Hoosker-Doo

I ate, today, at a place called Hamburger Hamlet, on the insistence of the Mrs., which was sadly bereft of Shakespearean actors supplementing their meger theater-based incomes in Valencia, California by serving up the tastiest burgers this side of the Renaissance!

As it was, it turned out to be a pretty good restaurant, regardless of the obvious disadvantage of having no connection whatsoever to pantaloons. I had a frozen fruit-blend drink called a peach blossom, and the lobster bisque. So, needless to say, when I finally ended up throwing up at around four this morning after a day of riding roller coasters, downing funnel cakes, and arguing with my better half after only three hours' sleep, the emesis was a particularly objectionable shade of orange.

Incidentally, it says a lot about me that my better half is, physically, a lot smaller than the rest of me. With eleven inches and eighty pounds on her, I think the gravity of my faults sadly and consistently outweighs her influence, good though it may be.

The thing I dislike the most about amusement parks... no, that's not entirely accurate... the thing I dislike the most about Six Flags Magic Mountain (apart from my total lack of understanding as to the punctuation of its title, I figure since it's supposed to be "Six Flags Over Magic Mountain" then the appropriate nomenclature should be Six Flags... Magic Mountain, but the world I live in is hardly so just) is the ride-exit pile-up. All the pussies who wimped out at the last second and are waiting for their friends, all the people who couldn't figure out how to get in line so their entire party could ride together, they just stand there completely blocking the escape route for people like myself and the Mrs. who don't have the slightest inclination to stand around the mongoloids that are drawn to the promise of possibly poisonous street fare and soulless, themeless thrills.

Which, I suppose, includes the Mrs. and me.

I know I've written about Six Flags before, and I largely covered my complaints in the previous post and, for the most part, think it redundant to spend more time discussing its shortcomings further, but I'd like to throw one more thing out there before we move on to the next item on the agenda. One more grievance for the flames, take it or leave it.

In accordance and furtherance of the previous posting concerning Magic Mountain, as to my theory of the roller-coaster Boom Town, there is no theme to Six Flags (as the Mrs. insightfully pointed out to me). Sure, they attempt some brief and fleeting connection to Warner Brothers and their respective cartoon characters, if only to give a face to the child's section of the park and form to the prizes one can win in the "fair games" section of the attraction, but for the most part there is no overriding, connecting, inclusive concept under which the park operates as a whole.

Disneyland has its stock of characters, and its "lands" which each operate under different set rules and expectations, even Knott's has this old-timey western feel to most of its attractions, but Six Flags is bereft of any face, of any identity. It's a nameless, blameless field of rides. Nothing more. That's probably the largest cause for the feeling of impersonality that saturates those who visit it.

Like it would be so difficult to pick something that could unite the whole of the park? Hell, you already have Batman: The Ride and Riddler's Revenge... why not just assimilate the rest of your ridiculous attractions underneath that same umbrella concept and make every. single. ride. about. Batman. villains.

That theme park writes itself... designs itself. Whatever. Goliath becomes Bane, Deja Vu becomes The Joker, etc. etc. Figure it out people. Nothing is this difficult to put together, nothing is so far beyond salvation that you can't make it better by simply giving a fuck about it. You do the rest, Six Flags, I've helped you out enough as it is.

...

I t hink gynecology is a scam. Men don't have to go through any of the traumatic stuff women do. We don't have to have anything inside of us until we're fifty, and even then it's one finger in the ol' a-hole and we're out the door, cancer or no cancer. Women need, at the age of thirteen, to have multiple metallic implements intrude on their most private of punctures and begin noodling around. I think, in the beginning, practitioners of suspect medicine decided they wanted to start poking around in the private places of hot young girls and derived this incredibly suspicious school of medicine to facilitate that need. FOR SHAME, GYNOS! FOR SHAME!

...

It bothers the hell out of me when people say "Love it or lump it." How the hell is anyone supposed to "lump" something? Idiots.

I've Never Received a Fucking Fruitcake

What gives? There are these revenant cliches which have become anti-cliches in their pronouncement of their existences as cliche. Case in point: People give each other fruitcakes for Christmas. It becomes a cliche, and everyone makes jokes about it and people become embarrassed to give out fruitcakes, it being such an overdone and openly-mocked tradition. However, this is not a two-way, mutually exclusive self-destroying prophecy, as the destruction of the action does nothing to faciliatte the destruction of the cliche, as it should. Instead, the cliche persists, and the action it was based on is annihilated, and long forgotten while the cliche thrives. There are still cartoons today, people, who bring up the fucking fruitcake phenomenon. I think I've only had fruitcake once. In my lifetime. I'm fittin' to destroy these things, once and for all, and end this tyranny they've long held over language, a concept which I hold most dear, which makes the next tidbit that much more painful.

Moving further into the murky and depressing swamps of the "Blogger Spellcheck Chronicles," this motherfuckler suggested that my spelling of "fruitcake" was me trying to spell the word "britches."

... Words fail me. In more ways than one.

...

The Mrs. and I took a trip to Disneyland the other day for the second time in a year... which through the purchase of a low-end year-round and some heavily denial-influenced mathematics on my part save us money, in the end.

I really like Disneyland. People can ache and suffer on about commercialization and the assimilation of Anaheim and how they haven't come out with any really good animated films since Hercules (to which I say, "Emporer's New Groove.") but the fact of the matter is that though its fueled by greed and over-rampant materialistic capitalism, Disneyland's a magical place to be. And that's the shit of it, is that for a jaded, disenfranchised, bitter old sod like me to accurately describe Disneyland, I have to use the word magical. I have to mean it, too.


We got to ride the newly re-opened Space Mountain (the shit) after its seemingly decade-long hiatus, took a revolution or two on the big ol' swingy ferris wheel in California Adventure (which, while also the shit, terrifies me), and got to see the Nightmare Before Christmas-decorated Haunted Mansion (such the shit I can barely stand it) among other things.


Disney really hit upon something with the whole Nightmare franchising and merchandising. Again, I don't want to throw a wrench into the fantasy, but if you want to be hip, slightly edgy, and immediately relatable to any and all late-twenty-somethings without having any creativity or interesting personality traits, you just load up on Nightmare Before Christmas memorabilia and you're set up for a long night of singing "This is Halloween," probably culminating with a sloppy, fumbling encounter between you and the chick with too-long poorly-dyed red hair, the nondescriptly lacey ankle-length skirt and the lip piercing in the back of her Jetta (or, for you ladies, the really skinny guy with the scraggly black mop on his head, the ironic-phrase t-shirt which most likely references Jesus in some way, and the belt with more holes than Camp Green Lake: superfluous and riveted, much like himself).


While on the Haunted Mansion/Nightmare Before Christmas ride, the Mrs. took some probably-illegal pictures of the many revisions made to the old attraction, some of which I've included here. The one that stands out the most to me was seeing Zero flying down the hall instead of that floating candelabra. There's no picture, because the effect requires a mirror whcih simply doesn't lend itself to photography, but the other touches were really nice and at times absolutely inspired. Well done, Imagineers!



The Christmas Fantasy Parade was really fantastic. Mickey and Minnie have never looked mre elegant, and it was great to see Goofy and Max together (even though I'll always think the boy's voice sounds strange after they re-cast it following A Goofy Movie). I really love the damn Christmas Parade, really I do. It's hard for a guy to admit it, but sometimes you just have to let go and enjoy these things, and watching those little trussed-up snowmen in their own little village threw a warmth into my soul. I teared up, the same way I tear up when I watch myself on film. Embarrassing.

I wonder what the career prospects are for people in Disneyland Parades. I understand the concepts behind "cast member" status at Disneyland, and I've actually been through the audition process to be in the parades, surprisingly enough, and that's the conundrum. The people in these parades are clearly going for some kind of performance-oriented career, as I'm sure there aren't many out there who do Christmas Parades at night and law school during the day. They dance, which takes talent and training, so they have to some more than just time and the need for a job invested in the idea of performance art.

So what's the next step, kids? You can't do parades forever. Do you work for Disneyland exclusively, or do you cover your bases, hedge your bets with the Doo-Da parade, half-time shows and kid's parties, etc. Are you trying out for musical theater and, if so, where?! This is Orange County, it's not even L.A.! I know you're not making the commute to be a sweetheart elf for an hour or two a day in Anaheim just to go back to your tenement to look through the mail and check your messages for callbacks while your heroine-addicted roommate tries to light a canister of sterno to boil water for Ramen. "It's not going to work, Dennis! You're going to burn the building down, and Mr. Svenson already said no more open flames after last time! I can't lose my lease! I can't move back to Montana with my close-minded parents who fear my big-city, showbiz life! Now help me change the rat traps. The roaches got in them."

And that's just if you're a chick. If you're a man in one of these things, as magical and wonderful as I find them, Oh man, you are the reason I have tears in my eyes. I am so fitfully embarrassed for you. I remember being a kid and trying out for a parade, and while we were doing some pre-choreographed dance steps to test us, I looked over and saw this one joy boy prancing, positively prancing about, high-kicking and smiling bright enough to fucking blind the rest of us. This kid was getting it, we all knew, and it did two things to me.

One: I no longer felt the need to try, as I knew I didn't have much of a chance after Toothy McElvenface had gotten the job, and Two: it made me realize how truly fucking awful it would have been had I gotten the job. I did not want to be like this person, skipping and dancing about, kicking into the air for no reason other than that it's what people want to see: some boy-child smiling like he's not being whipped with a coat hanger by his stage mom every night for forgetting to Vaseline his teeth and throwing his spindly pre-pubescent legs out in front of his with such abandon as to beat the devil back into mommy's womb.

And, I guess, Three: embarrassed the hell out of me for having to be one of the people trying to be that guy for that moment and for failing at it. Althought, in a lifetime of failures, that's probably the one I'm most ready to forgive myself for. It's okay, no one blames you for not being gay enough.

Yeah, I said it.


But Jesus I love Disneyland. It costs your very soul to be there for a day, but if anything's worth it, then it's this. Being able to hold my girlfriend, see fireworks that rivaled the 4th of July celebration over the East River in Manhattan, and kiss her in the snowfall afterward, in California...

Well, to me, that's worth more than anything they could ask me to pay.

Say what you will, Mr. Sir is a fantastic name for a character, and, for my money, is Jon Voigt's best role to date.

"Yule Log," You'll Blog

"If he was listening it would defeat the purpose,
Not a dolphin, but a porpoise."

-D. Alexander Naylor

...

The final wave of presents I purchased for the Mrs. arrived in he mail today, and amidst much sturm und screaming, Christmas is upon us. I really, really can't wait for Christmas, mostly because I really enjoy Christmas, but also because I would enjoy not having to use the presents we bought for each other as bargaining chips in our scuffles anymore. I remember vividly when I wrote about Christmas last year, and it's a hell of a thing to still be doing this. Most of my analog attempts at keeping a journal ended... well, they just ended. I stopped writing and found better ways to express myself (just as well since, going over them today, they're mostly about who was dating who, and why it bothered me in different ways). This, however, has found long-life, either through its intrinsically interactive medium, the variety of expression available within it, or with the advent of that most important facet of the 20th century: the audience.

I wonder if I'd still be doing this if there weren't at least two people who I knew for sure were reading this thing. My thought is I probably would, if only out of the small chance that someone might stumble upon it (as some have done before) and read the madness inherent of which I record here. I wonder how long this whole thing would be if I compiled it into one document. Could I make a book? I tend to be long-winded in these entries, but by the same token I tend to update fairly sparsely, preferring instead to allow my thoughts and musings to collect and congeal. Something to think about.

I suppose it's fair game to say now that I have a new job, officially severing the Center from my life (save for its continued involvement with my mother, my brother, my good friend, and my one true love... I will never be free of its royal-blue grasp) and moving securely into the realm of making tons of money for much less work. Fuck you, Discovery Science Center. Fuck your non-functional cube, fuck your bullshit fair-weather policies, and fuck your ridiculous prices on astronaut ice cream. Fuck you.

Now that I'm no longer attempting to hide the identity of that particular shit-in-the-pan, my new place of employ will be referred to as the Tower, as my position is that of an appications instructor inside the corporate office of a computer learning center. Pretty awesome, and pretty much what I've been doing for the past five-to-six years, when you really think about it. I'm only working for two days a week, which totally mesh with my schedule (well... now that I've hammered my schedule around the two days) and I have the weekend... get this... FREE. Saturdays and Sundays are mine. The Mrs.? Entire days together. The zoo, the park, anything. War? No problem. Practice? I'll be there. Might even start my own on Saturdays. All of these benefits to my new job and this:

I make more money in one day at the Tower than I did in two weeks at the Center.

And I reiterate: Fuck you guys, you motherfucklers.
When I first lost my job at the Center (or when I was "encouraged to quit," if you want to be technical) I was really broken up about it. My Mrs. did everything she could for me. She told a friend of ours to help me out, she put up with my moping, she picked up all the tabs, she told me that I shouldn't feel bad, that my next job would be so much better. Well, she was right. And I spend my time fighting with her. And that's such a waste.

I love you, tweeter. You did more for me than anyone else did.

Anyone.

No one means more to me than you. No one means anything compared to you. Hopefully, in the coming months, I can start to make up for the last few. I love you, and if I never did before, thank you.

...

I conquered Myst III: Exile in just two days. I wonder if it's because the boys and I already played through it, though I honestly can't remember really playing any of it (very little) and I think I was gone for most of the action. Maybe I was asleep or something. Maybe it was just a really long time ago. I honestly couldn't tell you. What I do know is that I blazed through that fucker, and seemingly without the knowledge of how each of the puzzles worked. Maybe on some level I did retain a lot of the answers... or maybe I'm a genius beyond reckoning. Or maybe, just maybe, Exile isn't that great when compared to the other Myst games. I'm going to have a little fun with Riven now. I'm trying to amp myself up for the other two that I haven't played.

The original plan was that my friends and I would play through these new games together, as we had in the past. We'd worked our way through Myst and through Riven, and I was there for Exile, at least parts of it, and it seems almost like a betrayal that I would want to play the games without the others with me... but I doubt very much if they see it that way. I attach mindless sentiment to things all to easily, all to readily. A story about me crying as a child when forced to discard a pencil I'd sharpened down to the eraser's metal casing after months of use. At least I got to say goodbye. That pencil still haunts me to this day.

...

IN OTHER NEWS!...


Let's alternate between blue and pink! Most of the girls will be wearing pink, oh, and put on your nice tie! Let's all wear jeans! Tyler, why are you wearing shorts? Can't you wear jeans like us, so we all match? Why must you always be the black sheep?

White people.

Honestly.

Thanksgiving at my house involves two whole turkeys, screaming across the table to be heard over the din, and knife-fighting. I imagine the Thanksgiving above featured a quiet and dignified prayer, strained conversation at the dinner table, some sobbing after the stuffing was not properly complimented, and everyone going their separate ways just before the vein on Tom's head leaped into the cranberry sauce. Holidays!

Sylvan

I'm at a friend's bachelor party right now in Crestline, CA., the peicemail city perched on the side of a mountain where I killed my Explorer.

To give you an idea of my friends, this bachelor party so far consists of Dungeons and Dragons, Lord of the Rings, Willow, World of Warcraft, and naps. My friends are fairly milquetoast in this regard, and it's taken me since I got here at 4 (it now being 1 in the morning) to smoke a cigar and painstakingly, slowly, fumblingly create a character to join in the game with. I can't remember how to do this stuff, I gave it up a long time ago.

So we've had cigars, and we've eaten a ton (pizza, chips, cookies and soda, Randy made goulash... it was delicious until I almost broke a tooth on a hidden rock) and for the most part this is my kind of party. We don't drink, really, none of us, so there's no booze of any serious presence... though I'm sure there's a handle or two somewhere in the cabin if someone was really hurting. We don't like strippers, really, which I've personally always thought weren't even masturbatory in whatever menial pleasure they provide. The bottom line is, if I'm not getting off, I don't see the point. I don't look at porn with two hands, follow?

So we're here, and while there are things I'd rather be doing than gaming (which, considering everyone's napping so they can get up and game when Danny gets here at 3... not going to happen... I'm probably not goint to be doing much of) I'm still having a great time just getting to see friends who I hardly ever get to spend time with anymore.

So here I am, up a mountain, about to brave the cold just so I can take part in a vice which I may or may not have given up at this point. If nothing else, I've definitely cut down, though this weekend, by its nature, is going to be a bit of a binge. I may just not sleep, and get a little rest on the ride back down the mountain tomorrow. After all, these kids are lightweights, and it's pretty awesome having an entire house to yourself, let alone a house with neighbors so far away we'd have to start a landslide to bother them.

And, as I end the refrain, I SIGN OFF!

Cyrano de Bergerac. Bitches.

ENSP

Would sleeping now really help me do better on my last final tomorrow, an undoubtedly lengthy and gruelingly challenging essay? I'm not so sure. I just finished going over this script front to back, I think I know enough about it to do well on the test and I'm fairly certain I know enough about film to do that anyway, but this man grades in such a tough manner its hard to say.

Tough. Hard. Difficult.

Notice I use the word "challenging" to describe the essay and not "difficult." The fact is that this class has probably been one of my favorites (my Asian art class pulling out a surprising lead) but the man grades you as a college professor is supposed to grade you, which gets in the way of my plans for Master's study. On the other hand, the A's I get in other classes I always feel like I deserve, but I don't always feel like I earn. An A from this man would be validation beyond my wildest dreams. If I could get an A from him, then I understand film more than I ever thought I would. Such is the power of this professor. I want him to be my mentor. I also want my British film professor to be my mentor. I guess I just want a fucking mentor, people. Help a nigger out. I'm gonna need those recommendations eventually, and in the meantime I'm tired of trying to squeeze myself into discussions with my contemporaries and settle for arguing why Monthy Python was funnier when lampooning religion or politics THEY'RE JUST FUCKING FUNNY YOU BASTARD SHITS I DON'T WANNA TALK ABOUT IT ANYMORE.

I attended class today when the graduate kids were giving their final presentations, and was publicly outed for my underclassmanship. I hate it when that happens, I suddenly become an untouchable in the room. Only the most charitable of students would give me a handout at that point, lest my inexperience rub off on them and their noses begin falling off. I have to say: unimpressed. Their presentations were either boring or uninformative, nothing I couldn't have learned from watching the damned film myself. Here's what I garnered from this last class session listening to the future of film study:

Graduate students are either...

• Idiots


• Pretentious frauds


• Pop-culture monkeys


• Pathetic college addicts who believe their personae of bookwormy brainiacs will get them laid and are unfortunately wrong in both their assumption and their UNDERSTANDING OF FILM

I don't mean to make the bullet-point list an unflagging feature here at DeadLanguage, but it seemed the right format for the job. Very bauhaus, was my decision, in this regard.

...

Worshipping Buddha is Buddhism. Following the teachings of Confucius is Confucianism. Not believing in a god is Aethism.

Why, then, are people who pray to Mecca said to follow Islam? Their religion's name should follow the same rules as everyone else's.

They should follow Mechanism.

HA!

...

So the hatefest that is my entire life continues unabated into my upper-division college years, and the job I recently landed will necessitate the dropping of at least one of my classes (which I'll have to replace just so's I can graduate on time, if that even really matters anymore), and I haven't seen my girlfriend in a week and it's driving me fucking nuts. I can't stop eating these chocolate covered raisins, as soon as I taste the handful I just threw into my gaping maw I feel the undeniable urge to replace the flavor, the pattern of which perpetuates itself until I feel sick or, God willing, I eventually run out of chocolate covered raisins. I am a fat boy, a fat boy who is INTO chocolate covered raisins.

eat two more chocolate covered raisins....

Anyway, (two more, before I even realized what I was doing. Honestly, I need help) sleep couldn't hurt, and my soft, soft bed is calling to me with its soft, soft self and its see-saw...

Shelf.

My new filing system is to throw paper willy-nilly about the room, which makes for a real dynamic moment of filing, and then picking them up off the floor with my toes before I stomp them down into the trashcan. This system does not work well if for "filing," you use the definition of "storing papers you wish to keep" and not "throwing shit all over the place because it looks neat and is fun."

But then that's your discrepancy. Good day, sir.

Y'all seen that new Kong joint? It stars my cat.

Motherfucker

According to this, Donald Duck and Daisy Duck are second cousins. Evidently, no one gave this any consideration when either compiling the family tree, assigning relatives to the popular character willy-nilly, or when establishing the Donald/Daisy relationship.

Also, Dewey's full name is Deuteronomy.

That is the shit.

Also look for Potcrack, Paperdick, and "Dirty" Dingus McDuck, not to mention Donna Duck's husband, Manuel Gonzales. I swear.

Filth

Upon not Showering At All over the Weekend:

Observations...

• You do not need to shower every day. Some people do, you do not. Not until about midway through the third day, when you start realizing that that smell is you, and that the smelly guy you used to work with, the really smelly guy who you couldn't understand how he smelled so bad? Yeah, he smelled like how you smell now, and in one horrible moment you realize that a) he smelled like that because he thinks, day-to-day and not over a lazy I'm-not-going-outside weekend, it's okay not to bathe at all, and b) now you are that guy. Congratulations. Stinky.


• Chicks identify memories strongest with the sense of smell, and scent is the mot powerful (if not the only) tool we have against them, so use it well. Be advised: The mere mention that you may or may not have showered for a day, over the phone in a different city, will make them be less physically attracted to you for the rest of your life. You will never again make up that quotient.


• I use my washcloth when I take a shower everyday. It takes my washcloth longer than a day to become completely dry, hanging from the bar on the sliding door of my shower, and so my washcloth is never really completely without moisture. Usually, in the morning when I wash my body (creepy sounding), the rag has a chilly, clammy feel, which I remedy by running it under the piping hot shower water before I rub my face with it. After a few days absence from the shower, I'm surprised cobwebs haven't begun to form, when I see the petrified state my washcloth has assumed. It has become, essentially, a deep red peice of low-quality sandpaper, and can literally stand under its own power when folded in the middle. Also, it can be folded in the middle. It takes a while longer than usual under the spigot for the water to permeate, saturate, and maleate the cloth, which I opine has yet to regain its natural pre-washing-hiatus suppleness. Damn.


• Something built cobwebs in my shower.


• My hair, on the other hand, I honestly can not remember washing last. I have no idea when the last time I washed my hair was, suffice to say that my shampoo bottle has lasted approximately the same amount of time as my hair has without a cut, and when you have these glorious Agean ringlets down to your chest that's saying something about longevity, hear?


• I enjoy showers.

...

George Carlin has said that the only things you really need to wash are your armpits, asshole, crotch and mouth. I say that George Carlin needs to watch his poop mouth, and that we're all pretty sick of pretending to be delighted by his antics. If grandpa started talking like George Carlin does, we'd simply shut him away in a peaceful rest environment where he could scream to his attention-grabbing content. As it is, we're forced to celebrate his lewdness for the sake of being lewd. Why, because he's old? You'd boo a younger guy doing the same bit off the stage. But old guys?! Hell, old guys aren't supposed to be like that! Yes, I'll pay a hundred bucks for tickets to his show! Yes, I'll forward the e-mail based on his stand-up. Yes, I appreciate his outdated, archaically trash-shock-reliant comedy! Yes I'll purchase his newest ÇD! Idiots. The guy gets arrested for profanity in Jesusville, Wisconsin in the 1960s (where pretty much anyone with a pony tail was rounded up and stuck in the drunk tank until Vietnam was over, let alone Carlin calling the sheriff's wife a cunt) and to this day you'll shell out twenty bucks for "Shit my Fuck, You Cocking Dicklickers!" Yeah, that's high art. Proud day for your family, Carlin.

I'm not saying I don't still like him, I think his old stuff was hilarious. But that was forty. years. ago. And Carling is still doing the exact. same. bit. I'm sorry, but the world evolves, and comedy evolved along with it. Hell, he should be proud. He's one of the main reasons that it did.

In closing, I think Carlin still has a mastery of monologue. Of timing, rhythm, and syncopation, but his material is terrible, and he comes across as starving for much-needed attention. Attention he will recieve in spades once we rise up, as a people, and put him in a fucking home.

Eat shit motherfucker!... eat shit, motherfucker.

All the Dead Christmas Trees

"Once a woman turns against you, forget it. They can love you, then something turns in them. They can watch you dying in a gutter, run over by a car, and they'll spit on you."

..................................................Charles Bukowski

This is Our Last Dance

FINALS WEEK.

FUCKLE-DOO.

To be honest, I've always treated finals week as a week to... take a bunch of tests. And to have radically reduced class times. For the most part, I've been coasting through these fuckers, I've never had to worry much about my academic performance, but I have to research and write two extensive papers and take a couple of exams on top of them and the whole thing is giving me a wicked migraine. I almost find myself hoping I temporarily lose sight in one eye again that I might feel like my anxiety is justified. As it is, I may just be fooling myself into thinking I'm stressed. I can't really believe it until I go blind.

But, man, at least I don't have to do footnotes. Christ, I hate the prospect of footnotes. Works cited, no problem. Even endnotes I can see doing, though I've never had to, but there's nothing that drains my essence more than having to meticulously, categorically track down and number each and every thought that occurs within my words, so the original thoughts can be quickly and surgically metered out. Fuckers.

Here's a tip: Stop drinking. it's just ridiculous. It's not stupid, it's not irresponsible, it's just ridiculous. How fucking boring are you that you're incapable of having fun unless you alter your consciousness? How fucking horrible is your life that you can't deal with it unless you numb your senses to some degree? How fucking ri-god-damn-diculous can one society be? Teetotaler? Tee-totally.

FUCKERS.

My dad went to the hospital today with a high fever. It's odd to see that much of a man, someone I really do look up to a lot, look so weak and fragile. I had to help him down the stairs, he couldn't keep his balance standing. My dad's three bucks if he's a pound, and I'm a little over half his weight. Regardless of whatever else I could say, my dad, in a whole lot more ways than one, is much more of a man than I am, and it was really weird him needing my support, physically at least. I don't know how I felt about it.

I do know, at one point, that I worried if it would be the last time I saw my dad. If my last memory of him, literally, would be carrying him down the stairs and trying to hold him up as we walked out to the car. Trying to keep him from falling over while he put on his shoes, fighting for balance, and how only his leaning on my arm against the wall could have broken it. And I was supposed to hold this man up?

I always secretly worried that my dad was dissapointed in me, he being such a tremendous athlete in his youth and me being KING OF DRAMA CLUB! I learned later in life that my dad's real passion was literature, that he'd been an English major and had wanted to teach, to become a professor, so maybe my scholasticism and complete reliance on the more cerebral aspects of life were more of a boon than I'd imagined. And, of course, then came the fighting and the beating and the constant physical exertion and the extreme tolerance to pain, so I had that to fall back on, showing my dad his boy's a man (he said, entering html code to make the word look bold).

He's back at home now, he's going to be fine. I don't know if they'd tell me if something was really wrong or not, but from all I can gather he's going to be fine. The weather's bad for him. I know I'd feel terrible if something happened to my dad while he was still working. He slaved, killed himself, his entire life just to provide for his family, getting up at four in the morning every day, and that's only now that he has a really posh position, not like when he had to work nights. No, he had to climb ssubstantially up the ladder in order to get to wake up before the sun does. My dad goes to work before God's out of bed. Retirement's going to be so nice for him. I see how he gets when he's at the beach for the week or two he takes during the summer. I'd love to see him like that indefinitely.

In the meantime, will I get a high-paying job which I'll only be able to work a day or two a week at. yet that alone will not only sustain me, but represent a doubling of my previous earnings at a fraction of the work time? Will I be able to have a job that will make me happy and suit my needs? Will things work out?

No, most likely not.

BUT STILL! THE SUSPENSE!!!

...

Make the world look bold would be a great title for a book of fonts. Or something.

Walking and Talking

The company that makes the Roomba Robotic Floor Vac (read:vacuum, I don't know why they chose to shorten the word "vacuum" into "vac" when the name of the damn thing is already so luxuriantly rambling) is called iRobot.

I... Robot.

Does no one else see the implications here? Does no one else read Asimov? I mean, I don't. But I'm familiar with the works, I know what they mean! Hell, did anyone even see the Will Smith movie version? That had the right title! No? How about the fucking preview, even?

People, the Roomba is going to rise up and destroy us. It's the first step in artificially intelligent domestic servant droids. Everything will go fine, all according to plan, and then one day you'll be leaving for work and as you approach the staircase (for which the Roomba has a Stair Avoidance System in order to prevent it falling) it'll scuttle out from some impossible cranny and trip you up, sending you plummeting down your own filthy staircase which you never clean because you won't and the robot can't clean because the designers never saw Robocop.

The big selling points of the Roomba ar as follows:

• Schedule it to only activate when you're not around.


• Gets into places you can't, like under your bed.


• You can purchase a "virtual wall" which will "confine" the Roomba to a certain area, suggesting that, were it not for the virtual wall, the tyrannical little automaton would have no restrictions upon it, and would be free to run pell mell about the countryside, independent of any human control. Cleaning... always cleaning!


• The ability to charge itself at its own docking bay. Tired of the Roomba? Wish it would just leave you alone? Tough titty! The Roomba goes on, regardless of your flawed human desires!


• In order to support breast cancer with your purchase of a Roomba, and have $36 sent to the Susan K. Gomen Breast Cancer Foundation, you have the get the pink one. What's up with that?!


• Also, it eats.... your.... babies.


• ...


• TRUE!

So there you have it. The Roomba is evil, it's one step away from those little mouse droids you saw skittering all over the Death Star. In fact, I think that's exactly what those little fuckers were. You never saw anyone else cleaning the place up, and you can't tell me that Vadar alone wasn't leaving behind a trail of sloughing skin flakes and condensed saliva running down the inside of his suit. Gross.

The Death Star is gross, is the point, guys.

...

I've been thinking lately what it would have been like had I had a child right out of high school, like a surprising number of people I know actually ended up having. I don't know if I would have gone to Wolden, though considering the quickness of the training and the instantly better job prospects afterwards which i'd need to support a family, I just might have. I'd have had a kid before Danny did, which would have been a hell of a thing, because Danny's so much farther along than I am and even when he had one it was still such bad luck.

I'd have never gone to college. I don't think I could have made myself. I'd have gone right into the job market, making money working full time, maybe two jobs though not right off the bat. I didn't really hone my overload ethic until about the end of '01, and even then I didn't really believe it until around '03, so I doubt I would've gone quite so heavy so early. Just the same, I would've ben working from the start, no school at all, and I wonder, now, with my difficult memory, just how much I learned from my college days, and just how much different I would be had I never been through them. Precious little of it is experience I earned outside the classroom, I barely did anything besides go to class and study, but I did learn so much from those lessons, I loved learning from them. I feel better about myself, the more I learn about the world. I wonder how many of the things I learned while going to college I would have still learned just jumping into employment, and I wonder how many things I would have lost.

Would my creative impulse have been affected? Would I still write, would I want to make movies, or would it all have been crushed out of me, squeezed and pressed down until there's nothing left of it but the knowledge it once existed, and the melancholy of its failure. Maybe one day, late in life when all the other obligations had ben sorted out, I'd try again, but most likely not. Complacency is going to be the death of my art, and I seek complacency out, I hunt it like a pig for truffles. I'm going to root the easiness out, and I'm going to set myself along that course. It's a physical, mental effort to do anything else.

But all of this is incidental. What really interested me, when I started thinking about this, is just how far away my leaving high school seems now, even still in class, even still living at home, it seems miles and miles away. If I'd had a kid right out of high school, she'd be six years old by now. I'd have a six-year old. She'd be starting school. She'd have friends her mother and I hadn't arranged for her, playdates and group days, she'd have chosen who to be around. She'd want and need. She'd be six years old. Walking and talking.

I wonder how much faster those six years would have gone had she been here.

...

Driving the other day, I was stuck behind another car, and on the back of it I saw emblazoned the name of a diety that may have been overlooked by most conventional schools of thought.

Yukonxl: The lost Aztec god of sports utility vehicles.

The more of these things I find, the more likely it is I can start a whole other site dedicated to finding, cataloguing, and describing the phenomenon of incidental gods. I'm going to keep a look out.

Fuzzyclaw Jone, I think I love you.

Breastbone

I went the other way out of class last night, out the wrong door from the one I usually use, to walk by my professor to see if, while talking to another student, he would be inadvertently and luckily answering a question I felt embarrassed and stupid to ask. In doing so, in order to get to the staircase down, I had to circle the entire floor and ended up approaching it from behind. Waiting at the top of the stairs and facing away from me, towards where I should have come from, would normally have come from, was a man with a light beige suit, a blue shirt, short blonde hair, and one hand resting on the banister as he leaned, one leg casually crossed in front of the other. He seemed to be waiting for someone. I was grateful I didn't have to look at him as I walked the hall approaching the stairs, that I wouldn't be seen and watched by him.

A middle eastern kid who I had a class with last semester and who liked my movie had gone the right way and nodded hello to the man, smiling. I wasn't sure if h knew him or if he was just being polite, but the man may have nodded in response. I rounded the man to reach the stairs, and as I did I felt afraid, like I was lucky to never have to see it's face. It was the face of the devil, the face of death, and I'd avoided it.

The staircase was spiral, and as I came around I could have looked up and seen, could have confronted him, whoever he truly was, but I didn't. I couldn't bring myself to look, was proud that I didn't look, because it would have destroyed me. If you enter the right function, the right sequence of processes, into a machine, you can break it. Viruses, trojan horses. You can destroy by input. What would the sight of that man's face have done to me? How would it have changed me? I will never be the man I would have been if I'd seen te face of the man in the light suit last night, and I feel, perhaps misguidedly, fortunate for that.

...

I got an e-mail (most likely spam, I thought) from an unfamiliar address, until I looked again and noticed that it was "cnoicqcuxk@mtaonline."

Apparently, Aztec gods are trying to get in contact with me in order to sell me Rolexes at discount price.

...

I didn't really get a lot of sleep last night. My chest hurts, and hurt then to the point that I couldn't move around, couln't be off-kilter or really turn at the waist at all, couldn't lift anything of any real weight. It doesn't hurt internally, this is not a problem of pink and wet, it hurts near the surface, in the bones. Bone pain is the worst, because it can't go away quickly. Sometimes, when a nerve is pinched in the spine or a joint, all it takes is a trip to the chiropractor and a quick adjustment, and the nerve is out of the way and the pain is, miraculously, gone. This is not that kind of pain. This is degenerative cartilage. This is bone misplacement. This is months, years, possibly the rest of my life of applying cartilage regeneration cream and having my spine readjusted that the flawed trajectory my ribs now take might be corrected. There, on the little padded bench, I must lay balled up in the arms of a surprisingly strong, little man, and try to only wince and not resist when he begins contorting me, snapping and popping my protesting joints. Your bones cracking is little pockets of air moving between one bone and another, separating them for an instant and then, when they move away, causing the bones to audibly slam back together, into place. That's been happening in my god damn sternum. I was adjusted, and it feels better, but it doesn't feel good.

I can't stretch really good, I can't twist really good. If I danced, I'm pretty sure that would be out of the question, not by doctor's orders (there are hardly any) but more on sheer limitation of movement. I can't do much.

Luckily, I never did much to begin with.

Seriously, right now, go Google image search "Rat King." Look at what you get besides the TMNT guy.