my weekend

Was a lot of working. And then this happened.

Thankfully, aside from some whiplash and upsetting Adam's back, nobody was seriously injured. Every car you see in the picture was involved.

If you know Jinah, give her some love when you see her. That white one was her unnamed baby.

I got an A on my psych midterm, and on my Comps. midterm. Taking into account how I've done perfect on everything else, yours truly is an A student. Weeeeird.

I tried to blog from the porch earlier, but this fucking hurricane is eating up all my wifi and sitting outside wasn't working. Seriously, though. I'm inside and I can hear the sound of the floodwater in my backyard over the sound of the air conditioner. That can't be good. Oh well. My yard's been eroding for years, it's only getting bad now. My dad said something about it being the Army Corps of Engineers' duty to take care of land erosion.

This summer's going by faster than any I've experienced before. Probably because I've been keeping relatively busy, doing stuff, not having a lot of time to commit to sitting around, and/or driving around aimlessly, like last summer. God, before Katrina, we could say "Let's go for a ride in the country" without eliciting those "are you fucking NUTS?" looks from whoever was around.

I want to go to Deep Creek so bad. Enough said about that.

As you might tell from The Gravy (and I'm not linking to it anymore, you find it yourself, you know you want to), I've got a new bit I'm working on. Although this one's more of a song than a poem, and I'm mostly done recording it, too. If you're not either Jinah, Francis, or my mom, you'll have to wait to hear what it sounds like. I just feel good having recorded something, having a project, if you will. It's been quite some time since I did anything musical, other than farting.

Sometime before the end of this summer, I'm planning on hosting a luau / cookout / big gay yard party. Not necessarily gay, heh, but don't expect to hear country. Or to escape a little bit of disco. Or something.

These sweat pants I'm wearing are making me do just that. I'd take them off, but.. I actually don't know why I haven't taken them off. There, that's better.

I went on a date Friday night. It was alright, I guess, but I fear I'm going to do my magic "I'm unfortunately not interested" act again. I know me.

After an episode of ST:TNG, I've determined it's time to go to bed.

(DB) out.

a clear picture of the region between my ears

Author's note: I mean what I say in the title. This is about as cogent and composed as I get. This entry here is me in print. For now.

Tonight, I sat in the diner with the Apple crew for four hours. It felt good to be home.

I was thinking to myself as I drove home how disastrously I've been neglecting my blog(s). I have good reasons, such as keeping up with school, writing this paper that was due today, well Thursday, whatev, staying in touch with friends, etc.

I think what made tonight at the diner so reminiscent of "the old days" was the conversation. Of late, it's been along the lines of 'get some food, joke about work, go home / go on with evening.' Otherwise, it's with people from outside of work. Still enjoyable, but the dynamic is completely different. Tonight it was me, Bec, Alicia, and Patrick. The latter two made appearances, but Bec and I sat there for about four hours or so.

Of course, the usual hilarity ensued. Talking about boys, jokes about sex, bugs flying in and out of my hair (no joke), and the like. But once the coffee and the ambience of Polly's presence sinks in, it's like we're playing Breakout with each other; bouncing introspective statements and disarming questions back and forth, disintegrating whatever walls we live behind, unearthing the ancient ruins of our inner psyches.

That's what I missed the most, I think. To draw on something I said to Bec, I miss seeing people naked. And I miss being naked.

(If you haven't distinguished from my choice of words tonight that I'm not talking about nudity, go read Entertainment Weekly.)

That's what I think makes my "work friends" so unique. If I had to pick reasons for why that is, I'd say it's because we're around each other all the time, working and otherwise, so we've had more time to observe each other in most facets of our daily lives. To be more abstract, I personally place a lot of faith in how another's presence resonates, in the metaphysical "vibe" or "aura" sense. Being immersed in a set of company, through a diverse set of situations and conditions, tends to foster a connection that I, granted from limited experience, view as rare.

So, in summation, we're very well equipped to sand-blast each others' personalities until we're sitting there, naked, looking at our clothes, and learning what it is to live, and why.

It's inspiring.

Looking at my life right now, school's treating me a lot better than I was expecting. No, actually, it's more along the lines of, I'm applying myself and enjoying it more than I was expecting. It's been a good, long-ass time since I've turned in a paper and felt like I was running across a finish line somewhere. As far as I know, aside from missing one point in a lab for Intro to Comps., my grades are perfect. I'm doing homework, acting responsibly, sleeping, not eating the entire contents of my kitchen on a regular basis...

Compared to a month ago, and a year ago, I've got my shit together. Of course, I'd love to sit back and revel in that. But I feel like I've still got a lot more work ahead of me, mostly because I actually do, and therefore I don't want to think about any laurels that I might be tempted to rest on. As I was saying earlier tonight, I don't want to stop until I've reached a point where my potential is no longer limited by decisions I've made.

A lofty goal, but attainable. Aren't the best goals the lofty ones, anyway?

The sense of satisfaction I get from actively pursuing success is helping to quiet the voices inside that tell me I'm lonely. Shit, if you've been reading at all these past couple entries, you might know how loud those voices get. However, one of the textbook coping mechanisms for anything is keeping busy. And, since I can use that to my advantage, I don't feel so much like trying to break it apart and solve the real issue.

In my soul of souls, I know the issue will resolve itself when a) the stars are properly aligned, and b) when I'm good and ready. But, in the more superficial soul above that one, I still feel like I want someone. Don't know who. And really, I don't know what I'd do with someone who met my criteria. Frankly, the chances of that person existing right now are so slim that I'd probably start looking around for the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.

That's not me being emo. That's me acknowledging how picky I am. Which I sometimes think is self-destructive. Enter the soul of souls again, though, and I really know that my standards are for my own good. Plus, combined with the circumstances of my life at present, I've said this before: there isn't much room (or desire) for compromise on my part.

I'm trying to decide where I want to transfer, whenever I'm in a position to do so. I have decided that I don't want to stay in Maryland, if I have anything to say about it. My two choices for schools are ASU in Phoenix, and McGill in Montreal. ASU's transfer requirements seem hellish, but they're probably pretty much in line with those of other American schools. McGill's requirements are even more hellish, because the standardized tests in Canada are a lot more rigorous than they are here.

I think I could probably get past that if I wanted it badly enough. Then there's that problem of transferability of credits to any post-grad stuff I'd want to do. Which, if I stick with psychology, might interfere with getting licensure years down the line. Something to consider, but whatever. Who knows if I'll be sticking with psychology? I think I'd like to now, but I'm still relatively early on in my college experience. Overall, though, I think if I had the chance to go to McGill, I would. ASU would probably be a close second.

As much as I've wanted to go to Phoenix over the past few years, I think McGill would be a more fertile ground for education. And I think Montreal in general would probably be a much more diverse playground for new ideas, etc... I think it'd provoke me to continue further on my never-ending quest to understand myself. While Phoenix is always sunny and I do have family there, something about the opportunity to go to a completely unfamiliar and appealing place is tugging on my leg, asking me to jump in.

(DB) out.

this is where songs come from

I can see it happening now. All it takes is enough conversation with some intangible boy, and I start to care about him. Then, all he has to do is say one wrong thing, and I start to doubt him. He quickly corrects it, and I shove the doubts to the back of my mind and get back to caring. Combine that with distance and indifference amidst an otherwise desirable set of character traits, and there we have it: the self-perceived Challenge, the uphill battle I seem drawn to fighting.

I will be alone for quite some time, because it seems I'm entirely too self-destructive in my choice of men lately. Something about this cycle has to give, and I'm tired of it being me.

I'm tired of finding disillusionment lining the only road that, inherently, I believe to be the most important. If not for love, there would be no point to life whatsoever. I don't like thinking about that anymore.

I'm a (mostly) good person. I've got a lot to give. I care, sometimes too much, and I'm perfectly capable of loving someone.

Am I, though? I've come to think lately that if someone has deep enough feelings for me, that I'm doing something wrong; that I'm failing to realize something about either them or myself, that will pop up sooner or later and make it all crash and burn. But, turn the tables, and I'll cry myself to sleep over every unstable, idiotic bastard that I happened to identify with, at least until I get tired of it.

That cannot be healthy.

So, am I capable of love, or am I just capable of pretending I want to be? How deep-seated is all this, and how much more digging and sorting through my and others' feelings before I find some semblance of reason?

If I can't do the one thing I've felt we were all put here to do, then what is the point?

Tobacco, that's what.

asdf.

I've been talking to a boy lately. At times I don't know what I think about him. I know for sure that if he lived in Baltimore, we'd have met already. But alas, he lives in DC.

Could my autumnal "find someone" instinct be kicking in early? Perhaps, given all the thought I've been wasting on the subject. Wow, but anyway, we're supposed to somehow meet for lunch next week. Not this one, but the next one.

The rest of this post has been omitted because it's NOT INTERESTING AT ALL.

I've done a lot more writing this weekend than I'm really used to, and it feels good. I'm half tempted to start drawing shit again tonight. I say half tempted because I have to wake up sometime before noon.

Maybe I'll do my hair.

I have to buy blank DVDs. I didn't spend all this money on a Superdrive for nothing.

P.O.S.T.

It's ridiculously pretty out. I think I was supposed to hang with Dave today or something. But I need to finish cleaning. Ugh.

At least my iPod will keep me company through that.

For no apparent reason, I feel a little bit like crap. Probably because I slept in funny positions last night.

Hah, I only seem capable of one-sentence introspection right now.

Power On Self Test. Makes sense.

I need to dig through my closet, in hopes that old textbooks are all still dwelling there. I also need breakfast.

I'd feel bad eating, though, because I ate like a fat girl last night, between Sushi Hana, dessert, and 3am munchies. Maybe I shouldn't eat.

Do I need to go to the bathroom? Only time will tell.

i can feel your feet touching mine

For the sake of my dubious traces of a reputation, and in deference to my mental state last night, let us call the last line of the previous post "lost in translation."

I was useless today. I slept in, masturbated, ate some cheese, took a nap, and only after that did I really start my day. I had sushi with friends, then stood around talking with Bec in the parking lot for what turned out to be two hours. Then, I got dessert with Tabby, came home, and largely repeated my morning. And thus, here I am.

School starts Tuesday and I'm only half-sure I have the books from when I took one of the classes before. The other class, well, I'm hoping I can pull some money out of my butt before we actually get to needing that book.

However, given the hands-on nature of that class, I don't see too many homework assignments. Could be wrong, though. Probably am.

I'll say one thing, though. I'm going to have to kick this insomnia. Or, more accurately, the dysfunctional sleep schedule I'm keeping. I doubt I'm doing myself too many favors by being up and writing at this hour, but whatever. A girl's got needs.

At the Double T tonight, the table behind me heard me recounting The List. I don't think they knew I was talking about myself. If they did, I imagined them as the type that would say something ignant. What do I know, though?

2006, thus far, has been a pretty strange year, I guess, considering the number of changes that've occurred to what I would've called my baseline, normal life. Plus, my hair certainly isn't getting any shorter. Which only signifies my adherence to my assertions that I was going to grow it out. Stil, though. I talked about it forever,r and now, it's actually happening. Even though it takes shampoo, conditioner, a blow-drying, a go with a straightening iron, and another blow-drying to get it looking right. Sometime I wonder, how might my days be diffrent if I woke up and gave myself enough time to do my hair in the morning? I conclude that the only real effect would be, being that guy who spends too much time on his hair.

(DB) out.

thunderstorm, part II

This pen is far more suitable.

We went to the diner, drove home, and here I am. I came out to the porch to finish a drawing I started earlier, and so I did, mostly. By the end, the perspective on the wall/ceiling panels got screwed up. The occupant of the porch depicted would have to be on an untold number of drugs for that shit to make any visual sense.

So, this is my last "free" weekend before life starts back up. I feel like I want to go out and be crazy and such, but the wiser half knows that the bored half had more fun thonight, making shirts, painting the beginnings of a tea set, drawing, writing, frolicking, whatever. There was a sense of uniqueness and individuality to our activities tonight that I enjoyed immensely.

Louise says married life is boring. I wonder, is single life all that more enthralling? I want to say no. Sure, having the ability to fantasize guilt-free about whoever you want can be amusing, and you don't have to compete for the covers at night, but eh. There's a kind of monogamy to being single. Love only yourself, until an interesting substitute comes by. (Which I guess would constitue adultery?) Oh well. Here I am, making up catchy truisms out of a sense of being alone.

Although, unfettered from the throes of love and the practicalities of a relationship, I feel like I know myself better. I'm responsible for only my feelings, and my romantic indecision / apathy doesn't have earth-shattering consequences... I like to feel like a walking contradiction sometimes.

The lonely heart, yearning for a companion, has no desire to actually find one.

I was trying to explain it to Francis a couple days ago (I still felt weird talking "inner me" with him but we worked that out) and this is how it goes: I'm unwilling to compromise the fairly loose set of standards that I have, and therefore I come off, even to myself, as abrasive and heartless.

However, the notion of someone more "my speed" frightens me.

I think I'm more fun when I'm not in love. Acerbic sarcasm is the air I breathe in social situations. Everyone knows my warm, chewy inside, and the juxtaposition between the pulp and the rind can be quite amusing. Even if cynicism is the breakfast of champions for people trying to nurse inner pain... well, if it can get a chuckle, nurse me. The laughter of others can temporarily fill the gaping hole that is my desire to hear "I love you" with an echo.

I delude myself by thinking, "Well, this will help my art." What art, though? All I do is bitch about work, school, friends, disillusionment with life. Then, I drop a few tonal and metaphorical references to every time I feel disgusting about having bad sex.

<>

(DB) out.

thunderstorm, part I

Tonight, Jinah, Adam, and I decided to go to A.C. Moore rather than drive around aimlessly. I'd say it was a good choice. We got materials to make T-shirts, and a tea serving tray.

We spray painted the hell out of everything we bought, stunk up my basement, then went out and frolicked in crazy, pouring rain.

So now, I'm practicing kana, and having tea. A+J are inside watching TV.

This pen is not suitable for writing.

today is Turn On Your Broken Air Conditioner Day

9:12AM- Last night, I fell the fuck asleep, haha. I sat in bed (mistake), intent on writing something, and fell asleep, pen in hand. I woke up largely in the same position hours later. It is insanely beautiful out today. Sucks, because I must spend most of my day trapped away in an office. You know, it's funny. When I first started, I was elated to have a job that didn't require moving around in any fashion. Now, I hate sitting still. I look forward to any chance I get to move around, or whatever. So, today, the Signius Project begins. Between phone calls, I'm going to try and write a poem a day, or a cogent artistic musing a day, or something. It's a way to capitalize on all this ridiculous "free" time. Hopefully, it can stand in for any sense of accomplishment or satisfcation that I might wish for whilst at work. Somehow, I'm going to get my ass to Deep Creek this summer. I don't care who with. Even if it's just by myself. (Preferably not, but whatever.) Well, I know Jinah's wanted to go forever, so she'll have to come. That and, I miss the ocean too... We're all supposed to go camping again in August, but I think that would require finding all of our stuff again; given how it was haphazardly scattered through in everyone's trunks, that would take weeks. It'd probably be easier to just rent cheap hotel rooms, as I have in the past. Come to think, we probably should have gone to Point Lookout during swimming season.. Mmm.. I have off this coming weekend! Maybe I can get down to the ocean for a night or two! I know Jin and I were talking about that, except I think everyone's going down on Sunday, which isn't that convenient, time-wise... Eh, I'll figure it out.

11:19AM- People are idiots. And I am not a telemarketer, or an answering machine. Thankfully, I'm not going to have to struggle with that much longer. And I don't care about "capturing phone numbers and mailing addresses" and trying to upsell people on things. My job is to mindlessly enter information for people and pretend to like it. And pretend to be knowledgeable on things that I'd never pay good money for in my whole life. Also, if I were a caller for any one of these companies, I'd be upset at the number of flaming hoops I'd have to jump through to get an answer about anything. If anything, at least I have a short list of doctors, lawyers, and apartment complexes that I wouldn't consider if my life depended on it. After today, only three days left. I hate how fake I sound when I pick up these calls. My phone voice is nothing like my normal voice, sometimes, anyway. Sometimes, I make no effort to sound enthused, or, no effort to mask that I hate what I'm doing. There really is something to be said for caring about what one does.

12:36PM- I do like The Format's new album. It's more energetic overall, I think. Still, it doesn't have a First Single analog, which I still feel bad for caring about, but overall I'd say there are more "skip-to" songs.

12:54PM- I wish being at this cubicle didn't drain all the vitality out of me.

1:07PM- I wish I didn't have to hear the same sob story about the same S.O.B.... that... uhhhh... they broke up because of an AIM prank, designed to trap the guy into saying the wrong thing.

1:28PM- Cigarette. Finally. Praise Jesus.

1:43PM- My mission for today is to punch thousands of tiny pinholes into a piece of paper. Then, I will hang it on my wall or something.

1:50PM- Speaking of hanging things on walls, I need to remove all the pictures from my cubicle, because I'm leaving and my room could certainly use some current photos. But, I know if I take them down now, I'll be bored out of my mind until I finally do leave. Not like I look at them all that often, but they cast an ambient glow over this grey prison.

3:03PM- I got the most amusing call ever. A maintenance man fixed a toilet. Then, he shit in it. He didn't do a great job fixing it. After the flush, his shit exploded upwards and outwards. The woman kept screaming, "There is doo-doo everywhere!" At least eight times.

4:13PM- It is STUPID BALLS HOT out. At least it was in my car, where I had lunch. Something about eating, alone, in an undecorated, windowless break room, with only the hum of bending machines to tickle my ears, well. Kinda makes me unhappy. It's funny. Morale here usually seems fine, but looking at anyone alone in that break room, it just feels like they hate being there.

4:57PM- People are monkeys. I understand it sucks that your AC doesn't work. But I am a hundred miles away. Get a life.

6:52PM- We have been STUPID busy. I don't know why so many people had a Memorial Day deadline to turn on their air conditioners. Retarded.

11:40PM- Turns out my parents turned ours on today, too.

(DB) out.

what i think when i'm away

...from a keyboard.

7:11AM- It's sad when a pen and paper are more of a backup blog, rather than a blog being a digital backup diary. I wish I had done something useful with myself last night. I stayed in, watched about 20 minutes worth of Monster In Law, listened to the new Format album, and allowed it to take too much sleep from me. And now, I'm at work. I got two hours of sleep, optimistically speaking. Of course, pessimistically speaking, I got about fifteen minutes of sleep, interspersed throughout two hours of tossing and turning, sweating, and finding my pillows way too uncomfortable; even though they're absolutely great, I can't take much solace in their company when I know I have to leave them. Am I talking about goose down pillows, or concubines? Is there much of a difference? I'm going to attempt writing as a form of therapy, if not intellectual stimulation, to keep me awake. Is it bad that I'm almost wishing to get a migraine, so I can have an excuse to go get some sleep?

10:00AM- I just ate a little bit, had some caffeine, and a cigarette. And for about ten minutes, everything will be okay with the world.

10:10AM- I find my mind dwelling on two things. The first being, I can't wait to actually be done here, to finally stop having to live and work in the proverbial shadows, doing jobs that nobody wants to do. I much prefer Apple. I much prefer enjoying my job and being appreciated.

10:32AM- The second thing is, memories that are so vivid I could live in them. I only have a couple of them, two good, one bad. The bad one just happened. The good one was last summer. The other good one.. which I guess I would more accurately call bittersweet, that was in the fall. "And about all the pain, I suppose it was worth it.. You could do it again, but I just don't deserve it..."

11:11AM- I'm afraid of relationships and commitment in general. I'll admit it. I look at where my life is, where I want it to be, and how much I've got on my plate, and I am of the opinion that I've got absolutely nothing to give, at least as far as time and energy go, and that I'm far too picky to find any guy for whom I'd be willing to compromise. As far as my freedom goes, hah. I have no idea what kind of superhero would be required to distract me from my love affair with my own capricious free will.

2:58PM- That poem took entirely too long to write, but it's been pretty busy today. Aside from an hour or two of unconsciousness in the morning, it's flown

(DB) out.

leave for the city, well, count me out

Bec says The Format's new album isn't as good as Interventions and Lullabies. I was supposed to get it from her tonight, but suddenly, I'm not all that anxious to. Suddenly, I actually think I might wait until it hits stores. Or whatever other avenues might bring it my way. I find it akin to the feeling I had that I didn't want to watch the sequels to The Matrix, because I didn't want to ruin the first one for myself.

I've been reading Devlin's blog lately, and just finished replying to an email he wrote me. Whether or not my readers know, he's in Japan. He's apparently having the time of his life. Having never seen him blogging before, it was strange, but something became clear; whether or not I'm familiar with his writing, the change of scenery's made him happier, or at least, given him something to be excited about. I was just telling him that it seems we're, if on separate sides of the planet, in similar boats; both of us have come upon circumstances that could completely change our futures, at least, how we see them.

I find that exhilarating. In two weeks, school will begin, Signius will be done, and I could be on a completely different road than I was a couple months ago. Or, I could do what I always do, and brilliantly fail.

The difference, this time, is that I don't view failure as an option. It's not like the last couple of times, where my thinking was more to the tune of, "well, if I fail, I'll deal with it and move on." Well, I've tried that one, and it hasn't worked. Plain and simple, I must excel, if I want anything to change. And that's a pretty silly "if," really.

Friday night, I was retarded, and decided to go to a party in honor of yet another friend of mine who's headed off to the military. (I say retarded because I only had about an eight-hour buffer zone between getting out of work and having to be back the next morning.) Granted, he's not as close as certain others, but I think it's served as a distressing reminder that as we age, people are going to leave. A scenario that recently came up in conversation was one where, in five years, some of us are going to come back from college, and find our hometowns empty. Well, not empty, but you know. Everyone we once held dear will be gone. Somewhere else, out of town, even dead, who knows? Besides wishing people the best, there's really nothing else one can do.

And, the other night, when Dave referred to dropping out of school as "pulling a Danny," I feel like a good bit of motivation fell into my lap. I look back, and I see an unglorious past. I look forward, and I see the support structure that cradled me through that past going threadbare. The more I think about making my life happen, the more I realize that I don't need that support structure. I don't need to be in the presence of people whose accomplishments amount to as little as mine; and I don't need to feel intimidated around people working towards a masters or a doctorate.

The mark I leave on this world has nothing to do with how I compare with my peers, and much more to do with what I bring to the table, and how I do it.

(For the purposes of disambiguation, the aforementioned support structure has nothing to do with my friends, and people I otherwise hold close to me. More like the abstract sense of feeling more comfortable in the company of fellow slackers and dropouts. Which is gross, I know, but true.)

Okay, so, it's May. Why is it absolutely butt freezing outside? Aside from the facts that I'm wearing a microfiber shirt, not moving, and smoking, of course.

For the record, this weekend has been monstrously sleep-deprived. So I think I might retire or something along those lines.

(DB) out.

we are family...

I guess. Now's not the best of times to be asking about the topic.

Today just didn't go right at all. It was that one day off in the 9 on, 1 off cycle that my life has been lately. Fortunately, I haven't got too much longer to be dealing with that. One thing I will say about Signius that I don't particularly care for is their penchant for giving me random days off during the week, then working me straight through every single weekend. I get off tomorrow night at 10:30, then go back in at 7 on Saturday. I'm not a machine, and I'm not a manager. Machines wouldn't care, and managers get paid a good bit more because that comes with the territory.

That and, if your check arrives Thursday night, but you can't pick it up unless you're scheduled to work, and therefore have to wait until Friday (which begins the hell cycle of no free time until pretty much next week), that's straight up bullshit.

So after finding out that little gem, and having a long-winded and unpleasant conversation with my parents, I turned off my phone and went to sleep. It's not too often that I hit a point where I'm about to break, but every now and then, I get in this precious self-defeating mood where I hate myself, I hate everything, and all I want to do is not exist.

Right now, I take solace in being able to look a turkey sandwich in the eye, and tell it without a shadow of a doubt, that resistance is futile.

(note: if the time appears incorrect in this post, it's definitely because i let it sit for about two days before actually hitting publish.)

i somewhat know where to begin

Sorry about the absence of a post in recent days.

Up until Thursday, I had no reason to neglect my blog. Thursday hit, and I suddenly had all the reason in the world.

Without getting too far into it, because most of my readers probably already know this.. well, okay. I'll try to do it in one sentence. In the course of a day, a spontaneous hernia (I hope) has turned me back towards college, and most likely toward the demise of my new job.

That aside, everything's been fine. My doctor's appointment is Monday, and I suppose that's when crunch time begins. I have to figure some way of taking care of whatever ailment this is before June 5th, because that's when school starts.

I'm hoping the difference between success and failure, this time, will come from the lack of any alternatives. It was either 1) go on the fast track back to school, or 2) rack up thousands of dollars in medical debt. The choice seems clear.

I mentioned in prior posts th... okay, I'll finish this after some bed.

(DB) unusually sleepily out.

entry, part II

I totally meant to finish that entry last night. But I think something happened along the lines of me nearly collapsing at the keyboard.

I was just thinking to myself, what should I listen to while I blog tonight? So I looked through my playlists and realized they were all way too predictable. Thus I've made a playlist entitled "I'm Sick of Predictable Playlists." It's chock full of goodies that I don't listen to all the time, formulated via the ultra-scientific method of scrolling around my library and picking something random from each screen.

But if I had fears of the random pick sucking, I'd definitely pick something a few songs up or down, that sounded a little more promising. Yeah, I'm fickle. But yeah, I designed the experiment myself. So they're my rules to break.

It'd figure, though, I'd go through the trouble to pick out some relatively less traditional blogging music, and have nothing to blog about. Well, maybe something.

So, in writing a story, there are only a finite number of conflicts any given character can run into. I remember only really touching on four in school, even though Wikipedia says there are eight or so. Right now, my conflict is Man vs. Himself.

But to be kind, I'll summarize, as this is just a variation on a theme lately: I need college to get where I need to go in life, but I hate sitting through classes. I'm smart and can accomplish anything I want to, given sufficient incentive. But, my track record is as follows: I mess up every chance that falls in my lap, and the ones I seek out always turn out to be nowhere near as satisfying as I'd hoped. So, through significant fault of my own, plus some genuinely unfortunate outward circumstances, nothing's really worked out the way it was supposed to.

I asked my mom tonight if all people do in life is work towards some promise of an eventual payoff. And that thought scares me more than anything. If I go through with college, get a degree in something, get a job, get a house, get a dog, get married, have kids, then pay for their college? Seems like once people satisfy the demands they once strived to meet, they go looking for bigger prizes and bigger challenges.

I'm wondering, at what point does one stop and take some time to enjoy those hard-earned things? Does such a point exist? And if life truly is all about the endless pursuit of increasingly lofty goals, how the hell can that be satisfying at all?

I personally don't feel like spending every day of my life preparing to have a better one. I'd like to reach a point where I'm done with that, and I can be happy. And I hope my view of American life, and my view of my own life and future, well... I hope they're just overly cynical, and wrong. There's nothing I'd like more than to be told I'm making absolutely no sense at all, and that the drive to improve oneself (or acquire toys, for some people) does really hold some sort of beauty and exhilaration which I haven't yet figured out. Somebody, please, give me some hope!

And on the more short-term end of the spectrum, I wouldn't be opposed to trees genetically engineered to reproduce without pollen. I'd much rather avert my eyes from oaks humping each other than have such a runny nose that I'd sell my soul to be able to sneeze uncontrollably.

And now, for your moment of Zen, thanks to wired.com: uh, wow. and it's like a nightmare.

Goodnight.

(DB) out.

entry, part I

And I'm planning on it in the fall. I'll need to start saving soon. Like, next paycheck. But I really need to be able to go, and sometime in October. I think that's when I wanna do it.

I don't know why I'm so compelled to go. Actually, I do. I just don't know why I'm so compelled to actually believe that I could make it happen. I'd probably need at least $500 or $600 for the trip, and that's a good bit of money. And I suck at saving. But I still want to go.

I find myself unusually short for words tonight, and I don't readily have a good reason for it. Today was spent swimming with Jinah, working, hanging out at Double T with Jinah, Adam, Shelly, and Francis, then coming home and desiring to go to Ireland.

Swimming was nice, though. Jinah and I needed to have some exclusive us-only time, so we sat around like fat kids watching courtroom reality shows, then went swimming. The water was clear, and it was cold, but not numb cold, it was eventually warm cold. We spent about an hour there, and I went to work. Of course we met up later, because our lives are basically a continuum of doing whatever and reconvening to wonder what to do.

I've got something on my mind, but I can't really talk about it without getting too down and dirty, and starting to talk about other people. Whose business is not mine to spread.

(insert break of about a day here)

we still kill the old way

Every now and then, I'm compelled to listen all the way through Lostprophets' Start Something.

Every time that happens, I think about when I used to hang out with Brian, and how much enjoyment (?) and / or satisfaction we gleaned from doing absolutely nothing. We'd listen to this album, drive around, maybe ponder a fine point or two of life, leave the occasional trail of beer cans on the side of some random road, and ultimately conclude it was time to go home around 3am. Most of the times, it was all pointless. Sometimes, dangerous. Still, I feel like I enjoyed it nonetheless.

As summer starts to stir, I find myself thinking about how different this one is, or at least looks like it will be. Namely, the formerly inseparable old crew. Looking at us now, it seems like the only reasonable cause for us all to be in the same room would be a funeral. I start wondering, how meaningful was my relationship with each of those people? The thought crosses my mind that maybe those relationships weren't all that substantial, if they seemed to dissolve so easily. Did we all spend all our time together, was the group dynamic the only thing we had going for us? Even though a year or two isn't that long, so much water's passed under so many different bridges, and that makes it easy to look back and make blanket statements. Statements which, in turn, make it easy to forget details, and make it easier to deal with that loss of friendship.

Tonight, I caught myself looking back, resting on certain memories with more than a passing glance. Heh... I think I'm not alone in knowing that a part of me will always live in Mike's dad's basement. There were occasional guest stars, but the cast remained the same, usually. There wasn't a one of us who hasn't seen the other laugh, cry, throw up, get naked, fall in love, fall out of love. We all knew each others' various faces, even the ones most of us didn't show other people. Sure, there are tons of people who would describe their senior year of high school / first year of college the same way.

But, I can't think of a single person in that cast to whom I never bared my feelings and pleaded for help, or vice-versa. Whatever happened, everything always worked out okay. No matter how ugly we were on the inside, we still loved each other, and stuck at one anothers' sides. We're talking about the kids who knew me as a neurotic closet-case with a taste for Jack Daniels and demolition DDR, and the habit of saying the wrong thing one time too many. I'm talking about the kid I secretly envied for his occasionally self-destructive inability to give a damn. Or the kid whose boundless generosity often pushed her own concerns to the back burner, leading to problems. Or the kid whose passion for inane, loopy ideas was as often as subtly annoying as it was exhilarating. Or the self-professed asshole who would only publicly drop that facade only for prospective romance, even though closed doors tended to reveal that puppy dog we all knew was there. I could go on too long with these, so I'll take it on faith that you get the point.

I'm pretty sure than anyone who even made it halfway through Psych. 101 could easily name a personality disorder for every single person I just described. And the "misery loves company" adage, at first glance, couldn't fit a group of people better. But it wasn't like that. Two or three of us would go somewhere one day, then a different set would go somewhere else the next day. We didn't need to be all together in one place to have fun, and forge great memories. Get us all in one room though, and we'd all just play off one another.

If you're familiar with the physics behind a nuclear fission reaction, it all makes sense. Pared down to the absolute bare minimum, it goes like this: A fissile fuel atom breaks down and throws out a neutron or two. Which then hits another fuel atom, causing it to fission. Releasing more neutrons. Lather, rinse, repeat. Energy everywhere.

Even if we were in uninspired or otherwise foul moods, sometimes one joke was all it took to get that reaction going.

(As an aside, looking down at iTunes and seeing this makes me feel like at least something about my thoughts tonight was cosmically intended.)

But, to address the question I posed earlier, my relationship with each one of them was perfectly substantial. And the fact that we're all orbiting different planets these days is a lot harder to reconcile than it should be. One never likes losing friends, especially for idiotic reasons. Although, my perspective on things might be different, because I didn't have any blood feuds erupt between myself and anyone else as life started dragging us off to our respective peripheries.

Jinah and I were talking tonight, about how we all know we miss the old times. And I realized, even if we were all in the same place again, doing the same things, it wouldn't be the same. You can only stand on a mountaintop for so long before you eventually have to worry about where dinner's going to come from. Even if we all forgot about the personal differences that have popped up over time, I think those spontaneous nuclear reactions we loved so dearly wouldn't happen so readily anymore.

We thrived on uncertainty. Sunday off was a requisite for partying Saturday night. Even though we could all theoretically be up for work or whatever, it was always more exciting when we were wondering just what the next day would hold. Any given Saturday night could be considered a microcosm of our lives at the time. None of us had "real" jobs. Community college was barely on the horizon, and when it came, it hadn't hit that shit-or-get-off-the-pot point where you're forced to seriously consider your future. When the future could be anything, the present is unquantifiably more exciting.

So even if we were all kicking back with some drinks, and being collectively stomped by one person in Halo 2, we'd all have that worry of where dinner's going to come from lurking around the corner in our minds.

But that's not how things work in the real grown-up world. People don't stop calling their friends because they get jobs. That's only supposed to happen when they have kids.

We all watched each other start to realize just who the people occupying our shoes were. And after that, we all witnessed each other learn to walk. Aside from lousy time management, there's no fantastic reason why we can't still walk together every now and then.

So, after waxing poetic about it, I think I might do something about it.

I don't know why I felt that was appropriate, but I did.

You know, I had other stuff on my mind before I started typing all this. Thankfully, most of it's taken the backseat it's generally more suited for. Except, I'm really disliking my new work schedule. I don't think I like the idea of Sunday and Monday being the new Saturday and Sunday, respectively. Even though Monday makes a good Sunday (everything's open, and it's easier to circumvent my broad, deep hatred of real Sundays), Sunday makes for one shit-bomb blow fest of a Saturday. Real Saturdays don't exist anymore, at least not in my world.

Bedtime.

(DB) out.

third wind

I've got no idea just how this auxiliary subsection of my personality has managed to take over, and thrive for the past couple of hours.

I conquered the hellishly long word day with aplomb. And with only two hours of sleep to go on. So I feel like everything turned out okay, in that respect. When I got home from Apple I was resolved to eat, and immediately sleep.

But SNL turned out to be funny, so I stayed up and watched it with my parents. My dad went to bed, I had a cigarette, then went up to the computer, intent only on blogging about my conquest of today, and then sleeping my big gay ass off.

It didn't end there. I'd left Wikipedia up at some point earlier in the day. It sucked me straight in. I've felt like a zombie, hopelessly aquiring useless information just for the hell of it, slowly finding that I didn't need to fight off sleep. The urge started to fade by itself. And while I've been catching myself about to commit more and more typographical sins, I feel more readily conscious than I did a couple hours ago.

I don't feel like there can be any healthy explanation for that.

I do know I finished at least one REM cycle during my micro-nap this morning, which might have allowed me to survive the day at Signius with relatively few mistakes. And I know the Red Bull allowed me to survive Apple. But as for now, I refuse to believe that an episode of SNL can serve as metaphysical fuel. All I know is, this third wind feels disconcerting, to say the least.

I feel like my body and mind are at odds with each other. My mind knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I should be asleep. And I think my body knows that too. But for some reason, it's not listening. It's just doing its own thing. It's not the first time that's happened, of course- but this is one of the only instances in recent recollection where it's happening for no particular reason. Given the current circumstances, my concsciousness serves absolutely no purpose.

Random aside: Why the crap is it 42 degrees outside? Isn't May, like, Monday?? I don't know. I feel like I shouldn't be able to see my breath without the aid of a cigarette. That and, for some reason, it smells like autumn out here. That's kinda depressing.

I don't know why it's depressing. My first instinct is to type, "I feel like, in order to appreciate that smell, I need a tumultuous summer of accomplishment, folly, and emotion in general to look back on." Which I guess makes sense. What I don't get is, my summers usually aren't that much different from the rest of the year, except the weather makes me happier by default. Hell, if you compare my relatively idle summer of 2005 to the winter/spring of 2006... well, you've got sloth in one hand, and ambition in the other.

Although if I look at this past winter, despite financial woes and boy trouble, I remember it as having been a whole lot more fun than a lot of ones in the past. And I think I can trace that back to the night of the Apple X-mas party, when all of us piled in the van, went down to DC, and let loose for an evening. It brings back memories of when we all lived at the diner, and the hectic holiday shopping rush had us effectively working together constantly, and playing together constantly. Of course, the circumstances of one's life tend to change, and things have largely returned towards what I'd call the baseline. I don't know. I'd go looking through iPhoto, but I'd probably get a little misty. At least inwardly.

I think I'm going to try sleep now, because I can't think of anything else I feel competent enough to communicate.

(DB) out.

they say your middle name is trouble, but i know it's caroline

I think my body hates me, or something along those lines.

I woke up this morning feeling sick as a dog, and after stifling that with much medicine, avoiding soda, and trying to get to sleep early, I tossed and turned for hours until I woke up at 2. I haven't been able to get back to sleep since. Which is a pity, considering I told Signius I'd work a surprise shift tomorrow at noon.

Okay, it's only from noon to 3, which is practically only enough time for me to scratch my balls, yawn, and wonder what to do next. But still, once you get in that "day off!!" mindset, it's tough to reconcile with yourself if you give it up.

Tonight was the first night I really got to break in my cubicle, after spending the past two weeks floating around to train. (Once they decide they're fed up with Win98, I'll be totally happy in any cubicle.) But anyway, I like mine. Tonight, after waking up and realizing I wasn't getting back to sleep anytime soon, I went through iPhoto and printed out some 4x6's to keep me amused during the day. Surprisingly, the whole process took a lot more thought than I ever realized.

When you walk by someone's cubicle, and you look at the photos they've got up, you subconsciously try to extrapolate some kind of story from those photos. Personally, I don't care if I'm right or not, but it's fun to look for details and start fabricating entertaining lies. If I see a picture, I see a teenage son, a girlfriend that the mother's not too entirely happy about, but they're both smiling, so she feels bad for having her doubts. I see a family at the beach, and I think, wow, they look happy, but I totally remember all my family vacations and the squabbling about where to go for dinner. If I get as far as to wonder the potential dinner spots those people in the photo squabbled about, chances are I've looked too long.

Does anybody else do this? I'd like to feel like I'm not completely insane.

So, whilst looking through my photos, I feel like I was thinking about it entirely too much. I was thinking, what stories do I want people to make up from my photos? I figured the following- no pictures of just me and someone, because a) I'm not dating them, and b) Shelly would ask why we don't have any ones of just me and her. And I'd have to tell her that she forbade me to print any of the pictures of her that I particularly care for, because she feels like she doesn't look good in them. Furthermore, I was careful to avoid pictures of any of my friends with beer bottles in their hands. (That one made things especially tough.) Then I thought, is it too transparent to have tons of pictures of friends? There's a lot more to my photo collection than that. So I picked a few of my favorite landscapes. Then I wondered, is that transparent? If I walked past my cubicle and saw those pictures, what would I think?

The pictures I chose tell the following story: this kid travels a good bit. He's got a lot of friends. They all look so happy. I wonder if they're all still happy? I wonder how long ago that was taken, do they all still talk? Would they all still appear in another picture looking just about the same? He's also got quite an eye for scenery. I bet he thinks he's some hot-shit photographer. I wonder if he even took those. Seriously, who prints on non-glossy 4x6's? I don't see any girls he's hugging, he must be one of those gays...

And I'm okay with that story. Because, ultimately, my life is interesting, for better or worse, and I'm fine with people noticing that.

Saturday is the work day from hell. 8-4 at Signius, 6-close at Apple. I've never worked that long a day before. I'm both excited and terrified, thinking about how it will turn out. Sure, I've partied that long, but that's a much more free-form activity than general purpose customer service. Will I get off work and go out, desperately needing to unwind? Or will I go home, crash, and wake up sometime Sunday afternoon? I guess only time will tell.

Speaking of time, I've got entirely too much of it. No matter how hard I try, I haven't been able to get myself to sleep. I don't even know what my body's telling me to do. One voice says "sleep!" Another voice says "Seek more cold medicine!" Then the "That would be dangerous" voice quickly puts that one to rest. If the chorus of "You're hungry!" and "You're nauseous!" and "Drink more water!" and "FIND SOME CAFFEINE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!" doesn't stop, well, at least one voice will win- I'll eventually tire myself out, thinking about what I'm really thinking.

By the way, the "You have to work today, bastard, because you're responsible and said yes when they said they needed you, and you're not in bed yet, muhahaha!" voice is really bugging the hell out of me.

That paper Jaime was writing, remember that? I proofread it the other night, and sent her a couple notes she later hailed as brilliant. Then she informed me that I have way too much potential to ignore college, but not in a condescending way, rather in an encouraging one. I then spewed out a little insight that's rare for me to spew out anytime before midnight:

10:49:57 PM danny c.: here's the official story on me and college: i'm working now, just so i can get my life in order before i attempt to take college seriously again
10:50:21 PM jaime b.: yes...
10:51:44 PM danny c.: here's the unofficial version: i've already screwed it up twice. i hate being there, and i hate essex, but i don't have a choice. it's there or nowhere, with my high school GPA. the last two semesters i went, all it took was a couple nice large emergencies, which in my head i blew out of proportion and was able to rationalize as an excuse for losing all interest. so in all reality, i'm waiting because i need to be more mature and self-motivated if i'm ever going to make this work, because i couldn't take screwing up again

I went on to talk about how my home situation and ailing car seem like they're significant emergencies waiting to happen. For clarification, my home situation isn't, like, bad. It's more along the lines of, I'm getting older, and my parents are getting older. Our relationship is just fine. But we're on opposite sleep schedules, and my dad's got a worsening case of real, clinical insomnia, so when I'm here, I have to be practically silent. I can rarely ever have company, because the parents don't like the idea of surrending their house to a bunch of kids. Which is fine. Hell, it's their house, and I'm at the age where I really need to stake my claim on my own living space and get on with it. But, it's just really inconvenient to have to live like I'm a guest, rather than a resident.

Jaime said it's good that I wasn't being a bitch about it. I told her, all the years of thinking that way landed me nowhere.

In other news, I feel like life without MySpace is a lot more rewarding than life with it. I've been forced to stop using it as a crutch for my bored and uninspired mind, and thus, been forced to give my noodle a little exercise. (Please refrain from any masturbatory references, because I'd like to take the high road for once.)

(LOL, just kidding.)

But seriously, I like it. I feel slightly more alive, and slightly less like I don't exist.

Would it be unprofessional to ask if I could bring in my own keyboard and mouse, to make the working experience more pleasant? I doubt they'd let me, but would it hurt to ask?

Meh. I think pretty soon I'm going to find something to eat, and try sleeping again. And maybe some more cold medicine. The voices are starting to organize, and rally against the "stay awake and keep blogging" voice. So on that note, goodnight. Or good morning.

(DB) out.

ambitions of being a walking double negative, plus uncensored word-painting

I was struck with a really interesting thought process earlier.

Today, my accomplishments could best be measured (okay, I definitely almost split another infinitive, and I definitely caught it, again.) ...anyway, measured in terms of what I did not do, rather than what I did do.

Today, I didn't watch all three episodes of ST:TNG. I only watched two. In fact, I didn't even watch the 2am one. I didn't insist on my boycott of Denny's on account of their abolition of the smoking section. I didn't need that much help handling business at Job Deux. And most importantly, I didn't back down from my assertion that I was going to empty out my MySpace profile and never look back. So maybe I posted a bulletin explaining my departure. I think that's allowed.

I didn't surrender to porn surfing after I got home from hanging out. I instead listened to some music, and then picked up my guitar and gave it a bit of exercise. And now, I am blogging. And I haven't picked the same playlist to which I've been listening nonstop these past couple of days; I picked an album I've never listened to before.

Come to think of it, today's been really unusual, and I can't think of a good reason for that. At all.

I suppose I should do a little catching up, to cover the time between my last entry. God, I don't even remember what my last entry was about. Okay.. turns out it was a screen capture from a MySpace bulletin I posted. Wow.

Well, in short: I cut my hair. I was interviewed and hired at Signius Communications, where I answer phones for a variety of different people. Shelly had no small role in getting me considered for the position, for which I'm quite grateful. I've been training these past couple weeks, and honestly, I think everything's going to be fine.

I went on the camping trip, which was absolutely fantastic. The pictures are up and they are also fantastic. It was a fitting vacation, and it was most definitely the kind I'd been sorely needing.

Speaking of the camping trip, I have to go out to my car, and dig up my sketchbook. I did some writing out on a pier, the night we ended up leaving, and while it's raw material and I made no efforts to refine it whatsoever, at the time it satisfied my need for self-expression. And so, without further ado:


I am the full moon.
I am the lone headlights, a mile away, on a bridge.
I am this glass lake, a bay on one side, and a raging river on the other.
I am the barely perceptible breeze.
I am the call of all these unfamiliar birds, and the owl punctuating them.
The shadow on this page falls in a peculiar fashion.
These occasional moments of solitude remind me just how alone I am not.
The only sounds I can hear are the ones that speak to me.
The ones that reassure me there's more to life than seeking potentially lucrative uphill battles.
Wherever the storm, all the rain will eventually return to the sea.
I am far better at painting with words, or with light, than with a brush.


And it's amazing, how an hour can turn a glass lake into a maelstrom. A bunch of us were playing cards in our screened-in room, well after quiet time because, shit. It was our last night there. We didn't care about noise, plus everyone else had RVs that likely insulated sound. Anyway, we were playing cards, and two storms blew in simultaneously; one down the Potomac, and one down the bay. There was no rain, only lots of lightning.

Jason, Francis, and myself all decided to walk out onto the causeway so we could watch the storm roll over the bay. Keep in mind, where we were, the bay was about 30 miles wide, so we still had an unobstructed view of the one storm from our relatively safe intended vantage point. On the walk over there, the wind started to pick up like we couldn't believe. After getting slightly lost in the woods, we finally got out to the causeway.

The lightning was like the grand finale at any Fourth of July fireworks show you've ever been to, except it didn't end. You could read by it. Every half-second, another massive lightning bolt shot down to the water, illuminating the massive wall of fog forming on the horizon. It was unlike anything I've ever experienced.

Only moments after we arrived, that glass lake was spitting waves about six or seven feet beyond its usual shoreline, starting to lightly flood the roadway on which we stood. And only moments after that, a van full of our compadres rolled up, and informed us the wind was destroying our campsite. We returned, and found all the pop tents nearly collapsed, and the screened-in room reduced to a heap of metal and mesh. (My complicated-ass tent was the only one that survived the 60mph winds with no problem.) After determining the tents to be uninhabitable, and getting a weather report from someone back home stating the storm was supposed to get worse, we haphazardly broke camp and left, at 2:20AM.

The peaceful, idyllic trip ended in a clusterfuck of wind, lightning, and chaos. And that was about as beautiful as the rest of the trip, in its own strange way.

I think with that, I'm going to bed. Chances are, most people reading this have already heard this story anyway, but I don't think I've written it out before. I feel like I've accomplished something. Bonsoir,

(DB) out.