Upper Case K (A Meditation)(Also a good DJ name)

Imagine yourself behind a desk in a crowded lobby. A computer screen rests before your eyeballs, keyboard, mouse, assorted brochures. To your right, just in the peripheral of your vision there are shelves. Many shelves with many brochures. Your job is to provide information, but what if the information proves too much? These are questions you cannot answer, which in truth, answers your question.

You gaze at the shelves and see the brochures have been labeled, in plain script, with a handy Labelmate brand labeler. One catches your eye. It resides below a phone book (ATT Spring 2006, Greater South Plains). The label reads, "LubbocK" then there is another label below it. "Phone Book."

Why the strange capitalization Mr. K? Is it to denote the all encompassing nature of the phone book? The mighy "L" and "K" acting as sentinels, guarding the world of Lubbock and her phone numbers (and pizza coupons).

Was this a specific message to me? As my name begins with an upper case "K." What message do you have for Mr. Label? Are you marking my place in this world, do I, Kyle with an uppercase "K," belong in Lubbock, the land of upper case "K's." These are answers I do not have, and even my many mighty brochures offer no elucidation.

Perhaps this is no cosmic sign at all, rather the work of an errant labeler. If so, I'm dissapointed. Because, bold label, you have offered me untold mystery and distraction at work, and I assigned to you a greater importance. If you are uppercase merely by the whim of someone with a Labelmate, what does that say about me, and my uppercase "K," what does that say about all of us.

Once again, my brochures prove useless. But they do offer very enticing deals on 2 bedroom apartments.

A Series of Crushes (Parentheses make it match)

With the advent of my fiercely popular blog, I have recently rediscovered my previous contribution to the internet, the Xanga of my youth.

Because I am the person that I am, I felt compelled to read the workings of my early high school mind. Some of it is embarrassing, some of it is actually kind of funny, but most of it is sad. The journal reeks of failed relationships.

That said, it also allows me to see very seminal moments in my life that seemed fairly mundane when I was 14 years old, but ended up having a major impact on the rest of my life up to this point.

So, due to the fact that this transitional period in my life (high school/college) has caused basically nothing but self reflection, I've decided to document the 3 major high school crushes in my life, with perhaps a sprinkling of some lesser ones thrown in, like a sorbet to cleanse the pallet of my overwhelming failure.

You may ask, Why? Why do you feel the obsessive need to relive these painful memories that everyone shares some semblance of and doesn't care to read about. The answer is because I am an emotional masochist. I must constantly relive my grief in my head and share it with others. That seems like a very unproductive and probably unhealthy way to spend your time, but I'm getting better about letting it go, so hopefully this will help in that regard.

I know that my legions of readers are curious about who were these women who so impacted me, what sort of girls were they that shaped and shook me so? Well the answers are, in chronological order, Chelsea, Susie, and Claire.

I know that this blog is many times more popular than our school newsletter and most Trinity alums and current students have an RSS feed to it, so they may recognize the previous names. "How very odd," they might reflect, "None of these girls appeared to care about Kyle in the least." Exactly.

Just to get you all in the mindset of 15 year old me, here are my original Xanga posts, from Tuesday, November 16, 2004.

"Hey guys this the xanga im gonna use from now on i used to have an ebloggy but i got tired of it. So yah whatsn new w/ me hmh. Yesterday i went to B&N and D-hutch was there and we hung out for a while so that was cool. Today i went to school and it was cool, courtnety was acting a little wierd. We had the senior auction for guys and me and Jade bought John Claiborne for $42. Then i had ca and we played stickball, lifted, and then messed around. so thats about it. see ya

-Kyle"

and

"so i added some cool mellow music to my xanga by the beatles, they didnt have and zep or floyd so i went w/ them."

The first thing one may notice is my frequent use of the colloquialism "cool" and my strange fascination with nick names. (The nick name thing gets worse as the xanga progresses) Also you may notice my fascination with proving myself "cool" I accomplish this by informing the reader of my love for classic rock bands of the 70's.

It is very easy to tell why a woman would find me unlikeable.

Dreams (not the kind that you chase)

The night prior to me typing this I had a few dreams which I would like to share with my beloved audience.

1
The first dream began in the middle of downtown Lubbock, I was standing just West of the local landmark, "haunted hotel," there were various other citizens milling about with me, and it was dusk. There was a flash of blue light and, this being dreamworld, I was immediately aware that the majority of people outside of the shockwave of the flash/blast were dead and that a lot of them had turned into insane zombie people. Oddly, this did not perplex or frighten me, rather I realized that I had just dreamed what was essentially a *SPOILERS* plot point in Watchmen*SPOILERS*. I think I later proceeded to fight zombie people/run around.

What I believe caused this dream. First off, I've had comics on the brain recently what with TDK coming out and the Watchmen trailer. I also briefly discussed zombies and the book World War Z, with Ben Law 2 nights prior, so that may have contributed. Or, possibly my brain was reflecting on my internal struggle to find my place in a world full of people who are seemingly mad or spiritually dead. The brain is kind of a dick in that it doesn't let you know what the hell is going on in dreams.

2
This dream was more of a brief scene. In this scene, the late John Paul II is standing before a council of Cardinals (not the ones that play American sports) and he is told that he must face trials to become the new pope. Apparently, I went back in time in dream land. Then I was able to witness the first of the pope's trials, which was, fighting an anthropomorphic gorilla. I realize that, being primates, gorillas already anthropomorphize themselves, but this was like he was fighting a man dressed in a gorilla suit, but it was a gorilla. Also it was 7' tall. I can only assume that the pope went on face more trials where he fought other fantastical beasts. Dreamland also took me to mythical Greece, because that is totally the plot of the Heracles myth.

How this dream came to be: I have no idea. Maybe I just wanted to see a man fight a monkey. My main theory is that I was dreaming about David Haladay, who is not only popely, but also fought a monkey in his youth. Why Mr. Haladay/Pope/Heracles are infiltrating my dreams, I do not know, I can only assume it is an allegory for the trials of manhood I must face after graduating high school. Hopefully, I won't have to combat any large mammals, because I don't have any boxing gloves.

3
This dream was set some strange dystopian cartoon land. There was an expanse of green, clearly animated grass ahead of me, in an entirely 2D environment, the grass was little more than 2 hillocks of a sickly irradiated green. The sky beyond it occupied 3/4 of my field of vision and was a menacing shade of black blue, like a bruise. Cropping up beyond the second grassy hillock were 3 buildings smashed beside each other, the leftmost the shortest, the middle the tallest, and the rightmost in between. They were black with cartoonish windows and outlined in purple. I was standing beside Lindsey, but rather than speak we were texting. When she did speak, she said, "Claire sent me this text." She displayed the message which read, "I used to think he was hideous, but now he's sort of cute." Claire then materialized beside me and we kissed, but in a very 1980's teen drama fashion, my alarm rang right as our lips met.

Dream explanation: This one is the most straightforward. I text Lindsey a lot and I would like to kiss Claire. It also says a lot about my personality in that in a dream, where I can be or do anything, I describe myself as only "kind of cute." (I am very cute)