much insight,
    I am doubting the length to which he sees
    Because what’s fate in a handful of fears?
    When I’m a twig in a forest of trees
    And a pile of dust when the air clears.
    There is no faith in what I don’t believe
    And no hope for something I cannot feel.
    So before any dream can be conceived
    I will let it run away on a reel

    And only chase it when the line runs far
    Because I can’t believe in cards and stars. 

  14. So where are you going to college?
    Anonymous

    UC Santa Barbara.

    I received this question a while back, and decided I’d save it for a time when I could actually provide an answer - which, as anyone who follows might be aware of, I rarely often do accurately because of my conveniently skillful abilities in the art of avoiding questions and truths in combination with my other equally deceptive talent of veering subtly off-course into some barren land of Ambiguity.

    And of course, here’s the part where I actively attempt to ward off any immediate judgments or negative feelings bound to accompany the discovery of my unscrupulous practices. I guess this may just be the first time I’ve been asked a question for which I can only realistically provide a singular answer. Every other time was left open-ended (or else I just weaseled my way around it and made it into one).

    But after visiting both LMU and UCSB, it wasn’t really much of a decision. And I don’t mean that in any ill manner toward LMU. In my situation, I was just walking on the Santa Barbara campus and realized that there was no reason not for me to spend the next four years of my life there.

    I am also going to take these few inches of (previously) blank white space to inject the obligatory amount of cheesiness into the situation. I had always dreamed of experiencing that long-rumored AHA! moment on a particular campus and realizing that I belonged there. Obviously, this happens for some people and does not for others.

    I was half lucky.

    While I wasn’t initially smacked in the face by that sought-after feeling of I NEED TO BE AT THIS SCHOOL (although the bipolar Santa Barbara coastal winds definitely put in an admirable effort to smack me in the face with something), after staying the night and taking a tour the next morning, that metaphorical weight disappeared off my shoulders of its own accord and I suddenly realized that the choice was never even really up to me.

    The wand chooses the wizard, just like the Higher Education Gods choose which institution will leech money off of us.

    In a good way, of course.

  15. “‘Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love.’”

About me

We celebrate the lives of the dead
It's like a man's best party only happens when he dies