FUCK. EVERYTHING.

Currently hating everything.
Vegas sucked.

I'm beginning to think that I'm never going to be legitimately happy ever again.
Thanks Rod.
Fuck.

I MISS MY BEST FRIEND. GOD DAMNIT.

Can he come back now? I don't like this hiatus he's taking.

I just don't even know anymore.

He's such a dick to everyone, yet we stand there and stare at each other from across the juice pong table (romantic, I know) and I can't seem to care about anything else that's going on around me. It is the oddest thing, to get so lost in a glance. That stupid look that indicates we're both thinking the same thing....that indicates that the people standing next to us are silly and foolish but we don't care because we've both decided to say "fuck it" to being cautious and boring. We both threw away the things that made us who we were and now we're just trying to figure it all out again.

Yet I seem to be the only one missing anyone in this situation. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if she wasn't there.

I just can't seem to get over him. And I feel like an idiot. I talk about it too much. I think about it too much. But it's always on my mind. Always.

Fuck.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

I hate wanting to be remembered by the one person who couldn't care less.

New Year's Eve

Are you fucking kidding me? My friends are fucking BORING.

What's that, you don't like big groups of people and exciting celebratory parties to ring in the new year?

THEN DON'T EXPECT TO SEE ME ON NEW YEAR'S EVE.

That is the last time I spend it with her. I swear to God. She is my best friend and I love her to death but she is SO BORING when it comes to this shit. GOD.

I would have LOVED to be drunk off my ass at that party. Awkwardly hanging out and having the inevitable drunken 'why did we break up?' conversation with my ex.

IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A THOUSAND TIMES BETTER THAN SPENDING IT THE WAY I DID LAST NIGHT.

NEVER. AGAIN. GOD. DAMNIT.

BLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Stayed up all night studying. Brain is melting at a much slower rate than expected.
However I think I am on the brink of insanity.
I don't miss him anymore.
I just miss how I felt when I was with him.
I can't seem to get that again.

My life is falling apart.

That's all.

I HATE OPEN OFFICE.

And here it is.

I still miss my ex. Every day. All the time.
Sooooo I feel like a terrible person.

And I've been trying to act like I don't. Like I'm fine. Like I don't care that he's not around ever.
And I shouldn't care! He's treated my friends and I like shit for months, and he's just recently begun to ignore me completely.
So what's the deal? I'm in a relationship with someone else. Someone who really cares about me, and I care about him.

The deal is, I suck.
I'm horrible.
I got into something I shouldn't have gotten into.

I thought I was fine.
I was just wrong.

And I've wanted to say something for a while and I just couldn't, but it's driving me CRAZY!

But I can't tell my best friend because she will just yell at me and talk about how he's a terrible person and I shouldn't spare a thought for him ever again.

I just suck. I know it.

And what's worse?
I told my boyfriend that I didn't know if this was such a good idea, because I had a lot of stuff to work through, and I kind of jumped into the relationship without thinking it through.

And he doesn't care. He thinks it'll pass. He thinks it'll be fine. He "understands" and is "fine" with it.

Are you fucking kidding me?

How could you possibly like someone so much that you don't even listen to what they are saying to you?

OH WAIT...

god damnit.

And I don't mean for this to be one of those pathetic things where I'm just pining for someone who will never ever come back. But maybe that's what it is. And maybe I don't want to interfere with his seemingly perfect life, so I've left him alone.

But haven't you ever had a person in your life that just understood you? Someone who accepted you for every crazy thing you'd ever done, and even enjoyed it?

I miss that. I miss that more than anything.

There won't ever be a couple quite like we were. We were strange. We were disgustingly affectionate. But we got each other. We knew each other inside out, and no one was ever that close. Ever.

And the one person that I thought would never go, was the one that tried to erase himself from my life completely, so that he could be another girl's perfect man.

And I've been holding in the urge to scream that I miss him, to call him up and tell him so, because I know that I shouldn't anymore. So I decided to post it here, on a blog that no one reads...hoping that I will somehow feel better?

But I just feel guilty. I feel guilty because every approach that I have taken in this new relationship of mine has only been because it would have been what my ex wanted. I did it because I didn't do it with him, and he resented me for it. But I also hold back. I don't open up and let this new guy in. We still barely know each other, and I fear losing my independence so much that I have no desire to change anything. I don't want to cling to him, or be around him all the time. I don't want him to know everything about me, nor do I want to know everything about him.

And maybe that's why things aren't going as well as they could. That could possibly be why I haven't developed stronger feelings and gotten over my fucking ex-boyfriend. Because I won't let myself get attached, or care, or give someone anywhere near as much attention. I don't want to.

I want to fly across the country and find him and run into his arms.

But you know what he would do? He'd push me off, and walk the other way.

And yeah, I sound fucking pathetic, right? I sound like a complete moron. I sound like those girls in crappy sitcoms that everyone wants to punch in the face for being so whiney and lame all the time. I sound like those women who just feel sorry for themselves and stop living their lives, and all of their friends are screaming "GET OVER IT OH MY GOD" at every opportunity.

But I haven't stopped living my life. I think I'm doing pretty well, and I am really enjoying myself. I just wish he were there with me. Even if we could be friends. At least I could see him, or talk to him on the phone every now and then. At least he would acknowledge my existence again.

I'm fucking pathetic. Someone put me out of my misery.

This is nowhere near as entertaining as Tumblr.

JUST SAYIN'.

Well, I haven't used THIS in a long time.

So, Tumblr is down, and in its place, I will use my old blogger account. Granted, this blog was made solely for my newspaper class, and I had no intention of using it for anything else, but what the hell.

http://whentumblrisdown.com/ - LOL.

"When Tumblr is down, the definition of 'shortly' changes dramatically."

Baahahaha.

I had a lot to say, but I guess I don't anymore. More later.

The End of the Road

So, the semester is coming to an end, and our last paper is over and done with. It didn't get printed correctly, though, so we have to wait until tomorrow to get our hands on the damn thing.

I guess now would be the most appropriate time to compile a list of things that I've learned over the semester.

- I have to fake being nice sometimes. I thought I would only have to deal with that at work, but oh no, making a good impression is always really important, so I have to act like some sappy kiss ass. Fantastic.
- i had to learn just about everything about news writing. Leads, quick to the point, no room for bullshit, etc etc. I had always excelled in my english classes, and I didn't necessarily stop to think that articles would be that different from essays. They really are, though. It's kind of insane. I mean, the idea is the same, and there's the thesis and all that. But there's just something about it that is so different. The content varies. You know, the essays that I write all the time are generally an analysis of something, whether it be a film, book, poem, or anything of that nature. With articles I'm the one delivering information to people. I don't have to prove WHY something happened, I just have to let people know that it did. Raising awareness FTW! Woo!
- Interviews are much more complicated than I imagined. Some people [as I experienced with my first article] DO NOT like being interviewed. They don't want their name printed, or anything. It's lame, and stupid, and I hate that journalists sometimes have terrible reputations. You think people would just be....better. Then they wouldn't have to worry about shit. Buh. So, an interview can either go really well, or really terribly, depending on the attitude of the interviewee. Now, another factor is that an interview might go really well, but you might get shitty information. They might not tell you anything interesting. One guy I spoke to kept talking about the same thing over and over again, but he just worded it differently each time. I wanted to smack the guy! BLAH!
- Selling ads kind of sucks. I'm not really a fan, and I suck at bargaining/negotiating with people. I'm not clever/sly enough to pull it off. People always want to pay less than we ask, and it pisses me off. I just end up getting frustrated with people. I don't want to do business stuff. No thank you.
- I can't believe how many errors I've found after people have exported their shit. HELLO!!!!!! Skimming over a page doesn't mean that you caught all the errors! You have to READ every fucking word! lsfjgldksgjl;sgjlk;djfkl;sjfgl;kdfjgasdf
- I learned how to use InDesign! Granted, I'd never had to use it before, and I had no idea what it was before this semester, I still learned how to meander around the program and do a thing or two for design.
- I learned a lot about myself this semester. I initially took journalism because I wanted to be sure that I wasn't missing out on something that I might enjoy more than what I'm currently doing. I wanted to be sure that majoring in music was the right choice for me. I thought that since I loved writing, journalism would be a great thing to try. I learned that music is definitely what I'll want to do for the rest of my life, and that I have the capability to do a lot more than I give myself credit for. I just need to get out there and do what needs to be done. I can't put things off. I have to be the responsible one; I can't rely on anyone else.
- As a whole, we all learned how to interact with other people, how to work in a sometimes stressful environment without ripping peoples' heads off, and how to put together a really great paper. We learned how to criticize people without insulting them, and I learned that I'm kind of intimidating, and all I need to do is stick up for myself.

This class was a really great experience for me, and I'm sad that I won't be able to come back next semester. I'll definitely stop by when I can, and I'll make everyone I know read the paper when it comes out! I made some really great friends that I'll continue to hang out with, and I hope that everyone else was able to gain as much as I did from working on The Voice this semester.

This might be the last dinner for teachers because a lot of them might not be back next semester.
Budget cuts are affecting everyone all the time.
Pink slip unhappy sad teacher no more adjunct write this in your article. Ok.

I think that Thursday is going to be interesting. I won't be there to see how things go, and IF EVERYTHING ISN'T SPELLED CORRECTLY I'M GOING TO BE PISSED.
It's just so annoying to keep finding spelling errors after all this time. Maybe I SHOULD take it upon myself to read every story myself. But I'm not going to be there at the next layout night, so someone PLEASE do me a favor and make sure the grammar, spelling, and punctuation is correct! RAWR!

Anyway, I'm kind of bummed out that I won't be able to be in newspaper production next semester. Everyone is really cool and fun to be around, and I hope I can still help out somehow. That would really be cool. I guess we'll see what happens.

This isn't the exact version that went in the paper, but it's good enough, right? Hahah.


To kick start the holiday season, Cabrillo Jazz Instructor Ray Brown and his Great Big Band will perform tonight in the College Theatre at 7:30 p.m.
The band consists of mostly All Star musicians from San Francisco, accompanied by some former students and Ray's brother Steve Brown, who will be playing guitar and drums.
Throughout this afternoon, there will be various clinics available to all students specializing in saxophone, trombone, trumpet, rhythm, and improvisation. For more information, please contact the cabrillo music department.

For 33 years, Ray Brown has been educating Cabrillo College students about jazz improvisation, theory, and arranging.
Brown was hired in 1975 by Lile Cruse, who was looking to expand the jazz studies program at Cabrillo. After being on the road with the Stan Kenton Band for a year and a half, Brown taught part time in New York, and finally found what he was looking for here at Cabrillo.
“This was a complete jazz job,” said Brown. “Which were few and far between at that time. …There were very few places, if anywhere, that had a full-time jazz only position. So this was very special.”
Brown's experience with the hiring process was difficult, but definitely worth it.
“It was a long day,” said Brown. “I played at a wedding the night before from 9:00 pm to 2:00 am and I took a 6:30 am plane out of Kennedy, flew to San Francisco and then came [to Cabrillo] to run a rehearsal and play and I had interviews and so on and so forth. Then I got back on a plane and got back to New York at 7 in the morning and made it in time to teach my class at 9:00 in the morning.”
But Brown didn't always plan on being a teacher, “Up to my senior year in high school, I was going to go to Cornell for Hotel Administration. I was going to run a hotel, and the reason was so that I could have a jazz club in it that I could play in. In January of my senior year in high school, I realized the musical abilities that my parents had given me. I just thought everybody could do what I could do. I could do a lot of things, but it wasn't anything special, because in my family, I was the worst one. I never realized that other people couldn't write charts and improvise and stuff like that. I thought everybody did that. And only then did I realize how advanced I was from other people. Because in my house, it was the norm. At that point I decided to go into music. I really wasn't sure, but within a year I realized I was in the right place. From that point on I knew what I wanted to do.”
Brown went to Ithaca College in upstate New York, and studied classical music theory. As a junior he ran the Jazz Lab Band, which, he says, benefitted him greatly. He was able to learn how to work with his friends, but run a great band at the same time.
However, most of Brown's education came from his father, who started jazz education in America in 1944. Glenn Brown had elementary jazz bands, junior high jazz bands, and high school jazz bands in Long Beach, NY, and Ray's biggest influence has come from his experiences as a kid.
“Whatever I teach my students comes from how my dad taught me,” said Brown. “My whole curriculum is based on what I learned from him.”
Aside from what Ray learned at home, he gained playing experience in his father's jazz camp at Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.
“We had classes in arranging, copying, and improvisation. We rehearsed every day for an hour, and we had sectionals every day. After about two weeks we would go out and play four or five nights a week at all the camps around the lake.”
“That was an unbelievable education for me,” said Brown. “Nothing I could have gotten anywhere else.”
After graduating from college, Brown went into the army. He and some friends joined an Army Band, knowing that it would guarantee them the opportunity to play, and after one year, Brown found out that the army started a jazz band. Modeled after Glenn Miller's Big Band, the Airmen of Note, the Army's Studio Band was formed, and Ray found a way to join the band.
“I don't know how I did this, but they only had four trumpets and I convinced them to go to five.”
Ray became the jazz trumpet player for the band, and he was also a writer. He was able to rehearse the band and again find himself working amongst his peers. With this experience he learned that he was on the same level as some of the greatest players in the world, which he had not known when he was growing up.
When it came time for Ray to leave the band, he had made friends with these great musicians, some of whom had played with Stan Kenton. Two months after leaving the service, Ray received a call from Stan Kenton, asking if he would play with his band. To which Ray says, “Of course I said yes.”
Ray toured with Stan Kenton's Band for a year and a half as the jazz trumpet player, and ran all of the jazz improvisation clinics they held, which provided him with plenty of practice with teaching and running classes. He traveled and played in every club and major performance venue in the world.
After his experience with Stan Kenton, Ray got his master's degree and married Sue Brown, who is also a music instructor at Cabrillo. The two freelanced in New York for about two years before moving to California for Ray's position at Cabrillo, and after about five years, Sue was hired to run the strings and chamber music program.
Brown can now write and play for whatever he wants. When he was a freelancer he had to take every performance and job he got called for.
“That's the kind of stuff that teaching allows me to do on the side. That's what's really been cool about being here. As well as the students I've worked with; there have been a number of great players and it's been a pleasure to work with those people and see them go around and become major forces in the music world.”

So I wrote a profile on Ray Brown for Issue 5.
I'm totally stoked about it; I mean obviously it could have been a lot better, but I'm learning a bunch of new things here and there.
This guy has my dream job though [aside from writing movie scores], I mean seriously, so awesome. All jazz all the time. That's the way to live, for sure.
Anyway, it was interesting process, writing this article. It was significantly longer than my past articles have been, and it was cool to have a page all to myself. I learned a lot just from the interview in general. I mean, when you tell people you want to have an interview, they don't think you're messing around at all. I mean seriously! It's like, people I've spoken to in the past, that I can make jokes with and have conversations with on any regular day, just don't want to deal with it during an interview. It's like they want to get it over with, without saying anything "bad", and then just be on their way. It was really odd dealing with that.

But with this, I learned that I need to work on my "professional" image.
Honestly, I don't really have one, and I lack the skills necessary to develop one. Or, better term, I lack the knowledge of how to develop one.
I don't own nice clothing, I'm not well-tempered, and I feel like, whenever I'm in a "professional" situation, I'm being completely fake. I feel like I'm not being true to myself, and that just bothers me. I don't like portraying someone I'm not just to be "approved" by someone's stupid standards.
However, if I ever want to get ahead in this world, I should probably start learning how to kiss ass.
I should probably dress nicer, care about my appearance, at least slightly....and, I don't know, be more...polite? Timid? Butt-kiss-y?
I don't feel as though I'm not a successful person....on paper I'm fantastic. I have good grades, lots of awards, I've done community service....but when people meet me they just get immediately turned off.
I'm too loud, or too obnoxious, or too weird. I don't know, I don't fit in with the majority of society, and I guess that's something I'll need to work on when I get out into the "real world."

Any ideas?

So I interview Ray Brown today for my article. I'm really excited, it's going to be so cool to have him featured in the paper. This guy is totally my favorite teacher...so awesome. Yay!

So tomorrow is layout night...hopefully it will be less stressful than it was last time. Meh.
I am learning a lot through this whole process, though, so that's nice.
What's hard for me right now is trying to figure out how to write a decent story out of something mediocre and possibly boring.
I keep writing about the Democrats Club, and I think it's great, but it just seems so BORING, and I lack the skills to make it exciting. Maybe I'll be able to figure it out soon...

OMG Today was so f%^@ing stressful.
I finished my page but I didn't have the photo, because we had to do all this shit to it before we could send it in to get printed.
I had to wait like 2 hours to get the damn thing, and so did a few other people.
It was just obnoxious because I guess that photo teacher guy was showing people how to do it, and he took FOREVER.
Chad showed me how to do it in like five minutes.
I just wish that we would have been able to manage our time better.
I have so much to do, and I thought I would be done a lot sooner than I was. Buh.
We ALL need to learn to work on the pictures, and it's going to be SO NICE to get those new computers...that will hopefully ALL have PHOTOSHOP!!!
Ugh, I know I'm just complaining, so I'm sorry for that.
I probably pissed some people off today. I got so stressed at the end there.
Sorry......