I have a short attention span, I can cop out and blame tv, infotainment, modernity, etc. In all seriousness, however, I think it's just me, although the aforementioned things definitely have not helped it.
-------------------------- (the line indicating a new idea)
The news talks about the tsunami having "slowed time" by knocking the earth slightly off track, or something. I am exposing my lack of any scientific knowledge here, but "time" as a tangible truth is bullshit. It's useful as a construct, a reference, a way for us to synchronize business meetings and bank heists, but an earthquake slowing time is hard to swallow.
On that note, statistics is bullshit in the short run. Although tsunamis may happen only once in a very long time, the chances that anything will happen at any time is 1/2.
I've been watching a lot of the style network. Highschool william would be appalled. Most of the programming is pretty vapid, but I thought one episode of a makeover show was quite poignant. "How do I Look?" is a show hosted by Finola Hughes (whom you may remember as Carol from Blossom, or whom you might recognize as the host of Fox's Who's Your Daddy. Damn, it's hard to get the sarcasm across) where 2 friends/family member types and a professional stylist compete to make over someone who is in desperate need of fashion help. Having watched about 68 episodes of this in the last week and a half, most of the people who come on this show are not all that remarkable. However, there was a specific episode involving a woman in her late twenties who dressed like a tomboy from 7th grade. Part of the backstory behind the episode was that she received constant teasing and verbal abuse from her coworkers, one of whom, her boss, was actually one of the show's participants.
Before I get to why this episode is remarkable, it would be instructive to explain what the show is usually like. Finnie's work is usually very rehearsed, she goes through the motions and sets the participants to work, sometimes she does some wheedling on the reluctant make-overees, and then she provides a type of Vanna White performance where she reveals the clothes picked. What I mean by this description is that her participation, although a necessary part of the show, is largely mechanical, and that she could reasonably substitute any one performance for any other, provided that the relevant details (names, fashion crime, etc.) are copied and pasted from one to the next.
When Ms. Hughes discovered that Evan (that's the boss, and one of the teasers) had been showering (good natured, so he says) verbal abuse on the unfortunate girl, she hit him, repeatedly. Of course, the editing suggests that this was "good natured", but I like to offer some of my own theories on why she responded in such a way. The show can be read as a complicated and contradictory on the beauty ideal, and this episode exposed what I would like to call the cynicism of beauty.
I would like to believe that Hughes is aware of this cynicism. The explicit goal of the show is to make the participant look better, but the easily grasped implicit goal is to elevate the participant's sense of (inner) self-worth through a change in his/her appearance. This woman's coworkers teased her because of her appearance, Hughes punches her boss because he was personally responsible for some of this abuse. However, in the end, it seems that they share the some of the same uneasy goals: they want to change this woman's appearance, and Hughes wants to possibly elevate her self esteem. The disagreement that leads Hughes to punch Edward (that's the boss) seems not to be about the purpose of his teasing, but rather the specific approach he took toward enacting this transformation.
This pygmalion-type transformation implies a certain amount of violence. This woman's appearance seemed to be changed against her will, with a promise of a better future if she complied. Furthermore, the physical change forces a reconfiguration of the psyche, an externally imposed reordering of her own priorities. In this new list of priorities, the responsibility for creating and maintaining her pulchritude is pushed up the list, perhaps against her will, but fully complicit with the will of her boss, whose collection of clothes, hair, and makeup she chooses in the end.
The show did what it purported to do, it brought this specific participant up and above her old "level of beauty", and possibly pushed her beyond the average level of beauty. At the end of the show, when the made-over participant was paraded in front of a crowd of gawkers and admirers, including those co-workers who had formerly taunted her so relentlessly, she should have felt relief and vindication, and maybe she did. I find it difficult to believe that she did not feel insulted, or highly cynical, or both. Where the girl before the makeover would have received an unrelenting barrage of jokes and abuse, as a more attractive woman, she receives the nervous flattery that belies sexual interest, and is the target of the observant and objectifying gaze. I am over-simplifying, but the show forced this woman to choose between homeliness and the verbal abuse that came with it, and beauty and the problems it entails. In neither alternative is she treated with respect, so the choice is between disrespect expressed through wisecracking, and disprespect expressed as a corollary to desire. What she should have realized then, having witnessed the effect of this new beauty, is that it's a stupid, ugly thing. I think Finnie Hughes knows this too, and that when she punches Edward, she is punching herself, which, in the end, was a truly decent and human thing to do.
I've been reading these old entries and they are stupid.
Buddhism is bullshit. Also: fuck Tibet.
Monday, January 3, 2005
When I was anticipating writing my thesis (over 2 years ago) I was excited and eager to begin. When I was supposed to be writing my thesis I wasted my time doing not much of anything. When I actually wrote it the act felt forced and I was sad that I was not doing justice to this thing I'd promised myself to do. I want to say that this is a small illustration of the transition from William the dedicated goal achiever who checked off every important to-do on a super-neat list to William the dilletante. However, I don't think the super motivated goal-achiever ever existed. I realized that it's not doing important things that's in my blood, it's dawdling (and selling out). As a corollary to this realization, I can now also see that my one advantage was that some strategic (if it can be called that) catching up always made up for the skimping that I did.
When I decided to go back to school I promised I would stop fucking around as much, and I think I've done that, but maybe not to the extent that I should have.
Also, I miss sociology, mostly because it's ruled out of the options.
Tuesday, June 25, 2002
William's recipe for marinated chicken.
Ingredients
Chicken breast (quantity depending on how many you want to make)
Soy sauce (preferrably a thinner kind like La Choy or Kikkomans)
Lemon Juice
Olive Oil
Spices (ie. Mrs. Dash or black pepper if that's all you got)
Butter
Defrost chicken breast, this should be done in the refrigerator so you might wanna take it out of the freezer the night before cooking. Place chicken breast(s) into a zip lock bag, put in enough soy sauce, olive oil, and lemon juice so that breast is fully covered by liquids, shake in spices, close ziplock bag and let sit for at least 6 hours.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees, bake until chicken is thoroughly cooked (around 25-30 minutes). During the last 10 minutes, you should spread a small amount of butter to the top of the breast as it browns.
Friday, April 5, 2002
I have to do this for my own sake.
Morioka, Japan
He is a cheerful old farmer who jokes as he serves rice cakes made by his wife and then he switches easily to explaining what it is like to cut open a 30-year-old man who is tied naked to abed and dissect him alive, without anesthetic.
"The fellow knew that it was over for him and so he didn't struggle when 'they led him into the room and tied ,him down," recalled the 72-year-old farmer, then a medical assistant in a Japanese army unit in China in World War II. "But when I picked up the scalpel, that's when he began screaming
"I cut him open from the chest to the stomach and he screamed terribly and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped. This was all in a day's work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time."
Finally, the old man, who insisted on anonymity, explained the reason for the vivisection: The prisoner, who was Chinese, had been deliberately ~ infected with the plague, as part of a research project, the full horror of which is only now emerging, to develop plague bombs for use in World War II. After infecting him, the researchers decided to cut him open to see what the disease does to a man's inside.
"That research program was one of the great secrets of Japan during and after World War II: a vast project to develop weapons of biological warfare, including plague, anthrax, cholera and a dozen other pathogens. unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army conducted research by experimenting on humans and by "field testing" plague bombs by dropping them on Chinese cities to see whether they could start plague outbreaks. They could.
A trickle of information about the germ warfare program has turned into a stream and now a torrent. Half a century after the end of the war, a rush of books, documentaries and exhibitions are unlocking the past and helping arouse interest in Japan in the atrocities committed by some of Japan's most distinguished doctors.
Scholars and former members of the unit say that at least 3000 people and by some accounts several times that number were killed in the medical experiments; none survived. No one knows how many died in the "field testing"
It is becoming evident that the Japanese officers in charge of the program hoped to use their weapons against the United States. They proposed using balloon bombs to carry disease to America and they had a plan in the summer of 1945 to use kamikaze pilots to dump plague infected fleas on San Diego.
The research was kept secret after the end of World War II in part because the U.S. Army granted immunity from war crimes prosecution to the doctors in exchange for their research data. Japanese and U.S. documents show that the United States helped cover up the human experimentation and instead of putting the ringleaders on trial, it gave them stipends.
The accounts now emerging are wrenching to read even after so much time has passed: a Russian mother and daughter reportedly left in a gas chamber, for example, as doctors peer through the thick glass and time their convulsions, watching as the woman sprawls over her child in a futile effort to save her from the gas.
If you're interested, here is a paper I turned in for a sociology class last semester.
Saturday, February 2, 2002
What a pathetic fucking mess that last entry (and I) was (am). If you're smart you've probably already learned to ignore me by now. Kudos to you then.
Saturday, February 2, 2002
It snowed again this morning.
I could not find two pockets
To deposit my hands into.
There was an old man walking
Towards me.
In the distance he was a flat figure.
As he got closer I put on the smile
I reserve for strangers.
I didn’t want to look him in the face
For fear that it would express an
Interest I did not possess.
My best front put itself forward
Needlessly,
His face was every other face I’d seen,
Sharp, numb, unremarkable.
The sun glared behind him,
And he was a dark figure.
We passed each other without a word.
So, Erin went back home today and I was pouty and difficult. I don't mean to be. Maybe I do. I'm not sure. I just like it when she's around better than when she's not around. I feel horrible, since I was being all pouty, and since she's not down the hall. I guess what really bothers me is that she knows almost of all of my friends and I know non of hers. Since this is the case I try to involve her in everything I do but she never really has to do the same. And apparently it bothers the hell out of me. I could do work, I suppose, Kinkos is open 24 hours a day. I could go photocopy something and cut it out. My heart wouldn't be in it. Erin told me I'm clingy. I guess I can work on that. I can also work on vodka. If you want to be nice you can also work on just fucking shooting me in the fucking face.
Sunday, January 20, 2002
I miss Erin so much.
Thursday, January 17, 2002
I want to show you everything these eyes have seen. I remember, I was once young enough to be sure that I know what love is. It’s a chaste kiss in the middle of a crowded train station, or one hand languidly stroking another through a thin film of velvet, or strangers bristling against each other coincidentally as the sparks fly all around them. I want to show you everything these eyes have seen. My father (bless his heart) loves mathematics. I think there might have been a time when he might have loved writing more but he learned to overcome that particular roadblock a long time ago. I love him and I love him more when I think about how brave one needs to be to calculate all the odds thoroughly and give up what one needs to give up, or so I think. My mother (bless her heart) plays the piano so by default I did too. I tried to tell her that I didn’t want to but it was easier to just follow along. Night after night I sat awkwardly at the bench in front of those yellowing keys. Springs and summers flew by, recitals and semesters and tests and mediocre grades sped away into the twilight. I want to show you everything these eyes have seen. The wet neon-lit streets beckon and repulse and all I want to do is be absorbed into the ground or be transported, far away, to a place where I didn’t have to think about what I had to think about, maybe, or maybe not. It’s 2:30 and I can’t sleep. I’ve had too much coffee. My neck has been propping my head up for far too long. My limbs have been stripped of whatever little sliver of grace they once possessed. Give me the holy water, the prayers, the rosaries, the incense, the acupuncture and the palm reading, I need it all. I want to carve out my name in the night sky. I want to be able to point out a patch of darkness and points of light. I want a place that will be home no matter where I’m stranded. The one problem with having had too many homes is that I never really know where it is. I’m told that home is where the heart is. My heart is lost in space somewhere. An amateur career test told me that my dream job is to be an astronaut. Who am I to dispute that? Give me the spacesuit and tether and set me free for a while. I’ll make it back one of these days.
Thursday, January 10, 2002
I had a dream a couple of weeks ago. I was about to get a tattoo, on the ball my ankle, the part that's just a thin layer of skin over bone. I was scared, ready to wince at the first time the needle landed. I was scared, and I tried to pretend I wasn't. I broke out in a sweat. When this happens it's not a gradual process, I don't notice it. One second I'm shivering and the next second I'm drenched. It wasn't a tattoo I wanted to get. It felt more like I was obligated. I knew that I will hurt, and I felt humiliated.
Saturday, January 5, 2002
So,
then,
this is my last night at home
and I've said most of my goodbyes.
I feel bad for the ones I've missed,
but there's really no time left now.
These are the people I was a kid with,
the kids I moved through painful adolescence with,
the adolescents with whom I dragged myself into
something vaguely resembling adulthood.
I've already flown and one by one they are
abandoning this place, this dim scene,
the background against which we moved,
the background we hated and gritted our
teeth and bore for lack of suitable alternatives.
We've atomized, drifting out in larger circles,
then larger circles still.
It's inevitable.
It happens to everyone.
It's nothing special.
I know.
I also know that for one moment,
maybe a night, or a few
nights, or all those
nights, we broke
through the
tedium
and mediocrity
and endless half-lit streets
and newly broken and mended hearts.
We were special, then, nothing could have
tugged us apart if it had tried. Of course it
all had to cease sooner or later. It's been a beautiful
couple of years, mostly, anyway.
I love you kids, and let's keep in touch.
Friday, January 4, 2002
God I feels so fucking lazy. I've been watching dating shows and eating and sleeping for the last week. One of these days I'm gonna baloon up into one of those blobs that kinda swallow other things when they come into contact with it. Ok, maybe it's not that severe yet. I thought I really wanted to be home but I think I realized that home is kind of boring. Elimidate, however, is always there when I need it the most, kind of like a trusted friend, or heroin.
I've done nothing for the last 13 days. I've written maybe half a page of my paper, which I'm not even sure I'm going to turn in. I've watched more tv these last weeks than I have the whole time I've been at school. A year ago and I would have wanted to go out all the time, but now it's like I can't even be bothered. I'm not even remotely motivated to occupy myself.
Daniel left this morning at four I think. He's off to Florida to get a degree in recording and he hopes to never come back here again. I don't blame him of course, I got the hell out of here the first chance I got. Him leaving is just one less thing to hold me here. That's kind of sad, but it's also so very inevitable.
I hope it's been a good new year to everyone. Good luck, and I'll be back soon.
Thursday, December 27, 2001
I haven't turned in my final paper for comparative literature class since I haven't started it yet. Some of the stuff below will probably end up in it.
The sky seems easy since it's always there,but
my neck has always been here too, for as long
as I've been around anyway, and I've never seen
it, not the way I've seen eyes light up like
flint sparks in the blue night.
I dream about trains and elevators and that kind
of crass shit. In the morning I wake up and wipe
my thoughts of that not so magical magic and look
outside to remind myself that the same 99 cent
breakfast sandwich popstar action figure kama sutra
of concrete neon light stripmall pawnshop check-
cashing bailbond high-rise lowbrow topless television
titillation and static world is still there,
and it never disappoints.
***
I've been told that the ocean is
maternal.
I haven't been there in so long.
Why can't concrete be maternal too?
It holds me up when I'm down.
It forces me up when I'm down.
That's all I could expect of a mother.
Thursday, December 27, 2001
I feel like a kid in a candy store, except I'm at home and the candy store is a million miles away.
Thursday, December 27, 2001
Sunday, December 23, 2001
I thought about prefacing all of my entries with something along the lines of "what follows are probably some things which you could care less about."
Anyways I got home on the 20th. It feels like I've been living two very distinct lives in alternation. I had this sense of obvious and overwhelming familiarity as we drove home. I guess what's really weirding me out is that I'm so familiar with two distinct places at the same time, or something like that.
That said, I already can't wait to be back (to school, I mean). Being here for a little over 2 days has reminded me of why I went so far away in the first place. It'd be nice if boredom killed.
Thursday, November 15, 2001
Sooo, guess who's gonna be published in Teen People? Well, yeah, don't guess too hard. I feel like a whore, I thought I should just get that established. But other than that I don't really feel as bad as I should be feeling. It'll be a good story to tell people, and maybe they can put a picture of me in with little hearts and flowers around it. I set tonight aside to do all the work that's been piling up for the past two weeks but that didn't really happen. Anyways, sorry for leaving this thing alone for two months. I've been busy. No wait, that's a lie, I've been slightly less than busy and slightly less than interesting, anyways, whatever.
Wednesday, October 3, 2001
I am so totally sorry about not updating this thing for over a week. I mean I guess I was sick for about 5 and counting, but as one of my friends pointed out, being drunk has not stopped the updates, so being sick probably shouldn't either. Anyways, I dunno why I stopped writing, maybe I had nothing to say. Have I ever said something about the importance of writing crap? As a writer, it is of the utmost importance that you should write no matter if it's good or not, so the amount of absolute bullshit you produce probably shouldn't worry you at all, and having taken this to heart, here's some of mine (bullshit that is).
p.s. I have just started writing again for the umpteenth time and this shit is so bad I just have no excuse for it.
Snippet 1
I am just one child in the wet blue air of a Thursday morning that comes from a long string of Thursday mornings crossed off on note pads and appointment books. I keep them to take attention away from the fact that I'm not really that important at all. There are names that I memorize too. Names like Boomer and Howie and Elise and Amelia reassure me of how concrete my worth is.
Snippet 2
I can tell you that you're not a pirate, but that won't get me off this plank you've built. I stare down as I eek out ginger steps, admiring the way you worked my name into the cheap chipboard with typical precision. We are not oceans apart and never will be no matter how hard you work at it. I almost want to cry but this is the time to congratulate ourselves. So I raise this glass, to my self on the plank that your hands laid down, and the days in the sun, and the shade and the seconds before torrential downpours, and to girls with hair the color of rust, and crisp winter days when everything seemed a little less out of reach, to coming in from the cold again.
It's been a lucky thirty-four years, and I guess I should have know that things come around again on weary feet. I am exhausted, and this last stroll is almost a relief.
Saturday, September 22, 2001
I am in a bout of post something stupor right now. Coming down is not the problem, waking up the day after might very well be the problem. I think I lost track of how many people came in and out of this room last night. The worst part of it all was that I was supposed to get up at 8 to build a house for habitat for humanity today. Since I went to sleep at 5 o'clock I think I knew that there was very little chance of that happening. Oh well, another time, another excuse, blah blah blah.
Tuesday, September 18, 2001
This is something I'm turning in for comparative lit tomorrow.
Quote from lecture: “Do not make reading a dead activity by closing off yourself to the world.”
Quote from reading: “He tasted the almost perverse pleasure of disengaging himself line by line from the things around him.”
Extra quotes
“Mohammad is Jesus is good and is love, that’s the way I see it.”
– Deep Dish
“I will die when love dies and you will not let love die.”
– Bonnie Myotai Treace of Fire Lotus temple, after the WTC attacks.
I hope it’s ok that I added these extra quotes. I think they fit pretty well. I’ve never been a religious person so my aim is not really to push or propagate any belief but to just look at everything and try to take something that’s good from each belief. We’ve spent about all of last week talking about the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and war and how America is going to “root out evil” and I’m tired of going over it again and again. Hopefully this will be the last time that I talk about it, it probably won’t be, but as of this moment I will pretend that it is. The very first thoughts I had after the shock of seeing the explosions on TV wore off is that there are a lot of people right now with things missing from their lives. Things like security and love and comfort. Maybe some of these things have always been missing to a certain degree but this incident has certainly brought these absences to the forefront. In my opinion, the way to address these critical absences is to open yourself up to all those human emotions, both your own and those of others. In the aftermath of the attacks the government assumed that the way to fill up these newly empty spots was with anger and the promise of violence. Maybe a better way would be to share sympathy and love. Just the fact that you can talk to someone about something that might be significant to you and to have that person understand and encourage you to keep going can make the critical difference. In times of crisis it seems that people are more acutely aware of the suffering of others and more willing to alleviate that suffering by offering their own love and sympathy. Therefore it’s even more disconcerting to see people clamoring for revenge. Just because we have suffered does not mean that we should inflict additional suffering on those who are innocent. Blood does not erase blood.
Deep Dish is a duo from the Washington DC that usually produces dance music. I like dance music but not a lot of it really touches me deeply. “Mohammad is Jesus” is one of my favorite songs of all time. I’m neither Muslim nor Christian. From the quote I believe that it’s obvious that the song’s not really about people who are Muslim or Christian but that it’s about our basic human capacities, namely the capacity for love. On some level, I believe that Mohammad and Jesus were who they were not because they were messengers or sons of god, but that they were so very essentially human in that they felt the totality of what it was to be human, to offer your unconditional love to whomever should demand of it, and to expect little in return. Bonnie Myotai Treace’s comments on love after the WTC attack conveys essentially the same message, that what ultimately defines human beings is not planes or architecture but the ability to love, and through love make meaning of life.
I think that if we fully realized our capacity for love there would be little left in us to try to shut off the world outside. Being defined by love means that there is little of the world that is that “other” which remains undeserving of life and love. To take a Daoist view of things, we are all merely different manifestations of certain aspects of the world. Who’s to say that a certain race deserves less of the world than we do, or that a certain species of animal deserves a little less kindness? Hurting others would mean little more than the fact that we are indirectly bringing pain to ourselves. I just found out yesterday that apparently the footage of the celebrating Palestinians show after the WTC attacks was not real. It was footage shot from 1991. This seems like such a calculated move and my heart grew a little colder when I found out. Then I thought about all the other times that I’ve fucked up in life and it doesn’t seem so black and white anymore. Maybe it was an honest mistake. Sometimes it’s best to give people the benefit of the doubt. And I’m wondering if we’re doing that enough as a nation.
I read the New York Times at work on Friday. There was a page full of various quotes from religious leaders. When I read Bonnie Myotai Treace’s quote I almost cried. It seemed like a plea for people to not forget their roles as just humans in times of crisis. It was so simple and sincere, at the same time it was an actual goal to strive for, as a race we are so far from that simple love that it’s easy to give up hope. We keep asking questions like “where are we?” Maybe we should start asking things like “Where do we go from here?”
“The Continuity of Parks” centered on the theme of worlds, and our place in the world. Right now, it seems easy to become so individuated that you end up as one person going against seemingly the entire world. I think it’s important to realize that people are not isolated beings who randomly come into infrequent contact with each other and the environments around them. To be a part of the world means that you let the world shape you, and you can in some way shape the world, which is yours and also everyone else’s. When I read the world does not cease to exist, maybe I stop paying attention to it for a while, but it still exists for me in as much as we exist for each other. I might sleep but the world never sleeps, in a certain way it will always be there for me, throughout my life, after my death, in all those tangled and beautiful relationships that will carry on long after I have departed. History books exist to let the future generations know that the world existed for the past too, and that they loved the world enough to paint it, and sing of it, and fight for it. To know this is to know that I have a heavy responsibility to make my world the best world it can be for me and hopefully others. I might not be aware of it but I have this responsibility at all times. It is because of this that it seems dangerous to disengage yourself line by line, as the protagonist of the story does. The world encompasses all that we are, and it is sad that we seem to need to escape from it. In trying to deny the existence of the world, even if it’s for a little while, we’re also trying to deny some aspect of ourselves.
Tuesday, September 18, 2001
I've neglected this thing for a couple of days. That's really not quite true though. I've almost updated it three times but decided that I really didn't have anything important to say after all. I'm not sure if I do now, probably not. I really like my comparative lit class. Santiago is one of the coolest teachers I've ever had. He just has this weird zen aura about him that kind of puts me at ease. If I was a girl or gay I'd probably be all over him by now. Did I mention that we get to grade ourselves in this class? It really feels like he wants to put us on an equal footing with him. I've got a night of work set out. I think I'll get started now.
Wednesday, September 12, 2001
I'm not very religious but I don't think you need to be very religious to have faith. I have faith in the future, probably now more than ever. The people on tv keep talking about war and revenge and retaliation and all I can think about is reconstruction. There is all the time in the world for pursuing some symbolic atonement for what's happened but the damage is done and we need to start fixing it now. The way to end suffering is to heal and not cause more suffering.
Wednesday, September 12, 2001
Still watching CNN and the death tolls are about 1400 and climbing. Oddly this reminds me of the innate human capacity for good. I went to a vigil last night and even though I'm not really religious at all the things the various religious figures said all sort of made sense, or were at least helpful in some little way. It doesn't really feel like there will be a conclusion for this. It'll just drag on until we get tired of it and scrawl it off as another bad day in history. Keep your heads up.
Tuesday, September 11, 2001
Class is canceled and I've been watching tv all day and it still hasn't sank in yet. The footage was surreal, especially the stuff shot from the ground up at the towers where the walls just kind of peeled away into dust. Above all the political and military implications what really gets me is the chaos and terror of it all. To be on one of those planes and know that not only are you gonna die but you're gonna be causing the deaths of others. This is so obviously the worst day of my life.
I love you, and take care of yourselves.
Tuesday, September 11, 2001
I just saw footage of the WTC collapsing shot by someone from the ground. The walls just peeled away like dominos, glass and steel turning into dust in seconds. Fucking unreal. This is a fucking nightmare.
Tuesday, September 11, 2001
Today is unreal. I went to class today at 10 and didn't know about anything that happened. Someone said something about the WTC and the pentagon and planes, nothing that specific. Toward the end of class someone dropped by the room and told everyone that class was canceled. I went home and saw the footage of the planes hitting the buildings and it is just fucking insane. This is the craziest thing I've ever been witness to in my fucking life. I can't stop thinking about the absolute horror of it all. I need to go find somewhere where I can give blood.
Monday, September 10, 2001
Apparently if you search for "very very very hot fucking" on google I come up first. I guess you learn something new everyday.
Saturday, September 8, 2001
I don't know how many shots I did last night. It was many. I don't even have a hangover right now. I woke up at maybe 5:30 to pour myself a glass of water and accidentally poured some into the glass half full of vodka. Luckily I noticed my mistake and didn't end up drinking more. I even got up and refilled the Brita. I like being able to function in the dark while drunk.
Friday, September 7, 2001
I'm waiting for Sean and Blaire to get here so we can get into trouble. On a sour note I've started playing Snood again. I haven't touched the damn thing for at least 4 months since last semester's "download snood the week final exams start" debacle. I pulled through ok, miraculously, this definitely spells trouble in the future.
Friday, September 7, 2001
I'm looking at my two creative writing portfolios from last year and they are such pieces of shit. I want to get to the point where I'm writing decent stuff regularly again, y'know? It should be like one of those programs you put yourself on and stick to. I think I might have a problem with sticking to things, I mean anything. God, here's some spur of the moment thing I'm about to write, I just hope it's not absolute crap.
Like the shapes I cut in the magazine and like the diamonds
they taught me to swallow whole I gleam with the precious
lustre of something that's not there anymore. If you see my
face on the subway walls somewhere don't hesitate to break
out the spray paint and make me over a couple of times
until I look like someone you wouldn't mind looking at.
Everything I've ever been taught is about acquiring things,
and everything I've ever been taught is about letting things
go again. I am a man and I am also a recycling station. I am
less than a man but I am also less than a trash receptacle.
The sewer caps have my eyes painted on them, and I will soon
be everywhere.
Friday, September 7, 2001
Things are going pretty ok. I really like cherry tomatoes. I also really like Lush. It's too bad about the suicide/breakup. We went to see this band on Wednesday and they had a xylophone, among other things. They were ok, I guess, it started out interesting and became kinda blah. We left after about 4 songs. The high point of their performance, in my opinion, is when they covered Groove is in the Heart. I think I'm gonna dig my classes.
Wednesday, September 5, 2001
I gave in to temptation and downloaded the new Aphex Twin album DrukQs. It's really good. The spazzy 200 bpm breakbeat tracks are back and there are also chill little analog and ambient snippets. Can't wait for it to come out.
Tuesday, September 4, 2001
I'm never drinking that much in one night again.
Tuesday, September 4, 2001
ohgodohgodohgod. I'm so smashed right now. I went to a party with Tyler tonight and ended up drinking more blue kool-aid and vodka than I ever have in my life. The house ran out of the blue stuff so I started mixing up more myself and doling it out to people and there were all these people from classes from last year that I expected never to see again. Anyways my sentences are running cause the alcohol is running as well. So apparently it was broken up by cops although I thought that maybe Tyler just wanted to leave since he thought he was a little too much under the influence. On the way back he stole a construction sign and there were cop cars around and I'm not sure what else happened. I'm in my room right now and I can't really feel my lower extremities. No more drinking for at least 3 days.
Monday, September 3, 2001
I moved in and my room is sorted out. I'm fucking exhausted. I hope things will be fun and flowers and lollipops. Cex is really good packing/unpacking music.
Thursday, August 30, 2001
I always feel funny about archiving shit since I feel like the most recent stuff hasn't gotten enough exposure, but enough of this ridiculous speculation about how unimportant my stuff might or might not be.
I think I might be a Buddhist. I think what really convinced me was the open-endedness of it all. It feels like it's kind of impossible to be a "good" Buddhist since it's just one of those things where you'll get there when you get there and if you don't then you don't. There's a terrible circular logic going on that basically says if you have the answer you'll know it. It seems kind of hard to accept something like that when so many faiths offer up set doctrines and rigid dogma, but I think the lack of answer is refreshing, and more importantly realistic. Yeah, so that's my spiel, I don't think anything too dramatic has changed.
