:.
so the fillies that we were with had heard of a club that was open till 5am, so we headed on over. now, this club is located in the 'gay' district, so it was a gay club, which i think they suspected, but not this level of gayness. this club was packed wall to wall with shirtless body-builders dancing the night way. so the fillies run into several coworkers in there, and they're hugging and laughing and dancing. you don't see that with lesbians and straight guys. well, i don't anyways.
i've never heard of the counterpart to the fag-hag. i've never heard a hetero guy talking about his close lesbian friend. is this because of straight men or because of lesbians? you'd think lesbians would have as much in common with straight males as gays have with straight girls. is it just a mythic misconception (a mythconception, if you will) or do lesbians really mostly dislike men? and if so, is this a factor of their lesbianism? cause or effect? if 'cause' then is lesbianism more a product of environmental factors than gayness is? i don't really care about these questions, but maybe one of you out there needs a research topic.
Saturday, March 30
:.
today's purchases of note:
black silk boxers. there's nothing quite like walking around with smooth underpants made from the woven secretions of caterpillars from the orient.
cotton camouflage boxers. while the probability of getting killed due to your boxer pattern is zero, a good pair of camo boxers just might save your life one day.
bedside lamp. no more cold-footed running to the door to turn the lights off when i want to read.
12 pairs of black socks. goodbye white. we've had fun, but you're the winnie the pooh to my christopher robin wardrobe.
ribbed t-shirts. for my pleasure. and if the chickies like them too, well then, double bonus.
:.
also, someone shoot me before i go crazy because of not being able to own a munchkin cat: image 1. image 2, image 3.
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i saw unwound tonight. monday is their last show. ever. vern, sara and justin have been playing together for 10 years now, have created some of the most amazing intense music of the past decade, and tonight they filled up a basement theatre in chinatown with 150 people, tops. this is the part where i draw a parallel between the demise of a prominent band from my youth and the demise of my youth. this is the part which pontificates something trite with new words. and here, i'm witty. this is the closing, and this is the good night.
Friday, March 29
:.
meatspace journal, '96:
the now, overwhelmed
by its own
egocentricity,
exploded.
not once,
but twice.
and then sat back down.
Thursday, March 28
:.
i wrote this to someone privately, but i'm tired, and it makes a good journal entry.
i have a tattoo. it's this (sans registered trademark symbol) and it's on my sinister shoulder blade. i got it because i was very sad once. but i got it later, when i was happy, to remind myself that i was sad. when i show it i pretend it's a badge, but it's significant to me as a scar. i did stupid things when i was sad. but luckily none of them were visibly permanent.
Wednesday, March 27
:.
hello mr. blog. how are you today i am good. my day was long and i didn't get to play my bass or work-out but i had some cool stuff happen and i talked to a potential new friend so there. mr. blog, do chicks care about cars? i think they do even though most won't admit to it. because even if they really don't, they can't but help feeling giddy when a guy they like for other reasons drives something that's got some sex appeal, whether it's new or old. i think so. especially when you'll be my age mr. blog, i think youll understand. people keep telling me that my car doesn't match my personality and i don't really care because a car is just a tool but when the chicks say it then i go hmmm. so i want a car that i'll really love and feel like it completes me because cars can do that in america. if you have a hole in your personality many people do mr. blog no i'm not making this up then you can put a car in it and then you can take a picture of it and it won't make you happy if you were sad but the chicksll kiss you more often uh huh thats how it works yessiree. i guess its like what loving the horse you rode in on was like once before they had cars and color television and sound in movies. mr. blog, do you lease or own?
Monday, March 25
:.
the problem with a short sighted algorithm for improving your life is that you could fall into the trap of a local maximum. if you employ the method of continuing along the status quo until some(thing/person/place/thing/opportunity) shows up, with no perspective on the larger vector field, you could find yourself stuck in a local maximum that is far below your potential global maximum. for example, when i quit both previous jobs, i had no destination; i went from stable salaried to unemployed. i had reached a point where my salaried work was tangential to the career arc that i wanted to pursue, so staying there meant no forward progress; i had reached a local maximum. so i jumped off. and during those unemployed months i worked towards getting back on track, and eventually found a new job which opened up a new set of options.
and this goes for all things in life. when you're young and life is a vast open field of opportunities, the notion of 'planning' a life, or giving up on people because at some point down the line they won't provide what you need or want, seems ridiculous. you figure you'll just do what's right for the moment. this is the innocence.
but life starts to tick away. and at some age, instead of doing forward animation, 1/24th of a second at a time, you start to keyframe your life, planning milestones defined by biological constraints and social norms, and you find that you're off track. so you start to get serious, cruel, and definitive. you set time limits for relationships, required lists for potential partners, 5 year plans, schedules, decisions. this is the loss of innocence.
and eventually, you'll be past your prime, and while some goals have been achieved, those that haven't will require redefining and the decision to find that local maximum because your too old/tired to be out looking for that mythic global maximum. so you get on the next train, regardless of its destination, just happy to be moving in any direction. this is the compromising.
Sunday, March 24
:.
nowadays, i leer. i'm used to knowing that when i'm wearing glasses, people can't see my eyes, as my shades are always mirrored and dark. and so when i wear glasses, i irreproachably stare at women. but now i am as transparent as my new clear spectacles.
Wednesday, March 20
:.
today we begin the unreflection process. tomorrow morning i'm off to a conference thru the 24th, and i have every intention of unthinking, defeeling, and, just generally, cleansing.
i have reached stage two of the live journal. what was, initially, a destination for random ruminations, frustrations, and random verbage, has created its own life, and it generates feedback. while it once accepted my scribblings like a found kitten starving for attention, it now has its own list of needs and standards and expectations. it is no longer grateful, but now -- demanding.
and expressive. the once receptacle of my verbal dispositions now throws them back at me, steering my thoughts and moods, magnifying and exposing. pointless drivel becomes (or desires to be) the oh-so-mischievous notion of 'content' by a simple push of the 'publish' button.
and there's angst inherent in the process. one can either delve shallowly into the details of one's life, or probe and tear apart some external process or news or person, thing or place. but one stuck on drilling a hole through one's own core on a daily basis will be left with nothing.
and so this must transform into something new, once more. and so i must cleanse.
Tuesday, March 19
:.
there's something about the repetitive abrasive droning sound of unwound that scratches an itch that other music can't reach, like steel wool q-tips pushed deep into the ears. mmmmm... more... speaking of more, watch this, now.
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wondering what is the origin of ido? Is ido really practical? how easy is ido? or what sort of vocabulary does ido have? then you can find all of the answers here.
Monday, March 18
:.
i just saw a beautiful mind. in my teens, i wished i was schizophrenic. i was already on the outside, looking in, and i just wanted it to have some dramatic flare. i wanted to hear voices, or see stuff that wasn't there. i figure that maybe part of my developing distaste for theology was that, growing up, i was very jealous of all the deists. no matter what the situation was, deists could always talk to god, and i guess i felt it was very unfair that they got to keep their imaginary friends and i had to give mine up. life can be quite lonely when you're an adolescent atheist. and if you don't like yourself, well then, you're in for a bad trip.
Sunday, March 17
:.
so i'm working on ido version 3.0, which should be available sometime early summer. here are the details:
new features:
- musical talent. i've lost all senses in my fingertips, but i can almost play the bass line for fugazi's 'the waiting room.' look for 'rockstar' feature in v.4.0.
- more literate. upon a friend's advice, i blasted through some more of i, claudius, and it's picking up once you get past his ancestral history and into his own life. so far it's kinda like the book harry potter should have been.
- improved stability. more funny, less angst. i'll miss angst. maybe i'll leave some in for variety.
- improved writing skills. hey. i'm working on it.
- improved visual appeal. gym = life, glasses = boatloads of women at my doorstep.
- confidence. all else being equal, i'm a sexy bitch.
old great features you've grown to love:
- strong professional life.
- fun at parties.
- gets along with children and cats. even though sometimes i get the two confused. but the kids love playing in the litter box, so it's not a bug.
- i can take pichers with teh camrea.
- sense of style. only noteworthy because i'm straight.
- i can dance. but only if i want to. i can leave my friends behinds. because my friends don't dance and if they don't dance then they're no friends of mine.
known bugs:
- communications protocol is faulty. i tend to lose packets. i more than most reply to email, but if you're waiting for a snail mail package or letter from me, oh boy.
- messy. stuff looks so comfortable lying on the floor. i wish i could lie on the floor. i think people that disturb the harmony of floor-lying objects are just jealous and vindictive.
- shy. oh yeah, welll if you're so great, then how come you don't walk over and introduce yourself to me, eh?
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if you download only one mp3 from a gnutella network today, download steak for chicken by the moldy peaches. it's the perfect blend of genius and stupid.
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so much for that theory. my match profile is generating some email. i can't decide whether or not to chronicle events on this particular topic. we shall see. first there's gotta be something worth writing about in order to have said dilemma.
Friday, March 15
:.
sure. when i say that we're just monkeys defined by our habitual nature and thousands upon thousands of years of evolutionary stresses and brain psychochemistry, and that our consciousness (free will) has little (if anything) to do with our feelings and actions, then i get ignored, but when a rutger's professor writes books about it, and spends her whole career researching it,then you listen. fine. hrmf. next time i'll just think twice before sharing the truth with you.
Wednesday, March 13
:.
why would anyone be stupid enough to expose themselves to the world by publishing stupid little essays on the big stupid net? because when i get an email like this i wish i could write morefasterbetter:
"sort of makes me want to be you, but not? i'm really not sure what that means, but all i have to say is that you are a powerful experience on that level... it's like scary wonderful?"
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just so there's no misunderstanding: her space holiday's manic expressive is definitely and unarguably the absolute single bestest lp of the year, for the week of march 11th. it makes me squishy inside. second bestest lp of the year (of whatever the hell year it came out in), for this week is unwound's faketrain. it makes me grrr angry and i'm screaming with it on my commute and i bet i get funny looks.
once in southern california, on one of its 'very sunny days (tm)' i was bouncing in my car to the tune of weezer's 'island in the sun', dancing as much as one possibly can while yielding for a left turn, and i looked over to my right and there was a girl at the light bouncing as much as i was to whatever it was she was listening to, and laughing. yeah. we had a moment.
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if you happen to be looking for a guy like me in your neighborhood, this is the kind of profile you'd look for on match.com: HarmlessFriendly. i love it; it's my bestest profile yet. but i am so not gonna get any responses.
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we argued our way to terminal silence.
we argued constantly. teasingly, playfully. prodding and poking in jest; wrestling with each other's rhetoric and confidence. we argued about everything: what movie to see; whether it was good or not; what to eat; where to go; how to live; who we were. i'd try to sound resolute and compelling while the both of us struggled not to burst out laughing. i recall, at one point, spontaneously asserting that my ultimate life ambition was to walk around with money in a money clip instead of a wallet. we argued over that one; she told me i was stupid. i was. but/and i argued. at another point in time, i insisted that if i ever married i'd never get a ring because i couldn't stand the thought of metal permanently clamped around my finger, and that i'd rather get a tattoo of a ring, instead. and we argued. we argued like kittens tussle, or lovers wrestle. but as the days grew longer, so did our claws. and the kittens became tigers and the smiles were long forgotten and only the arguments remained. and then came the silence.
Monday, March 11
:.
and if you're an sxsw snoot, don't walk, but run to go see her space holiday. also recommended: alsace lorraine, dressy bessy, girls against boys, and they might be giants. and if you do get to see any or all, i hope the show sucks, because what am i, chopped liver?!
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there's a knot in her soul. and it defies her.
she's a smiler and she finds joy in the smallest nuances of daily life: a stranger's scowl; an old man's brown hat; a new flower on a tired path. but there's a lump buried deep; and i know it's there, somewhere; a pea beneath a score of mattresses. i used to think that it was just in my mind; that i was projecting, inventing; making her fit into some archetype that suited my world better than she did. but i know now that it's real; i can sense it like a fleeting shadow or the floaters in my eyes or a quick cold draft when our eyes lock. i know that there's some latent tension, masked and covered and masked again, deep, dark and taught like a press. i don't know what it's about, or how old it is, or who inserted that singular grain of sand, about which her pearl of angst grows. and even if i got close enough, she'd never let me past the granite walls of smiles and joy and laughter. but i know it exists when my mind passes over hers like a doctor's scope upon a murmuring chest. and i know it exists just like the strands of white hair that began revealing themselves when she was twenty: her physiology whispering to me what her steadfast grin never could.
Sunday, March 10
:.
ok. now usually i'm a big fan of change, even if it's just for the hell of it. but new morpheus is big ass. big blue baboon in your face at the zoo ass. if you crossed a blue-assed baboon's ass with jenifer lopez's ass, you'd get the new morpheus. how the fuck am i supposed to buy cds if i can't listen to the music beforehand? and the radio is _not_ an option. it's hard enough to find good stuff on a p2p network, let alone an established channel. bah!
Saturday, March 9
"why do we always come here?
i guess we'll never know.
it's like a kind of torture
to have to watch the show."
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my zoolander magnum look.
Friday, March 8
:.
from my meatspace journal, 1996:
i write you a poem,
because _______ did it first.
and in male mammalian mimickery fashion,
i must, too.
aye. but i shall not will not dare not
write about
an inspiration of your person.
nor about that which is you.
but instead,
in a most
cliche fashion,
"to."
:.
from my meatspace journal, 1996:
my true face,
hidden beneath my shallow breath,
shall never encounter the
texture of your fingertips.
nor will it feel
your warm exhale.
not that i don't desire that.
not that i wouldn't reveal it
if you asked.
but just that even if i knew
which parts were real,
and which parts
were me,
there's nothing here
for you to be.
Thursday, March 7
:.
snowed in on my evening out on the town. :( i was gonna go see 'my morning jacket' over at the crocodile and hope to still hear the echos of guided by voices reverberating in the dark spaces, but alas, the snow was falling like a plague of packing peanuts and traffic was crawling, and i'm not going back out to that. seattle will just have to wait before it sees me in my glasses.
aw yeah. who were the girls outside the gym checking out and smiling at tonight? that's right: four-eyed ido. and who could smell the boredom of their personalities from half-a-block away? that's right. four-eyed ido. hrmf. expectations suck.
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someone invent a time machine, NOW! guided by voices was in seattle 2 frickin days ago and i didn't know! damn you citysearch! damn you to hell! robert! wait! come back!
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got this in my inbox. i'll credit it as soon as i find out where it's from.
"French Intellectuals to be Deployed in Afghanistan to Convince Taliban of Non-Existence of God"
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 08:40:21 +0100 (MET)
For Immediate Release:
February 2002
"C to Convince Taliban of Non-Existence of God"
The clean-up portion of the ground war in Afghanistan heated up yesterday when the Allies revealed plans to airdrop a platoon of crack French existentialist philosophers into the country to destroy the morale of the remaining Taliban zealots by proving the non-existence of God. Elements from the feared Jean-Paul Sartre Brigade, or 'Black Berets', will be parachuted into the combat zones to spread doubt, despondency and existential anomie among the enemy. Hardened by numerous intellectual battles fought during their long occupation of Paris's Left Bank, their first action will be to establish a number of sidewalk cafes at strategic points near the front lines.
There they will drink coffee and talk animatedly about the absurd nature of life and man's lonely isolation in the universe. They will be accompanied by a number of heartbreakingly beautiful girlfriends who will further spread dismay by sticking their tongues in the philosophers' ears every five minutes and looking remote and unattainable to everyone else. Their leader, Colonel Marc-Ange Belmondo, spoke yesterday of his confidence in the success of their mission. Sorbonne graduate Belmondo, a very intense and unshaven young man in a black pullover, gesticulated wildly and said, "The Taliban are caught in a logical fallacy of the most ridiculous. There is no God and I can prove it. Take your tongue out of my ear, Juliet, I am talking."
Marc-Ange plans to deliver an impassioned thesis on man's nauseating freedom of action with special reference to the work of Foucault and the films of Alfred Hitchcock.
However, humanitarian agencies have been quick to condemn the operation as inhumane, pointing out that the effects of passive smoking from the Frenchmens' endless Gitanes could wreak a terrible toll on civilians in the area.
AP/2002
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hehe. here's the story of our journey to tierra del fuego, 1999 (it's in french. click here and enter the previous link into it for the englishized version.) and here's me with a broken pinky and pain killers.
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not the best interface, but still a cool presentation of the incestuous upper echelon of american corps. they rule.
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whether i'm laughing at her or with her, i'm never really sure, but i'm always laughing. so go read my favorite emo-wannabe-half-the-time teen's journal.
Wednesday, March 6
:.
women as property, or the evolutionary logic of male sexual proprietariness. (via metafilter)
when i was in high school, i developed a crush on a friend, who was a very close friend's girlfriend. and so i told her as much, and to my complete surprise, she reciprocated. they broke up and we started seeing each other. needless to say, i lost the friendship of the male counterpart, but they remained friends with each other. and i didn't really understand why i was singled out as the transgressor, when all i did was tell her how i felt.
but the explanation is that we didn't break the 7th commandment (adultery) but i did break the 10th: "thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's." it was my moral burden to stay clear of my friend's possessions. i had taken something away from him, something which was not to be blamed for being poached. and i guess this is a common manifestation of deep rooted male possessiveness. the spoils, bereft of any moral obligation, go with the victor in a battle amongst men. and he kept away like a defeated ram keeping away from the young new champion.
but life's a lot simpler when you place that burden on your significant other, and not on every guy she meets.
i dunno. maybe it's the same for girls. and maybe i should stick to talking about stuff that's relevant to my life at the moment. or maybe you should just shut up. yeah, well maybe i should just wack you with this keyboard. wack yourself, you mean. stfu.
Tuesday, March 5
:.
omg. i don't care if you went to the 10pm showing of 'we were soldiers', and i don't care if you didn't eat anything all evening, and i don't care if you spent the whole weekend feeling like a bad guest because you weren't the least bit hungry, and i don't care if it was only a 'small' popcorn, do not, i repeat do not eat so close to going to sleep because you'll wake up with vietnam in your stomach.
:.
today i became a man, four months early. how?
first, after a weekend in capital (and apparently expendable) d.c. during which the existence of a shadow government has been made public and thousands of conspiracists are chanting itoldyouso, for the first time in years, i shed some cynicism. contrary to my previous platform of detached indifference, it turns out that my participation does not invalidate my observations. and so i guess there's room for me being an agent of change, or in the very least, a single person educated in a single issue. for what it's worth, eh.
so, being in the smack middle of it, i'm gonna try to get to the bottom of this whole videogames-violence correlation. i'm not leaning either way, and the results might be in contradiction with my livelihood. although, hopefully i'll be a full-blown rock star before i find out the truth. i'm not turning on a dime here, but i should start doing some reading, i guess. i dunno how one gets edumacated on stuff, but reading seems like a good start. this might be a long and fruitless endeavor, but all i'm saying is that leiberman better buy a new helmet, just in case.
second, i've been through much reflection and retrospection this weekend, and i've found out some stuff about me and the universe, and how they relate to each other, and who's tougher and who's gonna win in the end. i won't spoil the ending for you, though. life moves along when you 'want' seldomly, as it's easy to focus all energies on some desirable goal when it finally becomes apparent. but is it better to not know what you want, or to discover wanting something you can't have? i don't know, but i don't get to choose anymore.
and last, i got my glasses today, and i look like one goddamn sexy bitch with four eyes on. why, if i weren't me, and i saw me with glasses on, i'd turn homo; that's how good i look with glasses. i have no picture yet, but here's an artist's rendition of what i look like: four-eyed-ido. but now i'm so man that i'm worried conagra might hunt me down to make more manwich (made from 100% real man).
Monday, March 4
:.
hey look! i can amuse you with someone else's effort! economy on the rebound.
Friday, March 1
:.
from my meatspace journal, april, 1996:
they met in a twelve step program. he was getting ready for step four and she was heading into step seven. they were together for two and a half steps, and they both rebounded back to the bottle after they broke up. it turned out that they communicated with their drinks much better than they did with each other. and so it came to pass, and they along with it.
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tomorrow night i fly off for a weekend in dc of unabashed capital fun, and maybe it'll involve seeing both portastatic and pinback, but it'll definitely involve seeing an old-flame-turned-new-friend, with five years of silence in-between.
it's ironic that youth is so impulsive and agitated, having so much time to waste, while maturity makes us patient and mellow cool, even though the clock is only speeding up. but humans are stuck looking aft, and we compare the now with the past, and not with the future, and now, what's a few months or a few years compared to what we've seen and done?
i've been an adult for nearly six years now, and people weave into and out of my life like celtic knotwork, and if not today, then tomorrow, or the morrow after that; but the pattern is understood, and i'm not threatened by the immediacy of the moment, or by my own fickality projected onto others. i know the moon, and i understand the tide; i have all the time in the world, and if i choose, i can sit right here on the beach and know the ocean will return.