Argle Bargle

yargh. urrf. moo-cow. i'm so tired... all i wanna do is get the fuck outta here. but no. i'm stuck. on an assignment i don't actually know how to do. this is great. just great. ideal. lovely. my head hurts. i can't do any more. i've been actually being productive today. i'm working. i refuse this work. i reject it. its been rejected. like an acne ridden dweeb asking to be your prom date.

i want to go to sleep. sleep heals all... must sleep through the entirety of my life... or get out of texas... i need to figure out something to do this weekend. i need to see a movie, i just remembered. my little pact with myself. if i have NOTHING else with which to occupy my time, perhaps i'll even see two movies; one on saturday and one on sunday. ooh... scandalous.

i need to go to the gym today. even that feels like too much. i haven't had a cigarette since sunday. i'm trying hard to quit. i just so want to go to sleep. i want to sleep through this entire weekend. but no. bad move. hibernation will not solve the problems currently on my plate. action will. i need to write for the zine this weekend, and finish off my letter to tod and billie. (since i can EVEN pretend to be on any sort of first name basis with them...) i looked up all sorts of fun mutual fund information today. hooray socially responsible investing!

the Apostle

so sonya at work (you know, the person with all the attributes of a cool person, but they aren't hung together quite right, so you want to like her a lot more than you actually do...) and a few of her friends here at work (i'll tell you what, this entire tale happens within the confines of my place of employ (read, at work)) have been trying to set me up with another young man here. his name is paul. when i learned this, my first response was, "like the apostle?" yes, like the apostle. except that apostle's last name wasn't wadlington. this apostle's last name is.

so after weeks of freaking out, deciding i would like to make a wolf-skin coat out of a certain toothsome austin boy, feeling like a broken machine/crusty-pussy scab, trying to figure out who this guy is, being approached by someone in the parking lot who i had the sinking suspicion must be him, etc. etc., i have answers.

yes, the pale tall lad in the parking lot who commented on my john kerry bumpersticker is the apostle. no, he is not overly attractive. my first thought is that he might be fun in that i feel like i could probably run circles around him, and control him in a great number of ways. he is completely non-threatening, which is sorta nice, but not necessarily something i look for. all in all, being spurred to get to know someone because they simply seem like fun to play with is probably not a whim to follow up on. its not nice. and i don't think i'm looking to meet anyone right now. i'm busy having some alone time. its not pleasant, but its seeming to be somewhat productive, which i'll take over pleasant most of the time. so sue me, i'm me.

so mr. wadlington. i don't know. i'm intrigued. much as i'm intrigued by many new people. i want to see what makes them tick, and i want to learn their little tricks. i am an evil, evil person. but he just seems so pale and soft, so innocent. so larval, undeveloped. i'm afraid i'm too corrupted. too mean and snarky and honest. i don't want to have to lead him to the dark side; i want him to have a summer home there already, like me. i feel like he's breakable. not that i'm not. i'm just breakable in complicated and interesting ways. but he seems breakable like a glass. he's transparent. and he certainly doesn't make me want to rip his clothes off and bite his neck. hmm...

anyway

i've wasted a fair bit of time. only fifteen minutes to go (THANK GOD!!!) i feel better about my prospects of making it through the rest of the day. not by much, but by a little. sometimes i feel, i want to DUH DUH get away, i want to DUH DUH run away from the pain you DRIVE into the hea-eart of me ... go ahead. sing it with me guys...

Yesterday...

i tried to write a blog entry yesterday. i tried to write a blog entry, and my computer ate it. everything i try to do: eaten by the computer. not really. but every day, i want to cry. that one is probably true.

so i had this whole entry written yesterday, and i pressed the "publish" button, and *bwoop*... no more entry. of course, the "ebloggy" servers have been down for nigh on a week now, so all my friends can't even look at their blogs, much less update them. good stuff.

today, i've been being a math nerd. i'm still working on the wyoming project, and man, is their shit fucked up... i'm a friggin' editor; i don't have to know how to add two and two together to fulfill my job requirements and get hired. but luckily for them, i'm a friggin' genius, and can correct all the stupid errors the item developers (people who are supposed to know math) make. i correct flat out wrong questions, and research arcane terminology, and advise, and find definitions, and hammer out letters to dictionary sites because their definitions are circuitous and wrong, etc... so wyoming, i hope i get a thank you, because i'm busting my hump for you.

so after i finish this entry, which i fully expect to be eaten, i will make a few important phone calls. gotta set up doctor appointments, and other such stuff. being an adult sucks. i'd rather be a child. no. i'd rather be happy. i was too dysfunctional to even be happy as a kid. now i just wanna be happy.

i told mom this morning, the voices in my head are getting louder. she thinks i might be having "auditory hallucinations". i'm not sure what to call them. see, i don't have that one little voice at the back of your head that says stuff... i have a whole friggin' chorus. i have so many voices, each speaking for a certain aspect of my personality; mom and dad are there (the super-ego, as all you fans of freud will gleefully point out) along with tiff, the goofy voice, the innuendo voice, brother, the overweight woman of color i was in a former life voice, the flamboyantly gay man voice, the quiet reserved voice, etc. they usually don't all talk at once, but they all speak at various times, and right now, the pissed off racist voice, the pissed off misogynist voice, and the generally pissed off and defensive voice are all sounding off. they've been getting louder. they usually appear when i'm under large amounts of stress. its scary to have so little control over the various portions of your own head.

so that's that. i'm so tired i want to sleep forever. i keep trying to get more and more sleep, but its never enough. i've been getting close to eight hours a night recently, but it doesn't help. i'm constantly yawning. i empty so much soda and coffee down my gullet, and still i drowse in front of my computer at work. my eyelids droop, and i lose track of time. i have lost the ability to focus. i know i need a kind of rest that's more profound than normal sleep, and deeper and more healing. i don't know what it is. but i need it, nonetheless.

i am aware that overwhelming lethargy is a sign of depression. i'm not sure what i can do about that right now. mom and i hope that going back on my clonopin (anti-anxiety) will help me with the voices. my interior forum. but the depression... there's a limited amount i can do, really. i'm trying to be happier, etc. seeing movies, working harder to keep busy, no drugs or alcohol (even quitting the cancer sticks now), all that. i'm just trying to resign myself to a much less than ideal situation right now. i'm trying to be happy with the fact that i can't be happy right now, and doing the best i can to change my situation, but not expecting some magic sunburst to appear on the horizon and heal my ailments.

its so evil to try so hard to confront your demons... once you start, you can't turn it off. i was talking to chris about this not too long ago. once you start psychotherapy or something of the sort, once you start training your eye to look at yourself honestly, you can't really turn it off again. you can't stop sifting over your actions and analyzing yourself. once you gain the vision that allows you to see demons, they just start pouring from the woodwork in an unending stream; there are new ones, or at times they feel new, but as your vision grows more refined, you see that what looks like a new demon is only the nest evolutionary step of an old one. the weed demon, stripped of some of its garb, looks like the alcohol demon, which can be traced all the way back to the addiction demon, which in turn traces back to you.

trace those demons back far enough, and they become knowable. they are those parts of you that are sick, and hurting. they are energies you produce that are not able to find a suitable outlet, and so stagnate and ferment into the destructive behavior demons. they are the human drives and desires that are normal, but that have nowhere to go. they sit there, and build, and darken, and build until they explode. until you can't hold them back anymore. until they are unleashed.

its never about a cure. its about maintainence.

to seek a cure for those demons, a way of rooting them out, is one of the great fallacies of humankind. you cannot excise these parts of yourself, you can only hope to route their energy along its natural and productive paths. it all requires constant upkeep. it is a big, unwieldy, psychological, physical, spiritual, emotional, social machine, that you need to keep in good working order. you need to grease the rusty parts, keep it clean, make sure its all hanging together. and you know what, its a lot of work.

well i'm trying to keep my machine, myself, in good working order while i'm out here, but its not going as well as one might wish. and i'm trying to not be surprised by that anymore. i'm trying to not constantly feel it as a fresh and live cut, still running with blood and stinging like a bright flash across the brain and eyes. but if it doesn't heal, what happens? the image springing to mind these days, the days of no surprises, is of a crusted and pussy scab; a stiffly gooey, half-open, festering sore. i actually feel as if i at least have a poultice on it. its not actively spreading. but its not really healing either.

writing in this blog is really becoming a ritual cleansing of this wound. i don't know how long i can continue to let it harden and sit, waiting for the actual healing to begin. how long can it stay there? how long can i keep it without it becoming incorporated into me, a permanent part of me? or perhaps i shouldn't be so quick to speak ill of scars. but i don't want this scabbed rill forever embedded in my psychological landscape.

i'm not sure what to do. i don't know. and now, i should probably make some phonecalls. because apparently, there are some things in this world that are important.

Oh My God I Want One

A true southern original, the GooGoo Cluster (named because it is so good that "people will ask for it from birth") was invented by the Standard Candy Company of Nashville in 1912.The world's first combination candy bar, the original GooGoo Cluster combined peanuts, caramel, marshmallow and milk chocolate. Also available in Peanut Butter, and Supreme (pecans)
Try one GooGoo and you will try them all. Remember getting Pecan Logs on long road trips? Try Standard Candy's Pecan Logs. They are as good as you remember.
Order by phone @1-888-451-2848

i want one SOOOO bad... the ultimate evil, and simultaneously the greatest sight on the web, must be the moonpie site. the undisputed king of all gas-station junk food, the moonpie is so delightfully sinful and just plain wrong that it had no other option than to be righter than well-lubed sodomy. i swear upon all that is holy, i think i am going to go out and buy one of absolutely everything that moonpie owns and produces.

for more delightful goodness, go here:

www.moonpie.com

i swear you will not be disappointed.

This is Getting Me Fired

right now, every letter i'm typing is bringing me one step closer to a corporate showdown. wait, lets rewind for a minute and find out what the hell josh is talking about.

we have been moved. no longer do we inhabit our out of the way, open little community, where we each had a desk of our own, a little corner for our stuff, plenty of legroom, and a casual, friendly cameraderie. gone are the days when josh could mutter to himself without worry of offending coworkers or other employees beyond our borders. we have been moved from the outlying lands of the warehouse to the vast cubicle garden of the building that actually looks like an office building.

understand, WE don't get cubicles... god no. we get crammed side by side at long desks, at those column ends usually reserved for file cabinets or printers. my section is thirty yards from the vp, who is in charge of the whole san antonio operation. you know me. you know why this is bad.

by the by, i was so freaked out yesterday afternoon that i stopped writing this post. its now tomorrow morning, or today... look, if i were still typing yesterday afternoon, i would describe this moment during which i'm actually typing as tomorrow morning. even though really, its right now. but to all of us, every successive moment is right now. so i suppose that... fuck it. fuck that shit. aargh...

anyway, we are surrounded by potential members of the "self-appointed harcourt nazi" tribe. these are the strange strange people who "identify with the agressor," as my mom puts it. and its true. to be on the powerful side of the employee vs. management equation, they become these freaky little policemen. and they don't even talk to your face. they make their freaky little complaints to their higher ups, and the complaint has to work its way all the way up the food chain and all the way back down again. so an hour later our bosses get a call, the complaint has completely been mangled into something different, and we are told that one of us did something that annoyed an anonymous person. and we all proceed to flip out. "oh god! was it me? what did we do? aargh!" so begins a round of even heavier paranoia-driven self-policing.

and do you wanna know the real story? because i was sure it was me, just like i'm sure i'm going to get fired. (not so much anymore, thank god... i'm calming down.) we were all sure it was "me." not me like josh, but me like, everyone assumed it was them, which is just so tacky and evil and foucaultian... aargh. but no; sheryl decided to watch the inaugeration on her computer, and she didn't have headphones, so she just let it play. in the middle of the cubicle garden. mind you, when we were down there with the chickens, the chickens politely asked us to please keep it down. but somehow, the lesson didn't carry over in sheryl's mind. so crisis averted. momentarily...

in other news, the beginning of this year is supposed to be a romantic bonanza for us virgos. i don't take this lightly, because virgos and romanc go together as well as *insert some witty metaphor about two things that go together not very well at all*. no no, i'll wait til your done laughing... i know i'm brilliant.

ANYway, yes. so i'm supposed to be getting my cock sucked and ridden in all corners, and in reality, i want to crawl into a hole and never meet another person again... i swear, life gets so irritating sometimes... just sittin' back, letting good things pass you by. because you're too unhealthy to move on them. word. that's my fucking philosophy. write it up and call the publishers. word.

Using Words As Blunt Instruments

this weekend, among other things, i went to the movies. i saw spongebob, and it was great. i enjoyed it thoroughly. however, i went out alone, and with no one to demand my attention, i was left with nothing standing between me and the masses of humanity.

here's what i think about humanity: FUCK HUMANITY!!!

no really, FUCK IT! fuck it RIGHT IN THE EAR! there are few things i hate so much as people, just out there, doing things. and granted, i'm in a really bad mood right now, but i'm not stopping. i think people suck. i think there are too many. i think we should go on a program of weeding out the unecessaries. i think the U.N. should establish tests for those who would have children, and if they don't pass, they don't have kids. if you have unregistered children, they will be taken away from you and given to someone who passed the test, and you will be slapped with a MASSIVE fine. and possibly sterilized.

i am tired of people. i am miserable, and profoundly unhappy. and therefore, i would like to go on a program to make everyone else miserable. not the five people who i actually like... you all know who you are. you're the people i talk to AT ALL!!! because i HATE wasting my time on STUPID, STUPID PEOPLE. you are not stupid; you make my life a better place and make me want to practice acts of love and compassion. mostly, i just want to howl wordlessly at the people who have contributed to my current state.

not that that would solve anything. screaming my head off is not productive, and that's probably part of why i don't do it. but i can write about wanting to scream my head off, and god damn it, i will!

things with wolfie have officially dissolved. he is too busy to give me the time of day. when someone tells you they have to get off the phone so they can take a nap so they can go out with their friends later, well, they're not interested in you. so fuck it. i was actually doing pretty well with this, and treating it as a matter of the two of us not being in places that allowed anything to happen. which is true. but i also want to send him an e-mail, or leave him a message, that says FUCK YOU! i won't, but it would be sorta funny. and just sort of sad.

to all you normal people out there: i am so jealous of you sometimes that i swear to god i could just kill you. i don't want to be bent out of shape about this. but its hard not to be. i'm really just not healthy enough to be in any sort of relationship right now. i think i've decided that i'm going to stop trying. i can't do it anymore. right now, the process of trying to connect with anyone is way too much. i'm so unhappy, and looking for so much that's missing in my life, that every person who shows the inkling of being cool is shouldered with all my needs and desires. cuz that's really fair to do to anyone...

i think i'm done. i think i'm going to stop pretending to try and meet people, or better my social situation, or any of that. i think i'm going to go to work (which makes me physically ill... no really, i think there's a lot of pollen in the air out here or something.), go to the gym, and try and make plans to get out of here. i think i'm going to talk to people as little as possible. i think i'll make a point of shrieking in horror if someone dares touch me, or accidentally brushes my shoulder as we walk past each other.

i'm sick of it. i'm sick and tired of feeling like a broken machine, with that one little gear that turns lazily over and over, but isn't connected to anything. and if i can't fix myself, then i'm going to fix my situation. people are difficult, so i'm going to delete them from my life. which is OH SO HAPPY AND HEALTHY! GEE! WHAT A BRILLIANT DECISION! I WONDER WHY I DIDN'T THINK OF IT BEFORE! maybe because before, i was at least pretending to not be a SUICIDALLY DEPRESSED SOCIOPATH!

i'm just, so tired. all i want to do is sleep. which yes, is a symptom of depression. i just want to pedal on the stairmaster until i dissolve away into nothing. i will not drink alcohol, even though my twenty-eight days are up. i'm tired of smoking cigarettes; they make my mind all funky, and keep me from being able to think right. and i don't like weed anymore, because all it does is make me lazy and forgetful. i don't want anything in my body. i need to be a miserable, anxious, hardwired, impregnable little fortress, all the better to keep me safe from the outside. i sound like a frickin' CRAZY PERSON! yes, i'm aware of that.

i just want to get out of here. it will probably help me feel better. i just need to get out of this situation, where it feels like i'm dying every day. i need to get out. i need to get out so bad... and perhaps that's exactly what i'll do. perhaps we'll be moving my departure date up to the beginning of this summer. maybe i can register for some summer school courses in nyc, and just move on up to jersey in may. perhaps thats what has to happen.

because lemme tell you; things aren't working out so well down here. i bet you figured that out already...

i want to beat people's brains out with the force of my words. i want to scream so loud inside their heads that their little skulls just pop right open, and gobbets of brain spatter out across the ceiling. i want, for a second, to feel like i have something in common with someone out there. i want my experience to have something in common with those of other people. i need to know that this too shall pass, and that in fact, others have been here and survived. and i don't want to calm down, and i don't want to change the way i function fundamentally. i like the way i am, i'm just unsure of how what i percieve as normal ends with me feeling so unhappy. because other people aren't that way. other people seem... happy.

i don't know how to be happy right now. for more than an hour or so at a time. that really sucks. y'know? that really mother-fucking bites.

i lied. not really; my perspective is just different at the moment. but somehow, no matter how hard i try to force things into a pleasant shape, they resist. its like trying to sculpt water. if there were a psychological equivalent of freezing things and then fashioning them into a big icy sculpture, i would be so willing to try and learn that... but until then, until i get out of here, i just feel so, horribly, fundamentally powerless. i can't change anything, i can't effect anyone. i can't bang my life into a shape that doesn't grind against my brain. i'm not going to stop trying. but i feel the need to express how completely impotent i feel. i feel like i'm holding my limp little penis, and its just lying flaccid there in my hand, not even like its soft, but like its flat out dead. i feel really horrible.

all your creative power, the generative drive that makes you able to laugh and love and mold and form and effect change and stand up for what you are and what you believe in; imagine someone stole into your bedroom one night, and somehow cut it right out of you. they stole it away. they took it from you. and this isn't some movie where you learn the lesson that you had it with you the whole time; they can't take that away from you! they took it. its lost. and without it, you don't even have the drive to look for it.

imagine your womb, your thrumming, life-giving, vibrant, "the only way a single person more gets here is through my own power" womb. then imagine a desert. imagine that inside your womb is a desert. that's how my life feels. imagine you try to tell people about this horrible loss you're feeling. you try to explain "they took it from me! my power, my energy, my spirit and my soul! they took it from me! i've lost it!" and everyone just looks at you with fear in their eyes, and radiates their lack of understanding.

for probably the second time in my life, i really feel like i'm cracking up. i'm not even kidding; this isn't an exaggeration. at this point, i am holding so tight to my little worldview, and there is such a disconnect between it and the reality of my situation, that i really feel like i'm teetering on the edge of that precipice, and have one foot over the drop already, and the wind is just sucking at me. pulling at me, trying to suck me down.

and even scarier, i would rather fight it out, and cling to my insanity, and go out in a blaze of glory, spirited away to some facility where they medicate me heavily and treat me like i'm subhuman, silently punishing me for daring to defy what is their reality. i'd rather crack from the strain. because the alternative seems to be the loss of something dear and precious to me, and i wouldn't be me without it. i would be the walking zombie that i already am more and more often; a shuffling shell without hope or ambition, not expecting anything, not even able to wrap his mind around the concept "happy." i would become a societal black hole, a dark spot pressing heavily on every mind that came in contact with me. i would be exactly what i hate.

i'm so tired... more depression. this writing, this tirade, is my way of draining the abcess. its the mental equivalent of sticking a hot knife into the infected pocket, and letting viscous, angry pus bubble and run out. it is the relieving of this unbearable pressure. and it works for a little while, and i feel better afterwards. tired, just like an exhausted surgery patient. but it helps, and i should try and remember that.

i feel better.

What're You Going to Do Today, Napoleon?

so if you'll remember from yesterday's post, i was not a happy camper. fire and brimstone were raining down, i didn't have my umbrella, and the girlscouts were once again selling cookies. those damn samoas are so friggin' addictive... anywhoo, today is a much better day, and indeed yesterday evening helped to in part heal me. what were the ingredients of this miracle cure, i hear you asking?

1. pizza for dinner

2. cake for dessert

3. napoleon dynamite

i love pizza. i don't tend to eat a lot of white flour, etc., or carbs in general, due to that whole "insulin dependent diabetes" thing. hence, it is a treat to indulge every now and then, and pizza is a positively sinful decadence. thin rolled crust topped with sugary tomato sauce, fattening cheese, and all manner of pork products. then it is baked until it reaches that perfect stage of development, where a sheen of grease overlays the bubbling cheese, which has crisped and blistered ever so slightly around the edges. the pepperoni is wonderfully thin and salty, and the crust holds together, but is moist and chewy. read my lips; i love pizza. i would marry it if i could. no no no... that would be too much of a good thing. i would marry eggplant, but pizza would be my lover on the side. a scandalous pleasure.

in fact, i would try and suggest a threesome with me, eggplant, and pizza. a delicious and completely talmudically frowned upon unholy union of allowed and illegal delights, an eggplant parmesan pizza. if i could swing it, i would make sure to take pictures and frame them, so i could always remember it.

if pizza is a rare decadence, cake... cake is like heaven on earth. i salivate when i hear the word cake, like one of pavlov's adorable dogs. i can achieve orgasm by walking through the door of a bakery. something about white flour combined with sugar and yeast, and then baked at four4 hundred degrees... a chemical change takes place that defies all attempts at description. somehow, earthly goods morph into the closest one comes to the kingdom of heaven while still attached to a physical vessel. there is something about cake, that just makes it... mmmaaahlahlahl... like sex with icing. i never, NEVER have cake. even when its available, the fact that it is like insta-death for me makes for difficulty in justifying it. but oh, when i do have it... i need to change my drawers afterwards. moist, rich, sweet cake, full of chunks of pineapple, with fluffy, coconut flavored cool-whip frosting...

i digress. but suffice it to say, last night, food actually did make things better.

then there was napoleon dynamite.

everyone who has seen this movie has said it is the best thing ever. my brother loves it, my sister loves it, my best friends love it, my highschool art teacher is positively obsessed with it. in short, this is a movie that i have needed to see for many months. but i never get around to seeing movies, even though i love them. so last night, rachel bought the damn thing on dvd and we watched it while eating pizza and drinking soda. i think it is without a doubt one of the funniest things i have ever seen. holy fuck, but it made me laugh, and laugh, and laugh, so often, for so long... it was good. it was real good. it was the kind of good where you're sure you must be doing something illegal, its so good. it was sodomy good. and i like me my sodomy...

it is also, without a doubt, the strangest movie i have seen in recent history. and it has such wide appeal, that there is almost a subversive aspect to it. like, all these kids fell in love with this movie, without even being thrown by the fact that it is an amazing piece of film-making. it creates a utah-universe that is bizarre and insular and wholly contained. every time a new character appears, there is a quiet question in you; will they fall into this universe as well? or will they be the ones to break this spell and reassert the reality we all are used to? and they fall in. the universe of the film consumes all reality, so wholly and fully, that you are not even allowed to find your feet until the credits are over and the treat at the end has passed.

and one of the best parts is that this whole universe, this spectacularly successful world, is obviously crafted on a shoestring budget, and revolves around the most bizarre set of people to populate a film in a long, long time. and it all succeeds because it is so, fucking, funny. it is an epic film about tiny tiny people. there are all the highpoints of a classic feelgood movie; the heroes all meet with success, the villains are vanquished, moral rectitude triumphs over shallowness and emptiness, and the main character, in all his goofy, t-shirt tucked into jeans patheticness, is a savior to himself, his friends, and his family. it is a most bizarre realization to come to. and a frightening measure of the utter success that this film is.

in short, if you want to laugh so hard you cry, and at the same time gain a ridiculously honest and effective look into a world where the beautiful people are very far away, and if you want to feel so profoundly uncomfortable that you squirm even as you soil yourself in glee, this movie is for you.

i am utterly in love with it.

being a loser never felt so good.

*cough cough* anthrax...

words that describe me today:

pissy, flatulent, crazy, self-destructive, listless, full-o-soda

things i've done today:

hit my head on my cubicle wall to see how it would feel (it didn't actually hurt that much),

two crossword puzzles. i'm a frickin' genius.

thoughts i've had today:

i want to curse like a sailor. it would make my day better.

i am currently a piece of life's flotsam. i have no will of my own. i will float along at the mercy of fate. i will follow whoever happens to be in front of me. i am the walking dead.

i just accidentally tipped my chair over, thus making a laughingstock of myself in front of all my co-workers. i wish i could say i didn't care, but i actually do, and am full of shame, contrition, and self-loathing. i hate everything, mostly myself.

today is not what i would call a good day. i'm in a funk, and i'm not really sure why. i'm irritable, and i keep having these thoughts... i want to make someone elses day miserable. i want to piss someone off. i really just... feel like crap. because i feel like nothing. much as i'm pissy, i'm not straight up, full blown, kill them all angry. nor am i happy. clearly. today is just a completely nothing day. its a beige day. within a week, i will remember nothing about this day. it is lost time. i should have stayed at home in bed. because at least then i would be getting sleep. rather than embarassing myself.

my head hurts. no clue why. i have to go to dad's house tonight. i don't want to. blah blah blah... today even my stream of inner dialogue just feels like a roar of sound. i don't want to listen to any of the people in my head. they're having a bad day. they're bitching and whining, and pissing and moaning, and none of them are being terribly funny, and i'm not in a good mood, so i'm a bad audience. we're all just not happy in my skull at the moment.

i keep burping. i have so much gas in me... i feel disgusting. maybe i should stop drinking so much soda then... maybe i should try to just stop thinking.

i could read a book. i brought "the salt eaters" with me today. that might make me really happy. i should try that soon.

i want to close my eyes. my head hurts.

People People, Please...

not many people other than my friends tend to stop by my blog, and they already understand what i am about to share with the rest of you. if there ARE any of you. i hope there are. but maybe you get it too. but i'll press on, just in case, and go ahead and give me the benefit of the doubt on this one. in fact, give everyone the benefit of the doubt. its a good practice for all those who would like to fall under the rubric "decent human being".

people, please, don't assume that because someone has been elected to public office that they are smarter than you. in fact, these days, don't believe that they are smart at all. a safe assumption would probably be that they have enough brain cells strung together to understand that the hot tea is "hot hot hot" rather than cold. on a good day. after they've warmed up.

another important aspect of your basic public official is that they should have been disqualified from running for office, the minute they expressed interest in it. politics, as a rule, attract people who know how to play the game. in a word, that means that they know how to be on all sides of an issue, talk out of both sides of their mouth, and smile as they bend you over their desk and fist you, and then tax you for it. politicians need to be on good terms with everybody, and very often, that means swallowing pride and principles.

with all this in mind, it should follow that, when following politics or listening to an official make a speech, one should have a large shaker of salt handy. do not assume they are telling you the truth, and be warned and aware that everyone always has an agenda. politicians are not your friends. they are their own friends.

from all this, i shall take a small leap to the subject of:

SOCIAL SECURITY

read my lips. social security, is in absolutely no immediate danger. social security trustees say the program is solvent, and able to pay out full benefits until 2042. after that point, it will still be able to pay almost three quarters of current benefit amounts. these are not politicians, but the financial whizzes that have more intimate knowledge of the program than anyone else. them, i would trust.

another estimate on the long term solvency of the program comes from the congressional budget office. though these people are the scary politicians i have been talking about, this office is also made up of nuts and bolts money people, whose major task as u.s. representatives is to manage the funds we provide. they say the program is good to pay one hundred percent of benefits until 2052. after that, benefits would only drop a modest amount.

these estimates are coming from people whose job it is to know their shit, and to make long term plans and strategies in regards to the budget in general and the social security budget in particular. the only ideology governing them is to not go into the red.

due to the nature of social security, it is a program that requires constant tinkering. the ratio of the work force to the retired is constantly changing, and interest rates and living wages are also constantly in flux. the program will need to be tinkered with again, but generally speaking, it is one of the most stable, cost effective, and succesful government programs in existence. when bush needs to borrow money to pay for his budget deficits, the social security trust fund is what he borrows from.

in addition, a little research will show you why the program is so necessary; before social security, being old and retired was synonymous with being poor. the nuclear family unit of parents and children replaced extended families living under one roof largely due to the fact that social security allows the elderly to live on their own and be self-sufficient at all. unless you have the money and know-how to succesfully play the financial markets (and research again shows that most people who play the markets are already financially independent and upwardly mobile) social security is what keeps you from being destitute.

now, with all of the above in mind, lets address the president's plan to privatize social security.

first off, the privatization scheme is not new. it is a basic tenet of the neo-conservatism to which george w. bush and his accessories pledge fealty to. conservatives despise welfare of any sort, and many have opposed social security since it was begun by FDR. privatization, or "partial privatization", is only part of a greater overarching campaign to end social security, period. if you're a wealthy ceo or statesman with large financial holdings, you'll be fine regardless of whether the program lives or dies. not so for the rest of us.

in addition to being a first step towards killing the program, bush's plans depend to a large degree on borrowing trillions of dollars, at a time when our country's economy is struggling, our government is running deficits, and the debt is increasing by leaps and bounds, which in turn means that we are consistently borrowing huge sums of money from other countries, money that we will eventually have to pay back, with interest. now is not the time to take such a financial hit.

along with this, private accounts themselves are not a feasible solution. financial markets are dangerous places, and one is just as likely to lose money in speculation as one is to gain money. in fact, one is more likely to lose. people who have been playing the markets for their entire lives lose money. this does not in turn bode well for people who have never played the markets and suddenly find themselves with a few thousand dollars and the government whispering in their ear "invest, your old age depends on it"? it is a risky situation, and many people stand to lose their long run security. on the other hand, wall street and financial houses stand to gain a lot of money. unless you're working for wall street, you are getting a raw deal.

another point worth mentioning is that, by switching over to private accounts within the next few years, we will be short-changing social security and its current beneficiaries. leave it all alone, and benefits take a small hit forty years down the road. switching to private accounts right now will have the effect of reducing current benefits by a great deal. the money has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere will in part be the pockets of current social security recipients. the american association of retired persons is against it, and for good reason. their existence depends on the system.

the lack of an actual crisis, immediately reduced benefits, and and weakened fiscal security, both personal and governmental, are all reasons to oppose private accounts. unless you are willing to gamble with your later years, let your aging parents move back in with you because they cannot afford to live on their own any more, and saddle your offspring with the ridiculous taxes needed to eventually pay for all of this, you should be against the president's plans, which by the way, are supported with falsehoods and his amiable grin. by bush's prediction, social security will experience a shortfall of 10 trillion dollars an a timeline of infinity years. infinity is a long time. and small updates every few decades can keep the program solvent indefinitely. private accounts solve nothing, and indeed make things much worse.

so those are my feelings on social security. if you have questions, ask, or better yet look up some answers. excellent portals are listed below.

www.buzzflash.com
www.commondreams.org
www.talkingpointsmemo.com

educating yourself on issues is the only way you can make an informed and realistic decision, and if you are reading this blog, you are either paco or speech or kaspella or e., but more importantly, you have internet access, and there have a wealth of information at your fingertips. and unless you are extremely unfortunate, the issue of social security definitely will effect your life at some point. you need to care about it now.

i will now be finding a tankard of diet coke on which to gorge myself.

Vindication & Teddy the Mongoose

let it hereby be known that, due to reading a sherlock holmes story in which a mongoose was peripherally involved, i have spent the last few days yelling "mony mony mon-goose!" to myself/the world at large. and i could tell, from the very clues that holmes had to work with, that the small animal could be nothing but a member of the mustelid family. oh my furry brethren! how i do love you all! and yes, the mongoose's name was teddy. it was cute.

its tuesday. monday was a bust, saving my half hour of communion with the stairmaster. zach and i had a (halting) talk about our relationship, and how its changed recently. basically, i feel like i don't have time to fuck around and drug myself up and run around with him and his friends avoiding my work. so i don't hang with him as much. meanwhile, he feels like i'm abandoning him (again) and is pissed that we don't hang out anymore. how am i supposed to explain that, regardless of how much he loves me and enjoys my help and support, i will never be able to rely on him as much as he does on me. we are so different, and his opinion usually isn't one i give much thought to. i think about things that he doesn't even have opinions on.

i can't bare my soul to him the same way he does to me, and i don't even feel able to tell him so, because he'll just get angry and feel like i'm saying that he isn't good enough, and that i don't accept/respect him. its such a friggin' bind. i feel like i somehow need to get it across to him that it isn't all about him. that's the message he needs. it is not all about him; i am not here to serve as his substitute psycho-therapist. i am not here to be his constant companion. despite what he might think, i don't make my decisions based on how they'll effect him. i do not live for him, and i don't expect him to live for me.

i will always love him, be willing to talk to him, be willing to try and help him, but i try not to ask him for things he cannot give, and there are many such things. he doesn't seem to be able to understand that concept. he wants a relationship from me that i can't give him. when we talk, he gets a lot more out of it than me; he gets to air his grievances and benefit from my advice. i get to play the sponge and absorb. i can't do it all the time. its hard.

i tried to float the idea that he shouldn't try to be something other he isn't in order to try and help us be closer. he didn't seem to understand; he said he never tries to be someone he's not. aargh. i just... i can't explain these things completely honestly without hurting him. so i don't know what to do. but i've ended up disappointing him again. always. mom thinks he's never forgiven me for going away to college. i think she's right. it makes sense. he can't step back and try to see what is reasonable to expect from people, so he thinks its all right for him to expect me to be exactly like him, for us to always get along, etc. he wants us to be best friends forever with hearts and stars, and i want us to be able to speak the same language... sigh.

and i realize the last few paragraphs were garbled. i'm sorry. i'm not thinking terribly clearly at the moment.

in other news, i sent wolfie an "express interest or tell me to leave you alone" e-mail last night. it had been a week since he mailed, so i decided that i was tired of giving him space and should just confront him bluntly and get it all over with. i don't like mysteries... so what the hey. and guess what? he e-mailed me back to say he had been very busy, as i already knew, that he is wary of internet conversation, since it doesn't replace actual physical interaction, and here is his phone number, if i should desire to call.

so basically, we get the picture of a nice but slightly flighty young man who has a healthy desire to protect himself from various unsavory elements, who is interested in a relationship (scary!), and who does enjoy my e-mails, as i am a witty and clever young man. so perhaps things are back on track, and i will be calling him tomorrow. not today, but tomorrow.

so who knows, but things are looking up quite a bit, which i had hoped they would, because i wasn't looking forward to having to write him off... he seemed to cool to force me into that position. ah well. i lucked out, and was a little bit right. we'll see if my luck holds.

in other news, i have to work on the "massachusetts comprehensive assessment system" now, so i suppose i'll have to end this entry. sad. i wish i had more to say. but i don't think i do. but hey, i'm sure it'll pass.

Frustration

today was a good day. room is on its way to being a pleasant place for me to live. new furniture, cleaned out, ready for reorganization tomorrow. went to the gym also. no outlet malls tomorrow (thank god!) but breakfast with dad, which should be nice.

i am in the midst, however, of the grumblies. my mind, like an empty stomach, is gurgling and whining with frustrations. i am well aware that wolfie has a tenuous grasp on internet access. however, i need more contact. a week is too much time. i need a lot more reassurance and conversation. i am needyneedyneedy. and mostly, right now, i need more contact (needyneedyneedy) because i sent two stupid letters at the beginning of the week. so now i don't know if i killed what i thought might be the bud of something. its so hard to grow a relationship... grr... it takes so much, SO much freaking time and energy. and then, its so fragile at the beginning. so basically, i've got the old hanging on a rusty nail feeling. is he not writing back due to understandable and excusable lack of computer access, or did i frighten him. such things have been known to happen...

aargh! people are so difficult... they are when i actually care if they like me anyway. people are actually rather simple. i mean, not the people in my life, but in general... i don't tend to keep simple people around. they're uninteresting, and i bore very easily. by which i mean i get bored very easily. anyway, i don't know what to do. or what to say. or if i need to do anything. i left it alone all week. two long e-mails is enough. i'm waiting; i promised myself i would leave it alone until he wrote back. which i hope he does. but its easier to give people their space when you have other things to occupy your time. earlier, i had work and research to do, and my time was all filled up. and i was busy being miserably ill. now its the weekend, and i have slightly less to do. maybe i'm just impatient. i know i'm impatient. whatever.

i just need a sign, because i'm bending myself in all these fancy knots trying to play this all just right, because i desperately want this boy to like me. he's a man, actually. he's 28 years old, but 5'7" tall, so i don't know quite how to classify him. i am thrilled by this. people who defy classification are special, and deserve extra consideration. and i wish i wasn't so ridiculously obsessive. i'm sure going from zero to "holy god i'm in love love love" in five seconds wreaks havoc with my actual real-world chances. and i'm constantly telling him i find him witty, and cute, and that i like him. i really have little clue how he feels about me, beyond the fact that he seems to continue writing to me. and i'm sure i'll get a letter from him tomorrow. sunday is always the day. but goddamnit...

i think i need to dose myself up with some sudafed and read sherlock holmes until i fall asleep. aargh! i swear, this is one of those times when i slightly envy you normal people out there. i can't even deconstruct why i feel so strongly about him, and at the same time there are so many reasons i can list. but aargh! its sad and hard when you feel as though you're predestined to have some sort of relationship with someone. and somehow, i very often do. i'm attracted to people so rarely. not that its like my taste has been good in the past... whoo. but apparently, mine is the only taste i can be reasonably expected to go on.

its not good when you tailor your interactions with someone based on their star sign due to lack of other information. it doesn't bode well. and i would really love a cigarette right now. my one little dirty habit. i hardly even feel bad. life, as they say, is a bitch. i will not write him again. i am now playing the waiting game. i can wait a while longer.

Saturday...

i feel glorious today. it is beautiful out. my allergies have abated a bit. i had a wonderful evening last night. i am not at the warehouse. life suddenly feels good again.

chris, kas, and i will be starting an e-zine. it will be quarterly, and amazing, and i am so excited about it... the first issue will be exploring the theme of communication. it will be out in april. oh yeah. i really am so ridiculously excited about it... mmm... e-zine.

wolfie nee alex has not yet e-mailed me back, but i can't even find it in me to be distressed by that fact. he is a busy young man, and has plenty to do, so he will write when he can, if he wants, and there is utterly nothing for me to do about it. so to that i say, and send into the ether, "wolfie, do what you can, and i shall be ready for any contingency."

i went to the gym yesterday after a two day break. man did that feel good! i am such an addictive freak. dropping alcohol and pot from my life has only caused me to step sideways to other addictions. i'm not sure if only i do this, or if it is the natural template of human behaviour. but now i am addicted to the endorphins i get from worshipping the stairmaster in thirty minute increments. and i allow myself five cigarettes a week, or thereabouts. these are addictions, i have decided, that are acceptable. exercise is actually healthy, and if for the time being i need SOME sort of self-destructive habit, 1/4 pack of cigarettes a week is acceptable.

its my twenty-first day of sobriety, minus one night a week and a half ago that i got stoned. but weed was never as much the issue. my project here is to not become an alkie. i feel like my brain is working so much better... its nimbler, and faster, and it feels beautifully uncluttered. that fog that descends due to too much drugging has lifted, or is in the process of lifting. and it feels really, really marvelous.

i need to clean my room this morning. i'm not looking forward to it, but it will be good for me, and god knows i begin to love anything if it makes me feel productive... and i get to go to the gym again today! is life not endlessly exciting?

i should eat breakfast.

Fuck Yeah!

i am sick. i feel like a cold slice of ass on a plastic plate. and yet...

my day is eight kinds of brighter upon finding out that five senators and eight house members have officially filed their objections to the 2004 vote in ohio.

the conyers report on voting irregularities has been added to the congressional record.

and for once in their miserable recent history, democratic office-holders are doing what they are supposed to do. they are allowing our voices to be heard.

a little bit anyway...

etc. etc. etc. i'm too tired to go on a rant or actually think this over and see what it is i believe office-holders are supposed to do. but i'm happy nonetheless.

wolf should e-mail me.

I Feel Like Death

i am such a complete and utter wimp.

i used to be a fairly healthy person. i felt under the weather, you know, once or twice a year. no big problems. allergies were never that bad, and i ran around and did my think secure in the knowledge that my health was relatively unassailable. perhaps this is a fiction i am telling myself. i'm not sure. but i think not.

then i hit college age, or something like it. perhaps it was that living in texas never taxed my system that much. winter here is pretty much a joke. connecticut is really, really different; snow, sleet, ice, days of ridiculously low (to me, anyway) temperatures, etc. so i'm not surprised that i began to get sick more often. little things; allergy related sinus infections, colds, mild flu, whatever. granted, it would have been nice if i had remained a relatively well person, but new climate, new ailments, whatever. thats not why i'm a wuss.

now i'm back in texas, and i am constantly getting sick. like, in the four years of abscence, my allergies ballooned into these massive, life altering affairs. right now (and for the rest of this god-forsaken winter) its mountain cedar season. i think that basically means that i get to sniffle and sneeze, run a fever, have glassy eyes that make people think i'm blunted, and run around my little life wanting nothing more than to go to sleep and never wake up. even these painful allergies, however, are not why i'm a wuss.

i am a wuss because of what i become when i am sick. now this is partly me rebelling (again, for the eight billionth time, always) against my body and its ability to preempt anything i might have planned. i'm not kind to my body. i treat it well enough, but in the hierarchy, it is way below the all powerful noodle. so when i get sick... the noodle gets preempted. vessel! how dare you rebel against your master! etc.

beyond this, however, i am simply unable to be psychologically well when my body is in a state of yuck. i get sick, and i become this whiny, mewling, complaining thing. i bitch and moan, i am rude to people, my favorite phrase becomes "i hate EVERYTHING!"

well, now i can do it on the internet too. god how i hate being sick.

The Day That Wouldn't Die

as so often happens, i feel i am communicating with you from the depths of hell. this isn't an office... really it isn't. but it isn't even the warehouse that it would appear to be. it is the devil's hacienda. try the tacos, they'll give you ass-burning diarrhea.

my allergies are kicking in; my eyes itch, my nose is yucky, my ears hurt, and i've been getting these wierd zits on my temples... the zits are unrelated, but while i'm griping, i thought i'd throw them in too.

how the heck do you spell diarrhea?

i hate not being able to think. or concentrate. i hate that it looks like its going to rain a bitch outside at any moment. i hate that i need to spend eight billion dollars to get my little architecture dream machine up and running. the sweet sweet powerbook is sweet sweet mother of god expensive. then all the programs... you know, maybe i'll sell one of my kidneys on the black market. it would solve so many financial problems.

i have a beautiful tie that i love, and that i can never ever wear. its a pattern of small blocks that are alternately filled with a lovely shade of red and beautiful little drawings of elephants. it is, in short, the grand prize, trip to tahiti, dyed in the wool republican tie. even i can't help thinking of it that way. elephants are way too lovely and beautiful to have been coopted by the GOP. can't their animal be... i dunno, something terrible. like a tapeworm, or the pathogen that causes tuberculosis.

but i love red, and i love elephants. i love big grey wrinkly things. i'm getting those lines from your nose to the corners of your mouth. i'm terribly excited about them. but elephants... they can hear with their feet, did you know? these scientists went to the desert somewhere in africa and put some huge speakers face down in the sand, and they played a big stomp, or whatever it is that's a ground-transmitted elephant alarm call. and all the elephants in the herd nearby would stop each time and turn to the source of the sound and raise one of their front legs; the elephant alarm posture. it was so amazing and beautiful to see.

their feet are so squishy and wide, to spread their weight over as great an area as possible, so they don't sink into the sand. they can also find water in the desert, and dig until they uncover it. its the only way their able to keep cool. they have to drink masses of water.

its almost time to leave now. one more obsessive check of my e-mail. i hope tonight, i dream about elephants rather than dry-humping a waste-paper basket, like i did this last night.

HOLY GOD!!!

you know that little blurb about me and my blog that should display near the top of this page? no, you don't, because THE SYSTEM KEEPS EATING IT!!! twice i have written about me, what this blog is about, my mother's maiden name, all that crap. twice, the system has eaten all my lovely words. where do i live? what has my life been like? what do i do with my time? why is my username that of a character in the "get fuzzy" comic strip? YOU DON'T KNOW! BECAUSE THE SYSTEM KEEPS EATING MY WORDS! HEY SYSTEM! GET A LIFE! STOP IT! LEAVE ME ALONE YOU FUCKER!

in other news, my blood sugar began to dip this morning. i had to eat trailmix to keep myself not unconscious. by the way, i have insulin dependent diabetes. i never think of it as an important aspect of my life (in a mental/emotional sense... physically, its very important indeed.) so i never think to tell anyone. but i have diamabetes, and i realized today that if i were to slip into a diabetic coma and die, my final waking moments of life would be really, really unpleasant. shaky, cold sweat, stomach crying out for something with sugar in it, hysteria, the works. yeah, that would not be a fun way to go. don't know why this never occured to me before. oh well.

Dear God...

maybe its the eight billion gallons of cold diet coke i've put in me today, or maybe the air conditioning in the warehouse (i work in a warehouse. a warehouse full of cubicles.) is set to "arctic winter," but i am so fucking cold... oh my god.

how cold it is:

its so cold my nipples could cut glass.

its so cold my nipples stick out like blazes.

its as cold as a witches tit in a brass brazier.

its as cold as a wizards nut in a brass jock.

its so cold i swear to god i farted and my ass cheeks froze together.

its so cold i licked my lips and my tongue got stuck to my lip-ring.

on another note, my coworkers and i were discussing groups of people doing cruel things to individuals. of course, i had to chime in that its really sad how the cruel things are so much fun. damnit, people laughed. they were just afraid to say it. and its true. being cruel is really... cruel. but more often than not its also really funny, for at least one of the people involved.

also, i don't actually have a lip ring.

also, before i could regain control over my mouth by interrupting the direct feed it was getting from my brain, coworker e responded to my remark about cruelty by saying she would beat me with a rolled up magazine, to which i replied, "i would like it!" then i sat down in my seat and promised myself i would not speak again for the rest of the day, because clearly doing so is not safe. i swear i don't know why i haven't been fired yet...

First Post

i am not a weblog virgin. as a matter of fact, i am a dirty weblog slut! in the interest of preserving my privacy, i closed up shop on my old blog and began a new one here. right here. the story of my old blog's demise is a long and sordid one, stretching all the way back into the dark years of my high school career. i'll tell it to you later, when i feel like it.

i find it interesting that every time i start a blog, i feel the need to be somewhat more polite and urbane. as though anyone ever reads these but my friends. but its a compulsion i just can't shake. i'll loosen up eventually, give me time.

so i suppose i could start this off by telling you a little bit about myself:

i am currently 22-ish.

i am a virgo (and a dog in the asian astrology cycle).

i have a b.a. from wesleyan university. i majored in english.

my family does not have a crest. we're of russian and eastern european stock, and were way too busy subsistence farming cabbage to think up a fancy little shield expressing our motto. but if i were to design a crest for me and only me, it would most likely feature a picture of a puppy wearing a scarf.

i long ago gave up on using capital letters. they take too much time. apparently i have SO many important things to say that i only have time to use them as accents.

i long ago made the english language my bitch.

i love all things british, except mercantilism and imperialism. it would be rude to blame the brits alone for those things anyway.

i think that is probably enough about me for now. as i update, i'm sure all sorts of sordid and dirty details will come spilling out, like so much pus from a festering zit. and you know what, you'll be here to enjoy it all. all right. cool. or kewl. but i'm going to lunch now, so hang out for a bit. i'll be back later.