I'm afraid that I might be an "emo kid."

Gah. There, I've said it. Commence the stoning, prepare to torch the holy city. Hypocrisy of hypocrisy, heresy of heresy, betrayal of all betrayals; the end of the world is near: Vershal has just come out of the emo closet.

I should have seen it and sought out help-- the signs were there all along. I listen to obscure indie-rock bands that I'm sure you've never heard of, I read books like Prozac Nation and Catcher in the Rye just because they were banned from public high schools, and I wear baggy/wideleg carpenter pants with lots and lots of pockets to hold my notebooks, pens, cell phone, textbooks that I have never read but carry around anyway because they make me look even more intelligent, guitar picks, CDs, vitamin supplements, and etc. close at hand. I even clip my keys to the outside of my pants (though I only started doing that after two unrelated incidents that made my bike and my car inaccessible).

I scribble a lot of meaninglessness in a battered notebook. I publish vapid pseudo-philosophical musings in an online blog, all the while faking originality. I wear a beanie. I spend a lot of time at the House of Java, drinking latte-- lattee, for cripes sake-- and watching the other folks there out of the corner of my eye. I like to pretend that I'm political. I sang and played my guitar [badly] at an open mic night. The only thing that I lack is a pair of bowling shoes.

Yeah, I know that being emo is about more than image. I've got you covered there, too. With the onset of winter, I've become pretty moody; I could blame it on photosensitivity, but deep down I know that it's just the common sense in me giving a final fight before handing over the keys to the Cadillac to the emo kid who lives in my stomach. Occasionally, I get lovesick (the term I prefer is "stupid"), and I've become quite the expert at the backhanded insult (kind of like the backhanded complement, but with no pretending to be nice). There are times that even I get sick of my pretentiousness, and I think that perhaps I would be better off if I was a little less dry-- if only pretentiousness and being dry didn't fit me oh-so-well.

I would fit right in at a Pedro the Lion concert. Ugh. I'm flaming emo. Any moment now I should start crying about my broken heart.

My complaining about this- I roll my eyes at the thought, whining about being emo- seems to directly contradict what I said in my essay Be an Individual, Just Like Me! In fact, it's an outright contradiction, but I'm allowed to contradict myself-- this is my site.

If there is one thing that I do not want to be, it is an emo kid. Perhaps, as long as I can hold on to that one sentiment, I have a fighting chance at retaining some shred of common sense.

See? The desire to fight is SO not emo. There is hope for me yet.