format
this playlist of posts is now set to shuffle.
i save the entries to my hard drive as i write them, and i post them when i feel it appropriate -- not necessarily in the order they were written.
the result, dear reader, is intended to entertain and confuse you.
get fucked.
i mean, thank you.
I would leave if i could
I wish it was as easy for me to disappear as it is for you.
You simply have to ignore me and I go away.
I still have to live with me
24 hours of the day
7 days a week
52 weeks a year
year after year.
It doesn't ever end for me.
So give me a fucking break.
she makes me write poetry
I watch her eyelids like they were the horizon, waiting for the sunrise
to shine brightly with vivid blues and browns and greens.
They emerge and find me, and she smiles at me.
I smile back and I kiss her.
The kiss is like oxygen
dissolving into my blood,
spreading through my body,
driven by my pounding heart.
I immediately breathe her in again, and again.
And again.
One more, and then I hold my breath again,
and wait
for the sun to rise again.
homesick
Tonite I'm spending my first night in my new apartment. Overall I'd say the experience is depressing, but already as I lay in bed typing this into my phone, I'm getting clarity enough to see that in time the sadness will wear off and it will get easier.
That having been said, the homesick part of me still isn't ready to move on without acknowledging these feelings. Its not enough that I miss my charming modern apartment for all its details that I grew accustomed to for 3 years; because its this setting and these feelings that remind me of all the other times growing up when I had to leave home behind and start over.
Its getting to be too much to dwell on right now, so I'm going to have to go back to the healing frame of mind where I look forward to what good things are ahead.
Someday I hope to be able to deal with loss more positively and optimistically without becoming callous or losing appreciation for good things gone by.
in my dreams
I told her I loved her and it wasn't a lie, but i don't think it was true either. It was probably more like a dream. So I stumbled around and said some odd things while sleepwalking until I hit the wall and woke up. Later I would try to make sense of it, but there's little sense to be made.
Anyway, thanks for letting me sleep in late I guess.
growing
Clipping my toenails, I notice my big toe still has a trace of NewSkin on it. I'd almost forgotten, back in July I tore my big toenail in half the day I got out of the hospital. I sealed my nail together with NewSkin. More than 5 months have passed and here I'm still looking at the evidence of that day. It makes me think of a Bright Eyes song.
...How time can move both fast and slow amazes me...
real pain
Sitting in my cubicle in front of my computer, I take note that apparently my job is so displeasing that I've unconsiously developed the habit of plucking hairs from inside my nostrils when I'm sitting here alone. This should be painful, but its not. Not really.
tele phony
I catch myself thinking one of my recurring thoughts, how I need to just get away from everyone, how the idea of communication is facetious when everyone is so shallow. Its at this moment I realize that the page in front of me is a Skype page explaining how their internet phone works. I can't understand why I spend so much time working with telecommunications when I want to get the hell away from everyone.
Father's Day
I wake up on Father's Day on my friend's pull-out couch following a bonfire that ran late into the night. I stir and fall back asleep, stir and sleep. I hear bits of things around me during those moments that i'm not asleep. I hear my friend's son playing with his toys, and I hear my friend upstairs on her phone.
I finally wake up one last time when I hear some commotion upstairs. I hear my friend's son scolding the cat and my friend calling from down the hall, wanting to know what all the noise is. Her tone is not exactly sympathetic.
He shuts himself in the bathroom, and they have a conversation through the door. Apparently the cat attacked him, he explains through tears. He can't stay in the bathroom the whole morning crying, she tells him.
I picture how this all might have happened: he's playing with the cat, rubbing his belly, and the cat thinks its fun to attack. After all, the cat has done this before with adult visitors and the game can go on for quite awhile. But this time the hands he bites and kicks at are younger and more vulnerable, and the boy is scratched and bleeding. He feels betrayed by the cuddly kitten that transformed into a violent beast. Down the hall, mom calls to him to quiet down, adding insult to his injury. Not wanting to further attract the attention of her or that weird guy who passed out on the hide-a-bed, he takes refuge in the bathroom.
He's 11 years old, and I'm thinking how popular opinion would lead me to say that he's a bit old to be crying like that; but nothing about this situation seems the least bit unnatural. I have sympathy for him, and i can easily imagine myself in that position.
I think back to my own childhood and all the times i cried for whatever reason, and how this was discouraged. I was made to feel weak for crying. Suddenly, seeing my own situation played out by someone else, I realize for the first time ever how my reaction was perfectly natural and I wasn't weak. I was just indoctrinated with that belief and i've worn it like a big black ugly mark.
Realizing this, I suddenly want to cry too and let out everything that never should have been bottled up. I could wipe my tears away and go up there and tell him its ok to cry, as I wish my own father had.
I feel my eyes tighten up and the muscles in my face tensing. But before I can burst into tears, I feel the cold wash over me. Like a tidal wave of liquid nitrogen, my face and heart go still in the same instant. I have just pulled the plug and I feel nothing. This is how I learned to overcome crying, i detach. And this moment that should have been a release from my programming is replaced by a reminder that my programming is here to stay. This is who i am now.
I leave my friend's house without saying a word to her son.
i really hate poetry
In thirty minutes I'm going to head down to the laundry room to camp out.
And when she arrives, i'm going to try to face my fears and not break eye contact.
I'm going to try to lose myself in those big brown eyes.
And if i lose all muscular control
and my body falls to the floor in a heap
while my essense hangs there in the air
staring
mouth agape
at those round beautiful eyes
its just something i'm going to have to accept.
nothing is hatching
I was doing a lot of thinking down I-43 on the way to Oostburg this morning, and I think i might be able to explain the cloud looming over me.
Growing up, at a very young age people started telling me I was special. And I, being very young and unwise, believed them. When they said "special", they meant apt. When they told me I'd be successful, they meant I could go to a good school and get a job at a good company. When they told me I could do anything I put my mind to, they meant I had a few more choices than most people if I was willing to work hard enough for it.
Most of this pandering came during elementary school, after which my parents started moving around. This was to be a long and difficult time for me, during which I held on to the belief that I would be successful and happy one day as if it were a life preserver; in many respects, it was.
Half a lifetime ago, I'd look at that image in the mirror and I had no idea how I was going to become the person I believed I would become, but I believed someday things would all be different. I've found that at age 24 I'm still waiting. I look in the mirror and I still see that kid anxious for the future to deliver me into happiness.
Its kind of like finding an abandonded nest with an unhatched egg and deciding to incubate the egg. Imagining with excitment what will hatch and what will become of it, its easy to justify the work involved caring for the egg. Soon days become weeks, then months and nothing ever develops. There finally comes a point where its time to consider that you've been nursing a shell with a corpse inside.
I'm the one dead inside.
I feel like a shell.
I feel unborn.
Going to work to get another paycheck to pay rent and put food in my mouth is not going to make me feel alive any more than a heat lamp is going to reanimate a dead bird fetus.
I don't want to believe that my dreams are hopeless any more than Terry Schiavo's parents wanted to believe their daughter was gone forever (yep, i just went there). But when you're braindead, you're braindead. And I have to consider than my dreams are in a persistent vegetative state.
This is hard for me.
SWM (Stupid Wimpy Moron) seeking SWF (Sexgoddess With [dork] Fetish)
This is what's got me worked up:

Were it not for the fact that blood is being routed away from my brain right now, I'd blow a blood vessel in my damned forehead right now. Were I simpler man, I could just enjoy the boobies and get on with my life, but I'm way too caught up in the fact there's a guy out there with a ridongculously hot girlfriend who will dress up in a sexy retarded penguin outfit for his little video game website. I'm so drunk with jealousy right now that I could just spill the blood of the innocent, or slam my genitals in the bathroom door. Motherfucker. Aarrrghh.
I don't have to guess this is the scenario, because I know its true. I've met them both so many times. This is how it goes down:
We meet at a party or a bar, whatever, and I notice her come in, and my brain is like "HA HA HA!! YOU? and HER?? ...BWAHAHAHAAHA!!" So I avoid eye-contact for awhile, because the visual and the dialogue together make it seems like she's the one laughing. I stroke off my ego with thoughts of how she's probably a real bimbo and likes guys with big muscles, fast cars, and no brains, and then I forget about her. Ah, but fate, cruel bitch that she is, is not done with us. We are introduced somehow and begin talking, and that's how I learn the damning truth that she's actually incredibly smart. I find myself engaged in discourse the likes of which I've never thought possible. She has personality, intelligence, wit, ideals, a sense of humor, bottomless eyes, and the most amazing lips. Oh my god. I could --
Wait. Who's this guy. Is your that little brother? ...oh, I hope that's not your brother. You're not supposed to kiss your brother like that. "This is Chris", or Chad, or lets give him my name for that extra special ironic flavor.
"He's.."
Ready
"..my.."
Aim
"..boy-"
Fire
"-friend.."
If this guy looked like Brad Pitt, I could sleep at night, because I understand that. I've been exposed to that all my life. But I could kick this guy's ass, and I'm a waif. And I sure as hell didn't fall out of the Calvin Klein underwear ad in Vanity Fair, but I'm better looking too. And he just made a math joke.
Scuse me, dream girl? Where's the bathroom? I need to slit my wrists.
Thanks.
Every time I think I've lowered my sights enough to find happiness in reality, I come across this happy couple, and then I want to eat a gun.
When. When is it my turn to date way outside of my means?
Damn you all.
new and improved
We're coming up on New Year's so, ah, time to start making false promises to yourself.
Last year I don't believe I made any resolutions. Instead I loudly declared "this year better not suck!"
I guess somebody heard me, because the Chinese determined that 2005 was to be my year, The Year of the Cock. They proudly certified it with a zodiac placemat, which I magneted to my refrigerator to make it official. The placemat lived up to its word as the year proved not only to be favorable for me, but also to give a quite literal interpretation of the name.
Before that, I think I just had a New Year's mantra.
I don't really remember. I was too busy drinking campange in a hot-tub full of girls. I think I must have used up all of 2004's good fortune shortly after midnight.
God, I hope next year is the year of the cat.
The point is I don't typically make a bunch of resolutions at New Year's.
The best I ever do is a New Year's philosophy.
This year I'm trying something new: the New Year's cleaning.
Its kind of like when you stop at the gas station to fill up, and something inspires to finally pick up all the empty McDonald's bags and 20 oz Tahitian Treat bottles that are carpeting the floor of the back seat and throw them in that trash can next to the pump. You've been putting it off for so long that when you finally just do it you're surprised at how easy it was.
Well, ok, New Year's is gonna be the gas station, and like, that car is me. And the trash in the car -- in me -- is all the stupid stuff I still do. And me, i'm like me cleaning me. Yeah. Think about that. And the trash can... and the gas pump... well... ... ok look, I really don't have the attention span to keep this up, alright? Either you get it by now or you don't.
Anyway, I think its really time to clean out all the crap before I even think about adding something new.
Hey, maybe this site could be the trash can.
Yeah. Yeah, that would work.
Its already full of my garbage.
confucius say:
in bed.
feedback

I really don't like making any reference to this site on the site itself. I don't discuss the maintenance of the site or anything about how I write. I don't even like to use this space to explicitly describe what I'm trying to do in any respect. But, as you should have already surmised, this post is breaking the rules. I hope that as you read on, you find this wanton defiance to be appropriate for the subject matter.
For some time now, I've been under construction. By "for some time", i mean the past few months; this is not one of those "all my life..." moments. My utter lack of budgeting is leaving me slowly draining my savings to death, the management of my web design projects is equally non-existent placing me chest-deep in chaos, and my performance in Karate has been steadily slipping for the past year, give or take. This is not a complete list. Simply put, I've been fucking off for too long.
Out of all the wreckage I find myself in, the area I'm most concerned with fixing up is the web design stuff. This is not solely because there's a guy signing my pay checks who's asked me to start showing improvement in my efficiency. Its primarily because an increase in efficiency means less stress, and more projects which means more money. More money = more freedom = more happy.
I find myself in the position of trying to examine what it is I do and build a pattern of functionality out of it. While my knowledge-of and experience-with websites is extensive, my understanding of managing/executing a project of a website's construction is incomplete. In other words, I know how to make a site and make a site well; i don't know how run the project of building said site, unfortunately.
The finished product is going to consist of essentially two new components: a new ideology for the management of a web design project, and new technology to effectively facilitate the tasks required to manage the project in the manner defined by the ideology. I know, that sounds like the meaningless drivel they fill software whitepapers with (and if this job ever falls through I'll know I can get a job writing those) so if you don't work in an office, i'll try to translate: first i gotta figure out how to do this shit, then I have to get some software to help be do this shit.
The ideology part requires me to disassemble any and every project into core components so I can quantify a project's labor requirements. Being able to quantify the project means, among other things, I'll be able to come up with better quotes for labor costs and completion schedules, and I'll be able to track the project's progress better. To break down the projects like this, I've been considering all the projects I've worked on so far plus new scenarios that I've imagined, and trying to see what the pattern is. Given the wide range of what I can do, the process has been pretty tedious, but after months I think I'm finally making progress.
The technology end is something else. I'm probably going to be writing a lot of my own software, at the very least writing the interface to tie together a lot of existing technologies. I'm going to be introduced to a lot of new technologies, and it will not take shape overnight. Simply put, the development of my new project management tools will be a project of its own.
Hang on now, here comes the fun part. I've been half-assedly managing projects for customers for the past year or more, which is no good. So I need to do something to effectively manage projects. I need to totally revamp the way I work, which is -- you guessed it -- a new project.
But how do I keep from half-assing the project of organizing my projects? Why, I need to organize the project of organizing projects! And to manage it, I'll need software, yes software to track the project of setting up software for managing projects. But where will this software come from? How will i set it up? A new project.
If you're feeling dizzy right now, then i've described this correctly.
When you find yourself in an endless chicken/egg cycle like this to which you can find no starting point of entry, you're about to enter the wonderful world of
bootstrapping.
Making it out of this situation is usually very tedious and never predictable. Seeing how often situations in my life come to me having to
pull myself out of the swamp by my own hair, I'm starting to take note of how this works. Yes, that's right, I'm talking about spontaneously figuring out how I spontaneously figure stuff out.
The world is rapidly dissolving into a
solipsistic nightmare of me constantly tripping over myself. Projects determine the management of projects, websites discuss their own content, and everyday I wake up and make money and eat food to keep myself I alive so I can continue making money and eating more food. A camera captures the image of the video monitor displaying its own live image and the only sound is steady, resonant feedback.
I'm tempted to end here, since I really hate when posts just hand over the interpretation and outcome. I'm not writing short stories over here, so I have no incentive to be cathartic. I'm perfectly happy to take you up in the plane, but i'm pushing you out when we get to the top and you can find your own way home. Today you’re lucky because there's still more to come.
Let's continue talking about the site and turning the camera on itself; Some of you might have noticed that there haven't been any posts lately. This is due in part to me being busy with these projects that I've been discussing. Some days I just spend so much time focusing on work that needs to be done that I might only remember the site briefly and think "oh shit; gotta think of something profound to post." And then my mind wanders onto the next to-do on my list.
Other times, there's really just no easy way of summing up what I need to say in a simple post that doesn't violate any of my rules. This post is a perfect example. For all I do to keep my writing simple, independent, and needing no introduction, it sometimes means periods of silence because I can't
adapt all my ideas to my style of writing.
Now, as you can plainly see, if I break from the format it is possible to then make commentary about the complex stuff. But i do so at the cost of the quality of my writing. My style is an effort to keep my writing concise and interesting. I need to be sure that I'm breaking the rules for the right reason (to make an effective post) and not for the wrong reasons (i'm too lazy to write well anymore).
If you clicked on the
"solipsistic" link above and read the Wikipedia article on Solopsism, then you should have seen this passage of text:
Thought similar to solipsism is present in much of eastern philosophy. Taoism and several interpretations of Buddhism, especially Zen, teach that drawing a distinction between self and universe is nonsensical and arbitrary, and merely an artifact of language rather than an inherent reality.
I went searching the Tao and Zen articles, looking for a better summary than this, but only saw what reminded me what I disliked so much about Tao and Zen. It seems so abundantly empty to me. I find the rhetoric to be really contrivedly paradoxical. Semantically impossible sentences just don't strike me as "deep", what can i say?
Despite how much these eastern philosophies (or least their rhetoric) lets me down, I really liked the summary in the solipsism article because of the part about breaking the barrier between self and the universe. This is a very common western philosophy, characterized as "me vs. you" or "us vs. them". When considering the universe, one has to remember that the universe is defined as all things, and we are still things. Therefore we are an active part of the universe. No matter how objectively we try to view the world around us, we're cheating ourselves out of the whole picture if we do not include ourselves in the picture.
Don't take this as my full concession of skepticism and acceptance of Tao/Zen, but I’m beginning to think that there might be something there which I was never able to grasp before. Perhaps that was because I was approaching it objectively and trying to understand Zen itself without really trying it out. A favorite Zen phrase is "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" Its so hackneyed that I'd all but forgotten what it means; it means essentially that some things are more than just the sum of their parts. So perhaps to study Zen without also considering yourself is like trying to get a clap from one hand. Zen teachings + your life = CLAP! Zen.
This really reinforces the conclusions I've been coming to lately with this
feedback loop of projects I'm stuck in. I had realized that the key to bootstrapping just seems to be to take what you have, jump in, and start doing what you're trying to do. Accept that thing will fail and/or not meet your ideal requirements, just try to learn something from it, tweak your actions, and try again. Each time you should improve until the point where you've reached your goal.
I'm seeing how trying to study something academically without actually applying it and studying it first hand is frustrating because of how incomplete it is. Its only when you take the principles that you're trying to study and actually apply them to something real that any kind of real learning can occur to allow you to make actual process. Until then, the house-of-mirrors solipsism thing takes on a very real manifestation wherein your mind tries to logically sort out a problem but lacks the information that it needs to reach a solution. Real world testing produces results that your mind could not have anticipated because its lacks the knowledge. If nothing else, it just goes to show that solipsism in the text-book sense that only one's self exists can't be possible because learning is impossible without outside stimuli.
And so its necessary for the eye of scrutiny to observe the world around it as well as itself. When these two elements meet, the sound is known as "understanding".
I'm waiting to hear what sound is made when this meets my website.
Perhaps I'll find the answer in the comments section?
tonite's insomnia
Here is an incomplete list of questions currently helping to stave off the sleep:
Should I pay rent tomorrow?
Will I have enough money in checking?
Should I take another month off of Karate?
Will it matter?
Do I have the time/resources for another web design client?
When am I going to actually function with some sort of efficiency?
When am I going to go freelance?
When am I going to be able to afford things again?
What am I going to say to her tomorrow?
What is she going to say to me?
What am I forgetting?
martyrdom
The idea of dying to save someone close to me isn't scary.
The idea of not saving them and living with it is.
relapse
I've fallen off the hedonism wagon again.
For months I had enjoyed philosophical sobriety, but now the damned existentialism monkey is on my back again. I'm jonesing bad for something to validate my life.
I know I should be thinking about recovery, but right now my main concern is that I can't find myself a fix.
I need a support group for those addicted to the meaning of life.
i'm not very bright
I only have one avid reader of my entries that I'm aware of, and I just traded the entire basis of their engrossed interest my posts for some porn.
Did you know that you can get porn on the internet -- for free?
Unbelievable.
dreaming
Last night I dreamt that I was visiting a friend in the hospital. She was sitting in her bed wearing the rag doll outfit they give you and waiting to go in for surgery. While she was sitting up and talking, she looked like she'd seen better days. We were sitting and talking and I was trying to calm her as much as I was trying to calm myself.
Somewhere in here the usual dream stuff happens where one or two non sequitur things appear, and then another 2 or 3, until there's a whole freak parade marching through my mind. Stuff such as talking penguins, fire breathing midgets, floating marshmallow cereal pieces, or rainbow colored water dripping from the ceiling. In moderation, these things typically provide a colorful background atmosphere for the events going on, but I guess my subconscious mind feels that things are moving too slow because I'm getting washed away by a flood of these ridiculous characters.
I look up to see that two nurses are leading my friend out the door for her operation. There's no way I can fight through this crowd of freaks, so I grab a Sharpie marker and scribble a note on the palm of my hand. It says "I Do [Big Heart] You". I call out to her and reach out my hand.
She reads the note and suddenly without explanation the parade is gone and its just us and the male nurses, and she runs to me and hugs me. And she looks at me and says "Oh [me], I can't believe it." She kisses me and says "when I get out, we've got some catching up to do" before being led away by the nurses.
I watch her go and then its just me alone in the room feeling like absolute shit because when I said "i love you" i didn't mean "i'm in love with you".
Its the real world now. The parade of freaks have been replaced by retards.
But I'm amazed how I'm still able to remember this dream.
One thing occurs to me that hadn't occured to me when I was dreaming. Why did they send two really big male nurses to lead my friend away? One would have easily sufficed. Plus most nurses I've ever seen in a hospital were women, and the male nurses aren't usually built like football players.
What kind of hospital were we in?
play something else

this week i was in my car during my break, curled up and listening to Modest Mouse.
I looked at my CD player and noticed
this.
I wish I had programmable memories.
I don't even want to program new false memories. I just want to delete all the bad memories and dwell on the happy ones.
Unfortunately for me, I have a robust selection of memories and my mind chooses to dwell on the unhappy ones.
My brain is the jukebox, and my mind is the shittiest DJ ever.
over the legal limit
When you wake up in bed alone with contacts in your eyes and a condom on, the best you can do is hope that the parties involved had a good time, or hope at least they were too drunk to remember otherwise.
what... the... hell..??
I just found a box of Wal-Green's brand tampons under the sink in my bathroom.
I'll repeat:
I just found a box of Wal-Green's brand tampons under the sink in my bathroom.
Why is there a box of Wal-Green's brand tampons under the sink in my bathroom?
I'm so perplexed.
Who.. i mean.. why...
What are they doing there?
And how long have they been there?
Is someone coming back for them?
Or were they left as a convenience for other women who may find themselves in my bathroom in the future?
Please women, please stop fucking with my head. I beg you.
irony is a mother
Friday morning I awoke at 7am to our maintenance guy mowing the lawn in front of my bedroom window.
Saturday morning I awoke around 8am to shouts from the apartment next door, someone singing along to Pat McCurdy, and -- i'm not making this up -- someone yelling "LOUD NOISES!!!!"
This morning at 8am I received a phone call about math.
Oh, I get it. "Haventslept.com"
Very clever, irony. Very clever.
hangover
what could be better than puking at work?
the answer, my friends, is doing it on the sidewalk in front of the office.
oh yeah.
i'm loved
at least that's what the drunk girls tell me.
i have to go now.
posting drunk
Aside from the whole unexpected falling-in-love thing, I guess I'm really wrapped up in the fact that I felt really special for dating this girl because I thought she was just so fucking cool. But as it turned out, I was just pretty circumstantial and I wasn't even good enough to last a whole 3 fucking weeks. That just hurts. I'm sorry, it does.
sick
I'm on day 12 of my persistent cough.
I officially have had this cough longer than my last relationship with a woman.
change
it
is kind of a weird thing, changing.
many of you want something more or something different.
who here right now is actually ready to change?
you're gonna have to lose some of these things around you.
some things are going to
have to go, that's just how it is.
you've got to change your act. no one can do this for you.
is anybody ready for this?
is anyone else leaving the shelter to brave the storm?
i'm going.