Incompletes

I hide behind sarcasm because I fear honesty.

2006-09-08T14:53:00.000-06:00

the chair next to you's free

2006-09-08T01:48:00.000-06:00

it's back again.

the desperate need to be a part of something.
something bigger than me.
bigger than this.
bigger than all of it.

i don't know how it works.
i don't know how i don't have it.
and i don't know how i don't know.

maybe it's something i did.
maybe it's something i didn't do.
maybe it's something i don't know how to do.

and maybe no one else has it.
and maybe no one else wants it.
maybe it doesn't even exist.

but it's here.
the hole.
the need.
the desire.

nothing much to do

2006-08-05T10:58:00.000-06:00

i'm in the middle of a do-nothing saturday which is part of a do-nothing weekend and i couldn't be much happier.

it's been a while since there was a day so nicely gray and morning where i could sleep in but decided i didn't really want to. not because i have important things to do, but because i just wanted to be awake for this beautiful welcome freedom.

leisurely making breakfast and reading the paper and two things that i haven't done in far too long.

i love the feeling of absolutely no obligations for an entire weekend.

i feel the need to tell someone this. and with all my whining and bitching and moaning on here this seemed as good a place as any. recently this stupid blog has been nothing but regurgitations of feelings of dispair. and i hope i can stop doing that and start writing about things that are interesting and fun and valuable instead.

sure i could make a promise to myself that i'll never write think or say anything negative. i've known people who did that. but it always seemed dishonest to me.

denying any negative feelings doesn't mean that you'll never feel them. it just mean that you'll lie to yourself about them.

but for right now i'm fixing to change.

i woke you up a four this morning, to whimper and to whine

2006-08-04T15:02:00.000-06:00

this whole blogging thing is tired. it's been tired for a while.

maybe it was when i decided to stop pretending that i was something else that i stopped being interested. but when i look at that it's only with disdain, not nostalgia.

maybe it was when i decided i would only write what i was feeling. probably that's it. when i decided the only thing worth writing was variations of a self-important and utterly impotent and empty view of reality.

my problems are not nearly so important or so big as i imagine them to be. as i make them to be. as i feel that they are.

and yet i put them here, and for what? for someone to say i feel the same way, which would be utterly self-defeating. for someone to say that i'm wrong, in which case i would probably disregard all they had said. for someone to say i shouldn't worry, which is no more reassuring than it ever seems to sound.

i guess i thought that putting it here, that pointing out my faults to a small and irrelevant portion of the world that i don't actually interact with, would somehow make the problems go away.

quite the opposite. exaggerating my feeling to make them interesting only makes me feel more depressed and disappointed with all that i, and the world, are not.

i still find it impossible to believe in anything. i don't believe that people can change. i don't believe they want to change. and i don't believe any of them care about anything important.

and i don't believe in the transformative power of ideas or the ability of love to save the world.

i don't believe in anything because i don't want to risk anything. belief is risk.

i don't risk anything that i don't think i can afford to lose. and as i have a precious few things that i'd still claim as my own i won't risk any of them.

i want to believe in things. all kind of things. i want to believe that there are people out there with whom i could feel comfortable. that there are things in this world that i can change. that there are things in the world with living for. or dying for.

but i know that to believe in those things means that i could be wrong. at somepoint in the future i could lose a lot. everything. because i believed in something that just wasn't, that just couldn't be.

i don't know where to start. i don't know how to do it.

i want to learn to believe in people and ideas and causes, but i don't know where to start.

please. someone. tell me how. to begin. to believe.

but it's thoughts like this that catch my troubled head when you're away

2006-07-24T01:33:00.000-06:00

reading hemingway i found this:

"In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure he would never die."

and then i realized i had no one to tell about this. no one to even read it to, no one to even to feign interest in it. no one to not care.

i have at various times turned here when i didn't have anyone to say what i wanted to say to.

and i'm not sure that that's as horrible as it feels. but it feels pretty dissappointing.

i don't know that even if i talked to more people i would have a solution to this problem. part of me doubts there's a person in the world i would tell something like that to.

that's not their problem. it's fundamentally mine. at some point in the past i decided that it was to much to put myself out there. to risk being hurt.

so instead i superficially interact with the rest of the world. i don't really give all i've got.

i half listen to my conversations and half wonder what's behind them. this gets me in more trouble than i'd like, but i've yet to fix it.

i don't really think most people give more than that. but sometimes they seem to. and the seem upset that i'm not.

more and more it all feels like small talk to me. and they call it small talk because it's about small things and thus it relatively insignificant. and i'm bad at it anyway.

i've been told that i should practice. that i need to be good at it. and i always said there was no need. that anyone who wanted to could struggle with what little i'd give them.

i've increasingly realized that they were right. that you need to know how to have insignificant conversations. but i'm still too impatient to do it most of time.

and i think i've been misrepresenting small talk most of my life. small talk is only small when you don't care about the topic. you can have an honest conversation with the exact same words that would at other times be called small talk.

but if you really care how they're doing, asking it not as an idle question but an honest curiousity, it's completely different.

i guess it may just be that i never feel it. i never feel them caring about the responses. and so i don't give them honestly.

maybe it's because i never care. i have to remind myself that it's polite to ask about the other person. rarely do i actually want to know.

maybe i can't tell the difference where i thought i could. maybe they all care. maybe more care than i realize. and then maybe none of them care.

i've wished more than once that i was the kind of person who could genuinely care about everyone. who does genuinely care about everyone. in my life i can only think of one person who honestly appeared that way. maybe i was wrong. and maybe he was amazing.

some people fake it well. some people fake it poorly. some people don't bother to fake it. and some wish they didn't have to fake it. that it was real. and for some, it must be real.

i'm the third and fourth.

and sometimes that makes me pretty damn self-righteous. and sometimes that makes me hollow.

do your dances alone in your room, becoming a star will become your doom

2006-07-19T00:46:00.000-06:00

i used to think that i felt lost because i really was. and then i wasn't so sure.

but really, i don't like being lost and confused. and if i'm addicted i'm stupid and deserve this feeling.

but then what's so hard about getting unlost that i've been unable to do it for more than two years.

partially its for the same reasons i've written too many times on here. the internal contradictions.

that i want desperately to save the world but i'm to scared to. and don't know where to begin. and i don't know anything and have no power.

mostly i think i just don't know what to do. i could become a businessman and hope desperately that one day i'll be rich like bill gates and be able to solve all the problems.

i could become nothing and live a comfortably meaningless life rising to no acclaim and risking nothing.

i could throw all of my advantages away and go work construction all over the world. getting paid very little for very hard work.

i could learn every language in the world and travel around and talk to all the people.

i think i've probably written this same thing before. listing every possible thing i could become and not liking any of them enough to go for it.

i'm too scared that i'll fail to even think to try.

i've been blessed to have a lot of people think very highly of me and give me great goals to aspire to. somehow i don't want to let them down. as though not trying negates the failure to meet the expectations.

this feeling that i've already said all i'm saying is really starting to bother me. it seems that i must quite incredibly simple to keep having the same thoughts. and yet i never ever solve them. i never find the answer.

part of my problem seems to be that i have no idea what i want. i possess more useless things than i should.

and i can't think of a person or place or thing i want either. nothing as abstract as love even.

i decided a while back that romantic love was a poor substitute for something more important. however, i seem to have forgotten what was so much more important or how i was going to get there.

maybe it was self-knowledge. but thus far that hasn't brought me much of either peace or happiness. maybe i just don't have it the way i thought i would or wanted that i could.

so here it is. again. for the millionth time.

i. don't. know.

ain't no sunshine when she's gone

2006-07-17T00:14:00.000-06:00

i recently came across an interesting idea: that emotions are addictive.

i've been wrestling with this in the back of my mind for a while. because i don't know how much sense it makes.

on the one hand i think it's true. obviously if something makes your feel good you're more likely to get addicted to it.

but it feels like an incomplete idea. because what does it really mean?

does this explain why i've felt lost for the last two years? am i somehow addicted to the feeling and thus i keep coming back to it even when i don't need to?

that too makes some sense.

i guess the hardest thing about this is that if it is true i don't know what to do. it seems like to break an addiction to emotions you'd have to not feel anything. that's probably a slippery slope, but i went there.

maybe i just don't like the idea because it seems to real. maybe it's really nothing. the idea was dead before it was thought.

i don't really know the answer.

but should i?

when you've got god on your side

2006-07-12T01:23:00.000-06:00

i thought of starting this with the quote from emerson that got me thinking. but then it happens that emerson's nearly as hard to read as kant and that will never ever do.

essentially emerson said something to the extent of: without God, i would be left only to wander the sensual world unfulfilled. at least that's what i got from it.

and i've been thinking for a long time that i just needed a friend. a real good friend. someone that i trusted and someone that trusted me.

and what i was thinking is that if i could bring myself to believe in God, maybe i wouldn't so much need that. maybe jesus could be my homeboy.

unfortunately i've become convinced through mechanisms beyond my ken that not only does god not exist but he cannot.

i used to think i was an agnostic and maybe with time that simply hardened into atheism.

maybe i was never an agnostic and scared to take the final step of admitting it to myself.

regardless, i guess this is just another reason that i regret that God doesn't exist.

ps the first reason to regret His not existing is given by Jonathan Glover:

"One of the things I regret about there not being a God is that I won't have a chance to have a discussion with God in the afterlife."

pps i feel like this is somehow a departure (somehow dishonest, perhaps) from everything i've put on this blog for long time, and i don't really know what i think about that.

with promises we knew we could not keep

2006-07-11T01:50:00.000-06:00

as soon as i pressed publish on the last post i wondered if it wasn't already too late. if the hope hadn't already left.

i guess my biggest problem is that my most visable problem has sprouted it's own legs.

if at one time it was just that i was socially awkward now i'm socially defiant.

and maybe i was never socially awkward and the defiance was seperate.

the defiance is surely somehow quixiotic though i'd never choose to admit it. there is a large extant to which i do define myself by other people, as much as i dislike it.

i don't talk to people much and always say it's because i don't know a single person worth talking to. but i always wonder if that's really why. or if i'm really just petrified.

i don't know the answer. and when i planned to change i was going to change that. but i didn't know where or how to start. i can't think of a single person i know that i'd like to have a conversation with.

i think this problem is surely as much or more my fault than it is the world's. and yet it's so much easier for me to think that there aren't people out there capable of a good honest conversation.

i don't know. i'm here again and i have only this to say for myself (again):

"Theres nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment, perpetually wearing their 'discomfort' like a favorite shirt." - Jhonen Vasquez

she stands back to sigh this impossible goodbye

2006-07-10T17:33:00.000-06:00

increasingly i've been thinking that i'm doing all of it wrong. every aspect in every way that it could be wrong.

i spend hours on the computers hoping and waiting and wishing that something will come through and grab me and make me feel good and give me direction.

i spend more hours watching tv doing the exact same thing.

and none of this makes any sense but i keep doing it because it's easy and it's comfortable.

it's comfortable for me to be convinced that there is nothing worthwhile and interesting to think or see or do in the world. that way the fact that i don't find anything is validated.

it seems so fundamentally defeatist to never look in place that i could actually find what i'm looking for. blogs are largely vacuous and devoid of anything meaningful and useful and helpful for someone completely lost and looking for meaning and direction.

they're people talking endlessly about themselves and their own stupid meaningless feelings. or worse their stupid meaningless opinions about external thing. maybe that's not worse. but none of it helps me to fulfill a single one of desires or needs.

and worse i'm worried about this blog. i'm worried that if i change and this blog changes anyone who reads it will leave and that will mean something. this is despite that fact that i'll never met a single reader and probably would rather not.

i don't know.

maybe this is the same thing that i've written five times before. and maybe i'll come back in another month and write the same thing again.

and maybe not. i write this with some intention to change. however feeble and weak i do have some intention and hope where before i would never have admitted to any.

i hope i will actually find things that are valuable and make things that are valuable. and it maybe take some work but i'll tolerate that. i can put up with that.

i'm hopeful that i can at least diminish the limitless loneliness and emptiness. that i can find people and things that make me feel good and alive rather than cynical and disappointed.

maybe i'll succeed brilliantly and maybe i'll fail just as brilliantly.

but right now i've got a glimmer of hope.

this is my problem

2006-07-09T02:05:00.000-06:00

it's the same was it always the same?

2006-07-04T01:29:00.000-06:00

i realized that the last two posts were about the same thing. and i thought that was a little dull and boring but i had nothing different to say so i just said the same thing differently.

at some point in the past i decided this blog would only be about me and feelings and so that mostly means that it's honest but also that it's as boring as i am.

i'm not sure that's a good thing. i'm glad i'm not writing the type of shit i did 18 months ago, but i think in someways, even as fake as it was, it was more interesting.

regardless, i'm stuck in a relative funk. i'm just getting by and i'm not much liking it. and sometimes that's really all there is but for at least the last 6 months thats been my predominate feeling. that i just had to keep going.

i wonder if i wouldn't have serious depression if i wasn't so damn rational. there are days that i really don't want to eat, but i know i need to so i do. and i remember that was always a symptom.

i wonder if this funk isn't more serious. but it's not.

i don't think it is. i think it's probably just a funk. i'd prefer it was just a funk.

right now i'm feeling like i should go back and delete all that i've just written. i'm fighting the urge.

i feel like i'm just going forward because that's the only way i know how to go. it's the only way i can go and even if it's hard it's all i can do. and even if it's dull and even if i don't like it, it's better than the other options.

i have days where i'm just glad to exist, but when i look back i tend to forget them. i'm sure there was at least one of those in the last week, but for the love of god i feel like all i've had is pain and hardship. that's too severe. dullness and boredom.

maybe it's summer. maybe it's the accompanying isolation. probably is.

because i know that as much as i don't like people, they're important. but if i don't have a good reason, i don't talk to a soul.

other people confirm that you're sane. that you're ok. that you're normal.

i doubt that validation is all i need but it would probably help.

i probably should act on this realization, but i won't. i guess it's inertia. maybe it's some fatalistic bent that i've always secretly had. some desire to see where this goes, as if this isn't my life and my feelings. as if it's all just some perverse reality tv show that i can't turn away from.

i know this isn't the first advice i've had for myself and not taken.

but i don't really think it's that.

i'm too scared of being weak and vulnerable (and i know i've said that before). if people know i need them and care about them suddenly they'll not respect me.

and surely that's not really how it has to work but it's how i'm always sure it will.

i've always wanted to be tough and solitary. and to the extent i've succeed i was really scared and lonely.

i tried not to admit it to myself but it was always true. and somehow i knew it. i'd rationalize it. everyone was off getting drunk so i didn't want to or need to bother. there was really no one i wanted to see.

the fact that i'd accept those rationales means they were partially true. but as much as i want them to be true i know they're also lies.

i know that i desperately want people to think i'm interesting and cool. and i scoff at their approval for all that i want it.

cynicism is something i've always had a love/hate relationship with. i want so deperately for it to be right and okay and proper to be a cynical misanthrope. but on the other hand i know so certainly that all that they say about cynics is true. that they know "the price of everything and the value of nothing."

all that shit. i know it's true. but it's so essential to the way i see myself that i allow myself to be strong and cynical and denounce all else as worthless and meaningless.

my distaste for wide swaths of the population is due as much to my fear of what they'll think of me as it is to their actual merits or lack thereof.

i don't know what the final result is. i don't know where this is all going.

but i have the feeling i've thought and written all of this before.

and i successfully tied back to the begining. and that's the mark of great writing.

the only answer

2006-07-02T02:11:00.000-06:00

i want so bad for there to be some place some person some thing that just makes me feel completely comfortable and satisfied.

i'm never found such a thing.

and i know that such a thing doesn't exist and can't exist and probably shouldn't exist.

but i can't get past the desire that it does that it should that it will.

and i even know that i probably will not have this dropped into my lap without any work or effort on my part.

but that doesn't really stop my waiting and wishing and hoping for it.

and sometimes i think i'm crazy and alone and dysfunctional and useless for these feelings. this need for something that probably can't exist.

and then i'm sure that everyone who's alive must want this thing.

some of them might have it and some might think they have it and some may think it's impossible and some may be working for it and some may be drowning those feelings and some may just wait and hope.

but me. me. i think it may kill me.

right here and right now

i feel this so intensely that i think i may implode from the desperate desire to feel good and happy and ok.

but i realized that i need you and i wondered if i could come home

2006-06-30T14:07:00.000-06:00

i think i've probably written about this before but it's back again.

i spend so much time looking for them. someone once explained them as "healing texts" but i think he made that term up. basically, it's anything that comforts you and which you feel is good and right and valuable. that's the best i can explain it.

i guess it's essentially some sort of validation that these would provide for me. but they're a lot harder to find than i'd like and most of the ones i do find don't last very long.

it's not the text disappear but that they stop working for me. within probably an hour i usually feel like i was somehow shorted by the text. it no longer feels good and comfortable but old and worn. or maybe it takes on a different meaning.

most of the time i realize that the text isn't actually about me. and usually it makes me feel better by momentarily imagining i was something within it, when i'm still without.

sometimes i feel so glad that i am who i am and not what i'm not. i feel comfortable and happy with who i am.

and sometimes i feel so bad that i am who i am and not what i'm not. i feel ugly and stupid and useless as who i am.

and these two things come and go and i look all the time for something that lets me momentarily feel good about what i am.

and sometimes i feel completely sure that what i'm doing must be detrimental to my sanity and sometimes i'm completely sure that what i'm doing is all that is worth doing with a life.

and sometimes i wonder if other people are so conflicted all the time and sometimes i'm sure they must be because they're people too.

and sometimes i'm sure i'm insane and sometimes i'm sure the whole rest of the world is.

and mostly i'm just lost.

wondering how i got here and how i'll ever get anywhere else.

i don't want to live in isolation anymore

2006-06-30T00:53:00.000-06:00

i think i was wrong last time. i think i made it sound better than it was and misrepresented what it is.

i thought that it was some incredible quieting of the mind but i think what i've actually been doing is dwelling on feelings.

when i feel some emotion i've been grabbing hold of it and continuing to make myself feel that way for as long as i know how.

i'm not really sure what the motivation for doing this is but i'm pretty sure i've been doing it.

i did it last night as i walked home in the dark. i spent the whole walk terrified that i could be killed at any moment. and i knew it wasn't really worth being terrified and i kept telling myself that but i still felt unsafe until i got home and then even then i wasn't so sure.

so onto the why. i think i'm doing it to try to make me feel alive. my life is typically rather boring and this summer has been doubly so, and so i think i'm doing this to confirm for myself that i'm still alive and can feel feelings.

i told myself for a few weeks that i really didn't want to or need to go anywhere. that because i couldn't possibly get more than 5 miles away from my house that i didn't want to do that. i realize that that was a complete lie and it didn't really satisfy my desire to go somewhere else.

and now that i realize how bad i wanted to go i still can't go more than 5 miles from home. i don't think you stop being with yourself and around yourself when you travel, but it does help you take a different perpective.

and maybe that's what i really need.

my mind races with all my longing but can't keep up with what i've got

2006-06-27T18:16:00.000-06:00

i was going to write yesterday about a girl from the bus. on the girl from the bus was a smile that didn't belong.

it was the strangest smile. it wasn't sure that it really wanted to be on those lips. it wasn't really comfortable there and it wanted so bad to get away if only it had had the chance. maybe it was company or the place but that smile just wanted out but couldn't leave.

but then something else happened and happened again and so i couldn't really avoid it.

my mind went completely blank. not like memory failure. just that i couldn't concentrate or think about anything. and it wasn't the kind you get when you're really tired and you just know your mind can't process. this was different.

it's happened before and probably will again. it's hard to explain. it's like my head is completely empty and i can't do anything. i just sat there and looked out the window.

and that was all i could do. and i couldn't figure out why or how it was but it was.

and then the phone rang and slowly i had to emerge from wherever i had gone and get back to this living thing.

it was a good feeling and a bad feeling but i'm pretty completely sure it was just a feeling and not a single solitary thought aside from awareness.

my only thought was that it was happening and i couldn't really get out because there was no need. and it wasn't scary and it wasn't happy it just was.

i just was.

maybe that's all it was.

we all see what we want

2006-06-23T17:56:00.000-06:00

as i walk along the sidewalk. facing oncoming traffic.

i wonder.

what are they thinking?

do they notice me?

do they notice the stupid piece of grass sticking out my mouth? like the farmers in the cartoons.

do they think i'm stupid? for that piece of grass.

do they think it's funny? i think it's funny.

are they worried?

are they anxious?

are they sad?

are they happy?

why aren't they smiling?

isn't driving fun?

and then i see the door.

i go inside.

and i write this.

i start wishing there was something i could offer them consolation what could i offer them

2006-06-19T23:49:00.000-06:00

i think when i used to do this i thought my opinions were genuinely interesting and unique. that's not to claim that they really were, but i thought they were.

these days i can't think of much of anything that seems meritous of posting here. maybe i don't do enough interesting things and maybe i don't think enough interesting things or maybe i've just become too cynical for my own good. but i know about the only feelings i can really seem to muster are displeasure with my roommate. that's all i've got.

maybe i'm dying and maybe i'm dead but i just don't have much of anything to say here.

and on the one hand that makes me sad. as though i'm letting my infrequent visitors down. or maybe i'm letting myself down.

as i remember last summer, i wrote an awful lot. about the weather, about me, about basketball, about whatever.

and now i'll i can shit out is one passively angry piece to my roommate and some unmemorable crap.

maybe i've found better things to do, but going to a class i don't much like with a teacher i feel even less passionate about isn't much better than anything. and sitting at a desk and getting paid to watch movies is surely pretty great, but i can't think it's much better than, well, anything.

maybe this is how it starts. the slow painless trip to suburban sedation.

it starts when you have nothing to say and then after only a year you think discussing the merits of each commercial station on the FM dial and talking about CSI while you pour mediocre coffee down your troat at a job you hate is living.

maybe i'm going there. the road i promised myself i'd never go. the road i swore to myself i'd die before i travelled.

i'm beginning to understand, if nothing else, how it happens. i used to hold every single suburban person with a suburban life in violent contemp for squanding their potential. but most of them never knew they had potential and the rest only got complacent and settled without even realizing that's what they were doing.

one day you give up a bed roll for a california king and the next thing you're stuck forever with your melancholy mediocre life and if you're smart you don't recognize where you are. you mistake your nice TV for a nice life with meaning and substance and you remain sedated.

and though surely you could have done better, for some this is just the better they were looking for. and for some this is good enough. and a few suffer. unsure how to get out from under. the crushing weight.

maybe that's where i'm heading. maybe it's not too late. maybe it is.

maybe i'm already dead. maybe i was always dead.

maybe no one can really do anything. i'm thinking that more and more.

and that's an awfully sad thought.

i think i thought i could change the world until i realized that i might have to actually DO it rather than say it.

and now it's just easier

to lose all hope and surrender to the rising tide of mediocrity.

his goal in life was to be an echo

2006-06-13T01:11:00.000-06:00

actually, i have nothing to say.

it's hard to explain how i'm getting by on so little from you

2006-06-09T01:46:00.000-06:00

part of me wants so bad to just be normal. to sit around with friends and get drunk and watch tv and whatever it is these normal people do.

part of me wants so bad to believe that these normal people are universally unfulfilled empty useless and dead.

and really i know both of these desires have no gounding in fact.

i know that there are no normal people and that no one is really unfulfilled empty useless and dead.

but these are the things that comfort me. the fact that they'll all useless meaningless and evil. when i think that i don't have to be accountable to myself. i can just be better than all the shmucks.

and if i could be normal life would be easy. i could just slide by fitting in.

camus is quoted as having said that "nobody realizes that some people expend a tremendous amount of energy merely to be normal."

and mostly that's what i feel like. i don't really like who i am today. slowly i'm trying to work on it. but it's hard and all i've got is try.

my goal isn't really to be normal. i'd never want that. i just don't want to have to apologize for myself.

that's what i feel like i have to do now.

and maybe i should just learn to accept who i am. surely that would be good and useful. maybe i do need to change.

all i know is that right now. right now. i'm not doing anyone any good.

honey i want the heart i want the soul i want control right now

2006-06-07T00:38:00.000-06:00

sometimes you just stumble on the answers in the strangest places.

i've been trying to figure out why i was so dissatisfied for at least the last week, probably longer. i think that's what it is. that lyric from a springsteen song.

i want the heart
i want the soul
i want control
right now

i think the last line of that's really the answer. the first three lines are something of the theme of my life, the last is new.

i've gotten too lazy. too lazy to look. to expend effort. and instead i've been greedily waiting for it all to just fall into my lap. and it hasn't been.

rather i've been getting what i've come to think of as normal. nothing. no connection. no interaction. no feeling of belonging or understanding. no nothing.

with no effort expended i'm getting nothing and then i'm getting upset with the rest of the world for that.

awhile back i came to see reaching out as weakness. a weak mind and a weak heart.

i wanted to make of myself the lone winter snowlion. and i wanted to change the world that way.

and what i have is too much alone and too little changing the world.

the bitch of it is that i'm too obstenate to change. i'm too strong. i don't need nobody never.

while i was convincing myself that it's weakness that seeks friendship and companionship i decided i was too good for it all. the games we always play.

the way so many people feign interest in another so that someone will feign interest in them.

i convinced myself that that's all there was out there. feigned interest.

and in my life i've been lucky enough to meet some people who weren't faking it. genuinely interested people. good caring people.

but even they haven't taught me any better. i want so bad to be like them. to be interested in all people. to be able to coax the information that really enlivens people. because that's what i like. people who are passionate.

kerouac is far too often quoted on this point.

but i can't do it.

i'm too shy to talk to strangers. i'm too closed off to get excited for other people. i'm too superior to listen to anything anyone else says.

maybe i can't change. maybe i can. maybe i must.

oh if you would sing along

2006-06-04T23:38:00.000-06:00

where did it come from, that pained sweetness in your voice?

do you only have it for me, or does everyone hear this forced tone?

am i the only one who notices it?

am i the only one who doesn't like it?
-:-:-:-
when i read about holden caufield i didn't really get it. i still don't really.

but i'm begining to think you're a phoney.

and i wonder as i haven't in over a month if people really do play some game so that they'll feel accepted.
-:-:-:-
for a while i hated people for playing the stupid game. trying too hard and too blantently to make people like them. you're making me realize that it may just be that people don't know that it's not required.

it may make it all a little less awkward but it looks really forced.

and i'm kind of sad you don't know that you can just be yourself.
-:-:-:-
maybe i got it all wrong. maybe you're the right one. maybe i don't like you because you prove how bad i am at it all.

you prove that someone can never spend a single night alone. wondering about the futility or the meaning or the rationale of it all.

you prove that someone who is a mile from honest can have hundreds of people who profess to care about them.

and sometimes i do envy you. i'd be a liar to say i didn't.

and sometimes i feel bad that i'm not more like you. you seem to like it well enough. maybe i could too.
-:-:-:-
i don't really know you. i probably never will. maybe no one ever will.

but either way i know you'll put on that voice. and give me your brave greeting and your forced goodbyes.

and we'll never know what to do with eachother.

not now. not ever.

we'll make a brand new start

2006-06-03T03:33:00.000-06:00

i've been meaning to get back on this horse for quite a while and being unable to sleep at 330am on a saturday seems like as good a reason as any.

i was just reading some of the shit i've written on here. the first few months are downright blantently embarrassing and fake. the later stuff is far more honest, but i still loath my writing.

and even while i maintained that this wouldn't and shouldn't be edited i think my writing stinks on the first draft. it probably still stinks on the last one but that's why you never read it again.

i'm still not quite sure i remember how i used to do this. i really feel like i have nothing interesting valuable or worthwhile to write here. for the world or for myself.

when i realized i wasn't an invincible genius it started to happen. and now i have no will or ability.

i'm trying to fight my way back here, but with no one reading it this has really become for me. publically for me.

this pain in my chest

2006-05-14T02:13:00.000-06:00

i've been thinking that i really need to go somewhere. to leave all of this past and present and future

behind.

but i was mistaking location for self.

i'm not looking for a new situation be a new me. i'm tired of being me.

i was thinking and there's no where that would actually make me happy to be.

maybe what i want to go away and come back. you do see things different after a time away. maybe that's what

i'm actually looking for.

i'm terribly bored. not so much in the conventional sense. too often people mistake boredom for simply having

nothing to do. or being tired what a thing. or a task.

they see boredom as an external imposition.

which it most certainly is not.

boredom is an internal state that is easier to find reflected in the surroundings. it's easier to see the reflection because it frees the self from responsibility.

i was told today that i was exciting. sarcastically. and i continued to say nothing. because, i thought, this

really has nothing to do with me.

but i've been doing the same thing. i'm pretty sure i don't physically need to go anywhere. although there are

some external conditions i could stand to escape, mostly i just want feel differently about myself and relate

to the world differently.

and maybe travel would bring that. but i'm no brave enough for that. but i'm hopeful. i'll find another way.

and if i fail it's on me. not the people or the places but the self.

i like pleasure spiked with pain and music is my aeroplane

2006-05-14T01:18:00.000-06:00

i'm terrible at goodbye. to people to things to ideas. everything.

this blog for one seems to be in the begining stages of a long goodbye. this wasn't so intentional. i've gotten the habit of feeling compelled to say anything.

i've drowned any passion i've ever had in television, the deep cavarns of the useless internet and the various other meaningless drivel.

it hasn't been so much a conscious choice as a slow progression. i used to be convinced that i could and would change the world. and that what i thought and did really mattered to myself to the people i know to the world. in time i've slowly supplanted those convictions with the bitter truth that i'm powerless. i may be able to change, but only little things. i've gotten lazy. i've begun consumer rather than producing.

and it feels to me like the start of my own death. my own long terrible senseless death.

i don't know what i'm going to do with my life but i'm pretty sure i never ever want a job and a house and family.

i've decided that if i'm alone and sexless my whole life that i can accept that. may even like it.

but i never want to settle down and i sure as hell need to stop the incessent flow. it's been happening lately.

i no longer think i'm the smartest fucker in the world, but i fear that that's because i stoppped being him.

i recognize the value of humility, that's not what i'm saying. i think that i've been increasing submitting to pasivity and fear rather than knowledge and action. part of that's an overromantization.

this is all really leading to nothing. and is only tangentially related to my original goal.

however, i should clarify. this is in no way a finale or a epitaph. this blog is not dead and if anything changes i'll probably come by more rather than less. if only for my own sanity.

i realize all these things now and it's too late

2006-04-29T22:31:00.000-06:00

looking forward i have one dominant fear. that i will at sometime subvert what i want and think for what i should be doing.

that i take a job a don't really like and i tell myself that it's only temporary. and then the weeks stretch for months and on into the years.

and i don't think this is irrational and unrealistic. i get the feeling that this is what happens to just about the entire world.

and i don't like it. not one bit. substituting what you think you should be doing for what you want to do is the first step. but it's not the last.

at the same time that i think i should get out of school as soon as i can because it's not really what i want to be doing, i know that if i go i'll probably start to die.

it seems the "real world" is what ends any idealism that may have made it through the preceding 20 years. worrying about money does that pretty easily.

i want to worry about being a better person and helping other people to improve. but i don't want to be one of those millions of "self-help" gurus who mostly pedal uplifting shit into the mouths of people living other people's lives.

i think academics largely dislike what they do. but then so do most people.

these thoughts don't really come together well. they never do.

becuase at the same time that i don't want to produce anything my entire life i realize that if no one did we'd all be dead.

so i'm back at square one.

he's forgotten but not yet gone

2006-04-26T22:39:00.000-06:00

just when i think i might be able to try believing in people again some stupif meaningless piece of shit comes a long and puts an end to that.

i want to believe in god so that you'll go to hell.

i know these are bad and useless things to think. i won't retaliate but i'll brew here. in my anger. hatred. disgust. and convince myself once again that i'm all i should ever count on.

knowing isn't the same as doing. i know you're a person and their probably a good reason that you're such an emotionless harmful wreck. it may not even be your fault.

i shouldn't sit here loathing you because it's really only hurting me. but knowing isn't the same as doing.

i realize you probably just don't understand. people's irrational affections for inanimate objects. you only love things that give you a chemical high or a hard dick. i know i shouldn't say these things. but knowing isn't the same as doing.

so i'm doing it. i'm sitting here loathing you. thinking of the things i'd do if i was capable of being overtly mean to someone. but i can't.

maybe i'm spineless but anything that makes its harder for me to be mean to people is probably a good thing.

i don't know what to do. but i know i have a lot further to go.

does he ever get the girl?

2006-04-24T17:50:00.000-06:00

i've been stuck on a single thing for the last month and most other things have stopped. i've been noticing more and more the emptiness and i've been trying my best to ignore it because it's to hard to face.

i think that may be why i took such a long unplanned hiatus.

i don't know what it is or how to fix it but i have a lot of ideas that i want to think will fix it. even while i know they probably won't.

while i was blindly looking yesterday i found this:

"Theres nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment, perpetually wearing their 'discomfort' like a favorite shirt." - Jhonen Vasquez

and it seemed to fit so well with what i've been thinking and feeling for so long i couldn't avoid it.

i really came to find a home in constant disillusionment and dissatisfaction.

it was my only constant.

i'm writing that in the past as though something has changed. which i doubt it has.

but i think it's remarkable at least. that quote.

i've been feeling like there was some hole somewhere inside of me and that i just needed something to put into it. maybe a person maybe an idea maybe a thing. didn't really know didn't really care. i just walked around being in that hole. being that hole.

and i'd tell myself that i had to fill it and not someone else and i didn't listen. i'd be the hole and i'd look a little and then pity myself a lot.

it wasn't smart and and it wasn't right but it's how it was and how it probably still is. but now i'm at least seeing it.

i've been the hole for too long. i'm trying now. trying. to be whole.

where have you gone?

2006-04-23T01:55:00.000-06:00

i don't know how to blog anymore. i don't know why i did it either.

something killed just about every single thought in my head. i don't think anymore, i just get by.

i'd put more here if i knew how or why.

and she decided the rest of her life from that point on would be a lie

2006-04-03T18:13:00.000-06:00

i was going to write about how i wanted so bad to be vulnerable.

and then i realized that it's a lie.

i think i've made myself falsely strong. i think in reality i'm as vulnerable as i've ever been. i just don't let it should.

i think i've distanced myself from everyone i know so i won't get hurt.

i'm so vulnerable that i won't get close to anyone ever again.

because i'm scared.

i don't want to be scared anymore.

i want to allow myself to be vulnerable and open.

but the superstructure of my own superiority won't let me.

and so it all goes on. unendingly.

i want to stay

2006-04-02T03:15:00.000-06:00

i want to love desperately.

i want to want so bad it hurts.

i want to do nothing more to spend a whole day thinking about some girl.

some flawed normal human girl.

i want to not notice the flaws.

in her.

in anyone.

i want to want the future to come sooner than it can.

i want to know that i can and will change the world.

i want to be self-confident.

i want to make big mistakes completely convinced that i'm right.

i want to abolish my self doubt.

self pity.

self loathing.

i want to wake up longing for something.

anything.

i want it to burn me up for a few hours while i fulfill meaningless obligations.

and then i want to go for it. all out.

i want to mean what i say.

i want to feel like i'm right.

i want to keep looking even when i realize it's not there.

i want to never stop looking.

i want to find it.

i want to find it.

so fucking bad.

i want to go back.

because right now.

going forward.

is too daunting.

too scary.

too real.

i was a fool you were my friend

2006-03-24T12:07:00.000-07:00

i saw her again yesterday.

she's the girl who smiles at me and i smile back.

we've never said a word to eachother and we probably never will.

all we'll probably ever be to eachother is the person that smiles at me.

and i'm happy with that.

she seems nice.

i hope she's satisfied in all her endeavors.

and everytime i'll see her i'll smile.

and who really needs anything more than that?

i miss you already

2006-03-21T00:45:00.000-07:00

so here's the thing: i'm the most self-centered piece of shit in the world. and it's all the worse because i spend all this time pretending it's not true.

people always ask me things about myself and i always answer them without much wanting to. and then i feel obligated to ask something anything in return.

it's not that i'm interested or i care. i just feel like i should because that's what you're supposed to do.

now maybe that's the reason they're asking in the first place and maybe it's not but they're asking either way.

and it at least seems like they care. maybe they don't and that would be okay. maybe they're just better actors than i am. maybe they practice more.

but really not just this but everything. i don't talk to people and i don't spend time thinking about people. unless it directly effects something about myself or what i get to think about myself.

i remember when i was really cynical in 10th grade i thought i was so deep for saying that everything everyone does is inately selfish. maybe this is just that realization.

i don't wish others ill or anything. i just generally don't care.

i'm typically unmoved by the presence of others. and if i'm in anyway effected by it's usually because i really want to just say "awkward" and move on.

i'm begining to think that every shrink in the world would tell me that i have a problem and moreso that they'd be right.

it's not so much that i desperately want to be normal. whatever that is. it's just that i want to at least be able to understand how other people function. because right know none of it makes a lick of sense in my mind.

i think i just killed my false sense of superiority.

i need to do something. i need a change. i need something.

life moves pretty fast. if you don't stop and look around once in a while you could miss it.

2006-03-17T12:14:00.000-07:00

i've been doing something thinking and largely haven't come up with anything.

i was thinking about that quote and how it basically explains why i think i'm so deep. because unlike nearly everyone else, who're constantly moving, i'm mostly sitting here thinking.

people can, and usually do, spend so much time thinking about what they'll be doing later that they never wonder why.

i never do much of anything so all i do is ask why.

i'm being to think that me and my made-up doppelganger (pretty sure i used that wrong) are both doing it wrong.

as far as fixing it, i'm not that sure i will.

i don't think all the answers i'm looking for are easy to find. and i think i need to realize this.

further, i'm beginning to realize that looking for answers withotu questions is probably most of the reason i'm failing so miserably.

and i probably shouldn't spend my life waiting to save the world. because it's nebulous, and nearly impossible.

so in the end it like this:

How many of them really know what they want, though? I mean, a lot of them think they have to know, right? But inside they don't really know, so... I don't know, but I know that I don't know.

she knows she's losing it

2006-03-09T22:59:00.000-07:00

i've had a sinking feeling in the pit (where's the pit?) of my stomach for the last 6 hours.

exact cause is unknown thought i'm sure it's psychological.

mostly i'm just confused.

every hour every minute every day i'm sure some other future is the right one.

i've never really wanted to be president but for a while today i was sure i needed to be.

i have no ability to draw but i was going to make some just as amazing as calvin and hobbes.

i was actually going to edit this blog and make parts of it into a book. the biggest problem is i wouldn't want my name on it. and it would suck.

i was sure i wanted to stay at university as long as i could because it's supposed to be so much better than the real world.

i wanted like hell to get away as fast as i could. tomorrow wasn't even soon enough.

i thought for a second about becoming an alcohalic. or a gamer.

i thought about how stupid and awkward and antisocial most videogamers i know are. and how they're distracting themselves forever. something i used to be absolutely convinced that everyone was doing all the time. i wonder why i stopped believing that...

i was even thinking about being a political scientist. but then i remembered that i was told you had to deal heavily with numbers or you were a dinosaur. only dinosaurs care about people in political science. apparently the real movers an shakers are all about numbers and trends. what a mistake.

i was thinking about taking all my money and chasing down all my dreams. worst case i'd be bankrupt and homeless. and i'd have tried.

and then i thought about how i want to have a nice place to live with a big bed with a thick down comforter on it.

i was wishing i knew what it was like to be black. or asian. or latino. or anything else. anywhere.

i remember i suggested that we should all switch bodies every two years. i don't need the rest of the world to do it, i'd do it even if i was the only one.

i was thinking about doing something really desperate. like studying philosophy for the rest of my life. it's not that i don't like philosophy. but it, like every other academic disciplines. takes out all thinging human and meaningful is left with the stiff worthless ugly shell.

i wondered how i'd see the world differently if i'd been born somewhere else. i doubt i would or could be this person. i wonder what i'd have been like. if the stork had taken me somewhere else.

i wish i knew.

i wish i could stop looking down on people because they're not like me. i wish i just loved everyone. that sounds so banal but i mean it. in all its banality.

a million people have said a million times that if you want something to become true you have to act like it already is.

but i'm too busy looking down on and hating these people to be able to like them. nevermind love them.

i've also been looking for something of value. and i'm not finding it. i've wasted over two weeks looking through everything but books and telling myself i'm too busy for those.

maybe i should just admit that this could take a while and go to the library. and if there's not something in a whole library this could be a hopeless quest.

if we really are reincarnated people i doubt i was ever famous. everyone always wants to be famous or tragic or brawny in their past life. but if this one's any indication i was probably some tortured commoner who just wouldn't take it as good as it was given.

even with all the advantages in the world i could never be satisfied. i probably always died young, cold, and alone. i probably thought it was better that way.

we'll make a brand new start

2006-03-07T00:42:00.000-07:00

i've probably spent over have of my life looking for something to connect with. and way more than half of this blog lamenting not finding it.

i realize also that i'm probably looking wrong. the internet probably has little or nothing of value. and we can be nearly as certain about the tv. book would probably be best, but books are hard.

what a weenie.

i've been trying to figure out for a long time what to do with my life and i still have no fucking clue.

i was thinking today about writing a book about uncle ho.

but even though i think it would make a pretty interesting book for, i can't find a good reason for me to write it.

i know that even though i think would be interesting, i'd probably never even touch the damn book if someone else wrote it.

i've been thinking about joining the peace corps for a while. but i don't know that they'd accept me.

i have no marketable skills and i never want to market myself.

"I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that."

i realize i'm creating my own problem.

i realize that i abhor doing anything for money because i've never in my life had to worry about it.

i realize that i look down on people who are only trying their best to make it through.

i wouldn't admit that i look down on them because they're materially disadvantage but in someway that's exactly what it is.

whenever some says they're making good money i scoff. and that's just dumb.

having said that (which was completely irrelevant), i feel like no ordinary career option would leave me the least bit happy with myself.

maybe i'm looking too narrow. i probably am.

being some sort of relief worker would make me feel a lot better than anything else i've thought of so far.

and yet even that isn't really what i want.

i think that it goes back to the unceasing need to connect. in large part i just want to help people connect. but god knows with what and god knows how.

having never experienced anything resembling what i want to give i have a pretty strong feeling that i can't give it.

but i think at the end of the day that's what i'm holding out for.

something so revolutionary and so meaningful to the whole world that they'll look up, take notice, and then thank me for having done it.

these are probably the same desires every other person around the age of 18 or 19 feels. some have just ignored it or let go of it better than i have. better than i can.

i was thinking earlier that i would like to be the weather man. not a weather man. The weather man. the man who makes the weather.

actually i'd rather be the cloud man. but i have a feeling that the weather man long ago took over the cloud man's job and is unwilling to give it back.

i realize that job doesn't exist and that thinking about how cool it would be really doesn't help.

i guess maybe i could be an artist. but i really don't get visual art and so i think doing it would be a mistake.

i think maybe i should be some guy who sits on benchs and stares up at the sky. i'd do it with such intensity that others passing would have to look up. and then they'd see the things they usually igore. the light the clouds the birds the air the color the depth the magnificence.

someone told me about the wolf that eats the moon. to save the moon the villagers would get out all their pots and pans and make a lot of noise. and then the wolf would slowly return the moon.

i don't know the reason i was told this story. but i told him that i wish there was a wolf and that then i'd do something that i knew was valuable.

i don't know that he got what i meant. maybe i didn't.

there's nothing in here moving and anyway i'm not alone

2006-03-01T12:12:00.000-07:00

i want so badly to connect with something. someone. anyone.

this isn't new or interesting or worthwhile, and i thought i had something better to say.

maybe it was this: as bad as i want it i never ever even try to get it. it starts when i tell myself it's impossible because i'm so much better smarter and more enlightened than everyone else.

and then i don't approach people. it's a general rule of thumb i've had for at least two years and it's probably a little stupid.

i think i was afraid that if i put myself "out there" and wasn't greeted warmly it'd hurt. and surely it would. but i doubt this is a good way to fix it.

those are the reasons i can think of now. i'm going to guess that there or more.

but the part that really stings is that i'm pretty sure even though i think i'm so progressive and growing i'm rather certain i won't chage at all.

i'll keep saying and doing the same things and just be upset about it. it's a lot easier to be upset and sad about it than to try to really change it.

and just when i get so nervous i can't speak

2006-02-27T12:15:00.000-07:00

i'm so disaffected (i don't know that that's the right word, but i don't have a more accurate one) that i can't really seem to care about much of anything.

and maybe it's good to be this way and maybe it's bad, but it is the current state of affairs.

what i wrote on friday really bothered me for a while. it then took my four more hours to get to sleep even though i had to be up by 6am.

that's just the way it is.

but i've been really detatched (maybe that's a better word) for so long that i don't get worked up about much.

if i think a girl's cure i never do anything about it. maybe i'll tell someone but it won't have any intention behind it.

i don't really get stressed about things either. i just know that it probably doesn't matter. and when it does matter i'm more scared than stressed.

scared of what it means. for my future. for me. forever.

i really don't know what to do with my life.

but i maybe scared but i'm more abstractly concerned.

for a while i've maintained that i would do something valuable to someone, anyone beyond myself.

increasing that's seeming like the nonstarter that i think it is for most people.

it's a great idea in concept. it's a great thing to say and you can feel good saying it.

but it's infinitely more complex to do.

moreso it feels like most people who actually make a difference to anyone do it by accident. they invent something that find to have greater usefulness. by chance. pure random chance.

so i'm sitting here not willing to get worked up. ideologically opposed to getting worked up. and still feeling like i should be. like i can be. like i am.

don't wanna be famous just wanna be shy

2006-02-24T23:33:00.000-07:00

i wonder if i got it all wrong. like somewhere in the past i just misplaced the things i take to be natural and necessary and now all i've got left is the wrong thoughts and the wrong values.

like this thing i say about chasing our dreams in other people. how the only thing that can give you fulfillment is yourself. that sort of thing.

because it seems like it's all an effort to retrospectively justify all the choices i've made in my life.

that is i never really fell in love. and so i say that there's no love and there's no use for it.

and i never had that many friends so i say that they're just useless and a distraction and not important in the great scheme of things.

and i've never connected with anyone and so i think that it's impossible for people to connect on my level.

which is better and deeper because that makes me feel better than it being arbitrary and meanignless.

i could never believe in God with honest faith so i just eliminated him. He doesn't exist because i'm unable to believe.

now i'm not ready to admit that this is the way it is or that the way i've been looking at it for so long is right instead. all i know it that this is probably something that i should consider if i am to realize anything of important value.

this idea, as much as it negates my life to the point is something i find rather haunting.

i feel there must be some substantial truth behind it. and maybe its not the one i'm thinking of but it's got to be something.

the difficulty is i see however is that there's no place for a real substantial answer. no one can talk to God for me about it. at least no one i know of. claims to have discussions with God. which it really rather unfortunate.

in the absense (or maybe even in the presence) of an absolute answer i think i must instead choose my own answer.

not the one that people and books and classes drive me to. but the real honest right answer. that i have. i think. somewhere in my soul.

and this is scaring me and i don't know where to begin but i think this is probably the most important thing i've put on this blog in a long time, maybe ever.

and now i must think.

don't say that later will be better

2006-02-24T01:58:00.000-07:00

it's back again. not that it ever really leaves. it hangs around forever at the perimeter. making sure you never ever ever get too comfortable. you can only get so close before it snaps back into place.

i still can't or won't forget it. the feeling that i'm certainly better than some people.

maybe its just what i percieve maybe its really there. i doubt i'll ever get a real assessment. but this isn't really that.

if most people live and think and interact at about 25% strength, i'm at about 30 and thinking that it's 100.

and from time to time i realize that it really isn't 100% of anything. and least of all it has any relation at all to happiness and contentment.

i guess its sort of this realization that's back again. the fact that a whole section or more is missing from the puzzle. and as much as i look for and find something i'm not finding more of these things and i don't even know if they exist.

it's probably this feeling that is most central to my opinion of relationships and life and reality. the feeling that something, a lot of something is missing for me and everyone else.

i wonder if marriage really does it for people. surely there are some people out there who try to sell that and from time to time i've thought of buying.

and surely there are as many or more people selling you religion for it.

some people seem to have a magical combination: marriage and religion. and outwardly at least they seem to think that's all there is. maybe they'll through in a family to be sure its finished.

and i don't know shit about their situation or their reality. and they know nothing about mine.

but i do have to wonder if the really have what they're trying to sell, because though i want to believe they do with all my heart, i doubt if they do. and i doubt even moreso that it could or would work for me.

so instead i'm stuck on the internet for hours. looking. and tv. looking. and walking. looking. learning. looking.

never finding anything.

am i looking wrong?

it seems increasingly possible.

maybe i just can't see it.

maybe my presence makes it disappear.

maybe it just doesn't exist.

and that's the saddist of all.

so all i've got. is the search. the meaningless directionless endless search.

the pictures far too big to look at kid your eyes won't open wide enough

2006-02-22T19:47:00.000-07:00

i don't usually agree with any politician, but Bush said something that right or wrong i think it absolutely necessary to point out.

"I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a great British company," Bush said.

that's what he said. it's in regard to the port deal that i know little or nothing about. but reading about the complainants and what they were saying i felt like it was all i little racist. or nationist (i made that up: discrimination by nation).

their reasons are bullshit, at least the reasons i've heard.

i've been thinking. it always hold people to some standard that they can never achieve. and some fall shorter than other. so in the absense of anything of value coming to my mind i'll just end with another quote, this from the great gatsby:

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. 'Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'"

postscript this situation keeps getting more complicated (that is more facts revealed) and so this position may seem all wrong in hours days or weeks. i just don't feel like deleting it.

i ain't never been in love i don't know what it is

2006-02-19T23:45:00.000-07:00

the best feeling in the world is going to sleep when you're completely exhausted from working so hard and you have an unlimited amount of sleep ahead of you. climbing into a comfortable bed at that point is probably the best feeling in the world.

you gave all you had and sleep is your reward.

perhaps than the worst feeling is the exact opposite of that. when you feel the desire to do something really important and draining in the name of something greater. and have nothing. nothing. that you can think of to do.

i'd settle for something that just made me feel better. more alive. but it's cold outside and i have nowhere to go and nothing to do.

i have no obligations. no animals to go check on. nothing. nowhere to go and nothing to do.

complete and utter impotence.

"this weather has me wanting love more tangible"

if the greatest cause is the world is things outside of yourself the greatest loss is wanting so bad to serve some greater outside cause and no way you can think of to do it.

it all seems too big or too impossible. you have no special knowledge skills or competences. or the causes are pedantic things you don't believe in and don't care about.

is there no middle ground?

so as a toast to my mediocrity, i'm going to watch tv. and try to forget it.

nobody said it was easy

2006-02-16T22:56:00.000-07:00

the second i write or say anything i start to feel differently. that's not to say it cures depression or anything. it's just that i tend to go to the extreme of my thoughts on something and then click publish post.

this isn't that i didn't say what i thought when i said it, but now, five minutes later i'm reconsidering this.

i do this all the time.

i wonder if other people actually do this.

if there's one essential unchanging fact about me it's probably that i devalue everything.

or at least that's what people tell me.

and i may. i can always tell you want's wrong with the food i'm eating. i can always tell you what problems there are with the show you're watching on tv. how that movie could be better.

maybe i'm just being cynical. that's what people say.

i don't really think about it. but i'd prefer that i was just seeing the potential of everything to be improved. to be the best that they can.

but just because that's the reason i'd like it to have, that doesn't mean that's the real reason. i don't know the real reason.

it's probably closer to what they say than what i say. though i don't really know.

and having said that there are a few things i really like. i love it when on cold days cloud descend over the foothills to the west. making them look like big mysterious adventures waiting to be had.

i love the moon. i don't know that there's a god, but if there is he got that thing right. the moon with a few clouds up in the sky are probably one of the greatest sights in the world.

part of what i love i think is that there's no way i can change these. no way that any person can.

they're beautiful and i can't change them. and i wouldn't want to.

and everything i made is trite and cheap and a waste

2006-02-16T22:35:00.000-07:00

i haven't shaved in days and i don't sleep and i don't do homework. i don't really do anything. i fall asleep with the tv on. i'm wasting away. approaching dispair.

i'm thankful for all i have and all i've been given but it still want more.

if i had my way i'd live my life only looking for new ways to look at the world. new things to think.

academia is so worried about it's own privelage that it's completely dead.

we've dreamt up tons of emperical topics and area of study that mean nothing to privileged people like ourselves.

unless we delude ourselves into thinking they're important.

as a look out there are two types of adults out there and i don't want to be either of them.

there are those struggling to just get by. and maybe it's not always a struggle and maybe it's not so difficult but they're still mostly trying to make it.

then there are people who are convinced they're smarter than those that toil, but really are just doing it again, on a higher level. and their toiling is pointless. nothing is produced, harvested, or distributed thanks to them.

they may have made the ipod, but that's just more junk to carry around.

this is probably insulting to a lot of people. and its probably already got a few spelling errors and so far it doesn't quite work in my head but it's what i've got.

knowing about the russian revolution doesn't change my life. it doesn't do shit for me, i could write a book about it and i'll i'd get were an assurance of more money.

even philosophy, which feel like it's the most naturally necessary, the closest to what i seek is largely concerned with symantics.

it's upsetting and makes me wonder what i'm doing here. living even.

so far it seems like it's just a financial choice. and that's a shitty shitty reason to do anything. but it seems to be the only reason i'd do anything for the rest of my life at this rate. the only reason people do anything.

and i think that retiring is dumb and i never want to do it. and never want to be kept alive artificially or put into a old folks home. maybe in a society that didn't shunt away the elderly i'd feel differently but i'm not sure.

i'd rather die with business undone at 40 than with time left with nothing to do. and i'd be more famous dying young. people would endlessly think i was a genius because they were really just awed by my death.

worked for elvis. worked for cobain. worked for james dean.

good to great indeed.

and i'm losing all those stupid games that i swore i'd never play but it almost feels ok

2006-02-10T12:09:00.000-07:00

there's something incredibly cathartic about telling the world how much it sucks. i didn't instantly feel better, but i began to. add a little tv and a little sleep and i felt pretty damn good when i woke up this morning.

this isn't to say that all i wrote is resolved externally or internally, just that i'm not so upset about this.

on another note, i'm scared of academic discourse. well not scared, i just don't really want to spend the rest of my life doing it.

as intersting as history or philosophy or whatever is it not substantial.

it doesn't get to the crux of the issue. the crux of it is about being a whole complete fullfilled person.

i realize that for better or worse there must be all this work that doesn't really make us who we are. but some part of me would rather farm the way they did 2500 years ago than go to a modern university.

unfortunately i know too much. so that's not really possible.

i know too much to be completely satisfied and to little to realize that.

empty stares from each corner of a shared prison cell

2006-02-10T02:04:00.000-07:00

life is hard for reasons no one else seems to understand.

i hate to be a dick. but i'm pretty much better than you.

you go around thinking about your stupid little problems and thinking about how fucking great you are. fucker.

life is hard because there is nothing i can connect to. nothing that's true. nothing that resonates.

i wouldn't want an exact copy of me for a friend but that would be better than at least 99% of the poeple i know. dick.

i read about 10 blogs. the rest are unimportant crap. and so are most of the ones i read.

i don't know how to explain any of this to anyone. they just tell me i'm a dick and that's the end of it.

i don't hang out with people because they never seem to be capable of understanding.

i'm probably creating this problem myself. but when you and your girlfriend have serious issues of completing politics you clearly both shouldn't be in a relationship. or politics.

no one i know has a real soul. or if they do they don't know.

nothing on tv has a soul and neither do 95% of the books i read. neither do movies.

maybe i don't.

but this is fucking shitty shit.

"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee." -Pulp Fiction

you should never underestimate the ability of small worthless people to completely ruin your day.

i've been looking my whole life for someone to be my friend. and i've never found anyone.

i probably expect to much. maybe the best i'll ever get is really someone who remember the stupid things we both did and can laugh out them.

but that seems painfully hollow to me.

i'm shivering right now. and it's not cold in here.

i'm tense. i'm worried. i'm scared. i'm confused.

life is hard. life is hard.

life is hard because there's no one out there. people walk around caring around shells that they call bodies minds and souls.

these things are covered in graffiti. the same graffiti as everyone elses.

yours is covered with you democratic parents. your emo style. and stupid insistence with being popular.

yours is all the shitty weed you've smoked that has left you unable to tells emotions apart. so you define your shallow meaningless wife by your search for weed. and how the man keeps you down.

everywhere are these empty shells.

and i've said all of this 100 million times before because its the only thing i know. i know with painful certainty.

i also know that i'm probably some shell too. i don't know what it is or looks like. but there may be someone right now thinking about how i'm just an empty shell of a person without a soul or original ideas or thoughts or anything of value.

from the outside i'd probably find myself kinda annoying. only substitute really with kinda.

i'd probably look at me the way that stupid girl who thinks she's hard and tough and mean looks at me. she's scared shitless of ever really thinking anything. her precious reality would shatter into a thousand bloody shards. so she'll be mean and impenetrable and useless the rest of her life.

i always look at people and wonder what they're thinking about. wonder if they'd be interesting. i almost always come up with no.

no use lying to myself. it's ALWAYS no. even the hottest most interesting looking girl i've ever seen.

she probably thinks she's so openminded and forgiving and interesting. and she'll talk about her love for john kerry and bright eyes and sex and the city adn i'll condemn her and the rest of the human race for hell.

i've been meaning to read about nietzsche's superman for a long time. because i think i could be one of them and maybe that would explain my desolation.

when feeling complete and utter despair i tend to marinade in it for a while just to make sure i know what it feels like.

most psychaitrist would probably tell me this is unhealthy. but i'd guess every single psychologist in the world doesn't shit about shit.

and i hate people who say that they wouldn't want to know anything about excrement. fuck you that's not funny or smart or original or worthwhile.

i found a good phrase in my stupid shitty chinese history textbook. it's probably been 1000 other places 1000 other times.

it said that leader x had mistaken grandeur for substance.

if i could meet one person in the world right now i'd probably choose charlie rose. that man's met more people than most people ever will. i wonder what he thinks about people after all of that.

most people aspire to know stuff about things. they want to be able to have interesting conversations about interesting things. so they pretend to study politics. but really they're just filling their mind with big words to scare and coerse people into their own unconsidered view of things.

for one i'd like to meet someone who doesn't either love or hate george w. bush. someone who would actually think about what the man says and does and not add at the end that he's smart or dumb or whatever.

i wnat to meet people who consider their politics. and i don't mean that stupid fuck who thought about registering as a nazi because it would be funny.

i looked up the mohammad cartoons and i realize that historically it's wrong to portray mohammad but those are some of the shittiest cartoons i've ever seen. mohammad with a bomb in his turban. that's litterally all it is. it's not saying anything. it's only stupid.

and i think i read that 35 people have died. and at least three embassies torched.

the ten commandments say their shouldn't be false idols but that doesn't stop millions of christians from handing out stupid crucifixes and crosses. which i'm pretty sure are idols.

and also i think the csmonitor said that it didn't used to be wrong to portray the prophet anyway. that that's just another thing we should thank the wahabbis for.

but that's all really off topic.

the issue is that i have no faith in people.

i once convinced myself that old people would have to have discarded these stupid retarded shells and then i went to see my grandparents and remembered not everyone changes.

i am a malcontent. a chronic malcontent.

alert me if the situation changes.

but overall it's really been a wonderful life

2006-02-08T12:04:00.000-07:00

it seems like i always have fewer ideas than i used to. i've considered the possibility that this is actually my midlife crisis. that i'm getting old.

i don't know that i want to live much past 40 anyway.

i've gone from being sure of what i didn't want to do to knowing what i want to do. i'm now back on the first category.

in an era of great knowledge and achievement one is not able to do all that they want.

and that fucking sucks.

if i had my way i'd go try making movies for a few years. i'd probably be pretty bad at it but i'd have done it.

then maybe i'd dabble in philosophy. teaching, writing, the whole bit.

then i'd become a diplomat. to some african country i think.

i'd come back and be a historian. having seen the conditions of diplomacy i'd be damn good.

maybe i'd run for president. i could never be elected. because i think advertising and partisan positioning and politicing is generally bullshit. i'd probably be a shitty president anyway.

and in the end i'd write the best memoir. full of stories of my adventures infiltrate the soviet power structure and bringing it to it's knees internally.

i'd be old enough then, people will realize that all memoirs are bullshit by then.

and then maybe i'll really be a spy. though without a monolithic enemy that really doesn't seem very interesting anymore.

and then maybe then if i'm still alive i'll become one of those physicists making up crazy theories about people and selling them to the world as supportable fact.

that's what i want to do. i want to go it all balls to the wall, eyes on the sky, all that shit.

live the experiment.

but i'm scared.

this is the worlds scariest idea. i like having my own warm comfortable bed and my nice hot meals.

risk means putting all that in jeopardy. it means going out there and working hard and doing what i believe.

not just putting my thought on paper or the internet but into execution.

i'm scared.

i'm so fucking scared.

and so i'm going to get a PhD and then wonder for the rest of my life if i really could have done it.

the whole stupid list of all the stupid things.

i've told myself for years that i wouldn't do it. that i'd never do what was conventional and safe. that instead i'd do what i believed in on my terms. that i'd be strong and tough and invincible.

i'm fucking liar and a fraud and a dick.

i'm here completely alone. the direction and substance of my life is in my hand. i can't pin the next 20 years on material circumstances.

i've lived my life to this point doing what was virtual preordained. the next 20 years are my own, to do with what i want.

and i'm scared shitless.

everything looks perfect from far away

2006-02-06T02:14:00.000-07:00

for the last year i've been convinced that just about every girl i've ever met or known is in love with me.

it surely varies from case to case, but it's always there.

and whenever i tink this i tell myself that this is really stupid. there's no way they all can be.

none of them ever do much if they really are.

and even though i know that this is stupid and inaccurate i still think it.

there really is no great lesson you or i or anyone else can learn from this.

and this is no great insight for my mind either.

but i still felt the need to share.

any day now any day now i shall be released

2006-02-02T18:02:00.000-07:00

it's strange how thinking about what i thought two months ago makes me nostalgic.

those sad lonely depressing thoughts. nostalgia.

everyone in the world is just trying to make it. no one knows what constitutes making it and what doesn't. we just know that it's hard.

most people don't relate well. they try all these feeble attempts to say i'm here and i care. and they all come to nothing. because we're all just trying. trying all the time.

i used to think i could change the world. that all i'd need to do is think and write and talk and change would come.

old people are discouraging. convinced more that that thinking is wrong than that we should each be given a chance to fail.

you can't do that they tell me. you can't do that society tells me. you can't do anything.

we're conditioned to think that we can't do it so we don't do it. that's all it really is. we're told not to think we can do it so we don't do it.

it's not good. but then it keeps us from getting really hurt. knowing we can't really do it makes failing acceptable.

just a year ago i could do my small part to change the world and that would be enough.

six months ago the problems were too big but i'd make progress.

and today i feel sick and want to throw up all over my broken dreams and lost hope.

this wasn't supposed to be a poem

2006-02-01T15:38:00.000-07:00

discarded flowers in disarray upon the ground.
ignored forgotten trampled.
all flowers die.
few die this painfully.

attached are affirmations.
you have nice eyes.
you have a beautiful smile.

trampled forgotten ignored.
i paused.
to take it in.
the melancholy metaphor.

arms wide open

2006-01-26T22:35:00.000-07:00

i don't know. i probably am the only one. the only person in this world who has this problem. becuase like just about every other one of my problems it is a clear result of many of my little idiosyncries making me feel like a dick.

sometimes i think i'm the king of the world. times like this i feel a lot more like dirt.

so here's the thing. everyday i run into a least person who inhabits this awkward place between someone you have to talk to and someone you'd never ever talk to.

my not being a fan of small talk doesn't help either.

but i see them and i feel obligated.

there's the girl who used to work at the same place. but we only ever talked about work. there's the girl who i made eye's with a few times but never said anything to verbally. the girls i knew in second grade, who were never really anything.

there a many of all of these. an more. and they're not all females.

but the point is this.

fuck i don't know what the point is. doubt there really is one. but i needed to say that anyway.

ps: i just saw that there's now a blog at my old url. and it's got links to porn too. yay!

and then rushed out to kill something new so we could bury that too

2006-01-20T23:15:00.000-07:00

i do the same things that i did 3 years ago but i relate to them differently.

when i didn't do anything on a friday night then it was because i wasn't good enough for it. now i'm too good for it.

i still don't really talk to people. i used too think i was annoying and stupid. now i don't talk to them becuase they have nothing of value to offer me.

(i'm not saying any of this is sensible or right or smart, just saying how it works in my head.)

it seems that for better or worse i haven't really changed any. my actions are exactly the same as they were 3 years ago. or 5 years.

i think i've, rightly or wrongly, been taking different opinions of the same actions and calling it growth. when at the most it's really just a lateral movement.

im probably actually the same person i was three years ago, even if i think i'm not.

i didn't call people 3 years ago because phones scared me. what if they didn't want to talk to me? what if they didn't like me?

the real reason i don't call people is probably the same as it was back then. but i tell myself that i just don't really want to talk to the person on the other end that bad.

so maybe, i've been thinking, maybe this is just me. the actions that is.

maybe the actions are some static me that i didn't know existed and then shifting reasons are some random flux.

i still don't make conversation well. now i just have a better reason i can tell myself for it. that i'm better than conversation.

we've been taught our whole lifes that labels are good and useful. and if there is a single label i think necessary and accurate and useful it would probably be the introvert/extrovert thing.

and i'm pretty sure i'd be an introvert on this scale.

this then, could be the majority of the excuse for my terrible social skills.

but i hate labels. i abhor to label myself. i think that it trivializes any legitimate thought or action or person.

lennon said he didn't believe in beatles, only himself.

and i don't believe in labels, i just believe in me.

in the absense of labels to hide behind we must be accountable for each of our actions.

and so i must then really confront this. i must confront myself. become myself.

this is daunting and i'd be liar if i said i wasn't scared.

and there are a million ways we can escape. we can avoid the obligation to be honest to ourselves.

we can blame others for our problems. we can ignore them. we can distract ourselves with far less important problems.

i certainly do all of those.

it's so much easier for me to worry if other people like me than to worry about whether i like myself. whether i am myself.

i always start these things expecting, hoping, that i'll come to some brilliant an amazing conclusions at the end of them. something that'll mean i can never have to worry about anything for the rest of my life.

and it never turns out. i cannot really say i'm surprised by this. if enlightenment could happen in 20 or 30 minutes hopefully we'd all have it.

but we don't.

and all i've got. is these little. tiny. misdirected? baby steps.

god is a place you can stay for the rest of your life

2006-01-20T02:19:00.000-07:00

i don't know. what every single girls that looks at me twice. looks at me long. is thinking.

maybe i have a big pimple i don't know about. maybe i'm devilishly good looking. maybe they're just admiring my flowing locks. or my patchy beard.

i have no way of knowing. i usually take it as a compliment. and i've never bothered to find out how right or wrong that is.

that probably isn't a good way to do things. but i don't do much of anything the good way. or the right way.

if anything is to be done it will certainly be done my way. whatever that means.

i'm surer than ever that most people don't know enough about themselves to have any sort of meaningful relationship. i don't just mean sexually. i mean at all.

god. i'm a dick.

i don't know. it just seems that holden caufield. described. almost everyone i know.

these are people who want everyone to like them. and care when they don't seem to. and get upset about these things. these stupid meaningless things that don't mean shit.

this is why people break up about the stupidest things. people fight about the dumbest things. all the time.

i'm one of these people to. don't get me wrong. but i'm not sure everyone else knows it about them. or cares to know it. or is trying to work on it.

this could be really long but i'm going to quit. and go to sleep. because it's late an i'm tired. and i just plain don't like you.

don't say that everything's working

2006-01-15T20:16:00.000-07:00

whenever i write something really long or something i think is really good i don't want to write something to push it down then page. even though that's when i'm the most fully of ideas. it's kind of a stupid idea, but i tend to think that way.

i think there is some part deep inside of all of us. i don't know what this part looks like, smells like, feels like, tastes like or sounds like. but i'm pretty sure it's there. i guess you could call it a soul.

i guess we would commonly call it a soul. though i would guess this thing is a part of your brain, that's not important.

so essentially this part is the reason we stay alive. why am i living for something i know nothing about? because this thing, if activated rightly, will make everything in your life ok. all the troubles will go away. you're just going to be happy and fulfilled.

so we have this part, or "soul," and when it is properly activated you'll feel "like a million bucks."

none of this is too amazing. really none of these ideas probably are, but they're the ones i've got.

so essentailly we stay alive for the moments when we feel like a million buck. we stay alive for the highs. why i never thought of that before i'm not too sure. it seems rather straightforward right now.

so we're doing all these things and all we're hoping is that they'll activiate this part of ourselves. so that we just feel great.

this is why we work. why we go to school. why we blog. why we hang out. why we watch movies. why we read. why we converse.

we're just hoping. hoping for the times when our soul will make us feel like it's all all right.

maybe soul is the wrong term to be using.

drugs i think must then do something. they must make you feel as if that part is activated. that it's all ok, even though it really isn't.

i'm finding this theory much less revolutionary than it was when i was walking here to write it. it's such an utterly plain and straightforward theory really. so mundane.

the other day i was looking through the archives of this here site, looking for a link i knew i'd posted a long time ago. and i looked at all the thing's that i wrote about a year ago.

they feel so completely dead. stupid. and worthless.

first i think this is partly because i was still trying to blog like someone else. to write like other people so that i'd be popular. i'd link to blog i'd never read so that they'd look at my site. i wrote about things that i thought people would want to read.

i would guess my blog got more traffic at the time. i'm pretty sure it did. but honestly i don't really care.

most of why i write is for me anyway. and if someone likes it i'm glad. but if i don't get paid for writing trying to appeal to anyone else doesn't make much sense. so this is for me.

i thought that i'd just found the answer when i was walking over here. i thought, you know, this is just right. now i've got it all figured out.

if i were to characterize my life in one word i think i'd choose impotence. not the physical kind. more true, emotional impotence.

there's is something inherently difficult about living.

i think it was gore vidal who said that there is no problem with the world that couldn't be solved if everyone would just listen to me.

there are so many problems with the world and many of them are so daunting that to confront them make you feel not like david fighting goliath, but the shit stain in davids underpants.

ok, maybe that's a little inappropriate. but that's what i thought of.

there are a lot of times that i'll just sit and not really think of anything. i kind of just drift off. and i feel like it's somehow a waste. that i could take that time and think. and eventually solve something about world hunger.

this seems like it'll just be another long rambling bunch of words. so here's another one.

i met a man a few days ago. a diversity lecturer. and he started by telling us that he was racists sexist homophobic classist etc etc. in some way i thought that was incredibly depressing. even more so when he said that everyone else in the room was too. but he was right.

you're a racist. you're sexists. you're lookists. you're classist. you know the distinctions when you see them. we can't pretend that we don't know that a black woman is different from a white male.

this is what i thought was so sad. he told me that people weren't just people. that they couldn't be.

i lost any train of thought remotely related to this. so goodnight.

it's thoughts like this that catch my troubled head

2006-01-14T00:33:00.000-07:00

i've been listening to the iron and wine version of such great heights over and over in my head for the last two days. mostly it's the vocals. they're rather haunting, in the best way possible.

it's much harder to point out other people flaws. and to chastise them (in your head) than to do this with yourself.

well doing those two with yourself isn't that hard. changing is hard.

i like to think that i know most of my flaws. the things that i should work on. but i find it pretty hard to manage to really confront them head-on and try to fix them.

i guess the reason it seems easier with other people is that i'm not having to face up to the necessary changes.

it's easy to say that you need to read all the books you've bought and never read. but doing it is something completely different.

there are a million other examples. like my (irrational?) fear of olives, fish, green peppers, mushrooms and cucumbers. i want to appreciate all food so that i could actually be a good cook, but it's hard to actually get over this.

these may be small things but they're some things. there are others.

i'd love to be able to really talk/listen intently to anyone. and not have it feel like a chore. i'd like to but i'm finding progress hard to make.

i wish i could find the value in every single person. but here to i struggle. it's not that i dislike the people, it's just hard to find something to learn from them.

there's a quote i'm a little fond of, something like: every single living person has something to teach me.

i think this is true. it must be. it is. but i still struggle to fully believe and realize it.

and still i wonder. if other people really think about these things.

everywhere it seems like people are more worried about significant others and school and jobs and money and celebrities and God and evolution and economics and politics and and and

my favorite blog title is "how to be human," though "just another pretensious fuck" comes in a close second. this is to say nothing of content.

JAPF describes just about every blog in the world. mine included. and the how to be human thing is great, though the latter name applies better.

i wish i could really write a book about becoming a complete fulfilled person. i wish i could but i'm not one and i don't know how to be one.

i don't really like to talk about people. even if its all good things. even if they'll never hear.

all attempts i've ever made to describe people to others generally fail outright. it follows that all discussions of people fail to describe anything of value.

i remember some quote that the least enlightened conversations were about people, the slightly moreso about things and the most ideas. i hate the quote. it's demeaning and probably wrong.

but there seems to be something to it. most conversations that you ever hear about other people are incredibly vapid and either hurtful or shallow.

there's a certain impotence that seems to come with this feeling. that i really know nothing about nothing. and i wish it would go and leave me.

now i'm not trying to say that i want absolute confidence. that seems incredibly dangerous.

there's this guy who refused to talk about the government because it's run by a republican. if you are employed by the government you're a stupid puppet of george w. bush. now i know little about politics but i'm pretty sure you would qualify as one of the least enlightened people in the area of politics that i've ever met.

and yet i'm sure you're not all bad. i think you have to be. there must something good and interesting in you. but i can't get past your seemingly painfully unenlightened politics.

the abolition of parties would probably kill democracy. it would however, challenge people to really think about issues.

on a semi-related note, don't think of an elephant, is probably worth reading, for anyone, but especially "liberals" or "progressives."

it's seems like every where i see people who aren't too sure of anything about themselves trying to get into relationships with people equally unsure of themselves.

some sick game dreamed up by some people that seems to often lead to pain and suffering as much as happiness and joy.

i don't know what to do. i have no right to stop them. and i don't have any basis for thinking myself right and them wrong on this issue. but it just seems to preverse to me.

i think celebrities are probably some of the loniest and most troubled people on earth. and yet they're worshipped.

if you were to meet me in real life you'd probably think i was a prick and a dick and an asshole and weird and awkward and quiet and stupid and lazy and lonely and maladjusted and and and

some of those are probably right. most of them maybe. i don't know.

sometimes i really wish i could, for just a minute or and hour or a day hear what people think. i want to know if other people think the way i do. think about the things i do.

for example, i do this thing where while i'm brushing my teeth or something my brain has two seperate things running. one is basically what i would be saying out loud. it's rather articulate and reasonable. and then there's the lower level that comes up with where the articulated streaming is going to head next. and if something goes through the lower level and sounds reasonable i have to repeat it on the upper, more articulate, level. i don't know why this is and i think it's rather strange. i already know exactly what will come out of the more articulate string and yet i must MUST go through the act of thinking it or i may have never thought anything at all.

i think the whole thing is rather strange. and i sit there thinking about politics. and then talking to myself about politics. and then thinking about how it's weird that i have to say all the thoughts i have twice.

i want to know if other people do things like this. when i was pretty young and i did this is kind of made sense. because the more articulate strand would, for example, be talking to a room full of stuffed animals (they listened far better than anyone i ever knew). but now there is no room of stuffed animals getting my articulate presentation and the more articulate strand is still there.

do all people think like this? do they realize they think like this? do they think about why they think like this?

maybe i should talk to a psychologist. not for therapy, but for academic interest.

but i don't really suppose that they'd really know much about it. even if they think this way they'd have no way to know that all people act this way or not.

i sat in a room tonight and realized that all these people think they've come so far since high school. but the conversations was comparably banal. if that's progress i must wonder how idiotic high school students conversations must be.

i don't really converse much with people really. other than that meal time conversations. and as a time-killer.

and some part of my wonders if i'm not just a reject, but mostly i think it's because people never really talk about most of the things that go through my head.

whether they're unwilling, unable, or scared to do this i have no idea.

i supposed i could just start breaching these topics with people. but then they may think you're insane. probably will.

i think there's a certain amount of banality required for all social interaction. but i have to wonder if this is just becuase this is how people think. or is this what we've been conditioned to think is acceptable in social situations. is there a good reason we don't discuss these things? why don't i know that reason?

i tend to think that everyone who's quite a reserved and adverse to social situations must think like me. must find them unfulfillingly trite.

but i think most of them were scared. are scared. of even involving themselves in these conversations.

when i look back at my social patterns through my life it seems like i went from scared or them to too good for them. i don't really remember a phase when they were right for me.

it's things like this that i find really strange. maybe even troubling. and it's only been in the last 12 or 18 monthes (if that) that i really thought i was too good for social situations. so somewhere this transition took place and i think i just missed the middle step. the one that most people spend most or all of their life on.

and i'm very much uncertain about whether this is a good or bad thing.

i wonder how psychologists and psychotherapists ever find time to try to help people get their lives in order. my life is confusing enough for me. i wonder how mentally healthy psychologists and psychotherapists are. it seems like they'd be to busy with other peoples mental problems that they'd never have time to really try to figure out their own.

maybe i'm missing something. i probably am.

but still i have to wonder. to think. that maybe they're the ones missing something.

i could probably go on forever.

so i'll just end by saying that i'm amazed at how well the title i gave this before writing it applies. usually i ensure at least a loose association between the lyrics i use as a title and my writing, but this is probably the best fit i've ever pulled off.

2006-01-09T00:56:00.000-07:00

well i'm lonely too

2006-01-07T20:17:00.000-07:00

to at least some extent, i think that every relationship most people have is caused, at least partly, by the i'm lonely too phenomenon.

that is that there are two lonely people (they're not with other people) so they get together, they hang out, they go out, they do stuff. all that sort of stuff. and so they're friends, but really, at least partly its only because they both had no one else. no one better to hang out with.

maybe you think i'm completely wrong. maybe you think i'm completely right.

i'm not denying that there are genuine relationships where there's some real desire to hang out there. i think there must be some like that. and even relationships with a little of the "i'm lonely too" stuff in them can be backed up by genuine interest.

and like just about every other idea going on here this one would really really suck if it were true. that, for better or worse, doesn't really debunk this idea.

but it seems like most people seem to go around hanging out with certain people becuase nothing better's around. and when they think something better comes along, whether they're right or wrong, they'll split.

i have to think that past of this is just because i have no real relationships. but i can't think of a time when i really had one.

and i know this probably just means i'm some sort of deviant. i'm pretty sure i am one. not a deviant that's up to no good. just the kind that's a deviation from the norm.

in some ways i'm sure that there's an extant to which everyone knows exactly what i'm talking about. and they just don't want it to be right.

and at the same time i'm sure that i'm just a cynic. one who knows "the price of everything and the value of nothing."

i guess this is as good a place to stop as any. i was reading this debate of some guy with an aethiest (i think his name was something glover) who said that his biggest regret about there not being a god is that he won't get to have a conversation with him when he dies. and ain't that the truth.

daddy, what is love? what is friends? what is life?

thinking that's what held me back

2006-01-07T01:42:00.000-07:00

most lives are comprised of both highs and lows. and most people just take this for granted.

can't have the sunrises without the sunsets. that sort of stuff.

and i've been thinking that maybe that's not necessary though it may be good.

i'm not really sure how this works. there's some way that you can flatten it out.

obviously if there's actually an equalibrium between the highs and the lower eliminating the valley wouldn't really be desirable. but who are we to assume that the equalibrium exists?

if heaven or hell exists this equalibriumn simply couldn't exist. eternal peaks and or eternal valleys would mean that there is no equalibium. that equalibrium would be impossible.

and even in my head i don't want this stupid equalibium to be here.

yet i can't really shake it's existence.

even though it makes no sense. even though it would suck. even though my life doesn't really seem to support it's existance.

well that's really all i guess i had. it seemed better and more sensible earlier.

we must talk in every telephone

2006-01-06T01:49:00.000-07:00

i'm dealing with things that i'm sure i've written about 100 times before. because really every problem is exactly the same.

every problem with ever have is caused by dissatisfaction with something or other. and whether or not you really want to admite it they are all basically the same. i can really only say that for me, and i'm not ever sure it's right.

but there's no turning back.

somepeople seem really bothered by the fact that all of the past is slowly leaving. truth is, it is a little sad. i would't lie about that. but it really isn't that big a deal.

all the people will eventually move away. the things and places that used to mean everything, will come, in time, to be no more than memories.

this is much closer to a bundles of randoms thoughts ideas and memories than anything substantial, interesting and useful.

i have this idea that most everyone, but especisally the people that i went to high school with, spend most of their lives playing the friday game.

the friday game, which i've glanced over before is this. to most people are two central problems. having nothing to do, which is refered to as boredom, and no one to do it with, which is called, lonliness.

now there are complex relations between these two criteria. like that it's ok to be bored in a crowd, but being busy and interested alone is worse.

now it's not that this is really the only thing for most people, but for many it seems to be the way that they measure their success and worse.

seeing it this way i think it's fairly obvious why this is so undesirable to me. maybe. probably. that i see it that way tells you a lot about me. it really should. but that's how it comes out in my head.

now the fact that someone's alone on a friday doesn't mean they're better than the game. it can, but doesn't necessarily. they may have what is even more troubling a problem. they somehow admire the game and think they're incapable of playing it. they're no good enough.

whelp, i feel like a real dick having just attempted to diss just about everyone i've ever known. and that argument was really pretty unconvincing. if it was even an argument. i think that's enough.

no it isn't. it just seems like all these people are so worried about the game that they don't really worry that they have nothing to give to the people they're with nor or they interested in taking anything.

time is passed with nothing being accomplished. no one learns anything. you may learn some useless trivia from some dick at the bar, but really you're not coming away a different or better person. at best you have trivia that you'll then pass on to someone else who will then continue to pass on the fact that drunk ants always fall to their right side.

and everyone will feign interest in everyone else and presist in not really giving a shit about them. and yet they'll still get together again and do it all again.

and now i'm proably the biggest dick on the internet. and no one will benefit from this. they'll maybe be upset and call me a dick and they won't think about what they're doing. or no one will care. that's good too.

grass stained jeans and incompletes and a girl from class to touch

2005-12-31T02:07:00.000-07:00

thought it was time to move my blog before it turned one year old. i'm still playing with the template, trying to stay really hip. like the cool kids. and stuff.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
i've been wondering if i've just always been a loner cynic, and that's what's made me what i am.

it would pretty much explain why no one else is really like me. thinks like me, etc.

as much as i really don't like that conclusion though i'm thinking that there must be some truth in it. not that i think it's completely accurate, i have no such delusions. nothing, at least relating to people, i've ever managed to convince myself were really that simple.

i've been reading some book or other by the dalai lama. i don't read well though, so i'm not really making much if any progress in it. it's so much easier yield to the simpler things, like tv, when you've got no requirement for your activities.

but anyway what i was going to say is that he says some things that i think are right and some things that i think are wrong, or at least contridictory.

that you shouldn't challenge your mentor except for when they lead you astray. for me at least that seems questionable. i haven't been thinking much though.

i haven't really read it enough to have anything to say.

i hate how frivilous new years resolutoins are. and i hate how right now i'm thinking like the damn tv. that's to say, a third grader.

ok the end. it's tv time and stuff.

i've been feeling sentimental for days gone by

2005-12-28T01:41:00.000-07:00

if there are really only two types of people in the world i think we'd have to call them the ignorants and the malcontents.

that's not a claim that that's accurate but that's the best i can figure.

it seems there are lot of people asserting that there are two kinds of people, so i'll do the same.

do what everyone else is doing. even if you don't like it. that's what i always say.

the ignorants aren't airheads. they're merely live shallower lives. their greatest fears are "boredom" and "lonliness." for them "loniless" means not having anyone to do things with; "boredom" having no things to do.

a malcontent's greatest fear is that this is all there really is. that they've had it as good as it's ever gonna be and it will never really been anything more. there is no heaven to comfort the malcontent. and there is no God to keep him moral.

any liberal or conservative. democrat or republican. is an ignorant.

and follower of organized religions is probably also an ignorant.

there's something about the groupings of people that really just serve to comfort people in their ignorance. we all start as ignorants. none are born malcontents. we must strive from time to time to break away from the norm so that we can see it's flaws.
...
really everything i just wrote is bullshit. or i hope it is.

i hope there is a way to get out of category of the malcontents. and i hope it doesn't involve becoming ignorant again.

i like to hope that there are some people somewhere who neither accept all that they see and hear nor that are intensely and eternally dissatisfied.

i hope that i'm not wrong about the dalai lama.
...
after looking at the book i decided it wasn't exactly for me. it was about as dogmatic as the way i was raised. it's just that it was structed around different ideas.

i still desire to study buddhism for what it has to offer. but i do not wish to ever declare myself a buddhist.

i think that there are a lot of ignorant buddhist just as there are a lot of ignorant christians. you should probably distrust anyone who is still the exact same religion they were raised with. even someone brought up as an atheist should be treated with distrust until they have proven their individual merit.
...
there was a time when i desperately wanted nothing more than to spend time with these people of my hometown.

now i'm more likely to dread it. that's a little unfair. but fundamentally i could, for the most part, do without them.

the people haven't really changed much. which leaves me pretty sure that i have.

i've gotten more arrogant i think. other than that i'm not too sure of how much i've changed.

it used to be that i didn't hang out with these people because they were too good for me. now i don't see them because i think i'm better than them.
...
i wonder if i'm not just one of those autistic kids who sits on the fringes of a group and can't relate to those on the inside.

one of those kids who everyone says is really weird. "but not in a bad way."

it's politically incorrect to say that someone's weird in a bad way.

i wonder i'm some mentally defective hermit who's absolutely convinced that he's living in reality, while all of society considers him... well... retarded.

it would explain why sometimes i get into ugly arguements for no legitimate reason. why i question people when i'm told by others i shouldn't.

why my sister tells me i'm an asshole.
...
plato or aristotle or some other old dead dude said that it's the mark of an educated mind to entertain an idea without accepting it.

i think that must have at least some truth in it.

but is someone who never accepts ideas supereducated or mentally defective?

noam chomsky is an anarchist with few academic credentials as a historian. he's a linguist by trade and by most accounts a rather good one.

that said i think his ideas are interesting but i doubt their truthfulness.

he claims that the reasons americans know/knew about the terrible genocide of the khmer rouge in cambodia and not that of the indonesians in east timor was that the US was profitting by the timorese massacre.

this is quite an interesting theory, but is also incredibly flawed.

chomsky fundamentally believes that all people are by nature incredibly intelligent and capable of high level thought. i as you've read, think most people as blissfully ignorant about as much as they can be.

the reason that american's knew about cambodia and not timor is that american's had no ideas or cares about timor. cambodia, however, was well a well known neighbor of america's strategic interests in vietnam. american's cared because they had some context. timor may as well have been on a different planet for most of them.
...
nearly every arguments conclusion can be deduced if you know something about the arguer. my world view shapes the results of my opinion about timor.

the reason intellectual discussions about God rarely ever happen is that people are so tied to their personal beliefs.

i'll readily admit that if someone proves God's existance i think they're a poor logician. thay're probably unintelligent and their argument's probably flawed.

they probably think the same thing sof argument's with athestic conclusions.

we're both old and stuck in our ways.
...
if there's one way that i could describe almost everyone in the world that would probably be how i'd do it. they're old and stuck in their ways.

even the 10 year olds.

at least 10 year old me.
...
i read recently that no one sends thank yous anymore. in one way i was a little upset that we're so selfish. but they were really painful, formulaic and insincere.

and i'll admit that i thought all the defenders of the thank you note old crumudgens.

not because they were all over 40 but because i've never like sending thank you notes.
...
i'm a prick. i'm nor really proud of that. but i'm not looking to change either.

i know i'm flawed. but i guess maybe i'm just too lazy to change.

maybe my flaw is inertia. resistance to change. maybe i'm too flawed. to change.

you said true meaning would be dying with you and though i wanted to i did not smile

2005-12-24T03:55:00.000-07:00

the one thing that i'm always left with. is that there must be more. something to make the food better. the books better. the movies better. all of it better.

i see people. and i wonder if they feel it too? is this the fabled human condition?

in some ways i think it must be. the truth is that, as the first noble truth says (i think): life is suffering. or put another way, it's dissatisfaction.

now i still don't know for sure about the rest of the four parts of the path. it all makes good sense but i don't know it well.

i look for answers in other places.

companionship. i wonder if that's the one thing that'll do it for me.

maybe some one person can make it all better. make it all go away.

but i just can't find much truth in that. as much as everyone else seems to believe it. as much as i want to believe this. i just can't believe that that's it.

we're raised to believe that the answers are out there. out.

american's all seem to believe in two things. the road and love.

i don't know about other people, but that's how it seems here.

the road is somehow supposed to have all of the answers we're looking for. that's not to say that we're told that the road is the truth, but we still, by nature, take to it when things get hard. people desire so profoundly to get away, and really they always come back without finding what they were looking for.

more all my life i've been told that i just have to wait. until that day when i meet some girl who's life has been just as marginal as mine until we meet. from there the two of us somehow become whole people and live full lives. we'll grow old and die together. because we're dependent if not in love.

these are the things we're told. and at some point we all believe it. we believe more too, of course.

and some day you get to the end of road with that other half of your soul and you still feel empty. jesus may even be with you. but you're still alone as you were at 14. still as alone as you are today. as alone as when you were born. as alone as when you die.

this isn't a happy truth. it may not even be the truth. but with the way i've been feeling it seems so true.
...
there's a way in which everything i've ever done seems much more like a way to kill time than anything really.

i've never thought myself terribly interesting or consequential. i may think that i'm smarter than you. i may think that i think better. but i probably think you're more interesting. and i think that's the reason.

i don't think i'm interesting because i've never done anything that i really wanted to do.

i may try to write the great american novel but self-doubt comes in right after the first act. if not sooner.

i think the biggest obstacle to anyone ever doing anything is that they don't believe they can. that's trite, i know. but it's trite because it's true.

i don't really know what i could do to make me interesting to myself. i don't. saving the world wouldn't really make me any more interesting to myself. i don't know if it's possible for me to be more interesting to myself. because after all, i do know everything i do, before during and after doing it.
...
there has to be some answer to some of this. i don't know if this book in my hand holds them. i'm hopeful but doubtful.

at the least this is a religion i have some degree of interest in. jesus always struck me as too easy or too impossible. either you were saved for believing, or you could never screw up ever. sure there was forgiveness, but you never knew if God would give you that.

at least i agree with this problem. i think it was john hick who said that religion was essentially a problem and a solution.

to a catholic the problem is that we're all sinners. the solution is compliance and obedience to God. and honestly, i don't like either part of that.

at least i agree with this book a little. it says that the problem is that i always feel a little empty. it says that's normal.

this might be as fake as many consider God. it may be. there's no way to know that we're all reincarnated if we don't save ourselves in this life. there's no way to know that we can even really save ourself.

but there is hope.
...
though i'm no christian i think that william james was at the least a very interesting man. in the will to believe he quotes someone (fitz-james stephen) who says:

"What do you think of yourself? What do you think of the world? ... There are questions with which all must deal as it seems good to them... In all important transactions of life we have to take a leap in the dark...whatever choice we make we make at our peril. ... Each must act as he thinks best: and if he is wrong so much the worse for him."

it goes on and is very poetic, but i'm forgetting why i was quoting it so i'll move on.

essentially, i still think, like Clifford who i think i quoted a few months ago, that it is wrong to believe if some God/Jesus who i don't have evidence for the existance of.

that said, i don't want to fault people for believing it. they may be wrong to BLINDLY follow it, but the considered christian isn't a problem for me.

but what what this book in my hand is about. has nothing to do with some big powerful blackmailer in the sky. this is about trusting. having faith in. yourself. and that is really all we have. all we have.

abc nbc cbs bullshit

2005-12-23T23:36:00.000-07:00

interesting article at Wired, here. about how americans are so dependent on technology. the two really interesting excerpts are below.

"Our culture is about distraction, numbing oneself," said David Greenfield, a Connecticut psychologist who specializes in high-tech issues. "There is no self-reflection, no sitting still. It's absolutely exhausting."

"Some people feel the products will improve the quality of their lives. But do we really need to be connected in every way, shape or form?"

really they're both really obvious. i just thought it was interesting that it was found in a rather mainstream/gadget obsessed article.

i was thinking about the same thing earlier though because i decided to go back to some of my old haunts. yes, i'm old enough to have "haunts" on the internet. or maybe i'm just that much of a nerd. probably the latter.

i used to be obsessed with computers. i also had no money so i would just desperately want the things other people were buying. well i went back to a lot of those sites and i just couldn't bring myself to read a word of any of it.

anyway, that's basically all i came up with, is that most people spend their time desperately wanting things that they really don't need or have a use for.

i'm not saying you shouldn't buy anyone anything for christmas. or whatever holiday. or that you shouldn't want anything. just that... i guess just don't let it get out of hand.

over the last week i've basically turned my mind off. for better or worse. it's just been shutting down. or at least that's what it feels like. as i try to remember why i started writing in the first place.

ok. the end. the painful end.

no i am not singing for you

2005-12-22T03:00:00.000-07:00

king kong is epic, powerful, and flawed. both the movie and the monkey. read this, because it pretty much has it right and that way i don't have to expound.

everytime i come home i'm faced with the fact that the person i am no is not the person i was. really ever. in the past.

and yet some people think you're the same. the act as though nothing's changed. as though the last conversation we had was yesterday and not 18 monthes ago.

and i'm left only to wonder. if this is because they haven't really changed. or if they're just making this all easier by pretending they haven't.

i find myself completely unable to focus on anything.

things i don't know are best coped with by ignoring. that's how i act at least.

when it all comes down to it these are just people i grew away from more than 18 monthes ago. that is if either of us really cared in the first place.

some of them see to think this is wrong. that we shouldn't or can't have done that. and there are some good reasons to that.

networking. everyone will tell you. is the key to getting or head. like it or not, they're probably at least partly right about that.

evenmoreso its comforting to have a long list of people who you are for, and who care for you in return.

i think that i've hardened myself to a point that i can't relate to people anymore. i don't really think that's a problem. it definately has it's charms. but's is also full of lies that i'm telling myself. i make myself into the strongest most independent person you know.

but sometimes. sometimes. it's so. so. so. incredibly lonely. sometimes.

i walk around thinking that i'm so much better. so much stronger. so much smarter.

but i have to wonder. if i'm so much better than the rest of them. why aren't the rest of them like me?

there are an infinate number of paths. all is possibility.

and i always write bullshit ending so i don't feel like a dick or so i don't feel insignificant.

one more cause for a dispute

2005-12-21T01:24:00.000-07:00

i've held for a while some hope that i would be able to really do it differently. and to thus change the world. that because i did it differently others would be willing and able to do the same. i'm sure there's some cliche slogan on a wall somewhere that says exactly that.

i thought that i'd travel with a videocamera and get these crudely made senseless films made into hollywood blockbusters that would change people's lives.

i thought that i'd become president. the greatest that ever was. all would love me. and there would be no need for war. ever again.

i thought that i'd be able to raise money in a heretofore unthought of way. all would be willing givers because they knew that they'd do some good.

i thought i could eliminate all differences and distances between people. we'd all just be. bare, naked, and free.

when i talk to older people they ask what i'm doing and what i'm going to do to make money. and they think not knowing in ignorant and stupid.

we all walk around with a false sense of superiority. myself more than most. you bag groceries better than the grocery bagger. me, i think better than him. she, she dresses better than he does.

and we walk away and he thinks to himself about how he's so much cooler than all of us.

we're all as wrong as we are right.

so i was so sure i was better than the world that i was sure that i could change in. increasingly i'm finding that notion in doubt. not so much by any outside actions but of my own free will. i'm willingly crushing my dreams. telling myself that no one will listen, no one will care, i don't know what to do, it's too big for me.

thinking i'm too big for the problem's probably as stupid as thinking i'm too small for it. but both option seem wrong to me.

it's comforting, if not correct, to think that we're all made the right size for the problems we're to face. our will is big enough for what we need to do.

what is comfortable, however, is not what is right.

in my life i seem to find a inevitable dissatisfaction with where i am. if i'm working on one thing something else always seems more interesting, more worthwhile.

when i'm not writing anything i'm perfect for it and i don't have the time.

when i do have the time to write i'm inadequate for the task.

there's nothing i'm ever ready, willing, and prepared to do. i'm either too good or not good enough. too busy or too bored.

resignation to your fate is as deadly as constantly thinking you can change it.

the world seems at time full of people ready and willing to listen and at other times full of people who are stuck doing things the only right way.

neither picture can be all right. thus they must hold within them some shred of the proper truth we seek.

there must be some middle way.

on the right we see the safe and secure life. good things. dissatisfaction.

on the left we see the experimental life. wonder. awe. and peril.

in the middle. all i hope. is possibility.

and one by one i drowned all the people i had been

2005-12-19T15:43:00.000-07:00

you think you're so much smarter than the rest of us. you're older and the way you've always been told it, that also means you're a lot wiser.

age doesn't begat wisdom.

it's a painful truth that 40 year olds need to be told twice as much as 20 year olds.

you can be 40 and telling me that i should really be a catholic. and i'll listen to you. i'll listen to you tell me about how reading some catholic apologist really helped you cement your faith. and how you know it's hard to stay religious in college but you wish i would.

and i'll answer all of this with quiet compliance, but i won't buy a word of it.

and i'll listen to your daughter tell me how much she loves college. and i'll think to myself how she must have some new boyfriend that lets her be a drunken slob all over him so that he feels a little less alone. and i'll think about how no 20 year old has ever been strong enough to tell anyone how he really felt.

and i'll wonder how far it is from her 20 year old boyfriend the the 40 year old lies you're telling yourself just to get by.

i'm not trying to fault you. life is hard enough without having to worry about whether or not the things you tell yourself are right or wrong. it's hard enough to wonder about those things when you're 20 and financially secure in college.

it would be so much harder to do that when you're forty and not really sure if the next paycheck will come in the mail.

we're all just doing the best we can. and while i may scoff at your best, you're probably scoffing at mine.

fear eats the soul

2005-12-19T01:16:00.000-07:00

that's the title of a german movie i've neither seen nor heard of that i decided i need to see asap.

something about the way that's said has been stuck in my head for at least 24 hours.

fear eats the soul.

if i were to decide that there was a single perfect phrase that would probably be it. having said that, however, i have to admit that i don't have the slightest idea what it means.

in donnie darko (my favorite movie) drew barrymore says that cellar door is good. for what fucking reason i don't know.

that doesn't even mean anything. leaving aside the fact that it sounds like crap.

no, i'll take: fear eats the soul any day of the week.

and the colts finally lost. and the '72-'73 dolphins should go jump off a bridge anyway.

greatest story ever told

2005-12-15T00:34:00.000-07:00

i was giving it some thought and i think i'm like scrooge. not the reformed scrooge. but the scroogy scrooge. maybe not always. and maybe nor that much. but still that's me.

its not that i sit counting my money all day. god know's that wouldn't take very long even if i had it all in cash.

i'm like scrooge because i look down my nose at people having fun.

i sneer at people who consider a good night getting drunk with strangers and maybe making out with one drunker than they are. i did it right then.

but who am i to say that that's so bad. other than the brain cells you might kill from a night of heavy drinking. if you're responsible (read, don't drive) you really can't do too much harm to anyone other than yourself.

and if you enjoy yourself more power to you.

thats more than i know that i can say about myself. don't get me wrong, i'm not bored out of my mind because i'm not drinking. but sometimes it gets boring. and that's why people get drunk and go hang out with strangers.

i don't think anything i've written is mildly coherent but i'm tired. so i think i'll leave this as it is. i'm scrooge. at least sometimes.

guess i'll just keep moving someday maybe i'll get to where i'm going

2005-12-14T02:15:00.000-07:00

me and you and everyone we know is adsurd troubling and hilarious. not everyone would agree with the latter two, but no one would contest that it's absurd. it surely has something to say about love and transcendence of our isolation. that said, i don't know what it's saying. still an interesting movie though.

i feel like there's something i should and can be working on. and i'm just not doing that because i like this shitty feeling of uncertainty to much. maybe it's that i'm too lazy to discome what that thing should be. maybe its becuase i haven't looked hard enough.

whatever it was i think i'm ready to give it up. if we're here to serve God than I'll get to know Him. if we're here to help others, sign me up for any and everything. i'll give my arm.

i guess i just don't know what to devote my life to so that's why i'm here. wondering.

some people give it to some idealized romance they've never had. never could have.

some people give it to the big Guy up in the sky.

some give it to music.

some give it to charity.

and some of us. are just overcommitted. or undercommited. one of those is what i meant.

you breath in forty years of failing to describe a feeling

2005-12-13T15:57:00.000-07:00

having no obligations or deadlines to avoid makes finding interesting things to do much much more difficult.

solitare loses almost any appeal when there isn't a reason you shouldn't be doing it.

i haven't written anything in almost a week because all my feelings just confuse me know.

i need to do or think or say something but i have no idea what it was. or how to find out.

i'm certain that there's something out there that i'm missing that'll make it fit together a little better.

there has to be.

some puzzle piece that'll make the whole thing make sense.

and i don't know if i'm the one of the few that has this puzzle. i think everyone must have it. in a dust box in a never used hall closet. on the top shelf, there they never look.

it's there. sometimes they wonder what's in the closet. they never really go look it.

but when you dig that puzzle out of the closet it's always missing a few pieces.

and that doesn't make any sense to me.

well i liked the heart so you've got a head

2005-12-07T01:42:00.000-07:00

"'There are three mental states that interest me,' said Amanda, turning to the lizard doorknob. 'They are: one, amnesia; two euphoria; three ecstasy.'
...'Amnesia is not knowing who one is and wanting desperately to find out. Euphoria is not knowing who one is and not caring. Ecstasy is knowing exactly who one is - and still not caring.'" -Another Roadside Attraction, Tom Robbins

aside from being completely unable to focus on combatting my impending doom, my brain seems to be doing something else.

it's seems to have sent me in search of some amazing sort of pleasure far greater than any in known existance.

that's probably overstating it. many are for more acquainted with mind-altering substances. one of those could be the one my brain's telling me to find.

but i'm pretty sure nothing i've ever experienced is what my brain thinks it needs.

complete and utter exhaustion. extended for days of labor-intensive menial toiling. and then the peace of the greatest best ever invented for as long as i want. that's akin to what i'm to find.

maybe my mind's wrong. maybe this doesn't exist anywhere.

but it sure isn't helping me at all right now.

this weather has me wanting love more tangible

2005-12-06T18:47:00.000-07:00

coupling bad weather and a bad mood was a bad idea, God.

and then you had to through on all this end of semester crap. God! God, you're some piece of work.

and so i'm pretty much a wreck.

i just want to sleep for a week and wake up with nothing to do. for almost a month. that's what i want. so badly.

snow has never bothered me so much as it does to day.

i don't know it's cause of the bad mood. or my distaste for it has just grown from the bad mood.

the worst kind of mood is one you don't know the cause of or way out of.

hope that made someone feel better. because it isn't working for me. sadly.

and became famous on that day in november

2005-12-05T12:28:00.000-07:00

the windiest day in recent memory came uncerimoniously in early december. it's reason for coming or the duration of its stay is completely impossible to say.

all we know is that it's ferociously angry. the cause of it's anger too is indetermined.

the good reverend brown says that's its good anger being unleashed upon the citizens of boulder. that we've brought this upon ourselves and all we can do is repent.

some meteorologist told us some hooey about high and low pressure. there's no pressure here. scientist.

found a liquid cure for my land-locked blues

2005-12-03T17:13:00.000-07:00

i've been thinking about why i have no friends.

it's not that i want them and don't have them. i'm pretty sure at least.

even when i'm feeling lonely there's not really anyone i want to call and talk to. maybe jessica's right, maybe i just don't know the right people.

that makes a lot of sense.

i'd really like there to be someone. anyone. that i felt a need to talk to. to hang out with. but there just isn't.

i don't know what's wrong with the people i know. maybe nothing.

i think that maybe they just aren't challenging. i don't want someone who tells me i'm wrong about everything i've ever thought, but someone who thinks about something more than sex and booze would be nice.

that's not to say that that's all the people i know think about. i'm sure it isn't. but that seems to be most of what they talk about.

maybe people just don't know how to talk about anything more. that seems at least partially legitimate.

i struggle with it.

but there has to be something to be done about it.

i used to know a kid that would joke that whenever he got together with people they debated contemporary world politics. but that sounds a lot better than what most college students, including him, seems to do most of the time.

i may know this, but i still don't know what to do about it.

you used to laugh about everybody that was hanging out

2005-12-02T11:56:00.000-07:00

one of the best ways to feel good about your life is to think you're better than people. maybe not all people. maybe some people. maybe a person.

that's at least what they've told me since elementary school.

of course another way to take drugs that make you feel good.

both are artifical. neither lasts.

i tend to do the first one. it just seems easier to me. and it can last longer than a booze bender. and with less physical danger.

i don't bully people. and really i've mostly stopped making fun of people. but i still tend to think that i'm better than you.

what to do about it is much harder. i'm still very unsure.

i don't know what i want to do with my life. and that makes it harder. i think.

i think i want to spend a year in sweden. or alaska. where it's light for 20 hours a day. just to try it. with that i'd also have to try the days with four hours of light. i imagine both could get depressing.

it's very windy outside.

i've been thinking that is would be cool if i could travel around with a video camera all my life and get paid for the footage. and the travel.

so if someone wants to blow a few million on me. i'm waiting.

muttering small talk at the wall

2005-12-01T15:35:00.000-07:00

my mind is full of half-formed pseudo-memories.

i no longer know if these thing happen once. or if they were dreams. or if they were just thoughts i had.

there's one where i'm in some brown and white cafe-y place. with my dad and my sister. and i'm about 7 and they're also younger. somehow hot chocalate with marshmallows figures it.

i don't know what this is. if it happened. if it matters.

but it's there.

i guess it's just something to wonder about.

i used to think that it would be a great idea if we basically had a camcorder recording everything we ever saw. but i'm pretty sure that's a bad idea.

for one, there would be a lot of useless tape. and you'd be able to all the better live in the past. lamenting about things that didn't go your way.

and that really isn't good for everyone.

i don't like not knowing if this pseudo-memory happened, but i can't think of a thing to do about it.

and i sure wouldn't want to look at 20 years of video-tape to try to find it.

it seems that all men want to get into a car an go anywhere

2005-11-30T12:05:00.000-07:00

here i stand sad and free
and i can't cry and i can't see
what i've done
-evaported, ben folds five

i guess what i've been trying to get to for a while is this. every person everywhere must give their life over to something. some idea. some purpose. some cause.

you can choose god. you can choose science. you can choose clothes. you can choose politics.

there really isn't a right or wrong choice. except for refusing to make one.

it's the most important choice of your life and not making it is just making your life worth nothing.

mlk, jr once said that:

If an individual has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.

that always struck me as rather harsh. but it seems exactly right.

you may or may not think that there are wrong choices as to what you'll die for, but i doubt there can be.

if someone willingly give their life wholly to God then they've made a choice. and though i usually look with scorn upon them, they've made a choice which is more than i've done.

that may not be completely true. if my death would lessen the amount of human suffering in the world, i'd do it. in a second.

but i'm still not sure. that that's really what i need. but it's all i've got.

the kids are alright

2005-11-30T01:33:00.000-07:00

i've been in a rather bleak mood as you may have noticed.

i'm groping in the dark for single once of something right and pure that i can cling to. that i can trust. trust until the end of the world.

and it seems that there's nothing to be found. nothing to trust. nothing is certain.

descartes was an interesting dude. he found a way to trust the whole world from knowing nothing. but he had God in his back pocket.

when the going got hard he could still trust that.

for better or worse i've pretty much discarded God. the notion. the idea. the person.

and sometimes i really wonder if i made the right choice.

everywhere there are people worrying about being able to hang out with some girl or other. and sometimes i wonder if they're not right. and i'm not wrong.

maybe i really am crazy. maybe the people with their mtv and their razrs have it all right. drinking is more important than philosophy.

but when i cared about those things i didn't feel much better. i've never had a time in my life when everything was certain and i had nothing to worry about. if it was all alright i'd just look harder to find something wrong.

and maybe that's how i got here.

i guess i've always trusted the fact that life was unsatisfying and unfulfilling.

that's not a very optimistic thing to trust in but it's what i've done.

and if, as with descartes, what we believe going in is what we get coming out, well i've basically dug my own hole. the flaw i was trying to correct is only bigger. only more empty.

i don't know if i erred in some way. i don't know if it can be corrected. if it should be corrected.

but i think that this must mean something.

the day will come

2005-11-29T02:37:00.000-07:00

there are but two certainties. we were all born and we will all die.

anything more is pure speculation.

i may think i'm living a better life than you, but i can't be certain.

you may think you'll go on to God's heaven, but you can't be certain.

he may think that he was born with divine intervention, he cannot be certain.

where we came from or we're going outside of these landmarks is whole beyond our control.

christians think that we pass on to heaven. buddhists think we're born again. atheist think we're buried.

everything else that i think i know i can't possibly really know.

saying that life is necessarily uncomfortable and uncertain is no more than speculation. there is nothing i can know about it.

there's an emptiness that accompanies this. this feeling that we can't know things.

we're without eternal existance. we're without any assurances at all. we can't know what a good life is. we can't know what a good death is.

by rejecting the certainty claimed by dogmatic christianity life is infinitely more uncomfortable.

there's some line written somewhere bout the difference between doing what is easy and what is right.

how we must not let ourselves off the hook, what is right needs doing.

but how do we know what is right?

i'm of the opinion that moral absolutes represent a lack of understanding. that the black and the white cannot exist if one understands the way things really function.

right or wrong. whether anything else is certain. i know i'm empty.

my head's a carousel of pictures the spinning never stops

2005-11-28T12:01:00.000-07:00

i like to think that every day i become more and more the best possible person. not necessarily the best possible me. i'd rather be a good person and a good me.

i've changed a lot in the last year. or two years. and some of these things have definately been positive.

people tell me they really aren't though.

and so i don't know whether to think the critics unenlightened or myself flawed.

i'll readily admit that i'm something of a narcissistic fuck. i know that and yet it doesn't stop me from thinking i'm incredible.

i realize i probably think more highly of myself than anyone else does. than i should. but it doesn't stop me from doing it.

i say we should all just get along. and then i think about how i'm so much better than anyone else.

i don't know what any of this means but i know that it's all true.

i think that i think about more important things than that rest of the world. but i know no one else could or would ever know what i'm thinking about.

could the whole rest of the world really not be worried about their clothes their money their appearance their reputation? could they all realize that it's pure artifice and then go on feigning care so that they'll get along easier?

i doubt it but i must admit the possibility.

at times i think its impossible that people regularly actually consider what their life means. when you see little girls on mtv crying when their dad won't give them everything they want. when you see 29 years olds on mtv who still act the same way.

but then daily there are people who simply must think about more than keeping a job and keeping up a reputation.

my little sister seems to judge a persons worth by whether or not they went to their senior prom. on one level this seems to be completely false and shallow. on another i wonder if there is really anything else that can be used.

the reason i think people who are quiet must know more think more and feel more than average people is that everything anyone ever says is so utterly banal.

maybe people are incapable of relating on the plane i think they should. maybe discussions about how to best use our talents that reach beyond political bickering and pretension are impossible.

though on some level i feel like everything done day to day week to week year to year is shallow unfulfilling and pointless, i'm forced to wonder if anymore is possible.

when i say that i've never had a friend, it's just because i feel like no one has ever done something for me. something really valuable.

they may help you while away the weekend. it may even be genuinely enjoyable. but i have to feel that if no one comes out of something fundamentally changed from how they went in all was useless.

i think that it is necessary to constantly and unceasingly evaluate who and what you are. what you think is important and what you don't.

i can't say that constant evolution is fun. and it certainly isn't comforting. and i don't even know that it truly helps you live a better life.

it's riddled with uncertainty.

and yet we can't go back. we can't stand still. time marches forward. and if you're not moving with it you may as well surrender.

life is uncomfortable uncertainty. constant evolution is absolutely necessary.

someone i used to know

2005-11-25T02:25:00.000-07:00

talked to someone i went to high school with. probably one of my best friends then. still a good guy, but we don't talk too much. this was edited for length and some personal content. it's still full of typos though.

[00:50] Him: whab about news w/ you?
[00:50] Him: u making good friends this yr?
[00:50] me: not really
[00:50] me: i still have no friends
[00:50] me: but you know
[00:50] me: what can you do?
[00:51] Him: i don't konw
[00:51] Him: make some?
[00:51] Him: u relaly have no friends?
[00:52] me: none come to mind
[00:52] me: there are people
[00:52] me: it's not like i sit in my room and feel sorry for myself
[00:53] me: but like, no one i know i really like to or want to hang out with
[00:54] Him: yeah
[00:54] Him: so what do you do then?
[00:54] Him: just hang out alone?
[00:54] me: yah i guess
[00:55] Him: fair enough
[00:55] Him: what do you do?
…
[00:56] me: my life sounds SO boring
…
[00:57] me: what about you?
[00:58] Him: hmm, most of the weekdays i'm in class, lots of class and hw, but also band stuff, tour guiding, a bit of frisbee here and there
[00:58] Him: a tiny bit of partying
[00:58] Him: although partying is losing its appeal
[00:58] Him: lol
[00:58] Him: and fast..
[00:59] me: haha
[00:59] Him: i don't know
[00:59] me: not as fast as it lost it's appeal to me
[00:59] Him: i just don't think i have good enough friends to really have a great time
[00:59] Him: hah yeah
[00:59] Him: i'm really liking school though
[00:59] me: that's pretty much how it is for me really
[00:59] Him: yeah
[00:59] Him: we're not too different
[00:59] Him: in that regard probably
[01:00] Him: its kinda hard to tell who friends are and aren't
[01:00] me: ya
[01:00] Him: but thats also cuz i'm prolly more distant
[01:00] me: you're a fuckload closer than i am though
[01:01] me: but then everyone is...
[01:01] Him: yeah
[01:02] Him: so do you feel there just arne't any interesting people?
[01:02] Him: or what?
[01:02] Him: i mean you had friends in HS
[01:03] me: like
[01:03] me: really when i say no have friends now
[01:03] me: that probably means too that i've never had any friends
[01:03] Him: u think u've never had friends?
[01:04] me: yah
[01:04] me: maybe (probably) my standard are all wrong and out of whack
[01:05] Him: hmm
[01:05] Him: ok
[01:06] me: yah probably doesn't make much sense
[01:06] me: doesn't make that much sense to me
[01:07] Him: who knows
[01:07] Him: thats a shitty way to think about things though
[01:08] me: well it's not like it bothers me
[01:08] me: i mean it's not like i hate people or think they hate me
[01:08] me: i kinda like them and i'd guess they kinda like me
[01:08] me: but it's not like i'm upset when i don't talk to them for a few weeks
[01:08] Him: well then whats ur standard for a friend?
[01:09] me: jesus i don't know
[01:10] me: i guess i just think the words overused
[01:11] me: like it seems like peopel use it for acquaintances
[01:11] me: people you don't know
[01:11] Him: yeah
[01:11] me: i mean like, most people couldn't tell you shit about eachother
[01:11] Him: yah
[01:11] me: liek there's superficial crap
[01:11] me: but that's about the extant of it
[01:12] Him: yeah
[01:12] Him: i mean, thats definitly the case with most people
[01:12] Him: but some people not
[01:13] me: yes and no
[01:14] Him: yeah
[01:14] me: like what do we know about eachother
[01:15] me: ?
[01:15] Him: hmm
[01:15] Him: i'd say i know some stuff about you
[01:15] Him: where should i start?
[01:16] me: fyi i love southpark
[01:16] me: but i don't know
[01:17] Him: haha
[01:19] me: i guess part of it is that everything, like every relationship i've ever had, has left me thinking there must be like more out there
[01:20] me: don't know it that makes sense
[01:20] Him: more what out there?
[01:20] Him: and no it doesn't really make sense
[01:22] me: yah
[01:22] me: pretty much i might be crazy
[01:23] Him: lol
[01:23] Him: that could be true
...
[01:27] me: oh
[01:27] me: i think i might be the stranger
[01:28] me: you know
[01:28] me: camus's stranger
[01:28] Him: haah yeah
[01:28] Him: have u seen jarhead?
[01:28] Him: he read's that on the shitter
[01:28] me: yah
[01:28] Him: "intellectual" reading...
[01:28] Him: pssh

take your time think a lot think of all the things you've got

2005-11-23T02:28:00.000-07:00

i don't know if its the lack of sleep or the quantity of work. but i seem to have less and less to say.

here. i've never had anything to say anywhere else.

a lot of people spend a lot of time worrying about things that don't matter. myself included.

and i know, too, that i've said this 1000 times.

people spend more time counting the things that they don't have than the things they do. not that either matters much.

the conclusion i come to increasingly is that none of it matters.

but somewhere somewhere something must matter.

most people scoff at nihilism. i did.

but increasingly its the only thing that makes much sense to me.

the white supremists aren't going away. for better or worse we can't make everyone realize that people are only people. none better or worse. some refuse education.

at the same time, the solutions proposed make less and less sense. a mandatory diversity class for all student will shape behavior as much as the mandatory alcohal class. that kids took. drunk off their asses. not paying attention. and passed. they'll tell you.

people who don't want to believe something can't be made to believe it by sheer force of someone else's will.

if there's one thing i know it's that.

people are full of irrational ideas that comforting. God. whether or not he exists, it rather irrational.

all signs seem to point to the fact that none of it matters. you can't change people.

they're either too impressionable or too stubborn.

all ideas are equal. some are mine. some are yours. but neither of us can be wrong.

in the absense of absolutes we're left afloat in a motionless ocean.

completely. utterly. lost.

completely. utterly. alone.

and it's all over now baby blue

2005-11-21T12:08:00.000-07:00

if i could have one superpower i'd definately want to be able to pause time. that's probably the greatest power anyone could ever have.

you'd be more powerful than flash. you could pause time and move.

more powerful that neo. superman. all of them.

and you could always get enough sleep.

you'd also be able to steal things pretty easily.

it really would be pretty much the greatest ever.

i got 3 hours of sleep last night.

i didn't write anything for over a week. and now i wrote some shitty shit.

on the bright side it didn't hurt very much when i was hit by a bike.

he smiled and said child i love you regardless

2005-11-16T03:02:00.000-07:00

the man on the tv hawking his wares.

god. he says. will give your life meaning.

god. he says. will give you eternal salvation. everlasting life. internal peace.

and i feel nothing.

this man. i think. has never thought about anything important. god offers small answers for little people.

if not that. he doesn't tell me what i need.

so many people out there are quick to sell you the answer. you just need to get drunk. to get laid. to find god. to smoke weed. to volunteer. to donate to charity.

none of it really makes a difference.

these are at best temporary solutions.

i'm wasting my time.

i want a lover i don't have to love

2005-11-16T02:17:00.000-07:00

i write a lot of meaningless crap here. some of it might mean something but a lot of it's wrong. i have no idea what's right. i know i'm wrong a lot. just like everyone else is. i think i'm not. i find it comforting to think that i'm not, but i really am.

i have too much work to do and no will to do it. papers to write. about the plague. and the moral argument for the existance of god. none of it matters.

I got a hunger and I can't seem to get full
I need some meaning I can memorize

i don't know what matters but i know something must.

i was looking over an article i read awhile ago. i starred something that it said. an atheist. who said that the one regret he had. about god not existing. that he wouldn't be able to talk to him after he died.

and ain't that the truth?

i'd love to be able to be told what it was all for at the end. to know why sometimes i feel so empty when little has really changed.

how stupid people doing stupid things can sometimes just make you feel like shit.

but now i've got to crawl
to get anywhere at all
i'm not as strong as i thought

she says you've changed

2005-11-12T15:31:00.000-07:00

sometime i think i'm like cypher. from the matrix.

not that i would kill anyone. but the way he was trapped out there with this knowledge he didn't want and he just wanted to get back to the old way. the old concerns.

everywhere people run around worrying about little things like what someone else thinks about them. whether someone is thinking about them.

i'm not saying that's the best things a person can worry about, but sometimes i wish i could really just worry about things like that again.

becuase seeing the state of the world, as it really is isn't any fun. it's a lonely place.

if life were an ocean most people don't seem to get deeper than 5 or 10 feet in. i'm not faulting them, but that's how it seems.

there's so much more down there. more to life. but it's also dark desolate lonely and dangerous.

it's a blessing a curse to go down there.

it's the weekend and that means lonely people get drunk so they can hang out with people without realizing that those people pretty much suck.

i'm lonely too. but i can't do that. to myself.

a day is gonna come

2005-11-10T20:33:00.000-07:00

there's a feeling of impotence. that accompanies this thing i think i have. it's like the flu, but far more deadly.

lack of belief is society. is a dangerous killer.

i believe in the potential of each individual. but i think you group them together and you get a bunch of college kids convinced that booze and the opposite sex are far more important than global poverty or prejudice.

i think that society allows people to focus on small problems. like shoes. when they should be worried about more important things. like saving the world.

my philosophy teacher, who is a great person, his an einstein quote:

"if most of us are concerned with shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophy"

the problem i see is that one if every 10 people even thinks twice about reading things like that. or if they do they're doing anything about it.

there real problems out there when we sit well-fed in our heated apartments and think about how great we have it. ten minutes later we'll be thinking about what some stupid inconsequential person thinks about us again.

what's needed is a absolute change in the way people think. we're so civilized we don't know shit.

i'm a bad person when i say that if everyone would think like me we'd be fine.

what's needed is crosscultural interaction. in a good way. not wars.

i remember 7 years ago i saw a piece on nightline about how israeli and palestinian kids would go to some camp in maryland. and they wouldn't hate eachother. they wouldn't hate they other group. because the people were just people and that's all it takes.

when people are just people. when you see that people who don't look like you and think like you are still people. change can begin.

i realize that concern for your fellow man isn't going to solve all the worlds problems. i realize it might solve any.

i realize too that even if three people who read this are converted. that won't make much of a difference.

i may be impotent against the problems of the world. but i'm gonna keep trying. hard.

where the winds hit heavy on the borderline

2005-11-10T12:57:00.000-07:00

misanthropy. population 1. is a lonely place to be.

i don't believe in commas anymore.

i think that i'm the most enlightened person on earth. and then i think i must be wrong.

enlightenment shouldn't be like this.

i think that most people are far too concerned with things that don't matter. and then i'm left holding the world and not finding a single thing that matters.

that's not completely true. human suffering matters. it does. but it's the one thing. that i can't do a thing about.

i don't want to volunteer because collecting 100 signatures won't affect the world. neither will 1000. or 10000.

saving one forest won't save another from destruction.

volunteers work hard to plug the leaks in the dam when the whole fucking thing is about to explode and crush us all. with the force. of our ways.

but then they're doing something.

i can poke fun at the man with his feet and hands in holes in the dam. but i'm not fixing the dam. and i'm not building a new one. i'm not properly equiped. for anything. but to tell him. that he's wrong.

like emptiness and harmony i need someone to comfort me

2005-11-09T01:32:00.000-07:00

denouncing all people doesn't really leave you with many options.

it's not that i really hate people. but i'm definately a misanthrope. i've been told it many times before. and that's because it's true.

there is nothing that really bothers me about people.

but i've been disappointed to many times. and so all of humanity disappoints me.

i don't want to get people because i know that i'll find problems with them. they'll be too concerned with what other think about them. too worried about being liked. too worried about things that don't matter.

i feel as though all temporal concerns are worthless. you'll live until you're not alive. and yet i still worry about these stupid temporal things.

i really don't know how to relate to people anyway.

because i'm convinced that all topic are completely worthless i have nothing to say.

so i fall into the same old shit. how's school? how's life? how's the weather?

none of it matters.

all of it matters.

and we'll be laughing at mediocrity

2005-11-07T02:36:00.000-07:00

it's 2:36am and i should be asleep. but i'm watching dateline. about evangelical christianity.

i've learned a lot.

i remember seeing some rock and roll church on tv once. i thought it was a tv thing.

there are a few ENORMOUS churches by my house. i just thought they were big.

these places are real and common and they scare me.

what it really seems to me like evangelical christianity does it scary. it basically give people an easy way out. of everything.

i'm sure these people can do some good things. maybe the feed the poor. maybe they protect religious freedom.

but these are millions of people who don't know anything about the bible or God or government than what some dude with a giant church and desperate need to attention tells them to believe, vote, and think.

now some of them may rightly consider their faith and come to the conclusion that evangelism is the answer, but from my experience, i relaly doubt it.

they talked to a women who said she voted for bush because she knew he was an evangelist christian. she said she didn't know ANYTHING about politics.

this shit is scary.

you give a lonely lost person sense of community and belonging and they're putty in your hands. and that putty seems to be used to overturn roe v wade and kill the environment. to say that god hates fags. to say that we have to take over iraq. to civilize them.

the true white man's burden. is spreading christianity.

the future seems to be evangelism. and i'm scared.

why do i love them

2005-11-06T23:43:00.000-07:00

tonight two very important statements were made at the staples center.

the first is that the lakers aren't nearly as bad as everyone wanted to think. the second is that the nuggets aren't nearly as good as everyone wanted to think.

really only one of those could have been shown tonight, but i'm pretty sure both were.

the nuggets falling to 1-3 and proves that karl back on the bench wasn't the answer to my prayers. the nuggets played terrible sloppy basketball.

they forced more than half their shots. they passed sloppy. their defense was ok, but hardly good enough to be the second best team in the west.

part of these problems could be attributed to the lack of karl in the first two games and the loss of nene, but neither of those explained the sloppiness.

they were undisciplined and it showed in their rebounding.

the nuggets are too short with the huge guards of the lakers. they're not strong enough defensively or offensively. they're undisciplined.

in many ways the nuggets are just victims of their own success at the end of last season and so the whole team was complacent in the offseason.

there were few line-up changes made during the last offseason. and many were needed. the nuggets lack both talent and depth. 'melo, camby and martin are all good but none are exceptional. the rest of the team is at best a little above average. depth and or talent could have really been added. neither were.

the players seem to be playing without the intensity they had at the end of last season. they seem convinced that they can win without trying and the lakers made it painfully obvious that they can't.

the laker's were largely cast to the bottom of every barrel with people saying this would prove that jackson was really just an average coach put into extradinary good teams. the current lakers are still a fairly strong team. bet they're playing pretty amazingly.

sure they lost to the suns without johnson and stoudemire but they've dominated the nuggets twice. their triangles currently a little heavy on kobe, but slowly that'll change. and kobe's probably the best he's been in a while. he's not taking every shot, which makes him harder to defend. what he's doing isn't as predictible.

and the clash between kobe and phil? i'm not seeing it.

it's funny how life turns out

2005-11-06T16:26:00.000-07:00

well i may not live the most privileged life, but i realize that i owe my fair share of thanks for the life i've had so far.

and i realize too that this is about 20 days too early. but i want to right it now.

i don't know if i owe these thanks to God, karma, fate, or my parents, but i think i owe them to someone.

i'd like to thank them for letting me be born white. american. and middle class.

i'm in no way trying to say that i'm better than someone who is brown. indian. and impovrished. but i wouldn't be me if i'd been that.

i'm thankful i was born in such a beautiful state. i'm thankful i got to go to good schools. i'm glad i never had to worry about food. or heat. or clothes.

i'm thankful that i had time to think. about things. about religion. about privilege. about life.

i'm thankful that i've known the people i've known.

i may not have always liked them. i still may not like them. but i'm thankful that i met them.

essentially it comes to this, i'm glad i am who i am, and i'm thankful that everything in my life that ever contributed to that.

even that bad. ugly. terrible things.

especially. the bad. ugly. terrible. things.

and i'm thankful my bad. ugly. terrible. things.

aren't really that bad. ugly. or terrible.

i'm sorry the whole world didn't get privileged life like mine.

i'm sorry i don't know how to fix the world.

but i promise. that i'll try.

i owe them that much.

anywhere at all

2005-11-04T11:48:00.000-07:00

life's hard when you're small.

i think there is no God because if there was he'd be really smart and never let anyone keep the same body in the same town in the same country for any amount of time.

if, every two years we had to change everything external about ourselves i think the world would be a different place.

we'd probably also be really upset and angry and not enjoy a second of it. but we'd be far more understanding.

i remember once i read a story about a planet. where the creatures believed that in the next life they could be anyone else. if they were rich they could be poor. if they were black they could be white. and supposedly on this planet no one went hungry and no one ever suffered. no one ever had less.

maybe we should start a new church. that says that. maybe thats the secret. to changing the world.

if you make friends with jesus christ

2005-11-03T15:18:00.000-07:00

first i would like to say that i'm pretty sure that this "fun size" milky way is less fun than ever before. the "fun size" was always small but i'm about 90% sure that this is even smaller. my halloween is slowly dying.

but that's not what i wanted to say.

i heard, twice today in different places about how shitty american politics is.

the oft cited figure of low voter turnout is an issue. don't get me wrong. but i think more troubling than that is something else.

colorado had so important ballot referrendums, and all the arguments i heard about them had no idea what they were about. i had no idea what it was about.

people voted against it because they didn't like taxes or they voted for it because they support higher education. those are they only arguments for or against that i heard.

that shows some thought. all be it incredibly superficial.

but more frieghtning is something else i was told about, right or wrong, today. i was told that up to like 80% of the population either vote what someone they trust, like their minister, tells them to vote, or they just vote the party line.

that's wasn't really too shocking. i've thought and said it before.

but the fact that it was presented as a fact not something i made up. oriented it differently.

when i always thought that i'd say that it's a shitty state. hearing it in class it sounded desperate.

now i don't know how we could fix this. if it's fixable. or it needs to be fixed. but none the less. it pretty much sucks.

and the rockettes went on strike.

shirt's in the closet

2005-10-31T19:21:00.000-07:00

i was going to write some mean scathing commentary about how halloween is bad. how it's just people masquarading as things they're not because they really don't like what they are. how people only like halloween because it gives them not one but two excuses to not be themselves. they're dressed as someone else and they're drunk.

but i decided against it.

this is not about that. it may not be about anything.

i learned about buddhism in class today.

things like the four noble truths.

how life is unsatisfactory. life is suffering.

that suffering is caused by our clinging to things. our attachment.

that there can be a cessation of suffering.

that the eightfold path leads to an end of suffering.

i'm not going to elaborate the eightfold path. i understand it even less than i understand the four noble truths.

but this represents a huge fundamental difference from the western religion(s) that i was raised on. there is no God to save me when i screw up. this is all on me.

as strange as this would seem to a lot of people, that's the most comforting thing i've ever heard.
regardless of opinion on God, you have to admit that arbitrary decisions about whether you're damned to eternal bliss or eternal suffering isn't very comforting.

we'll God may not be arbitrary, you're thinking. the catholic church says that homosexuality is a sin. other churchs don't. there's one God. someone will have had the wrong beliefs. either someone was wrong in condemning homosexuality or someone was wrong in accepting it. both Christians. one has to be wrong.

that's just one example. there are others.

now i know nothing about the evidence versus mythology of jesus. that's always been this one thing i wasn't sure i could get past. more recently it seems to me that jesus could have just been a crazy egotistical sonuvabitch. no disrespect to mary.

regardless of all this though. the thing that strikes me about buddhism is that there is none of this stuff about a God or gods.

i was told that the buddha said that there was no need to know if there was a god or not. that make sense to me. he doesn't solve this problem. the human condition. is independent. of a higher authority.

i don't know where i'm going. but i think that's something.

2005-10-30T17:36:00.000-07:00

but they weren't meant for it

2005-10-29T22:43:00.000-06:00

i've been thinking about kicking the can. giving up the goat. leaving the rat race.

when i think about where i want to be in ten years it never really fits.

i wonder what nirvana really feels like.

i wonder if i'm there.

i'm pretty sure i'm not.

because i still think i'm better. that i'm more worthty. than anyone else.

i know i'm not. but i feel it. time to time. all the time.

there is a great connectedness of things in the world. all of it fits together. each came from the same stuff. each is the same stuff. each will eventually be the same stuff.

the dalai lama says that all people are alike because they want the same things. that is they want pleasure and dislike pain.

seems sensible enough.

but still i can't feel connected to people. i realize the material and the basic drive similarities, but i can't relate to most people. all people. any people.

even the people i think i should get along with best i don't i never do.

conversations are to my recollection either forced boring or onesided.

people can say stuff. and it can be interesting. but it doesn't seem useful.

to me there's only one worthy pursuit. the bettering of yourself.

that's not quite right. probably not at all.

preventing human suffering is a very worthwhile endeavor. not an easy one but a worthwhile one.

but i say this and i go and i spend 200 dollars to make my already comfortable life moreso. and i pack some money away so i can travel like i've always wanted to. and i feel guilty that i'm not out on a friday night.

all of these things. and there are many more. despite all i said before. i do and think and say them.

i claim to want to help people and i scoff at volunteering. i think this countries politics and priorities need to change but i don't want to do it.

i suppose in someways all the things we see and think and want done, we can't do.

there's too much and we're too small.

i did think i could change people. that i could right and talk and people would be open and accepting and would realize my wisdom. and then together. all my converts and me. could affect change.

but so far i don't think anyone gets my message. either due to my failures as a writer, or theirs as a reader.

i don't really even know if i get my message.

if i know it i don't seem to.

it is our actions that define us, not our ideals. not what we believe but what we do. that matters.

i think i used this a few days ago but it's exactly what i want here so: i'll know my song well before i start singing.

i think that's where i need to go.

figure out the song.

what you want, i can never be

2005-10-28T23:15:00.000-06:00

i once saw a book by some guy i don't remember. it was called i am that.

i think that title got it all wrong.

i am this.

labelling yourself allows you to stop considering.

if you're a christian. you don't have nearly so much to consider as a nonchristian. because you believe that God gave you a book that says how to live.

if you're an average college student too, you don't have to consider. you too have a bible. it has in it two words: sex and booze.

by becoming one of these things are the hundreds of thousands of others you allow yourself to stop being challenged. you're ideological battles go from internal to external. you start persecuting not wondering.

if you're a conservatives you should only talk to liberals if you have to (a la ann coulter). if you're a liberal conservative are old, stupid and stuck in their ways.

life is so much easier when you're a gathering of terms rather than thoughts.

i always feel wrong when people ask me to descibe myself. because well. i just am.

i am not a christian. i am not a liberal. i am not an engineer.

i'm not a million more things than i am.

all i really know. is that.

i am.

and don't criticize what you can't understand

2005-10-27T18:55:00.000-06:00

if people were just people.

if people were just people.

if people were just people. the world would be a far different place.

black. white. yellow. red.

chinese. south african. indian. native american. american. slovak. japanese. kenyan.

gay. straight. bi.

christian. muslim. jewish. hindi. buddhist.

male. female. transgender.

if people were just people. there could be no hate.

no godhatesfags.com. no GLBT alliance. no black panthers. no al-Quaeda.

i'm beinging to wonder if people are just incapable. of just being. a people.

the distinctions we draw between ourselves cause misunderstandings.

i'm a person. but to others i'm a straight white american male.

sheryl swoopes is a person. but to others she's a gay black american female.

and something makes me feel like a dick. for being white. male. american. and straight.

i don't dislike anyone anyless for the labels that are put on them. or i try not to. i try hard.

people are just people. judge each on their own merit. or don't judge at all.

the weight of the world, a play in three acts

2005-10-26T01:28:00.000-06:00

"then what tom?"
"i'll be all around in the dark. i'll be everywhere. wherever you look. wherever there's a fight so hungry people to eat, i'll be there. wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, i'll be there. i'll be there in the way guys yell when they're mad. i'll be there in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they built - i'll be there, too."
"i don't understand tom"
"me neither, ma. but... just something i've been thinking about"

the world is full of injustice. of depression repression suppression oppression.
of hate.
of fear.
of misunderstanding.
and there's nothing to do about it.

there's no god.
we're alone.
and we hate eachother.