I hung out with Adrian, Quilty and Tif last night. That was fun; we got drunk, then Adrian, Tommy and I went over to this guys house and smoked. That's when I started feeling like I'd probably puke everywhere if I didn't try real hard to stay calm.

I've been writing a lot in a new journal I got. I haven't really been taking that much care in the last year to document; even though I was all about that for a long time before. But I can certainly say that the appeal of the internet is gone for me. The only thing I can do anymore is check my emial. I don't even have another website that I check regularly. There's really just nothing that interests me online. I'm sorry, Facebook, my space, livejournal, craigslist, what-the-fuck-ever, I'm over it. I'd rather draw at Ellwood, or pretend to read while my fake roommates (meaning I don't really live with them I just hang out a lot and sleep on the floor occasionally) run around and are nice and stuff. (Shelly is pretty fucking lucking with the Newman crowd. They seem like good kids.)

I don't really have anything to say. I am kinda pummy today, because of the hangover, but other than that I'm kind of TALKED OUT. And waiting to absorb more amazing experience that I can then start talking about. Until then...

April 21st, 2005
Yeah, so I was right about the utter exhaustion thing. Complete crap. I spend at least 7 hours straight at school (9 on Wednesdays!) then, if I get home before passing out due to malnutrition, I stuff my face with whatever tasteless crap is in my fridge, spend about three hours reading (and by that I mean trying to read but feeling horribly inadequate and distracted), then pass out, then wake up and do all the homework I didn't do the night before. Then go to class. Until nights like tonight, Thursdays, when I realize I don't have class for three days and suddenly the horrible ache of lonliness and stress in my stomach is replaced by the dull nauseatious ache of alcohol consumption, or a three day stoneover from an organic, vegan, raw hash cookie, purchased at the food co-op by the vagabond staying with us this month, fresh back from New Zealand, and paying a third of the rent.

Right. So I'm stressed out is what I was getting at.

And I miss my friends that I normally see but can't see now because I'm always busy. OH YEAH. AND THE NEXUS. Ha-ha-ha (mescaline laugh) I was supposed to turn in an article today but I couldn't get an interview with the guy until Monday so I haven't even started it. OOPS! Ha ha ha. I got them wrapped around my little finger. And by that I mean I got a review printed in Artsweek today. And they didn't completely re-write it like they did my other article. Yay! So right, writing crap, not seeing friends, that is about all I do. Ever. And forever. Until I die, sad, lonely, and with carpal tunel.

I need to do something creative. The band? Oh yeah, Sausagefest2005 -- Animals Eating Other Animals played and it was awesome. Me, Maggis, and Berto. And now Manoli is in the band. And the Hairbrain Scheme won the battle of the bands that was yesterday, 4/20 -- so they get to play a show with Busta Rhymes and the Walkmen. WHICH IS AWESOME. Nate was on the front page of the Nexus. Oh my, what excitement.

So something creative. Maybe I'll write some poems and actually make that next zine I talked about three weeks ago. Yeah. Sounds good.

March 31st, 2005
Sometimes, you just can't use the CCS copy machine. This is something I'm learning to live with.

This first week of Spring quarter, if it's any indication of what the rest of Spring quarter will be, will soon lead to exhaustion and mental and emotional decay. On Monday, I attended several long hours of class with short periods of non-class in between, either spent at the library or on a lawn reading or stuffing my face with food. Later that night, I went to a show at the Pink Mailbox, featuring Sara's band, you know, the one with drums like Old Time Religion, which inspired me both to make music and to have a bowel movement. Tuesday was about the same, filled up with crap classes, but I decided, after much consumption of Bukowski, that I would make a zine. Tuesday night was the Monsters show. Uh...I'm not gonna comment here on that until I talk to Chris about it. (Cough.) Yesterday was spent, much time waiting, to use the CCS copy machine in order to print out the zine. Look at that life lesson learned -- if you want to put out a zine in a timely fashion, DONT WAIT ON OTHER PEOPLE TO FUCKING GIVE YOU SUBMISSIONS. So I think I am going to make the shift to making short zines featuring my peoms and photography and/or art, and just call that that. They'll be books, more or less, so I'm gonna work on book art stuff, too. (Especially since I imagine my copy code will run out soon.)

So when can you expect a new issue of GFD? Fuck, I don't know, ask my writers. THE PRESSURE IS ON, MOTHERFUCKERS.

Oh yeah, and I went to a Hairbrain show after CONSTANTLY MOVING from 1pm until 10pm. Holy crap, three fucking busy days. Bullshit. There isn't a show tonight, so I may have time to actually go to the library or bookstore and begin tracking down the hundreds of dollars of books that I need to buy this quarter. I don't think I really want to wait for the professors to put the books at the library. So I'll just goad them for two weeks until the bookstores say I can't return the books, then accept my fate as a loser who will be spending massive amounts of money on books even though she is severely morally opposed to it. FUCK YOU, BOOKSTORE.

Love, Becca

March 30th, 2005
spiraling
fluttering
madness
rocketing up
like human remains shot out of a canon
from beach to bluff to ravage
floral hilltop beauties
from the glint in its crazed eye
to the curl of its
proboscis
without a doubt
the menace
maniacal
masked as a delicate
docile
doily feathered plaything
screams its death cry
rattling blood red orange blemished wings
like saber and shield
then explodes in a blaze of glory
its gory insect innards
spreading in a one hundred mile per hour smear
across your windshield

I'm working on a poem book. Thanks, Chuck.

March 27th, 2005
The Hunter S. Thompson Spring Break.

Spring break started off, as I espoused in the last entry, with binge drinking and all out abandon of my general social mores; meaning, I puked for the first time, was hung over for two days, and got danced on by some horribly typical chap who stank of Tacata crap beer and leered at me with a variety of sexual abandon that made my femminist brain reel with disgust. After continuously leading him on and then pushing him back in horror, all the while verbally insulting him and attempting to crush his morale, I decided it was time for me to make my grand exit, but was stalled for a little while and ended up chatting with the hostess of the party, Katie, outside. She was cool, and the party was pretty sweet (a David Bowie dance party) (of course Nate and I were the best dressed) (Ha), but as I was still hung over I just wasn't in the mood. The next day I got up around one or two and embarked on a wonderous journey of turning my balcony flora into mescaline. After roughly thirteen hours of laborious, gooey and stinky alchemy, the last bit which included watching Fear & Loathing, I had a half gallon of green slimy mescaline sludge in an orange juice container, and two hours of sleep until leaving the scum hole I call my home - Isla Vista. This was the beginning of the road trip.

The first day we drove to the Grand Canyon, which was amazing and my first trip to Arizona, the state where my parents lived for twenty years, and Shelly grew up for her first ten. Quilty had been there before, but Nate and I had never seen the giant hole in the ground. By the time we got there, it was dark, but the almost-full moon shone ever so brightly, and we could just make out the immensity of the drop below the landing where we were standing. This gorge is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen in my entire life, hands down. The colors were just fucking brilliant, but I could never describe it, or at least not here, without going on for paragraphs filled with imagery and metaphors, which I don't feel like now because I'm so fucking exhausted from my trips. We camped there that night, freezing toe numbingly cold windy night, and took a four hour day hike into the canyon. We walked about 1/4 of the way down, which took about an hour or fourty minutes, and then about two hours back up (which I took at a snails pace in order to not drain myself too much). Then we stocked up on firewood, half of which was too sappy to burn, and attempted to build a fire to keep warm. We used all of the fire starters, but it was better than nothing. Dinner was a delicious mash of beans, rice and corn cooked over a camp stove, and after two nights of nearly no sleep, we crept into our slightly warm bags and bunkered down. Little did we know (or if we knew, we surely hoped it wouldn't happen) a snow storm came that night. It was more wind than snow, and arguably less cold than the night before, but for my first time camping in fucking freezing rain, it was a trial. The snow sliding off the tend with every loud gust of wind was enough to keep me from really sleeping. The next morning, delerious and tired as always, we headed off farther into Arizona, Navajo country, to find Monument Valley.

Yes, Arizona is big sky, big wind, and big rocks. We drove a little around the Navajo's Monument Valley, taking pictures of the huge rock monoliths and listening to Aaron Copeland, and then drove the rest of the night to Las Vegas. Oh, Vegas, you shit hole, you raunchy and hilarious city of sin, everyone else hated you but I think you're fucking great. You drive people to drunken, bankrupt suicide without a care, you are the machine manifest in urban landscape, glittering like a valley of gold below the mountains. Ingenious. Fucking ingenious.

Two nights there, a bottle of whiskey, an attempt at picking up a hitchhiker, two free breakfasts, Quilty mistaken for a woman, and climbing through or around a train stalled on the wrong tracks, then we left Nate and ran screaming four hundred miles to Los Angeles, ate Cuban dinner with Quilty, and Shelly and I rode our mechanical bull up to Santa Barbara for long needed sleep.

The next morning I woke up, called Shelly, and we downed two or two and a half glasses of the mescaline goo, then embarked on the craziest trip of my life, and probably the only of hers. We walked to Ellwood and checked out the beautious flowers (spring in Santa Barbara is indeed coming soon!) then watched the beginnings of the sunset in our tripped out, rolling and giggling in the sand insanity. People were the only real daunting task, as there was a definite line drawn between the sane and the insane, and we were on the far, far, far insane side of that line. I don't know if I can do the trip justice, so I will just say it was at least 20 times more intense than my most intense shroom trip, a lot heavier and a lot more brain consuming, and lasted much, much longer than anticipated. The trip started at three fifteen, was in full swing by four, was out of hand by five, by six thirty we were wandering back through Isla Vista and probably would have been crying in the gutters had Joel and Tiffany not found us, the mescaline had more or less worn off by three in the morning (twelve hours later) but I still couldn't sleep, despite my horrible exhaustion, until five. Ten hours later I thought about starting the day, which takes me to now.

Now, I am incredibly burned out. I have been tired of school for a few months, probably since midterms of winter quarter, and with spring, two summer sessions, and fall ahead of me until I get a three week break over winter -- let's just say I'm not looking forward to this marathon of studying. It will be rewarding, of course, but...I'm just kind of sick of not being able to read the books I want to read, not being about to spend enough time on creative things like music -- which my trip (both talking with Nate and Quilty and thinking about artists while sifting through the sieve of my mescaline riddled brain) helped me realize is probably the one thing in my life that I do need to be a self-actualized person. I just hope this quarter will allow me enough time and freedom to do what I need to do to stay sane, and be a productive member of the artistic community in Isla Vista (meaning: my friends).

The fact of the matter is, I do a lot more than most people, and this is great -- but it's not good enough for me. Sure, when comparing myself to Grant it's easy to say that he should be doing more because he's out of school and music is his career. Nate and Chris are both music majors and are also making it a career -- and Christof is headed off in that direction too -- so of course I feel like I'm not putting enough elbow grease in. I still want to try journalism, I still want to try using History and Middle Eastern Studies to make a difference; I know that I am meant to learn about these things and use my knowledge to change the world as much as I can -- but I also know now that I need to make music, because I do have a gift of being able to write fucking cool songs, and I do have the technical tallent of an amazing voice and pretty exceptional piano performance skills -- to destroy or neglect these gifts would be a fucking waste.

So right now I'm really lost, but at least now I'm caught between two important directions. I think I would make an amazing journalist, so I am going to try to work at the Nexus this quarter and get the feel, at least of the lowscale bubble Nexus variety, of the profession. But I am also going to work really hard on crafting songs, and more importantly performing them. Luckily I have amazing friends who can help me out with getting gigs. And even more exciting -- I have a band to work with too! I think the band is going to be hilarious and wonderful and fun, and really help me work on my stage presence. There is definitely a lot of work for me to do with myself this quarter -- and I think I've come full circle again, from about a year ago, and have began realizing once again that my life is about me -- and not fucking boys who will come and go and not appreciate me truly and holisticly for all that I really am. There is no way anyone can really understand the wonders of my brain -- fuck, I can't even really comprehend them -- and until I really start putting them out there they will remain a giant secret. Only after I realize what they really mean to me can I let the rest of the world know -- but I am definitely getting closer.

March 19th, 2005
My finals went fine, I suppose. I got really excited about being drunk Thursday night and ended up puking clear, alcoholic stomach acid into Nate's toilet. What got me to this point? Four shots of Jager (approximately; I didn't take shots but, as is my fashion, swigs from the bottle), four shorts of 99 Bananas, two shots of whiskey or burbon, an almaretto that Faith got me, two more shots of scotch, a fuck of a lot of weed dispursed throughout the evening, several cigarettes and a cigar. Sadly, no real food ever made it's way to my stomach, so it was just alcohol when it came up.

Cathartic, emotional release? No. Just puking. Although it was nice to have Nate there cheering me on, especially since the weed gave me the amazing ability of feeling every movement of each internal organ I have, wretching twisting and grinding against each other in repulsion. (A hand to squeeze helped out too.) Ugh. So...now that my day and a half hangover is gone, I'm on the road to recovery. And soon I hope to be on the road to the Grand Canyon, although certain inevitabilities have caught up with Bam and Brandon, and it looks like we're down a car. And thus down a Joel. Oh yeah, and last night Zach went fucking crazy and put out all of the imaginary fires in his apartment, covering everything he, Nate, Nick and Rich own with a fine layer of flame retardant. Rich called his dad at six in the morning to pick him up and get the fuck out of that crazy house. (Nate had a conservative evening, and ended his night reading in his room and listening to the Smashing Pumpkins. Myself? I went to bed at about 1:30 after no drinking and listening to the smashing beer bottles being hurled off of Nate's balcony and into the parking lot.)

This weekend, with Shelly gone home and myself nursing a hell of a wild ride through my body's own limitations, this weekend has me thinking. It might just be the depression that inevitably springs from feeling like shit, it might be Bam & Brandon's split getting me down (I think that's a lot of it) or perhaps the fact that Chris is out of town and I wont see him for a week or so...Regardless, I am down. Not depressed, but pensive.

Living in Isla Vista is quite tumultuous indeed, and especially with these crazy motherfuckers I call my friends. We are certainly a gaggle of derelics. But I wouldn't have it any other way, and I think it takes hurtling through extremes to really understand what it means to live; what it means to love and lose it, to fear your own mortality but spit in its face, to wake up most mornings knowing that you have to face a barrage of mindless, soulless zombies before you get to your first class, which is far to early and far to uninteresting to really make you want to roll the six inches from your old, pokey mattress (that once belonged to the singer of your friends band and you got for free from an insane piano major with a taste for beer, dope and nature documentaries) and onto the floor or your studio apartment, which is covered in your and your roommate's hair, clothes, books and a lot of unidentifyable lint and food particles you would rather not acknowledge at this hour of the morning -- the tiny studio, more than ninehundred dollars rent a month, choked with freezing air because the sun hasn't been up long enough to shoot its morning rays through your south facing window.

This is why people in Isla Vista drink. And drink a lot.

But four years of my life WILL be spent here. I can't leave it yet. The sad part is that those four years are quickly rushing by, and I have no idea where or what or how I will do or live after this shithole town is miles behind me. The dirt from IV doesn't wash off. It stays under your fingernails for your entire life. On the short walk from my apartment, through People's Park and across the street to the liquor store that doubles for one of the town's three supermarkets, I may pass any one of the following: fake blonde highlighted ugg boot mini skirt sorority girl, bro on skateboard, my ex-physics professor in a wetsuit on his bike toting a surfboard on the way to the beach, a bum with one eye who plays a mean hormonica, in fact any of the bums in Isla Vista, and there seems to be a disproportionate amount of them, the patriarch of a poor Mexican family, riding a bike with a plastic crate hooked to the front collecting beer bottles to recycle so he can feed his kids, rich assholes riding too fast through the street to notice any of these poor souls, or, if I'm lucky, one of my friends who will make me look up from my feet or down from the cloudless sky and bring a smile to my face. The rich-poor dispairity is quite breath-taking. But so is the termite riddled side board of my aparment building. Yeah, they put in all new doors and windows this January (which is nice because before they did that I could hear my nextdoor neighbors speaking THROUGH THEIR CLOSED DOOR), but they never told us the building had bugs. I had to hear it from the guy they paid to paint over the board, talking to his buddy on the phone about how chewed up the panneling was, and how every time he tried to paint over it the termite shit got in his bristles.

Then I think about the shack I'm subletting from an estranged friend this summer -- probably a total of sixty square feet for four hundred fifty dollars a month. She's paying one fifty more than that for the next year, and I'm sure it'll really suck when winter comes around and she realizes there isn't isulation in any of her walls. I might get her a space heater just to keep her from getting sick for months next year.

To walk from the slums of Isla Vista into Manzanita is like walking out of the Mexican rainforest into a beach-side hotel resort -- No litter, spotless sharp landscaping, all the buildings in good repair with color-coordinate paint jobs, and the dining commons with a bulb lit patio that overlooks the walk to the ocean. From there, to this box with windows, to a shanty shed/former outhouse, to an apartment in a co-op I don't even know if I can live in yet...The race for cheap housing in IV is certainly a disgrace. And to imagine -- there are families that live here, and these are all real people still waiting to achieve their dreams. Fuck that shit. This place is a black hole. A dead end. I'll only leave after I get spit out of the University of California's educational conveyor belt -- most of my ideals shot dead by pragmatism, most of my dreams shattered by the reality of these streets, and most of my other worldly connections lost to four years of isolation. Oh yeah, and one hundred and twenty thousand dollars in debted to the United States Government.

March 16th, 2005
I'm not going to talk about how the show went. I was disappointed. I've been feeling disappointed a lot lately. In myself, in my friends, in my inability to make things cool, in my in-initiative taking, in my nonexistant job...I should have a demo by now, I should have another issue of GFD out by now, I should I should I should. But I don't. And hence, the disappointment.

I have one more final, this time for History 4B, tomorrow. CRAP FUCK SHIT. I am so done with this quarter, and I am so fucking tired of finals. Especially finals like this one, where you have to study EVERYTHING from the entire quarter, not just main themes or concepts, and you never know exactly how hard its going to be until it fucks you in the face. CUM SHOT. Just like that. Ach. Well, I guess I really don't have that much to worry about. I'm doing fine in every other area of this class, essays, section, maybe not the midterm, but I didn't even really study for that so I don't feel too bad. And my other classes should be A's, except maybe Arabic, because that final was fucking hard and I only got four hours of sleep before having to pry myself out of bed and draging my entire body five minutes away to HSSB.

But I digress. In reality, I am really fucking sad because -- guess -- yeah, Christof. You know, the imaginary persona of Chris Meredith that doesn't exist, but I keep holding onto it because I can't let the beauty of love die in my heart. So I have to keep torturing myself, wishing this relationship into existance so I don't give up all together. It's a sad state of affairs, and lord knows it's been hard to keep going this long, especially through finals. The show was such a pain in the ass to do, and then I was so worried and stressed about Arabic that I got really fucking depressed on Friday. As usual, that culminated in me calling Chris on Saturday and crying on the phone because I can't control my fucking composure with him. Then I forgot to call him later (Blue Velvet) and he came over to Nate's after I ran away (from David Lynch's incredadisturbing masterpiece) and he started acting really weird. Like I've never really seen him -- worried I didn't want to see him, personally insulted because I didn't call...Ach. The whole situation (me=drunk & stoned) didn't make me feel confident at all about the possibility of a strong friendship like I know he needs and wants. I just don't know if I'm the person who should be giving that to him. Of course, I would love to be able to give him every part of me, but -- that's the catch -- he doesn't want every part of me. He wants the inexhaustible friendship part. And I've given that to boys I loved before, and it fucking came back and spit in my face. How am I supposed to trust Chris? Especially when I am always my most vounerable around him, and, I don't know, he seems to think that's when I'm being my most honest. I think he thinks that weak, torn apart little girl is who I am. But it's not. It's who HE makes me. It's what trying to be friendly with him makes me. It's what hugging him and not being able to love him makes me. IT'S NOT ME. And I tried to tell him that before, but he took it as me trying to be someone I'm not. I guess the fact of the matter is that he has the same imaginary persona picked out for me, one comparable to what I have for him, but different of course, and he isn't able to let that go either. So we're both in love with people who don't exist.

Not healthy.

I guess I just need to get to know him, finally, meet him in my most objective frame of mind. Be friends with him. (Yeah, then he'll finally get what he wants.) Ugh. I don't know. I am constantly oscillating between silent resignation and wanting to flail out and resist his pull, just reject him outright. But I know that cutting him out of my life right now wouldn't make me happy. But I don't think seeing him like this, the two of us interacting like this, is healthy either. Synthesis??? SYNTHESIS??? Synthesis through honesty? If we could meet again, and put our pasts behind us and just meet again as two people, who we really are without all the fucking pretense, just honestly accept each other for our real selves, I think the problem would solve itself.

March 8th, 2005
Hello, friends, lovers. I finally did it. Or, I will finally do it. Friday. March 11th 2005.

THE MACABARET.
9:00PM @ CCS Room 143
My first show since...God. Forever. Here's what I posted on LJ (oh say it aint so!)

Come see - The Amazing...

MACABARET!!!

Friday March 11th 2005 @9:00PM The College of Creative Studies Building Room 143

INTRODUCING: Rebecca Riley as "Clitorectomy and the Mutilator$"
Playing one night only with dramatic flare and sexual abandon!
WITH SPECIAL GUESTS: ::Animals Eating Other Animals feat. Chatchi McDeathFang::
::NABOA (Chris - Gavin - Nate--impromptu amazement)::
::Manoli & Ted Nava -- cutting up the vinal and ripping out the beats::
~~~~~poetry performances~~disgusting, stomach turning artwork~~~~monster movies~~~~~

YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS OUT -- I MAY NEVER PERFORM AGAIN!
(Unless it is with The Hairbrain Scheme -- www.thehairbrain.com)

**

COME SUPPORT THE FUCKING SCENE!!!!!! BEFORE IT DIES AND YOU'RE LEFT WITH NOTHING BUT YOUR FASHION!!!!

Ha-ha. I like the fashion comment. Anyway, if I thought that anyone other than Nate read this, and I don't even think he does, I would say -- COME ONE AND ALL! But since both he and I are performing, this is a moot point. So, random interwebland viewer, come anyway. Love. Becca.

February 24th, 2005
The past two days have been a breath of fresh air. I can't complain about the rain because I'm from Ohio, and I know in Ohio right now it's probably too cold to snow, let alone rain. I can't help but get sucked into the trappings of Seasonal Affected Disorder, however, as I have been trained to respond to the month of February as if by Pavlov. When the clock ticks over from 01 to 02 all of a sudden a wool blanket is drawn over my eyes and I am smothered and perhaps even bitten by fleas, as if the Middle Ages were back in style and I'm covered in bubos. But the fact of the matter is the sunshine has had me in good spirits. I even sweated yesterday because I was wearing a black tee shirt! How marvelous. Of course I am always thankful for California weather, but I am conditioned to be sad and bitch about clouds, so you must all bear with me. It's not a direct response to my surroundings, but instead a holdover complaint from my homeland.

I signed up for classes for next quarter. I wanted to take the Military Science class on Terrorism, but I couldn't get into it because I'm an upper division student now. (Damn. And I wanted to call them on all of their idiocyncracies...or better put, idioticies, because I'm almost more than certain our Military Science program is run by conservative Bush loving NAZIs, even though I've never taken a class. Call it a hunch.) I did, however, sign up for MES 46, thus completing my lower division reqs for my MES major, as well as HIST 4C, the last in that series (the 2 series will hopefully be completed over summer sessions A and B), Arabic III, FLMST 122 (Arab film taught by Menicucci -- I love that man!), and PHIL 20C. Now, I figure FLMST122 will be easy because I've had Menicucci before, and it's a film class...so I hope it'll just be a couple of papers and not much other work, but I can never be sure. I'm also thinking PHIL 20C will be the fun, enriching class for the quarter...but with a course load of 21 units, I am probably going to drop it. Then the film class will be the fun one. I am really excited to take 2 MES classes next quarter though, since I didn't take any this quarter. (Except of course for Arabic, but that also counts for history...and I dont know...Magda just kind of keeps it from seeming like a class. Ha-ha.)

Yes, I want to learn about Philosophy. So I will hopefully be able to manage all of those units. Although, this upcoming tough quarter will be preceeded by 2 solid summer sessions...so maybe I should cool it down and just do 12 units?? Aw, fuck, I don't know. I just want to get the most possible out of my parents' money, I need a challenge (this quarter is exceedingly UNCHALLENGING), and I don't mind the work. It just means I'll have less of a social life. And that's okay, since I only have 4 friends, and fuck, I like it that way. Well, I guess 5 now that Chris and I are on better terms. But still. That's not much. It's manageable.