11/29/09 - Cassettes.

Recently, my band's been wrapping up a new demo, which we've all worked very hard on, and I'm very proud of everyone for  all their hard work. It sounds really awesome, and I can't wait until it's done so that everyone can hear what I've been putting almost every Friday night plus much more into for the last year now. You can listen to some really rough mixes on our myspace right now if you'd like.

What does this have to do with my writing a new memoir? Well, it's not just a shameless plug, and you may or may not have made the connection by now. This demo is being put out on a limited run of 10 cassettes, and I recently bought a pack of cassettes in order to

5/5/09 - Home.

Today was a horrible day. I got to see everyone I love in Hillsborough.  I got to see Alexis, Chris, Chris, Shayne, James, and whoever else was in school today in school. My family was at home, as always, just as anyone should expect to find in his home, The only thing wrong was that my father was no longer an employee of his current company, or rather, gave his two weeks' notice. 

You see, for a while, my father had gone through a horrible phase in life. Years ago, my father had been accused of a petty crime, which he hadn't even committed. For this, he was to attend probation, and he was never to leave the State of New York. It was around this time, that my family decided it was about time to leave the city, in order to have a better life and so that I would be raised in a better environment, or rather, more secluded and supposedly further away from the drugs and crime of the big city. In essence, they were renouncing everything they had here in order for me to have a better childhood. For this I am endlessly grateful to my parents.

We were moving to New Jersey. My mother, as a new dentist, had received a high-paying job in Newark. The State of New Jersey had agreed to paying her student loans since she was working in an inner-city area. At that time we were incredibly poor, as my family depended upon the income of my father as my mother went to dental school. My grandmother worked in an inner city school, Seward Park Highschool, in a poor area of Manhattan that got shut down due to poor standardized testing results. My grandfather worked with several Asian-American newspapers in the city such as India Abroad and News India Times(the latter of which he still works for). Sending someone through dental school for a full four years is extremely difficult. We were in debt, and we were poor. New Jersey paying for everything was a godsend. 

My father was to under no circumstances leave the State of New York. He was unable to find a job due to the fact that he now had a criminal record. The Iraq War had been in it's second year. His family, estranged but still deeply loved, was nearly two hours away in what seemed like a village in the middle of nowhere. Things were stolen from him as well, and he was a new film maker, aspiring to fulfill his dreams. Fate had a different plan for him, as every ambitious action that he took was countered by limitations by the law. He was unable to see his own family, as they lived in another state. He was forced to break the law in order to see us at least every weekend.

Leaving the state under probation was against the law. As was skipping meetings with your probation officer, an act that my father frequently committed. He had to go on trial, and we thought things would go our way. Our lawyer assured us that by the end of the trial, we would be re-united. A few days before my ninth birthday, the day of his trial came, and I was told that the only place I would see my father for the next year was Riker's Island, the island prison between Queens and the Bronx. 

That night, I cried my eyes out. I had plenty of homework to be done, and I hadn't even begun doing it. I didn't intend to, and for the first time in my short life, I didn't care. Some things are more important than homework. Some things mattered more to me. My father was one of them. The rest of that school year, I hadn't done any of my homework. I went from being a straight A student in Queens, New York to being a B and C student in the suburbs of Hillsborough. 

My views on life had become extremely pessimistic. Certain events that happen in your life really rob you of your innocence, and my father being hauled away to a prison complex really does the trick. My daily rituals of coming home and doing homework had been replaced with crying and seeking comfort in being someone else. I loved drawing, and I loved making up stories, and I loved internet role playing, and I loved anime. My mind would be filled with different stories and tales of being someone else, leading a more meaningful life, etc. I was looking for an escape. Fuck my life. Seriously, my childhood was fucked up. I think I deserve trading in my fucked up childhood for something better. No one should have to suffer like I did.

My father finally came back when I was in sixth grade. They day he came back was one of the happiest in my life. I came back from school and waited eagerly for his glorious return. A taxi pulled up and a man stepped out. For those few moments that he stood there, he seemed like a giant, like there was nothing in the world that could stop him. He was my father, and I saw him as a hero that had returned from a war. I ran up to him, hugged him, and cried. I'd visited him in prison, but he was finally back in the real world, and could come to New Jersey whenever he wanted. 

These next few years were quite possibly the worst of my life. My father tried his hardest to find a job, but he was unsuccessful. His criminal record held him back from doing so. My mother had grown extremly bitter and did nothing but scream and beat him when she got home from work. She said that he was just a sponge that would take her money and give nothing back in return. There would be daily fights between the two, where my father was stripped of all his dignity and subjected to becoming a punching bag for the wife who he had worked so hardly to put through dental school and bring to America. It wasn't her fault either because life had been cruel to her too. She was my mother, and she loved me more than anyone in the universe with the possible exception of my father. What happened next wasn't anyone's fault, and I've no one to blame for it.

Alcohol became my father's escape from all this insanity. He would always be drunk, and he would always be home. What could you expect? He had no job, no friends, and no pride in himself. He'd lost it all when he was given an all-expense paid trip to Riker's Island on behalf of the New York State government. Life was a bitch to everyone in my home, and coming home was torture. I'd lock myself in my room and spend hours sitting or laying on my bed and staring into the ceiling thinking of ways that I could end it all. Everyone at school thought I was some sort of freak. I hadn't had any real friends. I was never part of a clique. I had nothing to look forward to. Fuck life, fuck school, fuck me, fuck you. I spent my days figuring out ways to commite suicide, and I'd spend some nights attempting to do it. 

All this coming from a 12 year-old kid.  How fucked up is that?

8/9/08 - Pen.

A few days ago, I  was going through my grandparents' room, an activity that is quite frequent during pen season(pen season being school time). I came across something that piqued my interest. It was a pen. Now, you may be saying that's what I came to look for, but this was no ordinary pen. It was my favorite pen - my best companion when I was younger. After just moving to the suburban town of Hillsborough, NJ, I had many friends but no one I could really connect to. At the time, I was obsessed with Japan, and I'd found a Japanese pen. It was probably the best pen I'd ever written with; the point finer than any you will have ever seen before. The pen was a Zebra Techno Line 0.4. That's everything that was written on it in English, anyway. 

Not only did the pen write like a dream, but it was also quite an enjoyable toy. In this district, there were very few items that one could play with on school grounds. In Queens, the case was almost the opposite. Kids brought Yu-Gi-Oh cards, BeyBlades, GameBoys, and much more to school. You name it, it was there. What's worse is that all these Catholic school teachers just young, attractive Bible-thumpers that had no idea what this new-fangled techno crap toy fad was all about, so they just allowed kids to bring them in. They'd eventually get stolen because our backpacks would all be stored in the same room for the entire day, as well as our coats. The only place to store our shite was our pockets, and Catholic school trouser pockets weren't too big at all. I got lots of my favorite toys stolen at that school, and I resented having brought them at all. 

I began the fourth grade as I'd begun any other. I expected to reunite with old friends and see old teachers, when I'd be making new friends and being the burden of new teachers at the same time. The school had three floors. The Pre-K through first graders were confined to the first floor. Second grade through fourth grade was confined to the second floor, and fifth grade through eighth grade used the last floor. We had just had the concept of switching classesi ntroduced to us, and that was a whole new experience. We could no longer leave EVERYTHING in our desks and just let it pile up until the end of the year. We had to bring everything with us. That was a pain. 

It was around this time that I found my Japanese pen. You'd wonder how a premium, foreign pen would make its way to a children's playground, but this was New York City! You could find anything if you looked in the right place. For here, the right place was my school's playground. Go figure. I played with my pen, launching it off of any surface I could find. The spring was extremely powerful. Soon, others would try to beat me when it came to launching pens up in the air and there was a whole league at one point. We never bet anything of monetary value, but we'd print out pictures of characters from DragonBall Z, or Pokemon, or whatever the flavor of the month thing was at that time and wager them. I always won, but I threw most of the pictures away after they'd been used as a coaster by some unidentified person of the house. Water really messes with printer ink. 

Then we moved away from New York. This was the worst time of my life, but I won't get into why. I will however get into how. My grades began to dwindle as my motivation for homework just disappeared. My sleep patterns began to change, and I began my journey into adulthood, and through the jungle path known as puberty(a place I'm still stuck in today). I began to stink after playing, and I began to listen to ACTUAL music. And what of my pen? Well, the whole pen competition thing didn't really catch on. Basketball was more the thing here, as the school's facilities(with the minor exception of the classrooms) were far superior to that of my previous school. Instead of being stuck on a big, flat yard that was a few hundred square meters in diameter, we had an ACTUAL playground. Sadly, there were barely any areal parks in my place of residence.  So I began to play basketball.

Most of the friends I made upon my arrival in this new town didn't stay my friends. Only a select few have. Most of them stuck with the basketball bollocks and have become jocks at the school. Who knew sticking to those playground activities could make people so...unlikeable? I was known to be an excellent artist because of my ability to draw, a talent I had picked up shortly before leaving Queens. I think it was shortly after finding this pen, actually. Maybe the pen has magical powers that allow it to unlock hidden secrets of a person? Probably not. Whatever. But it was during those moments that I'd wow those who observed me draw that I'd spend time with my pen from Queens. The memories I'd have of the place would be relived everytime I drew, and I guess that's why I drew so much in those days.

Now I don't draw as much. I play more music in recent times - bass, guitar, cello, drums. What I can never fully understand is why I liked Queens so much. I've been there a few times again, but it's pretty gloomy. Manhattan is pretty nice, but the more urban areas of the place I lived were just dead. It was like Kansas when you compared it to Manhattan. If you know anything about New York, you'll know that the whole city is just random suburbs scattered among the city areas. My suburban areas were great, and my school was also great. I no understand that is why I enjoyed my life there so much. It was my childhood, and I had a very happy one. I came here right at the dawn of my adolescence, and I guess I liked looking back and laughing. 

Looking at the pen from the outside, you'd probably think it hasn't aged much. Four years isn't much at all, but for a person like me, it is. For someone to go from a sweet and innocent child  to a teenage monstrosity like me only takes four years. When you try to use my once so adored pen, you can really tell how much of a difference four years is. The ink's still in the inner chamber, but it's mostly dried up and very difficult to write with. When you actually can write with it, the lettering is grey. The spring has corroded, with causes the pen to jam whenever it's clicked. It can no longer win those pen-launching competitions of my childhood, and it can no longer write as it once could, but it still brings a smile to my aged face when I look at it and hold it. I can be sure that I've lost all my friends from Queens and all my friends from my arrival in Suburbia, but I've got my new friends and I'll always have my pen.

3/26/08 - Birth.

 Two days ago, Monday, I turned fourteen. This got me thinking. Is one's birthday a celebration of an ever closing in death or their life? Many may argue that it's a celebration of life, but who'd be so self-absorbed to celebrate their own birth? Many people don't. Have I been wasting my life away by adopting the conformities that Mennonites so wholesomely enjoy? I want to do something with my life. I only have so much of it.

On the other hand, I'm only fourteen now. I'm still young. I've got my whole life ahead of me. Why concern myself with such tedious thoughts as what profession I want, what college I'll go to, how many children I'll have, and what I'll leave behind? I need to enjoy life. I should be carefree and oblivious to everyone and everything around me. And yet I still rant about the pressures of progressing in age. I don't want to grow up. I'm just a kid and I don't want to grow up. I haven't written up a 5 paragraph memoir in one sitting often enough. I haven't done my homework often enough. I haven't apologized for all the wrong I've done in this world often enough. I haven't experienced lucid dreams often enough. I haven't enjoyed the sweet songs of Pavement into the night often enough. I haven't experienced an encounter with drugs, alcohol, gangs, etc. often enough in my social life. I haven't lived as a thirteen year old long enough, but I've been robbed by a bandit.

The bandit's name is time. Time has robbed me of my childhood. I hate time - and yet I love time. Time allows us to progress. Time allows us to work. Time allows us to sleep. Time allows us to experience that which we love, and as human beings, we love a lot. I love a lot of things such as poetry, music, writing, drawing, film, sleep, etc. - though I may not be very good at either. Sleep is the one I love the most. I love dreaming, and I love that feeling of rejuvenation in the morning. I love sitting up straight, stretching, absorbing the sunlight, and crawling out of bed. It's a magnificent feeling, in my eyes, but without a proper night's sleep, it can be very mundane. Trust me, I hate the mundane. 

The only problem with sleep is that unlike the other things I've listed, sleep won't get me anywhere. Sleep won't help me establish myself and it won't leave a part of my soul behind for the rest of the world and our young to feast itself upon. Sleep only eats away at my life and my time alive. It seems like a waste, but it's not. I'd die without it. It allows me to do the other tasks - to experience them. I need to experience more things as well. 

My generation gets a lot of criticism and is said to be very horrible, even by the generation itself, but I don't think that any of it is true. What makes us so different? Just time. We're still people, just like you. We've been through a lot, too. 9/11, a horrible president, wars, Genocide, an uprising of a suppressed people, cyber-bullying, fad diets, pop music. It's pretty bad. Cut us some slack. We're just teenagers. Besides, I doubt it was much different for you. How does this correlate to my birthday? It doesn't.

I remember once when I'd turned six or seven years old, I had a birthday party in my house. It was a beautiful house. It was huge and in the middle of Queens. I had a minor fear of clowns, though most of it was just in my head. I'd been taught to fear the people by the media, but they're meant to be comforting or at least humorous. Despite the hidden fear, my parents hired a clown to come to the party. I realized there wasn't much to fear at all. They're just people. We met this particular clown at a beauty salon of all places. My mother was getting her hair done.The party-goers and eye basically ignored the clown and ran amok, though. 

Earlier still was another realization that clowns weren't something to be fear was a preceeding birthday. The clown's work wasn't very entertaining at all, or must not have been since I don't remember it at all. That was a while ago, but I'm young and it'd be easier for me to recall such an event than someone that's considerably older than me. I remember one thing about the clown, though. He was upstairs on our second floor and was coming down as I was going up. He was a tall, thin, bald man with a duffle bag. I didn't even understand that clowns and real people were one in the same until that day.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be going. There's a warm bed and blanket wating for me with my name on it. Good-night.

 1/19/08 - Books

I remembered what my first encounter with a novel was like. I decided to write about it here since I'd also remembered that I had this website and that I hadn't posted here in half a year. I decided that this book story would be something interesting and suitable to write about....the only problem is I don't know where to begin. I guess I should mention where I was living, and who was living with us at the time. I was about five years old. I'd just been learning the basics of reading and writing in school, but these skills had proven very useless in the real word as I could only read words like cat, hat, mat, rat, splat, frat, gat(gattling gun), and doo doo. So, instead of actually reading children's books, I'd ask my grandmother to read them to me.  

I remembered my favorite book back then was a modernized(read: bastardized) edition of Rumpelstiltzkin. It wasn't in modern times or anything, but the humor had been jazzed up to appeal to audiences of the TV generation. I'd imagined that the book was published a few decades ago. It was a rather morbid tale and I guess that's why it appealed to me so much. Maybe this is where I got my sarcastic and dark sense of humor from....

I'd been fascinated by the mythology of Robin Hood. The concept of taking from the rich and giving to the poor was, in my opinion, amazing. Now that I look back on it, I realize that these are the fundamentals of communism; poor men work hard and receive compensation on behalf of the rich men. Beautiful concept, right? Horrible execution on the part of the Soviets. Communism is about equality, not the government controlling everything. 

So, back to Robin Hood. I loved it. I'd seen the cartoons(yes, the Disney one with the animals), and that was my only feeling for the story. It hadn't been until my grandparents had brung presents back for us. These presents were two fat books; the first being Robin Hood and the second was the Prince and the Pauper. The Prince and the Pauper didn't appeal to me, but I regret not taking a look at it based on the cover art. Very foolish...but what did you expect? I was merely a child that wasn't even fully aware of the world around him. 

I'd asked my grandparents to read me the Robin Hood book. They refused to do so because they said that this was a book that'd took more than one day to finish. A book that took more than one day to finish? Sure, you may be sitting here thinking that all books that you've read have taken far longer than a day to finish, but I was five. I'd had no prior exposure to ACTUAL books. Just children's books. The concept of a book taking more than a day to finish was baffling and went over my head. After that, my reading skill drastically improved(first grade) and I took on Robin Hood.

6/8/07(Early in the morn') - Roots

Well, despite the fact that I should be sleeping, I'm awake, and I'm writing my first real post. I thought it would be a bit wise to share my beginnings on the web with all of you. I, like many, am used to the cool and flashy websites of today. However, unlike most of you my age, have been using the internet since a very early age. I've been an avid geek/internet user since the tender age of five years old. That's right, a five year old that could barely read was using a computer and communicating to people all over the world during the late 90's. I don't remember too much of the Y2K scare, if you really want to know, but I do remember some other stuff. Back then, everyone used AOL. America Online(it was called AOL despite the fact that Online was one word). I had a kids account because I was a kid, and I remember that the whole thing was restricted. If you'd swear on the chat rooms, you'd be logged off. The kids stuff included some half-assed games and whatnot. You weren't able to talk to people with accounts if they were over 18.

To us it didn't matter much. All we were doing was browsing the web. That was back when the internet was billed hourly.  When we browsed the web, we didn't really do much. Mostly, we'd go to like... wrestling sites and stupid stuff like that. By the time 2000 or 2001 came along, they had broadband. We were still stuck in 1999. We had dial up, whereas the tenants had cable modems, so we'd go to their rooms and use the computers there. They'd show us a whole bunch of neat tricks and shit. It was cool. The also introduced us to Napster(when it was free). 

If you're wondering who "we" are, the answer is simple. Back in '99, my grandma saw that my cousin, Nishan(only a single letter different in our names) was undergoing sever mental stress. She had him come here to America from India. He lived with my family and I for about 4 years. So much has changed since then. Recently his father died, but I'll not go into much detail about that. Whenever I do, it makes me cry. I wasn't there. I couldn't see him. I couldn't hold his hand, I couldn't hear his last words. Aww fuck it! I just said I wasn't gonna do this and here I am doing it.  

So then the tenants moved out. We had a whole new story(10 feet) to work with. We got a new computer with Windows XP. We had a cable internet connection. It was indescribably fast. Before, we'd been using the laptops of other people, and they were just that. Laptops. This was a real computer. A desktop with desktop power and the speed of a speeding locomotive. I was still doing stupid stuff at the time. However, I was browsing the sites of kid rappers instead of wrestling sites. That means stuff like Lil' Bow Wow, Lil' Romeo, etc. Now they neglect those names, since they're old men. Whatever.  

 After a bit of that MTV propaganda, we began to watch videos on Yahoo's Music channel. Then after a bit of that, we'd discovered FLASH GAMES!!! Ah, yes. The countless hours a day I'd spend playing Flash games had brought us. Now, this was no where close to the time  I spend on the computer now, it was a lot. I played a lot of Flash games with my cousin. We also played Shockwave games and stuff on Shockwave.com We lived like that for quite a while. Meaning, using the internet as our man source of entertainment. Then it happened.

6/7/07(or at least that night) - WHAT IS THIS STRANGE THING!?

So, if you're reading this, you're probably a buddy of mine, or were stupid enough to have clicked on my forum sig. Either way, thanks. Now, you may be wondering what this site is. Look up. The heading says it all. This is my home on the internet. I've made countless forums, sites, blogs, etc., but all of them end up failing some way or another due to lack of interest, webhosts going down, shitty design, or just the lack of visitors. I finally felt like I needed a place on the internet that I constantly updated, and one that never went down.

    You may be asking "Why don't you just get a blog?". I reply with "Several reasons." The first being that I can do whatever you can with a blog script, but without it doing what I don't want it to. Blogs are just sites that are complex, but are made simple with some PHP script. Also, I wanted to try out the new Google Pages service. Also, I doubt I'll have more than one page up, so I'll just have a really long page up for a long time. That way, I don't have to worry about stuff like linkage, updating all my pages with new layouts, managing boards, etc.    

    My current forum went down recently. Presumably for good. Hopefully, it'll come back up. I'll work on a slick design sooner or later, but this layout is fine enough. Nice job, google. I'll probably have pages with my portfolio, pictures, and previous journal entries, but that's about it. Thanks for reading. Expect updates soon.