A car crash of a life

Tonight on my way home from wrestling (will talk more later), I saw a car crash.
Seeing a car crash is a life changing experience.
I don't know if anyone died but the police and fire engines were gathered, lights flashing.
The Haywards Hill is dangerous. I've never liked it and this crash, along with others, proves just what a bad road it was.
So this one was right at the bottom of the hill, near Manor Park.
It looked like the taxi was trying to turn into the lane to get to Wellington.
The front bumper, where the engine etc is, was torn in half.
It was dark, luckily, so I couldn't see any bodies or blood or anything but seeing the car so damaged scared me.
For all I knew, I could have been driving past a place where someone was killed, there could have been bodies in the area.
As a driver, it made me very cautious. It could have been me. It could have been anyone I know.
A car crash can change everything.
It's a chilling experience that I hope I never ever have to personally be part of in any form.
I guess for me, driving past the crash, effected me kinda of like the death of someone I didn't know. It made me feel a sadness that someone may have just lost someone they loved and of course, the aforementioned chill that it could have been me.

So on that positive note, tonight, some of my colleagues and I went into Petone to watch a NZWPW wrestling match.
The NZWPW stands for New Zealand Wide Pro Wrestling and I have to say, these guys are pretty bloody good.
It was like watching American wrestling except a little less tight, a little less disciplined.
But it doesn't matter, the crowd was SO into it, particularly the children.
It was our own piece of America in NZ.
The guys were professional as they come. There were crowd favourites as well as crowd enemies.
Although most wrestling, I feel, is staged/set up/faked, these guys mostly looked like they were inflicting pain onto their colleagues so were professional in their staging and storylines.
But they were every day guys as well. They had families in the crowd as well as children.
Great stuff.

By the way, I got picked up today.
Yes, Google has finally acknowledged my existance after 2 weeks or so.
Varelai Armstrong is on the map!
Or at least in the Google alerts.

I feel like this blog should be particularly long because I haven't blogged in a few days.
I apologise for this, it has been far too hot to blog or to concentrate on ANYTHING. The temperature does dictate a lot of things for me. I'm someone who can't stand being in conditions which are too warm but being too cold also affects me badly.
Being hot makes me unable to think or comprehend things so that makes doing ANYTHING difficult so I more often than not, choose not to do anything at these times.
Hence, I haven't blogged in 2 days or so.

I'm not a huge drinker of water usually and the fact I've been going through a bottle or more a day in the last week, just shows how hot the weather is, as well as how much body water I must be losing.

I'm trying to learn one of my favourite Green Day songs on guitar at the moment. I've partially learnt Time of Your Life (Good Riddance), but the picking in that song is pretty difficult so I've just practised the chords over and over so have gotten pretty damn good at that.
Today I learnt the first few chords of Give Me Novacaine. A song Green Day played when we saw them in December and a song that I feel impacts my life a whole lot.
I feel like I can relate to the song, not as a drug addict but as someone who has someone else to act as their drug.
Novacaine, if you don't know, is a form of anesthetic, a drug which numbs all pain.
I feel like the song is less about a drug than it is about someone who takes away someone elses pain.
"Give me a long kiss goodnight and everything will be alright, tell me that I won't feel a thing, give me novacaine"
I once talked with someone I had strong feelings for about this. Or they quoted it to me or something like that. It was a powerful statement coz all I want is someone to take away the pain I sometimes feel in my heart.
I wanted to tattoo those words on me, but for me, that sentence is a bit too long. A little longer than I think tattoo lyrics should be.
Speaking of which, my new tattoo has been designed. It is Green Day related but not Novacaine.
I have decided not to show many people the design until it's on me.
Last time I was very open about what I was getting but last time I got the font off the internet so it wasn't really very creative.
This time my friend drew it up from her mind so I guess I'm more conscious of it being stolen. Although I guess the lyrics I've chosen are something I've chosen for my own life and they may not even relate to anyone else anyway.
Maybe, MAYBE when it's done, I'll post a pic. But we'll see.

Speaking of Green Day, a band I'm extremely fond of after seeing them in Auckland on December 18 last year.
I do realise a lot of their lyrics on their later albums are all about war.
But my friend and I recently had a discussion about the meanings of these lyrics.
I enjoy arguing with friends. Not that you could even call this arguing compared to a couple of firey occassions myself and this person have had in the past.
And I don't really mean I enjoy arguing with my friends but I enjoy disagreeing on unimportant things. Because they often feed me new perspectives I never thought of before.
My friend and I talked about 21 Guns. To me, the song is about giving up. I never noticed this before because the music has such power and almost positivity that I never noticed the negativity of the lyrics.
To me, the song is suicidal.
To her, the song is more about NOT giving up, about dealing with things in a good way so you can mentally let go.
But also, of course, 21 guns, is a military thing, she told me, so the song is about war, as always.
But because I can't relate to war the song doesn't affect me in that way. I don't know anyone in the current US war and I don't really believe in the concept of war. It's not a smart thing to do. War is just stupid, STUPID stuff. As Rise Against said, there are no heroes of war. Well they didn't say that but they imply it in one of their songs.
Apparantly Billie Joe, lead singer of Green Day said 21 Guns was a song about accepting life instead of fighting it, learning to deal with these things no matter how closed the path may seem or something of that nature.
So, in the end, my friend and I compromised. 21 Guns, we felt was about a war. Yes. But it was about ANY type of war.
"War in general. Perhaps not just conventional war. The war against drugs. Wars within ourselves."
That, I can agree on, I think the song is definitely about a war we're fighting within ourselves.
Even the first lines prove this: "Do you know what's worth fighting for? When it's not worth dying for?"
Those lines to me, are about choosing your fights, choosing your wars.
Is your opinion worth starting a fight over?
Would you die for something you believe?
Even if it means you're dying inside because of something or you're fighting an internal war because of a belief.
The song relates to people on a personal level as well as the level Green Day intended, the war level.
I still think the lyrics are the most depressing things I've ever read and it scares me, to some degree that a friend can relate to the sentiment in the song in any way.
I guess I feel like I can relate to some of it too but to me, it's suicidal so to think someone I know relates to a suicidal song, makes me kinda worried I guess.
But in saying that, if the friend thinks the song is a positive song, then clearly, they don't see the song as being suicidal, therefore they probably aren't in that suicidal frame of mind.
Opinions are hard.

Hope you enjoyed an extra long rant tonight,
Varelai.