Free At Last

The past few days have been a lot more relaxing and less stressful than I can remember in a long time. I'm still working on my final project for my online class and trying to figure out my last photo essay, but other than that, I've had more time to do things I've really needed to do. Like working out, reading, and making some money at the Hut. I finished reading Hunter S. Thompson's "Better Than Sex" last night. I'm not sure whether I'm huge fan of Thompson. All I really got out of the book is that politics is a bitch, Richard Nixon was evil and George Bush Sr. is just as evil. A lot of this I really knew. It was hard to tell what was semi-fiction in the book and what was for the most part true. The saddest part of it all is that in Hunter's world, it was all true. Maybe I should try to read another one of his books like "Fear and Loathing" in Las Vegas. "Better than Sex" was actually part of his Gonzo Papers Collection. It's possible that's why the book had very little direction to it.

Today I started reading Nick Hornby's "A Long Way Down" which Nora bought me as a graduation gift. It's a book about four people who meet on a rooftop that is infamous for people committing suicide off of. I just realized that it's really wierd that I just finished reading a book about a guy who committed suicide and now I'm reading one about four people who try to committ suicide. That's actually just pure coincidence. (Somehow I feel like I'm going to get several calls from friends tonight asking if I'm alright.)

I also just finished watching Ken Burns' "Unforgivable Blackness." The life story of the first black heavyweight champion. I think this is the first time I really realized the ignorance of so many people in the first half of the century. I think it must have been Burns' way of portraying Johnson and white people, but it affected me a lot. I couldn't imagine living in a period where about 50 white people would line up on a bridge or near tree where they had just hung another human being and stand there with dead corpse and pose for a picture like they had just bagged a deer. Makes me sick to my stomach.

Stephen got a job at the Journal Gazette-Times Courier so congratulations to him. I wonder if this means there's no shot at an internship there now. I'm still waiting to hear back from the . I really hope I get that now. If not I'll still try to pressure the Times-Courier or I'll just hang out for the next few months and work at Pizza Hut or Roc's or find a factory job around here. Doing any of those couldn't be good for my mental health though. I need out of Charleston in a bad way.