Bowie: 51
Huntingtown: 49

Round two, down.

Wednesday, March 21st
Bowie (Prosecution) vs. Huntingtown (Defense)
Upper Marlboro Courthouse

Wish us luck, and let me know if you might be interested in coming.

Bowie: 47
Potomac: 37

Round one, down.

water.
by ben garmoe
1/22/07

Wistful longing for green grass long withered
Bittersweet pleasure mixes with the uncertain taste
This random success won’t enclose us much longer
Until glass case will shatter and roof will cave in
If this is rebellion, then I’m tossing the rules
Out of sight, out of mind…
Isn’t that what they say?
You can’t force it upon me, I’m not your typical man
I don’t have the clay mind that you seem to fit me with
I lust for success, for eye upon this pathetic figure
Maybe my muscular mind can beef up the rest
Whoever said that mistakes don’t occur
Even when your intentions just get thrown out the door
Like an unwelcome cricket in a midwinter night
The little voice in my head finally went
Finally broke, cracked and blasted off
Like that infamous shot, it set off a war
Between logic and ideal
Between the wanted and picture perfect
Between the lust for freedom
And the love of control
Bittersweet—what does that even mean
Oxymoronic yet disgustingly synonymous
The water keeps rising
But it’s quenching my thirst
Who cares if it eventually drowns me
At least I won’t be thirsty
You can’t live without water
Yet there is no such thing as too much of a good thing
So it keeps you alive
Until it drowns you
And yet we still choose to dive in.

I just don't understand our school system. Look, I realize how difficult it is to make the call about school and choosing whether to close and/or go home early. I really do. Weather is unpredictable, and no matter what you do, someone isn't going to like it. But lets be serious here. If the school system was truly committed to our safety, they would abandon this ridiculous policy of waiting until the last possible minute to announce the closure or delay of school. Anne Arudel and Montgomery almost always announce their decision the evening before, and yes-- once in awhile, they get it wrong. But a lot of the time, Prince George's ends up make the exact same decision, just at 5 AM the following day. The only time this year where Prince George's has announced their decision regarding the closure or delay of school was the Wednesday after the ice storm, when the roads resembled an ice skating rink and any idiot could have deduced the fact that everyone was going to be staying home the next day. But not even the next two days, both of which were relatively clear decisions (as far as I could tell), did they make the decision before 4 AM. Yes, I understand the desire to make the proper choice as many times as possible, but let's look at some logic here. Waiting through the night does no good, for one simple reason. It always gets colder at night. Yes, sometimes it gets colder then other times-- but it always gets colder. Thus, if there is snow on the ground, it is basically going to be the same conditions at 5 AM the following morning, which is almost always before sunrise (if not, the sun has not been up long enough to make any significant difference). When the school system is unsure of what to do because they believe it is too close to call, there's a very simple remedy. You call a conditional two hour delay. Announce that schools will be delayed for two hours the following day-- and also announce that you will be reevaluating in the morning, and it is possible that you may choose to cancel school if you feel it appropriate the following morning-- however, you will not, regardless of circumstance, rescind the two-hour delay. Thus, all parents, students and employees can at least be certain there will be a delay, and a cancelation is just an added bonus (or complication, depending on your point of view). If it seems pretty clear that conditions are not safe at the time that the sun goes down, then cancel school for the following day. Things are not going to improve overnight-- regardless of how hard the snow plows work. Yes, snow plows make progress throughout the night, but no snow plow team is going to make all conditions safe for school to be held through the night hours. They will obviously dramatically improve the situation-- that is their job, and they do it effectively. However, if conditions are not safe the night before, cancel, and make the lives of everyone a little bit easier. If you're not sure, delay school and work from there in the morning, once the sun has risen and the plows and salt trucks have had a few extra hours to work. I understand that Prince George's County Schools were basically reduced to a joke by Andre Hornsby, and Dr. Deasy is making a strong effort to correct this. However, the county needs to apply some common sense to decisions like these. It's that simple.

I propose we tar and feather Ann Coulter. Anyone on board?

Sometimes, you have a day that is so completely arbitrary in its emotional choices that you can stop at the end and realize how incredibly lucky you are to be alive. Even when things are worrying you, when people are worrying you, when you're worried about things you're doing, when you're stressed and not too comfortable and feeling somewhat overwhelmed, you can still manage to just appreciate the sheer beauty of having life, and living it. Even when you feel like you're constantly having to watch your every move, at least you're living, breathing and creating a life to be remembered by. There's something special about it.

Isn't life odd?

See, this should have been a bad night. Everything this week was preparing me for this night to be a bad night. I've had a bad week, one of the worst in a long time-- but not for one real reason. I've been tired, stressed, unhealthy, on edge, frustrated and emotional. I spent most of school today bored (aside from my 95 PERCENT on Mac's test), and decorations were-- well, nothing special. I was anticipating tonight being even worse. Sitting at home isn't usually the life of the party.

But you know what? I was wrong. When you can have chinese take out, ice cream, the Rent soundtrack, Somerset Park and two amazing phone conversations with people I hadn't talked to in way too long, then you don't need anything else. You guys can have your dance memories, and I'm glad that people went and had a good time. But all of the stuff that's been bugging me this week, that I assumed would drive me crazy tonight-- just didn't. I made the right choice tonight, and I'm glad to know that.

Inside each one of us is, at our very core, a control freak.
You can tell me I’m wrong, and you can try to prove otherwise, but I’ll be
really frank. It’s the truth. Every single person wants control, in one way or
another. I know the political thing these days is to tell people that you’re
all about spontaneity and about letting life exist and happen the way it does,
but that is only applicable to a point. Being spontaneous and letting life
throw its various challenges at you can be very fun sometimes. It’s a way of
life that consists of a highly dramatic change from your typical flow, and
sometimes it can carry an appeal of mystery, of losing control of the car and
hoping you don’t crash. But despite how we may live on a temporary basis, that
is not how any of us truly feels. Just think about it logically. You approach a
basic situation, pick anything, really. You throw yourself into it. Obviously,
you have preconceived notions of how you want it to turn out, or you wouldn’t
have done it. You have a purpose for every action you take. Therefore, you want
to be able to play an actual part in ensuring that whatever your personal
agenda is, it gets accomplished. Whether you’re referring to a person or event
or anything, you want a solid footing on which to stand—that’s natural to
existence itself. You don’t want the quicksand, you want the concrete. Think
about when you look at people, and what they have done with their lives. Think
about the person that you look at and think “Man, they haven’t done anything in
their life except live in the moment.” Where are they? Most likely nowhere. If
you choose to live a life where you have no control over what happens, then you
simply leave yourself open to the sheer power of unpredictability. You stand
naked before something that you can’t even see, and you have absolutely no idea
what it is going to do to you. It may choose to gently reel you in and set you
down lightly on your feet, or it may grab you by the body and slam you to the
ground, so hard that you won’t be able to get up for a long time. Living in the
moment isn’t always a bad thing, but there is a reason that it’s only meant for
“the moment.” A certain someone made a joke to me this weekend that “men think
with whichever head has more blood”, and as horrible and filthy as that may be,
it sums up exactly why men have the reputation that we do—and that we, for the
most part, deserve. Often times, we choose to simply think in terms of what
will please us right then and there. We ignore the ramifications that may occur.
But I digress. The point is that control is something we want. It’s really
simple, actually. Go back to my original analogy of the car. If you let go of
the wheel of the car and just go, you’ll be fine initially. You’ll continue
going in whatever direction you were traveling. But eventually, life will throw
new challenges at you, and if you let life dictate what those challenges do to
you, then you’re just going to crash. If you let life dictate who you are, then
you are giving away your own personal creative control and control of your
individuality. You wouldn’t give that to another human, so why would you give
it to something so unpredictable? It’s all about control.

That, in a nutshell, is why change is such an incredibly
complex discussion. If I were to sit here and try and tackle every point of
discussion that change brings, it would be irrelevant by the time I was
finished, because so much would have changed. But like I said, control is at
the heart of the issue. See, the past is like a book. When you read a book, you
can decide if you liked it or not. If you really liked one part, then you can
remember and praise that part, and forget about the parts you didn’t enjoy. You
have the ultimate power—you can play a mini-deity who has the power to manipulate
every last aspect. The past is such an odd place to look at, because it wasn’t
any better then the present. I can’t emphasize that enough—your past is almost
identical to your present. Yes, the two are drastically different—but not
really. You experience all of the same things, in different forms. Life goes
up, and then goes down, and so on. You find new connections and you lose old
ones—it’s all of the same essence. But the beauty of the past is that you don’t
have to worry about any of it. It’s all over with. (One of my favorite moments
in movie history is the scene in the Lion King with Rafiki hitting Simba and
then ranting to him about the past—I’ll get there later). The past happened,
and it isn’t going to ever happen again. Therefore, it automatically gains a
certain appeal, of somewhat of a twisted uncertainty. You don’t really want the whole past back; you just want the ones that
you can grab onto and use to float in the present. The whole past would be
pointless to get back, like I just said. It’s the same as the present. You want
to grab onto those special, memorable moments that defined your happiness at
that time. You want that person, you want that animal, you want that kiss, you
want that place, you want that item, you want that state of mind, you want that
sheer joy and passion—whatever it may be that you remember. You have the power
to draw up and create whatever it is you want—you can be the artist, and in
essence, recreate your own life in your own mind. That is why the past carries
such an intense and inexplicable nostalgia. In a lot of ways, you just want a
highlight reel. You want to be able to put yourself back in those moments, and
let yourself just exist there. It’s a comfort zone, because you already know
that it was amazing. You already lived that moment, and you know that it was
spectacular.

But the solution to this is probably why the issue itself is
so difficult. You have to face change. If you can not step up and face change
and accept it, then you can’t live. Every second that passes is a second you
will never, ever, for the rest of your life, have again. It happened, it ended,
and it’s gone. That wonderful time, when everything felt perfect, will never
happen again. You’ll have moments like it, but that particular moment has permanently
passed. See, the way you handle change defines who you are. A coward sits alone
and lives every day in the past. A strong and powerful individual lives for
change, and accepts it. Successful
individuals do not dwell on the past. If you dwell on the past, you can’t
go anywhere. You are not providing yourself with the possibility to move
forward in life, because you are living in a realm of being that does not
exist. It can be accessed in your own mind, where you are the puppeteer. But
when things count, and when you are asked to define who you are, if you live in
the past, you will have no answer. You will have a story, perhaps, but not an
answer. You will have nothing of lasting value to offer, for the world has
moved on. The world is a cruel and heartless place in many ways. The very
essence of man is imperfection, and that is why change isn’t always for the
good, at least initially. But those who define who they are by whom they choose
to be are the people that we truly remember.

Now, let me move back a little. This is all very easy to
say, but it would be unfair to leave the issue there where it was at the end of
the last paragraph. See, to simply tell someone that change just must be
accepted is cruel and heartless. We exist with minds that remember for a
reason. The past is not worthless, nor is it a waste of time to occasionally
return to it. You are speaking with an individual who loves history more then
anything else. To put it in layman’s terms, to tell someone that “hey, change
is a part of life, and ya just gotta deal with it”, is low and degrading, and
is taking the mind for granted. Every single person is going to, at some point,
sit down and say that they wished that things hadn’t changed. If we immediately
condemned everyone who said that and automatically assumed that they were
showing an inherent naiveté to life, then we would be showing a brilliant
display of ignorance, to the highest degree possible. Our minds naturally tend towards the uncertain thoughts.  What I mean by that is that we naturally
dwell on life. We run it over in our minds; it’s how we make decisions every
day on every little detail. It is incredibly hard to deal with change. It is a
challenge that can reduce a strong man to tears. When a man who seems
impenetrable watches his dog die in his arms, are we to tell him that change is
simply occurring and he must move on? I dare say that anyone who would say such
a thing could probably be safely categorized as simply without logic or reason.
A person must accept their past. They must come to grips with the fact that it
happened, and no event, technology or science can change that. The past
occurred; at some point, it was the present. A person must take the time to
comprehend and acknowledge that the past is not just a story—it is their story.
Change must be embraced as it chooses to come, because without it, there would
be no past. However, a person must spend just enough time in the past to
process and accept it. Then, they must persevere and live on.

Change is very emotional. It causes sleepless nights and
tearful evenings; it is often responsible for dramatic mood swings and
impromptu fits of frustration. The emotion it causes is real and tangible. As I
stated earlier, and can not emphasize enough, change has a certain power and
uncertainty to it that makes it so incredibly difficult to accept.  When you are looking back at a year where you
feel like your very existence was meaningless and worthless, you don’t want to
accept change. You want to go back and fix what has gone wrong. Yes, there is a
motivation to try and write the future, but it is so much easier to rewrite the
past. But despite the difficulty that this brings, it will happen. Change will
happen, regardless of whether you acknowledge it or not. It is worth taking the
time to appreciate the past for what it is; in fact, it would be foolish not to
do such a thing. But with change comes the opportunity to write a new past—a
past that you can be proud of. You can revisit the topic of change and the past
and of control in another time, and see yourself as someone who stood up and
embraced the sheer power and awesomeness of life and existence. You can make a
difference and establish a legacy, and you can leave the echoes of your name to
bounce around the world for years after you have gone. Or, you can try and
embrace something that isn’t real anymore. You can try and embrace something
with no substance, but only the tainted eyeglass of memory. Maybe it can help
you feel better right then and there, but it won’t allow you to succeed and it
will simply hold you down to the place you are at.

Let me close by returning to the Lion King example. Rafiki
hits Simba on the head with his walking stick, to which Simba angrily replies,
asking why Rafiki choose to do such a thing. Rafiki simply replies that “it
doesn’t matter, because it’s in the past.” This is exactly what I mean. You
don’t get the past back, ever. So why live in it? Why subject yourself to some
idealistic alternative universe where you can play god, when you have an actual
life to experience? Change will happen—sometimes it is incredibly difficult to
wrap your mind around, and sometimes it can bring you to the point of tears.
But it is real. It happens. And if you learn to embrace and accept it, you can
make yourself into the individual that you truly are, in the very core of you. You
can learn from your mistakes and remember with fondness the moments that you
loved and enjoyed. But the ultimate point is to not let it stop there. Create
new moments and memories that you can have to treasure. Don’t make them so that
you can use them as your foundation, but make them so that you can use them as
a part of you. Let them mold you, but then continue to move on and change more.
Change presents a problem to us, because it represents the exact opposite of
what we want. It carries an unpredictability and uncertainty—but there is
nothing that we can do about that except live, and never let the past define
who we are. Change will never stop coming, but its how you deal with it that
truly matters.

I'm
still alive, I promise. I'm sick, and I won't be there tomorrow, and I
may not make rehersal again tomorrow night. I'm not quite sure yet. I'm
feeling better then I was earlier today, but if I showed up tomorrow,
some of you might be writing this same note on Thursday or Friday. Just
keep me in mind and what not-- I bounce back pretty quick from this
stuff, so I'll be up and around in no time.