...High Fidelity quotes.

Yeah. I know. It's been done before. But considering that I'm taking this whole "Top Five" list thing and running with it, I think we're going to start off with an homage to the source. And we're going to do it in a truely homage-istic manner. Here are, in no particular order, my...

Top Five Autobiographical High Fidelity Quotes:
1. Look at these. I used to dream I'd be surrounded by exotic women's underwear forever and ever. Now I know they just save their best pairs for the nights they know they're going to sleep with somebody.

2. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

3. Well, I've been listening to my gut since I was 14 years old, and frankly speaking, I've come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains.

4. If you wanted to screw me up, you should have gotten to me sooner.

5. Dick: I guess it looks as if you're reorganizing your records. What is this though? Chronological?
Rob: No...
Dick: Not alphabetical...
Rob: Nope...
Dick: What?
Rob: Autobiographical.
Dick: No fucking way.

Here goes nothing:
1. Remember when you were little and you had all these romantic ideas about life and the universe and how things were going to go and you were going to get a happily ever after? Yeah. Right. I don't know if it's sarcasm or the self-destructive tendencies that so many other twenty somethings have hardwired into them, but everytime happily ever after seems to hit, something happens. I used to think it was everything else taking the proverbial dump on me. Recently, though, I'm not so sure. (And not recently like this past week. It's been about two years since the thought got beaten into my head, and I've only really forced myself to stop dancing around the subject uncomfortably long enough to think about it in the past couple of months.) The conclusion that I've come to (so far) is that life doesn't have to always have that golden wrapping that gets scratched away after a while. You get what you put into it, really. And if I want to be surrounded by that exotic underwear, then gosh darn it, I'm going to be. No more being 'too tired' to try, or 'only for special occasions' crap. Every day's a special occasion. Even if they invent time travel, there's still only going to ever be one 1/28/09. It's up to me what I choose to do with it.

2. I can remember trying so hard to do things that were different because I loathed the popular culture... but talking to the people who I'm friends with now, they did too. How much of my childhood was me and how much of it was socially induced behaviours? Seriously? It's a stupid crisis to have, and, honestly, it's not even a crisis, but when you're setting up to do some serious self examining, you start at the beginning. And my beginning just happened to be the counter-culture... but how much of that was really counter and how much was culture? Makes you think, don't it?

3. How hard is it to accept that you will only ever know just enough about anything to be dangerous? No one's an expert. Not even the experts. I keep trying to peg myself into an 'area of expertise', but that's never going to happen. Experts are so often reminded of the things that they've forgotten by neophytes and children that they may as well just call themselves "More-knowledgeable-that-the-average-joe"s and not "experts". I've come to believe that expert is as much as a myth as normal.

4. This is the sarcastic solace phrase. Just like in the movie (and the book for that matter), things often hit the wall, but I always have the fact that I was a weirdo long before the situation that went to pieces ever even started happening. And, thinking about it, it's not always my fault. Sometimes, yeah. But the worst thing about planning anything are the people involved. Including yourself.

5. I've been told that everybody goes through this. I've managed to do it for the past 6 years, and, frankly, the whole "figure out what I want to be until I grow up" phase has gotten old. You can't figure it out before it happens, you have to do it while it's going. And, like most things, the easiest way is if you have some sort of system for your thoughts. I think that's been one of my problems, really. I've just been a giant mess of hedonistic impulse, and I've been trying to drag that with me into a phase of life where you have to be responsible to people in order to have the phase of life. Anyway, after watching High Fidelity, I realized that yeah, I could use the Top Five method. Because, let's face it, how many things are really original? I mean, really truly original? Every chord progression has already been recorded, albeit with different lyrics and different melodies, but this fact sunk home the day I was messing around on my guitar and realized that the Cranberries' Zombie was Eagle Eye Cherry's Save Tonight was Reel Big Fish's Beer and then some.

Yeah, it's fragmented and bizarre and probably shouldn't be happening. But I've watched other people's blogs where they do this self-actualization thing, and I've gone "hey, I want to do that." Well, here goes nothing.