20041130 
It's all about the drugs. Really. Why try and fight it, America? Look at how well Holland is doing . . . I think I'll take a vacation there before I have kids. Have a nice drug vacation. I've been reading about addiction for three or four days. Yeah, craving sucks. But what is life but craving? What else but a drug experience is this king sized butterfinger, slowly dissapearing before my evening. What else is nethack? Not very powerful drugs, perhaps, but drugs nonetheless. Experience altering substances. Interacting with my brain's reward system. The nucleus accumbens. The VTA. The dopaminergic pathways.
The only thing about butterfingers is that they don't crack well, and that they dissolve very quickly.
My fourth grade teacher used to tell stories about dropping sacks of flour on tanks when he was in the airforce. I'm sure they were bullshit, but they were good stories. I'd like to go visit him.
DUDE.
No one must know; this I beg of you. You must find a projector, because the finest of the B cinematic experiences is soon to be in my possession. I'm not even talking about Death Race 2K, here. I can't actually tell you the name of the movie, but I can tell you it's gonna be good. And by "good" I mean ASS.
And I am requesting you apartment to bake in. Dude. You have no idea. Remember, this is a secret. You get the projector. You get the white screen. How much room is there in your loft? Exactly. A BIG WHITE SHEET, buddy. I will do the baking. January 1st, we consume an ungodly amount of pancake, french toast, eggs benedict . . . right? Am I right? Right. We have as of this moment two fine titles. A third will surely be produced, and of course, we have the Tony Curtis classic to fall back on. And I meeself never saw the bed that eats.
I've been playing party poker for hours. Amassed 2 million. In nothing. I mean, that's the problem. The only time it means something is when I go all in . . . And even then only sometimes do I get the endocrine response where my body flushes with . . . something, as if I just saw a cute girl or I just snuck in to a movie. That's what theft is about, says alex. Sensation seeking. Irony is that I should be writing a paper about this. Cortisol. Dopamine to the nucleus accumbens.
The folks playing poker are interesting. Don't type much. I think it's a combination of not typing well, and not having a great sense of humor. Flunk - Blue Monday. Damn. It's on my live365. I know this song . . .
Scratch that, dude. You may tell one person. Sewall. He must know. He must be present. I insist upon it. Last year was really half-ass. We did not party enough in TO. You must get your roomies involved, too. We must all sleep there. Awww, man, it's gonna be the best - I'm so stoked. Take it easy, Bra.
Dude. The present is slipping into the past, and it's unacceptable. Poker is slipping into the past. Damn. My leg is slipping into the past.
You know what the trouble with "salivary" testosterone is? Measurements can be substantially influenced during the process of sample collection, are susceptible to interference effects caused by the leakage of blood (plasma) into saliva, and are sensitive to storage conditions when samples have been archived. Now. Don't you feel better knowing that?
I tell the poker players that I hate them. It's really nice. Even better than telling the other motherfuckers that read this blog that I hate *them.* Not Marrissa or Rachel, if they're still reading. I don't really hate them. Because Rachel is nice to me. And Marrissa is contemptuous. Why is it that contempt from certain people really works? There's this chick in my lab from Sweden who's really contemptuous of my lab partner and myself. Or at least, that's how it comes across. It works. Why? I don't know. But it does.
I'm so excited for the new Wes Anderson flick . . . Bill Murray . . . Have you ever played 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon? It's fun.
Dude. I'm kind of sad to lose you as a slacker. It makes me a little sad. Because only a few people know how sheepish I am when I admit that I don't work hard, and even fewer actually sympathize. Damn.
But everyone's got shit. I actually relish my addictions. I don't often actually feel badly about myself. That's the amazing thing. At the end of the day, I really love this existence. It's hard not to, really.
Dude. You know what I forgot to tell the Dogz? My brother is expecting. In June. I will be an uncle. Damn.
Later, killa.
20041123
entelechy (en-TEL-uh-kee) noun
1. Perfect realization as opposed to a potentiality.
2. In some philosophies, a vital force that propels one to
self-fulfillment."
How's that for a doosy?
20041122
What do you think about the blog thing? Will these eventually be sold? Who owns the rights to them? Will they be preserved? They are pretty interesting anthropologically.
So, I pulled a hamstring on friday, and having been Limpy Mclimperson since. I did win at Bocci last night, notwithstading, at my rich neighbor's house. He's pretty chill, and has lots of beer for me to drink, and interesting guests that seem to change each week. And yummy tri tip. What is tri tip, I wonder.
That is all. I'm going to Venezuela in December before montreal. Pretty chill, huh? Miami, Caracas, Montreal. Reasonably decent vacation.
20041117
So this guy Jeffrey Miller thinks that the large size and processing ability of human brains is due to sexual selection. He's wrong, but let's talk about the argument here, because it brings up interesting points. Symmetry is a cue to high genetic quality, right? The mate selection processor was designed in such a way to preferentially chose mates that had a high degree of symmetry, because symmetry indicates the ability of the individual to fight off asymmetry-causing pathogens, and thus mating with symmetrical individuals will likely confer the same ability to one's own offspring. Another way of saying this is that symmetry is a cue to high genetic quality.
Miller says that intelligence is a cue to high genetic quality; intelligence is not a desirable trait because it will help you survive (he says it's far more complex than is necessary for mere survival . . . Just look at chimps. They do fine.), but because intelligence is so hard to assemble. This makes it a reliable cue that the organism has satisfied assembling machinery, and thus is likely to assemble it's other machinery well, too. It's stupid argument. It makes all sorts of predictions about male/female differences in intelligence, for example, that females should be choosing to mate with males that are highly intelligent rather than highly symmetrical. Ah, were the world so.
Daniel Dennet's "Elbow room." It's about free will. I'm about to read it. You want to pick it up too? You'll like it, I know . . .
I just did laundry yesterday, too. And I made another giant tub of guacamole. I literally cannot even think of eating any more avocado products for a while. I've made it about 7/8ths through the avocados that I stole from 257. I'll have to give the rest away.
I'm going to hear Dr. John on Friday. I'm debating as to whether to get f'ed before the show . . . may be worth it not to, but then again, I'm sure he would approve.
Thing is that I just did laundry and December is fast approaching. I'll be out of this godforsaken land-o-cement soon enough but will I have enough clean clothes? Lucky enough to have a giant hockey-bag-sized duffel for travel purposes - perfect for holiday trips home - but I'm not sure they'll be enough bounce-fresh smellin jumpers to fit into the thing.
Might just have to go around naked.
Or do laundry again.
Don't suppose you'd make a wager on which one of those is more likely, if you know me at all.
So despite my fast recovery vis-a-vis the fall down the stairs I am, nevertheless, plagued with a residual lumpiness on my eyebrow. Who knows about this? Scar tissue? I didn't exactly break anything. Didn't tear skin. No open wounds. Just a big lump. So now it's a little lump, not exactly painful, but certainly weird and alien-like and on anyone else I'd let it slide but on me.. well...
It just ruins my boyish charm.
Your mum might have told you how adorable you were growing up but nevermind. I'm far better looking. I'm sharp and smart and fair-haired to boot. I have perfectly average features, symmetry of the gods, and a week-old scruff to die for. I'm your mother's best fantasy.
Except I can't sing, I can't draw, I can't not-fall-down-stairs and I certainly can't imagine a world in which this mug was worth a penny next to any other face you could pick off the street. Looks, they tell me, can be deceiving. Regardless, looks for looks sake.. it's fool's gold. Fashion is for the fair. And by fair I mean simple.
And by simple I mean retarded.
Fashion, well, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. I imagine it's as good an indicator of internal smarts as the cowlick. It's probably as good a predictor of street smarts as a birthmark.
I'm not trying to get down on fashion itself, just that fashion for fashion's sake seems a bit of a hoax and really, what's the point? We're all trying to express ourselves.. run around flashing our red feathers in front of the opposition's faces.. Primal, predicatable, boring.
Even talking about it bores me. I should go do more laundry.
20041115
Okay, so I lied. So I'm posting again. I just can't help it. But, in doing so, it makes me wonder - once again outloud - about the limitations of the classical blog format: reverse chronological order. This post, for example, won't make a lick of sense if you haven't read the one right below it in which I state that I'll be busy and therefore won't be posting much in the next few weeks.
So. You see the conundrum? A simple solution might be to just show the first 10 posts in order.. or the first 5. Whatever. That idea quickly falls apart, though, the second you come to a page you've just read.. having to scroll down to the 'newest' material.
Bummer.
I still think this is a solvable problem, however. I'm keeping my eye out. If I find anything you'll be the first to know.
Anyhow, back to the whole point of this post.. which I'm going to have to obfuscate a bit in order to protect the innocent as well as not make myself sound like such a sap.
During my thought process of the thing I have to consider many alternatives to the reality I believe - otherwise I am done thinking. Thinking, truly, is the process of disbelief. It's an acceptance that there could be another explaination. The idea that your perception is not necessarily the only one, the real one, or even close at all. What I'm trying to say is that thinking - proceeding with disbelief - is really problem solving.
Think about it.
See what I did there? You weren't quite convinced but, given this new phenomenon you had to fit it into your reality so you.. thought about it. Now, maybe you believe me or maybe you don't but all I'm saying is you thought about it which correlates directly to believing you aren't always right.
Am I right?
So thinking - disbelieving - is something I have to do all the time with this thing. I have to do it all the time because I can't do anything else with it - or at least that's what I believe - and, not finding that to be a very amicable to me, I must believe there is another explaination. I must believe that it's not as bad as it seems. I must believe there is a better solution, a happy ending. So the only way to prove it is through experimentation. I'll go to school. I'll try hard. I'll be responsible. I'll... see if I can't be happy. I'll believe that what I am doing could be a decent approach to another reality and I'll test it out by doing it.
So what do I believe? Somedays I believe that anything is possible. Somedays I believe that I can simply imagine it and it will happen. Not in some genie in a bottle sort of way but in a hard-work-and-perspiration sort of way. I'll believe it's already written in stone sometimes, just for the hell of it to see how I react. I don't react well. Then I'll pretend that I ultimately control the outcome, all of it, and that it's just a matter of me taking the reins and charging through the doors to ultimate surreality. I don't really buy that either.
But sometimes I just imagine that if something is meant to be, - a job.. a life.. a friend.. a spouse,, death - , then it's meant to be.. not that it's already written down, but more that the stars have aligned and said it was right, just now, right during the crux of the thing.. and maybe ultimately, if you had all the power of the universe to harness in making gazillions of computations per second you could still not predict those stars aligning at that time due to the sheer enormity of the problem and there isn't anything that can be done about it. Which is not to say that the problem isn't solvable, theoretically. Sort of like the butterfly in china gig.
So maybe our paths, everything - the atoms in our bodies all the way down to the quarks in our shoes - maybe it's all planned out already, in the same way that the water you drank yesterday is fated to the sewers of your city today and then the waterways of your county to the air you breath all the way up up into a cloud and down, once again, as a water drop into the earth and out of your tap and do you think that water has a choice? Do you think two atoms have a choice? Three?
Does a boy with an option between sam's club cola and weight watchers cola really have a choice about his fate in life?
Do any of us?
The answer seems obvious but I'm not saying we shouldn't have the most fun we can riding this rollercoaster of life.. I'm not saying we don't have freedom of thought - we don't, really, if you buy that it's predetermined - I'm just saying that we're sort of stuck to these rails and our coaster car is heading in a certain direction.
So the long and the short of it is that I think I can only imagine two worlds - two possibilities. There could be an infinite many worlds, sure, but they all fall into one or two categoies, classified one way or the other. One, things could not work out the way I'd like to imagine. The other, things could work out exactly as I've dreamed.
Anything that can happen, will happen.
Stranger things have happened.
So what I'm saying is if it's not going to happen, that's it. It's fine, and at that point when I discover that reality, I can't imagine her knowing any other way. She'll say no, and It won't be anything but the truth. Or, alternatively, she will say yes and I won't, then, be able to imagine even the possibility of it not being 100% honest.
I'm talking about ultimate truth here.
So what I'm saying is love makes you blind.
but it also makes you dumb and deaf.
Love has the power to remove from us the only things we've got going for our species - our very ability of thought - our ability to disbelieve. It takes away any thoughts of anything else. It removes even the idea of a doubt. It is, quite frankly, dangerous.
Perhaps this is why it seems to defy our logic yet rein supreme. Maybe this explains the untold love stories of heroic defeat. Maybe this is why Napoleon invaded Russia. Who knows. I'm just saying that logic and thought are once removed when thought is of the love.
But I'm one step closer to seeing the world through the clarity of truth and for that, folks, I thank you for tuning in.
The proverbial shit is hitting the proverbial fan so I'ma hopin' y'all can stand a little slow down on here for oh, say.. ten or twelve days. That's the price I pay for being a slacker graduate student and therefore the price you pay as a reader of said slacker's website.
Cherrio,
back in a jiffy.
20041112
A new free They Might Be Giants tune, "Albany", can be found here. (mp3)
via ISOU:
Quite the firefight going on in Fallujah these days. (video)
tony told me the Wall Street Journal's online edition is free today.
Some grumbling (flash) is going on about vote counting, electronic voting machines, and the likelyhood of another stolen election.
Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks Bush might have pulled the wool over our eyes again. So why, they ask, was the popular vote not even close this time?
Maybe Bush is just getting better at it. Practice does, they tell me, make perfect.
Missouri's Green Ribbon Sky
From Astronomy Picture of the Day
Motto of the day from Strange delight:
Life didn't return my love. We became friends.
20041111
Tony complained today about having to go through his archives to make a book. Not that he didn't like the idea of a free book but he just doesn't care much for re-reading his archives.
I don't blame him, mine are shit.
And it's not even the spelling mistakes, the poor grammar, or the overuse of the comma and hyphen that gets me down, really. It's the sap. In a perfect world I'd have no feelings and just roll around like a giant juggernaut of logic. Logic, you see, has the power to save people. Logic, I've heard.. makes sense. I dunno what that means, exactly, but I think it has something to do with emotions being only partially right, or true, depending on how you're measuring things. It's sort of like natural error built into the system. One of the many variables in this big experiment of life. So what if you cry at your sister's wedding and throw a fit. Was it the best thing to do? Was it the right thing to do? Was it the thing to do if you were trying to maximize your social value, maximize your opportunities, maximize.. your life? Who knows, for sure. I'm not saying this logic thing is cut and dry either.. In fact, if we all adopted ultimate logic as our "social engine" god knows it would be fucking weird around here for awhile. Really weird.
Up is down, Left is right.
Still, though, in a perfect world I'd probably be a little less emotional, a little less romantic, a little less feeling in general. Why? Cause why not. Honestly, it's the emotion of things that gets me real down in it - the brain feeling, emotions - I'm not talking about ouch-my-knee-hurts here. I'm talking about real pain. Real suffering. And the other side of things is just fleeting, the unreachable goal of happiness. I've talked about happiness before. I say it's a momentary feeling. I say it's an electron in an excited state. Not something that lasts and lasts. The only thing that goes on, day to day, everyday, is the feeling like we're missing something.. like we're not quite getting it.
You thought I was going to say pain? Suffering? Come on, I'm not that much of a cynic. Sure, pain and suffering are a universal truth but I'd be a hypocrite if I led you to believe it was me doing the pain and suffering everyday.
But I am missing something. The big truth, as it were. The end-all-be-all-answer of why.. and I'm not talking about religion here. I'm not even talking about the end of the universe. I'm just talking about the neighbourhood, really. Humanity. Earth. The human race and where we're going, what we got up our sleeve, are we screwing it up.. big time? Could we do better?
I don't know, honestly, but for a race that's managed to take control of the world and, I think, do pretty well for itself.. managed to cover up it's fuck-ups fairly well, managed to make do with what we have in a necessity-is-the-mother-of-all-invention sort of way, well.. we've got a pretty bad attitude.
Don't think so? Look at Star Wars. Look at Blade Runner. Look at THX. The future, as we'd like to imagine it, is pretty damn bleak. Waterworld? Maybe we're just obsessed with suffering.. it's more powerful than love, maybe. Suffering is our ultimate purpose. It makes ourselves real. It frees us from our failings, because, well.. we're suffering. As if that's the ultimate excuse. If you cut me sir, do I not bleed?
Bullocks I bleed and bullocks if I don't heal right up and keep on going and going like that damn energizer bunny but you don't see anyone grasping onto that idea, do you? Around here we call such nonsense "hope" and then we laugh about it. It's like we're afraid to think we might be alright.
So maybe it's some sick evolutionary trick being played on us. Like a dog that can't stop eating maybe we just can't stop feeling sorry for ourselves, can't stop thinking we're gonna royally fuck it up, can't stop believeing that we're gonna kill ourselves off, we're going to ruin the world, we're we're we're at fault and we'll certainly suffer for it. I dunno, is that our self-contrived necessity? Do we suffer for naught?
I'm just saying we should think about these things on occasion. Maybe not take it all so seriously, maybe laugh at the blood, enjoy the pain. Maybe.
And maybe I should trudge through my archives and come up with a book myself. A blook as tony calls 'em. I can't imagine 10 pages worthwhile let alone 200 but then again, one man's garbage (thoughts) is another man's treasure(d ideas).
I could print it up real nice like and stare at it on my bookshelf.
And feel like I've failed.
I think the only thing I've ever really been complimented on is my eyes. That and how people always say I'm gonna be the first millionaire they know but, come on, I'm not sure that is a compliment, really. In fact it's not. So all I have is the eyes, and even then I personally don't quite see it. Kind of. A little. They're nothing classic. No baby blues here. No Sinatra that's for sure.
They're just sort of greenish hazel that get grey and dusty when the weather turns bad and my mood turns worse. Foul is the term, really. So maybe it's the expression in them that makes people notice. Who knows.
Sometimes, though, I dream about drinking them away. I dream about drinking so much that they become dull and glassed over. I imagine what a pack-a-day habit could do to them, make them all smokey and tired looking with crows-feet around the edges. Think about what a life on the ocean might accomplish - squinty bloodshot beady little things, they'd be. Sometimes, I'll be honest, sometimes it sounds exciting. Sometimes it feels like that is just what I need - an eye fix. A re-adjustment for my personality. A calibration, as it were.
Beady little bloodshotters would suit me just fine. Grey dull ones like a dog with a wonky eye. I could go about life without the looks, without the piercing looks. People see dull eyes and they keep on going. You don't pause at stuff like that just like you keep your head down when you walk past a bum on the street. Dull eyes have nothing to offer.
I dunno, cynical of me to say that sort of thing? Maybe. Or just tired of some of the things that keep me wanting. Tired of the stuff that makes me think I need more. Tired of the stuff that keeps me from getting it. You know, that future stuff all over again. Said it before and I'll say it again, I've seen the future and it looks like a lotta the same.
Lotta philosophical talk about nothing, I'd imagine. A big spaghetti dinner and a few beers will do that to a guy, just settle him down in a chair in front of the comfortable glowing rays of a warm CRT screen and type, for no good reason. Just to get it, maybe. Just to spill it onto the page, the screen, the keyboard, whatever you want to say.
None of it good or bad really, just there, on the page, staring back at him letting him know that yeah, maybe he did something. Maybe, today, despite all the useless pointless drivel, the busywork, the hustle and bustle of getting things done that matter in a months time, maybe there was something that got put down for future reference.. something with the slightest worth to it. Enough to remember it's there and maybe come back some day, re-read it. Gain some insight. About who he was back then, back now, back in the warm confines of that big ball of string. History. In the making.
Right.
Now.
20041110
A year and some time ago I wrote about a movie I'd seen where a man described the door test:
First date, you take her out. You go to her house and pick her up in your car. When you get there, make sure to lock both doors. Bring her up to the car and use the key to unlock her side and let her in.. Then walk around the back end of the car. Pause at the back and look through the rear window. If she reaches across and unlocks your side for you, she's a keeper. If she doesn't, she's too self-absorbed and you need to dump her right away.. if she doesn't unlock your side you're just seeing the tip of the iceberg and you need to get rid of her ASAP.
And hell if I'm not old fashioned but I still sorta buy that. In fact not sort of, I do buy it. It's something about the fact that they're paying attention, more than anything. It says to me that self-absorbtion isn't the end all be all and that other people might be important, somehow. God forbid, but that sorta makes me feel good, thinking someone else might be thinking about the rest of the world for once instead of just themselves.
thinking ahead.
you know, that future talk stuff.
Not back on it cause I'm still on it. Now is now and it's great, fun, but fleeting folks. The future does have some worth, afterall.. in whatever incarnation it might come in.
I think that might be the crux of the matter altogether. If you can't see the future, can't understand it's exact implications, than it must not exist.. it must not have worth or, at the very least, it ain't worth thinking about. Clearly this isn't a universal approach but I know enough people with some big chunks of credit card debt to know that the future isn't always consideration numero uno on people's "worry" list.
So what, huh? So people have a little credit card debt and so they're committing adultery now and fuck the future and so what if they're sitting on the couch ignoring their work watching some daytime tv - it'll come out in the wash, no? Maybe.. but to me, this future, it's the bane of my existence. Like a plague on my soul that eats away at the very fibers of my being.
As the future eats away at me the past doesn't even seem a worry, like it is for most people. What's done is done and that, to me, is a comforting thought. Not like the impending, looming, dark future. Future, you see, is all you've got. It's all I've got. It'd be a swell thought to think Now is all you have and sure, it's the only place you'll ever be.. now... now... now.. see? But that thin string attaching you to space, making sense of it all, it's like your whole being, this string.. and you can try to look down that string to find the end of it but it just goes on, out into space, for as long as the eye can see. You can look backwards, into the past, but it doesn't go anywhere - it's a big ball of string being rolled up behind you, getting bigger and bigger as you slide down this string.. Like some nightmare where the boulder gets closer and closer as you race down the mountain.
But it's the future, that forwardness of things, that's all you've really got.
If you're not going forward than you're not going anywhere because that big ball of past is sitting right there on top of you and, though it may be comfortable to crawl up into and enjoy the warmth of it, it's not getting you anywhere. The best you can do, really, is embrace that thin string - made from the fabric of space somehow, woven from supernovas and strings of vibrating energy - embrace it as you would the hand of God reaching over the brink to pull you out of the abyss?
Fack it. Ain't nobody, it would seem, is paying much attention to this string, this rope, cause look - we re-elected Bush. Look, we're just covering, cowering, climbing further into that warm ball of string. Reactionary, really. Ignore the problems or, if that doesn't work, nuke 'em. It's the new cold war, this "Terrorism" and don't think for a moment that it's not just the same thing - a poor excuse for the rich to get rich, the contractors to get fatter, and the military to get bigger. and bigger. and bigger.
Does anyone remember an old guy named Reagan? He played in a movie with some monkey, once, I think. Anyhow, I remember him for something else. I remember him trickling down military spending. I remember him loving Star Wars. I remember, vaguely, something called the Iran-Contra Scandal.
History repeats itself and why not? It's all we've got, this big ball of string. We're used to it. We're fucking James and the Giant peach hiding up in there in the cored out middle, poking our heads out now and again as if it mattered where our ball of string was going. As if, gosh, the future might matter. As if we might have some chance? Some sense of control? Some sense of planning ahead? Oh, heck no. Stick yer head back down in there, you're missing The Simple Life. You're missing Crossfire and Oprah and you're missing Ellen, too. You're missing Guiding Light and crap, you think the future matters? We'll just do it all like we did before, no worries mate. Just carry on.
Star Wars. Hyuck. A man before his time, really. If you think for a moment that Star Wars might not happen - the satellite system, in some form or another, not the movies - well, hyuck to you I say.
I dunno.. I don't really have a lotta time to be wasting on terrorists and Star Wars and old dead guys named Reagan. Not really. What I have time for is the future here in front of me, the one that involves some girl who unlocks doors for people. Fuck, call me a romantic. Call me a sap. Call me ludicris or hopeless. Call me what you will..
You, you just keep watching that TV.. you watch out for terrorist attacks and the end of the world and, well, you be sure to let me know if it happens, mmkay?
20041109
I sit here, somewhat late but not too late - manageably late, for a Tuesday, and I look around at the walls, the desk, the bed. There, right there on the desk, there sits a bottle of Bailey's and it's tempting, to be certain. Other things are tempting too. The glow of the television. The escape of Nostromo, which sits - still not finished - on my bedside table. The innernector. Goddamn the innernector. Always attractively tempting. Always hinting at joy, excitement, release, I dunno.. something.
None of it's real, though. That's the point. Or it's all very very real yet very much the same thing. I'm not sure if there is a real significant difference between those two ideas but you're probably getting the picture by now.
Don't matter none, buddy.
And it doesn't. Sure, the innernector might be fun, for a bit. I could get a buzz on and sit and sip and stare, into the baby-blue walls, until the excitement practically oozes out of me. I could pick up my guitar, close my eyes, strum one note for an hour and believe - really believe - that I'm hendrix up on a stage somewhere playing one helluva noteworthy intro. I could stand up on my wobbly knee and go over to get my beeping cell phone so as to figure out who - what strange mystery - has left me a message this time.
But really? I'd just like to enjoy the warmth of my bed for a bit. A good long bit, without any of that fun or excitement. I'm a little fun and excitement'ed out, quite frankly.
So that's what I'ma gonna try and do, I figure.. if that's alright with you. I'm gonna let the world go on spinning for me and I'll just get back on in a bit, after my little break there in my warm, cozy bed. That's alright with you, yah?.. if I snooze in my bed for a bit?
Well, I do appreciate the understanding I hope you know. I do. I really do. I don't mean to sound insincere or overly dramatic but it's important for me, sometimes, to be understood. More often than not, in fact. An unfortunate trait but what can you do about it, really? Ahh nothing. Nothing at all. Just accept, move on, get real cozy in bed and fugadaboughtit.
And that's what I'ma gonna do.
fugadaboughtit.
20041108
I know you're all waiting with baited breath so I'll go ahead and tell yah that I figured out who the mystery caller was. No-brainer, really. Shoulda known that right away. Shoulda.
Yet it didn't really sort me out like I'd hoped it would cause the very next night, at a similar late hour, I received a call from New Haven CT. Now this, I am fairly certain, is a real mystery.
Okay okay, I thought that about the last one too. I know. Ho hum. What can yah do?
Well? You can go see I (heart) Huckabees. Didn't really know what to expect but I figured why not, I'll give it a whirl, and it wasn't horrible but then again I didn't really expect it to be horrible. I think more than likely what ruined it for me was seeing the previews. I had too much expectation. Basically, it was a bit disjointed, I guess. Which is fine, generally. I think I would have loved it if I didn't know what was coming.. but, damn those previews, they give you the whole movie in one bite.
Bummer.
I don't know if it was the movie or stuff that was on my mind but I walked back home, alone, pretty bummed out. I walked along by myself looking at the damp cement and staring up at the dark sky and watching the red glow of brake lines stream by and I couldn't help feel just a little sorry. I dunno. Maybe it's the weather. Maybe it's daylight savings, come to remind me what real depression is: darkness by 5 pm. I just don't know.
How I can have such a positive outlook on things one day and such a critical and caustic view the next.. it's a mystery almost as unsolvable as my call from CT.
Someday, maybe, I'll meet someone.. someone who has these sorts of answers and doesn't mind repeating them when I forget. Someday I'll meet the person that can look me up and down and know my ins and outs, my failures, my triumphs. Someday, they'll sit me down and tell me what it's all about.
I'll forget. Then they'll tell me again.
It'll be great.
20041106
Got a call last night as 3 AM from Austin Texas. Only problem is, I don't know nobody from Austin Texas. Austin Texas, you see, is way down there. I, however, am way up here.
You see?
So I racked my brain for information. austin...austin...austin.. Nope. Nada. Nothing.
So somebody musta dialed the wrong number, I figure. Someone was up at 2AM in Texas just jonesin' to talk to somebody, they picked up their phone, they dialed.. the wrong number.
867-5309.
I heard those poor bastards really paid for it when tommy released that song. Figures. People'll do anything for a gag.
Me? I mostly get people calling for Travelodge. Thing is, they know immediately that it isn't the travelodge, based on how I answer the phone. You know, sorta casual like without any "Hullo this is the Travelodge" greeting. I guess that tips them off.
Somehow, though, they still give 'er the old college try. "Hey, I'm looking for the Travelodge" or "Is this the Travelodge?" and once, a few weeks ago, "This is not the Travelodge, huh?"
No buddy, it ain't. The Travelodge is over there. I, however, am over here. You see? Is it not obvious?
I thought so.
Which is why I was surprised to get a call from Austin Texas at 3AM in the morning. Seemed obviously the wrong number.
But, who knows. Maybe it wasn't. Thing is, I'm far too lazy to call 'em back and since they didn't leave a message I pretty much won't ever know who or what that phone call was about. Ever. One of life's little mysteries. Like why do they make those conditioner bottles that only stand on the head, so water from the shower builds up under the edge of the cap and everytime you go to use it cold water trickles down your arm when you tip it over and you shiver from the thought of what kinda mildew might be lurking down deep in the recessed of that cap. I dunno.
One of life's little mysteries.
20041105
20041104
Earlier, I thought it might be.. This might be over. I thought I might throw up a 'condemned' sign on here, or something, and leave her be for a long time. Thought this wasn't for me at all, not really anyway.
I know it's not, deep down, but I like to pretend.
Anyhow, the pretending was getting old, I wasn't posting much, and the thoughts were all sludging up inside my head and not pouring smoothly like they should. I figured it was time to throw in the towel.
It's always time to throw in the towel if I'm in enough of a bunk mood and I'm too concerned about numbers and statistics like the ones that reference the number of visitors to this site. So fuck it, I figure, if it's really time it'll be time and it'll happen, not cause of any coaxing from me but cause it's inevitable.
Nothings gonna stop us now. Nothing is gonna stop this ramblaholic from spewing like a purging bastard. If not here, somewhere. I'm not the diary-keeping type. It's gotta come out and I-guarantee-you it's gonna come out somewhere on the street, somewhere where people will step in it, check their shoes, look for stains on their pant cuffs. It's gonna be out there cause it's the sorta crap I go for:
effecting people.
For better or worse I gotta get my stains on people, gotta make 'em feel a little more than the daily drudge, and I gotta, gotta, gotta hope they catch the slightest hint of something different when they smell my ass or else, frankly, what's the point?
Probably isn't any point anyway but I'll just keep on keepin on as if there was cause that's the way I operate: Like life means something. Like our actions effect things. Like truth and integrity and honesty might mean something. Like my reality might have some - even the slightest - connection to true reality.
No guarantees that it means diddly but I'ma gonna keep on keepin on anyway.
Average IQ by state and which way their votes went
-- here --
and
Top 15 and bottom 15 states, ranked by % of population with a Bachelor's degree, and which way their votes went in 2000
-- here --
Up is down. Left is right. Nothing, it would seem, is normal anymore.
But really it never was. I'm sorry, you all deserve better than the lacluster performance you've seen here of late but what can you do? I'm cripple. I'm mental. I'm metaphysically handicapped, it would seem. Apologies, to the nth degree, but in the end, what's a sorry, I fucked up? Apologies are like assholes. Everyone's got one.
Do, or do not. There is no try.
Some little green alien told me that once and it's not the worst advice in the world. Effect your own destiny? Is that what he was trying to say? Make your own life? Discover, explore, entertain the idea of a meaningful existence?
But it's all in your own little head, what is good, bad, indifferent. All in your head what success or failure is. These aren't new ideas. As old as the day is long, they are, and trite to boot.
The only real struggle in life is that of survival. Water, food, necessities. The rest is mental masturbation and damn if I haven't worn out my hand. My wrist is numb, folks. Numb. I've been running in circles and the rut is getting deep.
Almost completely
Someday I would like to look back on this fondly. Someday I'd like to look back on all of it fondly. I'd like to look back, look forward, look side to side, and embrace it all with a big happy acceptance of my place, my world, my exitence, my being. I'd like to be in tune as the musician might say. I'd like to strum happily at life's little guitar. I, my friends, would like to make some music.
The thing with music is that some of it's good, some of it's bad, and we don't all make the right kind.
I never did have any musical talent, really. Not a musical bone in my body. I love the stuff, eat it right up, but it doesn't treat me well flowing from these finger tips. That's one fate I've gotta live with. No amount of lessons or computer enhancement can make me make real music - nothing beyond my poor excuse for a minor pentatonic and a few chords, anyway.
So I gotta make music of a different colour. I gotta strum life's little guitar in my own way. I'm not saying it's as beautiful or wonderful as the next guys, I'm not saying it's better or worse, I'm not saying it is anything at all, really, but I am saying that it's all I got,
this music,
that I strum,
of mine.
Notes of weeping willows and the pitter-patter of staccato rain drops. Rolling tremelos of green hills and sharp beats of mountain peaks. Booming drums of distant thunder, humming patterns of sunshine summers.
I ain't saying it's good music but it's my music, with a little humour thrown in like eggs to fluff the flour.
I like music. Who doesn't like music? It's universal, that language of love, regret, despair, depression, eternal faith and hope and life.
I'm an asshole. A real asshole, sometimes. I don't mean it in the way most people do - not in a mean sorta way - just in a stupid regretful sort of way. An asshole, in my world, he doesn't take the opportunities handed to him. An asshole hits on 18 and stays on 11. An asshole, you see, steps on his own foot and breaks his own back for the opportunity to prove the point that's worn with age and blunt with disinterest. An asshole, my friend, doesn't get it.
Sometimes I really don't think I get it. I look around, people smiling, people shuffling about with their lifes doing things making things enjoying things sighing and thinking things maybe sometimes not always the best but carry on it's out there figure it out you've gotta give it a shot it might be worth it sometimes you just gotta go for broke people. People, out there, doing. People people. Don't you see? I don't get it and I'm the worst sort of asshole:
I know I don't get it.
Ignorance is bliss, fine. But just not knowing - awareness that you don't know - that's a crime perpetrated on humanity.
Humanity, my friends, is all we got.
If you noticed.
Somewhere out there a man is huddled in the cold believing almost-completely in free worldwide healthcare. A noble cause. Not unobtainable in the least, given the desire aspect. Given that not all those who can be helped want to be helped. Given the nature of the problem, it's solvable. Not in any complete or perfect way but almost-completely. That, my amigo, is the best we can do and that man, cold and hungry, that man is not wrong. He's not far off from what we can solve as a humanitarian unit, as a race, as a big self-help group. One big happy family where the black sheep are washed of the soot and grime and the father, the leader, he is free from the shackles of the power, free from the corruption of self because he - he does not exist, it's a we, he, close but for one letter, we are the leaders the control the power the final say-so wielded by all.
Control of one's own destiny. Control of one's own heart. Control of one's own self, it's almost-completely accessible. Not quite. Close. No cigar. These, these are the constraints, the limitations, the rules we must engage.
Imperfection.
The human mind, our brains about us, we can not imagine a world that could not be better. We cannot think of what cannot be improved. Our very power, our thinking ability to evolve, the part of us that makes us us, the mind part, the conscious part, the ever-aware part, this is the knife in our very own backs, as if our arms were double-jointed and long and able to swing the blade around behind us and impale our very own souls upon ourselves.
The ability to perceive the notion of perfection will kill us all. The ability to know there is chance for better, the very programming that gave us our freedom from the muck and grime of it, it's our catch-22. Our achilles heal. Our power and our pain.
The human condition is to suffer, to feel, to bleed, to know of our dilemma. The human condition is to effect change which effects change which effects change for the better so that we might realize that better is not good enough not good enough not good enough until somewhere, you'd think, you'd hope, there is an end in sight?
No.
The end is not near. The road, long and treacherous, is farther than the universe is wide. Immense.
So what've I got? What's the end-all-be-all-answer for tonight? What do I gotta say for myself? What do I take from it and work with? What, pray tell, is the ball of clay I sculpt tonight?
Nada. I got nada. zilch. zero. nothing. nil.
It comes back to the same old same old. Here, this little heart, it beats a song that can only be sung to one and so that, my friends, that is the fate I've come to know. It's the fate that, though perhaps malleable, I accept willingly. It is what I am and I am what it is. Done. It. Finished. Over.
I've solved nothing. I sit here and I perceive perfection. I sit here and I believe that it's possible, truly deeply honestly believe - almost completely. If I don't then I have nothing and to want for nothing is to truly have everything and have we not just gone over the trepidation of believing those possibilities? All I have is this, this perfection in my mind, this somewhere-down-that-long-treacherous-road-there-is-an-end-to-that-road-or-at-least-a-new-beginning..
Am I so wrong to want to believe it?
Am I so wrong to know in my heart?
Am I so wrong to want to survive, really survive, in a way that only your grandchildren can know about?
Almost?
Completely?
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the guys: philogynist jaime tony - the gals:raymi raspil
