I went running at the park today. Shocker, yeah? I only ran about two songs worth of my playlist and not even consecutively. I thought I could do a system of run one song, walk the next, etc., but it didn't work out too well, since I'm not in shape.
But the weird thing is, I'm not out of shape either. I can bike 20+ miles easily and still have plenty of energy left and I'm a master of crunches and I'm super flexible. I just can't run. And since I'm crazy paranoid and think the apocalypse is going to descend down upon me at any minute, this makes me nervous. Why? Duh, apocalypse, fight for survival. The people who can't run always get swallowed up by the zombies or the werewolves or the giant earthquakes or whatever is causing the apocalypse.

The sad thing, that's true. I resent the fact that I can't run because I think it will hinder my survival of the apocalypse. My mind is seriously twisted.

I've had a lot of rants going on in my head recently, mostly in practice against a friend of mine who I've been having problems with lately, just in case a debate ever comes up whenever I hang out with him. Love the dude, but I don't agree with many of his views and opinions. I think I'll keep them in my head for now, just in case.

A couple posts ago, I ranted a bit about how no matter what I did in college, I was going to join Matt Mixon in the College Graduates Working At A Bar club. I mentioned this to my friend Molly and somehow our discussion came to the conclusion that Matt Mixon (Andy Hurley's BFFL/heterosexual lifemate, in case you forgot) and I should start our own chain of bars. He's located in Milwaukee and I'll be in Chicago, so we've got the Midwest covered. Molly and I decided that our chain will be much better than Pete's Angels & Kings. Our slogan was something like, 'Even though AK is international, we've got the Midwest, bitch!' Haha, 'cause we're awesome like that.

I was recently asked the question, "How can you listen to [Rise Against] all the time?!" (You see what I did there? With the [brackets]? Yeah, that's proper journalism techniques right there. And I didn't even take journalism. WHAT.) I don't remember exactly what my answer at the time was, although I think it had something to do with Tim McIlrath and his voice, which is appropriately dark and gravelly. Let me tell you something, kids: Rise Against isn't nice music. You don't listen to it when you're in a rainbow and kitties mood. You don't skip along the forest path to something like Rise Against, trying your utter best to imitate Sleeping Beauty before the prince came along and ruined her life (excessive exaggeration of a Disney classic).

No, none of those are appropriate Rise Against settings. The proper setting would be more like in the dead of night, preparing for the upcoming fight. It's not happy, but in its own way, it's still hopeful. Rise Against has some amazingly powerful lyrics that let you know that, yeah, there's a massive struggle going on, but at the same time, it is possible to fight and to win. The fight is worth taking on and there's people at your side. It's going to be brutal and it's not for the weak-hearted. But it gives me a sense of power.

I originally got into Rise Against because of the song 'Worth Dying For.' Sue me, I'm a sucker for titles like that. The basic message I take from this song is that, yeah, okay, there's a lot of problems in the world and no single person has the answers, but that's no reason to close our eyes, turn our backs to those problems. Rise Against is using the stage and the microphone they've been giving to tell us in no uncertain terms to get up off our lazy asses and join in this desperate, useless, wonderful, beautiful, insane fight.

That's what any good band should do, in my opinion. They've been given an opportunity most of us will never get, and they should use those opportunities wisely. I'm not saying that every concert should be a few songs interspersed with long lectures. The good bands will be able to get their message across with the words and music they write, will shove listeners outside of their comfort zone and make them think about the world that they are such an integral part of.

I'm a fighter, always have been. The fact that I'm constantly on alert for the apocalypse, like I mentioned a long time ago in this entry, proves that. Rise Against fuels that fight within me, they make me want stand up and defend what I know is right.

At the same time, I'm not one of those fools who thinks courage is not being afraid of anything, of laughing in the face of danger, blindly thinking I'll walk out the other side unscathed. There's always the risk of getting hurt, of not making it to the other side at all. The faster you accept the fact, the greater your chance of survival becomes.

I don't listen to many bands like Rise Against. I feel much more comfortable in the pop-punk genre, a 'safer' genre, in a way. Unless you're scared of preteen girls, in which case, I'd suggest staying in your hardcore mosh pits. (I won't lie, the preteen girls get to me sometimes, too.) But regardless, Rise Against is fairly singular in my musical selections, with only a few other bands for company. While a lot of the bands I do listen to give me similar feelings of empowerment for the fight ahead, Rise Against does one thing pop-punk bands usually never do: They scare the shit out of me.

Rise Against isn't even remotely in my comfort zone. Like I said, in my world, they're practically one of a kind. They're painting images in my head that puts a picture to the fight I've always known was there. They're forcing me to look around to see the horrors around me and they're holding my head so I can't look away. But you can't fight what you don't know. You can't hide behind ignorance, but you can die behind it.

There's a lot of bad in the world, but there are good parts, too. Rise Against is trying to bridge the gap between the two. They aren't doing it by adding to the good, by hiding the bad behind a mask. Instead, they're flinging the doors to Hell wide open, showing us exactly what lies in the darkest corners of the world, the places most of us are too scared to look.

Rise Against makes the dormant fight within me come to life. It's not good, it's not evil. It's a campaign for the change that, without our help, will never come. We lauded Obama not too long ago as the change America needed, but just like Rise Against, they are only the figureheads leading the charge. Their real job is to make sure the rest of us know what we're up against, that we'll see the horrors before us and pick up arms anyway.

This fight will continue long after I'm gone. But for now, I'll keep listening to Rise Against.

<3C
kxn