all we are is air

to write about

2011-11-14T02:40:00.001-08:00

the idea of narratives, which i have not fully fleshed out yet. (it has very likely been fleshed out by someone else at some other point) people love stories, and we're turning more and more things into stories. the news decided to add narrative arcs to the world and now the people who make news have decided that they have to make narratives as well. autobiographies as a way to either impart a narrative to one's life after the fact or (more recently) to reinforce a pre-existing narrative. 'pop' biographies that impart a narrative at the expense of impartiality/the 'truth.' the internet as a way to create/reinforce the personal narratives of relatively non-famous people. (the problem with this idea is that i am operating on the assumption that there are few/no works about this subject and i'm pretty sure that is not the case. if they exist, i need to read them. it's important!)

i think we're collectively becoming more and more aware (unconsciously or consciously) of the power of narrative. or maybe this is just permeating society to a greater degree.

this is when i get nervous that my ability to tie together ideas* into a cohesive whole has gone (if it ever existed) and i may never be able to write about this properly.

*i think it's best to imagine ideas as a bunch of balloons that all want to go in different directions inside the vast spherical room of knowledge. this idea takes a bunch of different balloons and attempts to bring them together. writing something like this requires some serious balloon grasping/tying skills that i don't think i really have.

ugh maybe this is all bullshit

i need to think about it way more obviously

2011-11-09T01:07:00.000-08:00

really worried that i've basically resigned myself to a life of voyeurism. the internet makes it so easy to watch other people without ever taking any other action, and i feel like the level of concern i have with my own narrative is decreasing by the day. i'm not sure if this is a subconscious strategy to take the angst/pressure/stress out of anything creative that i do, but i really like it so far. making things in an attempt to satisfy people outside of yourself seems ultimately unsatisfying and depressing.

growing up is so weird. i don't think i want to grow up very much.

2011-10-29T01:17:00.000-07:00

doing way better in school, this year.

possible reasons:

-courses are significantly easier

-no friends, much less difficulty focusing on work.

-presence of family makes me feel far guiltier about slacking off

-actually interested in the things i am learning

-far more control (weirdly enough) over what i eat/do/etc.

i don't like feeling targeted, and that is how i felt last year.

stop

2011-10-19T23:31:00.001-07:00

staying up too late
eating too much
reading too little
wasting time
just holding on

2011-09-26T01:28:00.001-07:00

this is a weird anxiety to confess to you, internet, but i think the scariest thing about making overt efforts to secure some sort of internet fame/stop hanging out on the sidelines of every scene i know of is that i'd begin to accumulate an internet paper trail, sort of. i don't really like that! i've spent at least a decade using you in an almost entirely voyeuristic way and it's very weird even considering actually playing a part in any of the things that i watch/follow/whatever. it feels like adulthood. adults google themselves and get results! i don't come up if you search for my name, even if you look for 10 pages! i'm not sure what to do. grow up and stop sucking, hopefully.

2011-09-14T03:16:00.000-07:00

i can't tell how important the role i have in the decisions that determine my fate is, anymore. i feel like there are larger forces pushing me through life and i can't figure out if these forces exist outside of my subconscious.

more importantly

today my father and i started talking. (we don't do this very often. i can't tell whether my father is aware of the effects of the absent father/close mother dichotomy and is acting as he does to affect his children or if he is just a normal person. (it seems very likely that he is just a normal person but i am easily confused, these days.)) i was honest with him about how all of my classes were going and i confessed my doubts about my anthropology class/professor to him.

i can tell this man is performing for me. i can tell that he's scared and filled with self-doubt. i don't know if i can respect a man like that. i don't know if i can learn from a man like that.

my father looked at me and said 'try having a boss like that.'

there was more to the conversation but this part stuck out to me because for a second it felt like we'd forgotten everything that separates us and related to each other as equals. i'd love to phrase that less awkwardly but i'm writing this at five in the morning in an attempt to tire out the part of my brain that criticizes my creative output non-constructively and it's so hard to keep myself at bay without having to sneak back with my tail between my legs and change things i've already written.

less importantly

i'm so scared right now. i'm desperately aware of the limited time i have on earth and the limited options available to me.

i hope i'm just tired

please let me just be tired.

recently

2011-06-23T23:15:00.000-07:00

i think most of the things i write on here are edited an absurd amount

but i feel like i tend to post them way before they're edited into what i want them to be

i wish i could just erupt with the perfect words at will.

the university put me on 'drop status.' i'm not sure what to think.

i mean, it's not as if i was ever particularly into schoolwork. (like, over the course of my lifetime) some of that is probably that i fear failure so much. (even though, like, i've spent SO MUCH TIME failing at this point.) some of it is this imperious bullshit i pull when people who know more than me try to teach me things. i want to learn everything by myself. i also only want to learn things i'd actually enjoy learning.

this is going to sound like the most BULLSHIT excuse for shitty writing ever but every time i want to write something like this i'm paralyzed by the thousands of ways it could go.

2011-06-02T03:19:00.001-07:00

do i judge myself too harshly?

do i judge others too harshly?

'don't carry things like that around by yourself. it hurts too much, it's not worth it.'

do you feel your memory revising itself so past events happen the way you wish they had?

do you feel empty?

'you need to choose between blue-collar and white-collar. which one appeals more?'

'blue-collar, i guess

i don't know'

am i hurting you?

why aren't you hurting me more?

'im sorry but this is the part where i start to get crazy and sad so like whatever'

why am i awake?

why don't i write back?

'no, i'm really glad you're here.'

whenever you're down

2011-04-14T13:07:00.000-07:00

remember that 'i wanna be your lover' by prince is a great song

and you should listen to all six minutes

just like they used to on the radio, even though they shouldn't have

it's just that good

2011-03-20T00:04:00.000-07:00

dreamt i picked my nose and it started bleeding

waited for the bleeding to stop, blew the clot out of my nose*

noticed a second later that i had put my finger right back in my nose and pulled out the scab that had formed

i waited for the bleeding to begin again and it never did.

dreamt i fell, though i don't remember what i fell on

managed to irreparably ruin my jeans **

they ripped but

the parts that ripped extended to thousands of times their original length

they looked impossibly beautiful

III***

dreamt i was talking to people

began to run out of things to say

began to talk about people as honestly as possible as they listened

as i let out all the little things i believed to be true about them from my head

their color began to fade

one by one they were all reduced to white sand

and i was standing on a featureless grey plain

and i watched the wind blow them around on the ground

* (one of the best feelings, i think)

** (i only have one pair of pants i wear and i care about them more than i should which may help to explain this)

*** (i don't know if i actually had this dream. i'm quite sure about the other two. however, i'm pretty in love with the number three and i felt like two parts might not be enough)

thoughts (2/???)

2011-03-15T02:54:00.001-07:00

watching a romance movie with someone you are romantically involved with just seems weird to me. i feel like i'd spend the whole time comparing our relationship to the relationship on the screen and having one of those classic-ass real-ideal conflicts and finding everything wanting in comparison to the world on the screen. or i'd become convinced that the relationship i'm in will follow the relationship on the screen and decide to end everything in an attempt to defy the workings of the world as explained to me on-screen. or i might just worry about things like 'is that what kissing looks like is that what i should look like when i kiss people'

the rational thing to do would be to accept that it's pointless to bring the two together, to enjoy the movie, to continue through life as a person in an un-filmed world. i'd like to try and do that, in the future. i'd like to not overthink at all.

(the voice in my head that doubts everything i say would like to point out, at this particular juncture, that this never happens when i am sober.)

reading about david foster wallace

2011-03-11T08:21:00.000-08:00

i'm obsessed, probably.

i feel like art should just be art and that is it. some people can like it, some people can hate it, but i'm not sure if it should be MADE to be liked or hated.

so deep lol

lol

thoughts

2011-03-06T03:58:00.000-08:00

i think there's an art to setting up social networking profiles so one profile sort of flows into another profile and so on.

i don't know if i'd ever really want to make a flavors.me. it feels like a step over some sort of preset line in my head, somehow.

tumblr drives me up the fucking wall because it seems like it makes finding cool shit on the internet waaaaaaaaaaay too easy.

fucking fuck when am i going to get off my ass and do something/anything creative

why can't i stop smoking cigarettes when they are offered to me

the best thing about every day of my life

2011-02-27T07:48:00.000-08:00

looking at other people and knowing that they have stories and hopes and dreams. knowing that we're all making our own stories and we mostly think that our stories are more interesting than the stories other people are making.

reading books and knowing that every feeling i've ever had is written down in one of them somewhere, that if i'm lucky i'll read everything about myself one day and that'll be that.

time is finite but i don't think i should be conscious of that.

what life really is

2011-02-20T06:05:00.000-08:00

asymptotic

what life is

2011-02-20T05:33:00.001-08:00

ultimately it's all just

fighting fear and winning

fighting fear and losing

and i worry that it's far too often the latter

problems that are stupid

2011-01-04T19:03:00.000-08:00

recently i've had nothing to do and constant internet access so i've been spending a shitload of time reading thought catalog/stalking tao lin/reading other associated blogs/not doing anything even remotely related to my resolutions.

after a couple days i start to think to myself that writing like this is easy, that i could totally write like this, that if i decided to start writing 'pieces' i could probably have one published in thought catalog. i could probably pump out a 'chapbook' or whatever and people might buy it or i might send it to them if they asked or something. would probably gain some small measure of prestige. more formspring questions, maybe.

at the same time, i don't think i'd ever do any of the above. a lot of things about this whole scene that i'm speaking of (that you might know about but probably not but it doesn't matter because after all this is mainly a way for me to deal with my feelings by talking to myself about my feelings in an attempt to be more rational about things) disgust me. i don't particularly like how well-to-do most of the people involved seem to be. (when i was reading about dash snow it struck me that just about everyone involved in the new york art scene as described was upper-middle/upper class and working (to various degrees) to conceal this. at the same time, the 'scene' could really only thrive because of how easily available money was to these people i think.) i don't really like how easy it seems to be to pump out things that will fit into the little micro-genre that this 'scene' has created/does occupy. it bothers me that a pretty significant part of the non-tao written words in this genre are blatant attempts to mimic tao lin, which he seems to endorse. the extent to which the discourse of these people has infected/affected my own disgusts me.

ultimately though i think what really bothers me is that i'll have to change to get ahead. that i'll have to talk to people i wouldn't talk to if i was acting purely based on who i wanted to talk to. that i'll have to say things that i don't really mean. that i'll have to change my appearance (digital or otherwise) and my manner of speech. that i'll have to conform because (ultimately) conformity does get you ahead. (it's not what you know it's who you know applies so very much right now)

this extends to the rest of my life. i don't particularly want to cut my hair like a regular person so i can get a job this summer. i don't want to act as if i'm interested in a summer internship when i would very much rather spend the entire summer skateboarding and playing guitar. i don't particularly want to grow up, i guess.

i'm not sure what's going to happen. there are so many possibilities and none of them really appeal. there's also the knowledge in the back of my head that if i had produced accomplished things by now, if i actually operated at the level i believe i am CAPABLE of operating at, i would have no problem with any of these things. i would advance based on sheer merit. that all of these decisions are a result of my inability to realize my own potential, which is language borrowed from somewhere else.

2011-01-01T06:55:00.000-08:00

goals

-4.0 this semester

-get that ambient album made

-read a shitload

-strive towards relevance

-be less fat

2010-11-28T10:30:00.000-08:00

it's really easy to say that there's always someone cooler/smarter/younger/better looking/more relevant than you are. it's really hard running into those people in real life. i can't tell if it's hunger or envy that is burning a hole in my chest. (that's because it's probably both) it's probably best to say to myself that there are things that i have that they don't, that my life isn't over yet, that people probably think the same things about me, sometimes. (the feeling in my chest doesn't go away unless i just STOP thinking about shit like this, though, so i'm hoping i can finish this post quickly and get back to work.)

i like it when my thoughts or my sentences adopt the weird systole/diastole rhythm where i say one thing and follow it up with something else that is relevant (but maybe opposed) parentheses. (this doesn't happen as often as i'd like it to, but i don't think there's a better way to represent the way i think.) it seems like it's pretty common to represent the thoughts of insane characters in books as words running into and over each other. (the thoughts of sane characters always seem to follow a straight line.)

the one sort of constant problem i have is writing things and realizing that i've said things too concisely, that i've summed everything up as well as i could have and i still feel as if i should have had more to say. (i pray for divine inspiration, maybe, when i'm looking at a void i seem to have failed to fill fully.) certainly, i wish that everything would come easier than it seems to come to me right now. (the worst part is that i remember a time in my life where things maybe did all seem easy, where everything followed as it does for those people in books.)

every girl i currently talk to and what i think of them

2010-11-26T03:37:00.000-08:00

this could only end horribly for everyone involved

after all is said and done

build a new route to china

if they'll have you!!!

what i wish i had said to my sister

2010-11-24T03:32:00.000-08:00

no, i don't want to be here

there's never been a place that's scared me more

there's never been a place i'd want to occupy less

i love you but this is different

just this once

please

when people say that someone's soul is beautiful, i don't think they really mean it

how could you tell such a thing?

what gives you the right to pass judgment?

when i say someone's soul is beautiful, i am being facetious

(that's why i don't think other people mean it)

unless i am talking about you

your soul is beautiful

iii

i really worry

sometimes

that the reason we get along so well now

is that we didn't when i was young

i know that doesn't make sense

let me explain

i'm not sure if i'm nice to you because i truly do love you

or because i want to right past wrongs

and i worry that i'll never know

and i think that maybe it's best that i don't

which doesn't stop me

things i've regretted

2010-11-24T03:22:00.001-08:00

-saying too much

-saying too little

-drinking too much

-not drinking enough

-taking things too far

-never taking things to the end

-philandering (if only in my head?)

-feeling guilt

-not feeling guilt

-picking at scabs

-stealing

-not going to class

-going to class

-being too polite

-slamming my pinky finger in a door

-attempting to unduly maximize my emotional impact on others

-being too cool

-not being cool enough

-trying to think about being cool and the ramifications thereof (which is, of course, how one becomes uncool)

-not reading enough

-not learning enough

-not even existing properly. i spend far too much time just waiting for time to pass, and i can't tell whether it's necessary or i'm slowly going insane

-using a pan that's too big for eggs to make eggs

-not substituting olive oil for butter

-not practicing enough

-not concentrating on one thing to the exclusion of all else

-not shaving

-not dreaming

-yearning (later)

-lying about how much someone meant to me (more than once)

-eating

-kisses

-meals with people i don't want to talk to

-conversations i couldn't bring myself to leave

-bad yoni wolf imitations

-not standing my ground

-standing my ground

-never quite figuring out how to meditate

-constantly judging people based on attractiveness

-your name here

feels like

2010-11-24T03:21:00.000-08:00

i can tell my bones apart from my fingers

and my bones think they'd be better off without their coverings

break

2010-11-24T03:14:00.001-08:00

aka

don't get anything done

stay up too late

feel miserable

church today

2010-11-14T17:34:00.000-08:00

i was going to start this off with a bullshit literary reference but i don't think i will, anymore.

i have never wanted to leave a place more than i wanted to leave church today. it wasn't a rational want, either. parts of my brain that i have no conscious control over spent the entire mass trying to drag me out the doors. i couldn't think about god (whether he exists, or not) or how to be a better person (if that's even possible) or my doubts. (which are really all i think about, honestly.) instead, i spent the entire time imagining myself vaulting over the back of the pew and running out the doors and back into the world again. i was pretty convinced that people were looking at me, because i was pretty convinced that my body language was really obviously conveying my fear and discomfort. (because, of course, i was scared and discomforted.)

i'm not quite sure what the strangest part about this mass was, the part that made me want to leave more than anything else. it might have been the weird public display of affection going on between two lacrosse team members directly in front of me. i don't particularly like seeing affection displayed (or displaying affection, really) even when it is expected. when there's that requisite kiss in every disney movie, i feel compelled to look away. it might have been the lighting in the church, which reminded me of the way that kankakee looks in the middle of the night and how lonely i tend to feel when i am in kankakee and it is the middle of the night. (i don't know whether the lights seemed orange because they actually were those damned sodium-chloride fluorescents that may or may not haunt my dreams, but i imagine that they were.) it might have been the way that the priest talked about catholicism in his homily, as if we were somehow under attack, as if we somehow had to defend our faith to others. this really discomforts me, because one of the main reasons i like being catholic is that there has never been any really pressure on me to go out and evangelize. (there are enough catholics. we can afford to rest on our laurels, for a while. that is the impression i always got, at least.)

it might have been the music. i'm used to one organ and one voice leading, and there were guitar solos and strumming. i don't feel comfortable with that.

maybe it was just that i haven't been to mass in a while, but i don't think so. something else was up.

please let me live

2010-11-07T02:40:00.001-08:00

please please please

shit you wouldn't remember

2010-10-04T02:40:00.000-07:00

when i was younger (i don't remember when) i was told to attend this weird career vision counseling thing by my parents, because i had been very clear about what i wanted to do with my life (nothing) and what i was going to do with any talent i may have had at the time. (squander it) there was a girl there who was named (at the time) halee ardella. i knew nothing about her. i know next to nothing about her, now.

what i remember was the way i felt around her. i worry now that i might be imagining the way i felt, but this was too strong to forget and too strong to fabricate. i felt like i could do anything, but i was paralyzed by the possibilities. i felt like i was looking down into a void that would swallow me whole. i felt, in short, just like i have around every other girl i've ever been infatuated with.

the two/three emails i sent her without response are some of the very first emails in my gmail account's 'sent' section. i still haven't deleted them. they're very embarrassing to read, now, but it doesn't bother me like it did when the memories were fresh.

i remember googling her email address and finding posts on some sort of yahoo fangroup dedicated to the used. i didn't like the used at the time (i still don't like the used. nothing has changed.) and i think this added to her mystique, somehow.

when facebook told me to index names in my contact list with gmail addresses, i found out that she has a facebook now, registered under 'ardella saffron.' i friend requested, received a message that was confused and sort of worried about where i came from, all of a sudden, and so i attempted to explain things. i was again met with no response.

fun fact for whoever keeps reading this post slash proof that i'm slowly descending into total creep-dom

found out her real name!!!

too bad christmas already happened because this would have been the best gift

why i am a computer science major

2010-09-22T01:40:00.000-07:00

context: i never, ever, ever do my comp sci homework when i should. i show little to no interest in the class, i don't do additional assignments designed to help me become better at coding/comp sci, and i only feel guilty about this when i haven't been around computer science for a reasonable period of time.

i think that so far all of the really enjoyable events in my life have been enjoyable, to some degree, because they haven't taken place while doing schoolwork. i don't think that, in the absence of school, i would have made the effort i did to stay up until midnight reading books as a young child. i don't think that i would have spent nearly as much time playing guitar in junior high if i hadn't considered playing guitar alone in my room to be the polar opposite of going to junior high.

in short, i only find the things that i do for enjoyment to be enjoyable when i am putting off something i have to do to do them. i loathed my summer alone because i had nothing to avoid, and my summer was therefore stripped of most of its jouissance, as well as most of its pleasure.

side note: i could not think of a word to put after 'stripped of most of its' in the above sentence, and the first word that came to mind was jouissance, which turned out to be the word i needed. it also references a philosophy/philosopher that i consciously know nothing about and i am struck with awe by the things held in my head that i won't know about until i require them.

i majored in computer science because i felt that comp sci is everything that school should be. it is rigorous, it is strict, and it is amazingly lucrative. this makes it the optimum curriculum to avoid.

secretly, i enjoy writing things, which means that when i had to write things for school i hated having to do something i do for fun for a productive reason. however, i have always loathed coding, though i have also always been good at coding. i need to do things i loathe to do things i love. at the same time, i want to avoid doing the things that i loathe as much as possible.

i'm in a hell of a state. it's called the human condition.

worries

2010-09-11T15:40:00.000-07:00

-that i've made some horrible decisions re: who to talk to.

-that i'm in over my head already academically (untrue, but may become true if i worry about it too much)

-that i'm going to gain like 30 lbs before the year is out

-that i'm not going to remain permanently celibate.

-that i can't take care of the people around me forever, and that maybe i shouldn't be taking care of anyone.

-that i can't take care of myself.

-that things are going to lose their mystery.

-that i will never be able to grow a beard.

-that i will be able to grow a beard, but i'll have to maintain it somehow.

-that i will owe the library overdue fines.

-that i still can't do simple things that will directly benefit me without hours of stasis beforehand.

-that i am going to overuse :/

:/ :/ :/ :/ :/

-that i have already overused :/

things i should acquire

2010-08-31T01:34:00.001-07:00

-a pair of those 3sixteen + jeans, or some other similarly slim-fitting pair of raw denim from self edge

-red wing workboots/alden indys

-muji recycled yarn shirts/socks

-black winter parka of some sort

-buzz rickson jacket (doesn't matter what sort, ma-1 would be nice)

-grey shirts

-black shirts

drinking

2010-08-22T08:38:00.000-07:00

alcohol is only good if your non-inebriated existence isn't.

so far, so bad

2010-08-15T03:07:00.000-07:00

it's been like a month since i updated you, darling black page. last time i updated because anna (i think) reminded me that my blog existed in the first place. i forgot about it! i forget about a lot of things. very recently i met some old friends and felt like a self-centered jackass maybe a bit yes.

college is a lot closer than it was, and i'm happy i've finally found an excuse for a last-minute burst of work. (i haven't packed, you see.) luckily, i'm not an especially possession-oriented individual, so packing shouldn't take long, but i do have to clean parts of the house i've spent years cluttering up. this sort of scares me, honestly. nothing quite says 'home' to me like 'horizontal surfaces all covered with my detritus.' (taken literally, that might mean that every horizontal surface was covered with my dead skin and fingernail clippings. NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH, black page. i mean things like old pieces of paper covered in math work and mugs that used to have green tea in them.) bet you five bucks that i get really overdramatic and feel like i'm erasing myself from the world at least once.

looking back on things, the last two times i've had to clean things out and move somewhere i was either crying or almost crying the whole time. in both cases, there were emotions involved that don't really apply to this particular egress, but i still worry, you know? last time i moved, i threw out all these sweet lights i rescued from the school district and i still miss them sort of. it was really nice to always at least have the OPTION of clipping these lights up everywhere.

my sister's going back to school today and she doesn't seem like she wants to at all. i'm really going to miss her.

...

i haven't posted since MARCH? jesus.

2010-07-23T22:56:00.000-07:00

i only remembered this existed when i had to find samples of my writing to use on some website that tells you what famous author you write like the most. (after trying basically everything on here i ended up with david foster wallace, which is why i am reading infinite jest, which i do not like as much as i should. i feel the algorithm is probably broken.)

i know this sounds dumb but SO MUCH STUFF HAS HAPPENED, blog/diary/lit confessional marquee. way back in march, i was still only semi-certain i would finish high school. (graduation felt completely unreal. i still can't believe that i will soon be educating myself/being educated by choice.) i still thought that there was some outside chance that one of the schools i applied to would think that i was admittable. (the more i read the blogs/prose/whatever of people who i find out later have entered the ivy league, the more i notice that they all seem to project this strangely clean-cut attitude even in their writing. what i am trying to say is that the more i read these people's blogs the more i realize that i am not one of them.) i probably should have realized earlier that being a middle-class white male with good test scores and a checkered academic past means you start out a little low in the college admissions game. not as low as asians start, but they don't have checkered academic pasts, generally, and i think they tend to know a bit more.worry more about college than i ever would.

i was in a band. it was honestly pretty fucking strange and i hated it. i was the coolest person in the band (by my own determination, admittedly) which is not good. i was also far and away the best at my instrument of choice. i also had possibly the smallest amount of creative control, though i think that was mostly an unwillingness to steamroller over other people and make them feel stupid/that i am unassailably right at all times.

i read a lot of stuff. i didn't really listen to a lot of stuff because i decided to start listening to my music in alphabetical order, which means i'm plowing through a bunch of shit i don't like/am no longer interested in/whatever i don't care to get to things i actually do like. i saw a couple movies.

i fell out of love with tao lin. (after falling out of love with him, i named my new laptop after him. i never really fall out of love, i guess.)i quit the internet. i started a twitter account. i made new friends. i carded people. i threw rocks. i lied, a couple times. i played video games more than i normally do. i had some moments where i felt weak, pathetic, and useless. i had some moments where i was convinced i could live forever. i had at least one really good conversation with a friend. i sang a drunk girl a lullaby. i wrote a lot of parallel sentences. i continued being self-referential. i need to stop now.

it's really really weird being old. i'm not smoking cigarettes, fucking, or paying my own rent yet, though. so, not that old?

the first part of this blog post came really incredibly easy. this is the part i sort of have to squish out of myself i think. that might make it better or worse.

i don't feel ready for anything, anymore. the one constant in my life so far is that my goals for the future are fulfilled in an obnoxious delphic-prophecy way that drives me up the fucking wall. when i was little, i wanted to play guitar, but i can't play in front of people without pissing myself, basically. i wanted to go to u of i for comp sci, but now that i'm doing so i only feel a faint distaste, as if i'm settling for this, somehow. i didn't ever want to have sex, and now that i want to it seems increasingly unlikely that it'll ever come to pass.

someone warned me that a lot of people stop being straightedge in college. i don't think he understands that i have the energy and the resilience of the late convert, the one who comes in fully aware of what he's up to. i'm not a choir boy, i'm c.s. fucking lewis. i've seen what drugs do to others. i hate it. i don't ever want anyone to see me like that. i don't ever want to be dependent on someone or something. (unless that something is facebook, apparently.)

i feel like there's this great euphoric idea in my head, but i can only discern parts of it. i think the most important part about this idea, about a lot of things in my life really, is that i'll only know it when i don't need to anymore. even if someone somehow managed to tell me what the huge thing under a tarp in my head actually is, i wouldn't comprehend until it was far too late. maybe that's the real revelation. i only comprehend things when it's too late for my comprehension to affect anything.

the above does not make my future sound particularly palatable.

things i am happy i have near my desk

2010-03-20T23:26:00.000-07:00

-remote control for my speakers (so i don't have to reach out and actually touch them to turn them down/off)

-box of miniwheats (can't slowly descend into obesity if i don't eat CONSTANTLY.)

-skateboard bearing (it makes a whizzing noise when i spin it. nothing is more pleasant.)

-external hard drive (all that tranny porn has to go SOMEWHERE. and it can't be taped to my walls because if i have to move i'll have to take it down.)

-x-acto knife (to cut myself with lol not really)

-books (LRNG IZ D BST)

-a girl skateboards sticker. (yay for the team that supports eric koston.)

formspring.me

2010-03-16T22:16:00.001-07:00

Ask me anything http://formspring.me/mdkmdk

it won't fucking start if you don't fucking start it, now will it?

2010-03-07T02:21:00.000-08:00

today i woke up and drove by myself to crete-monee high school. i went pretty fast on the highway because i assumed i wasn't going to be able to find my way around crete. (whenever i go fast i feel like my thoughts speed up and i get significantly more aware of my surroundings. i'm very nervous and very assured at the same time. nervous because i'm aware a mistake could hurt me/kill me/cause significant damage to the car. assured because i don't think i really believe i can make mistakes. if i did believe i could make mistakes, i don't think i'd be able to drive.) i ended up not being able to find my way to crete in time really, and only ended up getting there because while i was just driving around for something to do i found one of the streets that i needed to get on. it was serendipitous.

crete-monee high school scares me. my high school is laid out like a figure 8 with a tumor hanging off of it, and i find this shape to be very easy to navigate. i do not understand how crete-monee is laid out, and i found my way through it in the same very serendipitous way. i stopped being a complete asshole to everyone in sight somewhere around my acceptance to college and for some reason people seem to be acting significantly more friendly in my presence. i don't want to admit the two things are connected.

we played a song for a bunch of people. i liked the way i played, though i wasn't sure how anyone else played. i saw a girl who i like in the audience and we smiled at each other. (i think i like her because she looks like she was meant to live in another time period. there are some girls who are clearly going to be remembered as a product of my generation when my generation is old and we tell younger people what girls used to dress like, and this kind of scares me really so i prefer girls who seem apart from time.) i saw a kid in the audience who is from a very restrained catholic family i have known for a long time and i made a crazy face at him. he did not seem to react really. post-performance the judge was effusive and it was very strange because most of the time judges judge instead of saying nice things.

afterwards i went to a restaurant that is kind of like steak and shake but not at all like steak and shake at the same time. i ordered a cheeseburger and a chocolate milk shake. i promised the waitress i would not spill my glass of water. (a cop had just spilled his water all over everything on the way out, made a cursory effort to clean it, and walked out.) she smiled at me and we had a short conversation. i read a bit of a book called lush life. i didn't really like it that much. i don't feel comfortable reading books that attempt to maintain a pretense of realism while being written about situations that the author has never experienced. i feel like i am having a vision of the world as i should see it peddled to me, not the world as it is. the cheeseburger was good. i tipped enough to bring my total to an even number and left.

i also bought a cup of coffee from mcdonald's, which was remarkably fresh and hot. i really have no idea what i'm doing with my life.

(sort of a note: i wrote the first of the above two sentences in an attempt to start another paragraph about my day and all these crushing realizations hit at once and i put my hand on my head and the elbow attached to that head on the table and closed my eyes. the second sentence came from that particular place. i felt like if i didn't say all of this the above would be too perfect to live.)

my mother likes to suggest that i should start working construction instead of working my way through the higher education system. i don't think she realizes that my issue with working isn't a lack of tangible goals/accomplishment. i just don't really feel comfortable with the idea that my life is mostly going to be me doing things i don't particularly like doing to avoid consequences that i will dislike even more. sometimes i get really worried that what i'm doing is going to make my entire life more of the same.

i'm not sure if what dave eggers says makes him more enlightened or not. i think that when you shift from someone commenting on other people's things to someone who generates comment, you're more likely to be lenient when you do deign to comment, because you don't have to be shocking or hateful or obscure anymore. it's a continuous cycle, and acting like one part is somehow superior to another part is silly. sometimes you have to tear down and sometimes you have to avoid tearing down because you'll be tearing down what you built or what people you like have built. looking back on past snobbery with anger is like a butterfly complaining about having once crawled on leaves instead of flitting in between them. each part is necessary and needed.i think that when mr. eggers decides to ridicule the person he once was (and by extension everyone who is like him now) he's being JUST AS MUCH OF AN OBNOXIOUS SNOB but on a wholly different level. his disrespect of his previous self is just as reprehensible as his disrespect of r.e.m..

KIND OF A CAVEAT: sometimes i definitely do regret saying "no" to people, and i do wish i could make it up. i regret missed opportunities. i've missed a shitload of them so far.

NOT THAT MUCH OF A CAVEAT, THOUGH: at the same time, i like the person i am now, and i would be a completely different person if i had taken those opportunities. there is no qualitative way to evaluate people, so it's not like i can be convinced that i would be "better" if i had done this or that. i would just be different. it's silly to pretend that your life would improve if you had made decision x.

CAVEAT: certainly there are some decisions that you can regret making, and there are some reasons to hate yourself and what you've done that are entirely legitimate.

TAEVAC: i don't believe i've made any of those decisions yet.

LEFT-FIELD QUESTIONS: if you really stay true to this line of thought, is there anything that can really bring you down? aren't there things that SHOULD bring you down?

RIGHT-FIELD RESPONSE: i don't know. moral absolutism is great until you realize how incredibly difficult it can be to maintain.

I'M FUCKING DONE WRITING: i need to sleep.

don't feel like putting a title

2010-02-20T21:43:00.000-08:00

things to do with my life:

1. write english

2. write a real blog post

3. learn to ollie, etc.

i guess i can get 2 out of the way right now.

i really liked reading boss, by mike royko. one of my grandfathers was unemployed while living on the south side of chicago in the 1950's. (he was an irish immigrant with no education.) he talked to the precinct captain and got a steady job in exchange for "getting out the vote" every election. without machine politics, i wouldn't be here. so as much as i think i am supposed to be convinced that there is something wrong with patronage, i support it for my own selfish image.

i am kind of out of step with my classes. instead of getting back in step, i am worried i'm just not going to ever get in step again. this would be bad for my future. i should get back in step.

i'm going to do that.

2010-01-21T20:40:00.001-08:00

i like richard avedon

i like skateboarding

yay richard avedon

yay skateboarding

how to be fashionable right now (as far as i can tell)

2009-12-29T06:27:00.000-08:00

1. have a truly incredible amount of money. if your parents are rich, that will be helpful. if your parents are not rich, you should knock over a bank. though i am not sure why knocking over a bank will help you (is all the money stored on the roof or something?) it probably will. if you do not have rich parents and you are not rich yourself, you should do everything in your power to inherit wealth. (if you make money outside of fashion/writing blog posts/being pretty yourself, you are never going to be fashionable. accept your inevitable failure)

2. be skinny. as far as i can tell, being a waif is not going to go entirely out of style in the next 10 years. you will also be able to fit in tight spaces and be carried around by the wind.

3. spend that money on a bunch of stuff.

4. don't wear it like other people do.

5. use words with many syllables.

honest answers to college essays vol. 1

2009-12-26T22:59:00.000-08:00

Please submit a one-page, single-spaced essay that explains why you have chosen Carnegie Mellon and your particular major(s), department(s) or program(s). This essay should include the reasons why you've chosen the major(s), any goals or relevant work plans and any other information you would like us to know. If you are applying to more than one college or program, please mention each college or program you are applying to. Because our admission committees review applicants by college and programs, your essay can impact our final decision. Please do not exceed one page for this essay.

I chose to apply to Carnegie Mellon because I really like the name. I have no idea what I am going to major in. I think I am going to ask a friend if a department "needs more people" and then write an essay about how that department is my life.

I hope to one day live in a spare apartment with matte white walls and either polished grey concrete or hardwood flooring. I think this represents a desire to "start over" and cast off the trappings of my current life.

I hope to get a job which enables me to provide myself with the above. When I was young, I wanted to be an astronaut. At the age of 11, I decided that I would actually prefer to become a famous person or a bicycle messenger. Most of my "dream jobs" involve me doing something that I actually enjoy doing (reading books, reading wikipedia, keeping strange hours, downloading things from megaupload, riding a bicycle, exercising) for a truly vast amount of money. Sometimes, I consider male modeling, but realize i am doomed to failure. I am unsure how college will allow me to accomplish any of the above. I am unsure I want to accomplish any of the above. I am hoping college will supply me with certainty.

What influenced you the most in your decision to apply to CMC?

i thought about this and i took you guys off the list of colleges i am applying for.

things to do

2009-12-16T14:38:00.000-08:00

i only blog when i have other things to do that i don't want to do. i think blogging is one of the last things i do when i'm avoiding work.

THINGS I DO INSTEAD OF WORKING:

1. mostly i sit around on the computer

2. sometimes i exercise

3. sometimes i make excuses to go driving and listen to music

4. blogging

i read waveland and how to sell, the two books tao lin recommended in a recent interview. waveland was a surprisingly pleasant book about a man trapped in a web of broken dysfunctional relationships. i think the condition of the gulf coast is supposed to "mirror his condition" somehow. it ends more pleasantly than you might expect. the typography on the cover was all in CMYK, which made me think of the book as "not entirely up to date."

how to sell was kind of like bret easton ellis, if bret easton ellis had spent a lot of time selling jewelry instead of becoming a writer at an early age. i thought it was a little too nihilistic for me. it seemed like less than zero written by someone old enough to really feel empty and wasted in the way that everyone in less than zero seemed to feel. (but they didn't really because they were all TEENAGERS.)

getting my ideas flowing

2009-11-30T02:16:00.000-08:00

flow always makes me think of menstruation. which i fail to understand or spell properly on a regular basis. I wonder if by the time I die they'll have figured out how to mess with men's heads so we can finally find out what periods feel like. I feel like by the time we're able to "brain-in-a-box" to that extent, there will already be a backlash against the technology, a group of people unwilling to allow the hijack of their synapses. I'm not sure why the rebels in movies are always poorly dressed and the people they rebel against are incredibly well-kept. I don't like the idea that rebelling requires being unsanitary.

so done with this class

2009-11-30T01:08:00.000-08:00

ugh

2009-11-23T21:11:00.000-08:00

just had one of those days where i felt like i was saying what i was actually thinking/not really being composed enough. feel kind of like an emotional basket case. not sure i'm that worried, though. generally the people i vent to aren't people whose company i really feel like keeping.

today i read a poem written in the 17th century that was basically like:

hey baby

i know you're chaste

i'm not chaste

i would prefer to have sex with you before you die

because corpses can't have sex

and i really don't want to have old-people sex

and your virginity should not be taken by bugs eating your decaying body

love

-me

i really liked it because i only realized that was what he was saying once i finished going over it with my pencil. (poetry, like anything from back in the day, is best carefully annotated.) there was this huge grin on my face and everything.

i bought a bunch of stuff for my internet secret santa. hope he likes beard care products and books about movies because that is what he is getting. (maybe the complete far side collection. i ain't got no moneys for it though.)

here is what i am going to do

2009-11-16T15:22:00.000-08:00

listen to "hospice" by the antlers

i do not really like hospice anymore

it grew on me and then i realized how stupid it was way too quickly

it felt like riding a skateboard downhill and realizing i am going fast enough for any mistakes to cause semi-major/permanent damage to my person and i just start shaking like the salt and i level out and i'm still shaking and i have to sit down for a while because i can't do anything else.

i think i put myself in these shitty fucking "gauntlet" situations in the hope that one day i'll pull through and i'll never have to worry about procrastination or failure ever again.

my resting heart rate is like 40 bpm

this either means i am in excellent shape or that there is something very wrong with me

i can't wait for robots to figure out how to work harder than us so i will never have to work. i will instead sleep until 3 pm every day and spend my nights doing things that should probably require daylight. i feel like most people will be "with me on this one."

i would like to be the last person on earth so i could walk around on highway offramps.

i am closing my browser now.

goodbye google chrome

goodbye blog

goodnight moon?!

2009-11-15T23:59:00.000-08:00

a list of the things i have done that are not the paper due by tomorrow morning:

1. high intensity interval training

2. called teacher, had argument about grades, won argument about grades, grades for some reason did not change. (sore loser?)

3. watched a lot of how i met your mother

4. read blogs

5. drove

6. THERE WERE A LOT OF THINGS THAT WERE NOT WRITING MY ESSAY AND I MADE SOME BAD DECISIONS THAT IS WHAT THIS POST IS ABOUT

at least i'll be somewhere else, while you're pissing on my casket

2009-11-11T09:28:00.001-08:00

hiit is significantly harder than i expected

attn: university of illinois at urbana-champaign

2009-10-30T18:31:00.000-07:00

i am tired of attempting to appear sane in your essays

here is what my essays should be:

ESSAY #1: In an essay of 300 words or less, please discuss your academic interests and/or professional goals.

fuck you. i want to sleep on the floor of my four-bedroom house.

ESSAY #2: In an essay of 300 words or less, choose one extracurricular activity, work experience or community service project from the list you provided on the application and explain why you initially chose it, why you continued with it, and how you benefited from it.

i cut the arms off of a homeless man, and then beat the homeless man to death with his own arms. i initially chose to do it because i could no longer cope with the torturous college admissions process. i continued to do it because while removing his arms i had opened a major artery to the air. his death was inevitable by then and i felt i might as well derive some enjoyment from him pre-demise. i did not benefit in any easily-articulable way.

Is there any additional information that you feel we should be aware of while reviewing your application, including extenuating circumstances that affected your academic record?

bruce lee could do 50 one-armed pullups with both his right arm and his left arm.

1500 words about tao lin

2009-10-26T14:12:00.000-07:00

i was the last person to catch on to tao lin, i think. obviously that isn't entirely true but by the time i found out about him and realized how wonderful he was a vast and disparate group of my friends had already heard of him/owned his books/read his books/had opinions on him that were more than a couple words long and could be articulated in a conversation with someone else. A tiny asian girl who i thought was mostly into her tiny asian boyfriend had already found out about him and owned both his books, which at the time was all that he had ever published. A friend/ride home from school who is a huge metalhead and really likes bukowski had forced a librarian at a previous school of his to work some sweet sweet inter-library loan magic and retrieve for him the only two extant copies of tao lin's work that at the time could be found in the illinois library system. a slightly larger polish girl had found out about tao lin because she religiously reads gawker and tao lin and gawker have a strange sort of love-hate relationship. i do not pretend to understand it, nor do i want to. i found out about him because i read hipster runoff.

tao lin's website is kind of strange. it is a blog just like this one except it is white instead of black and he updates far more than i do. there is a link to his art, which is strange and wonderful and not particularly well-executed. there are links to his stories, which are also strange and wonderful and executed far better. he likes writing poems but i am not really a "poetry person" because i really want to bang emily dickinson and i fear i might be "biased" in her favor. i do not want this bias to ruin my blog post. i do not want to let this bias into my life. i would not mind letting tao lin into my life.

the first thing i read by tao lin was hikikomori. it is about tao lin and ellen kennedy pretending to be people who never leave their rooms. it is written as a series of letters. it makes me want to leave whatever room i am in as soon as i start reading it, because it captures the lives of lonely people who are going to remain lonely for an indeterminate amount of time very well. i would recommend it to anyone who has not read it wholeheartedly. i am in an online english class and i use a paragraph from it as my "signature" on my "profile" that other students may see and read, because it is so good that i want other people to read it and love it and be transformed by it. it also made me read a book by richard yates, which set off a 6-month span where i read yates/about yates constantly and became an incredibly miserable human being. i would like to thank tao lin for that if i ever meet him in real life. i only read hikikomori because it was free, just like i am only writing this blog post because i want to receive something without any monetary expense of any sort. i also read his poems but i am generally not a fan of poems and do not want my anti-poem bias to infect this post about tao lin.

what i like best about tao lin is that he makes me feel empty inside sometimes. most books/media/anything do not succeed in making me empathize. tao lin does. i think this is because tao lin is somewhat like me, but more miserable. tao lin is the only person who can capture the feeling you get when you are alone in a place meant for vast amounts of people. other people try, i think. but they fail.

i am reading silence, which is a collection of writings/lectures by john cage, who spent a lot of time being avant-garde and invented ambient music because he felt like it. he did the whole obnoxiously long repetition thing years before tao lin was conceived/brought into existence. people would come up to him and tell him that what he did was so easy anyone else could do it, but they never became famous avant-garde composers. i think tao lin could be anyone, but tao lin is the only anyone who wants to sit down and spend hours in front of a computer writing things that i will later read that will force me to imagine a void in place of my stomach. i admire tao lin greatly.

tao lin is a self-promoter, but not in the "advertising using google" or "plastering walls with posters" fashion. he likes gimmicks. i am part of one of his gimmicks. it is a testament to the quality of his work that in spite of my self-conscious awareness that i am a minor part of a gimmick of his i have chosen to sit down and write 1500 words.

i think tao lin might not give me a book for a blog post that was simply "i quite like tao lin" written 300 times. i thought this could be hypocritical because tao lin also likes repetition quite a lot but i think tao lin would never stoop that low. would he? i do not actually now know.

tao lin attended nyu. nyu has sent me a lot of application material/come to our college stuff in the last couple months and i have wondered if i am truly ready to go to new york and use the same library tao lin does for my own blog posts. i feel like someone somewhere would define that as "moving up in the world." i somewhat disagree. i think tao lin probably lives in a very small and spare apartment. hardwood floors and a black chair in front of a wooden desk. he sleeps on a mattress on the floor. all the food is healthy.

tao lin has shoplifted before. i have never shoplifted. i firmly believe that shoplifting is always wrong. i have let tao lin slide because he was probably not shoplifting to fill the void inside his soul/because he felt like it/because his friends pressured him to and he simply could not take the pressure. i do not think tao lin is a "weak individual."

tao lin's new book has been reviewed by serious media outlets. this seems kind of strange to me. i wonder if tao lin felt like he was finally attaining legitimacy. i doubt that. tao lin was legitimate beforehand. he will remain legitimate in the future. tao lin is probably not going to slide into irrelevance in the next week or so. maybe the week after that.

tao lin loves richard yates. strangely enough, he doesn't really remind me of richard yates that much. richard yates was an alcoholic who had trouble "getting it together." tao lin seems to "have it together already" probably because he is "not able to afford to abuse substances heavily" because he is a "starving artist." i do not normally use a lot of quotes but i think that they reflect the "tao lin spirit" that is driving this post quite well.

richard yates wrote a great first novel and then fell off for a little bit afterwards and then staged a comeback. tao lin is still alive so i cannot really comment on his literary career with quite the same amount of accuracy. he wrote a really good essay which divided american authors into levels, with philip roth at the top. i have never read anything by philip roth. i have read a lot of stuff by tao lin.

i think tao lin is a vegan. i know some people who have "gone vegan" to fit into tight pants and pick up skinny members of the opposite sex. i do not think that is why tao lin is a vegan. he is probably a vegan for pleasant and admirable reasons.

tao lin should probably use an ergonomic keyboard to avoid repetitive stress injury. it worries me that tao lin could be crippled by writing too much. i want tao lin to be prolific. i want to be an english teacher and tell my students that tao lin was just like them once. i'll be lying because most of them will probably be "type-A" personalities who raise their hands in class and intend to not become starving artists. maybe tao lin wanted to be something else once. tao lin might have wanted to be a helvetica asterisk. if i was tao lin i would strive to be a helvetica asterisk. i would lie on a mat and paint every surface that might be seen black and make myself a five-pointed star. i think tao lin might? i do not know, tao lin is a mysterious human being.

tao lin is in a band. i am not sure what he does in the band. i think it is similar to robert hunter's role in the grateful dead, which involved a lot of writing and not a lot of music-making/being "in the band" from the perspective of crazed groupies.

this post reads like it was written by someone who has read "far too much tao lin."

my english teacher says i write too vaguely

2009-10-21T10:42:00.000-07:00

i am inclined to disagree. there is a difference between writing vaguely and not reading far too much into a poem/story that was not intended to hold up under analysis.

she included an essay that is apparently the "right way" to write about things and it makes me wish i could write like that. i guess i'm going to now. no use blogging.

:(

2009-09-23T20:09:00.000-07:00

i need company

i need human heat

have you ever worried

2009-09-21T20:16:00.000-07:00

that you're not writing anything of truth or value and you're just fabricating a bunch of nice things from whole cloth?

because you probably are!

i was writing some garbage for english and i realized that at some point i had stopped being interested in saying things of value and started just seeing how many phrases i could turn, how many nice sounding sentences I could string together to please someone by pulling the wool over their eyes and making them like it. ugh. i need a bit more respect for authority.

i'm reading bullshit science fiction right now. i guess i'm a bit tired of meaning. anything i write seems to lose its value when it gets long enough to stand by itse

before i go to sleep

2009-09-08T21:37:00.001-07:00

i rode my bike 63 miles yesterday. it's weird feeling like your body truly cannot go any further and going further anyway because you're awesome.

my mother washed my mp3 player.

i did homework while at home and set it up so that i would be able to print said homework out when at school, just like a real student

i am like 95% sure i have/will continue to have straight a's for the first time since 4th or 5th grade when i decided that i was so awesome i no longer needed to work hard, which led to me ALMOST failing out of public high school and then ACTUALLY failing out of IMSA. i saw a sign on the window of an empty room saying "this room isn't empty... it's full of POTENTIAL." sadly, potential is never going to fill my room/plate/insatiable lust.

i quit facebook and aim.

i longboarded around cantigny, which is apparently so weird it doesn't show up on google. the best part was falling off the longboard. sometimes i am all like "oh god nothing feels REAL anymore why am i so old ugh." throwing myself upon the mercy of the ground pretty much shuts that especially obnoxious part of myself up. i haven't lost any sensation, i've just figured out how to tune it out for a change.

i kind of want to talk to girls, but not as much as i want girls to stop talking. i get where necrophiliacs come from sometimes. love and silence are mutually exclusive.

i have shifted from "spending money on things" back to "wishing i could spend money on things"

hahaha ellen if you're still reading this, your sheer ability to produce scares the shit out of me. i wish i had that much to say about anything sometimes.

i feel so nice right now. not nice enough to stop saying mean things about others or living in my own special little eccentric social bubble, but nice enough to announce it to all none of the people reading this.

thought

2009-09-02T20:52:00.000-07:00

it's not that fun reading a book written from the perspective of a protagonist and knowing you're going to be privy to great events and you're going to read about something great the guy in the book did.

would it be worse to read about someone who watched one of those people succeed against all odds and ride off happily into the sunset?

i can't tell.

music

2009-08-30T13:46:00.001-07:00

two bands that i like very much are bands that came preloaded on a computer that my family bought 8 years ago. i'm not sure why i listen to them. am i yearning for my childhood? are they actually good? is all the music i listen to just an attempt to reclaim an earlier and significantly more sane version of myself? do i like the thing in itself or do i like the feelings it provides me with? (the latter)

this is how the modern stay scared

2009-08-27T19:31:00.000-07:00

the mass media.

get it?!

i am wallowing in self pity

2009-08-25T20:57:00.000-07:00

i imagine self-pity to be remarkably similar to a gigantic pool full of water that is just warm enough for you not to want to do anything in it.

i want to adopt a positive outlook on life but i feel like i would raise it wrong and it would major in business and become rich and famous and support me in my old age out of obligation.

i want to stop using the letter i to refer to myself but there is no other better option.

i want to start recieving replies to text messages i have sent, because it scares me that the people i trust enough to say things to are people who don't know what to say in return.

i need to stop using want because maybe my life shouldn't revolve around my desires.

i think all the options ahead of me look about as bad as they did pre me ruining a significant portion of my life. they say that whenever a door closes a window of opportunity opens. they forgot to mention that there is only one door and you already know where it goes and that the window of opportunity is actually 40 stories of freefall and an 8 year old child who will be afraid of falling for the rest of his life and that when the window closes you realize the door only looked closed and it's really just waiting for you to come on inside like everyone else.

language is not a good way for me to convey feelings and i hate that out of all the possible mediums i could use to convey emotion this is probably the only one i'm remotely competent at.

some days it's a struggle to not do something crazy just to break the monotony. i was helping my father and a tattooed man load a powerwasher into the back of a 2001 forest green honda odyssey and i almost closed the trunk on their heads/upper bodies because i was tired of talking and standing and living. i don't know what closing the trunk would have done and i think that's why i wanted to do it. actually i know what it would have done except i don't know what the consequences would be.

i think i'm just going to join the air force because at some point my vast potential will be useless and it'll be great if at that exact point i'm flying a fucking jet because i can just crash it or something and nobody will be like oh that's all you did with your life because they'll have to say oh that's all that red streak in the desert over there did with his life? hopefully they'll have trouble figuring out how to say that without offending someone or something and they won't say it.

i think i'm done for the night.

stolen microphone silver book big sharpie cheap pen imsa class of 09 id

2009-08-24T14:09:00.000-07:00

i don't want to deal with anything right now. not wanting to deal has been basically all i've been wanting to do for the last however. i don't like that i have a life in which my actions have consequences. i want to be on a monorail passing through life, shielded from things happening by a thick sheet of carefully bent polycarbonate. it really scares me that the rest of my life is going to be me making up for a very brief and glorious period where i pretty much did exactly what i wanted and the only response i can think of is to do something i want to do again.

i don't think i'm actually writing anything real or meaningful right now because i'm not even writing as myself i'm writing as someone else's idea of myself and i don't know who that other person is but they make me out to be much more than i am i think. i really like how indeterminate that sounds.

i guess i can see why we're all searching for authenticity. i saw a girl with a fake louis vuitton backpack today and i was repulsed by the very idea of the thing. there's not a lot more superficial than fake brand-name products. it's an attempt to buy into things deeper than yourself (timeless/very good design, other people associated with the brand, the brand itself) for far less than the price of admission charged. all the appearance and none of the substance. it's way too easy to copy things these days and it's only going to get easier and harder to deal with.

at imsa

2009-08-22T17:10:00.001-07:00

i get this sinking feeling in my stomach that seems to confirm that my time there is over. everything looks like it has aged badly in my absence. i knew i should have stayed home today.

stale bagels empty bottles guitar string clippings wire cutters and a big hug mug

2009-08-11T05:34:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to work today because my wisdom teeth are still bleeding and all i really want to do is sit around until my pain medication wears off and then take more pain medication. I feel really guilty about this, because i feel FINE right now. But work tires me out and I can't actually eat solid food yet (I've lost two pounds) because parts of my mouth that were formerly occupied by chunks of enamel are very angry at me.

I'm done with my stupid online health course. I didn't turn the last two assignments in but I did take a quiz I completely forgot to take and i feel like those things will balance out and i will get an A in the class. I'll get an A anyway. It's mathematically impossible for me not to. I don't want to be awake anymore.

Have you ever worried that if you stuck your hand into the dirt in the wrong place and yanked you'd pull away a thin strip of what feels like plastic and see gears and wires and you'd realize that we're all living on a vast clockwork facsimile of some actual place on the other side of the universe? After hours of frantic figuring in your clockwork home on your clockwork desk you'd realize the only thing able to provide enough energy to power the WORLD would be our hatred for one another. The leaders of the world aren't stupid. They're just in on a very big secret and they have to do horrible things so people can live and keep doing horrible things.

Would that be nice? Would you be confused? Would you start a war?

mike should be making flowcharts.

2009-08-09T09:12:00.000-07:00

INSTEAD it's time for

VAPID MATERIALISM VOL. 1

(things mike wants and so far has found himself unable to buy because parting with money is like a petit mort except it's not an orgasm i actually just feel like spending money is like dying.)

-american apparel. i need some new thermal longsleeve t-shirts and some slim slacks and some of those obnoxious muted stripe tees. they appeal to my utter hatred of branding.

-a.p.c. new/petit standards (as far as i can tell the petit standard is the new standard if the new standard wasn't severely vanity sized. my hips/skeleton/everything are not going to fit in a 28 but in the new standard that's what they're supposed to fit into. i've also really considered buying the work boots they have that are 475 dollars but i can't spend 475 dollars on anything. there are a.p.c. clothes that look kind of cool too but the jeans are clearly where it's all at. there was a duffle jacket from last season that looked excellent but it's impossible to find now, and the only REALLY good looking jacket this year is close to a grand.

-nike loopwheeler hoodie. http://www.nike.com/nikeos/p/sportswear/en_US/commerce/men?hf=10002^12002^4294965514^4294967157&country=US〈_locale=en_US&blog=en_US#?ll=en_US&ct=US&pid=242266&cid=1&pgid=242268&p=PDP reasons i like it: 1. no swooshes anywhere visible. 2. made on old school loopwheeler machines by japanese people who are obsessed with things that used to be made much better. it has a story! i love stories. 3. i have always wanted a hoodie but you don't find them in lost-and-found bins nearly as often as you'd think.

-buzz rickson tanker jacket. buzz rickson is a vaguely loopwheeler-esque company, except instead of reproducing fleece they reproduce replicas of 1920-1960 military issue jackets that are so close to the originals (which are now nigh impossible to find) that they've been used in museums as replacements for actual jackets. the tanker jacket/military jackets in general were mentioned in young hearts crying as being worn by an obnoxious warhol-esque artist who, despite never serving in the military, co-opted military fashions constantly. the tanker jacket is either worn in his very first appearance or his very last one. either way, there's an excellent little digression by the failed writer and yates stand-in about how he wanted to rip that jacket off this HORRIBLY OBNOXIOUS man who seemed to completely misunderstand what the jacket meant to veterans. I LOVE STORIES.

-http://www.pickyourshoes.com/new3/vans_so_wtaps_cbones.htm though i am unsure because the whole slip-on thing isn't really the whole michael kramer thing but they're a collaboration with a relatively obscure japanese workwear label which is good.

-alife shoes of some sort. some of them are wayyyy too busy for me but most of them are anonymous and very attractive.

vacation

2009-07-24T18:33:00.000-07:00

things i liked about vacation:
-reading books! i read brideshead revisited, which is a really catholic book that also happens to be an excellent read. there was a part that kind of explained how i feel about my catholic upbringing and i can't quote it exactly but it was something like:
"why are you bringing god into this?! it isn't relevant."
"i don't understand why god wouldn't be relevant."
it's not right. but the important part is that growing up and going to mass and reading the bible because i was bored means that the idea of an omnipresent god who is constantly watching what i'm doing is always there and will not go away.
-getting some exercise
-buying a low t-shirt.

things i am a sucker for

2009-07-04T09:05:00.000-07:00

-u2 songs. at this point i'm pretty sure they're all using the same musical cues to make me think OH MAN THIS SONG IS SO EPIC. i'm also pretty sure this is not going to stop me from listening to u2.
-fast food. i have about the least refined taste on the planet, and it's about time i recognized that my criteria for a good meal goes something like "was hot, did not give me the runs, was not too spicy." i am the biggest dominos fan on the planet for this reason.
-the smell old paperback books all give off. i used to/continue to exclusively buy books at church sales, so a lot of my DEFINING READING EXPERIENCES (orson scott card/isaac asimov/i am a sucker for old science fiction) involve this smell in some way.
-books with no plot and a lot of superfluous details. (there are a lot of recent books like this.) i read a book of essays from the 1980's and one of the biggest ones was about bret easton ellis and jay mcinerney. it was like "you can't learn anything about people based on what they're wearing/holding at a given time." i think that was about when i started to form my own opinions on such things, because i was like "actually, yes you can." i think this means i'm a child of a disgustingly consumerist society. for some reason that has ceased to worry me. this part on the list reminds me that i have to read some ann beattie.
-vocal harmonies. this is low.

a friend of mine (more than one friend of mine, honestly) has been like "why do you listen to them? they're so BORING." the answer is simple. because all of their songs contain chilling and beautiful vocal harmonies. for a very long time, the only reason i tolerated bluegrass was because bluegrass vocals rely on these yearning harmonies that pretty much compensated for my hatred of the banjo.
-angle shots. i am always, always, ALWAYS suckered in by a good angle shot. at this point i am consciously aware of it, not because i have some superhuman level of self-awareness, but because i have been fooled by the angle shot approximately 50 times more than the average person. this is easily the shallowest part of the list.
-minimalism. i am a sucker for helvetica and simple geometric shapes. had i been born 90 years ago, i would have moved to berlin and hung out at the bauhaus. i'd pretty much be a bauhaus groupie. when i was really little, i wanted one of those mies van der rohe chaises more than anything.

LOOK AT IT. is it comfortable? probably not. it's a collection of clean perfect lines and people are not nearly as simple as that chair is. but i still wanted it really badly, to the point where i would order furniture catalogs just to pretend i could one day have that chair.
-leaving in the middle of things
-coming back and finishing them
-lists
-not using capitalization EXCEPT FOR EMPHASIS. i think that if normal capitalization denotes someone speaking normally and ALL CAPS suggests that you're shouting all the time, typing in lowercase and using ALL CAPS for emphasis is the equivalent of whispering to people very intensely and then yelling at them and then shifting right back to a whisper. it's the psychopath of capitalization choices.
-being self-referential

important goals for this week

2009-06-29T02:40:00.000-07:00

-work out hard all 7 days. i'm tired of being fat.
-start practicing double bass again.
-don't spend entire paycheck on garbage.
-start working on college apps.
-get checking account.

i

2009-06-25T18:28:00.000-07:00

still have a lot of trouble believing michael jackson is dead. i guess i can see why people still think elvis is alive and out there somewhere. at some point these people become ideas, more than actual people with blood flowing through their veins. elvis swiveling his hips on tv is something i've never seen and yet it feels like a part of me. jackson doing the moonwalk is the same thing, pretty much.

it's really weird.

forcing your musical tastes on others

2009-06-23T15:42:00.000-07:00

my job consists of a lot of boring repetitive labor, done by a bunch of people who (by and large) did not take the job because they like talking/dealing with others/the foibles of others. to keep from going insane and murdering each other, we need a distraction. we need music.

i brought some very nice speakers in and played music! it worked out pretty well, except nobody likes the music i listen to except me. for some reason the rest of the world is not nearly as devoted to listening to slow/soft/depressing music. so instead i put on some BANGERS. that didn't work out very well either. abrasive synth sounds are awesome, but not exactly what the rest of the workforce was looking for. the bosses all are part of that walmart-shopping budweiser-drinking springer-watching country-listening demographic that i had trouble believing could exist in the quantities that it does before i took this job. the rest of the kids are black and tend to like songs that i do not like. i am the ONLY ONE.

part of me felt guilty about inflicting my musical taste on others. another part of me (the part that in others has caused countless horrible things and in me rarely gets much exercise) was like "well they should be listening to this anyway because it's BETTER blah blah blah." another part of me was just happy to be listening to music. this disunity pretty much just translates to a smile on the face and a queasy feeling in the stomach.

playing music for anyone whose opinion you value is incredibly nerve-wracking because WHAT IF THEY DON'T LIKE THE SAME THINGS YOU DO?! (the answer, by the way, to all of this tribulation is simply to never bring up your taste in anything. same reason you shouldn't talk about religion unless you're in a church or a group of people who you trust implicitly.) i have stopped talking to people because they do not like x, x being just about anything i like.

THIS LEADS TO

does the media you consume determine your value as a person? no. do the clothes you wear make you one thing or another? no. can the vague ideas you get about someone based on the media they consume/clothes they wear turn out to be correct depressingly often? yes. we can't all be outliers on the scatterplot of life. and believing you are an outlier rarely actually makes you one.

i don't like dealing with other people.

i think i'm going to stop bringing my speakers and start bringing some headphones.

attainability

2009-06-16T18:37:00.000-07:00

some bands have attainability. some don't. i don't mean in the sense that you can buy their records, because that has NOTHING TO DO with the attainability i'm talking about. we all live on the internet now. if you want some form of media badly enough, you will be able to get it without paying for it.

attainability is best defined as the band giving off the feeling, when you're sitting there listening, that you could go and do the same thing. the beatles do not have attainability (not even their early stuff) because they are simply too perfect. the velvet underground do because their songs sound like they were written by someone who could only play 6 chords and wanted to get as much mileage out of them as possible. both bands are equally good, but the velvet underground are simply more attainable.

there's more. i'll think of it later.

constant fight with no winners

2009-06-16T17:44:00.003-07:00

i really like reading. i read a lot. today i read 6 volumes of Naruto at work because i felt like it and i'm awesome.

BUT i can't seem to do that whole thing where you only read things that are good for you. i have to read HORRIBLE HORRIBLE books (or at least books that are easy to read) so i can muster the strength to push me through some healthy edifying reading. i spent the first semester of this year working my way through a french book i swore never to namedrop again, and i also read:
-14 or 15 absolutely HORRIBLE young adult novels
-breaking dawn (so bad it gets its own special place on the list.)
-anathem (so good it gets its own special place on the list.)
-various non-fiction things
-iono it's not like i made a list or anything.

and i always feel vaguely guilty about reading things that are clearly just time-wasters, but i LOVE to do so. and that is kind of the whole constant fight thing.

i have lost my wallet, a headphone to headphone connector cable, and my mp3 player in the last day. i really hope i find them by tomorrow. le sigh.

we're gonna clean something this summer

2009-06-10T16:50:00.000-07:00

i am really good at my job. i kick ass at cleaning windows/computers/lights/furniture and tying cords together so they don't get in the way of the scrub crew. people like me at my job, because unlike almost every other kid, i don't run away from hard work.
i like my job. i like having a routine that holds my days together, because when i have no reason to wake up i just don't bother waking up. inertia should probably be my middle name.

i hate my job.

i hate doing nothing.

2009-06-07T17:05:00.000-07:00

here is what i did today:
1. nothing.

here is what i liked about today:
1. see above.

here is what i am going to do about this:
1. see above.

WHILE WE'RE (I'M) ALL HERE:

the american analog set are a really good band. you should listen to them.

they made the same album five or six times, so it's a good thing that it's a really good album and you'll like it a lot.

the first time somebody said that a band made the same album more than once, i actually thought it was the truth, that some band had re-recorded (what a great prefix, what a great verb) an album and released it again. it actually means that the albums sound like parts of a beautiful cohesive whole, and that you'll like the american analog set a lot.

the lead singer of the american analog set did a split EP with BEN GIBBARD, the lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie, the only thing in this whole post that deserves proper capitalization. i capitalized ep properly too, though.

too late now.

i can never place / the face with the name

2009-06-06T18:45:00.000-07:00

i don't know what the last post on this blog actually says. i know that the title is something i was utterly obsessed with when i was someone else. i know that i stopped writing on it because i felt i had nothing to say. i know i started writing on it like 2.5 years later because someone told me i should start writing again, so i guess it's a simple leap to say that i have a very low opinion of myself, which is probably also the reason for the lowercase i.

here is how i have changed since my last post.
1. i have grown taller.
2. my voice has gotten deeper.
3. i am now old enough to go get killed in a dusty desert nicknamed the cradle of civilization.
4. my taste in music and art is probably worse.
5. i think i know my limits.

here is what hasn't changed.
1. i cannot touch my toes.
2. i don't like going home and i can't stand being away from home.
3. i am a vast and complex machine that turns food into paradoxes.
4. i am redundant.
5. i am unable to finish lists on a high note.
6. i am uneven.

2006-09-01T23:39:00.001-07:00

this is here basically because my dad doesn't know it's here