Thursday, February 28

:.      funny friend writes:

Ido your site makes me giggle and pee my pants.. you are just TOO
deep..WoW!
( Flattery is the new Insult)

     so i respond with:

uh. well then. that's cool, i guess. thanks _____. that's really nice of you.
(honesty is the new sarcasm)

Wednesday, February 27

:.      it turns out that i have absolutely no depth perception in my left eye.

:.      when you go to the eye doctor, and first he gives you dilating drops, and then he gives you the antidote, everything looks like a bad digital photo: blurry and color shifted, and i supress the need to walk like a zombie, with arms outstretched.

     my eyes are fine, just getting old and rotting from the inside, just like everyone else's. but the good news is that i am the slightest bit near sighted, which means i get to wear glasses if i want. yay! i've always wanted spectacles. now i get to look sophisticated. w00t.

:.

friend: he quit.

me: where's he going?

friend: He did an Ido. Decided to quit first.

me: heh.
me: so that's an ido?

friend: yeah, everybody else always had a place they were going.

     

i quit my past two employers with no followup job lined up. i prefer operating without a safety net, and i guess it's noticeable. i think i like that.

:.      i'm making a mix for a friend i'm visiting in dc this weekend, and with rewritables, i have the joyous luxury of reburning and retesting the sequence until i get it right. but fitting fugu's 'the best of us' into a mix cd is harder than i thought. it's important that the songs' start and end match up, (or not if intended) and controlling that while putting in a good mix of music that the target will hopefully appreciate is not too easy. but i've got most of it... the progression is going to be a double valley, if you can picture that. it starts out with a medium paced drony mood setter, drops down into light and bouncy popy fluff, speeds back up to a crescendo with some hard emo and lo-fi rock and then back down to some mellow somber sadness for depth. finally, i close with a hard and silly tom waits kicker as a palette cleanser. but i really want fugu in there, and i either water down the beginning to make like a fanfare prologue, or i just drop it all together. hrmf.

Tuesday, February 26

:.      correction. i retook the test without bothering with the question-weighing portion because the first time around i clicked a few and forgot about it during the later portion, thereby tainting the test (which is obviously scientifically guaranteed to be absolutely accurate).

1. Sartre (100%)
2. Nietzsche (95%)
3. Hume (93%)
4. Stoics (88%)
5. Hobbes (83%)
6. Kant (83%)

     so, as we can see, nietzsche jumped into second place, knocking the stoics out of third and kant was introduced into sixth.

:.      well. it turns out i'm 100% sartre and 75% neitzsche. except i think sartre got a lot more play with the women-folk. and neitzsche's health was icky. but i don't think they qualified those. or something.

1. Sartre (100%)
2. Hume (84%)
3. Stoics (83%)
4. Hobbes (80%)
5. Noddings (77%)
6. Nietzsche (75%)
...

     and according to monty python, david hume could out-consume both schopenhauer and heggel, so that's pretty good, i guess. thanks to unapologetic for the link to the ethical philosophy match.

:.      hrmf... googling for 'satanic pooh' will get you here. neat.

Monday, February 25

:.      my blog scrolls really far down. check it out. i'll wait here. no really. just scroll down and come back. k? i don't know what i did, but somehow i brox0red teh blog. what's it keeping down there? is my status bar too heavy? is this stretching a natural part of the aging process? is there a secret hidden link to a secret society somewhere at the bottom? i dunno, but it's far too late for me to debug it. and besides, if i can write about it, then it's earned its keep.

     oh. and your little joke is really funny. now put sitemeter back up before i epXlode.

:.      gratuitous pointless temporal amusement.

Sunday, February 24

:.      i can explain. yes, it is true that i went out this weekend in search of 1 cd (sloan, twice removed) and yes, it is true that i bought 21 in toto. but it's all very simple.

     so i'm not going to bother explaining 'genius+love=yo la tengo', or 'tortoise, millions now living will never die,' or 'stephen malkmus,' or 'quasi, field studies,' or the new death cab for cutie ep, or their 'something about airplanes' lp, or unwound's 'leaves turn inside you,' or 'sonic youth's all tomorrow's parties,' or pinback's 'penelope' single, or the 2 juno cds, 'a future lived in past tense,' and 'this is the way it goes and...' or the kings of convenience' 'quiet is the new loud,' or cat power's 'the covers record' or dressy bessy's 'pink hearts yellow moons,' because those should all be completely obvious to anyone familiar with them or anyone who'll listen to them now for the first time, and i don't want a blog about the obvious.

     but i will explain that i got the live jawbreaker cd because i never did get to see them when they were funct, and i wish i did, and the live lp makes me not so wish that i had, and buying something that minimizes regret is always a good thing, even if it's a bad thing.

     and i bought the 3 'airport 5' cds, guided by voices' 'glad girls' single and circus devils' 'ringworm interiors' because robert pollard is a mad jedi musical fucking genius and i simply have to buy anything he touches. if there's an album he's sneezing on, i wanna know about it. and if he's wiping his nose on another one, i'll get that one too.

     so just because you do go with a shopping list, it doesn't mean that 4 stores later you won't end up with a bit more than you set out to buy.

:.      women are complicated. but here's a starter lesson for you boys out there, so pull out your notepad.exe and take note:

      any single given word in the female lexicon can have absolutely any definition. the meaning of any word is defined solely by the female's semantic intent within the given context, which is only comprehensible by herself and other women. e.g. 'that dog is cute,' 'that guy is cute,' 'this chair is cute,' 'this mud is cute,' 'hitler is cute,' 'death is cute,' 'ugly is cute.' but, (write this down. i'm waiting.) when a woman intends on using the common transgender definition of any ambiguous all-encompassing girl-speak term (such as cute, love, hate, etc.), then she will use it twice. 'i hate this blister, but i hate hate that poli-sci professor.' only when a word is repeated can we be sure that the intended definition is the common one. so don't mistake a female phrase such as 'i like you,' (which, when translated into men-speak, can mean anything from 'get away from me, you creep,' to 'lets make babies') for 'i like like you,' (which would definitively translate into our 'i like you.')

     here endeth the lesson.

Saturday, February 23

:.      i asked my friend what is it called when i play 3 equally spaced notes while the drummer is beating 4. he said i cant do that, but i said, yes i can, and then i showed him with me tapping 4 with my foot and 3 with my hand, and it sounds neat. it's even more neat when i play 5 notes on the guitar while the metronome is playing 4, and he said i'm not supposed to do that and that it'll sound like i cant keep time and i don't know how to play. but he's wrong. it sounds way cool. especially if you're playing 4, and then play one measure of 5, and then 4 again, and then another of 5, and back to 4. people've got to not only say, 'he did that on purpose,' but also, 'hey, that sounds way cool. that kid's got talent.' so i'm gonna keep doing it. so pfffff. my bass, my music, my rules.

Friday, February 22

:.       do you have mdeath?

:.       i bought a bass guitar and it has 4 strings. it's this one. the strings vary in thickness, and each one makes a different sound when plucked. plucking them does not make any songs i recognize, and i'm sure i've plucked all four. maybe i skipped over one or maybe i need to buy one of them guitars with more strings. or maybe i need to put the knobs in a certain setting to get it to play my favorite songs or something.

     also, it's a deep burgundy color with a white plate and three knobs. when i went to buy it, i told the guy i don't even know what questions to ask, and he said you pick by price, sound and color, and i thought it was stupid to pick a musical instrument by color, but what do i know, i'm just a beginner. i'll look for the songs i know and i'll let you know if i find them.

:.      i'm going to be 25 in july. twen tee five. that's one quarter of a century. (stop me if you've heard this one before.) i think that makes me a man. (right now i'm a boy.) or does 30 a man make? anyways, since it's a significant point, i think it's time to stop dilly dallying and start getting serious about becoming a rock star. you can't dream forever, and one day you gotta start making stuff happen. so, first off, i'm gonna learn to play an instrument. this isn't hardly enough, but i figure it's a solid start on the road to fame, and it gives me an advantage over all the other rock stars wanna-bes that can't play an instrument. i shall learn: the bass guitar. more later.

:.      this world is shit, and apparently, it's also full of terrists.

:.      no internet = no update :(

Wednesday, February 20

:.      "those are some of the best maps i've seen." -- unsolicited compliment from another coworker. boo. yah. i need to celebrate. and that means travel.

      keeping old friends ain't cheap. especially when you move around a lot. i'm gonna be flying out to visit quite a few in the next several months. guess they're leaving it to me to bail out the airlines. so take it from me kids, lower your standards and keep only local friends. the guy next door is probably just as good at pool, and probably has more single female friends anyways.

     burning 480 calories in 30 minutes doesn't sound like a lot, but it sure fucking feels like a lot. but even in exhaustion, when i get to unwound's repetition's track 8, murder movies, i can't help but run as fast as the drums.

:. hrmm.. peer review?

:.      i give up on grouping the photos into quartets. i'm just going to post them periodically. i'd rather stick to photos that can stand on their own, rather than group four mediocre shots by theme. but now i've have to figure out where to fit the photo archives. my spidey sense tells me there's a major layout change in the near future.

:.      last night, as part of my new 'get the fuck out of the house at least once a week' resolution, i went to an all ages show in the university district. this equals gutter punks and over-energetic, under-talented opening bands. but it happily reminded of my college years, seeing bands like afi, the voodoo glow skulls and the mr. t experience in venues such as gilman and berkeley square. and it was a pleasant memory because that period fucking sucked and i'm glad it's over, and i was able to step back into it like a time machine and move between the shadows of my former peers and observe with great detachment and satisfying pretention.

     the wonderful thing about having a miserable emotional youth is that there's no nostalgia to block new experiences. i am tabula rasa, still.

Tuesday, February 19

:.      i get it. there is no blog community because there is no discourse. we're all facing the same direction. like hatchlings pointing upwards we chirp and we squack, hoping to get nourishment slash attention slash love. we've done away with the formality of conversation; we never did care for the bits where we listen. so now we're hundreds of thousands of voices all talking about ourselves at the same time. what a party this makes, eh?

Monday, February 18

:.      | yes is the new no |

i is the new you
laugh is the new cry
don't is the new do
because is the new why

:.      yay! i'm officially part of a fad. am i popular yet?

Sunday, February 17

:.      today i ran through the soft green glades of the fat burning zone, and through the majestic tall redwoods of the cardio training zone, and into the unlabeled territories beyond. what lies beyond cardio, you ask? what have i seen? what have i heard? there's nothing there but the droning sound of one heart beating at 180 beats per minute.

:.      inner monologue #2:

-sometimes you take yourself too seriously.
-not you again.
-if you loosened up a bit, you'd enjoy yourself more.
-that's too complicated, could you rephrase that tautology for me?
-don't be an ass.
-so stop being so wise. you're like a fortune cookie inside my skull.
-everything's so glum with you.
-a. not true. i'm just moody. half of the time i'm whimsical, spontaneous, and downright hillafuckingarious. b. besides, what's wrong with glum?
-it's not healthy. and it's repulsive. i don't like being around you when you're down, and i doubt anyone else does.
-well fuck you very much. this show ain't for everybody.
-'love it or leave it' schtick? that's so tired.
-hey. i'm not doing this for you. i gotta live with myself inside this box, and i like it interesting. and i like liking it. and i don't wanna always party like it's 1999. sometimes i wanna think about it. and if that's too intense for you, well, shit. grin and bear it.
-you're imfuckingpossible.
-but i love it. and if i gotta choose whom to please, i pick 'me.'
-how poetic.
-now who's being the ass?
-stfu.

Saturday, February 16

:.      say this out loud, in a crowd, and you'll feel so much better:

romance is for dumbasses.

     try not to laugh too hard, or people will know you're crazy, but a giggle is ok.

:.      is 'boy' a new euphamism for being gay? hit the random on the boylog webring and chances are you'll come across a decloseted body builder. i am so confused. (about the webring, not my sexuality.)

:.      progress?

     i woke up after having dreamt of a large, house-sized white spiders. they were kind of a cross between tarantulas and the walkers from war of the worlds. but smooth and spiny. i shut my eyes as soon as they opened and i did not get a chance to see what time it was. science foiled again by nocturnal delirium!

Friday, February 15

:.      flamingos have the secret of fire. how? logic: flamingos get their pink color from shrimp. but raw shrimp aren't pink. shrimp turn pink when cooked. therefore flamingos must cook shrimp. ba da bing! where is science?! come on people!

:.      take away booze, drugs, coffee, milk, sugar, cigarettes, sun. but for blog's sake, let me sleep in late!

Thursday, February 14

:.      you're at the gym, and you're running. and you look around at the people you wish you were and the people you're glad you're not, and all of the tvs show the same channel. and this is it; this is what your life is comprised of. it's the empty spaces between the things worth writing about. you spend your life waiting. for the weekend, for the promotion, for the date, for the kiss, for that lucky break that's going to make everything better. you're waiting for tomorrow. and you know that one day you'll wake up and it will be tomorrow, and you'll still be waiting. so you try to improve yourself faster than you're deteriorating, working towards some small net gain. but there's no award ceremony. no comeuppance. there are only two red letter days defining your timeline, and you've got one left to look forward to. so while you're still not moving, you just start running faster.

:.      love is in the air. thank blog for air-fresheners.

:.      today is v-day. and i never did get to see the hearty shores of normandy, or the whites in their eyes, or her fragile ways.

:.       i was 16, and i awoke in the middle of the night. i looked down at the my blanketed feet; the way the cover hung over the edge and the way the shadows played made it look like a dog. a collie, in fact. in fact, it looked just like a collie lying at my feet, facing me. and i thought, wow, that looks like a real dog. and that's when it turned its head and started panting. and that's when i bolted for the light switch at the other side of the room and flicked it to find nothing there. several months later, i awoke to find a lizard crawling on my bed, underneath the blankets. then came the lobsters, and the ants, and the spiders.

      i pull these from my dreams, and i guess my brain keeps making them after i awake, because, well, there they are. i began recognizing the dreaded feeling i get when this happens, aware of the fact that i'm not fully awake. so on the night that i awoke to know that there was a corpse in my bed, i didn't open my eyes. and since then i pretty much don't open my eyes if i can remember not to. but i know it's there, and i pretty much know that it's gonna be something i don't want to see because that's what my brain is trying to not think about.

      i imagine it's similar to drug induced hallucinations. i don't know. i've never done any aside from alcohol, and never enough to get there. but i guess everyone sees animals at night, right?

Wednesday, February 13

:. ok. gotta work on that asshole angle. dis is da shit.

Tuesday, February 12

:.      fuck yeah:

revered senior coworker regarding my map: "that's probably the best map made for this game, yet."

     fuck. yeah. who's the number one level designer that's a sex machine to all the chicks?

     alas, not me. if i could only transfer an iota of my professional success to my social life, neh? but them's the cards i dealt myself. i chose this. i wanted this. and here i am.

     take note, young ones, as he, who is in his early mid-twenties speaks: 'what-ifs' will follow you till you can't beat your own heart. but life is just a series of regret-minimization problems. you just gotta make the decisions you'll (hopefully) regret the least.

:.      4:11am. no visions. but fuckin a, what dreams are made within these cranal walls: restless ghosts and spiked beasts and gruesome violence and snow. much snow.

Monday, February 11

:.      i present to you a new segment of our show: ido's physiological oddities. they're real, and they're odd, which makes for good blog fodder. kinda like a bit of my own ripley's, if you will. so. with no further delay:

     something is going on at 3:30am pst. for about a week now, give or take, i've been waking up in the middle of the night. there's no noise; i'm not cold, or hot, or uncomfortable, or in pain, or any other state that should interrupt my nightmares. but i awake full on, like morning, only earlier. i don't know if it's always been 3:30, but it happened for a few days, and for some reason i suspected it was about 3:30 (i must have checked) and so last night i looked over at my clock and the damned thing had 3:30 on it. so. please. will whoever it is, just cut it out? it's not funny anymore, and it's getting kinda creepy. besides, when i wake up in the middle of the night i tend to hallucinate, and i don't like that much. but you'll have to wait for that story.

Sunday, February 10

:.      women leave like shattered glass on my heart. i pull out the shards and consider it done with, but a haphazard motion and there's a sharp pain induced by some burrowed remnant, lodged deep: a permanent addition to my sanguine contraption.

:.      i don't care for these, but this questionnaire is excellente, simply because it makes no attempt to generalize. it's blatant in its methodology:

Which John Cusack Are You?

:.      i see spots. dark little fleeting knots that dart across my vision. they appear when i quickly move my eyes, and they trail and then they vanish. i thought it would eventually go away, but it hasn't yet. this literal foreshadowing haunts me, and i hope it's the ever benign, oh glorious, oh precious, 'nothing,' but my mind wanders, and wonders: something i didn't worry about suddenly isn't what it used to be, and there's the ever slightest chance that it will never be again. i think about blindness, and how that makes being an artist difficult. what is this curtain that hints at closure? is this a dagger i see before me?

a. i've been seeing spots.
b. have you seen a doctor?
a. no. just spots.

     it's time to find a doctor.

Saturday, February 9

:.       ok. i'll play. why not?

1. What's the most romantic thing you've ever done for someone else?
left them alone.

2. What are your erogenous zones?
my erogenous zones are for loading and unloading, only. if you park there, you will get towed.

3. How old were you the first time you had sex? Care to expound?
i was 17. sure: the earth had revolved around the sun over seventeen times between my birth and my very first copulatory union.

4. Do you have mlife?
ok, fine. so the original question was 'what's the most unusual place you've ever had sex?' but my mom reads this (hi mom).

5. Do you have plans for Valentine's Day or is it just another Thursday?
It's just another manic thursday. wish it was sunday. that's my fun day.
i've ordered these, and i dare say you should too.

Friday, February 8

:.      a story; a desire; a telling:

     i am wandering in the buenos aires cemetery on a hot afternoon in december. i barely speak a word of spanish, and finally i'm in a place where that shouldn't be a hinderence since all of the locals are beneath mounds of dirt, or entombed behind large marble walls, or underneath massive granite lids. and besides, they're all dead. and it's mostly mausoleums. i've never been to a cemetery with so many mausoleums before. it's like what i would imagine the suburbs of tokyo look like: freestanding shed-sized houses packed in dense rows and columns. each would seem to comfortably stand three people, and some even have shelves in them. and it's all very gothic, and i mean 'of, or pertaining to the obsession with the death aesthetic,' and not 'of, or pertaining to goths' because a lot of it is quite modern. but there are still far too many angels and crosses and the such for my taste, but i guess that's what people want around them when they're dead; i don't know; i never asked.

     but i did come to realize that i didn't much care for the way people treat their death. death sucks to begin with, and i fail to see why it's gotta be embelished with angels and god and crap symbols of lives no one leads. you live for a bit, and then you're dead for fucking-ever, and it's no comma; it's a big bold period. and all that glum seriousness overstates the obvious.

     so i figured out what kind of a mausoleum i would want for myself: it would be of gray and white marble, and it would have monkeys on it. i figure it's got to have at least three monkey statues, hanging and playing around. one should be flinging poo, while another masturbates (because that's what monkeys do). and the third is hanging by one hand and covering his face with the other, because it always kills me when they do that at the zoo, and here i am, dead, so i figure that's very appropriate. most will walk by my tomb, recognize the scene, and become indignant, self-rightous, insulted, pompous. but the children'll get it, because they're still in touch with what life (and hence, death) is really all about. they'll smile and maybe even laugh. and i will too.

:.      my radio alarm wakes me up to howard stern. but on some days, i might struggle into awareness over the course of an hour, and man, those dreams are more fucked up than a werner herzog, david lynch brainchild. from now on i'm sleeping with a helmet.

Thursday, February 7

:.      well. i've been doing this for about a week now, and i'm still trying to find my voice, and, by 'voice,' i mean some formulaic schtick that i can drop thoughts into on one end and spit out nice little tofu nuggets of reading goodness on the other. by shear inspiration (and some madness) i've stumbled across a sundry of verbal motifs, but there's only so much inspiration in me and a whole lot of chicken scratching i've commited myself to doing.

     or perhaps, 'voice' isn't my problem. 'topic' is. my daily events aren't hardly as surprisingly uninteresting as they were back in school; and i'm just barely keen enough on current events to wax at length (and with great conviction) but not enough to actually add to any meaningful debate; and writing about writing, is, well, it gets a bit pedantic when it's all about the subtext in the absence of an actual text. (you might see this post mysteriously differ from your remembrance if i fail to find a suitable alternative) perhaps i've got enough going on inside to provide ample material, but i better get a backup source, just in case. so i'm still in search of that juicy shank of universal ham that i can serve on this rare medium.

:.      uh oh. this is where the stress kicks in: when i get a link like this, by a guy who unknowingly has far more confidence in my resolve and ability to write something interesting on a daily basis. there's only so much i can write about the writing process or difficulty therein (isn't there?), since there's nothing else of note in my life at the moment (or is there?).

Cynischism? Oh, yeah, I was linking to him clear back in 2002.

     sheesh. talk about pressure to perform.

Wednesday, February 6

:.      like clockwork, one day's emotional upheaval is followed by a day of calm emptymindedness. today is the emotional sabbath, and on this holiest of days we (royal) take comfort in the quiet calm (or is it apathy?) that washes over us, like a rainy windshield in the night, blurry and speckled. there's no need to turn on the wipers, no desire to see the road, no want for the radio. just the satisfaction of the patterns on the glass as our eyes lose focus. there's a protective sheath of warm insulation (or is it like puss, covering a wound?). we have no thoughts (except perhaps, 'ohm') and no impulses, and no lacks or motivations or needs. we simply are. and we're simply driving, winding down the road, lost between two opposing curbs.

:.      i laughed, i cried, and then.. oh wait. no. i just laughed: kafkaesque

:.      the other half of my mirror project mugshot.

:.      inner dialogue:

ego: have you read your last post? it's awful.

consciousness: it was the budding of a streaming thought, and i was too tired to fully develop it. i just wan't it written so i could sleep.

e: but you didn't have to publish it. look at it. it clunks around like rocks in the dryer. i'd rather pass kidney stones than read that again.

c: what's up with all the similes?

e: don't change the subject. it's juvenile and gauche and tragic, and it's embarrassing.

c: embarrassment and self-deprication are important steps in the attainment of humility. afterall, this is exhibitionism, not showmanship.

e: but i look stupid.

c: i must tear you down if i am to rebuild you.

e: but i'm tired of getting torn down. you're always tearing me down. build a strip mall and call it good.

c: enough of your whining. now shutup and push.

:.      my brain functions like a large machine, producing words and sounds and images like molded plastic army men which are strewn along the conveyor belt and slowly carried out. my consciousness (that is i, this voice), the lone employee in this large factory, has the burden of picking up these conveyed army men and arranging them; uprighting them; sorting them; boxing them; taking the large knots of green plastic and forming regiments and battalions of words and thoughts and expressions. and on some days, such as this one, either my brain is on overdrive, or my thinking mind is too weary, exhausted, overworked. and the green plastic army men are left unsorted, unpacked, unclaimed, and they pile up in large green heaps on the floor, like dead bodies at the bottom of a mass grave.

Tuesday, February 5

:.      i guess the lesson is that if you're going to stop and smell the roses, you better take a quick look beforehand and make damned sure you're in a field of flowers. because sometimes you're driving through swampland, and it's really best to keep your eyes on the road and your foot on the pedal.

:.      no one wants to read about lethargy: that's my contribution for tonight. fact is, everyone's tired. everyone's exhausted and drained and spent, and everyone feels like they look, and no one wants to read about it. i know i don't. it's a world full of tired, dilapidated souls, working the sunlight away, returning to a wasted evening of 'nothing of note', wondering about where the time goes, and how'd they get here so fast, and does tomorrow hold anything worth writing about. strike that. only the modern world offers this utopia of meaningless spiritual drainage. the rest of the world hopes to not step on a mine tomorrow, or get killed by political factions, or starve to death.
happiness is achieved through the pursuit and accomplishment of attainable short-term goals. mine was to write tonight's entry, but here we are, approaching the end, and i've still got that persistent malaise. or maybe it's just exhaustion. i still can't tell the two apart.

Monday, February 4

:.      dingdingding. we have another link! these people all seem to like my innocent 'newness'. i might have to mischievously leave the 'grand opening!' sign up for a few months to milk it for all it's worth:

Ah, I love finding a blog in its first couple months. The bud stage. And this one is brown on brown and has a good name. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Cyn|sch|sm.

Oho, and a brief conversation illustrates that this fellow understands blogging quite well already:

"it's so exciting to see that complete random strangers read the verbal sausage my mind won't stop making."

:.      so it's slowly dawning on me that this is an endurance test. the blog is an ever-sinking slide into the nether-regions of the archives, where writing something half-decent isn't hardly enough, as anything/everything good slowly slumps down this brown page like a cream pie on a clown's face, drooping slowly until it plummets off of the edge, only to be seen in hard to find collector's editions and unauthorized reproductions. it's cliche to say that one is only as good as their last blog entry, but here we are, both of us (yes, you too) determining this blog's worth (at least in part) on the merits of these here words. i've got a few day's worth to hold me, but it's gonna be a long drawn out war with lots of blood and guts and anguish and propoganda films and uso shows and pin-up girls with short skirts that love a guy in uniform. what was i saying? oh yeah, the war. anyways. i imagine this'll be a lot more difficult than that daily journal i had to keep for senior year's ap english class, as even though i gladly read to the class the mess i wrote, i can't take the credit for them being a captive audience. while i like to think that there was something worthwhile in those juvenile entries, i don't think it was the reason people showed up for class. but here you are, willing, able, and a little brain damaged, reading more of my doddling drivel. kudos to you. now go make someone else read this before it falls off as well.

:.      my mirror project. actually, it's just a photo. but don't tell anyone.

:.      i wrote this in january of 1996. i probably should have destroyed it, as it illuminates far too much, and it rhymes (i'm sorry), but it's cute in that 1996-wasn't-i-awful kinda way:

there's nothing new under the sun.
everything to do has already been done.
i've read the same book in different covers
and seen different movies with all the same lovers.
i write the same journal entry every single day,
expressing the same thought in a slightly different way.
i meet the same people with different faces
and i hang around the same fucking boring places.
everything needed to be has already has been said.
i try to say something new but i just repeat the dead.
but there's hope for uncreative fucks like me:
the human mind has a lousy memory.
i can preach my new deal
and reinvent the bloody wheel
and maybe no one'll notice.

     i hope that someone burns down the internet six years from now, as i imagine this site will be quite embarassing by then.

:.      1 am idea for a love story movie:

     it's called "the midas touch," and so there's this guy, and when he gets into relationships, he's so smooth and charming and sexy and sensitive and sweet, that he touches women's deepest desires and they get frightened and run away because he's too good to be true. and the harder he tries to understand why they run away, the more alluring he becomes, and the quicker they recoil. now it's not 'nice guy' syndrome, because he's not so nice. nice guys aren't interesting, but this guy's just enough of an ass to be unpredictable and challenging and sexy. also he has a cat. i don't know what the cat does yet, but he should have a cat. also he's played by john cusack, because the women never see it coming and he takes them by complete surprise. so anyways, he completely gives up after a string of women and ends up becoming a relationship advice columnist and dies alone. i'm sorry, but it's a tragedy. you gotta go where the characters take you and if i made it a happy ending, it would feel forced. also there are car chases and stuff blows up in act two. maybe he's a secret agent too. and the final showdown between him and the central american drug lord happens in an abandoned airfield. maybe it should be called "codename: king midas." instead.

     if anyone is interested, they can option my movie idea for 50k, and i get to have dinner with the leading lady, at your expense, and it has to be someplace that uses cloth napkins. also, i get a cap with the name of the movie on it, just like the film crew gets, or no deal, buddy!

Sunday, February 3

:.      journal entry, april 1996:

the buddha leaned back,
dealt me the seven of
spades,
and laughed.

how did you know it
was the seven of spades?        i asked.

because it is reflected
in your soul                the buddha replied.

but i don't have a
soul,                      i said.
and the buddha was enlightened.

Saturday, February 2

:.      the best part about any blog, regardless of how good the writing slash pictures slash content in toto is, is the hidden potential latent within its list of blog links. the excitement of the unexplored blog world is so much more alluring than the known territories, regardless of the quality of the grass you're used to grazing. so, here i go, linking, hoping that you too shall hope to find that nugget of goodness in some random poor bastard's blogging life. enjoy?

:.      some people have a tendency to get mugged. others are often asked what time it is. when i walk down the street, many people walk up to me and they say, 'hey ido, what is best in life?' i'm an honest guy, and i guess it shows, because when people want the truth they just walk right up and ask. now, since this happens with such great frequency, i'm readily prepared to tell them, just as a great scantily clad warrior once told me, except without the austrian accent and a bit more elaboration:

a. to crush your enemies. i can't stress this enough. just think about it: you're their enemy, and they heard the same advice. so act quickly.

b. to see them driven before you. now, sometimes, in certain situations, crushing is not an option. but if they're driven before you, then you know where they are, and you know what they're doing, and it's not crushing you , so you can rest for the time being.

c. to hear the lamentation of their women. really doesn't require any explanation. this is just good fun for the whole barbarian family. great with ale and a roasted wilder-beast.

     now take care kids! and be careful out there!

:.      when i was younger and in school, i used to have big thoughts and they'd come out in few words. and now the smallest ones take up so much fucking space. my teachers would be proud if they could see all the random garbage that fills the emptiness between words worth writing.

:.      well i'll be a monkey's uncle. the puppet's alive.

Friday, February 1

:.      i guess this is the blog equivalent to socializing: i've been linked to twice this week. first, you can read a whole paragraph about me here:

this ranks up there as one of the greatest compliments i've ever gotten about this site. i'd like to think that unapologetic is a good place to start learning about blogs... and from his first full post, it seems as if cynischism.com will be a blog to keep an eye on. thanks, ido - and good luck.

     and today i got linked here:

A baby blog! Watch him progress!

     i'm still not sure how i feel about the whole incestuous blog "community", but i have to admit that i get all tingly inside when i read a complete stranger's mentioning of my site. i hope they have room for one more.