Red

2007-11-01T20:20:00.000-07:00

this blog will no longer be updated

thanks,
carter

The End

2007-10-16T22:45:00.000-07:00

As I sit dying I refuse to call 911. I check my heart rate and it's doing double-time. My skin is on fire and my left side won't move.

I thumb through the phone book for the name of my hospital. It starts with "University" and there must be eight pages of numbers that are University something or other. After the longest three minutes I can recall in quite a many years, I find the right listing.

I check it and double check it to make sure, but don't dial. It's not that my right side won't work, it's that since my left side has locked up, I can't open my mouth to speak even if I make the call. It's amazing at this stage that my epilepsy has allowed me to remain conscious. This time, of all...

I wonder if I should write a message at all. Last words, Marx said so accurately, are for fools who haven't said enough. Instead, I will close the door to my bedroom and lie down. My phone will be between the pages of the directory just in case I decide to use it, but I know I won't.

I think of a family who regards me only from obligation, of brothers who forget me when they meet someone more demanding, and of a girl who eagerly settled with someone who loved her less so many times. To them all I have been utterly replaceable. I have been a useless waste. My fingerprints are nowhere.

No, I will not call the hospital. I'd rather just die alone and not burden those who have never had the strength to return my love.

Out of Tune

2007-10-15T04:24:00.000-07:00

This is ridiculous. I went to bed at midnight in such a tired state that I set my alarm for 11, glad that I had no morning class to attend and sure that I would need the extra time.

At 5:30am I wake up, fatigued mind and body. I am unable to connect a single thought, but my mind races and fights off sleep while begging for it at the same time.

Finally, my thoughts are able to focus on one thing. The freshman composition class that I'm being forced to take (and pass with flying colours) for the third time due to transfer credit losses.

Last year I took months and months of British Romantic Era poetry and loved every second of it. There in my composition class, we get to Keats's Ode to a Grecian Urn and the professor tells us it's probably the hardest thing we'll be doing that semester. I wonder what's so hard about a pair of lovers carved on a pot, when some girl starts talking about how it must mean that there's a woman cremated inside the urn.

The instructor, as baffled by the American stupidity as I was, but much more used to replying to it, was able to gently tell her that her insight was good but in this case definitely not the standard accepted interpretation. In blunt words, there's no cremated woman. It's a freaking water pot with a carving on it. The girl nods and we continue fighting the uphill battle with the freshmen to interpret the rest of the poem.

Coming to the very end, the same girl starts again talking about the ashes of a woman cremated. Meanwhile, John Keats's corpse is struggling to come to life to wrap his bony fingers around her neck and shake.

I don't have my book out, as I'd left it in my car that day. But out of luck or misfortune, whichever you'd prefer, I have the same professor for a high level Victorian Literature course. He sees me and feigns annoyance.

"Where's your book?" he asks in a tone I know means he isn't serious.
"I don't need it!" I beam back at him.
"Oh, you just have it all memorized?" He smiles back.
"Of course!" I say.
"Look off that guy next to you and read The World is Too Much With Us out loud," he tells me.

"The world is too much with us; late and soon," I begin, looking straight ahead,
"Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts awa-"
Here he laughs and stops me to ask the freshmen to butcher Wordsworth this time and let Keats have a rest.

Another freshman picks up, stopping at the end of each line just as everyone ignorant of poetry does for the longest time. I grin to myself as they go on with,

"And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;"

I've no love lost on Wordsworth, but I wonder if he would smile or groan at the joke he causes so many struggling freshmen to play on themselves with his words. It makes me wonder if any humour has been had at my expense by scientists or mathematicians, but then, if you would consider my amusement at the situation I've described here as somewhat dry, I can hardly imagine how painfully dull a mathematician's play must be.

Explode

2007-10-13T19:39:00.000-07:00

I can lift 168% of my bodyweight now, a friend is telling me. We're talking about how good it feels after you've just worked out, and he's updating me on his results. When I quit lifting freshman year of high school, I say, I was up to 154%.

Damn dude, he says, you would have been pimp if you hadn't stopped.

Would have been what? A behemoth who didn't have to talk my way out of anything or have any clue if female interest in me was at all intellectual. Someone who could smile now and then and treat people like garbage and still get what I wanted, rather, what others usually wanted. That's fine, I don't need to be "pimp." I don't do it so skanks will throw their nasty vaginas in my face, I do it because it is the closest feeling to pure ecstasy, either physical or mental, that is attainable through physical action.

It's like an addiction, though, and I push too hard. I run faster than my body knows how for longer than my heart can maintain. I mean to go for ten minutes, and forty later my vision blurs away and I rip the safety strip off to stop the mill.

I feel like I'm going to vomit. I feel like my heart is going to explode. My veins are on fire, my head is throbbing, and I have to sit down and lean against the bars of the mill to keep from passing out. It's like a painful orgasm, but much better, and thirty seconds later I'm back on the belt. This time I set it for stamina instead of aerobic and sprint until my legs lock up. I try to walk down the stairs and, disoriented, fall into walls and clutch the rails.

I smile and shut my eyes as my heart tries to pound its way out of my ribs. At that moment, nothing in the world matters but the ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum in my chest and the pulsating blood in my legs. I feel the muscles tighten as they lift me over each step. I feel them grow stronger and tighter every day.

With the heightened state of mental clarity that comes along with the leftover adrenaline, I find myself at home in the shower. By now I can barely stand. My side aches, my knees hurt, and it feels like I bruised one of the bones in my feet. But the next day I will ignore the pain and run until my vision blurs and my heart misses that crucial beat.

I'll do it because in that shower with that sense of being, I realize what I will become. My almost inhuman patience has been the last bit of my human self, the only thing that's distinguished me to any extent. Running into an old friend, she'll say again, "Is that you? I didn't recognize you...again. You look so different every time I see you." I'll smile, not from any pleasure in seeing her, but having gotten the exact reaction I'd been hoping for.

I'll do it because in that shower, I envision a future where I'm leaving the heartless, arrogant, self-absorbed fucks that I've been surrounded by my whole life and been so patiently waiting and doting on behind. It's not only my muscles I feel tightening, it's my grip on my life, and I will choke every last bead of sweat from its pores.

I am not expanding my capacity to run or lift. I'm not expanding my abilities in strength or well-being. I am merely expanding my power of will, and the ability to use my Roman rhetoric to couple that will and power of speech to form the most powerful weapon at my disposal.

There is no such thing as a life of importance. There is, however, such thing as a life of dominance.

Because my desires are few, it will be much easier to ensure that they are all fulfilled.

Insatiable

2007-10-08T21:59:00.000-07:00

I am not very quick at math, but I am amazingly meticulous when it comes to things that matter.

Which is why I felt like vomiting when I got my credit card bill a couple months ago.

Financially speaking, I've always been an excellent saver and investor. As my grandfather advised me, you can spend all you make as long as you don't spend more than you make. But say that one were to have made a few large purchases and somewhere along the line...what's the word...forgot?

Granted I have a considerable little sum tied up in bonds and CDs and whatnot, and that sum has been sitting there waiting for me and growing for years as an absolute last resort. To me, though, last resort isn't not having food or even clean clothes or anything like that. To me, last resort would mean that I was out of a home with no compassionate friends and street begging wasn't working out. I don't consider any of my invested money as expendable income. I don't even think of it as income. I think of it as being able to retire when I'm 40 on a lower middle class income due to finding an amazing hole in the banking system.

As far as expendable income goes, I start worrying to the point of being sick if I have less than, say, 500 dollars sitting there for whatever reason. If I can't cover my bills for at least two months, it makes me physically ill and incredibly depressive. I've always hated money and resented that it could have this effect on me, but that's how it stands.

Taking care of the necessities for the next two months, I'm left with about 100 dollars in my name. I know I will be fine between my work income and my patron (yes, I have a patron, how many people in this century can say that?).

I think it's just easier to worry myself over something material that I know will turn out in the end than it is to worry about something less palpable with a conclusion unknown to any.

A specific example arose earlier this evening. Everyone seems to be getting married so young now that, despite the fact that they're fucking retarded, it makes the rest of us wonder if we're not missing our chance at something.

"Girls, games, and gangsterism, it's all expensive nowadays," I tell my friend.

"Yeah, and I can't spend any more money for a while," he replies, "but I would like to have a girl. I'm tired of being lonely."

That's just it, it seems. People no longer resist that passion of youth that longs for a warm body to wake up to. No one's rational anymore. They're too busy convincing themselves that this person is the only person for them and explaining away every flaw...so busy that they don't stop and think that hey, I can't even be counted on to return phone calls, how can I count on myself to uphold a lifelong commitment?

"I hear you've fulfilled every white man's dream and gone AZN," my friend says.

"Gone there and am on my way back, I think," I say. "You know it's not the right one when you still feel lonely with her."

I took me less than 12 hours to realize I don't care what happens to her. It took my father 23 years to figure that out about my mother. I'm glad, at least, that I'm quick enough at math to be able to minimize my losses in a situation like this.

The hard part would seem to be figuring out how to maximize my gains. This is only a surface difficulty, though, and the answer is obvious. Human magnetism is the attraction of similitude. Likes go with likes or the perception of likes. Red is still in so many pieces, but I have patience, and my meticulousness is forging him back together not withholding a single tiny scrap.

Everyone tells me that I'm smart. Intelligent. Genius, some even insist. I think of myself as widely mediocre, even stupid at best in most matters. If I am stupid and smarter than that majority of others, then I have failed. I am not a prince among kings, I am an emperor among fools. Why on earth should I be in any hurry to subject the continuation of my soul through my seed to a world where people still believe that America is free, God would be jealous, and death is some far off foreign traveler?

In this world, loss and gain become the same. In this world, there is nothing that any amount of safe-money could bring to make me forget my soul. In this world, there is no look that any woman can give me that will make me feel any less lonely.

I have become insatiable.

One Night in Louisville

2007-10-08T00:08:00.000-07:00

Kimi, she was Chinese
dressed like a Japanese
so eager to please
dropped straight to her knees
no idea what it means, xie xie ni
ni shi zhong guo, only that soon
we'll be needing to go out of
the bathroom stall and flow
into the back seat or the shade
of a parking garage where we hear
the street drummer's beat, no small feat
with the fear of the barrage of sounds
you hear able to be anyone coming near
as our hearts pound together a slow eternity
in ecstasy we can hardly bear
but finally all's clear, no entourage
or fanfare just her and me and we're
sweating and shining and no blow could
break the ménage, simplicity wearing
smiles and fade to black, never want to leave
and never looking back

And then she told me she had a boyfriend, LOLOLOLOL

Unreliable Narration: Essay

2007-10-06T13:37:00.000-07:00

Paper: First of the year, composition.
Written: By hand on the back of a receipt at work.
Style: Stream of thought.
Research: None.
Length: ~3 pg.
Final Grade: 94%

The speaker of Bartleby is a prime example of an unreliable narrator. Through his mannerisms, actions, and descriptions it is made quite clear that the narrator is not to be trusted. He is neither on Bartleby’s side or that of the reader, but modeling his recounting of his exposure to Bartleby simply for the elation of his personal image and ego.

The narrator’s first descriptions are of himself and his office. Amidst a slew of self-compliments, he attempts to paint a portrait of an elderly man who follows the path of least resistance. He gives himself away as being “unambitious,” the type who would “never address a jury.” Furthermore, despite his reiteration of association with wealthy circles and his location on Wall Street, his quarters are mediocre at best. Though his description of his office view is that it contains “lurking beauties,” he also states a number of telling details: the building is black with age, lacking good sunlight, has no view, has windows only ten feet from a wall, and most subtly is upstairs (making it cost less still). The narrator’s attempts to proclaim importance of stature and connection to wealth are betrayed by his telling effort at eloquent speech.

False premises are also built around the other scriveners in the narrator’s office. Although he begins by trying to show closeness to the employees by listing nicknames for them, as the story progresses the workers prove little more than a means to an end. It is important to note that Turkey is of a larger stature than the narrator, and Nippers is much younger. Meanwhile, both Turkey and Nippers are prone to violence, as is shown by their willingness to physically harm Bartleby during his refusal to vacate. The narrator is not keeping Nippers and Turkey as workers because they are productive half of the time, but because he is truly afraid of them half of the time. His only solace is that the narrator knows when to avoid the scriveners, and thus how to avoid harm to himself (though he dares not discharge either while the other is in a bad mood and might defend the coworker).

In spite of the appearance of kindness toward Bartleby, the narrator’s ego spills over into his actions concerning his latest hire. The narrator appeals to Bartleby through peer pressure via the other scriveners with threats of violence expertly coaxed from Turkey and Nippers, through direct commands, and through bribery. To appeal to the police would be bad publicity for the narrator’s office. Likewise, to solicit the help of his employees might be construed as violence by his own hand or as a favor owed to the workers.

Bartleby is simply left in the office when the narrator changes locations. This can hardly be reflective of the care for Bartleby that is professed by the narrator. Certainly, the only reason the narrator revisited the abandoned Bartleby after the move was not a fear of the gathered mob (to whom the narrator insists that “Bartleby is nothing to me”) harming Bartleby, but rather that the mob might turn on the narrator.

The solitary action of the narrator that might be seen as caring in spite of the previous explanations of character and action would be the misconception that the passing of money to the jail cook on behalf of Bartleby was a selfless act. However, when the charge on which Bartleby was jailed (i.e. vagrancy) is considered, it is clear that Bartleby would not have been imprisoned for any length of time. The donations to the cook would be short-lived, could be made common knowledge for image’s sake, and would force the debt of gratitude (and therefore an edge of control) to the narrator.

Any similar act of gratitude from the narrator can be likewise explained, making it abundantly clear through the narrator’s self-contradiction and self-elation that his truest moments are those when he denounces Bartleby. The final dagger in Bartleby’s back is the last line of the narrator’s elegy. “Ah, humanity!” exclaims the narrator, when everything he has done shows that, to him, Bartleby is not human at all. Rather, he is an object, a vessel, and his purpose is nothing beyond increasing the quality of the ego and public image of the unreliable narrator.

Uninspired Moral

2007-09-25T23:17:00.000-07:00

Moral of the story: Iambic pentameter is difficult to write in and will only result in something crappy when you're uninspired.

turning slowly to the eyes of his death
he finds a world of reasons not to live,
the ushering away of the last breath
that of a lost man with no soul to give.

quickly away from the eyes of his life
he'll discover reasons to breathe again,
but none are quite worth the devouring strife,
nothing is found to save man in the end.

with neither peace nor tranquil love to calm
the pangs of thriving sorrows felt alone
heartfelt melancholy has not a psalm
and is no more song than a ghastly moan.

climbing to the apex of a tower
the way down seems so quick and welcoming,
seen not as a thing from which to cower,
rather, for once, joy in having no wings.

softly kissing the wind slapping his face
he will take that one final step forward,
falling slowly into arms of embrace,
quickly fading, denied only a word.

Loaded Questions

2007-09-19T22:29:00.000-07:00

"Do you have a cell-phone?" he asks me.

Manager, Senior Store Manager, Regional Manager, District Manager. We don't have an SSM, just four managers and a DM who visits maybe once a month. All of us managers get along well.

Except for this guy. Our Regional Manager is maybe 23 years old. I have to give it to him for being so young and obviously not having taken time to go to secondary education, he gets to call himself a superior to people who have worked for 45 years only to end up his subordinates. He's on the ball and he knows his stuff. I can respect that.

But when he asks me, "Do you have a cell-phone?" I know it's a loaded question. Everything he asks me is loaded. I can say no and he'll think I'm a liar and give me the speech on not having cell-phones in the store, or I can say yes and he'll give me the speech anyway.

I say yes, he gives me the speech, and I do the only thing you can do with a superior in this situation. I nod and scowl intently like I'm very interested in what he's saying, and when he's done, I look away and think out loud. I'll have to be sure and leave it in the back room, I say to myself, or actually, I should just leave it in the car because if I don't I'll forget. I don't think it'll be too hot in there anymore.

He smiles to himself, satisfied with my acting, and relaxes a little bit before attempting to find something else to lecture me on.

He starts telling me about a product and how great it is and how he uses it every day. I know damn well he's never used it in his life, but I act impressed and very enthusiastic about the wonders the item has bestowed upon humanity, and am eager to begin suggesting it to customers with greater frequency.

Closing down for the night, the RM shows me a "new" way to do things. A way that will ensure that I'm not out of the store at 9:05 getting paid to work until 9:30. I listen to what he says, ask questions that I don't need to ask, and when we're done I go over the steps with him even though I don't need to, making a mistake in the order so that he can correct me.

I think about inviting him to one of the guys' nights to play poker or hit a party or go to a bar, but don't. For a moment, I picture him sitting at a round tavern table trying to give me pointers on how to hold my mug or criticizing my selections and informing me of how excellent some other drink is. Choking the mote of pity or empathy or whatever it was as quickly as it had arisen, I decide against pretending to be anything other than the employee he wanted me to be.

We will both die relatively alone, but the tragedy of his life will have been completely by choice.

Today I will go in and he will be there again. He will lie to me and I will lie back to him, and as he tries to teach me about the sales world, I will be learning so much more about the one that is human.

Warring Krishna

2007-09-18T23:08:00.000-07:00

A common argument against the Bhagavad Gita arises from an opening scene.

The leaders of two foot armies are meeting in the middle of the battlefield to discuss possible terms and neither side will back down. One leader laments to Lord Krishna that he is about to enter a battle where he will be forced to kill the opposing army's leader, a member of his family.

The mortal says that he would rather simply lay down his arms and be killed than have to kill his family member, but Krishna advises him to fight. His army will die if you fight, yours will die if you do not, Krishna tells him. So it makes no difference if you wage war or are a pacifist. Either way, a life is a life, and someone must die.

The argument is that in this scene the Bhagavad Gita is condoning war. I disagree.

To me, Lord Krishna isn't saying "Somebody gon' die, fuck it, do whatever."

He's saying:

1) As long as mankind has existed there have been battles.
2) Denouncing battles has never led to peace.

So:

3) As long as mankind continues to exist there will continue to be battles.
4) Denouncing these battles will never lead to peace.

So:

5) You can either die fighting, or
6) You can die not fighting.

So:

7) You can stand up for what you believe in, or
8) You can let a wicked man stand up for what he believes in.

Does this condone war? That is to say, does it condone offense?

Maybe in an American or even White mindset.

To me, it condones nothing more than the defense of what one knows to be righteousness. Whether in words, lifestyle, actions, or on a battlefield.

To me, this is the true message of Krishna's advice on war. This is one of the few defenses of the text that I have seen, and the only one to explain it in any way remotely approaching what I see as logical.

Echoes

2007-09-13T23:56:00.000-07:00

It's funny how much perspective the slightest suggestion can give.

My roommate says: "Coworker and I are hitting a bar for a couple drinks this weekend, you want to come?"

I say: "Sure."

He smiles broadly as he tells me how his coworker wants to get drunk and how he's looking forward to it.

The echo says: "Be DD for me and a stranger."

I frown.

These echoes ruin quite a bit of potentially good things for me. Not because they're true, but because they're never entirely untrue.

All possible solutions. It's part of being so mechanical, I think; it's a necessity of being able to predict a situation in order to counter it if something that particularly needs countering should arise.

That blue-eyed girl was right about me. When she said there's something about the way I move that she can't put her finger on...like I'm always looking at the exits, waiting for someone to jump out at me, looking for a grenade to fall on. She was right on all accounts.

I've taken the dive onto more grenades than I can count. People seem to jump out at me every day, swinging and shooting while I just keep dodging. But those exits that I've just been looking at for so long...well, it might be time to try one of them out.

So many masks have been rotated, shelved, dusted, and rotated back. So many shattered in the name of a larger, more elaborate mask. It won't be enough now, though. I will have to craft an entire suit of armor to survive the venture I'm about to undertake.

I think it should be a delightful run of things, however it turns out.

Vegas

2007-09-06T00:07:00.000-07:00

A paraphrase for a friend slowly discovering the folly of humans:

"If they are satisfied only with regretting me, when they might have obtained my affections, I shall soon cease to regret them at all."

Naturally, from Jane Austen.

Zhong Nan Hai

2007-09-05T23:59:00.000-07:00

As promised, here is what I had begun to write in my sour mood stated before:

Something close to midnight at the apartments near the freeway. Stars and moon smiling down from the clearest of skies onto a hundred sleeping heads. I am the only one out under the pale yellow bulbs, save the singing crickets and one lost beetle who's been running in circles on the landing the better part of an hour.

I squint through the smoke stinging my nose. Snubbing another cigarette and downing another ounce of beer, I can barely feel. Light glistens off the metallic end of a handsome pen. It is the master of this night, the only thing that shall ever remember the desperate dying song of these crickets' heartbeats.

Gray air curling out of my nostrils like a dragon gives me pause. So many nights gone like this, where all I can think of is the brother who greets me like a stranger ("I haven't seen you around lately!") or the woman who married that other guy ("You're so evil!") or the mother who cares of nothing but money and liquor ("Five-hundred for school books? That's gonna be tough on you!"). All I can wonder is:

Is this what regret feels like?

Fork Between Men and Women

2007-09-04T09:33:00.000-07:00

Making delicious spaghetti for lunch today, the primary difference between gender mentality hit me.

A woman comes home and wants to make spaghetti but has no colander to strain it with. She disappointedly makes something else, and marks a mental note to get a strainer the next time she goes to the store.

A man comes home and wants to make spaghetti but has no colander to strain it with. He uses a fork. He wants spaghetti, he'll have spaghetti.

It would seem that the perfect woman for any man, then, was the kind that had sense and drive enough to improvise. Unfortunately, what we call women who use a fork instead of a colander is "white trash."

Result: There are relatively no worthwhile women. Men are smarter and deserve to be in power over them, as is proof by the natural order of things that has always existed.

Discuss.

Hedonism

2007-09-03T23:01:00.000-07:00

Sometimes all it takes is a half pack of cigarettes and one starry night to get yourself back on track. Sitting out there with the moon and a blank piece of paper, I started out in the most negative mood I've been in in quite a while.

I'll post what I was writing later, but the gist of it was that looking at the moon dancing with Venus, wondering what purpose I might possibly have, only one thing seemed logical:

Use the same process to conquer myself that I use to overcome my opponents.

The logical blasphemy that follows is natural -- "If I were God, why would I create life?"

No reason, really. Anyone could pick whatever reason they wanted and live their lives in accordance with the answer that they choose. Perhaps their answers are reflective of their own lives...but for me, why would I create this oasis of life? No reason at all. Utter boredom.

Personal satisfaction.

Hedonism.

Call it whatever you'd like, it puts a different spin on what my goals should be and how I should be going about trying to achieve them. I hate to think I've lost the last eight years being me when who I should've been, wanted to be, and was destined to be all along was Red.

I killed him so long ago. I never appreciated or loved him. But he was the right way, the only way. He was the true meaning of my life. It's time to unlock the demon that I sealed away in my soul those years ago. Time to stop having 'an evil aura' and let it consume me completely without any regard to the people who've been holding me back from letting loose this torrent for so long.

If only Loki weren't so many waters away, the fun we would have.

On My Way Down

2007-08-30T10:40:00.000-07:00

It takes the class longer to invent some speculative lies about a poem by William Stafford than it probably took him to write it. I tune them out and watch the trees leaning to and fro, shaking their leaves at the wind. With a reaffirming sigh, I understand more of Stafford in an exhale than they will in an hour of explication.

I consider time spent writing poetry and can't help but think it time spent daydreaming. My time was with Shelley and Keats. My time was with the traitor-patriot Eliot and Coleridge, the insufferable. Now their names lie in shelf-dust like tiny paper heartbeats of Ozymandius. Though I can understand Stafford in an exhale, I denounce him with the same breath. He is, to me, a child writing his Christmas wishes on a napkin in a grungy diner. Little more.

We are not all special and unique snowflakes specially carved by a loving god. That none of us share a single fingerprint is nothing greater than odd fact if we fail, as we shall, to leave our prints upon the heart of this earth. My sincerest apologies, Wordsworth, for though I offer you the utmost respect, I can never love you.

Despite, I will surely look for Lowell on my way down from this peak, one jagged rock stumbling downward to the frigid mountain waters of the trough, where I might daydream with trees once more.

Glimpse

2007-08-30T10:38:00.000-07:00

Thousands of people have sat on the same love-seat outside of my store. Hundreds of lovers holding hands, being lost in one another. Only two that have mattered.

Mathloaf

2007-08-30T10:37:00.000-07:00

I would do anything for love, but I won't do math. Oh, no! No I won't do math.

To Love a Mortal

2007-08-30T10:35:00.000-07:00

It is not so stark a distance, the time between a minute and a year. Winters and summers pass without nod or smile, yet camaraderie suffers nothing of the pains of the soil. Standing in the eye, a flawless circle from here to here as the calm lashes down at us. Encompassed - completely devoured - everything looking in from spiraling destruction. Never a flinch. Never the necessity of reassurance. Only cool, cool knowledge that this storm will brew its droplets again and again, all eternity.

Feasibility

2007-08-26T07:49:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine of whom I have made no mention here in some years recently opened a martial arts school.

To rewind, I may have talked of this in passing as a dream of mine that I never saw as a feasible plan for a way to live out my days. My friend and I had talked about making our own school since we had barely started high school. We would be partners and combine our different styles to make something wholly new and more effective, and having fulfilled our dream, would be happy with work that we could take pride in.

Eight years later, he's now the owner of the fastest growing martial arts school in the nation, and I'm out of shape working at some corner in the mall.

It's hard not to let that make me feel retarded. Not that I envy him (I'm good enough at being content with not having to handle food) so much as the fact that I know I could've done the same thing. We were both world-class champions. Even though we'd always hold back, I never fell behind him when we sparred. I was perfect in form, flawless in weaponry, and in combat unrivaled by most. As was he.

What goes on in the life of one person that he is able to never lose sight of his single most precious ambition, and what happens to the other soul that he settles for choice number three or five or ten without a fight?

I should mention before I sound too negative how incredibly proud I am of this brother. It has always been utterly impossible to speak with him without leaving inspired, and it's largely because of him that I ventured into peaceful philosophy after my years of Nietzschean babble.

There's just something in me when he asks out of politeness what I've been doing in the meantime that feels like I have completely betrayed him in straying so easily from a path that he has never been able to leave.

I feel like I owe it to him to get back in the saddle, but really, I owe it to myself.

Tranquility

2007-08-26T07:37:00.000-07:00

So much time spent in avoidance of a stale silence, that even I would not have predicted back then that one day I would be trying to illicit one of those overly long quiets to be a conversation-killer. After the wedding, I kept telling her. After the wedding, I thought, that's when I can fade to black like she's half-wanted me to for so long.

The other half is our unspeakable portion that no society would allow. I find that this is the side I reside in and the side to which I cater. Hers and mine, it is our pitch-black jubilant nightmare in which all horrors we withhold are utterly real.

Mine is a place of darkness where she is no longer allowed to dwell. Though she is welcome enough, she has forbidden herself. Thus as we teeter on the edge of a real conversation, I speak only of nothings and turn her to face the other way. Our chatter dies and she shows no remorse. For this I hate us both, for though I shall always be perfectly and unflinchingly in love with her darkness, her light holds me in no captivation.

I try to expand my consciousness beyond the walls of a small room and cannot; there are nothing and no one out there to free my thoughts.

I feel my heart beating strongly in my chest. I hear it tapping out each step as it marches toward its death. I feel the second half of my soul -- a portion given freely -- slowly flowing back into me. It is a portion that I had hoped never to see returned.

I am unloved again at long last.

Busywork

2007-08-25T11:30:00.000-07:00

I get up at about 7:30 whether I want to or not. My roommate is up by then, and no matter how quiet he tries to be, I'll get woken up at some point. Afterward, I lie in bed until my alarm goes off at 8:00.

I get up for real at that point and get ready for school. I'm just a hair late every day, but someone is always later than me so I don't worry about it too much. I have classes until 2:00.

At this point, I have about an hour to drive home, eat lunch, get ready for work, and drive to work. This is my only "me time" in the day.

I'll be at work until about 9:30 or 10:00 frantically trying to keep up with store duties, customers and homework.

After work, I come home and finish whatever homework I couldn't do during the day and get to bed no sooner than 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning.

I then get up at about 7:30 whether I want to or not.

Pride and Prejudice. Mostly Prejudice.

2007-08-21T12:38:00.000-07:00

Since P-chan is relatively preoccupied and away from the internet where she's unable to assault me through telekinesis (assuming she doesn't feel the Force-disturbance when I say what I'm about to), I just have to state a SCIENTIFIC FACT.

Jane Austen's books are fetid dungheaps that would be of more relevance to mankind if we were to burn them, but I'd rather use the charcoal kindling to filter cigarettes and die a slow physical death than the eons-long onslaught of pure suck contained on every page of her books that brings about a mental death reminiscent of only two things: Jar-Jar Binks, and I don't even need to think of a second thing because that pretty much sums up the extent of her failure.

Austen is not a Romantic writer. She's not a Victorian writer. For the sake of ease, we'll just never refer to her as a writer ever again.

Let's take Pride and Prejudice as an example since I am being forced to begin my Victorian Lit class with it. Or, more precisely, the professor is psyching us out by giving us authentic and worthwhile scripts by Tennyson and Browning and then lolling us as we nose-dive into Austen.

Granted, we're doing Austen now as his logic is to save the best for last.

No one will ever begin Pride and Prejudice thinking it's an action novel. Angelina Jolie will never star as Elizabeth tri-wielding uzis (two in her hands and one in that hideous monster that resides on the lower portion of her face).

But everyone will begin Pride and Prejudice thinking that something, ANYTHING would happen. Everyone who manages to finish this bark-scrawl will STILL be waiting for anything, anything at all to happen.

If you said, "but it's a story about her facing the social atmosphere of her-" ZZzzzzzz you're fired.

It's not about jack shit. Anything said in that book could've been said eighty times better by an illiterate orphan with sidewalk chalk and only a thumb-pinky combo to draw with.

When I'm done with this "book" that I'm being forced to spend five dollars more than it's worth on (yes, it costs five dollars) I'm seriously, 100% literally going to tie rocks to it and find a lake to throw it in. Despite that burial at sea is supposed to be an honor, I can only hope that it'll be somewhat like fishing with dynamite and that everything in its wake as it spirals to the depths will float back to the top, lifeless and ready for grilling.

And to anyone who says, "Bawwww Austen has withstood the test of time," so has diarrhea. Six thousand years of human civilization and they don't have a shot that will make infants and the elderly not have explosive projectile shits (especially after being forced to read this novel).

To those who say, "Bawwww if you're so awesome where's your classic, then?" just give me a bit of time. Actually, just give me some safety scissors, construction paper, and glitter glue. I can make something more entertaining than the whole of Pride and Prejudice in about thirty seconds.

If you haven't been unfortunate enough to have read this story before, feel free to profess this to any Jehova's Witnesses that come by your home, because clearly you are one of the Lord's blessed and chosen people. Don't even think of watching any of the movies or so much as peeking at some Cliff's Notes. I'm fairly sure that if you inspect the back of the book where the recap is usually at there is a Surgeon General's warning against reading the book if you are elderly, pregnant, or have any last shred of taste.

To summarize, I'm very much looking forward to teaching classes where I can force unsuspecting children to read this book. The ensuing woe and agony should bring my students closer together and give them hope in a brighter future, where time-traveling robots can go back to punch Jane Austen in the throat before she learns to walk.

THE END

tl;dr
(There was more excitement, drama, violence, and humor in this post than there was in the entire book "Pride and Prejudice."

Optimism

2007-08-14T20:37:00.000-07:00

For probably the first time ever I've got a job that pays enough to make me actually want to be there. I swear, my optimism toward being able to go to work has nothing to do with the fact that I spend a good three or four hours of my six hour shift getting paid to play Final Fantasy. Or more accurately, playing Final Fantasy while I get paid to do other things.

I'm almost registered for the classes I'll be taking this fall, which include a class on appreciating and writing poetry largely similar to a class I've already taken at a different school. Despite that I enjoy good poetry and can spot the needles in the haystacks, a poet I am not. Like I was telling Trappie, my professor isn't likely to be too thrilled with lines like:

You are the Zelda of my Hyrule
the Toadstool of my tower,
When you touch my Master Sword
it spits fire like a flower

I never really liked the romantic movement, which held that poetry is a sporadic inspiration of the soul (versus a well-planned piece forced to fit certain rules and perameters). But I do have to agree with them a bit. I can sit and write page after page in iambic pentameter, but it's generally rubbish due to the fact that I'm not inspired by anything emotional whatsoever.

I'm not even sure what else I signed up for. I think I'm in some class about grammar. Way to save that until I'm in my 20s. I have a feeling it's going to be shit they should be teaching to 2nd graders but that I'll still manage to get a C in it.

Really gotta push myself to stop doing the bare minimums. I know I could have made a solid 4.0 in everything I've done so far if I wanted to. It's just easier to tell myself I'm lazy and stupid and settle for the C baseline than it is to...well, I never actually study since I have yet to take a class that taught me anything thoroughly new, so I guess it's no harder to get an A than a C for me. Just habit I suppose...I always hated being the smart kid in the group, hated being copied off of and used for answers. So I quit being that kid, and now that I need to be him again it's difficult to get in the mode I need to be in.

That is to say, difficult to be motivated to do well for myself.

On an unrelated note, a customer made a comment that kind of triggered something in me. He was asking about the protein we sell, and I told him that two of our store brands tasted wretched. He said, "At least you're honest."

To me it was just the matter of do I want to deal with a return later, or do I just want to tell him the truth now and have a repeat customer. Overall, in sales I've found that people appreciate being told the truth. If you tell them you're skeptical over a product or that you don't think this one actually works, they trust you more. Strategically, when they then trust you, they'll also trust your recommendation when you point them to a different product. The majority of the time, telling a customer that a certain product is total garbage enables you to ensure a sale on another product. It's good business to be honest.

Our district manager constantly rags on the associates because their sale averages are usually only 20-25 dollars and his is around 45. He'll load people up with a bunch of stuff they don't need that they return the next day, or stuff that doesn't work that they return two weeks later.

I just tell people the truth. My sale average was around 90 dollars last time I checked.

Unfortunately, I don't tell people the truth because it's good business or to land sales or make commission. I just tell them the truth because it's easier than bullshitting to try and make huge sales.

It's just the type of person I am. I might not always tell you what you want to know directly or even at all, but I've never been one to tell white lies for no reason whatsoever. I can tell when people lie to me. I can taste it, smell it, feel it bouncing off my skin. It's disgusting, and whether they can tell or not, I just can't throw out that garbage the way people throw it at me.

I do lie. Make no mistakes about my claims. I lie when I feel that it is necessary or when I know that the ultimate outcome will be better because of it.

But no one cares if you drink coffee, if you've ever been to Cali, if that's your natural hair colour, if you're scared of roller-coasters. People lie about so much retarded shit...I'm not even going anywhere with this. It's just one of the huge huge huge reasons that I've never really been able to identify with most humans. Generally, people are of a mentality such that those sorts of lies are a basis for their entire behaviour patterns, and every action they take is reflective of the fact that they find no fault in white lies.

A huge huge huge reason that when I look at people, I try to picture them without their skin, as bones and twitching muscles to remind myself of their impermanence. They are as temporary as their falsehoods, serving just as much purpose.

I truly despise them.

I wonder if some of them don't feel the same way about people who cannot resign themselves to pleasant farces.

Weeaboo

2007-08-08T00:06:00.000-07:00

A Chinese (note: Chinese) friend had his avatar set to a cat biting a potato chip, to which a female white friend of his replied something to the effect of, "Aww cute neko ^_^"

Neko being Japanese (note: Japanese) for cat. As it really doesn't affect me in any way other than annoyance, the post I made on his board after the neko girl was out of sarcasm.

Granted, it's true. Japanophiles, as they're called by PC people, are the type that seem to worship anything Japanese. Cartoons, figurines, whatever. They want to marry a Japanese person and move to Tokyo despite the fact that they probably only know three words or phrases in really crappy Japanese that they learned from a TV show.

In non-PC terms, we call them weeaboos. More commonly, it's immediately coupled with another specific word that most people probably already know, i.e., "God, I can't stand that weeaboo faggot."

Post:

"Neko? What is this Japanese weeabooery? Zhong guo, nig, hometown China up in this ma.

"C'mon Vic. I know you like the anime and stuff, but despite the fact that you may or may not be destroying your frontal lobe in night clubs, there might be a time when you have to defend against the Japanese brutes if they decide to invade China again.

"At that point, you'll have to put your love of tentacle hentai aside and poney up for the motherland. You know in your heart that only commies can use physics exploits, and that only bunnyhopping reds will achieve victory on the eastern front.

"So the next time someone pulls some caucasianese out on you, you proudly say:

"I am Doctor Vic McAwesomesauce, and I denounce this faggotry in the name of thousands of years of cultural identification and delicious imitation Mongolian barbeque!"

"Then as you descend upon the Japanophile with butterfly sword in one hand and epic wang of smiting in the other, images of a society NOT desperately trying to sacrifice their identity to people who nuked millions of innocents will fill their mind, accompanied by the smell of sesame chicken and the distinct knowledge of the virtues of quality dental care not embraced in east Asia.

"Though only one weeaboo will have fallen, and another will doubtless rise to take its place, you will sleep better that night knowing one more person who put your people in American concentration camps because they couldn't tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese in WW2 isn't there to mispronounce "arigatou" at you when all you wanted to do was pound some white snoot and not have to hear about Sony or that motherfucker General Tso.

"If they can't at least understand "Osatowa ikaga desuka ;)"* in Japanese, then really, what use do they have?

....

"lol, actually, all I wanted to know was...DOTA this weekend? Sundayish?"

*("How about some sugar? ;)")

End Post.

I guess since white people are all mutts it's hard for them to understand the burning hatred between nations like Japan and China, or Thailand and Singapore, or North and South Korea, or whatever. But just because whitey can't conceptualize that Chinese people wouldn't want to be mistaken for peoples of a nation that invaded and sodomized their country doesn't mean that it's any less offensive.

I'll leave it at that, though, because it's not like America's ever going to change and understand the world around it. It always has been and is going to die as that stupid rich kid that never understood why no one wanted to be his friend but the other stupid rich kids.

Lights, Camera....Just Lights and Camera!

2007-08-02T23:10:00.000-07:00

I'm notorious for seeing only a couple new movies a year, but having moved in with a mediahead, that's somewhat changing due to proximity.

Having sat through Ghost Rider tonight, it was reiterated why I never watch movies. Ghost Rider had to be the most wretched, fetid pile of shit that Nick Cage has been in, even including National Treasure.

For the past decade Hollywood has been overrun with actors and actresses who only play themselves. Jennifer Aniston stars as the friendly, jittery girlfriend next door type. Adam Sandler plays the funny guy who goes down the wrong path but finds his way to happiness in the end. Robin Williams stars as the eccentric but comedic father figure. Nick Cage plays a half-mumbling guy who looks like he's about to burst into tears at any given second. Drew Barrymore appears as the chubby bitch who's supposed to be cute and innocent.

Let's not forget Chris Rock and/or Tucker as the token funny black guy. Owen Wilson stars in another film as...Owen Wilson! Meanwhile, Pierce Brosnan stars as the dashing yet reserved agent, and Halle Berry is fucking insane.

Depp is an actor. Jude Motherfuckin Law (that's his legal middle name) is an actor. Edward Norton has enormous balls and is an actor. Christopher Walkin isn't an actor, but he built Optimus Prime so he counts among worthy Hollywood additions. I'd even rather see Tom Cruise, as freaked out as he is, in another film than another actor starring as himself yet again. I'll give you Shanghai Noon and Rush Hour (one), but come on, if you've seen ANY Jackie Chan movie, the only reason to subject yourself to Who Am I is as an alternative to watching Tuxedo.

On a side note, Christina Ricci was delicious loli as Wednesday in The Addams Family.

The downside to actors that can actually do a decent job is that once they make something you love, you can't stand to see them in anything else anyway. Beerfest was totally ruined by the fact that you can't help but compare it to Super Troopers. Hot Fuzz? Not as good as Shawn of the Dead. Life of Brian? It's not Holy Grail.

Russell Crowe will never be that guy from A Beautiful Mind. He'll always be the dude from Gladiator. Jon Heder will always be Napoleon, Ron Livingston will always be the man in Office Space, Hugh Jackman is always going to be Wolverine, and Arnold Schwarzenegger will ONLY be remembered for his epic performance in Red Heat.

That's right, RED HEAT, "the sizzling theatrical blockbuster smash, which is the first movie to ever be filmed in Russia's famed Red Square. Arnold Schwarzenegger is Captain Ivan Danko, a highly disciplined Russian detective. James Belushi is Detective Art Ridzik, a fearless but undisciplined cop. They're a pair of mismatched cops hot on the trail of Russia's deadliest drug smuggler throughout the mean streets of Chicago. A nonstop action-adventure, packed with humor and thrills...with this much friction, there's gonna be heat...RED HEAT."

Oh lawdy, one is described as disciplined, but the other is described as UNdisciplined. And they're both cops. The classic zany-cop serious-cop combo starring Arnold. We should all be as lucky as James Belushi was to have been part of history like that.

In the end, America hasn't come out with anything worth watching since The Princess Bride (there, I said it) with the exception of Major Payne in twenty years. Nothing coming out of Hollywood is any better than poorly-subbed Hong Kong rips like Kung Fu Hustle. The worst news is that there's no sign of improvement. There aren't any Philip K. Dick books left for screenwriters to butcher, and as long as people are paying to see Adam Sandler star as himself in Click or Rob Schneider play as himself in a movie Sandler is making because he fails so hard he can't get a break on his own without being in Mr. Deeds' shadow...well, you get the idea.

Three things in closing:

Anthony Hopkins, you'll never do better than Silence of the Lambs. So please, stop ruining the fucking original by being in these crappy pre/se-quels, especially in a tight white t-shirt with cuffs on at your age. Write a book, have a signing, fucking retire and stop ruining our respect for you.

Sam Jackson and the entire cast of Friends, fuck off already.

Yes, Christina Ricci WAS delicious loli, so you shut your face. I don't care about the fact that you could land a Boeing 747 on her forehead. She was Wednesday, damn it.

Taste of Relaxation

2007-07-26T22:15:00.000-07:00

My roommate (Blisken) and I both had fairly decent jobs thrown at us at the same time. His is as a full time programmer, and mine is as an assistant manager at a health products place. I guess when they saw him they knew they had a computer geek on their hands, and when they saw me they were awed by my godlike physique.

And now that I'm done playing pretend...

We drove out to his worksite in advance so he'd know where he was supposed to go before the time actually came that he needed to be there. On the way home, I detoured to a cigar shop. I wanted to celebrate a little bit, but while I was waiting on my first paycheque I didn't want to do anything too extravagant.

With cigars, you generally get what you pay for. There are five kinds of cigars that you can almost always rate by how cheap they are. Each grade up of cigar is exponentially better than the grade below it.

The worst kind come plastic wrapped in packages of no less than ten and taste like some old guy had a bowel movement in a pile of leaves he raked up in a graveyard before rolling them around a stick and burying them for a few months.

A step up from those is the kind that come in plastic sleeves. Although they're much better than the previous kind and only cost a few dollars, they're either mostly flavorless if they're light, or if they're dark, will give you a massive headache and the inability to move your legs for half an hour after you finish. I asked Blisken (who's never smoked) if he wanted to try one and he said yes, so I bought him the type that I used to smoke regularly. Blue Nexus in hand, I searched for a different one to try for myself knowing that he'd probably not even think about actually smoking the Nexus anyway, and that I'd end up with them both.

Beyond these are some better known cigars that have actually made a somewhat decent name for themselves. They might come in plastic sleeves, but you can usually get them in glass or metal tubes if you look hard enough and should expect to pay eight to twelve dollars for one. I went for this bracket for a change, grabbing myself a dark Cohiba that was so moist a midget could have made love to it. It was delectable; I'm completely sold on them.

After these you have the type of cigar that only comes two ways. You either buy it individually, wrapped in cedar inside an air-tight glass tube, or by the wooden box of five. I've never had one because I've never had the job to burn that kind of money, and thankfully haven't had any kids to where someone would show up with one. Which, if I have to suffer through 30 years of a woman's little brat, is the least they could show up with.

Going up from these, you have the hand-rolled straight off the plantation style cigars that you can't get in North America...which is a good thing, because they'd probably immediately give me lung cancer and a heart attack simultaneously. Needless to say, if I ever find myself in Latin America I'm going to be smoking like a chimney the entire time I'm there.

Like I said, I'm sold on the Cohibas and they weren't even near the best quality a person could get. I thoroughly enjoyed mine down to the stub. Having said that, I never really understood why people hated the bottom ends of them so much. To me, it seems like the most intoxicating, flavorful part of the entire cigar. The longer you can stand smoking it, the closer to your lips the flame gets, the better it seems to taste to me.

Blisken left his lying on the kitchen counter and headed out of town. Not that I haven't smoked four month old cigars before, but they taste worse and worse as they dry out. After six hours, they get iffy, after a day, it's sometimes not worth even bothering. But reminiscing over my time on campus with a Nexus stuffed butt-end under my hat, I figured there were a lot worse things I'd been forced to suck on for half an hour.

....

No. Faggot.

As I closed my eyes and took in the spiced blue-label, I found myself enjoying the dried out, cheap, stem-filled cigar more than the fresh one that I'd got for myself. I guess that's why I've never cared too much about money so long as my bills are paid...I'm perfectly happy with something simple and good. I don't need the best of the best out there in order to smile alone in the middle of the night and truly be able to relax and enjoy myself for thirty minutes. And even if that's all it is, thirty minutes of unhindered happiness, as long as I know it's going to be there it doesn't bother me in the slightest that it's been two years since I've felt it.

I never saw myself as being the type to come home from a day of work and appreciate having absolutely nothing to do for the rest of the night. Hopefully I can make this feeling last.

Myself Tomorrow

2007-07-19T02:35:00.001-07:00

I had so much I wanted to do with my life and no one to ever help me get myself out of my own way so I could actually do it.

A phrase I hope to have no cause for repeating on my deathbed.

There's no one reason to live that encompases an entire life. There will be periods where the same answer to "why am I here" can blanket a short while. As I found out a number of years ago, the answer is too often "to find out why I am here." Coincidentally enough, the periods where you're lying in wait are the most torturous ones.

The only two things that have ever stood in my way with any force were capitalism and myself. I can at least correct one of those.

I've got to get over my eternal I'll-do-it-tomorrow hump.

I want to make better artwork tomorrow. I want to start relearning music tomorrow. I want to brush up on my Russian tomorrow. I want to work out tomorrow. I want to do well in school tomorrow. I want to read again tomorrow. I want to find a better job tomorrow. I want to feel good about myself tomorrow.

If I want to feel good about myself tomorrow, I'm going to have to start making some changes today. Every time I've made this exact same resolution I've tried to do everything at once and burned myself out quickly. This go-around, I'm really going to try and pace myself so that no matter how mundane and useless the tasks I set for myself are, I can actually get around to them.

Starting with re-learning a language that has almost no value in America.

What can I say, though. I'm tired of the convenience of being able to buy anything I could possibly need for a reasonable price at Wal-Mart.

Seriously.

I'm not going to get my ticket out of here by sitting and waiting for it to come in the mail.

So here's to climbing past the tallest wall I could ever have in front of me: myself.

Avoidance

2007-07-05T03:52:00.000-07:00

It's very easy to avoid an argument. All you have to do is say, "You're right, I'm wrong."

Fortunately, you don't actually have to be sincere when you say this. Unfortunately, some people seem to think it means, "I wish to keep arguing about this. Please continue to try and prove to me that I'm a fucking retard in the hopes that I will cut my wrists after I realize I can never live up to the awesome standards you've set for humanity."

To rewind, I made a slight error of assumption.

Someone said that it was possible to do the same thing twice at once in a certain program. I filled it in as meaning twice at once for a period of time that would actually be useful, since why on earth would he be wasting my time talking about it if it's a stupid parlor trick that won't help anyone out?

I quickly realized, as three other people were hounding me about how wrong I was, that they didn't mean that. I was fast to just say that they were right and I'm retarded.

A day and a half later I get a message (screenshots and all) where one of my buddies took probably an hour out of his day to prove to me (after I already said I was wrong and they were right) that you can, in fact, do something useless in the program for a short duration.

Now I don't know what to do, because I'm so busy sitting here crying and cutting myself because I'll never be good enough to prove to someone something that they already took my word for and didn't care about to start with.

On a serious note, it seems like there are a lot of people out there that do this regularly. I'm not trying to be a douche because I really have no beef with these friends that progresses past annoyance, but there's a time to grow up.

It seems that the people who do this sort of thing...these attempts to display their intellectual machismo in the face of all apathy...are of a certain breed.

Everyone I meet who does that has grown up in a relatively normal household, breezed through school (minus the sports, which they didn't do well at), and were never really popular outside of their little cliques. Now that high school is over, they seek out other remotely intelligent people and argue with them about shit they don't care about. Like it's some kind of achievement to beat someone at a game he doesn't want to play.

They'll never argue with you about your own area of expertise, because if and when they failed, they'd fail on that whole basis of their youth's development - their intelligence - and it would render all those years of failing to be able to fit in or excel at anything other than math as being totally moot.

Although to give credit where it's due, one guy I know will argue with you about your own expertise. He'll find something that you've been doing for years, maybe even competitively and successfully, and argue with you about it. But only online, and not without having an online encyclopedia open so when you trip up on one mundane detail that no one cares about, he can pretend that that was the focal point of his entire argument and that you're a total fuckstick.

I just don't get it. People don't seem to outgrow it. Specifically, I remember the teacher who taught me to play chess trying to castle queenside to beat me in a match once. Is it that important? Are these people's egos really so fragile that they have to cheat against 7th graders to feel good about themselves? That they have to decide, "Okay, tonight I'm going to read up on the invasions of Puerto Rico in the Spanish-American war, and when I say a factoid that he doesn't know, I'll pretend like he doesn't know crap about the entire subject and make fun of him. I'm awesome. Despite a life of inferior argumentation skills, I live satisfied because of my talent at being extremely annoying without invitation."

Really there are only a handful of types of debater:

1) The Sniper: These failures of logic are the type I've been droning on about. They only have one shot, so they'll save it for that slight mistake you make. The army of facts and logic surrounding that mistake don't matter: they'll hit their mark and then run away to hide again.

2) The Salesman: This guy's facts and reasoning are perfectly in order and run like a charm...if you take his word for it. A bullshitter through and through, if you don't know your material, he'll make up rubbish for hours for the attention, the victory, or just to see how long he can.

3) The DJ: He's got so much spin that by the time you're done dancing in circles you just want to go home and pop some asprin to get the pounding of the DJ's voice out of your head. Facts don't matter when he remixes everything you say to sound the way he wants it to.

4) The Logician: Logicians might not know what they're talking about, they might not even have any facts, but they'll try to rope you in with enough if-thens that you'll think you're reading a freshman's Visual Basic program. If this, then that, and if that, then this, and if this, then obviously there can be only one answer. Once they arrive at their one answer, their systems shut down and all other possible solutions return only input error lines.

5) The Claymore: This guy will sit silent and wait for you to finish saying whatever you might possibly have to say. He'll nod and mmhmm you for a half an hour before offering even the slightest opinion. Once you're done speaking, he'll explode total-recall shrapnel all over you in an attempt to decimate everything you just said point by point, leaving you wishing you'd just walked the other way.

6) The Adolf: More charisma than a can of sunshine and more solutions than an Asian in a calculus class. The Adolf will dominate the argument by forcing all eyes on him. The second you try to interject, he'll simply speed up the production of his inspiring speeches and starve you from the spotlight so long that when you do speak, no one will remember what your points were to start with because the liquid awesome seeping from his very pores is overpowering their senses.

There are a number of ways to approach each of these methods. You can play aggressive, you can play ignorant, you can play the victim, you can play the pro. But all in all, most people fall into one of these categories (I'm usually a claymore, myself).

Note that not listed is someone who patiently listens to the opposing side, considers it, and offers a well thought out factual rebuttal until a consensus or compromise can be made. This person does not truly exist. The closest thing you can get to this would be:

7) The Nihilist: Nothing you say really matters, because he can flow in and out of any form of argumentation that suits the minute in order to achieve victory on all fronts. Three days later riding in your car, you'll think of a brilliant point and wish that you would've thought of it arguing with him before. Ultimately, though, it wouldn't have mattered, because he'd have schooled you so bad anyway that your entire argument might as well not have existed in the first place.

In my opinion, I've listed these different types in the order of increasing effectiveness on a general level. It would seem, though, that how intelligent a person feels he is versus how intelligent he knows he isn't determines his placement along the ladder of argumentation ability.

So, to all you smart motherfuckers out there, learn to argue effectively and stop sniping. Seriously. No one likes you more for it. You might be the top of the intellectual totem pole, but no one's going to notice because they're too busy not respecting you.

Artistic License

2007-06-26T00:03:00.000-07:00

I was robbed. Sort of.

I never sign my artwork or anything because I don't think it's good enough that anyone would actually want it. I can't do colours for the life of me and all I'm really good at is drawing line-art with pencils.

Once I asked someone to critique my work. I started out with the warning that I only draw "like two times a year." Their response? "Maybe you should think about making that ZERO times a year."

Don't get me wrong, though. For what I'm doing, I do it better than most. I could sell something to an average tourist and they'd think it was fantastic. Art-world in consideration, though, I barely classify as a hobbyist in the professional's mindset.

When I'd heard that a website had stolen a bunch of work from a forum that I post on, I didn't think much of it. I'd only ever posted one actual piece there, line-art, and it wasn't the top of my skills pile anyway.

But, out of curiosity, I went to the site that had ripped off our work and started browsing through the thirty-one pages of content they'd taken. Really, I wanted to see what was deemed good enough to be worth stealing versus all of the art that I usually see there.

I kept telling myself that mine wouldn't be there because it wasn't color, because it was too light, because it just wasn't as good, but eventually there it was. I wasn't even angry at first. At first, I was sort of happy and took it as a compliment that they thought mine was good enough to take.

Then I clicked on it.

You could only advance to actually seeing the artwork by paying a fee to the website hosting the "borrowed" content. Essentially, they ripped off about fifty different artists and are trying to charge people to view their work.

There's really nothing that the artists, even all of us put together, can do about it. Hiring a lawyer would be entirely too expensive, and frankly I don't care enough to jump on that bandwagon with the fanatics. It just pissed me off that there was something I was trying to offer for free out of the satisfaction I got from creating it, and some asshat steals it in three seconds and is making money off of it.

There's probably a lesson in there somewhere about karma and downloading music, but I'm going to pretend there isn't since their situation is the total opposite.

At the very least, I'm trying to use it as mild inspiration to make more pieces. Maybe eventually I'll be able to draw something other than women and demons.

Eve's Cure

2007-06-24T04:24:00.000-07:00

She kept saying she wanted to see me again, and I kept casually-but-forcefully stating that that would be excellent...after her wedding. She told me she didn't understand why I insisted that it be afterward, but when I told her that before was okay too, she didn't push things. Chances are she understood that whatever my reasoning was, it was probably solid. More likely, she recognized her own reasoning and was glad to see it pushed aside.

This is a sort-of letter she directed to me. If you're a tl;dr type, well, you probably should've left eight years ago when I started out.

"Without going back and actually checking, I would have to guess that it has been roughly over 5 years since I began my venture in online journal-dom. Over the course of those years, I have had approximately 5 (maybe more) "blogs" - I still prefer to call them journals. This is the only one that was there at the beginning and is still in existence. Strange, that of all the journals I've had, the one that causes me the most pain is the one I still have active. Maybe I like pain. I've always said so, but I'm a ridiculous baby at the same time. I'll compromise and say that I tend to like self-inflicted pain as opposed to other-inflicted pain. Hmmm.

"Moving on . . . I think I cannot bear to let this one go because it holds so much of my life. Yes, only 5 years, but those 5 years span the last two to three of my high school career and will cover all of my college years once I'm done (well, my undergraduate years anyway). Those are amazingly powerful years.

"I decided to write this entry because I was on an old friend's journal and had a desire to write him, a desire that refused to be ignored. Why would I even hesitate? Well, I'm not sure this old friend wants to hear from me, in all honesty. And if we're being completely truthful, I can't say I would blame him one bit. He was correct when he said that I've used him as little more than a leaning post from time to time, usually when I needed someone to love me and care about me. He always did. Yes, I've used him and I've always known and the guilt has never gone away, but I never stopped. Until about a year and a half ago. He called out of the blue one summer while I was at work. The conversation was full of not much more than awkward silence. He left saying he'd wait to hear from me. I said okay and then whispered, "You won't" as I hung up the phone. How horrible of me, I know. I've never forgotten that, as with much of our conversation over the years. He said he's never been able to get angry with me the way we both know he should . . . and I've never been able to get him out of my heart the way I should. Yes, I'm engaged to Reito and he's the one I want to spend my life with, but, my heart still stopped the last time I saw him, and it does if I see pictures of him (not very often) or even just recall his face. I still smile when I think of him. No matter how much time passes between when we see each other or talk (and I don't expect either will happen again), there's still a part of me that he has and always will. It frustrates Reito and I feel bad, because he knows that he can't tap some part of me and he doesn't really understand why. He's broken most of my walls down or at least found a way inside of them, but he still can't figure me out completely. He wants to spend the rest of his life trying though, which, really, what more could I ask for? He loves me and I love him and even though it's a different kind of love, it's no less real.

"So Red, if you read this still, I'm sorry. Truly. I know I've said it a million times, but I still am. You're right, you don't owe me anything. Our ties have been severed, but I promised once (or twice or tons of times) that I would love you forever and despite my best attempts, I'm starting to realize that may be true after all. It's not a love like it used to be. It's a quiet one, one that just sits inside me, waiting for me to remember it's there. I remember once saying that my last thought this side of the grave would be of you. I wouldn't be surprised if your memory doesn't give the rest of my life a damn good fight for it, too."

In all fairness, now that the wedding is out of the way, I'll explain what was going on in my mind as best I can.

On the surface, it seemed obvious. A woman I spent the better part of a decade getting heartstomped by, a woman who never escaped the stranglehold I put around her ability to love others, sounded as if she wanted to see me one last time before she was married. That is to say, more appropriately, she sounded as if she wanted to see me one last time. Period.

On the surface, she's someone who likes to bring about closure herself. On the surface, her now-husband would be less than pleased for her to meet with me. Even when I suggested that she could bring him along, she said it was the worst possible thing that could happen.

That's all on the surface. Why would that be the worst possible thing? Why is it that I've seen her once in a number of years now but her then-fiance could find jealousy for me? Who in her right mind would bring up someone like me to someone like him?

No one in their right mind, because no one in their right mind is honest. She probably did so feeling it was as truthful as possible not to hide that there was a dark place in her heart that would never belong to anyone but me. How could it? That place is where the part of my soul she took resides. Where it feeds and grows and lives and kills off anything that tries to intrude.

Should I have chosen to meet her before her wedding, there were two large negative possibilities. One that she would view it as closing my chapter in her books. Another that I would turn sour and use it as an opportunity to instill as much of my oiled blood in her veins as possible. A small injection of doubt goes a long way when the person giving the medicine looks like, acts like, and IS the doctor. The evil part of me (and it is a large part) would have found some restitution in pulling the kickstand out of an institution that, these days, is anything but sturdy.

But I would never do something like that to her intentionally, would I? My ego told me no. My darkness smiled and licked his teeth. As children you swear you'll trust each other with anything. As adults, I found that sometimes you have to make decisions based on not being able to trust either of you.

After the wedding the potential is still there. She could still close the doors to me. I could still wax malicious and spit poison.

My love and that poison have sometimes been one in the same. That is why after lowering myself to a leaning-post and servant, after becoming a dust rag to polish her desires with, I still whisper in her ear. By doing nothing but offering everything I possibly could, relentlessly and unconditionally, I had already poisoned her.

She managed once to rip out my fangs, but they were just starters. I look at my hollow self in a mirror and I can see the lack of anything caring reflected in my eyes. I will have my fangs back, but I cannot extract my venom from her soul.

Perhaps it is that she wishes to embrace the pain in her heart that I have placed there. Perhaps she desires to find a cure. Either way, after all this time, I am still the only one that can help her do either.

Eve trusted the serpent out of love for all things. For her love, he gave her understanding. From this has always come nothing but suffering. If she could do it over again, would Eve reject the serpent's gift?

I believe that my dear Eve would not.

Humanity

2007-06-22T02:28:00.000-07:00

I wake up in a pool of cold sweat and lie unable to move for a short eternity. Finally tilting my head to one side and peering through the darkness at my clock I can see that it's four in the morning. A split second later I have a case of cottonmouth to rival the ancients and realize that the reason I'm unable to move is not a lack of will, but the lack of any bodily response. Sweat pours down my brow.

I somehow stumble to the bathroom, telling myself it's nothing. After a short urination I realize my body just wants to shit and vomit at the same time. My vision fades in and out.

Knowing what's about to come, I miraculously manage to pull myself to a half-standing position. Everything after this is a blur. The next thing I know I'm lying on the kitchen floor next to a glass of water, liquid falling out of the side of my mouth, unable to drink the rest of it as my vision gives out completely. So hot, an inferno in my veins, every gland of my body leaks precious water.

I wonder if this time will be the last time I have to go through this, if this time I wasn't able to down enough water to make it through. I think about trying to crawl to my roommate's door but my body is totally unwilling. At least if I'm going to die, I think, there's no reason to wake him up and ruin his night. He'll be glad for the rest if he has to come out and find a drooling corpse with shit all over it to deal with in the morning.

Time passes. Five minutes, an hour, it's impossible to tell. There's no shaking in the least; they're the steady hands of a sniper if only I could make them close around something to shoot. Briefly, I wonder where I got my glass and hope that it wasn't used. If only I could have laughed at the thought it would have been quite a relief.

Eventually I stand, filling my glass again and swaying to the bathroom. I sit down in the darkness and hold it to my face. It's not because it's cool at all (it isn't) but because it's the only way I can support both my head and the vessel. I empty myself into the toilet and take a long pull of water.

Smiling inwardly, the realization comes that I have survived another kiss of the netherworld. This particular droplet of death was one of the more disgusting ones, but I had passed through it and the utter human mortality of this decrepit body by a slim margin once more. I had lived to destroy another day.

Unlimited Power over Mortals

2007-06-19T02:16:00.000-07:00

I've done more in twenty years than most people do in a lifetime. I've been everything from a cyberpunk to a gang leader. I've been a pacifist in cases no one ever cared about and shed blood in places no one will ever know about. I've been a lover, a best friend, hated, and the bane of some people's existence.

I'm just getting started but I feel like I should be about ready to throw off my mortal shell. I feel old, tired, and ready to be done. But with a long way to go, there are a few truths that I can proclaim with utter certainty. Only one of those truths matters in this human world:

Loyalty is power.

Loyalty is a very interesting thing, because most people equate it to friendship or love when that is not at all the case. It's just as possible to love someone and show no loyalty whatsoever as it is to hate someone but realize that you must stand by him.

It's important to note that some pseudo-intellectual tricksters (myself falling into that lot quite often) might try to say that only the illusion of loyalty is necessary, and that the actual thing is not required so long as the illusion remains in tact. Though Socrates argued against this lack of justice at length, I cannot or will not because it is unnecessary.

While the illusion of loyalty may serve short term goals, in the long run, all humans are instilled with equal amounts of foolishness at heart, and the illusionist will fail at some point in his creation. There is a time when the attentive soul will see through the guise and the repercussions of this are generally leaning toward the utter destruction of who the victim views to be a grand betrayer.

The only guaranteed power is through that of genuine loyalty. It is not important that you remain loyal to those you wish to hold power over unless it is mandatory for them to publicly display their loyalty to you. It is only by the public display of loyalty that others are forced to credit you with authenticity and admit concessions to logical mandates.

Public, loyalty, authentic, logical. Key words.

Although private loyalty can in some cases be used as an offensive mechanism, it can only be done by the utilization of fear and is therefore only good in the hands of the most deft of linguists or leaders, and for this reason only public loyalty should be utilized by the majority of people wishing to come to victories.

There are many different ways of accumulating the loyalty of others. The most important factor is to never make concessions to any extreme. If you appear as balanced, logical, and just, then they will decide that their desires should be the same as your own and will further your aims above theirs, because they will make your aims theirs. As long as you are consistently logical and just, when you are occasionally slightly off-center, the diverting action will go unquestioned.

When working toward a malicious or self-serving goal, these off-centered steps must be taken in as small of fractions as possible, and if noted, they must be portrayed to be as logical and selfless as possible while reminding the viewer or listener that the action is what they want and in their favor.

There are a few warnings about obtaining a nearly unlimited power over people in this casual way:

Be wary of false loyalty in others.

The only failsafe way to ensure that your loyalty is not viewed as false is to ensure that it is real.

Intelligent or foolish, beautiful or disgusting, everyone can be used at some point for some goal.

It is impossible to truly tell when a person has outlived his use. Even after your goal is complete, maintain your loyalties for the event that the person may be of use again.

Loyalty is based first on the human and then on the ideals. If they can not find respect or friendship for you, they will not find true loyalty.

There's more but chances are no one who reads this will be able to put it into practice effectively anyway, so I'm going to play DOTA with Aeons like a hero.

Under the Table

2007-06-06T04:10:00.000-07:00

I am totally sober when I say that I really have to stop drinking.

I've been doing it since I was sixteen. Hell, it's a late start for some people. But it was early enough that now no matter how much I have the core of me doesn't feel a thing. I can be to the point where I can barely stand or talk, but the deepest part of my mind will be completely rational and unaffected. Passing out on the floor on the virge of dying to alcohol poisoning, that part of me will haul me to the bathroom, reach down my throat until I'm scratching my lungs and vomitting into the bowels of a toilet, and then pump me so full of water that all it amounts to is a nap on the linoleum and a headache the day after.

Seldom have I ever gotten to that point. Never when I've been with someone, in any case. It's more of the fact that I simply can't get to that point anymore. Other than being a little talkative, slurring and goofy, it just doesn't do anything to me anymore.

If it ain't makin' ugos into models or helpin' me forget I'm still alive, what fuckin' use is it anyway?

All alcohol does to me now is give me a massive headache. The slightest buzz that's not worth the hassle at all followed directly by a migraine. I can do without that.

I'm not an alcoholic at all. I don't drink in excess for the express reason that even when I do, I don't feel a damned bit different in my core.

Growing up I was always the model person that would finish clean. Never do drugs, never fuck around with women I didn't care about, never steal or fight. That was in their eyes. In reality, I've done so much more that I've never even begun to speak or write about, but...those are things for a different time.

In all sobriety, I state that I have to stop drinking because it simply doesn't cut it anymore. If it can't kick my ass, it's not worth my time. That's probably a good enough ruler for measuring a great deal of the crap I devote my time to.

No Receipt

2007-06-04T08:09:00.000-07:00

Life is supposed to be a gift from the heavens. You have no choice in accepting it, but are supposed to be eternally indebted for it. What if you don't want it? How do you return the gift?

Grab and Squeeze

2007-06-04T04:08:00.000-07:00

I thought that moving into a new apartment I would have more of the feeling of making a move. I should know that feeling well enough by now; only once in my life have I lived in the same location for more than two years.

This time around, moving back to a town I'd already lived in, to the same apartment complex in a unit with the exact same layout, it felt more like coming home.

I'm hoping the fact that my roommate this time around has some ambition to actually do something with himself will rub off on me. More importantly, his indecisive-but-planning trait plays well off of my fuck-it-let's-do-it characteristic, so we should actually have some fun that doesn't involve a keyboard or D-pad.

Being a bit of an asshole to him, I realized that I will have to show minimal self-restraint in what I say. Generally, he's the type that if you point out something completely honest despite the brutality of it, he'll think about it and not hold any hostility over something that is simply true. If you point out the rhyme and reason of why he's doing something detrimental to him, he isn't one to deny it outwardly. He will realize what you're saying is true and accept it. If he doesn't like that truth, he will form at least a small intent to change things rather than rationalize them.

There are, however, some things that people lie to themselves about because they are fully aware of what the truth is and do not wish to seek change. Sometimes, something is inherent in a person and despite how self-damaging that thing might be, the person cups and cradles it and lashes out, eventually, against anything that challenges that aspect of their persona.

I've always had a keen eye for these characteristics of people coupled with the ability to push the right buttons in the right order so that I'm able to step, very briefly, one pace beyond the lines they draw. In this case, that would not be advantageous in the least. Minimal self-control.

My bedroom is already starting to look like a normal human's bedroom, and as such my mind is already nowhere near being on the things inside the walls of it at any point.

Like a normal human's.

P-chan took a sideways thrust at me a little while back saying something to the effect of 'we mere mortals.' I reminded her that it was not I, but she, who based her life and morals on the belief that a body was merely a shell for an eternally enduring soul. She preached that. Not me. Fuck those glancing scratches, just grab the throat and squeeze.

It's one of the few things that can get me angry, supremely so, and very quickly. When people mock the off-centre things that I say one of two things happens. I either agree with them, as I no longer agree with what I said at a certain point, or my blood grows hot and any mote of mercy that might manifest itself in me fades to nothing.

I really can't understand why, though, because the vast majority of the time I can decimate anything they might have said in one sentence. I guess it's hard for me to understand why someone would question something that I can plainly see as unquestionably true when the "facts" they base their own lives on are evanescent droplets from a fetid pool of lies and insolence.

What else is new, though. People hate and laugh at what's different and relish in the fact that they've pulled wool over their own eyes so long as it was woven by the mainstream.

On the same note, there's a cliche that states genius and insanity are only a hair's breadth apart. Weighing my mental state during a drive, it hit me how inaccurate the saying is. My expertise is very vertical and I'm all in all not very bright. I can be perceived as such because my talents lie in literature and linguistics, but the facts are that I am not very smart and am by all means very average in my intelligence.

Meanwhile, I am certainly certifiably insane in the most literal sense of the definition. It's hard coming to terms with the realization that you're a somewhat stupid non-human, and I haven't quite done so yet. But, in time, my apathy will kick in and it will make no difference in my outward actions.

I don't want to continue going to school but it looks like I'm in for as much as five more years. It's become difficult to find any passions. The daily routine of working to enable a society where others of the future can work makes no sense. It doesn't matter in the slightest which nation is strongest because all are trapped on the same earth, and it doesn't matter how quickly or slowly that earth is destroyed because all the humans are doing anyway is working and having children to work after them.

I'll get up and go to whatever job that won't make any difference at all and then come home and waste time doing things that don't matter until I pass out and do it again. Doing the job well or poor doesn't, in the long run, matter. In order to not make a difference I have to spend another five years of my life studying things that will not change my skill or broaden my knowledge whatsoever.

I tried out the jobs that I thought I wanted. I tried out the jobs that I thought I could care about. But in the end, I don't care about the race or how much or little I contribute to humanity. I just want it to die off and be over with so it can stop fucking up the plantlife.

It's become difficult, again, to find something to live for. Doubly so when the only thing that ever completed me found me to be utterly replaceable. It's a stark reality that, in fact, I am just that -- utterly replaceable.

Mediocre in nearly every aspect with the unshakable belief that if I can't be the best, I'd rather not even be amongst the contenders. That said, it's worth pointing out that there's a difference between losing at something you might eventually win and losing at something you will always be a loser in.

The temptation when my body starts shutting down and seizing to simply not give it the hydration and food it needs and let it finish its wicked work is one that's hard to resist.

I contribute nothing. Humanity contributes nothing. It's depressing to wake up every day, breathing, being alive, and looking in the mirror to find out that I'm still one of those disgusting animals. It's little incentive to be the best at something in an empire of fools.

So I come to the question that is posed by so very many: what is the meaning of my life, if it has one? Not all life, but mine specifically. It seems obvious that it is not to contribute, perpetuate, father, love. It seems that it might simply be to bring about in others the realization that the answer to the question of meaning is simply nothing.

This could be the birth of a beautiful tragedy.

Blinded

2007-05-28T02:02:00.000-07:00

When I say that I am not a human, I mean it in the most precise way. I am like a dog in that there are certain things that I simply cannot feel in any great measure. For instance, guilt. I know what guilt is because I can feel it to enough of a degree to be able to recognize when it should be present in myself and when it is present in others. Beyond that, I simply emulate the reactions of guilt that I know are expected of me. But inside, I feel nothing.

Love? Yes, love I can feel to a sickening degree. But this is not the kind of love that plays and poems have failed for so many ages to put into words. Like the dog, I will run out and fetch that stick for you five, ten, a hundred times despite that you kick me and beat me until my ribs are broken. But if this is man's best friend, then man is in a poor state of existence indeed. If this is loyalty, if this is the love of a companion, then I can feel love in the same way that I can feel fear. In this way, I have more human love than most anyone you will ever meet. In this way, love for another is simply that stick, that something, that they bring to you that you desire. Love is little more than fear; yet another self-preservation mechanism that is manipulated, abused, denied, and warped by the human before it is even projected out of the self.

But this is not a real love. If it's the true love you're talking about, the kind that terrifies, destroys, and drives insane...if the love you're talking about is the sort that drives a girl mad, not with longing, but with utter horror when she realizes she's capable of feeling it too, then I've got scores of that love.

It's a strange look that crosses most people's faces when they hear me say this, but it is undeniable that there are two kinds of "love." One kind of love tells you everything will be okay, and the other tells you that you're on your own if things don't turn out okay after all.

Cruelty doesn't even begin to describe the purest form of love. Murder. Complete destruction. Savage hatred that burns to the very deepest portion of a heart no longer there. That's a beginning...

One of these is a path of light, and the other of darkness. Despite whatever pain and insanity it has brought, I chose long ago to follow the darker path. Even seeing the beast that I am now, I have never been able to regret this decision in the slightest.

I can feel nothing but contempt for the light.

Two Plate Guy

2007-05-24T08:11:00.000-07:00

There was a time when a huge part of my life revolved around physical activities, namely sports. Ten years of soccer combined with years of martial arts, hockey, and baseball. Top that off with random insertions of tennis, track, biking, skating, volleyball, cross-country, and a little football. Now combine that with a metabolism the speed of a bullet train and you had a pretty healthy individual.

Unfortunately, when my studies got more serious I started making sacrifices. My second semester of university I tried to get re-started in martial arts, but made it about three weeks before I had to buy almost 500 dollars worth of books and just couldn't go anymore.

Now I'm gearing up to get a much more efficient gym membership so I can get back in shape with a roommate who's actually motivated to do the same.

Back when I lifted almost daily I could bench over 150% of my body weight, which is pretty damn good for anybody. Now I'll probably be lucky to get the bar on the rack, let alone lift it. It'll suck because I've been the well-toned guy inwardly lolling as the other guy struggles with his two tiny plates. Now I'll have to be the two plate guy again and start from scratch.

*CLANK, CLANK* LOOK AT ME I'M THE TWO PLATE GUY *CLANK*

Since I've got a few weeks before I'll start up the harder routine I thought I'd at least get my heart prepared with some aerobic workout. It's a bad sign when it takes you longer to recover from the workout than it did to actually do it.

I thought I was doing all right the past couple years since I haven't gained any weight and am relatively the same size, but the little workouts I've been trying to do are a great reminder that I'm far from the shape I used to be in. I might still weigh the same amount, but I don't weigh the same amount with such strong arms or such a flat stomach.

I'm not looking to be herculean, but I'd like to be able to sprint up a couple flights of stairs and not feel like I'm about to pass out and fall back down them.

I'd track my progress here, but I can't see "Week four: I am finally able to curl five pounds" being too motivational. We'll see if the roomie and I actually get around to doing anything, first. If we're both able to find halfway decent work relatively soon, I might even try to talk him into substituting a day of work-outs for martial arts. I don't want to be too overly ambitious just yet, though. I've got a couple weeks before we'll even be in town.

JUNGLE JEWCE

2007-05-23T01:09:00.000-07:00

Red: dude mang
Red: like you bloggezed about
Red: they's so many fuckin good games comin out

Smitty: yeah
Smitty: no joke

Red: plus man
Red: i got at least a couple weeks booked cuz i ain't beat twilight princess yet

Smitty: rofl
Smitty: by 'beat' do you mean you play it? or us get krunked on delicious jungle juice and you wingman it for me

Red: either way we haven't beat it

Smitty: you know yo puzzle solvin skills go up 10 fold when u on the jungle juice

Red: that's true

Smitty: you aint got a book or nothin
Smitty: nigga actin like he programmed the game
Smitty: "PUSH THE LEVER"
Smitty: what lever?
Smitty: "IN THE NEXT ROOM BY THE BUSH
Smitty: U'LL SEE IT"

Red: rofl

Smitty: how the fu.. "I LIEK JUNGLE JEWCE"
Smitty: I have to find this last bug...
Smitty: "IT'S THREE HOUSES DOWN ON YOUR LEFT UNDER A BOX"
Smitty: How do you know this?
Smitty: "I DON'T KNOW I CAN'T EVEN SEE"

lol...I was just saying how alcohol has virtually no effect on me, but I was wrong. My powers of inference and deduction truly are amplified tenfold thanks to delicious peach schnapps. I might not have the power to stand up but by God can I ever solve spatial-temporal puzzles.

Ten Things I Miss

2007-05-16T03:04:00.000-07:00

*WoW Jargon*

Tonight I logged onto my 60 alliance character and started talking to my old warlock leader. Within about 30 seconds I had an invite to what's pretty much the "best" (if you value progression and are completely immune to drama and asstards) guild on the server. I didn't have to apply or ask for it or anything. One of the best guilds in the country and THEY want ME. If I can get into that guild based on a reputation I established on the alliance over a year ago without even having to go through the application process, then two of my projections are true:

A) I'm fucking awesome.
B) I play that damn game way too much.

I looked at the list of online guildmates and everyone was 70 except for me. After speccing into felguard, I went and gave warlock a shot for the first time in months. Send pet, dot, dot, loot. What the hell. It was so easy it was boring. When you go to click on felguard, they should have a warning box that pops up and says: "Do you wish to continue respeccing hunter? Y/N." I've been playing a hunter for months on horde only to find out that they changed one of my alliance characters into the same damn thing only ten times easier (if it's even possible to be easier than hunter). Screw that, I logged off. My priest was replaced by my paladin's ability to heal, my lock is basically a hunter on crack, and my hunter can't do shit because I don't play 15 hours a day to rep grind for shit that I don't really care to have anyway.

*End WoW Jargon*

I've done everything I wanted to do in that crap. I've done the PvP grind, the instance grind. Everyone knows me and that I'm awesome. People I completely fucking forgot about send Dunkel messages saying they miss me and asking when I'm coming back. I don't have anything left to do but quit playing the damn thing. Since it's basically a routine now, though, I need some things to take up the time.

Things I can do instead of being a WoWfag:

1) Be a BF2142fag. It's hard for me to play 2142 for any period of time because I'm so non-stop awesome at it all the time, but I guess I could score some commander hours that I've been dreading putting in while I watch movies and sacrifice people 30 ranks below me. HOT KNOB STATUS: ON.

2) Draw. The only way to get good/better at drawing is to draw anything, everything, every day. For some people this means finding their favorite 150 page graphic novel and tracing every last drawing in it to get the style down, for some it means drawing random shit around their house, for some drawing different eyes a thousand times. For me it means finding a style I can draw in quickly and satisfactorily (the second part being hard for me as a perfectionist) to be able to narrate for my...

3) Writing. I'd specifically like to get a tragedy underway. My strongest point is writing American Psycho type things. At least, that's what I'm told by the people who either couldn't finish one of my "graphic" stories, got halfway through and became physically ill, or finished it and were severely "creeped the fuck out." I guess I did find out something about myself in my creative writing courses after all. The hard part about a tragedy is that you have to work end to beginning. End: Most people die. That's a given. Figuring out how and why and who the hell they are and all working backward to the starting is the hard part.

4) Music. I'm spoiled. I don't even like upright/wall pianos. I started on a full sized behemoth of a grand piano and the least I've ever enjoyed playing on was a baby grand. Even if I weren't a snob about it, an upright would just be too costly at this point, so in order to make music I'm going to have to pick up something new. I stole my sister's busted up violin to get into that, but she threw a fit almost immediately despite the fact that she has no intention of using it, so that's gone. If she had been smart and waited a month to throw a bitch fit, I probably would've had it fully restored and she would've gotten a freebie. Percussion is out due to being in an apartment. Guitar seems so overly done, but I'm not sure how easy it'd be to find an instructor of quality for anything else. I might try for a woodwind, though. Quality ones are pricey, but your soul going through the instrument in a way that it can't with strings or percussion gives it a very distinctly satisfying feeling. MAYBE I COULD PLAY PAN FLUTE, THAT WOULD BE AMAZING.

5) Read. It feels so good to read after not having done so for such a long period of time. I have an entire volume of Joyce just sitting there, untouched. Well, not completely untouched since I quit halfway through "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" or whatever that horrendously boring shit in front of Dubliners was. I've been using the ridiculous cost of books as an excuse not to read as much as I would like to, but there's sort of the whole public library thing in the way of that excuse. TIME TA LERN ME A BOOK.

6) Work. I haven't looked forward to getting a shitty job this much in...ever. I know that excitement will last all of one week once I actually get a job, but having a paycheque will be so incredibly nice. More importantly it'll give me a reason to start playing The Redskins's version of 16 Tons. Redskins > Tennessee Ernie. YOUR REBUTTAL, SENATOR?

7) Get in shape. I've always been a pretty petite person. Short and thin. Get your penis jokes out of the way now, please. I haven't gained the 50 pounds that a lot of people I know have due to zomgraid syndrome, but what little muscle mass I did have is slowly creeping toward my midsection. My body is bad off enough without me going out of my way to fuck it up. It's overdue for a little more respect from me and a lot less caffeine and microwaveables.

8) Go outside. Just for the heck of it. I'll be living next to a goddamned park and swimming pool. It'd be easy enough to combine reading with being outside. The air isn't any cleaner but I'm determined to not have the standard Mizzou sock-tan this time around.

9) Oh lawdy it's clubbin time! I just have to find a place that sells glowsticks and GAME ON, GARTH. You shut the hell up, I'm the coolest person on this planet. Due to Parkinson's.

10) Fucking anything. Lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling is more productive than WoWfaggotry. At least then I have to think about something.

This is a good start. For now I'm going to start at Number 1. ATTAKOYOM ETO POJITSIA.

Failsafe Methods

2007-05-13T23:39:00.000-07:00

Women are precious, fragile beings that deserve the utmost respect and courtesy of men. While they are graceful and strong, they are also deserving of our care and understanding. Women are sensitive and emotional, and as a man, it's important to know that you must try to be as in-tune with their needs as possible and strive to be understanding of their differences. Gentlemanly behaviour is a necessity in relations with the appropriately called fairer gender.

MYTH: BUSTED.

A guy friend who's not the biggest talker in the world recently told me that he gets stuck when he's talking to women. He'll get to that certain point that every guy has been to at which you either seal the deal or trail off and talk about something completely unrelated. He said he'll get to that point and then choke almost every time because of the way he was raised to view women and how nervous they make him.

What I told him was this: women are just humans, too. They have one chromosome difference. Picture that girl sitting on her ass watching TV and stuffing Doritos in her face, orange remnants smeared on her sweat-stained t-shirt. She sits completely mentally vacant in her sweatpants, smelling like she needs a shower and getting fatter by the minute while she coughs up particles of chewed chips. Later she'll get up and go take a giant, loud, explosive shit that will splash urinewater all over her ass. When she finally gets up she'll wipe one time too few and look at the shit on the paper every swipe to see when she's done. Picture that and your problems with the girl in front of you will melt away. Quite possibly your desire to be friends with her at all will, too.

He said it was probably the best advice he's ever gotten about women.

Women will try to make you play their games, and most men fall for it because they've been reared to be slaves to the societal overmind that dictates action and reaction to things that don't have a penis. The solution is quite simple: even when women are on the defensive, they're always on the offensive. All you have to do is use their shit against them and they are powerless.

For example, your girl wants to go to an overly priced restaurant yet again and you aren't going to be able to afford that AND get your Nintendo DS by tomorrow. You ask her if you can go somewhere else, but she's insistent or acts like she's displeased/unhappy with your choices.

She says: "That's fine...I guess..." "I was hoping we could go to..." "I thought you wanted to have a romantic dinner..." "You said you'd take me to..."

You say: "I want us to have a good time together, but we've been going to the same types of restaurants that you've gotten to choose for a month now. I was hoping we could get out to a different atmosphere for a change and try something new. If you don't like it, we'll go back to the other place next time."

You DON'T say: "I'm broke, bitch."

Another classic scenario is when you're having a disagreement about doing something, and she pulls the happiness and satisfaction card COMBINED WITH the do shit for me card. You can't build her that deck she's been bitching about for six months AND slack off all afternoon.

She says: "Why don't you do this for me? Don't you want me to be happy?"

You say: "Of course I do. But I thought you wanted us to treat each other as equals. I know sometimes you might not feel like I'm doing my fair share around here, but I try and do what I can for you. I don't just want you to be happy, I want you to be happy WITH me. Maybe we could build that deck together this weekend. You'd be a big help with the stuff that's hard to do alone."

This will work because she sure as fuck doesn't want to build the deck either.

This sort of reaction can be applied to any situation, and I guarantee it works every time. The important elements are to have something that appears to be compromise but really isn't, honesty so far as she'll ever know, and self-victimization in such a way that if she goes against what you're saying, she's the asshole and not you. It's important to keep a soft tone and seem somewhat saddened when you say these things to prey on her motherly instincts.

Once you can combine the understanding that women are just shitting meatbags that don't understand how to win at their own games, you're dressed for success. Go out there and land the hood rat or corner skank you truly deserve.

Some girls prefer the asshole type. In this case, you can use my failsafe approach of complete and unrestrained honesty.

She says: "Will you take me to nice places when we're together?"

You say: "No bitch, yo white trash ass wouldn't know how to behave. You'd prolly show up in a do-rag, and in high society, that shit is a don't-rag. Til you can understand that, yo ass be eatin Spaghetti-Os from a dirty microwave."

Remember: Not every woman is different. Women are not special snowflakes that are all unique and will melt or break if you mishandle them. They're venomous spiders waiting to wrap you with their butt-threads and suck the life out of you before you can say vagina. Women are not special and do not deserve unconditional respect.

Keep these tips in mind, practice, and before long you'll be forming pointless relationships and having meaningless sex for little to no money or time investment. The key to happiness is satisfying your human drives and id's greed. Take everything you want and leave those selfish cunts wondering what the hell just happened like they've done to you for your entire life.

Don't send all your thank-yous and praise mails all at once, but be sure and let me know how things turn out so I can pretend like I care about your opinion or life and alleviate a few minutes of boredom in my day.

Cheers!

Fortplz

2007-05-11T20:35:00.000-07:00

You want my candle,
my only candle.
You have me fort you
when mobs are grey.
You'll never know, rogue,
how much I hate you,
when you drain my mana away.

Solve for Ex

2007-05-10T00:47:00.000-07:00

Five hours and no sleep away from finals that I haven't exactly studied for, I decided to take a long shower and try to shake the females distracting me out of my consciousness so I could focus on the more intricate (but less complicated than most women) points of plant genetics.

Unfortunately, a hot shower always gets my gears turning, and I started to think about them more instead of less.

At first I thought about the upcoming wedding, and for about two seconds, I let it make me feel miserable again. In those two seconds, I realized that it was exactly as I just said: I let it make me feel something.

It was strange. In five years I haven't been able to come to a close about a woman who it's never made any sense whatsoever to keep on caring about. In two seconds I was able to shed myself of that desire. It makes absolutely no sense to measure my behaviour and worry about how I present myself or when and what the ultimate consequences will be. Really, who cares, I'm not going to be the one she's nagging in fifty years. Fuck it. Problem solved.

Opposite of someone I tried to care about who perpetually tried to get me not to is someone who cares deeply for me that I feel nothing for. She's smart, averagely cute, has a promising future, and is loyal. She's willing to dump time and money into coming to see me and in all likelihood cheat on her boyfriend of three years for the fact that she's wanted to have my babies since fifth grade. Logically, I'm probably not going to meet anyone else that devoted to me or really feel much for anyone even if I do meet a "good girl." So I can just take that guy's from him and get both she and I what we want. Why not? Problem solved.

I've been letting my ego get in the way of my id. Sometimes the most effective solutions are also the most ruthless to the point that we blind ourselves to them.

I'll have more to say on this later if things pan out as I plan this summer. In the meantime, Mr. Bateman and I have some videotapes to return.

I do

2007-05-09T01:17:00.000-07:00

For the first time in my long history of writing, I've gone back on rule number one: No deleting.

After writing an unnecessarily lengthy wall of text about why I have to do certain things and can't do others and all the logistics behind how my life essentially isn't going to unfold, I realized that all I needed was the very first line:

"You must have loved me," she says. A small part of me grants the slightest smile. The majority of me just reaches up and scratches out "have" and "d."

Yes. As insane and illogical as it is, I do.

Scrapped.

2007-05-01T00:02:00.000-07:00

I worked off and on through high school on a novel I wanted to write, but never really got around to finishing it. When I got 55 pages into it, I realized it sucked and scrapped it. I tried to start over a dozen different ways but none of them really seemed to fit as well as I wanted. This is a short excerpt from one of the less-dazzling prefaces. I just liked the comparisons, but chances are I stole them from somewhere. I doubt my critical thinking abilities too much to believe I actually came up with them. This is probably crappy scrawl from something like 2000.

Funny how some things turn out. How our mathematicians, the great advocates of the purely imaginary, are the constructors of the tangible world around us. Or, for instance, the way readers of science fiction tend to know more science facts than even the most school-going students...people will wait hours for a half-minute ride in a theme park, but grow impatient in a ten minute line for food that will last them an entire month...

This really isn't written well or anything, so to make up for it a quote from Brother Jed:

"When is the last time you saw a college girl blush?"

And also, this dialogue between my old mythology professor and a student:

Professor: Chad, you know how to use this thing? You've done presentations on it right?
Student: What is it?
Professor: A computer.

Doesn't Apply Himself

2007-04-30T23:49:00.000-07:00

The following is an early penned entry from 1999. I'll be cutting out some words to make it sound less juvenile so it's possible to wade through. It's not particularly good or poignant, but shows a bit of my attitude and outlook at the time. For posterity, I suppose.

There are very few people who have chosen me to be their friend. Very seldom do people venture to me. Most see me as one of those 'has real potential but doesn't apply himself' types. But they are wrong.

I do apply myself, just not to things people wish me to. I used to have a best friend. He was the kind of person who, for example, if you messed up at a speech, instead of saying, "I'm sure no one noticed!" like a normal human, he would laugh. At you. Loudly. Mockingly. I asked him what people said about me.

His response was that most people thought of me as some depressed poetry writing nut. But a nice one.

I will admit that there was a time when I was depressive. But there is a difference between being depressed and being severely unhappy.

I asked my friend if I was depressing. "Yes, you're negative, morbid, and cynical...but that's why we love you." Of course, I can't claim I dissuaded anyone's opinion of me. When people wanted to know things, they usually asked certain questions. "What's your favorite colour?" Black. "What are your hobbies?" Writing stories. "What kind? Sad?" Usually.

I am not saying that people shouldn't have friends or anything, but my lack of any support from them gave me the room and freedom to change.

As a perfectionist I was not ever happy with myself. I asserted my negative energy into reading. Everything. I became a dominating source of information pertaining to anything imaginable.

This gained me more humiliation than actual respect and I tore myself apart from the inside out. It was during my initial confusion that I made most of my friends that I have now. As an act of defiance, I lashed out against one of my instructors.

It was not so much the man as what he stood for and symbolized in my mind. He was the part of me that I hated the most, and I don't care how egotistic it makes me sound -- I knew before the clash that he didn't stand a chance. I outspoke and outmanipulated him, and he has not underestimated me since. Once while we were "debating" in the halls I gave him a piece of my mind. He took it, turned it over in his hands, and gave it back. While he was looking, though, I stole a piece of his. I hope he's not counting on getting it back.

But it was from these new friends and old determination that I chose to become what I am now. It's true that I still don't enjoy dancing, singing, parties...but I am content and that's what really matters. I'm happy being both outgoing and conservative. Sometimes, you've just got to be yourself and not care who anyone else is.

Man, I was such an angsty little bitch. But dissuade was a good word choice. I need to pick that one up again; I never hear it anymore. And more semicolons for pseudo-intellectualism. Huzzah.

The Real Beginning

2007-04-30T23:41:00.000-07:00

The following is the original preface to the journal I was going to hand-write (it only contained several entries before I gave up for about a year and ultimately returned via the internet). It's clearly very juvenile, but at the same time the central intent has remained quite unchanged. Some punctuation changed so I don't twitch reading it.

"This is my life - my friends, my family, my self...I'm not doing this because I'm lonely or bored or don't have countless other things I could be doing, it's just that I don't want to forget. Life might be short, but that doesn't mean you'll remember it all. I've seen it in so many people - what they've lost; I've seen how much they want it back even though they don't know what it is to start with. We all lose something sooner or later. I've already lost more than I'd like to. It's just a matter of getting it back..."

To think that my memory is like a black hole where memories go and can never escape compared to the craptastic memories of most of my friends. I don't really remember incredibly important things, but any mundane detail you could imagine I can tell you. I can remember exact words, times, slight movements, outfits...a sigh, a misplaced hair, a smile...and at the same time, I can forget if I've even eaten today. Maybe I'm filling up too much space with remembering the texture of a girl's lips on my cheek and not enough with knowing whether I have enough clean clothing to finish the week.

Even if I am, though, I wouldn't change it. It's something of a torture to be able to perfectly relive something over and over, but in order to learn the absolute most that I possibly could, I couldn't have received a better curse.

Can and Want

2007-04-30T23:20:00.000-07:00

Whenever I move, which is somewhat often, I always end up going through all my old papers and finding things I had completely forgotten about. I've probably posted some of them already in the past, but if I've forgotten, everyone else sure as hell has too. The next few entries will be from archaic stuff I've dug out of folders.

This first piece is a letter to me from somewhere between 1998 and 1999, probably more toward the summer of 1999. It's written to me by my best female friend of the time, who lived about half a mile from me and whom I'd visit and spend time with on basically a daily basis. No, we did not have romantic involvement. Just very close friends.

I've changed the names and added a couple paragraphs for ease of reading.

Red,

First, this is a "thanks for all the cool stuff from Canada!" letter, but there is a lot more that I have to thank you for. This is a long overdue letter.

Yesterday I was flipping through my "Moo Erased." Apparently when I got it back for the last time, I guess I didn't think anyone had written in it since the last time I had read it. I was reading all the entries again, when *gasp* I come to some that I had not read.

I came to the last entry which was from you and it brought me to tears. It was something that I have really been reading. I would like to thank you for everything that you have done for me. You have truly helped me in so many ways. Although we have our differences I've always been able to talk to you about anything. First you'll bitchslap me, which I usually deserve :) but then you'll really help me.

I know there are the times when all you could think of was "dumb blondie!" but you were still always there to pick me up and to help me out. I thank you for everything from the bottom of my heart. I want you to know that I am here for you always.

Thank you,

L.

It's sad to say that she's another one of the "always" cases that I've run into in my travels. We rarely communicate, and when we do it's weather-talk, not at all reminiscent of the bond that two younger comrades shared. I'd like to think positively and consider it simply that we both understand that if the time comes, we will be there for each other. Nothing in between is entirely too important, and it's probably selfish to desire anything more than necessity.

In any case, I've managed to hang onto this for nearly a decade and will probably never get rid of it. It's something that reminds of of the kind of person I can be when I put my efforts into it. More than that, it's a reminder of the kind of person I want to be.

Cold Blankets

2007-04-26T01:33:00.000-07:00

Life and school (which isn't included in life) and conversations and all have been pretty heavy lately, so I sat down with the intent of writing something happy.

That's as far as I really got.

It's frustrating that negative emotion expressionism has become a fad and brutally butchered to the point that it has its own clothing, hair, and music style. I'm not talking about when a woman's husband dies and she wears black. I'm talking about the fact that you can't say, "I'm unhappy" without some retarded punk who, if he put thought into it, probably feels similar the majority of the time saying, "Pfft emo fag."

There's a difference between being an emo trendwhore and wanting to be honest with yourself.

I write poetry to show to one or two friends who won't be too hard on it, but will help me improve. An emo writes poetry so people will tell him how deep and thoughtful he was, then he can brush off the compliment and pretend that's not what he cared about.

I listen to music that reflects my mood. Emos listen to music to sculpt their moods for them.

I frown because I don't like people to bother me. Emos frown because if they didn't, it would hurt their image of being unnecessarily antisocial, and no one would come up to ask them what was wrong, giving them a platform to launch into a prefabricated speech about suffering.

I used to cut myself because I was fucking crazy. Emos do it, lightly, to be obvious about it and wear it as a sign that is supposed to say "Stay back: I'm hardcore," but just comes across as "Ignore me: I create problems so I can complain."

I don't feel certain emotions because my brain has been royally fucked by epilepsy and the early stages of schizophrenia. Emos claim not to feel to be mysterious and try to draw people to them so someone will read their fake, shallow non-poetry.

Being Emo is about having an intensely enhanced sense of empathy (although apparently not for any positive emotions) and being able to deeply feel sorrow and suffering in the self and in others. Emo is passive introverted sadness and self-victimization with the world as the enemy.

I have empathy only so far as the emotions that I am capable of having, which include ecstasy as well as rage. I am generally apathetic to the plights of others and my true and greatest enemy will always be the hollow, soulless half of me.

They are a heart compass, I am a calculator. They bleed to feel alive, I bleed to die.

The false mass-representation of individuality posed through an entire sub-genre spawned by people who couldn't handle being entirely gothic is something that I have no reference toward other than I pity and despise it at the same time.

I am unique in my state of being only insofar as my mind has been distorted by physical and psychological disorders that are not present in the majority of people.

I dress the same as everyone else. I speak the same, I go to the same places, I have the same goals and desires. What I cannot feel or understand I simply emulate as successfully as possible.

They get off the bus and try to stand out and be untouchable.

I step off the bus and become untouchable because I am unidentifiable in the midst of the crowd.

So. No. I am not emo. This accusation only even arises for the exact reasons that I am not: I am not ashamed of myself to the point that I would change my lifestyle, appearance, and who I am to fit in. I am so unashamed of myself that I readily present my negatives to such an extent that it becomes difficult to label them without resorting to blanket terms.

But please, if you have to choose one, pick one that fits.

It's just honesty.

As I look at the crowd of emo clones trying to stand out from one another and the rest, I can see why honesty is the last term that comes to mind for most of us.

People don't have to be lumped into a group to be appreciated and recognized. Call me emo, extremist, commie, geek, brainiac, freak, underachiever...it doesn't matter. I'm me. Just Red. Why is it such a bad thing to just refer to someone that way?

It's late and I'm rambling. I get called far more offensive things than emo on a daily basis. Hell, I live with a wannabe anti-Semite. I don't really know why this term makes me grit my teeth to the extent that it does. I think it's because someone who would call me emo either heard everything I had to say so far and didn't understand jack shit of it, or zoned out after five words and is totally apathetic.

Branding someone as something like that is just a shortcut to not having to think.

"What's Blis like?"
"Lil emo, sarcastic, humorous."

"What's P-chan like?"
"Lil emo, sarcastic, humorous."

"What's Shrugs like?"
"Lil emo, sarcastic..."

They're not the same people. Blanket terms always fail to such an extreme. I guess why I'm still going on and can't seem to just shut up about this is that it's so -illogical- to pull out these terms.

I've been described as a lot of things. Intense, quiet, sad, silly, smart, retarded, loud, kind, an asshole, boring, crazy, perfectly normal, upstanding, a criminal.

Never as unique. Maybe it's because I'm not, but for the time being, I'm set on believing that it's because the people who do this sort of thing cannot think in a unique way themselves.

Living in the Past

2007-04-24T01:11:00.000-07:00

Every time I see that fucking counter I watch it ticking away the seconds until I lose something irreplaceable forever. God, that damn thing makes me feel ridiculously miserable.

Especially because there's nothing to blame but my own failure at being able to provide anyone with anything even remotely resembling basic human necessities.

5768 years on this ball of dirt. Only five of them mattered.

I'll retell it again because it hits home so well: A friend sits down at a table where four of us are waiting to eat. With him he brings three potatoes. If no anyone refuses to give theirs up and be the one that doesn't eat, he takes them all away. But if you agree to give yours up, he takes yours away anyway.

You either go hungry and give away the only thing you have, or grip it so tightly that no one, including you, gets to have it.

I chose to go hungry and have been waiting at the foot of the table for so long for scraps that will never come. It was my choice and now my starvation is killing me as I watch the one I sacrificed for fill himself.

It's hard not to regret.

That is undoubtedly the most understated thing I've said in all my days.

I strive to be without want as much as possible, but the thing I want is a piece of my soul that I freely and happily gave away.

Happiness has never been a guest of mine. I keep starving myself to put food on its plate and wait for it to show up, but that food rots to the sound of a growling gut.

If I don't figure out a way to invite him in soon, this process of breaking that I've been undergoing for so long now will finally come to an irreparable end.

I will never be complete again. Part of me will be trapped in that eternal sorrow for which there is no cure, nor any escape.

The rest of me has to find a way to forge ahead...has to find that path I've been searching for to no avail for over a year now.

I thought I had nothing left to give, but I was wrong. There is plenty of me still left to die this slow death, plenty of me still left to count the seconds until the last beat of a broken heart.

Black Widow

2007-04-24T00:27:00.000-07:00

People so constantly pretend to be someone better than they really are to fit into certain niches that it would be redundant and superfluous to discuss it at any length.

My current entanglement, though, is quite the reciprocal. I'm presently in a situation that I have to take on the role of a person much more crass and even more unlikeable that my usual state. It's not much of an acting job to pretend to be just like the vast majority of the people I meet on the street. Stress the I, blow off any serious conversation, act a bit perverse, and give an impression that I'm quite a bit stupider and more carefree than I could ever be if...well, if I tried.

There are certain people and certain groups that it's imperative I not be accepted by or welcomed into for the time being. I made a poor judgment call without analyzing the psychological factors of the person it pertained to, and the result is that I have to put on the shittiest mask I can muster for at least a couple more months.

Careful words aside, it blows and I can't believe I was dumb enough that I didn't catch it as it was initially happening. The others involved don't even realize why they did what they did, so now I have to do this to keep things from going life-changingly disatrously out of proportion.

Such a heavy weight to carry, such a hard secret to keep. But I do it again, and again, and again. Someday maybe I'll learn. More than likely, though, some black-widow of a lady will just rise up to knock me down one more time.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to restrain myself from becoming a woman-hater.

Unspokens

2007-04-07T02:29:00.001-07:00

I don't believe in global warming. Before you say, "How can you not believe in global warming, there's so much evidence for it," consider that millions of people adhere to a messiah in a way that is a complete reciprocal. If it's okay to believe in Jesus because you "have faith" and "just know" when there is no factual support, it's okay to not believe in global warming in spite of factual support. The "drastic rise in temperature" is the exact amount that astronomers predict due to solar wind stripping, but you'll probably never hear that side of things because people enjoy being scared out of their minds about crap they have no direct control over.

I don't think one person can make a difference in the world -- only one person with a horde of convincing supporters. This seems historically and experimentally accurate.

I regularly debate points I don't actually support simply for my own entertainment. In a way, if I can win arguing for the side I don't believe, it helps me to justify the side that I do even better in the future. Although, afterward, I lose a lot of respect for the person who was actually arguing my true belief and failed.

I am either passive aggressive or going for the throat. There is no in between when I am angry. I can go from one to the other in a split second, without warning or reason.

If there is something I want to know or for a person to admit, I will kite them along by being comforting and agreeable until they are most relaxed, then attack them and extract what I desire while they are flustered and confused.

When I was a child and believed adamantly in the God of my parents, I had only one prayer. I said I didn't want direct forgiveness or a long life or even my health or happiness. All I ever asked for was the ability to fight for the hordes in the battles of armageddon and seek my atonement by slaying those who opposed the creator. Now, if there's a hell, I'm a thousand percent certain I'll be there.

I reslish both anonymity and recognition. I like to be able to move about and do as I please uninterrupted, but when I do something well, I enjoy having it acknowledged. If someone does acknowledge something I do, though, I immediately become cautious of them and attempt to decipher their weaknesses as quickly as possible in the event that they should be trying to kite me into something.

I can meet someone for ten seconds and know generally how they'll react, think, and feel in certain situations. At thirty seconds, I'm usually already bored of them and make no effort to hold their interest.

If I had a license to kill, I have no doubt that I would use it at some point not just for the betterment of society, but for personal gain or simply out of cruelty or boredom.

I don't care at all about money as long as I have enough to pay my bills and feed myself. Unfortunately this has led to a large lack of ambition toward the working world.

I feign indecisiveness. Most of the time I know exactly what I want and exactly how to get it in as efficient of a way as possible. Despite this, I constantly act like I'm indifferent or indecisive and force other people to make decisions that affect a group. It's probably just that I don't like being accountable for other people.

I'm a cruel doctor. I have always been a supporter: I offer confidence and any friendship necessities I can to people I care about...after I bitchslap them with the honest truth that they've been lying to me, and themselves, about. Bandaids don't fix everything; sometimes you have to pour peroxide in a gaping wound and let it sting you well again.

I wouldn't see anything hugely wrong with genocide against the mentally challenged.

I'm looking forward to the triumph of genetics over Christian society and hope that geneticists tweak and toy with everything their hearts desire until Gattaca (minus the happy ending) is a reality.

The only thing I dislike about war is that so little of it is hand to hand. I'm not a world class fighter and would probably die quickly in such a scenario, but it would be more gratifying to be stabbed in the neck than shot in the heart.

I don't hesitate to publicly and loudly state how easy blacks had things in America compared to Hebrews in the middle east. I have the black card pulled on me a lot by people thinking I'm white, but alas, I am immune and shameless, and their arguments are weak and stupid.

I have achieved multple orgasms and can partake of intercourse for hours on end. Tip: Think of dead cats. Not working? Protip: Picture your partner without any flesh, with maggots crawling through their muscles as you watch their mucus strands in the back of their throats and envision beetles crawling through their bowels.

When someone tells me he's Catholic, I automatically think a bit less of him and treat him like he's not as smart as the other people present, even though it's not conscious.

A manic-depressive friend once came to me saying she'd just stepped on a cat's head and slowly crushed it into the pavement until it died and had no idea why. Rather than console her, I laughed, hard. My only regret is that it wasn't a puppy instead.

The most vile, disgusting, cruel things humanity comes up with generally either make me smile or don't affect me at all. The happiest things they can throw at me make me feel horrible.

I've fucked up my entire life on a whim -- more than a few times. I'd probably fuck up someone else's life with even less hesitation.

Sometimes when I dream that I've done something unspeakably evil and wake up to find out that I really haven't, I'm disappointed and sulky.

I have very little personality of my own. I'm something of a leech, taking qualities that I see and like in other people and trying them on. If I enjoy it, I'll use it until it becomes uninteresting and replace it with a different quality.

I never really got past my calculator phase from which my shrinks told me I was not advancing and was incapable of feeling certain emotions, while others were totally off center.

Not all of this is true. I'll remember what is and isn't, and this will have served it's purpose for me. Probably more accurately, all of them are true in some way, but are altered.

Except the global warming thing. Global warming is total bullshit and I don't believe in it at all.

Rules of the Internet

2007-04-04T03:06:00.000-07:00

01. Do not talk about /b/.
02. Do NOT talk about /b/.
03. We are Anonymous.
04. Anonymous is legion.
05. Anonymous never forgives.
06. Anonymous can be a senseless, horrible, uncaring monster.
07. Anonymous is still able to deliver.
08. There are no real rules about posting.
09. There are no real rules about moderation either – enjoy your ban.
10. If you enjoy any rival sites, DON'T.
11. All your carefully picked arguments can easily be ignored.
12. Anything you say can and will be used against you.
13. Anything you say can be turned into something else – fixed.
14. Do not argue with trolls: it means that they win.
15. The harder you try the harder you will fail.
16. If you fail in epic proportions, it may just become a winning failure.
17. Every win fails eventually.
18. Everything that can be labeled can be hated.
19. The more you hate it, the stronger it gets.
20. Nothing is to be taken seriously.
21. Original content is original only for a few seconds before getting old.
22. Copypasta is made to ruin every last bit of originality.
23. Copypasta is made to ruin every last bit of originality.
24. Every reposte is always a repost of a repost.
25. Relation to the original topic decreases with every single post.
26. Any topic can be easily turned into something totally unrelated.
27. Always question a person's sexual preferences without any real reason.
28. Always question a person's gender just in case it's really a man.
29. In the internet, all girls are men and all kids are undercover FBI agents.
30. TITS OR GTFO – the choice is yours.
31. You must have pictures to prove your statements.
32. Lurk more – it's never enough.
33.
34. There is porn of it. No exceptions.
34-1. If a porn of something cannot be found, /b/ will make it.
35. The exception to rule 34 is the citation of rule 34.
36. Anonymous still does NOT forgive.
37. There are NO girls on the internet.
38. A cat is fine, too.
39. One cat leads to another.
40. Another cat leads to Zippo Cat.
41. No matter what it is, it's someone's fetish. No exceptions.
42. It is delicious cake. You must eat it.
43. It is a delicious trap. You must hit it.
44. /b/ sucks today.
45. Cock goes in here.
46. They will not bring back Snacks.
47. You will never have satisfying sex.
48. ?????
49. Profit.
50. It needs more desu. No Exceptions.
51. There will always be more fucked up shit than what you just saw.
52. You cannot divide by zero (just because the calculator says so).
53. No real limits of any kind apply here. Not even the sky.
54. CAPSLOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL.
55. EVEN WITH CRUISE CONTROL YOU STILL HAVE TO STEER.
56. Desu isn't funny. Seriously guys. It's worse than Chuck Norris jokes.
56.5. Fuck Gaston.
57. Nothing is sacred.
58. The more beautiful and pure a thing is, the more satisfying it is to corrupt.
59. Even one positive comment about Japanese things can make you a weeaboo.
60. When one sees a lion, one must get into the car.
61. There is always a furry version of it.
62. The pool is always closed. Due to AIDS.
63. There's always a female version of a male character. No exceptions.
64. It's been cracked or pirated. No exceptions.
65. Needs more pumpkin.
66. Needs more pooper.
67. Never talk about Candleja

Rhyme Practice, No Edits.

2007-04-01T22:18:00.000-07:00

between daylight and moonlight something doesn't feel right, like i'm losing the fight for the one thing that feels right.

no matter if my words are clever, they can't spring me from this endeavor, from something i thought would never sever me from this or that or whomever.

but every day it's harder to care when i have my fair share of weights to bear and all she can do is stare, never taking the dare til she fades to someplace and i know not where.

and why do i stand as a tree, waiting like she never had for me, seeing years pass, one two and three. she holds my heart but won't turn the key, nor release and let me be.

black onto white
we dance forever
a harmony so rare
why must she flee?

Animuz

2007-03-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

I normally keep my weeaboo-ness to myself and away from normal childrens, but I've gotta say...

Death Note...

Holy shit. Somehow, you made me appreciate ten episodes of horrible, fetid crap that could scarcely be called filler by melting my face off with a lethal injection of liquid win.

The only way this series could end better would be if L's cause of death is written to be that he develops diabetes and there's a cut scene to Wilfred Brimley (the "MY NAME IS WILFRED BRIMLEY, AND I HAVE DIABEETUS" dude) kneeling down next to his corpse crying, before he abruptly stops and spots L's delicious yumyums from the corner of his eye and chooses to indulge.

The ensuing sugar rage causes Wilfred to punch Yagami square in the balls and denounce his faggotry before foaming at the mouth and dying, loosening his bowels all over Yagami's death note.

Chances are Yagami would lick it clean, but I'll try not to get too far into b-tard mode this early in the day.

Captivity

2007-03-24T12:53:00.000-07:00

The sun beat down in all its glory as I dragged my feet across the sidewalks of the Old Town. My stubbornness in refusing to wear anything but heavy jeans despite the time of year was coming back to bite me as I wiped the sweat from my forehead for the hundredth time. For the first time since my captivity, I roll up my sleeves and unbutton my collared shirt in spite of the scars that cover my arms and chest.

One of the larger hills of the town comes up before me, and I pause at the base, deciding whether or not I'm about to become heat stricken as I climb my way to the top. I shrug and continue upward into the sector containing the fraternities and sororities of the campus students, keeping my straight face and hoping that the whip-like scars and decisive frown that are my constants will be enough to keep them at bay.

Today, though, the Greek sector seems startlingly empty. Reaching the crest of the hill, I am out of breath and so hot I can barely open my eyes. I decide to take a seat on the stoop of the closest building, a sorority, and hope that they deem me unapproachable long enough to get a little shade.

My eyes close and my breathing deepens as a breeze, unhindered at the peak of the hill, dries my brow and refreshes me. I smile slightly to myself, determined that this serenity will be enjoyed as long as possible. No sooner do I have the thought than my peace is broken.

"Excuse me," she says as she steps over my legs and rushes past.

"Excuse us," another one says as the rest of them shuffle by.

I open my eyes and look up in time to catch the face of the first person. She looks at me for a split second and continues on. As I stand, holding my breath, she stops and looks back at me. Her face pales to the white of the dress she's chosen for this day. Her jaw becomes slack and her eyes round with...with something I don't know. Surprise, terror, love, or all of them.

It's three slow steps to her, and I look down into her eyes. I don't flinch in mind or body, and without expression, I put my hands to her sides and lift her, pulling her to me. Out of her shock, she puts her arms around me and presses her lips to my face.

My body heaves as it tries to produce tears and fails. It has realized before me what that white dress means. My mind is in ecstasy, but my stomach caves in as my soul realizes that its is damned to endure the rest of its eternity cut in half.

Happiness through the happiness of others. A crowning achievement for a mortal. A curse unyielding for the immortal soul.

I try to pull myself away from the events that follow, knowing that I will be waking soon but not wanting to. Despite my best efforts, seeing her there again and feeling her flesh and eyes upon me is a sorrow that forces my submission. Finally, opening my eyes again, I see only my bedroom ceiling staring down on me.

Unready to let the painful pleasantries fade quickly, I blink a long, two hour blink as I absorb the false joys and real enough pain into myself. If dreams are wish-fulfillment, then I am a masochist yet.

Scarred

2007-03-23T01:58:00.000-07:00

Dunkel: "I, uh...tried to drink your grape juice carton...but it wasn't juice...it was a camera."

Look downward, cover eyes with hand, groan.

On something completely unrelated, I don't normally remember my dreams when I sleep in my own home. Frighteningly, after spending a few days at a friend's house, it was revealed to me via nightmare that one of my female friends isn't entirely female and furthermore has a liking for the elderly.

It's possible that I'm scarred for life.

My little garden got cold-shocked in transit, followed by heat-flashed. Judging by the fact that the cardboard containers almost instantly rotted and all of the peppers were swept by mold, I thought they'd all be dead and quit watering them. Two days later, the real holly calla (not the grass and clovers I'd been documenting thus far) shot out like a tiny skyscraper, and number one launched out like a devil was chasing it from the ground.

What I'd set out to write far more fancifully than the present mood will allow was a small self-observation with several large and varying consequences. Bypassing all the eloquent and stereotypical talk about the masks we wear, what I realized was that my masquerade was not a standard self-protecting one. The purpose of mine, like most, isn't to hide the self, but to replace it.

What I continually do isn't cover up my anger with sparkling eyes. I show nothing but the kindness to people until that portion of the demon soul is killed and replaced by the kindness. The result isn't an intended kindness, but one as pure as any human can make in its empathy.

I show love, but my love is a murderer that has cut the throat of my hatred and become drunk off its blood.

What I realized was that in the end, it isn't a mask killing a demon, it's the demon killing me.

I am the anger, the lust and the hatred. The compassion, restraint and love are the soul that suffocate my true nature. The demon soul is killing me, not the other way around.

When I realized that I had plateaued into an emotionless, unfeeling state, I thought that I was losing my human side. When I started to gain the kindness toward one's fellow humans that I'd always heard was the ultimate goal of the good man, I thought I had begun to win. All too late, I realize that I really have been losing all this time. It's what's driven me mad for so long. I'm dying and have been for a long, long time. Those primal twitches, that oil that courses through my veins, they may not be what humanity wants, but they are no mask.

They are my purity.

I've fought for sanity so long. To achieve it, I must embrace my purity or the haloed demon that is erasing me.

I will be strong again.

This time, for me.

Clones Could be Tasty, Too

2007-03-15T17:50:00.000-07:00

I get very, very bored now and then.

I also have spurts of very, very strange ways to cope with said boredom.

This in mind, I've potted sixteen pepper plants and two calla lilies. I am controlling their light sources, soil, water intake, and anything else humanly possible. Right now there's nothing to make a comparison to because this is the first time I've done this, but I'm thoroughly documenting as much as I can think of because, well, it takes up fifteen minutes of my time that is spent doing something other than staring at the ceiling.

The documentation of these efforts to create delicious yum-yums and a couple little pretties to mask the odor of cayenne and jalapeño can be found here:

http://peppergarden.blogspot.com/

Assuming I get enough plants to work with, I'll probably follow up the growing with some cloning experiments to determine which parts of each kind of pepper are able to be cloned (if any) and the same on the lilies.

Generally it's probably going to be a boring read unless you're wanting to put your money on a certain plant to make it more interesting. I'll be taking photos of them each Friday, but those probably won't be uploaded until just before I begin the cloning process.

Science...fun and tasty!

A Dead Rose Painted Red is Still...

2007-03-14T23:32:00.000-07:00

I came across some ancient poetry of mine. By ancient, I mean I haven't written anything in at least six or seven years, and it could possibly predate that. Reading through it, there was nothing really worth saving other than the memories of what compelled me to write them.

One of the originals:

I wake up to a cold bed
that once was warm from you.
In a daze I dress and go down
to the empty kitchen table
Looking out the windows I can
see the clouds forming
another stormy day.
Coffee trickles down like rain
drip…drip…drip…
And the heavens begin to cry

After an entire course over classical British poetry, I felt inspired to write absolutely nothing at all. I know I'll never be able to do anything that means to me 1/20th of what Ozymandias does, and if I can't do better for myself than someone else can, I don't see a point in pursuing it. Out of boredom, though, I figured I'd throw some of my new knowledge at an old work and see what I could do with it. Apparently not much.

The quick rework:

Waking to a cold bed
that once was warm from you,
dazed, I dress and go down
to our empty table.

Looking out the windows
I can see clouds forming
another stormy day.

Coffee trickles down like rain
drip…drip…drip…
and the heavens start to cry.

All I really did was make the first two stanzas run in six syllable lines and the last stanza go seven-three-seven. It doesn't run in iambs, it doesn't rhyme, the body stanzas aren't equal. All in all, it's pretty bad format, and like most of my work, not worth keeping.

That class I took, reading all of those gorgeous pieces, really made me feel kind of bad that I couldn't do something worthwhile considering my line of work and alleged expertise. I just never have had the desire to do so. Anymore, poetry is not considered art. Also, since the dawn of the interbutt, anyone (like me) who really should be ashamed to show their work at all has it plastered all over. People, especially teens with no idea of rhyme, meter, or what the difference between a monologue and a sonnet is, just do what they believe to be free-verse (it's not) and throw it out there.

Today's most common poetry, by all traditional means, isn't poetry at all. No rhyme scheme, no rhythm, no clear stanza organization, no themes half the time. It's just...frustrating. Why bother trying to make something classically good when the people of today will look at it and call it old-fashioned, if they recognize it as being poetry at all before pulling out their mass-printed butcheries of an ancient art.

Although, now that I think about it, I don't write in a traditional manner at all. I'm very passive-verb intensive and love to put commas after conjunctions. I use implied I as often as implied you and claim antecedents from the complete opposite end of the composition. And, as much as I demolish the rules of the English language, most people tell me they love my writing style.

Maybe I'm just behind the times and there's hope for the new "poetry" that's floating around so much.

I guess it comes down to whether I'd rather be considered an artist or a pioneer.

I'd take artist.

If, that is, I could make something worth keeping.

Careful Gardening

2007-03-13T15:23:00.001-07:00

The holly plant, unlike many, is not an asexually reproducing one. Generally speaking, the female plants, which produce berries, are considered more aesthetically pleasing.

For the purposes of propagating these females, growers often pair them off. For example, one will usually plant three blue princes (the males) with one blue stallion (female). By doing so, the male's generative nuclei, or microspores, are almost guaranteed to fertilize the female's egg nuclei, or megaspores. This deliberate pairing ensures that the female will be successful with one of the males, although the heredity of two males will ultimately be lost.

So if we label our blue stallion H and our blue princes T, P and A, the outcome might be, hypothetically, that while P and A have environmental influences on H, T becomes the only plant to pass on its gametes and form zygotes with H. The existence of P and A, while largely superfluous, does serve a purpose as insurance that H will prosper irregardless of whether they do or not.

But P withers and dies, because a dog repeatedly pisses on it.

A is unused, but is able to be transplanted for the insurance of another blue stallion, however the gardener generally opts not to use A's gametes, because they are aesthetically inferior.

T fertilizes H, and H prospers.

The zygotes (berries) of T and H are used to create hybrid plants. The grower becomes careless, and rather than keeping the line of hybrids in tact, allows them to cross-polinate with other hybrids. The result is that by the fourth generation, the grower is lucky if one in sixteen plants resembles the original in any way that can be described other than "vague."

Eventually, none of the plants survives outside of a latent genetic relation, and has no relation outside of genus and species.

H dies.
T dies.
A dies.

But with careful gardening, H has been successful.

Puntos de Partida

2007-03-12T03:43:00.000-07:00

Starting points.

I now have a small garden of cayenne and jalapeno plants in my kitchen, along with a couple calla lilies. That is, if they don't freeze or drown from the combination of the poor weather and my love of water, I will soon have a small garden in my kitchen. Despite that it's allegedly effeminate to enjoy cooking and the like, I have a very specific way I like to make my dishes and certain things I do to have fun with the process of cooking. In my mind, it's not just the food that you throw at the oven, it's the attitude you put into the food. I guess I really do buy into the saying that a meal made with love tastes better. Unfortunately, my tiny pepper menagerie has taken over the table.

So green pepper and mushroom pasta with lemon chicken in tow, I made my way to my desk. The supper table of millions more studious than I, it serves me well as a place to relax and enjoy something that I've at least somewhat created.

Clearing a spot for my plate, I also take time to open my messenger program for some dinner conversation before I get back to studying for my exam in the morning. There are two people on - Blisken and P-chan. I talk to Blis for a while, put my fork down, and have a good slouch as I let the food settle and my stomach feels full for a change. After a bit, I close my eyes and begin to fall asleep, kept minimally awake by the promise of a less-than-stellar test score should I let myself go under.

When I finally open my eyes again, I see P-chan's name. I look at it in the same expressionless way that I look at anything when I'm trying to observe something.

Okay, stupid. Think this through this time, I tell myself. Think of the why, the how, the consequences. Pros and cons, weigh them. This is a risk and an investment. Proceed with caution. Place hotel on Boardwalk. The harpoons, man them.

But really, there wasn't much to think about. No matter what logic tree you follow or what reasoning you try to put on it, it's just fucking retarded for two people who WANT to be happy together to INTENTIONALLY NOT be happy together. So I opened her little box, and said:

"Look cheesetits. You owe me five dollars. I don't know what kind of bullshit you're trying to pull, but I have the Blue Barracudas on my side, and your Silver Monkey ass ain't escapin the Hidden Temple til I gots muh monies. You might think you're going to smash some pots and grab some keys, but mark my words, the temple guards are going to find you and take your precious little pendants. Olmec and I be down, sucka."

God, that show was so awesome.

What I (sort of) really said, in short, was:

"I'm going to consider you heard from. If you have any objections to that....nigrplz."

She said some things. I said things back. Then she talked about things, and so on. It was only mildly awkward, due more to the fact we were talking about the platypus having the ability to sting and dirty shitstations, but it wasn't horrible, and sometimes that's better to aim for than fantastic.

It's a point of origin.

Blisken tells me that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over despite similar outcomes and expecting a different outcome. Maybe after six years, believing that I have at last achieved total sanity, I am mistaken yet. As strange of a positive side as it is, I can at least be glad that I was crushed and destroyed to the furthest extents possible. In this way, anything bad that happens now will simply be a muted replay.

Let there be no mistake, our interaction is on a "professional" premise. That's probably the most reassuring thing. In the past, I was required for the sake of my capacity to love and support. Now, she finally has those things. I am required only for my nature as a symbiotic soul.

Cliches inserted, it'd be something like:

"Hay u letz b frends"
"LOL OK"
"LOL ^_^"
"I MADE YOU A COOKIE BUT I EATED IT"
"T_T"
";_;"

I told her I hope that this time, I don't have to wait a year before I talk to her again. She jokingly said that there was a merit to suspense.

Pathetically, I know that even if it was another year, I'd wait it out with perfect memory and undiminished affectation, coming back like a puppy when I was called. But, hell, I waited upward of three years to talk to my brother, about seven for my father. A year would be nothing to me, that's just the kind of person I am.

Patience is supposed to be a virtue, but it might be nice now and then to spend less of my life waiting.

I started out hoping to not write a single word about P-chan. She'll probably come here, and it shouldn't feel like I'm looking at what's going on under a microscope. Really, I'm just winging it. But, describing what was going on to Blisken, I said, "I started journaling six years ago. The first entry I wrote was about her. My most recent entry is also about her."

"Oh, wow," he said.

He pretty much summed it up. You focus on what's important to you, and despite how guilty I feel for a lot of the things that I've said and even certain things I've only implied, that fact that I'm still at topic number one should be proof enough to me for making myself understand that we've both done our fair shares of atonement.

Schatze once had a dream that I published a book of my life, written in red ink, but that despite our two years together and extended friendship, she couldn't find herself anywhere in the pages. It was obvious what the dream meant, and it's saddening to know that it's coming true. As I tried to tell her, though, I've gotten into the habit of only writing when bad things happen to me. She was always so good to me that there was simply never anything to say.

If Alpha was the wrecking ball that brought me down, Schatze was the foundation that I was able to rebuild on. P-chan is one of my four cornerstones, opposite my brothers, my passions, and the iron will that I was blessed and cursed with. I know if they could speak to one another, Panda-chan would be able to reassure Schatze that I haven't forgotten a single moment of her selflessness. If it's true that there is a great woman behind every great (or mediocre but ambitious, as my case might be) man, then I'll always have to claim at least two. They are the complete opposites on the scale that balances me, and for a long time, I had neither of them.

Points of beginning, a place where a ladder meets the earth. I think it's time to pick up my things and start walking again. P-chan is a source of happiness, but I have much more work to do. Schatze, Cairo, Seta, Sola, so many bricks that comprise me, quickly becoming strangers. The last time I spoke with Cairo, it was in Latin. It's been so long.

I think I've descended into ramble, now.

This week has just served so well to remind me not only of what I had once lost, but of what I'm allowing myself to lose right now. This is a shitty world to be alone in, and I don't think I'd like to do it again.

Sometimes an artist starts out putting pencil to paper at a single point and forming a planned and tended line. Despite the best efforts, not all such drawings sell. Sometimes an artist jerks the top off of a can of paint and slings it at a giant canvas. Despite the fact that they shouldn't, some of these works sell for thousands.

After an all-nighter, I don't know if that makes as much sense as I'm hoping it does, but either way, I'm going to throw myself at the canvas.

Finally, I can picture my new life beginning in earnest.

You Could

2007-03-10T01:13:00.000-08:00

She told me she hated me a thousand times, and every time I looked to her eyes and smiled. I could always read them as plainly as every man wishes he could read a woman's eyes. Her lips smiled as she said it over and over, "I hate you. I hate you." But hearing the words from her heart that she always tried so hard to muffle, I could clearly make out what she was really telling me:

"I don't hate you yet, but I'm trying. I tried to stop loving you and I can't, so now I'll try to forget."

Every last second of that day is burned into me. The warmest greeting I've ever received, followed by the realization a split second later that I'd probably never see her again. The silence that I finally totally embraced, understanding that as perfect of a match as our hands were, our souls could never be together in the calm ways that our bodies could. When, after five years, she finally kissed me -- on the cheek -- and I drove home, sat down, and thought of nothing but that for as long as I possibly could because I knew that it was a goodbye kiss.

I remember the last time I called her, the stale quiet that totally encompassed us both as I was all too aware of her hopes that I would just hang up soon.

"I'll wait until I hear from you again," I told her. Despite a thousand temptations and a heartache that I could never describe in spite of any eloquence, I have kept true to my words.

When I'd hung up, she said to herself, to me, "You won't."

I hope that one day, when she finds what she was looking for, we can both break these promises together and start anew on the path toward the camaraderie we've been denying ourselves for so long. Sometimes I wonder how we'll ever find what it is we're looking for without each other in the first place.

There is so much guilt now, on both sides of the fence that we've built between us. Strangely, knowing that we've long ago forgiven each other only makes it all the more difficult to bear.

Her picture still rests on my shelf. Sometimes I get tired of walking by it and making sideways glances as I try not to think about her and go about my day. It's then that I stop and look directly to her, letting myself miss her, love her, and feel all the pain and pride that she brought into my life.

Our relationship will never be the way it was during that first year. If we were honest with ourselves, and with each other, I think we'd both agree that we wouldn't rewind and do it differently anyhow. But what we still have is the chance to be complete. The chance that I will be able to introduce myself to the person that she has become, the chance to be a source of happiness for her, is something that I will hope for no matter how foolish I am for doing so.

I've always given her as much love as I knew how, as unconditionally as a person possibly could. Despite my best attempts, it has neither diminished nor weakened, only matured into something that I know will be a part of me the rest of my days.

There was a time when I had to ask myself what I wanted from her, and I was never satisfied with my answers. Now, maybe, I can answer myself honestly: A smile, a laugh, and the words from her heart to whisper that she doesn't mind me being a part of her anymore.

I'm not one to put much stock in hope, but I know that if she feels one half of the warmth that I do, we are both great fools to make those last promises to each other the only ones we kept.

I don't hate you yet, and I won't ever. I tried to stop loving you and I can't, so now I'll embrace you, completely.

Tempting Incentives

2007-03-06T20:05:00.000-08:00

Mostly from an e-mail to Schatze, because I'm more likely to be honest with her than with myself when I write these things, and I just don't feel like saying the same thing over again in prettier words.

Rofl, there's a rap song that has some lines that go: "WHAT IT IS?! WHAT'S UP?! CAN A NIGGA GET IN DEM GUTS?!"

Sometimes I have to hand it to rap. As an evolving music form, it seems like it's almost done with puberty, which is bragable.

I've got a friend who's wanting me to help him make a (/groan) manga in spare time just to have something to do. Unfortunately I was never much of an artist to start with, and he's a complete beginner. It's not like we're looking to show it off at comicons for dinero though, so it could be funny if nothing else. All those cartoony storylines just seem so overdone. He wants to make a tragedy, and I figure if nothing else writing the plot will force some creative juice out of me. Hopefully the only thing tragic about it isn't our attempt at colouring.

"Whaaaaaat the fuck have you been doing?" Good fucking question, Billeesha. I'm still goin to school. Finally I'll be getting my associates. After that...¯\(º_o)/¯ dunno lol. It depends on if FAFSA comes through for me as to whether I keep going on my bachelor's or have to drop out for a while. Either way I aim on being back in C-town starting at the end of this school year.

I'm not workin right now because I've been a lazyass. I quit my job about the time school started and haven't done anything since. I keep meaning to go get applications. I went out to round some up one day around 4pm and the lady said to come back before 2 because the manager's gone by then and yadda yadda give me a fucking application fuck your manager etc etc. I just said screw it and went home. I've got enough to finish out the semester, so I figured focusing on getting better grades was more important than overworking for a shitty paycheque that I don't necessarily have to have right now.

"Just don't have a stinky smelling ol' man room, like my brother, yeck." My house smelled like old man when I moved in. And you know how every person has a different smell, but when you live with your family or whatever they blend so when you come home you don't really smell your own family's scent? Yeah, Dunkel's totally overpowers mine. Every day I come home and go 'goddamn it smells like Dunkel in here.' It's weird. Not awww weird, and definitely not HOT HOT HOTSKIE.

I haven't gotten a tattoo yet. I have too much scar tissue on my arms I think, and a scar on my chest where I'd get one there if I got one. If I end up getting one it'll probably have to be elbow length down on the side of my ribcage...which...yeah WTF, why even bother. What'd you get yours of? I think if I get one it's going to be me in a lumberjack outfit with one foot up on a slain t-rex, with a machete in one hand and a fifth of vodka in the other, and the text "I'm fucking awesome" under it. It might be a hard sale, but I'm pretty sure I could get laid anywhere with that.

Maybe.

Yo lil sis been askin if she can meet up with me before I head out of town. I told her that'd be awkward since I am a 20something man and she is a 10 year old boy. Instead, I tried to instruct her on how to beat the dark world of level 8 in Mario3. Apparently no one in the Schatze Casa has defeated Bowser. Do you know how long Princess Toadstool has gone without a bath, sitting there waiting for y'alls to free her? Bitch's pussy be smellin like Red Lobster, Mario's gonna get in there, realize there's no fish market nearby and head back to make manlove to an aged Luigi, who, though wrinkly, is at least sanitary.

True story, I've seen it a thousand times.

In my dreams.

Speaking of which, no B movie dreams worth noting, unfortunately. Dunkel had a dream in which he (long retarded Dunkel story short) used his awesomeness and latent ninja abilities to disarm and kill two thieves who were robbing our house.

One of my friends is gettin his flirt on with a (white) girl named Alaiah or some shit. Aliooloo. Allahu-akubar. Uh-lay-uh. Or as I call her, Shenaynay. Tol' her she gots a nigganame. She didn't appreciate it. Maybe she's half black.

Or half retarded.

I guess I gotta pretend I'm sensitive and be nice to her for his sake though. She has a lil friend who's interested in me but eh. I been out of the "game" for so long and pretty much treat women equally to a fault anymore irregardless. My buddy's lil girlie friend sent him a text message asking if they were together, would he be a gentleman and buy her dinner and so on. He says what should I say? I told him what he should say and what I'd say were two different things...I'da said, well, you have a choice, I can treat you like you're somebody's daughter, or I can treat you like an equal...and if you say you want to be treated like somebody's daughter, you're talkin to the wrong guy cuz I'm not yo daddy. Equality or gtfo.

All he ended up tellin her was "yes."

When I say "She has a lil friend who's interested in me but eh," let me elaborate on "eh" as meaning "she's a retarded slut with no ambition and a lackluster personality." The search continues, I suppose. I'm not too awful picky, but when you're all but bragging about how you cheated on your last three guys...no.

This weekend should be a nice break from drama queens and classroom scenes, though. I've got a few friends from out of town coming in for the weekend and we'll probably be hitting up C-town. I'm not sure what all we're doing, just that when someone brings up a designated driver I'm going to shout NOT IT.

Really, really, really fast.

I still don't tend to plan more than a day or two in advance. Been having a good time on the social scene. Got out of town for some pool and (amazingly aerobic epic battles of) ping-pong last weekend, but I haven't made any longterm plans. I'm still kind of winging it hoping that ultimately I'll simply fall into a teaching position, or perhaps start simply walking into Mordor.

My mombot and sister are still full of drama and self-centered bullshit and can't understand why I don't want to take time away from my own self-centered bullshit to put up with theirs.

Write back soon and let me know WHAT IT IS, WHAT'S UP.

Other than the contents of the above letter, I haven't been doing a whole lot. I'm trying to get some plans laid for this summer, but it's just not something I can do until I know where I stand on financial aid for the next semester. Although I'm assured that if I were to choose my triumphant return to Canada rather than an holiday (that's right Schatze, AN holiday) elsewhere, that Trappie would greet me with 'the biggest hug ever.' I have my doubts that such a hug wouldn't, in fact, come from Nano and Johann simultaneously. Either way, it's a tempting incentive.

I'd been thinking about my father a lot, and bloody maturity made me realize that I've made some questionable decisions concerning him over the years. I avoid the use of the term regrettable, as despite my present understanding of the way things should probably have played out, I still feel empty considering our current lack of a relationship. When I was young, I sought a father figure because I felt the need for one. A little older, and I looked for one because I knew I was supposed to. After that, I stopped caring. I've tried to start again, but I suppose it's as hard as forcing yourself to care about anything else.

The summary of the past month: Lots of action boring me to tears.

Pursuit

2007-02-06T19:46:00.000-08:00

We'll pretend for a few minutes that the majority of people have, at some time, decided to save a can of soda for a lengthy period for whatever reason, and that it is common knowledge that after about a year the can will simply explode of its own accord as vengeance for the neglect that it's faced.

Understanding that I definitely did not want a cascade of caffeine running down my kitchen wall, I went ahead and took down the four Arabic-enscribed cans that my sister's recently acquired husband gifted to me and went to work preserving them, so that when I ultimately move and lose them or they get crushed, they'll have been aesthetically pleasing in the meantime.

How you do this is by puncturing the bottom of the can with a nail so that it can drain and the top is left in tact. But halfway through draining my hajicolas (better known as Pepsi, Orange Fanta, Sprite, and Mountain Dew) I realized something very important.

Aside from the fact that Sprite can pee vertically a foot and a half into the air.

A mixture of sodas is commonly referred to as a kamikaze, or as a suicide.

SUICIDE CAFFEINE BOMBING OF MUH GUTSZ. There is no cola but Pepsi, and Mountain Dew is his prophet. The jihad against my stomach begins now, and I partake of it willingly knowing that if I should choke from the delicious pan-Arabism contained in every drop that I will go to heaven and be received by 72 unopened colas to enjoy for the rest of eternity.

Drinking this much caffeine is probably a terrible idea, not for the (lack of) nutritional value, but for the fact it dehydrates you. Several not-quite-dead-yet experiences and about a month of experimenting (i.e. getting inexcusably drunken), and I've found that my continually declining health owes part of its persistence to my lack of water. More specifically, oxygen.

It was always a mystery why I would have seizures. I'm not light sensitive, sound sensitive, anything like that. Although migraines often accompany light sensitive patients, we could never figure out why I would have them or why the medications never did anything. It's just a hypothesis, but lack of oxygenation would cover a lot of bases.

Too bad it takes about six months and a lot of cash to talk to a neurologist, otherwise I'd probably find out rather than trying to sleep all the time so I don't have to be conscious of the million needles stabbing into my skull and chest.

Besides, living or not is never that big of a question. It doesn't matter if you die. Dying takes no preparation and has no consequence on you that you'll ever be aware of. Living, on the other hand, takes a whole lot of work and willpower if you don't want what time you have to be made of suck and fail.

That in mind, I'm enrolled in the one class I need to finally get my first degree (albeit I'm getting it a few years late for various reasons). Public speaking. It makes me vomit a little just waking up to go to the class. Not because I have any fear of doing it, but because it's such a stereotypical self-help bullshit class that I have absolutely no use for. When you see just under 100% of the people you meet as meatbags that serve no purpose, their judgment of you really doesn't weigh in so much anymore, and speaking about random crap in front of them doesn't register on the scale of difficulty at all.

I actually got docked on my first speech for "moving around too much." Not fidgeting. Confident visual suggestions that pretty much any professional speaker would probably include. Good fucking game.

My other courses: Spanish and Plant Biology.

Now, both of those were electives. Plant Biology for three hours a day when I could've taken any blowoff class the school offers was probably not a wise decision, but I'm strange and it interests me. What can I say?

Because my friend who was supposed to make it to Puerto Rico with me has already bailed, and one of my contacts there is being a whiny little bitch, I figured it would be cheaper, easier, and more fun to get back to Canada for a visit like I've been talking about doing for the better part of the decade. It'll depend on what funds I can come up with after having paid every last cent of my tuition...again...because my mother didn't give me FAFSA information on time...again.

I hope it works out, but that goes without saying. The simplest way to say it is that I'm just really tired of Americans.

Other things. My sister got married on January somethingorother, I think the 9th, and since we have no father, I was the one to walk her down the aisle. Her daughter is now a year old and is still on the fast track to being a fatty with low moral standards.

I'm mean, I know.

Things have been pretty empty and apathetic. A little more than normal. I've stopped sleeping all the time despite my best efforts, but picked up drinking like a fish whenever it's around. I'm pretty sure I professed love for someone who's taken and entirely above me, but honestly I don't remember or care to. I don't have too much money to blow on the shit, don't miss any school for it, and since it seems to be wanting very badly to kill me, I haven't overdone it much lately.

No one's around anymore. The SyK tactic of simply not updating anything until people give up on checking seems to work quite well, intentional or not. The downside is that things are so boring that I considered buying a flower just to consume the two minutes a day it would take to water it.

Preoccupation is a key to longevity. Unfortunately, I've never been one too in favor of a long life. In any case, short or long, I'm slowly understanding why most people spend the majority of the time they do have in the pursuit of distraction.

Lengthy Letdown

2006-12-13T21:56:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time because I've been both incredibly busy and lazy.

Long story short, the semester is now over and despite wonderful success in my subject area, I've let myself down in the mandatory science credits.

How I of all people managed not to pull a midrange grade in fucking Astronomy is a story too long for the limited mobility I have at present.

As I have managed to get thoroughly drunken in the process of moping, I can spare only the focus to say that this is the worst failure of all types. You let down your friends, they forgive you. You let down your family, they forgive you. You let yourself down, though, and the forgiveness is not so forthcoming. Failing myself, the only person anymore with any access into my internal workings whatsoever, is the largest, longest, most painful failure. It is the hardest to come to terms with and to overcome and will take a lot more time and rum to rectify.

I intend to pick up the pen for my personal use again soon, however I will not, even in my present state, be foolish enough to promise anything.

Happy Soviets' Day.

The Crappiest Analogy Ever

2006-09-05T01:54:00.000-07:00

I've been a part of something for a couple years now. We'll call it a club. I'm not in a gang or anything, and the people who know me well enough will know what I'm talking about and that it is, in fact, not even as cool as a club. But for hypothetics, that's what we'll call it.

For the past two years, I've been working my way up the ladder of this club to be someone more powerful, more important and authoritative. It's taken me two years of my life and a lot more than just time. I've lost contact with a lot of people who used to be close friends. When I go out or visit family, I never stay too long because I know that I have a club meeting I have to get back for that evening. When I go out of town I plan around the meetings. When I do homework I think about getting done quickly rather than doing a good job so I can go back and hang out at the club. If I'm talking to one of my real life friends, or even most of the people I talk to online, it's usually about the club. And if we're not talking about it, then the conversation usually dies pretty fast.

All said and done, I've finally worked my way up to a respected position. People come to me for advice, for insight, and just to say wow I can't believe I'm talking to you. It was great until I realized that the club was going to be merging into an even bigger club where I would, again, be no one. Everything I've accomplished so far is nothing more than hundreds, possibly thousands of other people in their sections of the club have accomplished. And despite what I've given up to be part of this (including quitting my job to be able to attend more meetings), in the end it's nothing.

What I've come to realize is that I had originally joined this group of people to have fun and make some friends, as well as be able to spend more time with friends I already had. Now it's like a job that I don't get paid for. I never have any fun, the friends I've made only care about me because of my contributions and skills that aid them within the club, and my friends that I already had can't carry on a conversation about anything else.

I've been addicted to the fake societal position that I've held more than I could have ever thought possible. I've done a lot of drugs before...a lot of them...and I quit any and all of them with the blink of an eye and never looked back. Dropping from this club, though, has taken me months to be able to do. Now that I see the reality of the situation and all that I will never get back from the time I spent there, it's clear what I need to do.

It's time to move on with my life.

Fortunately my power and skill, like everything else in America, have a dollar value. My position in the club is worth right around $1315 USD.

During the fulfillment of my duties (or losing of my soul) to the club, I did manage to make one worthwhile friend. This new comrade is originally from Puerto Rico and has offered me a place to crash should I ever find myself in his neck of the world.

To drive to Florida, fly to San Juan P.R., fly back, and drive home would cost roughly $800.

Hmm.

HMMMMMMM.

It's about time for me to get my random boots out of the closet and polish them up a bit.

Latino heat, baby.

Shattered

2006-07-24T23:43:00.000-07:00

I was excited when I moved into my apartment here in Nowheresville and saw that it actually had a garbage disposal. True enough to form, though, as I'm cooking up some ribs at two in the morning and go to turn on the disposal, it makes that lovely grinding noise.

Not the grinding noise of old food being conveniently whisked away, but the grinding noise of a double-shot sized shotglass that you got seven years ago in Quebec being brutally mangled.

As I stand there fishing glass out of the drain, I have to acknowledge that my Canadian shotglass is in about the same state as my Canadian dream - useless, shattered, and going from gutter to trashcan.

I don't want to give up yet, but I'm starting to come to my senses and realize that what it will change is not exactly what I want it to change. I've long stopped being a political activist and thus the point of becoming part of a socialism is all but moot. As far as personal changes go, I'd practically convinced myself that they were impossible here. I know they aren't, but at the same time, there is a place for change as much as a time. I still feel that that place is far from here, in the Northland.

On the academic front, my attempts to continue reading daily as I had been when I didn't have the internet have failed miserably. Schoolwise, well...there's the toughy.

I've busted my hump to get everything ready for the police academy that starts on August first. I've done about 20 times more work than most people would have to for the simple fact that I have a record. I've been planning my future around this, and when I'm finally in, finally have both feet firmly in the door, I drown.

Sitting in the orientation, looking at the posters showing various parts of druggies' bodies, listening to the apathetic teacher, I realized it wasn't where I wanted to be. I felt absolutely no sense of desire, no sense of belonging, no passion...I got up fifteen minutes into the two hour long speech and left.

I didn't get far, as I went directly downstairs to the counsellor's office to ask them about their English education programs. Come to find out, I'm only about a semester away from having a degree. Of course there's a catch, though, and that is that with the school in this town, I'd have to go for a year due to credit requirements.

References in hand, I'll go to another college in the town I was trying to leave in the first place to see what can't be done. It may have taken me the past two years of being in total absence of pen and paper to realize it, but this love of mine that I so carelessly cast aside has found me yet.

If you love it set it free, they say. And now it has come back to set me free once again.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do about a place to live or money or food or any of that. But I'm happy enough to know that my first calling, my true calling, is the one which I will ultimately fulfil.

Notes

2006-05-16T10:42:00.000-07:00

I thought maybe it'd help me remember to write and actually do it if I made a couple notes. I set about making a text file with some lines from the day and saved it as "writeyouasshole" on my desktop.

It didn't really work, but here are the notes I made. It doesn't seem to be anything that needs much elaboration at any rate.

-----

went to visit grandparents

grandmother went to answer the phone, grandfather and i sat across from each other in total silence

grandfather went off to take a nap

my aunt's birthday; grandmother hurried away from her on the offchance that I would show up

gma offers money and for the first time actually doesn't force it on me. i am relieved

cousin failing pharmaceuticals, wanted to move to NY to be a writer lawl

got court records, must write something apologetic

work is kicking my ass

hard to force myself to sleep at the right time, but when i wake up and when i get home i want nothing more than to pass out

pay is shit and town is shit but i know it's temporary and don't dwell much

very thin and very poor but managing for the time being

Fault

2006-04-20T07:57:00.000-07:00

Although I don't write with any frequency now, I told myself that when I did write it would not simply be one of those, "Durr I haven't written in a while so uhhh last weekend I went someplace and drank something and came home and that's it." I don't enjoy reading that kind of thing, and I wouldn't expect anyone else to either. I'd rather just not write at all.

I actually felt bad when I called to tell my mother that I wouldn't be coming in on Easter. She called around three Easter Day asking where I was, telling me I'd said I'd be there at one and so on. Which of course I hadn't said that; she just can't hear and/or hears what she wants to. When I told her that I wouldn't be there until the day after, she said sure, no problem, come whenever you'd like and the whole spiel like it was nothing.

When I did get there the next day no one was home. Raiding the fridge, I found two plates of quite nice food wrapped up, which had obviously been meant for myself and Dunkel (who was supposed to go with me). I felt pretty low since she'd gone through all the trouble for us only for us to flake out on her at the last minute (whether she'd misunderstood or not). If she had just yelled at me like always, I wouldn't have cared, but it made me feel like shit to see the trouble she'd gone through just to have it blown off.

I took out one of the plates and unwrapped it. It wasn't exactly the best food going from the stove to the fridge to the microwave, but it was still better than anything I'll have at my own home any time soon.

Knowing that I don't really eat well due to the fact that I save money by cutting necessities more often than luxuries, she put some food into a bag for me when i was leaving. Poptarts, donuts, some lunchmeat, chips, pretty much whatever she could find that she and my sister weren't going to eat or felt guilty after they did.

Back at my own apartment, I opened one of the mini-packs of donuts to find them held together by mold. I broke out the chips, and they were stale (not that I didn't eat them anyway). This morning I opened some of the pop-tarts to find that they were so old that the sugar on the top had crystalized. I haven't found the courage to open the lunch meat and see what surprise is waiting for me there.

Ordinarily I'd point out how she probably knew it was all bad considering she even pointed out to me that I should check the meat first. But, for once, there's really nothing negative I can say. At least, I suppose, she somewhat tried.

I'd also phoned a few days before and asked her to withdraw some money for me. The town I'm in now doesn't have the bank my account is with, so I was just going to write her a cheque in exchange for cash. She turned down the cheque and said, "I never get to do anything for you," and pretty much left it at that. Knowing me, I'd probably normally just be suspicious and waiting for the, "by the way can you fix my computer/car/whatever." And from experience, I'm kind of surprised that wasn't thrown in.

Of the hundred dollars she gave me and told me to buy food with, forty of it went into gas already. Alternations between ramen, water, and hunger are just a way of life. And again, I probably wouldn't have really thought that much of it. As I've said numerous times before, my family tends to show affection through money rather than actions or words. My mother, however, never "gets to" do anything for me in part because she doesn't really think to, and in part because she simply can't if she wants to.

On workman's compensation, she makes 2/3 of her normal salary and has been for the past couple years. 2/3 of a teachers salary is nil to begin with. My sister, who just had a daughter, doesn't even have health insurance. We just can't afford it. To make things better, my mother just got fired on the excuse that the students' education suffered at the hands of poor substitutes (which, if the substitutes are of poor quality, is in all fairness no fault of hers).

I also have yet to find a job and am currently unable to contribute to pretty much anything at all. I'm on the fast track to broke as hell and the rest of my immediate family has been waiting at the finish line for quite some time now.

I'm not saying I'm going to go out and jump off a bridge or something; I'm not, but it's hard not to wonder what the fuck the point of bothering is. My family is only one in the loosest sense of the word, I'm on my way to a job that I don't really want in a place I don't want to be. Pretty much I have no friends left, no desire to go out and make any new ones, and will probably never marry and live and die alone.

On the one hand, I could learn to like my job and could force myself to go out and be more social. I could do like 99% of people do and marry someone just because she's willing to put up with me to a certain extent. I could be content, and content is better then blech.

But, again, it doesn't really matter. Birth to death is a very fast transition and what happens along the way for most, myself included, will not really affect much of anything if indeed it affects something at all.

I'd like to say that I believe I could learn to like whatever I do or that things can change and all the happy stuff, but really, I'm probably just still here because suicide is a really asshole thing to do. It freaks people the fuck out and I do that enough already. So no bridge jumping. Just a lot of whining and bitching.

My only interaction with people who matter or did at one point has become online. I really don't know (m)any people in this town yet, and it's not exactly a place with a lot going on to go meet people. Any given street is bank, gas station, bank, church, church, bank, gas station, church.

I thought there was like a theatre/rental place, but come to find out it's a porn store. I'm sure I could meet some interesting people there, but...no. I'll pass.

I've been thinking pretty hard on why I should go ahead and be a cop if I'm going to hate doing it in America and why I should invest all this money into it if I'm just going to try and leave it behind in the next 3-7 years. Why not just invest the same money into becoming an English teacher and doing something I really enjoy?

Well, one, I suck at it now, and two, it'd still take a minimum of two years. I need money pronto, and being a cop will only take the better part of six months for probably twice as much starting pay.

I think if ever I was making a huge mistake that would fuck up the rest of my life and was totally conscious of it, it's right now. I kind of wish someone would walk up and talk me out of it, but I know damn well I wouldn't listen and would just think he was an asshole for talking about crap that doesn't impact him at all.

Secondary goal: Get to Canada, live at least acceptably as a socialist. Probably take no action on anything important whatsoever and just put in my hours until retirement.

Primary goal: Learn Spanish fluently, move to Latin America and help nationalization, independence and export foundations. Probably be relatively poor but happy as a pig in shit.

Current course of action: Survive at all costs no matter how bad the outcome and attempt to convince self that primary and secondary goals are silly and that working at Taco Bell is sensible and acceptable.

.....if only I had a job at Taco Bell right now. If only I had a job fucking anywhere.

I won't apply to Wal-Mart, though.

I would do anything for love, but I won't do that. Oh no, no I won't do that.

Meh, I don't know. I know I'll be happy enough and do a great job when all is said and done. I just have to bitch and moan now and then. It seems like everyone around me is either getting married or is coming close to it. I know and they probably do too that they're too young and immature and shouldn't even be thinking about it for another five years at least, but it's hard not to want part of the same thing for yourself (which I know is easy to say when you don't have it). Most of my good friends are also doing the great jobs: finishing out their school to become programmers, engineers, analysts, lawyers or whatever and running off to internships at fancy companies. I, on the other hand, am in the process of throwing away two years of schooling to become almost universally hated in an occupation that someone who barely got a GED could probably do better than I will.

I guess long story short, I have no realistic ambition whatsoever, and rather than correcting this and setting attainable short term goals, I choose to piss and whine about unattainable long term imaginings.

I should correct it.

But I won't.

I'm taking the easy way out like I always do. And while I blame my parents or the country or whatever comes to mind, I'll always know that everything that happens and everything that never does will all be my own damn fault.

Jobhunt

2006-04-03T00:40:00.000-07:00

I decided that this weekend I would stay in and just kind of do nothing so I could save at least the cash I have on me.

Of course what that really means is that I was gone from Friday to Sunday, crashing at Harpell's house.

It was awesome that we actually didn't just sit and LAN the entire time like I figured would happen. The first night we (he) had over some people and there were your standard drinking and music and guys complaining because they didn't have some slut sitting on their laps at whatever given moment.

The second night started out pretty much the same, just with more people. It turned into a 21-and-up barhop for one of his friend whose birthday it was. Harp started out as the DD, but his friend got so many drinks given to him that he ended up sliding half of them to Harp and I ended up with the keys instead. Everyone hates being the designated, but I didn't really mind considering it probably saved me a lot of money that I would've blown even though I don't have it, and it sort of...you know...keeps us alive when someone can drive.

The third night, after two days of going to sleep around seven in the morning and getting up at noon, I figured I should get out before we did another bar/restaurant/splurgefest.

I hate that I sound like my father, here. My mother was always on the case because even when we'd vacation, he never really relaxed or had fun because he was always worrying about the money. I guess the difference is that I really don't have it and he was just a cheapskate; then again I also don't let it keep me from having fun while I can. I'll be conscious of the fact that I shouldn't be spending but just do it anyway, have fun, and worry about it later.

That will probably bite me in the ass later on, hard.

I don't really dislike working. I enjoy being active and having some kind of consistent schedule. I'm not even a bad worker, in fact I'm pretty good at more things than I'm not. I just can't ever get excited about any of it. I guess it's like my studying going from gradeschool to university: first I don't have to give any effort whatsoever to do fantastic, then when I really need to give the effort I just sort of flounder because I never really had a challenge with anything that taught me how to deal with challenges before.

Hopefully having a real eight-to-fiver won't end up being the same way. I know I have the capacity to be an awesome whatever, I just pretty much fail at forcing myself to do things that ensure my continued survival.

I guess what I'm saying is that, though I've no aversion to work, I have no drive, either. There was a point at which I'd have settled for nothing less than being a revered physicist or something along that line. Now, if it paid the bills, I really wouldn't give a crap if I were someone's secretary for the next 40 years.

Even though there's nothing to do about it, it's also always a shitty time when you have to hear over and over again, "Sorry, we're not hiring right now..." Half of the time I want to say, 'look, that guy at the register right now...he sucks. I could do better than him right now with no training. Just fire him and you can hire me and we'll both benefit.' The other half of the time I just want to crotch-kick them and ask 'how about now?' until they give in.

If anyone has some form of time travel device (SyK?) I'd like to borrow it to get my clean-cut, well motivated, ruthless 16 year old self to come and do some job interviews for me and possibly kick my ass and rob me for good measure.

I've always been so efficient and direct to get things done. My last three jobs I was hired on the spot at the first place I went. It's definitely good that I'm not the person I used to be, but it also blows to realize that you've lost your touch at some really awesome skills. I'm quickly becoming a sour old man who had a lot of hopes that never really amounted to anything.

It's so much easier to just give up and hate yourself for it than it is to relentlessly pursue something that, whether success or failure, forces you to better yourself simply by adherence to the undertaking.

Babble

2006-03-27T00:39:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when life is incredibly uneventful it can be difficult to really find something to write about.

On the other hand, though, sometimes when life is busy and full of changes, it can be hard to even choose a place or means to start, and all that comes out is prattle.

Real estate in my new town is nothing. The town is so small and decrepit that the land owners can scarcely justify charging anything at all. My last apartment was a condo-sized area that ran about 550 US a month, included no utilities, required a garbage fee, and internet ran roughly 40 US. With a roommate, this ran me from 320-400 US a month depending on how hot/cold it was and whether someone did something White like leaving a window or door open with heat on, a stove burner running, etc.

My new apartment is easily twice the size of my last if not more, runs 350 US a month, and the only utility I have to pay is electric. Both internet and a phone service are just around 30 US.

Although the cost of living here is considerably less, not having a roommate will end up making it cost me more nevertheless.

By my calculations, I need to earn at minimum about 2000 US by August, with the ideal being more like 5000. At a crap-pay job as it's safe to assume any of them will be in a town this size, that's roughly 30 hours a week. That's not too bad assuming I can find a job willing to give me those kinds of hours. I really dislike the idea of having to do two jobs to make it come out because your hours are always lame. Hopefully I won't have to go that route.

It wouldn't be so bad if I could work during school, but once it starts, I'll be in school from 8am until 5pm every day with homework and studying on the side. I could work weekends and might have to, but if it's at all possible not to I won't be. Not having a single day off week after week runs me down pretty fast no matter how easy the work might be. If it's hard work to boot, I'll be out of commission pretty fast.

I had around 3000-3300 US in my bank account coming here, along with bonds and CDs that I never touch, but it doesn't last forever. Probably the only reason I even had that much was from saving for the better part of the last decade to take an extended holiday in Canada. Calculating up rent, necessities (gas, food, etc), frills like the net and (/mumble) the Bacardi 151 in the freezer, in order to pay for everything just until January without being able to work from August til December, I really need to hoof it.

My minimum number is based on using pretty much every last cent I have in the bank along with cashing a 700-750 US CD that matures in September. I've pretty much sworn off fun until I find a job and decided to kick my own ass and have one by the end of the first week in April. If I were smart I'd call up Schatze and beg for an endorsement but my pride is too much of an asshole to let me ask for favours from anyone about something like that.

It's just such a pisser. Basically all the town has is gas stations and fast food. Which means day one is going to involve me stopping by every gas station in town, and day two is going to involve me trying to re-find every gas station in town to turn in the applications. I'd like to work in someplace that sells (grocery) food simply for a discount on it, but I'm not going to be picky about who writes my cheques at this point.

On the upside, only people who've never had a real job that they had to get themselves have given me shit over not having worked for the better part of a year now. I've pretty much been doing some kind of work or another for as long as I can remember...whether it was helping with construction or working in my droid's sign shop before I could legally work (which is much more physical than simply slapping paint on something, I can promise)...or serving ungrateful assholes disgusting gruel, or being everyone's bitch at the newspaper. I've never, until now, had a break from working and have always worked to get for myself whatever I wanted whenever possible. So to those who haven't given me shit, looked down on me, or tried the holier-than-thou act over me taking time off: thank you for not being fucking cunts and contributing to the guilt-tripping that everyone else has been doing.

Employment is kind of a catch-22. In the university town, there are tons of businesses and options, but it's hard as shit to get a halfway decent job (or even a shitty one) without contacts. Why pay a university kid or someone with a degree who will automatically make more money, when you can underpay some high school kid to do the exact same job? On the other hand, here where it's nothing like a city at all, there's basically no choice whatsoever.

What's worse is that you pretty much work at a corporation or you don't work at all. This basically ensures that, in order to live, you have no option but to not only be employed by capitalist weapons, but utilize them as well. So my apologies, yet again, to Schatze, whom I see truly had no choices. I am indeed an asshole, even if I'm an asshole out of naivete or oversight.

The apartment I'm in is part of a converted house that was made into four different apartments. Presently I'm upstairs and the only inhabitant of the place. I'm told some girl who's native to the town is supposed to be moving across the hallway from me the first of next month, but beyond that no one's going to be downstairs.

The senior-citizen real-estate agent who showed me the property asided that I'd get along with my semi-suite-mate just fine because "she's really cute." What this truly means is several things: first, the girl probably has no personality. She was "really cute" rather than "really nice." She's also cute in the eyes of a senior, which basically means that she's probably fat with bad teeth and self-centered. It really doesn't matter either way, I just want to put it in writing so that when she does get here, I can be all, "HA SEE I CALLED IT." And if I'm wrong, then...good.

I started to say that, "I didn't realize how much I relied on the internet for entertainment," but that's a bloody lie. I know damn well that it's about 85-95% of my entertainment more often than not, and not having it blows. I had some "special edition" movies (*cough*) that I hadn't seen yet, but they were pretty much all inoperable. After watching a couple that I had forgotten, I moved on to my...regular...edition...movies only to find out that I've managed to lose the power cord (which of course couldn't have a universal attachment) to the player.

That pretty much leaves me with single player games on my computer that I've either played 500 times already, or are FPS that I get bored of relatively quickly (even if I'm an awesome ninja-medic). The alternative are some console games that I've also played through 500 times. I found a copy of Majora's Mask for 64 that Dunkel gave me and figured I'd give it a try since it was at least RPG. I did end up playing it for several hours, but a lot of that time was spent sitting on my ass waiting for the right time on the in-game clock to pop up to do whatever special thing. After about four hours I was still doing shit in the starting zone. It wouldn't have been that big of a deal because it's the type of game that takes a long time, but I'm not exactly new to it and had the player's guide (courtesy of Dunkel as well) so it was getting pretty redonkulous.

What I really should be doing (aside from getting myself onto a regular sleep schedule rather than blathering at 1am) is finishing the cleaning here.

I got the whole place looking great except for some strewn clothes and papers in my bedroom. And of course my desk, as always, is a disaster area. The entry room is basically empty. I hung up a couple pictures and threw a bookshelf in there, but other than the rug on the floor and some swords shoved into a corner, it's totally empty and will probably stay that way for the most part. I intend to get a futon and eventually some kind of card table for if/when anyone (again, Dunkel) stays overnight. It's got a walk-in closet that is already serving me well as a dump-site for spare boxes.

My kitchen is spotless, like I always keep my kitchen when it's not shared with Chaos. There's no dishwasher (/cry) but at least there's a disposal and the water heats up. I also got to use an electric can opener for the first time, and I think I came a little. Basically two walls are entirely cabinets. The apartment doesn't lack for storage -- there's no way I'll fill up this place. I'm using two drawers for utensils and a couple cubbies for food, but half of a wall is pretty much pantry, and it's not going to get any love out of a poor bachelor's food supply.

The bathroom is pretty normal other than a pull-out hamper, which I'm sure will be stuffed full of clothes that I'm putting off washing at any given point.

The bedroom is ginormous and connects to the bath. It has a great bookshelf built into the wall, with room enough on one wall for my desk and bed both. The drawback is that I tend to fill open floor space with things that shouldn't be there (although I'm sure everyone would love to see my undershorts). Generally I keep a tidy house, though, and other than the hurricane that's bound to reside on my desk, I imagine once I get it cleaned up it'll stay that way for the most part.

My last apartment had some...unique...views. From the bedrooms you can see either nothing but leaves, or a highway. From the front room, a sidewalk, and from the kitchen, a brick wall. My current apartment actually has a really good vantage. On one side is the of course overly expensive Catholic church, which is attractive and interesting to look at in its own way. On the other side I can see honest-to-Gord sunsets for the first time in three cities.

One thing that strikes me is that it's pretty much totally quiet here. I went from living by a forest (which is noisier than you'd think), to a little section of urbana, to living next to a highway, and now into a town that for the most part has no pulse. I've gone out to the front steps in the middle of the night a couple times just to be outside, and it's actually fairly well trafficked. But with the church on one side, the rest of this house empty, the one across the street empty, and being located next to nothing of particular importance, it's fairly impossible to hear anything going on night or day.

To counter it I'll put on some music, but I can't play music and do anything really interactive on the computer at the same time, so I've just been cleaning while I listen. Any other property you went to would have been scrubbed top to bottom before it was even shown...this place wasn't so much as sneezed at. Just giving it a once-over took up most of the first two days, and there are still some things I haven't touched (like the blinds and fan blades).

I don't think I'll really -like- it here, but I don't think I'll dislike it either. I do have a couple contacts in town, but honestly don't have any plans to look them up until after I'm into a good routine of work. If the person moving in across the hall isn't a total scrub I'll probably just have an open-door policy when I'm here and encourage her to walk in without notice whenever the hell she feels like it. Even if she's a stupid bitch it's at least interaction. I'm not exactly a socialite, but after a few months of no contact whatsoever I get more edgy than usual.

All of that aside, as far as my personal existence goes, I'm just sick of feeling goddamn useless all the time. It's not like working at some shithole like Taco Bell would give my life greater meaning or anything, but at least I'd be able to feel like I was contributing something, or if nothing else, I'd feel more active. I'm trying to control my intake of both caffeine and alcohol a lot more, not because I really give a shit, but because later on people are going to expect me to -act- like I give a shit.

Becoming a cop isn't exactly the first on my list of jobs. Not in America, anyway. In America, I'll never have the right kind of pride or pleasure from it, and it'll always feel exactly like what it will be: waking up every day and putting on a mask that's socially (i.e. societally) acceptable. The same as I've done in every school and job and howdy-do to whatever stranger my whole life. Once a mask broke when I wasn't ready for it and didn't know how to handle it, and it pretty much fucked up my life. Now that I'm ready to be free of them all, leave it to capital to bend me over and force me to be contained in the cell of the land of the free.

If there's an afterlife and I find out I died in the line of duty enforcing American laws, I will be pissed as fuck.

Bleh, I don't have anything but the prattle. I really need to be getting to sleep, which means I'm going to go and read instead.

The Perfect Entry

2006-03-15T15:30:00.000-08:00

"A chair is not a chair," Mav's girlfriend was explaining to me, "it is the perfect image of a chair." In essence, a simple phrase such as, "I sat down in a chair," may conjure an image of a chair to anyone, but how that person visualizes the chair may differ drastically from one person to the next. While one might think of an office chair, another might think of a recliner, and another of a bar stool. So, in essence, the symbolism of the chair is a perfect symbolism in that each person envisions the (personal) perfect image of a representation of whatever word.

Though this was not exactly the intended debate of the philosopher, it was the route that she and I ended up discussing it, and that has been very fortunate for me in my subsequent religious and philosophical endeavors.

Although at that time, some five or six years ago, the argument seemed logical enough, today I realize that it was not at all sound. The chair one creates in his or her mind is indeed not perfect. The reason for this is that it is created with sentient intent (or more directly, with intent at all).

Cutting past all the complicated steps through five years and infinite religious and philosophical explanations, the reason is quite direct and simple:

If something does not intend an outcome, the outcome cannot be flawed in comparison to the intent, and therefore cannot contain mistakes as to an intended outcome. Thus it is perfect.

In this way, nothing outside of humans (I will explain this "outside of humans" a very little) in nature can be imperfect. Because a tree does not have intent in the way it appears, nor a river in the path that it takes, neither that appearance or that path can be imperfect. They may register to us as ugly or inconvenient, but that is simply because it hinders our intents for them as humans: not because they have betrayed any intent as acts of nature. Therefore even the sickliest of trees or muddiest of rivers is in all ways perfect.

Even a snake hatched with two heads was neither intended by its mother to have only one nor registers this as a want for itself, and therefore even as an abomination to the human viewer it is still perfect.

Again, in music, if I play the wrong note or pitch on an instrument, it is only wrong so far as my intent did not mean to make it a B sharp instead of a B, or a slur instead of a staccato. It is still, as whatever it ended up being, perfect in that existence and only imperfect in regards to my intent.

Conversely, when something is made with intent or simply counters the intent of the sentient will, it will without fail be imperfect. Whether a person makes a machine, or art, or another person, the outcome will be in some way other than exactly the way the intent had willed it to be formed, and thus it is imperfect.

If I intend to paint a friend, there will be something about the painting that doesn't look quite precisely like that friend at any given moment. To be sure, the subject of my painting would be constantly changing anyway, and so my painting will be always imperfect. If I intend to create a piece of steel six centimeters in length, on some scale it will be imperfect, whether it is even a millionth of a millimeter too long or short, it will be imperfect as to my direct intent. If I have a child and it is blond instead of brown haired, or breaks a bone, or is introverted etc as whatever preference might be against my intent as a parent, the child is thus imperfect in regards to my intent as a parent. (Though, arguably, a child who is mentally handicapped or etc that cannot consciously intend to be one way or the other is intrinsically perfect and only imperfect to outer registers.)

The fact that diets and makeup exist is testament enough to the human acknowledgement of both physical and aesthetic imperfections of intent. Take, then, into account that there are sanders and buffers to shine and reshape your steel, and shading and erasers to rework any sketch. It is clear that anything made with human intent can not be perfect, but simply come to a state where it is deemed satisfactory. In this way one might instead decide to make the steel "roughly" six centimeters long.

One may raise the argument, then, of what happens when a sentient thought of intent is raised in the realm of nature. If I plant a tree intending only that it grow to be ten feet tall and it grows to be eleven, is that not imperfection? Would not the existence of something like a hatchet or chainsaw or pruning sheers serve in their existence to correct this imperfection into something more satisfactory to my intent?

But this is not the case at all: the tree is not the product of human will. The tree was not created by human will, and therefore by not adhering to human intent, it is not at all any less perfect. On the other hand, the location of the tree was chosen by the human and therefore may not be an ideal location, but to be sure, location is a human device and the tree is completely indifferent to this intent.

The same is easily visible in any example. Wouldn't a polluted river be imperfect? No: because only the sentient intent will register that it is anything other than a perfect river, and the river itself has no regard or care as to what is in its waters.

What, then if a human digs an irrigation ditch or canal and makes a false river? Again simple: the design of the stream may be considered imperfect in a way, or even the flow or quality of the water. But these are all extrinsic imperfections in the way they register upon a conscious observer with intent. The waters or flows themselves are, by all means, intrinsically perfect.

The importance of this line of logic cannot be underestimated when one comes to apply it to, for example, the governing of humans in any way. Any intended government (and subsequent laws, etc) can by nature be only satisfactory and not perfect. This forces any group of people seeking a government into a 'lesser of two evils' position.

Just as importantly, the fundamentals of this logic can be applied to religion. If creation was sentient but humans 'sin' or are otherwise flawed in a way unfavourable to the creator, the creator has made imperfection in regards to its intent and therefore is imperfect itself. Whether creation may have been originally perfect and became imperfect later is not matteral: If a builder makes a house out of cheap wood and it stands for ten years only to fall down in the eleventh, the builder has failed in the intent of creating a shelter.

Most significantly in these regards, no being with intent (be it conscious or subconscious) can be considered perfect after it has taken any action, whether of creating or moving or even thinking.

It would also seem, by this line, that sentience as a trait of imperfection due to intent begins not with abstract thought, but with the advent of intent. This would lead not to a simple commonality of sexual organs or pain registry in applying sentience to animals (or plants, rocks, etc) but simply to the point of a conscious registry of intent in whatever entity, which is wholly different than any reflexive action (those of self-preservation and so on).

That said, though, I must also point out that this advent of intent would not be any basis of argumentation for the rights of one entity over another. Just as nature would not have imperfections in that most of its natural creations do not have intent, the fact that some entities do or may have the capacity for intent was, in itself, neither an intended or unintended design of nature. Therefore it is not the capacity or even the intent itself that is imperfect, but rather the outcome in regards to the intent once that intent is present. This registry against intent, to be sure, is thereby the breaking off of nature and sentience as I have explained it to be previously.

En Espanol

2006-03-15T15:25:00.000-08:00

Stepping up to the check-out line in the bookstore, I quickly discovered that I didn't have with me the gift card which I'd planned on using to pay. Though I had plenty of money on me, I couldn't bring myself to dish out the extra ten or twenty dollars for something knowing that I could get it later and already have it paid for.

The choice between the two books I was carrying was not anything of a struggle at all, and hardly even constituted a choice.

In the one hand I had The Upanishads: the thousands of years old scripts of Hindi faith. Essentially, it is their equivalent of a Christian Testament, though much older, and is to me an invaluable work of art.

In the other hand I had Spanish for Dummies.

I returned The Upanishads to their place on the shelf without hesitation, saving myself ten dollars and forking over almost thirty for my Espanol por Noobs.

Having invested years ago in teaching myself German, I have a very distinct taste for how a self-teach system of linguistics should work. To be certain, this Spanish book is nothing like that. Of course, this is a book designed to teach imprudent Americans to say, "Hello and where is your bathroom?" and not promote any true fluency. It is my simple hope, however, that I can at least learn rules of conjugation, negation, reflexive verbing and etc that will be important steps toward building a true understanding rather than prefabricated statements.

In many ways Spanish seems to be not very unique from French, however after just a short time it becomes obvious that, though they are both romance languages, Spanish is far more masculine and therefore, to me, much more preferable.

I of course do not mean this in a man and woman sort of masculine, but in the purely linguistic form such that French and Portuguese would be effeminate, while German and Russian would be masculine, for a couple examples.

A friend from Puerto Rico has agreed to help me in my learning, and though I'm not sure how dedicated of a teacher he will be, I'll definitely be pushing him to keep his word. I'm trying very hard to be enthused about this language that I have neglected and abused for so long, but it is probably thanks only to the oddities of the Argentines that I find it at all interesting.

I can tell, though, that I am fortunate to be learning Latin American Spanish and not Castillano Spanish. As with sculpting, I am discovering that what I remove is just as important as what is there. The lack of pronouns in conversational Spanish almost gives it a cave-man feel to an English speaker at the first look. To one who has studied linguistics, however, it is quite an ingenious omission.

Though I can already feel that I will not take to any romance language as willingly as I have the Germanic (Slavic, Asian, etc) tongue, romance languages seem universally simpler and extremely lacking in linguistic prowess to the point that I cannot imagine that, with any diligence, any of them would prove very difficult at all.

Hopefully I will not have to eat those words, or if I do, by the time I am forced to will be able to devour them in Spanish.

My Song

2006-03-07T17:10:00.000-08:00

It's not often that I write by hand to people, so when I do I try at the very least to make it legible. People that I write with any commonality at all don't end up getting carefully picked words or the best penmanship. But sometimes you have to pen that letter that, irregardless of the content, must be constructed with the utmost precision.

I finished reading some older journals with Alpha's upcoming marriage on my mind. Though we are not the closest of friends anymore, we never managed (at times, against common sense) to cross the line into being anything less than friends. Writing a congratulatory letter felt a bit obligatory, I'll admit, but it's also something I felt I should do out of more than the necessity of being polite.

It didn't take long at all to jot down about a page and a half, which is probably more than a congratulatory letter should be anyway. I proofed it very quickly, and then readied myself to ink a copy to mail. As I began to write, though, I realized that my heart wasn't in anything I'd written. To boot, half of it probably would have been looked upon by anyone who knew our history with distaste as being too illusory, and so I was back to square one with a loss of what to say.

Figuring that anything was better than just ignoring it, I tried to write out the words that I didn't really feel, starting out:

"It is with the greatest of joy that my soul is able to sing for you at this most significant intersection in your life."

What I ended up writing in a sloppy hand was:

"It is with the greatest of joy that my soul vomits fetid crap onto this paper with the most perennial consistency."

It just wasn't there. I didn't feel the "greatest of joy." If I have a soul it isn't "able to sing." And "most significant intersection" sounds about as diplomatic as the rest of the letter. It reads like a boring essay, without emotion or care.

As I finished reading through those old journals, I found a few things I might've sent in place of a heartless letter. I found a poetic piece I'd written and totally forgotten about that had "I am a flower in eternal bloom" in each first line followed by a little something or other. I thought about changing it from 'I am' to 'you are' and throwing that at her. Ultimately, it was equally heartless and probably even more inappropriate.

At some times I would send her letters that had only one line. I might mail her a letter that simply said "I love you" or "I miss you" or some such lover's catch-phrase in the middle. Now, I considered that that might be a very effective but simple way to get the job done.

My first attempt came out, "From this valley they say you'll be going."

Now, if you know the words to that song, it's probably the truest thing I could've said. But it was also, by far, the least called for considering the situation and about as far from a congratulations as it could be.

I decided to tackle it the next day, and, aided by the clarity of morning grogginess, I realized that I had it right the first time: my letter read like an essay, without emotion or care, because I had no emotion toward it and just plain didn't care. This event, which should affect me even more deeply than most people connected to her, was met by me with total apathy.

"It is with the greatest joy that my soul is able to sing for you at this most significant intersection in your life."

Untrue.

"...with both immodest and unreserved pride that I imagine this coming union."

Lie.

"...I now retract such prolonged silence to offer my deepest hopes for your future."

Fake.

"I have no doubts whatsoever concerning your upcoming success as a woman, wife, mother, artist, and most importantly, as a human being."

Ha.

"...know that you will be welcomed with all the warmth a humble comrade can give, and that whatever man you call your husband will always have a seat ready amongst my brothers."

Like hell.

It reads like a speech at an awards ceremony for mentally handicapped cub scouts. Although I did say some things that I meant wholeheartedly ("I once assured you that the best ending in the world doesn't mean a thing if the pages leading up to it are empty and meaningless") for every honest point I made, it either turned out to be totally off topic or I made two more false slaps to drown it.

When I really face myself with it I know that, in reality, I don't have any obligation to write this letter. Time and again I've been used as little more than a leaning post. I don't know why that, in the case of this one person, I have been utterly useless to be able to rile my anger or spite, and on all accounts have always been able to continue loving just as much someone who, in actuality, I should have written off as a traitor long ago.

This kind of love, which has always been reserved for only my brothers, seems to have finally manifested into what it ultimately was meant to. For, as the cliché goes, if you truly love it, you've got to set it free. I understand that it is not heartlessness, carelessness, or apathy that has dictated my total lack of feeling here. It's the fact that I was feeling only one thing, love, and acting on that and that alone. For all my suffering and blood these past years with her, I have been able to overcome myself...her...and the both of us to finally open the cage and walk away.

The closing to my letter was simple and, reading it now, the only thing I'd truly wish to offer Alpha in her upcoming marriage and life:

"Mazel Tov."

"Good Luck."

Well Re(a)d

2006-03-01T17:18:00.000-08:00

I felt myself blush a little, a not at all common thing for me, when the cashier of the book store acknowledged the conspicuousness of the size of the pile of books I piled on the counter in front of her. I had been given a gift card to the amount of $125 for the local mall, and after a couple hours of fruitless searching, I’d found nothing I could deem worth its price tag outside of the literature I was now fumbling with.

After taking in each of the titles, she stated that it looked like heavy reading. It wasn’t something that had even entered my mind. To me it was simply interesting. I can not even make the claim that I saw it as educational or in any way adventurous.

Great books for great minds, she tells me with a half shrug. I smile as the only alternative to frowning at her and retreat with the books in tow.

At the closure of this month I have completed most of the books. Originally having some order in mind, I resulted to reading them impulsively as my mood flew to whichever topic, but in an effort to break myself in the habit of reading several at once I have tried to stay true to one partner at a time.

Memoirs of a Geisha was my only fictional enterprise, purchased on a whim despite my general avoidance of any blatant fiction. It was excellently penned, however the ending was quite lacking in its general consequenceless heroine rewarding nature. This distaste, of course, is probably just from my own personal scrapes that do not let me forget that there is never such a happy ending without far more dire repercussions than the protagonist faced. Still, I would like to see the movie at some point for the sake of curiosity.

Bhagavad-Gita, a Hindi religious discourse, was simply beautiful. It was the perfect sort of book: the kind that can be read in one sitting, but only digested through the course of many. I found it curious that I had never read it before, and having taken the initiative to do so at long last was both very gratifying and calming.

The Prince is something that, simply due to content and author, I had always circumnavigated. Although Machiavelli is commonly lumped in with Sun Tzu and Nietzsche, it was just something I was not previously compelled to pick up. It was not intriguing in depth or approach enough to keep me faithful, and I ended up stopping dead centre and putting it off for the Bhagavad-Gita.

Buddhist Scriptures has not yet had found its way into my itinerary. The Buddhist philosophy or religion (whichever you prefer to call it) does not have any canonized ‘this is a Buddhist script’ texts, and as a result the only thing available is a compilation of the closest things possible.

The Art of War is one that most people jump to read as an in and of itself booklet. Knowing that this was not the case, I have held off until I had a satisfactory understanding of the principles of Taoism, which the book is intended to be an extension of. It is easy to see why even someone from the business sector would study this work, however it would be very interesting to see a credible modern day Sun Tzu implement today’s machines. With the Taoism gushing from his lectures, I would not at all be surprised to read that Lee had implemented The Art physically.

The Motorcycle Diaries of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara were a fun read. To me, though, they did not portray (as many have claimed) the man behind the myth. To me, they portrayed Ernesto Guevara – a man that Che summarily killed and replaced for the benefit of a great many people. Although one can see in Ernesto the first hints of Che, in my opinion Diaries does not truly touch on the revolutionary that later replaced the bumming doctor in its pages in the way that most have romanticized it to.

The Double is cumbersome and boring no matter how many times I attempt to read it, in whatever mood or with whatever determination. Dostoyevsky simply doesn’t catch my attention for whatever reason and entails the greatest of struggles to reach his final pages.

Desert Exile by Yoshiko Uchida is a stirring and factual recounting of a young girl’s family struggling in the American internment camps of World War II. The account lays aside the obvious unfounded political and racial foolishness of modern America in favour of simply telling the story of her family with all love and warmth. For this reason, it is all the more endearing and terrifying all at once, and says more for the failure of America Proper than any political discourse would have.

Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life is, simply put, a symphony in words. Jon Lee Anderson renders every detail in a most interesting way, easily able to inspire anyone with a political conscience or simply a passive interest in the welfare of his follow humans. The work, which took five years to complete, is easily one of the most enjoyable I have read in an equal span of time. I hesitate to use the word adventure, but it assuredly puts the reader next to the commandant through personal and wide-scale battles that Tom Sawyer would envy. Of any moans and groans that come to mind with the thought of a biography, this hero’s tale throws them all aside.

Mein Kampf, in its uncommonly presented two-volume unabridged version, is something that I struggled halfway through around the seventh grade. It was not that it was at all difficult to understand. On the contrary, it was so clear that my personal anger at Hitler’s absurdity would force me to stop every two or three pages for the inability to continue with his rubbish. I loaned my first copy to a friend my first or second year of owning it, and never retrieved it. Having since regretted not finishing the screenplay for Addie’s future dictatorship, I picked up a new copy. A short glance at almost any page in the compilation can leave even the densest reader with absolutely no doubt that there, before having any formal office of any kind, Hitler had said word for word exactly what his intent was.

The total is some 3500 pages at around 125 pages a day minimum to finish in the 28 days of February. Of course, with absolutely nothing to do as I waited for my application return and my personal shipping date, this has been an easy and welcome pace as an alternative to drowning myself in stupidities like games or television. The solitude and quiet offered by being kept eternally waiting has, if nothing else, at least provided the ability to absorb fully and think deeply about the gifts the authors and lives have given in their own rights.

As for me, I’m no closer to revising or continuing the 55 or so pages of my own book that have been sitting, unscathed, for what’s fast approaching a decade. After I repeatedly met my only literary goal of being published before graduating high school, I turned the majority of my focus elsewhere or lost it entirely. Although I will hopefully find it and direct it to the point of a proud fruition at some stretch, I do not hold out any expectation to do so. After recently examining so many fine gems in such a short period, it is quite overwhelming to think that I would be pretentious enough at this point in my life to attempt to stain any pages with my own words, knowing that it has been said better already ad nauseum for thousands of years.

Gateway

2006-02-26T14:12:00.000-08:00

In the process of reading some 800 pages documenting the life of El Che immediately following a thorough pouring over his Motorcycle Diaries, I find it quite difficult not to be instilled with the revolutionary’s will to put in motion the unstoppable wheels of change. His political wants and ruthless pursuits of them, coupled with his understanding of the necessity of violence for quick reform, naturally stir me and make me wish that there were such opportunities in this country as The Argentine found all over the tumultuous Latin America of the mid-1900s.

It is my firm hope that somehow I will eventually stumble across a way in which I can offer my services to the spread of socialism in such a way as to better the lives of a great many people.

However, one can no longer hope to do things for the good of the common people without America interfering, even more the case concerning socialism. The only hope, it seems, is to turn to a sense of nationalism in places where dictators and America work hand in hand.

My lack of any studies in Spanish has effectively cut me off from anything south of America. Had I truly realized what this would mean at this point in my life, I may very well have studied Spanish and only Spanish.

Though I realize that if I were to go to Canada I could live successfully as a member of a somewhat socialistic nation and be perfectly content, I am forced to wonder what kind of impact might be made in certain places in Latin America.

For instance, I asked a native friend of mine why Puerto Rico did not renounce its status as United States Territory in favour of being recognized as a nation. His response was that, although many people wanted to, they simply could not because if the U.S. cut them off as an act of spite, they couldn’t survive on the commerce of other nations without America.

Indeed this has been the desired effect of the American Empire throughout all of Latin America. America has controlled some of the only sources of export for nations, from things like copper mines to the there-famous United Fruit. Where unions are allowed, they are seldom effectual. One man, fired and exiled for being a communist, stated that he was headed for work in a sulfur mine. Conditions there are so terrible, he prompted, that no one would care what his political affiliation was. Most have already forgotten incidents such as that of Coca-Cola’s hiring a death squad to suppress a strike, resulting in the murder of two union men along with their strong suggestion to cease the striking. The nationalization of labour under America's thumb becomes more and more of a pipe dream with every passing year.

Everywhere that people try to improve their lives, there is a U.S. run or backed company. Everywhere where people try to make change, there is a U.S. puppet government or American backed dictator and rigged democracy or show elections.

It is disheartening to think that the United States has succeeded in maintaining power long enough that the current residents, having grown up in this regime, have simply come to accept it and the obviously American-inspired feeling that they “simply could not” be without the shadow of America looming over them.

Realizing that the stability of Latin America is far from being to the point that America tries to portray it, it has become my endeavor to take up Spanish at the earliest possible time so that I might be available to assist or perpetuate in the self-liberation, nationalization, and political and economic reorientation of any courageous nation or people willing to struggle toward this end.

Whatever the struggle, whether in the nature of Marx’s London lectures to politicians or in the nature of Guevara’s struggles in the Sierra Maestra, I would gladly devote myself completely to this difficult life, having neither doubt nor romantic delusion.

It is only a matter of time, I pray, before I find a place where my efforts will create the maximum benefit through the gateway of Spanish.

Though I will, for a while longer yet, remain a person of hammers and sickles in a country of stars and stripes, I can only hope that by the time my learning is complete the civilians of Latin America have not totally resigned themselves to be forever under the cloak of a foreign dictatorship.

I Called It

2006-02-20T13:53:00.000-08:00

The War in Iraq, I fuckin' called it. The following are excerpts from a fifteen or so page essay I wrote on the inevitability of an American war within the first half of my life. This was composed sometime between late 1999 and early 2001. I have added idiotic comments and a lot of capital letters for your (i.e. “my”) entertainment.

"Lack of the ability to compromise and negotiate will set people up for war, but the real instigators are vanity and the ego…what does compromise really achieve, and what is derived from negotiation? In most cases great and straightforward violence is only traded for spite and underlying aggression. Before mankind can make any progress it must realize why it is fighting. We fight battles not to settle disputes, but to win. The essence of all conflict is a vain want by the mind to elate one's own self over those around him. It is not a conquering of people, but a conquering of egos." <--Such as degrading Arabs by calling them Hajis in the same way that slaves were referred to as Sambos AMIRITE??

"Conflict, particularly war, usually starts as an economic or political struggle between two nations. One country will feel oppressed while the other feels just in being an oppressor, or one country will covet the fortunes of another." <--LIKE OIL AMIRITE??

"The first world nations therefore feel that since they have an established government, it is their right and duty to police those nations which do not...[The] first world country ends up making donations of resources or currency to the country being supported, inevitably forming a worldwide welfare organization under the cloak of governmental stability." <--Socialism at home + fascism abroad = capitalism AMIRITE??

"To retaliate against the policing nation, citizens of the third world nation will most commonly assault troops from the other country. As an effect more troops are sent to hold back the citizens assaulting the first troops, and in a chain effect those troops are also assaulted. Instead of doing the logical thing, as most governments always refrain from doing, and withdrawing from that country, the first world country stays and armed conflict breaks out. This results in an international incident which can, if not properly controlled, result in a minor scale war." <--.......IWASRITE!!

"These wars tend to be of either politics or beliefs. When nations with stable economies fight, greater weapons and larger amounts of soldiers are issued, and the conflict becomes that much bloodier. Often a moral or political leader is used merely as a scapegoat for the true reason of the war. Many people die not knowing the true reason that they are sacrificing themselves. This mindless slaughter is usually referred to as patriotism." <--SCAPEGOATSAMA BIN LADEN AMIRITE??

"When the members of a nation believe so passionately that their government should be the only form, opposing types of governments are degraded...Without understanding the opposing societal development, people are trained by their corresponding governments to automatically condemn all others. This is not a battle of right, but one which results solely from the fear of the unknown." <--OMGZ A-RABS THEY HAS DIFFRENT GOD AMIRITE??

"If one of these countries wishes to go to war with another country for any reason, what better scapegoat for them than their governmental practices? The people do not have to have experienced or understand the workings of their opposites. They only need be told that it is different and ergo threatening to their way of life." <--I WAN OIL BUT I'LL BLAME SADDAM, U KEEL HIM FIRST B4 HE KILL U AMIRITE??

"Now in a time when violence is no longer necessary, man does not know what to do with his hunger and thus wages unneeded wars and raises bloody conflict merely to appease his yearning for battle. All of the world may turn to this and ignore their successes in government and life in order to achieve the archaic form of social structure based purely on the untainted art of and lust for violence against each other." <--KEKEKEKEKE

"Man's worst enemy is his own mind." <--JOANIE LESS THAN THREES CHACHI AMIRITE??

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

28.7.01 -- 45 days prior to 9/11 :

"What the hell is going on? What’s happening to the world?...They say animals get nervous before a storm. I say humans get nervous before a war. When soldiers charge why do they duck their heads? It doesn’t matter why if the bullets end up going over them, the outcome is all that matters. In the same way it doesn’t matter much who starts the war or why, just who wins and what that means for the participants."

Journal Diving

2006-02-20T13:39:00.000-08:00

I recently re-uncovered my first 40 journal entries, which considering the shelf lives of floppy disks, I was amazed were completely uncorrupted after over five years and several moves. Something that I said within those roughly 36 pages of text was that:

"When you get right down to it, even with everything that goes on, even with all the words that I end up putting on that once-blank page, nothing truly changes."

Thank Gord I am wrong sometimes. Let's see, things that have changed...

I used to write in one of two ways: One way was incredibly sophisticated to the point of being doctrinal and absolutely did not look like the work of a teenager. I understand more now why my past teachers accused my parents of doing my homework for me. The other way was the way I conversed with the Chineses from the Northlands, using a great deal of crappy slang, profanity, and referring to the ladies as "chicks." In this crapastrophic (why did I ever stop using that word?) style, I did manage to embody the entire overmind of the internet and blogging with one question:

"Where's the motha fuckin' action at?"

Back then I would've been happy to tell you that I led a busy and very dramatic life. Mentally, I suppose that may have been true. My teen years, despite Neon and I constantly mocking them with the catch phrase, "TEEN ANGST, POWER UP!" were in fact very angsty. It was my classical age where I wrote doctrines, studied politics and religions and languages, listened to the mind music et al.

It was also the worst fucking five years of my life from which I'm slowly recovering. The action might be more physical now with my moving about from place to place, trying to work when I can and get edumacated, but it's still something. It's an evolution. One which my loyal readers probably find boring and uninspiring, and one for which my treacherous readers stopped bothering to visit long ago on account of my life being boring and uninspiring for such a long while now.

I'm now a much more pleasant person than I once was, although you'd never know it because I'm also now much more vocal in my discontent and my flippancy regarding being a douchebag to people than I ever would've dreamed I'd become. Unfortunately what hasn't changed is that the majority of my assholery is still untapped due to my bad habit of thinking of precisely what I'd wanted to say just as soon as the person I wanted to say it to is no longer present.

What also haven't changed are my ambitions for an exodus north. Unfortunately, since I'm unable to go on a scholarly pass, I'll have to do it the hard way. This involves working at a real job for no less than one year, and so my plans are pushed further back yet again. I'm estimating that it will take me around three or three and a half years at the least to be completely ready to hit the dusty (or snowy) trail.

This does, of course, put me in Canadia while I'm still young enough to find a single, rich old woman on her death bed and enjoy all the inheritance. It also puts me in America long enough to get married and get you a green card if you want, Trappie. Nothing like showing my remnant angst for Old Glory in a legal, if not hilarious, way.

In my teen years I was still doing the "Who am I?" ordeal, and I don't just mean watching the same-titled Jackie Chan movie that had the hottest of all his costars up to present. Now that I know damn well who I am and that there's only so much I can do about it, I figure I've got until at least 30 to tackle the latter part of the statement of "This is who I am, and this is what I'm going to do as a result." I can't honestly say I'm in any hurry.

Quiet Life

2006-02-20T13:36:00.000-08:00

Since my tenure with my last roommate(s) went from, "We aren't going to kick you out, we know what hell your mother's house is" to "As long as you're trying," to "We'll help you move," to "Be out by yesterday," I've landed, of course, in my mother's house.

I'd like to make the claim that after my sister giving birth (to the child her ex-fiance ran out on her as soon as he found out about it) and my homecoming after such a long time that we were all happy to see each other and have been bonding in the normal ways that families are expected and encouraged to. I won't make that claim, however, because as always it is false.

Honestly, I haven't done shit to take care of the noob-orn. I'm not obligated to and haven't been asked to, but of course I'm a softy and I feel like I'm being an asshole by not volunteering. Volunteering, however, is something I know better than to do. Despite all the time I put into helping I know that whatever I did would just be criticized and unappreciated, and that they'd abuse the invitation by dumping more than a fair share onto me. There'd be virtue in accepting that and doing it anyway, but there's probably some virtue I have yet to see in playing StarCraft instead.

Mostly, though, I just want my sister to get her head out of her ass and grow the fuck up. I can still afford to be a childish, immature asshole. She, however, sacrificed that luxury and if she isn't forced to face up to that now, she's never going to. Of course my mother babies her because it's her precious princess. I just want to say get your tit out of her mouth and make her be an adult for the first time in her life.

What can I really say, though, my grandmother treats me the same way. If not for her I'd still be working the drive-thru at Steak N Shake counting down the pennies until I could afford to go to school. And if not for my mother's fear of bad publicity, I wouldn't have a roof over my head right now.

I've been busting my ass for what, eight months now to get school all lined out and get a new apartment lined up. Although I am much closer to the final step, it's a long way to Tipperary. I can't submit my application to the new school until next month, but was already very assured it would be accepted. The school will then run from August through December, meaning I have plenty of time to work until it starts. I've found some more prospects on housing, but most of the places are dives. Hell, to be honest, I drove around that town for a solid four hours one day trying to find the "nice part" and it just plain doesn't have one. The whole place is a pile of shit.

But it is, of course, temporary. Once I'm done with my schooling at the end of this year, I'll be able to apply for acceptance as a bonafide rookie, complete with the ability to be underpaid by agencies all over the place.

Since I don't really spend much luxury money I'm hoping I can save quickly. Ultimately, I need enough to secure housing and finances in Canada, as well as the patience to work random crappy jobs as I get recertified there in accordance with the Canadian laws.

One step at a time, though. I once said that in their focus on the one missing piece of the puzzle, people tend to miss out on the bigger picture. In my eagerness, I've all too often missed out on the missing steps while focusing on the bigger picture.

As far as the steps go, the path I've laid before myself doesn't really extend past Canada. What will I do once I'm finally there working a stable job and have my citizenry under the belt?

Absolutely nothing. I'll live and die a Canadian. My walk will be over Canadian soil, and my last breath will be Canadian air. After I have accomplished the course of events toward which I have set my entire life in motion, I fully intend to do absolutely nothing else.

Somehow, though, my plans never unfold the way I intend for them. The Quiet Life has never been too awefully fond of me, and I suspect that it never will be. I'll find out when I get there.

Because get there I shall.

Potential

2006-01-25T21:35:00.000-08:00

My brother recently wrote:

"So I barely update anymore....what a shame. No one reads my site anymore anyway :( All I really do anymore is get drunk, work, and sleep. I eat a little bit in between there.....but mostly I just drink. I go out on the weekends and get hammered and after work during the week I generally stay at home and watch movies. Alone. Pretty much 1 night stands on the weekends and alone during the week. It's all good I guess."

People say that opposites attract, and while that is true, he is very much my brother for our similitude.

The staunch advocate of writing this past decade, I barely do so anymore myself. A shame? Anything anyone would read? Anything they'd want to? More than likely a no on all accounts. The attempts I've made the past several months have been large heaps of crap that just sit and fester because I have nothing real to talk about.

I wake up at precisely noonish, but usually later. I proceed to do nothing. All day. I don't clean the apartment anymore. I don't take out the trash or do dishes or sweep. I just keep my eyes shut for a long time after I wake up and hope that it's not really happening again.

When finally I get out of bed (out of futon?) I tell myself that I'm going to do something different today. After I realize that I can't afford to do something different because I've been out of work since August, I just get on the computer and proceed to not write or keep in touch with anyone I care about who might have cared even a little about me. I've blown off my entire life in favour of vapors and shadows of a true existance.

At about four in the morning I'll get too sick of it and go back to sleep to repeat the same thing over again. Sometimes I watch movies. Alone.

Still I rarely eat. I don't know what's sustained me this long, honestly. I woke up one day, not hungry, wandered into the kitchen and picked up a bag of bread. I realized I hadn't eaten for three days and ate out of obligation. It's just something I do because I have to now. All of the major bodily going-ons are done out of sheer obligation now. And I do mean all of them.

Meanwhile for new years, rather than sit at home alone like I'd planned, I got invited to go up to Dunkel's. Having regretted never pursuing anything commital with Brooke (or maybe just wanting a conversation about something not involving digital anything) I gave her a holler before taking Dunkel up. She thought I was joking and shot it down pretty fast, so that was the end of that venture and the beginning of nine days of being persistently intoxicated with "Drunkel."

So what'd we do? Got hammered. Caught up with some people. Got sloshed. Played some stupid computer games. Got wasted. Shot the shit. Got piss-faced. Passed out. That's about the entire process of that nine days, however it got me out of town, some human interaction, and made me uncontactable by friends and family alike for a good week. I can't say it wasn't refreshing.

The military thing ended up being a definite no-go. I got shut out for telling the truth on something I knew better than to tell the truth on that they couldn't have ever known otherwise if I'd just been a dishonest asshole like everyone else. At least I know better for if or when the police academy/employers ever ask the same questions. I want to serve people, damn it, so screw all the people who say I can't because of something that has zero effect on my capability or judgement.

My phone has stopped ringing. I didn't realize it until a couple days ago. Normally my mombot will call me even though she knows I won't answer. No one else really calls anymore. I'm told that most of my friends think I already made it to Canada and, well, I really didn't like any of them enough to tell them otherwise.

The day after I realized my phone doesn't ring anymore, I get a call. I answer. It's my momdroid. I'm standing here wishing she'd just cut out all the bullshit small talk and get to what it is she wants, and a long while later she finally cuts to the chase -- she needs a chauffer to drive her to the hospital and sit around all day waiting while she gets whatever done, then driver her all the hell around St. Louis all day and back home after.

I knew it wasn't going to be a, "Hey happy birthday don't drink too much, haha" call but there's always that off chance and you hope for it as much as possible. I can't complain too much because it'll get me out of town and doing something productive for someone, even if it's not at all for me. It's pretty evil of me, but my family is just kind of there. They call me when they want something, I don't ever call them. My mom tries to throw in an "I love you" every great once in a while, but when I hear it I just want to slap her, tell her no you don't, and to just stop saying it because it's only a reminder of something everyone I meet has that I never will.

Ideally in my life I have event, event, event. I like to be paced and in transition. I can't stand idling around, being at a dead end in jobs or relationships or anything. The lack of progression always eats away at me. It's now been over a year since I was out of school, five months since I've had a job, and years since I was in anything serious with a girl. Sorry, but getting a hand job on someone else's bed from her roommate while she's gone isn't exactly what I had in mind for the rest of my life.

Success would be a key word. I need success, I need signs of success. Presently there is none and there are none. When the biggest thing you do is step outside for a smoke or walk to the mailbox, it's pretty pathetic. It's pretty goddamned depressing and that's why I haven't had anything to write about.

I've always been able to trump myself out as someone who's not really got much to lose or fear. I'm realizing more and more that sometimes what you have to lose isn't even yours yet, and what you have to be afraid of can be something that doesn't even exist and may never. The "may never" is the scary part.

That's what it took me so long to realize. Way back when a shrink asked me what I wanted out of life and I responded, "To be a good father," I was wrong. What I really want is to be a good human. I want to have an honorable job, a wife who doesn't have to wonder if I love her, and kids who can always feel safe and know they have a home. I want to be pure again. These are all things I can't lose because they aren't even mine...all things that, more than likely, never will be.

Right now I'm contributing nothing to society. I'm not in the process of contributing anything to society. And I'm not even really a good looking guy. I have nothing to offer the economic or romantic world whatsoever.

Essentially, I am presently useless. My only use lies in my potential to be useful. That potential is fading with greater rapidity every day.

Generally, I'm 'sad and alone' and just want to die before I become sad, alone and an alcoholic.

I've always been a firm advocate of equivalent trade. More often than not, though, life will choose to use loaded dice rather than scales and balances.

Around my birthday something terrible always happens. At sixteen I had my wisdom teeth out. At seventeen I got in an auto accident on the way to see my girlfriend (who dumped me shortly afterward). At eighteen I was hospitalized. Between nineteen and twenty my mother was injured and I lost a lot of people close to me. For twenty-one my sister is due and I can only immagine what misery belies that child if it's born this week.

Judaic law warns against superstition, however it doesn't warn against heeding trends. Personally, I just want to get drunk and pass out and not wake up for about 50 years. That'd be the best birthday ever.

I have to be on the road in about five hours. If I were smart I'd have looked up Anna or Reggie before I leave, but I'm not really that bright these days.

If change could be found in a place, I'd gladly make a detour.

Cutout

2005-12-21T05:48:00.000-08:00

It's pretty pathetic that the entirity of what made my weekend was that my priest was only 5th on the core healing meter, but as soon as I saw that I wasn't 1st I immediately knew that the other guys had been overhealing like crazy. Overheal meter put some of them upwards of 22% while I rested on barely 2%. Yet again I take the heal team back to preschool, give it some spanks, and use my leet heal skills to hire Vincent to wang smack them all for me.

Now in the REAL world, what I accomplished could be summed up as "balls" where b=25, a=17.2, l=0 and s=-4.

So that's a whole lot of nothing I've accomplished this week yet again.

I still haven't done anything as far as shopping for my mother for the holidays. I'll end up getting her a gift card for 50 bucks, same as I got for my sister, and not even wrapping it. They'll be disappointed and think it's thoughtless (because it is) and wonder why I don't have nice stuff for them since normally I buy for December in February.

The money to spend on stupid crap just isn't there. Gift exchange doesn't make too much sense. If I spend 20 bucks on something for you, and you spend 20 bucks on something for me, then basically we both just paid 20 bucks for something we probably didn't need or want or will never use rather than just shopping for ourselves to start with.

Remember the B3 rule:

Is it...

a Blowjob?
some Beer?
or Bankable?

If not, you just unnecessarily wasted twenty of my dollars. JEWISH dollars, which are worth more than Christian dollars by far.

If those were really my only three "necessities" in life right now I'd probably have to flip out and start cutting people's heads off.

Livingwise I need food, shelter, and a lot of money to ensure that I continue having food and shelter. Sanitywise, I'm not sure what I can do.

The military thing kind of fell through. Yet again I got punished for being honest. Seriously if I'd have just lied on my application like everyone else, I'd have been just fine. I refused to let it sink in until I got home that I'd just been bent over and assraped by life for being an honest person for about the 130942 x 10^231-ish time.

I sat in my car for a long time and just let myself get cold. I punched the top of the steering wheel simply because normal humans are supposed to express themselves physically somehow, but really I just did the usual staring off into space and not blinking for a long time thing.

Once inside I think I shouted something to the effect of, "Why do I always get fucked for being an honest person? Why don't I just fucking lie like every other fucker out there who gets rewarded for being a shady piece of shit?"

It could've been inside my head, though.

Taking a few deep breaths, sitting down, accepting it like a mutt with a shotgun shoved so far up between his eyes that he's going crosseyed trying to see where the shot's coming from.

I'm supposed to be out of here by the end of the month. Knowing that "home" isn't and is rather a synonym for "hell," Chaos offered to let me stay here for a bit longer than I'm really supposed to.

My plan now is going to be the following.

-see how much money I have in the bank
-find out if that's enough to secure a place in Canada for a year, allowing for necessities and customs processes as I get a work permit and put it to use.
-when inevitably I find out that I really only have three cents in my account, I'll try to scrounge for a place here and hit the police academy a couple towns over.
-failing those, I'll go insane at my family's house and OD on whatever possible to remove one more disgusting, noncontributing humanoid.
-Descend as an ephemereal being in a beaver costume and light my own crematory fire. Kind of like how i'm closing this short with this cutout.

Who Put the 'Rap' in Crap?

2005-12-02T21:54:00.000-08:00

So I'm sitting here WoWing away and my phone rings. I get up and grab my phone off the floor to check the caller ID and it says "Nature."

Ah, Nature, better answer that one, right? When Nature calls it's just an unspoken rule that you answer.

I flip the phone open, "Yo Nature, Wazzaaaa!"

"Yo Red!" the person on the other end of the line says.

"What? This isn't Nature...who is this?" I ask, confused.

"Ah man, c'mon, you remember me! It's Giant Shit!"

The moral of the story is, when Nature calls, answer, but be careful because sometimes Nature is really one of Nature's asshole friends making drunk calls.

Morning

2005-12-01T03:17:00.000-08:00

The apartment was the filthiest she'd seen in fifty years of being a landlord, she told me. It'd need to be scrubbed, painted, top to bottom. It needed an entire interior overhaul, included stretching or possibly replacing the carpets. She wanted me to take care of it for her.

No problem, I could handle that. After all, she had reduced my rent to a hundred a month plus utilities on the stipulation that I do work around the complex. Easy things. Pick up trash, sweep off sidewalks, cut grass, and clean up the shitholes people left behind that were otherwise inhabitable dwellingspaces.

I had been putting in twelve hours a day, six to six every day for my uncle at his construction business. It wasn't a bad job. Nothing I was particularly adept at, but I was getting the hang of the things that actually took more than a day to finish quickly. At least I'd felt, and so he'd tell the family. He neglected to include the names and put-downs I got while I worked for him, but who would bother to include that?

After the first month, though, the pay-you-laters started catching up. Figuring out what he had paid me for the hours in comparison to the eight an hour he'd stated, it came out to only around five and a half dollars an hour only counting eight hours a day. I could make more than that scrubbing dishes, so I told him adios and went off to do just that.

There was the matter of that dirty apartment, though, which after twelve hours of work, I'd be in cleaning until two or four in the morning. She'd told me Friday that she wanted it done by Monday. I told her no way was that possible, and she said that was fine...no one was lined up to move in anyway, take your time.

Hardly a week later, I've started my new job, the same as I left behind in my old town. It's easy work to prep foods and clean up little messes. Fill up drinks, take orders. It's food work, but it was easy work for a steady six an hour and desperately needed food.

Hardly a week later, and my grandmother/landlady is saying how I'm costing her too much money, working too slow, and she's going to have to ask me to leave.

Evicted by my own family.

Owned.

Granted it was a dive, full of roaches and other ranom bugs, and smelled like old car chemicals when you turned on the ventilation, but it was a roof. She never called me, never said anything to me, just went to my roommate and sister to talk shit on me. It was a stab in the heart, but my heart doesn't feel that much anymore, anyway. I packed up my things, warned my roommate-for-a-month, Dunkel, that he should think about finding a new place, and got out.

Later, she'd claim to the very people that she told she was going to evict me that she didn't want that at all and had never said anything like that. Right. Multiple people with no contact with each other at all, all telling me the same thing. I can take a hint.

I haven't spoken to her since I left. I don't think I could say anything nice, so I'll do as I was told and not say anything at all.

Prior to my exodus, or return to my proper home, if you would, I had stopped my aunt as I saw her passing and asked her if she had any work around the apartments she wanted me to do. She gave me the 'you're stupid, use common sense' speech that I've gotten more than once while trying to please people.

She stops mid-speech and says, "Do you ever smile?" I'm not one to lie. I tell her that I don't very often have much to smile about. She tells me, "You look angry all the time," and asks, "Are you just unhappy, all the time?"

I stare at her blankly for a few seconds. It's not an I Care question, it's an accusation. Her manner is a degrading one. I look away, wishing I could just close my eyes and not exist anymore.

"Yeah," I tell her, "pretty much."

She comes in with a false hug. I don't return it. I try to breathe deeply, but fail. As I walked away from her, I realized that in all she had said, she'd torn me apart and said nothing constructive at all. She had done nothing but pointed out every flaw and misery that I despise. I walked away from this destroyer, determined that if anyone was going to destroy my worlds, it would be me alone.

Back in the home I'd left to be with them, I poke at a computer propped up on boxes and sleep on a futon. Most of my possessions are no longer mine. What I could fit into my car, I dropped into what was "my" bedroom at my mother's house. A house I've never lived in and never will.

I walk inside with some boxes. She's gone at work and it's early. The box of cereal I'd bought months ago is still unopened. Having had only beer and noodles in the past four days, I opened the box and put the milk in. I sat with my head in my hands for a bit, exercising what willpower I could to not devour like an animal and make myself sick.

"Did you open another box of cereal?!" my sister demands, scaring the shit out of me. "Yeah," I tell her, "It's my fucking cereal, it's not like I'm not going to eat it," I say, already filled with the oh-so-happy anger that constitutes my relation with her. "Goddamn," she says, and waddles back to her room, pregnant, swollen, fat.

"Hello to you, too," I say to myself. I eat, steal a couple bottles of water, and hit the road.

The words "unemployed," "drop-out," "useless," "starving," "dead," all tumble around inside my head.

I drive away from the family that's never wanted me or had any use for me. I can't convince myself that I never wanted it or had any use for it, only realize the fact that we have all failed each other terribly. We would all always fail each other. In my family, there would never be love.

I thought, not for the first time, about simply driving off the road. About the half-filled bottles of old medication in my kitchen. About the highrises in town. About the largish knives at home.

As I got home and began to unpack, I pulled out a small funeral card. I sat on my knees before the open box, eyes closed, card held to my forehead. I hated myself, then, more than ever. I have so much, but allow none of it to make me happy. I am so lucky compared to so many. So many that I have held in my own arms.

Options. There are always more than one. I just needed to get my head on straight, think.

What did I need? Food. Shelter. Income. Education. A job that I could do well and feel satisfied with. How could I go about getting so many huge things though?

Military.

The answer made my stomach turn. It wasn't the military, it was the military of America. Four years, minimum, active duty.

But I've wasted bigger portions of my life being dissatisfied with more than my job. Besides, if all I'm good for is destroying things, ruining lives, then so be it. I will cease to attempt being a creator and embrace my talents as a destroyer. Resisting the bloodthirst has never brought me any purpose. Heaven holds no welcome for me, and so perhaps, I hope, I can find some happiness in bringing those it does home at long last.

The problem, and there is always a problem, is that on probation I am not allowed to handle firearms. I could do one of two things about this: I could tell the recruiting officer that I'm on probation, or wait it out. Though recruiting officers have immense power in matters of this type and could likely get me taken off of probation, I have been in a status able to be removed from probation for over two months now. My officer has simply dropped the ball on my case.

I'm supposed to find out today if I am to be released or not. I'm confident that she'll simply push me aside yet again, having forgotten to contact the judge and telling me that he didn't get back to her. But at this point, stripped of both pride and possession, I have nothing else to hope for.

Someone asked me if I still pray. Yes, I told him. Yes, I pray every morning when I wake up, and beg of God that I not be forced to wake up again.

The easy way out, rarely is. It takes strength I don't have to open my eyes, to move my feet, to realize that I'm not dead, not yet, and that I still have the chance to do great deeds. If I fail...when I fail...at least I'll be able to say that I took the opportunities given to me.

If my worlds are to be destroyed, then I shall be the one to destroy them.

Alone.

Reconstruction

2005-10-20T08:38:00.000-07:00

My soul is a cool stream that flows from the mountains. Quickly, excitedly, it charges forth into the warmth of the woodlands. Encountering the many twists and turns of its course through life, my soul slows, meeting the river and joining the souls of the many others of the world. We move as one entity, one mind, heading slowly into the abyss of the oceans. When finally we reach our destination, my soul sinks slowly from the light, into the freezing depths, into the cold darkness below.

Some people are maintained by happiness, some by ambition, some by simple routine. As I wake in sadness to yet another day, I quickly discover that I am maintained only by sorrow. Each sunrise that my consciousness stirs I am filled with dread, until finally my eyes open to confirm it: I must live through yet another bleak day.

There is utterly nothing to look forward to. There is no joy, love, companionship. No goals or sense of accomplishment to hasten me from this point to the next agonizing realization that I have managed to live yet again.

Eat, they tell me. But I have no motivation to consume any more than my living has consumed of this world. Hunger only finds those with the drive to reach tomorrow, and as such does not find me. I grow ever thinner, and my skin becomes even tighter on my bones. Something stirs within me, but the depths of my emptiness silently move it away. In the mirror I count my ribs and watch as my hand falls across my cheekbone. I no longer recognize this stranger.

I watch my sister walk the hall and remark to myself of the weight she's gained. She is humbled now and forever. All of her pathological lies, her deception, her hatred have come to haunt her in a humiliating punishment. In her room still stands the picture of her with her arm upon the foul creater that worked with her to bestow this wretched heartbreak upon her. Even as the stench of her agony reaches my lungs, I fear that this punishment is a blessing I will never be allowed to suffer.

Having seen the countless alcohol canisters around the abode I have no mistaken speculations concerning the woman who was at one time my mother. She speaks to me once today to command that I watch that wretched television for the lottery numbers after she goes to sleep. It makes me want to slap her; it makes me wish that I could simply slip away and not wake. She wants only to know that she is loved, but I do not love this abomination that killed my mother. I never will.

Seeing her lacking the same things I lack, wanting the same thing I want, paints a terrifying portrait of my future. I can resolve not to become that abomination, but one does not always control his future any more than he controls his past.

Being content is wanting what you have, they will tell you. Food and shelter, I have. But what when the food rots in your mouth and the walls you try desperately to build around yourself cave in upon you? What fool would wish upon himself a soul as empathetic as I struggle to keep mine from being?

I am good at very little, and my life is good for very little. For longer than I can remember, I have wanted only for both my self and my life to end soon.

As I lie on the floor struggling to sleep, it came to me that I have barely lived one fourth of my life. It isn't even halfway over; it's nowhere near any end or conclusion. The thought didn't please me in any way. It didn't make me reflect that things change and I still had plenty of time to make a good life for myself. All it did was loose the dam holding back floods of despair.

Shuddering, wallowing in self-hatred until my entire body ached, I could do nothing but surrender yet again to sleep and pray, with all my might, that I would not be forced to wake again.

At one time I thought that if I desired my life to change, I could force it through my actions to do so. I realize, now, that sometimes the only, best thing we can do is wait and hope, no matter how often we must be destroyed and rebuilt.

Wings

2005-10-19T08:37:00.000-07:00

"I have always kind of thought that the art of conversation was dead, but with you it's not."

"I still can't believe that I found someone as open and so completely...incredible as you. I am so glad that there is someone who is there to make me realize that life is meant to be lived."

"I hope things end up all right. All I can say is to take your own advice. It's some of the best I've ever heard."

"You are the one person who brings out the best me. I can truly like the part of me you bring out. I don't know how you do it, but somehow you just bring out every one of my good qualities and make me think harder about the person I want to be all of the time...not just some of the time."

"You are helping me find the person I want to become."

"You can come up with brilliant ideas that apply to the world outside your head and still retain the truth and purity of your heart and soul."

"You have this amazing connection with what is good in this world."

"You, however, are one of the first people I have ever met who has ever told me that. Maybe they think it, but you are not ashamed of letting the world know how you feel and what you believe. You should not be, either. Your thoughts are always so meaningful. Your words are always fuel for my own thoughts."

----------

Man, I'm so freaking stupid. This person thought the world of me, and believe me it was mutual. Her heart was the most loyal and pure of almost any that I've encountered in my entire life.

But basically I flipped out. She tried to be there for me and I wouldn't let her. When her life finally took a nosedive...well...I was nowhere near to even think about returning the favour.

Last I heard her life had gone to shit. She's married now, with a kid or not I don't know. I still hold inside of me all of her pure hopes and honest dreams, all of the drive and love that she held for the world that was betrayed time and time again.

I try to remember her when there was light in her eyes. I try to remember her before I became one of so many who demolished her.

It is the autumn and the breeze smells beautifully of leaves. The sun is setting behind her home, and the last of the crimson-gold lights bounce off of her red hair. She forgets for a moment that our gods are not the same gods and puts her hand on my chest.

Her eyes, the glowing green, transfix my entire being. The purity, free of any darkness, harbouring light and only light. I take her close, her head on my shoulder, and breathe in the scents of love. For one long, priceless moment, I am happy.

----------

"Thank you for everything you have ever done for me. I love you now and I always will. I'm so sorry that things couldn't work out between the both of us. I have to go now. It's getting late."

After that, I never heard from her again. That is probably the best thing I ever did for her, and it broke me day after day until at long last, I opened my eyes to find myself in the arms of Alpha.

And, well, we all know how that ended. I was given the same, cold dish that I had served out so long before.

I disgust myself.

Kathleen, keep your wings. The inferno may be waiting with open arms for me, but the heavens aren't ready for you to retire just yet.

I'm Run Down

2005-10-09T13:14:00.000-07:00

I know I haven't posted in a long time, and I don't really have the time to even now, so here's the rundown:

My grandfather has cancer but is too weak to continue chemo. He shits his bed on a weekly if not daily basis and can't stay awake more than a few hours at a time. He barely eats and is very skeletal. My grandmother is running herself into the ground over it, and understandably so: they've been together since their teens.

My mother is about to have another surgery and wants me to sub her classes for her. Old hat, next verse the same as the first.

My sister got knocked up a couple months ago, but no one knows outside of my nuclear family. It's going to be a girl. Shhhh. I'll be going to see her for a few weeks for moral support. Speaking of moral, she said she didn't want to have an abortion because it was against her morals. Well, if you had any morals to start with, you wouldn't be unmarried and pregnant with a guy who left you the second he found out, would you?

I'm malnourished and starving myself to death. I just forget to eat for a day or a few days, and when I do, I'm not hungry. I have another doctor's appointment soon in which he'll just tell me it's because I'm depressive and make me take happy pills that don't do anything for me.

I'm still not in school and am not going to have the funds to be any time soon. I'm also thinking that when I finally do get the job I want, it'll probably turn out it sucks anyway and I'd probably be better just never waking up after all.

I'm sick of all the bullshit.

First Things First

2005-09-12T21:45:00.000-07:00

"I wouldn't have the balls to cross him," the old man was saying to me.

"Why's that?" I asked.

"The Red family...has different methods of collection than the federal government," he said.

I'm glad I have the name backing me, but I'm glad I'm not that kind of Red. Really the only kind of red I am right now is the sunburned kind. Even the backs of my hands are scorched.

I'm finding that the rule of thumb for construction work is that anything painful that can or will happen to you will involve your dominant hand. First day, burned, second day, palm is sliced open, third day, impact gash on the burn from a saw cord, fourth day I notice the random cuts and bleeding bits I didn't even notice getting.

It's kind of nice.

The skin on my fingertips has been tearing and breaking as it gets used to all the friction and rough surfaces. It's one of those things that goes both ways. When you shake a man's hand, if yours are smooth you kind of feel like a pansy; on the other hand when you run your thumb back a girl's cheek, you sure as hell don't want it to feel like sandpaper.

Vatev, though. It's a job and I'm glad to have one again, I just wish I knew more of what I was doing so I could be more useful. The boss man wants me to know what I'm doing to make things go faster, but he wants things to go faster so he doesn't take the time to teach me what the hell I'm doing.

I'm all for self learning, but it's kind of a different scenario having someone hand you a book and telling you to read, and someone handing you an electric saw you've never touched before and saying, "Cut those even," and walking away.

The hardest part is just sucking it up and not being a wuss about stuff. My momdroid falls off a ladder and breaks her spine, no big deal, I have to just climb up and not think about it. I've seen my dadbot come home missing a fingernail he had that morning so many times I can't count them all. Suck it up. I just plain don't trust nail guns, but too bad.

It probably wouldn't be so bad if my parents hadn't been total mindfuckers when I was a kid. There's a pit of rocks around the foundation of the house that's filled later on, but before that it can be a drop of several feet between dirt and cement with metal bits sticking out of it. The drop is called an overdig. My point being when I was little rather than my father saying, "Hey, keep your distance from that pit because you could fall and get hurt really really bad," he'd say shit like, "Don't fall in there because if you do there's no way to get you out and we'd just have to bury you."

His way was probably more effective in keeping me the hell away from the overdig, but it's not exactly reinforcing when I actually do need to lean into it or jump over it and something in the back of my mind is telling me I'm doing something very, very wrong.

Eh. Suck it up.

I feel like I've done a whole lot of nothing so far, and that's pretty accurate. So far I've just cut stuff, nailed stuff, moved stuff, and cleaned up stuff.

Which at a glance seems to encompass construction as a whole. Really the things I'm doing they can do faster without me, which they do now and then, leaving me standing there looking about as useless as I feel.

I know that as I go on and learn more I'll become faster, more efficient, more universally useful. Even knowing what they're talking about will help (it took me quite a while to figure out that what they call a 'sawzall' is what I've always known to be a 'jigsaw').

It doesn't help that with the progress you're doing something almost totally different every day, but at least I can be glad for the bits and pieces that are actually repetitious.

Someone asked why I wasn't in school, and my uncle said, "He fucked up and didn't pay his tuition on time or something." I took that over, "My PO has to see about letting me off early for good behaviour before I can clear the embassy."

I really need my life in order.

First things first, though, it's time to get my first and last night of good sleep in a long time.

Underground

2005-09-06T21:44:00.000-07:00

It's Day One again. There are so many day ones before you finally get settled somewhere. This time it's day one back in the hell-hole I tried so hard to get out of, but sometimes you have to either just wither away or live well in a place that makes you not want to live at all.

The place is great until you move an object that's been stationary too long and the little ants, beetles or roaches shoot out from under it. There's only a handful of things in this world that can make me jump, but that's one of them.

I guess we all knew it'd happen eventually: I'm off to work for the family enterprise. It's hard blue collar work, but it pays the bills and then some. More than sitting in an open cubicle writing business articles ever would, I can guarantee that much.

My grandfather was so excited that he actually drove to town and bought me a harness and loaded it up. Him holding it up for me to slide into...shaking my hand afterward...I've never seen him smile so big at the sight of anything, really. It seemed to make his year, and I doubt I've seen him that affectionate about anything before or will again. I wonder if he realizes that I'm still going to go back to school the minute I can.

Dunkel will be my roommate now. We're different where it counts, but alike enough that hearing us talk it must not seem that way. One day in and we've already been asked if we were brothers. But, then, where it counts, we are.

It sucks knowing that you've only got a job and place to live because your family is more connected than any New York mafioso could ever dream of being, but at the same time it's great to know they give enough of a damn to try for you. The uncle I'll be working for doesn't sound too enthusiastic about it, but I have every intention of showing him I can be worth his time.

Thirty minutes to launch and I'm eating breakfast of my own accord for the first time in I couldn't say how long. I can't honestly even say that I know what exactly it is I'm going to be doing, but rest assured that if it requires a harness and hammer, you're going to be coming home tired.

I always hated the construction business -- all you see is perfectly good patches of land get turned into suburbias. But I'd rather be in the destruction business than have to serve one more fake bastard a goddamned bowl of soup. John Doe can make his own fucking Campbell's cream of chicken, this Johnny's on to better company.

Wish me luck. In the family underground you need all of it you can get.

Seppuku

2005-08-24T04:01:00.000-07:00

Let me tell y'alls a little story.

LONG LONG AGO THERE WERE A MAN WHO WANTED HIS SKILL TO BE THE ULTIMATE, BUT BECAUSE OF HIS BLOODY LIFE HE WAS IN THE TROUBLES.

The end.

Let me tell y'alls another story.

When you get old, bad shit starts to happen to you. You look in the mirror and you remember what you used to look like and it depresses you. That is, for a while, until you forget entirely what it is you used to look like, and even looking at old pictures of yourself you don't ever remember looking that way.

You slow down a lot and get weak. You can't lift that box that's been on the top shelf of your closet that you put there ten years ago, so it's just going to stay there until you die. You can't move like you used to, so you don't aimlessly wander around in the grocery store and let the smell and air and bustle relax you: you know what you're going for and you get it and leave.

Sometimes you get cancer through half of your torso, start pissing blood, and lose all control of your bowels. You then proceed to not be able to eat anything for four days, lose about 30 pounds, and end up in the hospital while your wife cries an uncountable number of times a day because she's been with you since she was sixteen years old, only to die alone and heartbroken shortly after you do.

Or maybe that's just in my family, who knows.

The end.

My grandmother would never simply not answer the phone when I call, but I can't get in touch with her anymore. She won't answer. I feel bad because I'm not really calling to be like, "Hey, how's every little thing. Shitty? Oh yeah, I imagine." I'm really calling to try and secure an apartment where she lives and get her to give me a price check on it.

Wouldn't bother her about it, but she sort of, you know, owns the apartment.

I figure I can help with maintenance and crap since my grandfather can't now. Mow the yards, trim the bushes, pick up trash, change lightbulbs for crazy old people, paint rooms, scare children, whatever needs to be done. Dunkel is supposed to be my roommate for this, and since my family loves him more than some of our blood, we'll be getting a discount and therefore he's agreed to help out with stuff as well.

I have at least one job lined up there, which is part of the reason I'm moving. No work here means no income, and no income means I'm draining my bank account. A drained bank account means no Canada, and no Canada means seppuku.

So.

I'm going to move up there. At least it's a little more north. Also, I'm sick of living here. I've been here for what, around four years, and I've got more bad memories than good. I learned a ton here, and I'm ready to take it into the field. Chaos and I being roommates doesn't work because we're both equally as miserable and unmotivated here. Neither of us has a reason to wake up or be productive (or rather, reason enough to make us go out and do so) so we just don't wake up and aren't productive.

His girlfriend is gradually moving in, too. That'd be okay. You know, if I didn't live here. But I do, and she and I have gone from, "Hey, I made too much food, you want to come over and shoot the breeze and eat the rest of this crap...I mean...fine cuisine?" to not even acknowledging that the other person exists. Not in a negative way, just in a weird way.

Come to think of it, though, Chaos and I are getting there too. We'll spend entire days in the same living space and not talk to each other outside of game text messages unless we run into each other in the kitchen.

It's pathetic, and it's depressing.

Probation is supposed to end next month. Actually, it's not supposed to end for another couple of years, but I'm able to have it end next month if the judge isn't a total poon, and I hope it does. Because if it doesn't, then...seppuku.

I used to like sleeping, now I hate it. But I hate being awake too. Meh, you can't be unhappy as easily when you're asleep, but there comes those times when falling asleep on your bed is no different than if you'd just laid down on the floor. That kind of apathy puts a nasty taste in your mouth that you carry with you everywhere and project onto everything you do.

It's also very very old being asked why I don't have a girlfriend. I like to say it's because I'm going to be moving and don't want to start anything, but I'd rather believe it's because even looking upon my form causes mortals to turn to stone rather than bear my visage.

Rawr.

Cups and random bowls can be found all over my desk and sometimes on the floor immediately to the right of it. I try to take stuff back with me when I go to the kitchen, but...quite honestly I don't really care. I've said it a dozen times already, but the place is beyond repair and any efforts at this point to restore it to a state of presentability are futile.

Now I feel bad about life and everything, even seppuku. So I'll tell you another story.

Once upon a time there was a priest who always lost to another priest when they played 'pick a number from 1 to 100.' Sometimes the priest he lost to was a stranger, sometimes he knew him, but he always lost and was very frustrated with how much time he'd wasted.

He decided to stop wasting time losing to the other priests and start killing them instead, then he would be the only one to play 'pick a number' and would always win because he was the only one alive.

He then enlisted with the Silverwing Sentinels and melted people's brains with lasers he shot out of his hands. People began to realize that his power was approaching the ultimate, and decided to send two people at him. That didn't work, so they tried three. When he killed all three at the same time, they tried four. That worked pretty goddamn well, but when he was alive again (he's able to return from the dead because he's just that holy) he was pissed as hell and killed some of them with words alone.

Then he committed seppuku.

The end.