Raisins

One day, a little baby grape began it's promising life on the vine. This adorable little grapelet was named Shelly, and she was very excited to grow up and be a successful grape. Unfortunately, Shelly didn't really know what being a grape was like. When she found out what usually happens to most grapes, she became scarred and traumatized for the rest of her torturous, painful life.





Shelly's the little green thing.

Shelly had some very good friends and family that grew near her on the vine. They loved to talk about the most recent gossip that had come down the grapevine, because despite being completely immobile, grapes tend to lead fairly eventful lives. One day, while one of Shelly's relatives was sharing a hilarious anecdote with the rest of the grape bunch, a very large creature came. This creature proceeded to rip all of Shelly's friends and family off of the vine, where it then proceeded to unceremoniously dump them into a basket with hundreds of other grapes. Shelly watched in horror as her loved ones were taken away, and heard their agonized cries as they lamented the severing of their stems. After the creature had made it's rounds, ripping grapes from their homes and causing a fair amount of chaos, it then poured the contents of it's bucket into a massive container of sorts. The creature climbed into the massive container, and Shelly listened in petrified horror as all her loved ones were trampled to a quick, juicy death.





OH GOD NOOOOOOOOO *splat*



Suddenly, before Shelly could react (any reaction would've been futile, what with her being a stationary grape and all), Shelly felt herself being crushed. She screamed as she felt herself ripped from her stem and dumped into a basket. Shelly eventually went into shock and passed out from the pain.

When Shelly awoke, she found herself in a strange place. All around her were the groans and pathetic whimpers of dying grapes. Shelly quickly noticed that she was feeling quite hot, and discovered to her dismay that she was laying directly within a ray of sunlight that was peeking through the strange structure she was in. Unable to move, Shelly eventually produced a blood-curdling scream as the sun slowly dried the life from her broken, dying little body. She remained like this for 40 days.




Pic unrelated. Also adorable.

 Because God hated her, Shelly was the only grape to survive this drying process. She was soon shipped off to an undisclosed location, where she was crammed into a tiny little box with a bunch of other grapes. Shelly had just enough life in her to wish that she were dead, as she spent the next few weeks stuck in a tiny container surrounded by shriveled little grape corpses. Soon, her particular box of dead grapes was purchased by a young child. This child managed to eat every single dead grape except Shelly, whom the child had unknowingly dropped while grasping around the box for more food. Shelly soon died in a small puddle off the side of a road. She died scared and alone.



Yay!



Becoming Stagnant

Today, I realized that I live in a shitty 80's rom-com movie.

It sounds odd. Allow me to elaborate. Technically speaking, this is my blog, and you as the reader have absolutely no input as to what goes in it, so I suppose it's a bit pointless asking for your permission to elaborate. Moving on.

Over the years, I've noticed certain...things, within my community. Everyday things that make me pause for a second and think "huh, that was odd." Small oddities, almost like something that you would see in a movie. These little occurrences are frequent and trivial little things, and I've come to view them as chance events with no particular importance.

Today, all that changed.

It started innocently enough. I entered my Western Civilizations class, eager to finish it up and head home. As the bell rang and the class settled in, I was struck by another of my "movie moments". Everything was perfect-the teacher slowly paced the room, eyeing every student and giving us a brief synopsis on the influence of philosophy on Greek culture. The students bathed in a sea of apathy and fatigue, desperately wishing for a way to silence our underpaid overseer. I silently battled exhaustion with the power of doodling, idly drawing a tapestry of whimsical imagery in my notebook in an effort to stay awake. I looked up from my notebook and surveyed everyone in the class. The clothing, the way they carried themselves, the subtle-as-a-bulldozer texting methods of those who wished to remain unnoticed.

Then it happened.

The moment crystallized. Every detail, every color flashed with brilliance. My vision swam and I became dizzy as the image burned itself into my brain. A thought, a terrible hypothesis the likes of which I couldn't begin to fathom was forming, fragmented thoughts coalescing into a monstrous and amorphous shape that I couldn't bear to look at. Panicking, I asked for permission to go to the bathroom.

Stumbling out of the classroom, I made my way to the cafeteria, towards where the restrooms were. I was reminded of The Truman Show, when Truman's suspicions that his world isn't quite right are all reaffirmed. Mind you, I wasn't under the impression that I was being recorded and televised to the nation, but I couldn't shake the feeling that my entire world was...fake. Trapped within an insulated bubble.

Before I could reach the restroom, my ear was caught by a nearby conversation. A young man named Andrew, known throughout the school as being the personification of a meathead, was regaling a gaggle of young nubile-bodied females with a story. I paused, listened in for a minute, and felt my horror grew. This guy, this Andrew, this perfect movie-trope in a school choked with every conceivable cliche in the book. The thick neck gorilla-man, the guy that currently holds the bench press record for our school, the one whose voice drawls at the speed of hardening molasses while he enlightens his crowd with a tale of him apparently beating the everloving shit out of somebody that got on his bad side. The Jock.

Like this guy, but functionally retarded and just unreasonably massive.

I cast about in a fruitless attempt to convince myself that it wasn't true. I pirouetted around and there, strutting through the middle of the cafeteria like Athenian goddesses, walked a clump of no less than 7 make-up laden sex idols. It seemed as if every attractive girl had banded together into one hormone-baiting superpack, and were in the process of flaunting their obvious control of the entire school. The Mean Girls.

Like this, but all of them were white and platinum blonde.



They were everywhere. Every stereotype, every God-forsaken social clique was present and accounted for. Suddenly, the amorphous terror was complete, the fragmented "movie moments" solidifying into one terrifying conclusion. My childhood has already been written in hundreds of screenplays and award-winning movies, nearly everything I've known up to this point has already been written.

I live in a movie.

Not literally, of course. But my community, my school and friends, almost every facet of my midwestern whitebred suburban existence has already been experienced by a thousand fictional movie characters. The stoners, the hipsters, the band kids, theater kids, football jocks, lax bros. The volleyball girls that have all but replaced the cheerleaders as the dominators of the sexual-appeal leaderboards (maybe that's a bit sexist, but it's totally true). The out-of-touch faculty that has no idea how to approach the 21st century. Everyone here was just a pathetic rehash of the "laughable" cliches from the romantic comedies that plagued the 1980's. The cliches that we've all seemingly tricked ourselves into believing aren't relevant anymore. The cliches that are alive and flourishing, now more than ever, in this purebred caucasian paradise of shallowness and material wealth.

Now that's all a bit melodramatic, but you get my point. Basically everything I know comes from a movie. Whether the movies came first or not is irrelevant; what matters is that my life has become stagnant. Everything has already been written, every action has been performed. Heck, we even have a token jive-talking black chick who's always going on about some "skinny ass white boy tryna get dis piece a chocolate ass," (I wish to God I were making that quote up, but I'm not). I've made a habit of joking that I go to school with a bunch of Barbie dolls, but it's never taken such a literal meaning until now.

Existential crisis, man.

My Brief-But-Terrifying Foray Into The World of Sleeping Aids

"Just take two of these and go straight to bed," my mother explained as she handed me a couple of tablets from her prescription sleeping pills.

"Are you entirely sure that I'm supposed to be taking these?" I inquired.

"Of course, I'm your mother. Now go to bed."

Figuring that any possibilities of hospitalization as a result of these mystery pills were totally her fault, I happily tossed them down my throat and prepared myself for a night of good sleep. Assuming you read the title of this post, you've probably already deduced that my night wasn't exactly peaceful. To put it gently, it was absolutely batshit.

Stupid batshit.

After 20 minutes, nothing happened. A little while later, nothing continued to happen. Frustrated by this lack of eventfulness, I began to toss and turn in a vain attempt to get myself comfortable. While casually adjusting my blanket, I saw something peculiar within one of the folds of my sheets. Curious, I peered in for a closer look, until suddenly I spazzed and became trapped within the confines of my blanket. I thrashed about in a blind panic, dimly wondering why it was becoming so hard to free myself from this simple entanglement.

I soon resigned myself to trying to get comfortable in the blanket rather than try to break free from it's wily grasp. As I lay under the covers in darkness, I quickly became amazed as my blanket appeared to transform, right before my eyes, into a cave! Fascinated, I glanced down to my torso, and discovered that a group of strangely-proportioned garden gnomes had gained a foothold on my chest. I began to engage them in conversation, where I learned terrible secrets. This strange race of miniscule beings (less than 3 apples tall, if I were to make a proper guess) were apparently being hunted by an abominable race of giant flying worms that had an odd habit of wearing dashing sunglasses while feasting on their victims. As the walls of my blanket-cave slowly changed their colors, I was warned by my small garden gnome companion.

"beware leaving the confines of this shelter, lest thine flesh be rendered to shreds by the evil worm demons."

Tempted, I peeked out of blanket, and no shit there was a worm at the foot of my bed. As soon as it saw me it darted for safety behind my bed, but I'll be damned if I let that little bastard run away. Stumbling out of bed, I was taken aback by how heavy my legs had suddenly become. It felt as if lead had been poured into every blood vessel in my thigh, and I could feel it streaming through my body with every step. Losing my balance, I stumbled into the wall face-first and slowly slid my way down to the floor, where I proceeded to crawl into the adjacent room and stare at the ceiling for half an hour. Later, I slowly maneuvered my way back into bed and finally passed out. by this point, it was 3 in the morning.

In the morning, my cousin came to wake me up for school. But instead of his typical "Hey buddy, you needa get outta bed," he was adorned with a fur-trimmed cape and crown, and began regaling me with tales of a journey that I had to undertake in order to complete my journey to Oh my God I was a God damn knight in shining armor. I sprinted out of my bed and jumped into my couch, where my dog proceeded to talk to me and inform me that the portal was in my shower. I bounded for the shower as quickly as I could, turned the water on and waited to be transported.

As soon as the water hit me, I was immediately shaken out of my trance and realized that I had just creeped the ever-loving fuck out of my cousin. Defeated, I quietly got my things together and went to school.

My mom has some potent shit.