Hello and welcome to Madison Avenue!
I'll keep it short and simple: read, view, comment, etc, or don't, whatever.
Thanks for stopping by,
Madison

Do we mean the things we do, do we do the things we mean?

Getcha own, getcha own LOVER!!!

Okay, best day today in for-fucking-ever!!!!
Dean Lickyer, aka the latest object of my obsession, did and free show today and I got to go!! after their performance, they had this tent thing anfd they signed my sweater which now reads:
Joshua Alvernia
Eric Martin
Justin Bosso
Sean Royle
on the back and has this swirly thing and DEAN LICKYER on the front.

Josh is the vocalist, hes soooooooooooooooooooo rocknroll. hes got this amazing voice, like in the eighties. hes like slash and john lennon put together, and AMAZING!
Eric is the drummer, and when i was talking to him i was thinking 'holy shit, his eyes are so BLUE!!' and they are, like really blue.
justin does bass, and to be honest hes alot less rocknroll than the rest of them simply because his hair is cut at a normal lenth. all the other guys have hait past their shoulders, but not in a too-lazy-to-get-a-haircut way, but in a super cool, awsome rockstar way.
and my personal favourite, sean royle, guitarist. his guitar is just totally awsome. its soo classic but its really new and fresh. hes like a mix between nikki sixx, rush and matthew good. JUST AMAZING! also, hes the cutest.
wanna hear the coolest part, theyrwe all like 19!!!! no jokes and theyre so nice to their fans, there were these drunk guys who saw tham play when they first started out and they were all retarded like 'hey, remember me?? i saw you at the red rooster!!!' then they started moshing and freaking out the old people. but josh was all like "oh yeah, hope to see you there sometome!"
the old people were there to see 54/40, a band from the 80s/90s era. my dads favourite band, which is kinda how we got him to take us.

oh! and there was this one part where josh would go "nananana!" and sean would take his guitar and do the same notes, then they'd do it again, but sean would go first and josh wqould repeat the notes with "Nananaa!!!!"
it was awsome!!!
and they had this thing they built from the stage so that josh could get closer to the crowd and hed come running up and jump and stomp really hard while he was singing!! it would scare the shit out of the security guy standing next to it, but we, the audience, LOVED IT!!!!
and after their show, my brother and i went for a walk and ran into sean and eric, and were like "hi! awsome show, you guys are great!" and they were really nice, like not all stuck up or strung out.
theyre so rocknroll, pure rocknroll. not all sexdrugsrocknroll, but just rocknroll. I can guarantee you theyre gonna go far, reallllly far.

oh, and also on our walk we saw cosplayers!!!! i was all excited because ive never seen a cosplayer before. i was like 'hi!! who are you??" and this girl was like "im tohru from fruits basket!"
"I love fruits basket!"
"And I'm kyouya!!!"
"Im tamaki!!"
and their costumes were great, this one girl had her hair exactly like narutos, and i dont even follow that one!! later we saw them again and tamaki was like, "come, lets go scare the commoners" then they went to the concert.

*sigh* best day of my whole summer.

from left to right, josh, justin, eric and sean.
theyre usually in that order . . .

Rain, rain, go away for at least one day!

Holy crap, its been raining here for two weeks straight! Some places thats normal, but this isnt frikkin Vancouver for God's sake!
Everything is flooded and soggy. We've had to use the dryer instead of the clothesline. We usually only use the dryer in winter.
Other than the soggy weather, I have some stuff I want to say. Lets start with something I'm quite excited about.
Joel Plaskett recently released another album. Its three CDs and is entitled Three. I've got a quote and a video in my intro, but computer is a spaz so it might not show.
On a sadder note, there was a murder of sorts in a city a few hours from where I live. From what I hear, it was a senseless abuse of culrural tradition in a country where we do not asllow such treatment of human beings.
A car was discovered in a canal with the bodies of four Indian women, a mother and her daughters, from what I heard. Apparently, a man thoght his daughters and wife 'rebellious' so he killed them and made it looked like an accident. The women were unconcious when the car went into the canal.
My dad was telling me about a woman he dopes work with who is from India. Shes going to Bangledesh for a wedding and her parents are arranging for her to meet a suitor while shes there. They're all mad becaused shes 26 and still not married. OIh, and she moved into her own place. This is not done traditionally in India. A woman will live at home with her parents until they find someone convenient for her to marry.
I'm scared for her because she says that if she doesn't like him she'll come back, but Im pretty sure that if she gets on that plane, we'll never see her again.
It really makes me sad, because I know that if I lived there, I wouldn't have any guy friends or my boyfriend, and I'd probably end up marrying one of my dad's business partners. Ew. And its all in the best interest of the parents and the family's reputation. Its just horrible. And if women decide they dont want to be with the man their parents picked, they'd be killed without a second thought.
As much as this all sucks, theres nothing we can really do. Its their culture. Its been that way forver. Us telling them they cant marry their kids off is like them telling us to stop having premarital sex or be near the opposite sex at all. Some things are accepted in some places, some things aren't. It is the way of this strange and twisted world we live in.

YAWWWWWWWWN

key, right now, i am very tired, so please excuse the typos.
i gotta tell you about this dream i had. it woke me up at 7ish this morning.
kay, my dad and i were sitting, watching tv, and i asked if we could go to the grocery store, so we went outside and got in the truck. we turn the corner
(the corner opposite the one leading to the grocery store, whish i just noticed) and dad goes "did you see that?"
"what?"
"Nothing, thought i saw something."
then, when we got to the next street, i was like "holy crap is that a lion!?"
and it was, there was a lion standing at the stoplight growling at us in our truck. so we turned again and then there were animals everywhere. another lion, though female this time, roared at us, then there were these tigers running around, and a line of those white monkey-baboon things crossing the street (i tihnk we ran over some).
then there were these huge trucks with pictures of animals like the ones on the street, and the back were open!!
so we went to the grocery store and sat in the parking lot, and this little screen popped out of the dashboard (which doesn't actually happen in my dads truck) and im like "are we going to the store or are we going to sit here and watch a movie?"
then my vision zooms out and theres no animals on the street, it was just a movie we were watching in the car. but i didn't have time to ponder this, because my vision zommed in again, but on a hair salon/house thing a few blocks away (whish also doesn't actually exist). and whats happening here is, theres no animals, just people thinking theyre animals and attacking other people. but apparently, from what i saw, you could stop them from being animals by bringing them back to reality by hurting them (like in indiana jones).
so then im seeing through this kids eyes. hes about the same age as me and were facing another kid our agee with incredibly blond hair that has that long-but-not-touching-the-collar-or-getting-in-the-eyes way. then the kid starts snarling at us, so i tihnk "oh shit" and we grab a pair of elecric scissors (i dont know how this is possible, but i do know these scissors were plugged into a wall).
so we jump on him and cut him on the neck enough to hurt, but not to draw blood or kill.
so he looks up like "ow" all confused, and we get off him. then he gets that evil animalistic look back and pulls outa pair of tiny barber scissors and throws then at us like theyre ninja starts or soething! so we duck and he misses, but we are now laying on the floor, and he throws another one which gets stuck in our shoulders and hurts, but kind of bluntly. so we pull it out and throw it back, but very poorly, and i tihnk "great, give him back the weapon why dont you?"
then the blond kid pulls out a third pair of scissors and gets this malicious grin. just when hes about to throw it, i wake up.
when i woke up, i was laying on my side with my hands over my face. i could still feel the electric scissors in my hand and had to move to shake the feeling that they were there. so i got out of bed and came here, to theO, and ate some cheerios that tasted like crap. looking back it doesnt seem that scary, but it was when it happenned.
im not sure why i had that dream, but i did watch 'the haunting in conneticut' last night, which is an awsome movie that scared the living shit out of me, but i would so watch it again. then i watched this show on how to survive a tiger attack, none of which i could recall to help me in this dream.
great. so anyway, im up two and a half hours early. im gonna go look at art, or maybe find some better cereal.

NOPE (sorry)

This is all that stands on Matthew Good's web site when you ask for tickets:

Taunting me, isn't it?

a long way gone

I'm working on this book my dad bought. Its called A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. It is the true story of life in Sierra Leone during the civil war.
In Sierra Leone, there are a group of rebels who are 'fighting for the people' or so they claim. They do this by raiding villages, recruiting men and boys, abusing women and girls (to put it mildly) and killing as many people as they can.
Ishmaels journey begins when he leaves his village to participate in a talent show. The next day people come to the village he is staying in, covered in blood and bringing news of the rebels attack. Ishmael and his friends move on, trying to find their families. This is particularly difficult because they are all between the ages of 12 and 16, the age at which most rebels are.
I have cried alot while reading this book. The cruelty people show towards one another is astonishing, but the kindness despite the risks is even more so.
Tonight I sobbed because Ishmael and his friends, minus one who didn't make the journey, finally come to the village where their families are said to be staying. They stop to help a man from their village carry bananas. As they come to the crest of a hill that overlooks the villages, they hear screams and gunshots. The rebels attacked the village, killed everyone in it, and set everything on fire.
As I was reading, I could just see him running through the smoke, hoping to find his family even though he knew they were dead. I'm starting to cry just thinking about it. He is filled with regrets; if only we hadnt stopped to rest, if only we hadnt helped carry the bananas, if only, if only, if only . . .
But then they would have died with their families. He said he would have rather died with them, than had come so close to finding them and losing them once again, this time for good.
When Ishmael and his friends leave the destroyed village, chased by rebels for hours, they come to Yele, where government soldiers are protecting. He said it was a particularly large village, 'with more than ten houses'.
They stayed for days with other orphans, helping by doing chores around the kitchen. Eventually, the war reached them there too.
Soldiers went out each day to fight, and each day fewer came back. The general in charge had to recruit boys and men aswell, but he didnt force them. Everyone knew that if they left the village they would die.
He said that as they were being given guns and ammunition, the youngest boys there were aged 7 and 11. The rest were anywhere between 13 and 17.
This was where I started to sob.
I could just imagine my 7 year old cousin, standing next to my 11 year old brother, both holding guns too big for a childs hands. Then I thought about my other brother and my dad, my boyfriend and my friends, and all the young men I go to school with, and I couldnt beleive that people just like us were fighting for their lives.
War is a waste. It proves nothing, other than the fact that we are capable of murder and cruelty and hate and all other horrible things.
Think of all the things those people could have done. The children and the men and women. The horrible things that happened to them. Mothers and fathers watching their children die before they themselves are killed, children watching their parents and siblings killed for reasons they don't understand, that no one really understands.
It makes me want to lay down and cry for these people, I want to hold them and tell them they are okay, I want them to be safe and unafraid, I want them to be alive and well.
But they aren't, and they never will be again.
If you ever take even one peice of advice from me or any one else, I suggest you read this book and remind yourself of the world as it is seen through the eyes of the suffering people in it. Everyone should.