Punks and Pucks

Thank you!

Thank you very much!

I don't see where he says he thinks all people with a brain tumour should die. Do you? Now, I don't agree with his statement, at all. I think health care is a human right and that if someone is sick, affordable or free treatment should be provided, like in the rest of the First World. if I wrote for a news station or website, my headline would be "GOP Rep. Dreier Says "Million and Millions" of Dollars Shouldn't be Spent on People With Pre-Existing Conditions". That's taking words he actually used and turning them into a piece of information, without any slant or bias. This kind of hyperbole is NO DIFFERENT than what Fox and CNN do, but for some reason people just don't seem to notice or care. Liberal communities on social networking websites flock to AddictingInfo as if it's a beacon of truth without bothering to ask questions or do research on their own. I have no problem with editorials - I run a blog that has nothing but. I don't even care if they're factually inaccurate editorials. What I do care about s when someone takes an editorial that's factually inaccurate and tries to pass it off to people that want to believe the subject matter is true as "news". Not only is that pandering, but it's offensive to the intelligence of every single member of the progressive community. According to their site, "Addicting Info started as a resource to discredit all the lies and propaganda that the right-wing spreads." I fail to see how creating their own myths and fabrications disproves anything. Not to mention, even though I am proudly liberal, our side fucks up, too. Our representatives make mistakes. Our senetors can and have been bought. I'm sure plenty of left-leaning elected officials in our country have said and done insanely stupid things and have created their own myths, so why not drop the partisan bullshit and just provide an investigative journalism service that treats every politician equally? The internet can always use more of those. The website would probably double it's viewer base if it took a truly balacned view of things. Our society is collapsing because of the way media has divided us. We're not a society of curious people who seek facts and accuracy. We're a society of people who sit and wait for a cue card from Rush Limbaugh or Ed Schultz that tells us what emotion to feel at which group of people on that particular day. We're a society that lets emotion dictate how we think. and not logic. Because we put emotions first, we're easily manipulated by just about everyone. When i see my fellow Progressives, people who consider themselves to be more "enlightened" than the people watching cable news, fall for the same old shock doctrine, I lose more and more faith.

America, we can learn from this. Our currency is outdated, inconvenient, and an overall pain in the ass. Changing the appearance of our money wouldn't change how we use it or what it's worth, it would just make it easier for everyone to use. How is the middle class going to go out and create jobs through buying products if our money is annoying to use?

I'm glad someone does, especially a Doctor Who fan.

I was in my early teens when I first realized I was attracted to both sexes. I used to dream of encounters with other wome more than I did with men. At first, i was open about it. I felt no real reason to hide who i was. However, the bullying by both students and teachers at school and the lack of acceptance from my parents forced me to hide who I truly was until only a few months ago. I'd secretly had sexual relations with a few women(which were always so much better than those with men, by the way), but never told anyone. Though I genuinely love the bodies of women, I've never wanted to be a man. I love being a woman, and I've never felt that i was supposed to be a different gender, or that i had the brain of a man. The way i am now is who I am, but I know that's not how it is for everyone. I won't pretend to understand the struggles and mental hardships that transgendered people have to live through, especially since I've never questioned my own gender. However, I know the pain of having to hide my true self, since I did it for 7 years. What i find most offensive is when people ask why people seeking gender reassignment surgery can't just "be happy with who they are", as if changing sex is on the same level as getting a boob job, or dying ones hair. All transgendered people want is for their outside to finally match who they've always been on the inside. It's a brave, expensive, and extremely painful process that almost all insurance providers won't even cover. Tom Gabel was a talented, though rude, person. Now that she's on the road to being who she's always felt she was, i will stand by her. Any person who considers themself to be a punk, or a member of the punk rock community, should do the same. Mainstream society makes life hard enough for those of us in the sexual minority. Punk rock is better than that.

I've started, then deleted a blog about what I'm about to write approximately 7 times in the past few years. Every time I get about halfway done, I either break down crying about the situation, or get scared of the shit storm I knew was going to start. Today, I don't care. It'll be three years tomorrow that my life almost ended, and it's time people knew what actually happened, and why I became such a different person. This goes back to early 2009. A then very close friend of mine, Nathan, told me about this band that had essentially gotten stranded with him in Michigan. They were called Latin for Truth, and all but two of them were teenagers. I forget how they ended up there for so long, but Nathan said they were all extremely great people, so he didn't mind. Their name came up to me again a few weeks later, when another old friend, Dylan of the band kids of Survival, approached me to book a tour package both bands were on at cafe Metropolis for May 7th. I cleared eveyrthing with the venue and confirmed the date. I wasn't thrilled about booking a four package show on a Thursday in the middle of Finals week, but i wanted to help out an old friend, this band that was supposedly full of great people, and the other two bands. Almost anyone who's ever worked wih me in booking a show knows that I went out of my way to do everything I possibly could for the bands I booked, even locals. My priority was helping bands and giving kids a place to go. I didn't want fame. I didn't want money. I wanted everyone around me to be happy. About two weeks before the show, I realized I didn't have a ride home from the Bamboozle festival that was being held in New Jersey the weekend before. Someone told me Latin for Truth would be at the festival promoting, so I thought I would ask to ride with them from that weekend until the Wilkes-Barre show, in exchange for some food and some places to stay. I approached the band, they agreed, and everything seemed great. Between then and Bamboozle, I became very close with two members of the band, Charles, the oldest, and Christian, one of the tenagers. Christian and I would talk about absolutely nothing, but Charles and I would have very serious conversations about virtually everything. We'd both had pretty difficult lives, and we seemed to vibe well. I developed a lot of respect for him. Bamboozle came and went, and soon I was off on the road with the band. Sunday night we stayed in a hotel parking lot in East Orange, and I was convinced I was going to get killed. I bought everyone food at KFC, and we all hung out and tried to avoid the shitty weather outside. Monday morning came, and we'd all gone inside to visit with a friend they had inside the hotel. When we got back out, the guys had noticed they'd locked their keys in the Toyota 4Runner we were using to tour. I used my AAA card to get a guy to come open the door, and we went on our way. We spent all of Monday wandering around north-central New Jersey while the band waited to hear back from someone on their label. We went to malls, Vintage Vinyl Records, and a Dunkin Donuts, where I bought everyone donuts. That night, we stayed with my friend Bryan and his yappy little dog, Cody.  Tuesday we drove to Connecticut, where the tour package had a show at the Space in Hamden. I spent most of the show drowsy on a ouch in the back, as I'd come down with some kind of illness. I had a bad fever that I couldn't seem to shake. My friend Mat asked his friend Joe, singer of Shut Up and Deal, if we could crash at their band house that night and he said yes. We, along with the band Veara, stayed with SUAD and had a pretty great night. Wednesday was Long Island, where we played with this cool little local band called Holden Caufield that really, really loved Brand New. The original plan was to drive to my house Wednesday night, as it was only a three hour drive, but the band found a place to stay on the Island, so we ended up crashing with a set of teenage twins and their awesome, stereotypical Long Island mom.  I still felt terrible, but I was keeping my spirits up. I again bought everyone food that night. Then came Thursday. We awake to realize that someone had left a door partially open the night before, which caused our battery to die. We sat around for hours trying to figure out what to do until someone in a nearby house gave us a jump. We drove most of the way, then stopped at a Wawa off 115 I'd been to before with my cousin. A Newborn thriller, another band on the package, was there as well. We hung out for a minute and then headed out to finish the last hour or so of our trip. This is the part I hate telling. We were almost off of 115 when Charles made a turn down a road I didn't recognize Laurell Run Road. The GPS had told him to go there even though it wasn't necessary. I wanted to speak up and say "Hey, we can just stay on this road. I know where we are, somewhat", but I was exhausted and my throat was killing me. I just wanted to get to Cafe Metropolis so I could get some pizza and a tea at the place across the street and enjoy my day. The road began to get windy, and I started to feel like Charles was going faster than he should be. The next thing I remember is dust flying up over the window, Cory screaming "BREAKS!", and then... nothing. I remember my brain telling me not to die, and clinging on to the seat in front of me as hard as I could. The next thing I remember is being pulled out of the vehicle and placed on the street. I think I fell. Someone brought me my phone and I called my mom. I was spitting up glass. My legs were covered in blood. my stomach hurt, and my back was killing me. There was also glass in my ears and nose. My Have Heart shorts were soaked with blood. I looked and saw that our trailer was on its side, and I assumed that's what made us stop rolling. To my left was a place they called Giant's Despair. We should have been dead, but we weren't. The ambulance and fire department came. I remember walking over to the ambulance, but one of the band members, Michael, told me to go away. An EMT brought me back over anyway and cleaned up a little bit of my blood. Two of the guys were going in the ambulance, but I chose not to. If Ieft, the other three would be stranded, and I wasn't going to leave my friends like that. I sucked up my pain and waited for my parents. They came and took the rest of us to the ER. It was trauma night at the hospital, and because of this it took me over an hour just to get interviewed by a receptionist. This was the night I decided that I hated the American health care system. The guys that rode in the ambulance were taken into rooms immediately, and the other three were treated soon after. Some of Christian's friends from Altoona came and brought them food, but no one offered me anything. I finally ate at around 10:00, having been in the ER since shortly after 6. My brother brought me a plate of food he and Dad made the night before. Around midnight, a nurse came to get me for some X-rays. She never asked if I was pregnant. After that, around 1:30, I was told I wouldn't see a doctor until the morning. The band had left by now, having been treated and bought a hotel room by those other people. I flipped out, demanded my X-rays, and went to the hospital my family would normally use. They took me in immediately, cleaned up the rest of my blood (the other place made me sit covered in dry blood for 9 hours), and gave me some pain medicine. They did their own X-rays and told me the pain I felt was probably just from contusions. I was sent home the next day, though I ended up in the hospital again the following weekend because I was still sick. I was still having a hard time walking properly by the end of May. I was in a deep depression. I had hardly even heard from any of my friends, I was in horrible pain, and I was lonely. I ended up dropping out of school a week and a half before I would have graduated because I couldn't be bothered to do anything. At this point, I was convinced I was going to end my life. I thought the fact that I had survived a roll over without a seat belt was a fluke, and that it was just time to go. I'd heard from the LTF guys a little, and everyone seemed okay. Michael needed surgery, but it was nothing major. That summer was the worst of my life, aside from two incredible Menzingers shows. On top of everything my uncle had tried to kill himself, I wasn't hearing from my close friends, and two people who used to be my best friends decided it was a good time to slander my name all over the internet, ruining a bunch of opportunities for me. The Detroit Red Wings and The Menzingers willed me to survive, until one morning in September. My back hurt so badly and I was peeing every five minutes. My mom took me to the doctor, where I was again told I was fine, but he signed me up for physical therapy anyway. It took two more months before I got an MRI and found out that I had real injuries from the accident, aside from my obvious depression. I had a compression fracture, a bulging disc, and spondylolesthesis. I started taking heavy narcotics every day, and kept up with physical therapy even though it didn't do anything for me. By this time, I had medical bills piling up. I needed help. I originally wasn't going to try and sue anyone because I'm not that kind of person, but I needed money, and working was out of the question. I decided to go after the insurance company, and my lawyer thought it would be a pretty simple case. That is, however, until Latin For Truth started ignoring all of my phone calls and told their insurance agent I was never on tour with them, or in the accident. I want to make this clear. I was NEVER suing Latin for Truth. I would never. These were people I saw as friends and who I respected. I was suing their insurance for a small amount of money so I wouldn't have medical debt and so I could have a small amount of money to live off of until I figured out how to live with my injuries. I just needed help, that's all. I didn't ask for a cut of the donations people sent them because it wasn't my place. I didn't ask anything of them. I suffered in pain for 9 hours just so they wouldn't be stranded. All I wanted was the same kind of consideration. I had to drop the suit because, to this day, the band denies I was on the tour, and none of my evidence was good enough for their insurer. Even if it was, because they lied they'd be dropped and thrown in jail, and I'm TOO FUCKING NICE to let that happen to them. Now I'm 21, can barely move on most days, constantly taking medicine, usually grumpy because I'm in pain, unable to lose weight or work out because I can barely move. If I get pregnant, I'll probably end up in a wheelcair by my third trimester. Great! I don't know who the band has told about this, if anyone. Every statement they gave post-accident didn't include me. I wonder if Charles still has my yellow Converse and brand new Get Up Kids hoodie. I wonder if Christian thought he was clever by looking up porn on my laptop when I wasn't looking (which, by the way, was barely functioning after the accident). I wonder if any of them remember anything at all, or if this is just my own little Hell that I get to relive every May 7th. There is no case now. I wouldn't file one anyway anymore. I just wish one of them would apologize for lying. I blame no one for what happened, but I blame them all for making the years after what we lived through exponentially harder than they needed to be. It hurts even more when I hear that they're still making music and living their dream, while I can't tour anymore. And people start saying I'm an asshole in 4... 3... 2...

6 out of 7 nights a week, I have vivid dreams where I'm still in America. When I wake up from those dreams, I have no idea where I am for about 10 seconds. I'm happy with my life now, but up until about a month ago I was still crying multiple times a day. I wasn't sad, scared, or in any danger, yet I couldn't stop myself from breaking out into tears over the smallest of things. I had no idea what it was exactly that would set me off until a Lion King advertisement came on the television one afternoon, and I immediately started to quietly weep, hoping my husband wouldn't notice. It was then that my demon finally revealed himself to me, and his face was that of change. The Lion King was the first movie I ever saw  in theaters, and every single memory I have of the film is from a time when my parents were still married, and my outlook on life in general was still idealistic and hopeful. Just hearing the chorus to the Circle of Life brings me so much pain and joy that I haven't even been able to watch my blu-ray copy of the movie, for fear of ruining the experiance for everyone else in the room. Ever since I met my change demon, some of my "quirks" have began to make more sense, the most notable being my inability to like records made by bands I love that aren't just their best record part two. The Menzingers latest release, On the Impossible Past, is exactly what one would expect a Menzingers release on Epitaph Records would sound like, and that's absolutely not a bad thing. So, why don't I like it? I mean, there's nothing wrong with it. It sounds great, and some of the songs are already playing in my head. The Menzingers are one of my favorite bands, and while I should be excited that i have some new material to enjoy, I can't, because my change demon won't let me. This happened about a week ago when I sat down with the new Jealous Sound release and found myself equally as distraught. I tried so hard to love both records, spending hours listening each over and over again, but my brain won't let me enjoy them, and that, too, makes me cry. I need to learn to accept the fact that things change, especially bands. Every producer is going to make a band sound different. I could give two different producers the same songs and they'd each give me back two completely different records. My issue, though, is not with the music itself, but with the fact that it's new music, and that it further instills in me the reality of what my life is now. Gone are the days where I'd save up every penny just so I could afford a way to Cafe Metropolis for a Menzingers set. Gone are the days where I still went to shows, period. I'm growing up, bands from my town are becoming the success stories I always knew they'd be, and I need to embrace it all. Maybe one day I'll be able to watch the Lion King with my husband, and maybe one day I'll be able to put on the newest Menzingers LP and be able to truly love it. Until then, I guess I just have to try and learn to love change....

People always ask me why the Detroit Red Wings mean so much to me. I've never lived in Detroit, and I've only actually been to the city once. Having lived in both New York City and northeast Pennsylvania, one would assume that I would either support the Rangers, Flyers, or Penguins. While I had watched a few Rangers games on TV before I officially started calling myself a hockey fan, and while floor hockey was always my favorite activity in gym class, I was never able to feel a true "connection" with a sports team until May of 2009. I remember being very sick, and very injured. I had been involved in a roll-over car accident on May 7th, and it was one of the few times in my life that I wasn't wearing a seatbelt. The cops and medics at the seen all told me I shouldn't have lived. I know no one meant to be rude by saying that, but those words wouldn't leave my head for months. On top of the accident, I was battling a bad case of the flu. I was on a lot of different medications, so the weeks following the accident are quite blurry. I just remember being depressed and scared, and unable to find comfort in anything. That was, however, until I turned on Versus one day. It was the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and the Detroit Red Wings were taking on the Pittsburgh Penguins. I decided I'd watch the game, just to see if anyone was going to fight. I was pretty close to bed-ridden at the time, so me writing that I couldn't pull myself away from the match isn't very significant, but by the end of the second period, I was completely engulfed in the game. At first, I couldn't decide who I was actually cheering for, but after a while it became clear that I was going to be a Red Wings fan.  They had great puck posession, they seemed to always be "calm", and they all seemed to be technical players, like they could do just about anything with a puck. The playoffs soon ended, and somehow, Marc-Andre Fleury was able to give the Penguins a game 7 Stanley Cup win. As sad as I was that my new favorite team didn't win the Stanley Cup, I was even more sad about not being able to watch any more hockey over the summer. I spent all of the time between mid-June and early October watching highlights, studying statistics, and reading about various notable players. By the time October came around, I was beyond ready for my first true "active" NHL season. For a while, I was only able to watch a game if Versus carried it, otherwise I'd only be able to listen online via the Red Wings local sports radio station. Thankfully, by February, I had been able to convince my mom and her husband to let me get Dish network in my bedroom so that I could get NHL Center Ice. This, along with an old online friend donating me his Steve Yzerman road jersey he had from when he was 10, finally made me feel like a real hockey fan. I began watching every game I could, even if it was two teams I didn't care about. I just wanted hockey in my life. During this time, people started to attack me for being a "bandwagon" Red Wings fan. I tried to brush it off, but it did hurt. One day, in an effort to get people to leave me alone and let me enjoy my new found love, I did some research and tried to find the worst team in the league over the past few seasons. Soon after, I started declaring that the Detroit Red Wings were my favorite team, but I also cheered for the Toronto maple Leafs. People began to leave me alone, and I was able to discover the greatness that is play-by-play commentary a la Joe Bowen. Since May of 2009, the Detroit Red Wings (and, to a lesser extent, the Toronto Maple Leafs) have given me so much joy. The feeling I get when Lidstrom, Datsyuk, Filppula, or any of the Wings score a goal is something that I can't even begin to describe. Now that I'm in Finland, I stay up late, sometimes until dawn, just to see my teams play some good games. One thing I've never been able to do is see the Red Wings play in person. I've seen the Leafs play the Devils, but I've never gotten the chance to be in the same room as my absolute favorite team. I tried to attend the game against the New Jersey Devils last season at Prudential Center in New Jersey, but I couldn't find a ride. I only see 4% of 20/20 vision, so i can not drive. Even watching hockey can be next to impossible sometimes, especially live. However, great announcers like Ken Daniels and Joe Bowen make it easy on me, and when I'm at an arena, and I'm close enough to the ice, i can usually hear what's going on, just by the sounds of the skates, hits, and sticks on the puck. One of the reasons other sports, like football or basketball, never did anything for me is because they're visual only. With hockey, you don't have to see it to understand it.. and that just makes me so happy. I don't pray, but if I did, I'd be asking for a way to get to the 2013 Winter Classic, to see the team that saved my life play a team that just plain makes me feel good(especially Reimer and Grabovski!). Tickets are probably going to be expensive enough, let alone the flight from Finland, but I hope that there's a way I'll be able to come up with the money between now and then. I'd do absolutely anything to be there. The Winter Classic is just a game, but to me, hockey is more than just a sport... it's life.