No one reads this.

no really; no one reads this blog. i am now as adrift in e-space as i am in real-space. and granted, its partly my fault. i could try and keep up with people better. i could be kinder, warmer, and more open. but i haven't done or been those things, and so now i'm just venting to the ether. which is actually kind of comforting... its nice to know that however full of self-pity and melancholy i become, no one will have to read about it... no one will be subjected to it. no one will feel called upon to do something about it. and that's fine, because its my shit to deal with. and typing about it is at least a start.

i am tired. and by tired, i mean emotionally overwhelmed. i found a room to rent in austin, in what seems to be a really cool house full of really cool people. and this is great, and exciting, but it also means i have ass-loads of things to do to get myself ready to move. i can move in any time this coming january, but it just seems so huge... and christmas has taken up all my time until now. and i'm tired and drained from that. but i got an ipod nano and a ganesha car air freshener (it smells like enlightenment!) so that's cool. i'm just... spent. fully and totally spent.

in addition, my statement of purpose for architecture school is killing me. it is straight up killing me. to death. its just this ultimate headache, that i don't know how to write. people keep giving advice. their advice conflicts with other people's advice. i'm afraid of writing it because i fear being honest and open enough to put my head on the chopping block. which is completely irrational. but its how it feels... give away too much of yourself, and it can become a weapon in the hands of those who would do you ill... and granted, these are the words of a paranoid and possibly deeply disturbed individual. but i just can't shake it. i'm too aloof. i'm overwrought and desperate to conceal at the same time that i reveal. it just doesn't work. i'm trying again tomorrow. i'm just so tired of it all... i want it to end, and that means i just need to write it. again.

i'm technically all right, i suppose... healthy, not so sick anymore, etc... but i just feel, so heavy... i feel like i'm mentally plodding, stuck in mire and unable to pull myself out. my boots are made of iron, and they keep getting sucked down by the greedy mud. both my siblings had social events to go to tonight. i got to go to the gym with mom and eat supper. and think about my essay. way, too, much... i want to not think. i have no alcohol, and zach has the barest smidgen of pot left, that i don't feel comfortable smoking without him or without asking him, and he's busy with his girlfriend... its their one month anniversary. i just want to not think for a little while. i'm thinking too much. i can't make it stop. i'm a little bit upset at the moment. maybe you noticed...

okay, i'm really upset... but one of my friends just did poorly on her lsats, and another just got out of iraq and will be back home early january. my life just seems... so insignificant... i feel like i have very little to complain about. i have a place in austin! and yet... heavy like lead. i just feel heavy like hot lead, with my brain buzzing in circles while not coming to any conclusions. and maybe that's why i'm really happy that no one reads this. because i can be so self-absorbed and egotistical, and yet look like a nice guy to the rest of the world... well, i'm not a nice guy. i'm angry and argumentative, with a constant axe to grind. i have to always be right, and i am a social downer. i'm cruel and petty, and use a smug sense of self-righteousness to mask my own uncertainty and lack of confidence. and no one sees through it all to what a sad little bug i am. and that, is my great success, and my great shortcoming. my perfect disguise has rendered me alone and unable to find anyone else. and i am very, very sad.

Sick...

i think i'm sick. i'm not sure... i could just have really bad allergies. but regardless, my nose feels gross, my face feels gross, i'm unhappy and discouraged, my eyes itch, and i am so bitchy, female dogs are impressed.

it is cold here. it is wintry. but the season brings no joy. no happy thoughts of warmth inside, family, fires, etc. its just mother-fucking cold. i'm unhappy, and no amount of egg-nog or fried potato pancakes (latkes, for you goyim out there...) or whatever seems able to change that. my statement of purpose is a thing of pain and irritation; no one agrees about what needs to be done to it. i'm confused. i should've just sent it and been done. now i'm just adrift, and have no clue what to do about it. more and more, recently, i've felt like just bowing my head and crying for a little while, just to take the edge off.

i have a dry cough. it is loud and yucky. dad put a hand on a copy of the essay, looked at me, and said pointedly, "you can do better than this..." i hate him. i don't know why i even share anything i write with him. but then again, no one seems to think its very good, and i have to keep reminding myself that its my essay and i can write whatever i want. but its just stress... i give up.

i need to go holiday shopping today for siblings... scarf (or multiples thereof) for rachel and a video game for zach. i don't know what i want... dad is taken care of. audrey and mom, i don't know. you guys, i don't know. i'm just not that together right now. i don't like being in therapy, because it means i have to think about things, and i'm just not feeling able to do that right now... i just want to sleep. i want things to be different. magically. but as we know, the real world doesn't work that way... so i need to keep working. and meanwhile i just feel tired and cold.

the holiday season just makes me feel lonely. i don't need to take time off to see my family... i see them all the friggin' time. there's no catching up to do, no stories to tell... now is not a good time to be thinking about things, because i've clearly decided to be in a bad mood. for whatever reason. so fuck it.

i'm going to the post office, and then i'm going shopping.

say hi to the kids for me...

sorta drunk...

just to show how much i don't pay attention to the news (talkingpointsmemo.com and wonkette.com provide me with most of my shit...) i didn't know until today that richard pryor died. that truly and utterly sucks. and he was like, sixty-five... people should last longer than that. particularly great people. i just don't even know what to say, but that i tip my hat and shed my tears for a great.

i went to austin today to check out a possible habitation. i feel like i totally fucked it. i didn't say the right things. i clammed up. i felt so awkward... and now its over, and god knows if i get to live there. the guy was too nice to give me any hint as to if he thought i was house material or not... i have not a clue. i'm slightly drunk, and my back hurt horribly on the drive back to san antonio. i'm just tired. and i look forward to a night of drunken reading, drawing, and gameboy-playing. i have nothing else to say. goodnight.

busybusybusy...

today got so friggin' BUSY! and so quickly! i was just online, slogging through craigslist looking for housing (always a good time) and suddenly, housing possibility #1 calls and asks me to come up at 5.45 today. all right, cool. can do. then housing possibility #2 e-mails me back and also asks when i can come up for a visit. today? i mean, i will be in town... just, how soon? when do i need to be there? where am i going? who is this crazy man at the wheel? why is he driving my car? AAAAAH!

fuck me right in the ear... when it rains, it fucking pours. well, i'm meeting possible housemate W at the very least. and i want to go to the gym before i leave, and i wanted to stop by randstad... fuck! so much, to do, pant, pant... i'll call randstad, how about that? they should be there... its 1.15 on monday. where else would they be? and why am i always so fucking cold? by the by, i weigh 204.5 pounds. did i say that already, because a bit of the lustre has worn off, but i'm still pleased that i'm looking thin enough for mom to worry and demand that i let her weigh me, and yet i weigh a very healthy weight, meaning i'm losing fat and gaining muscle, the magic formula for looking like a hot piece of tail. which is clearly what i want to look like...

i mean, everyone wants to look hot, right? i'm not like, super more shallow than everyone else, right? i mean, my friends didn't nickname me "vain bastard" in college for a reason, right? that's the sad thing though... when i was with my cousins, i mentioned i wanted to lose some weight, and they were both like, "why, you look healthy!" and the first thing i wanted to say was, "yeah, i may look healthy, but i want to look hot!" and thats the sad thing. no one wants to look healthy, but everyone wants to look hot.

anywhoo, buying time before i need to actually take major action... brother zach wants to get a tattoo and a piercing the minute he turns eighteen. the tat, max from "where the wild things are," dancing on his hip-bone (where all good boys (most of them gay) get a tat). fair enough. the piercing, a lip-ring. eww... i know no one who has made the lipring look good. so the upshot is... zach is soon going to look like a boy-whore. eww... eww eww eww eww EWW!!! sick! DISGUSTING! I DO NOT APPROVE! not that my opinion really matters. but just. sick. blech. i have said my piece.

Keeping the Seat Warm

at this point, i never even know what i'm going to say when i update... i just do it because there's so much boring internet time to fill, and this is one more way to avoid doing the work i know i have to do. (i'll do it in a second, MOM! why don't you just get off my back! i know how to work! i'll finish! GOD!) no no, things with the mother are all right at the moment. she's just the only one who knows what my daily life is like, so she's the one to spur me and inquire every now and then. yes, i'm a little bitter about it, but mostly, i'm thankful someone cares enough to keep informed and make a nuisance of themselves.

so yes, i am seat-warming the blog for when i have something of true import to say. monday was fucking cold (for texas...) and tuesday was better, but today another front is rolling through, so the next few days should be bitter. cool, but i'm so cold even walking around inside the house with pants and a long sleeved shirt and puffy slippers on... c'mon, we have central heating, goddamnit! why am i constantly feeling like ice-man? but on that note, i saw buia-san on sunday, and later on, he told me i looked skinnier. which made me happy and surprised, but my next thought was, "maybe he's lying!" yes. i am so desperate to be "fat" in my eyes that i question everyone's credibility. but no. i am losing precious warming body fat and not gaining major muscle mass (though my shoulders are looking better) so of course, i'm really really cold. thank you elementary biology...

margaret cho posted a movie on her blog that her husband made. its a birthday present for her, and it basically is a music video of her little chihuahua/pomeranian mix puppy dancing around and looking cute. its really well done, really super cute, and i enjoyed it immensely. you should check it out, if your into that sort of thing... also, wonkette.com is completely obsessed with the panda cub born at the d.c. zoo a while ago. its chinese name translates roughly into "butterstick," already the material of a sitcom, no? but she is so butter-smitten that its just fun to scroll the page and find so many strange little references to the little beastie. oh course, the rest of the page is good too... go for it. you're reading my blog, you can't be that busy.

i need to get out of the house. all i want to do here is sleep. at least at bucks, i can read and do puzzles. and drink life-affirming coffee. but here, there's just me, the crazy cat, the deaf dog, and the sound of the wind outside the windows. i am lonely. another reason to leave the house; i get to see other human beings... even if you don't like people, its nice to be among them... you get to observe, and listen, and laugh inside your head. sometimes there's someone cute around. sometimes there's someone uproariously hideous! that's almost better than a cute person... i constantly wonder what i'll look like as i age. i wonder if i'll be one of those people who is only attractive due to the flush of youth, and as that fades, as the energy and vitality ebb away, i will just start to look bony and sunken, with loose skin and jowls. i have way too much time on my hands.

therapy yesterday. it was kind of scary. he made me sort of plead my case as to what i thought we could accomplish, which is fair since i told him that part of the reason i stopped coming was that i felt like all i wanted to do was bitch, and there was nothing that therapy could do to help me get through the situations at hand. so i pleaded my case, and he took me back, and i have a therapist again. tellingly enough, when i was telling the saga of zach flipping a lid because "i wasn't keeping him informed about my life" (how can i tell him things when he is NEVER. AT. HOME.) he kept mishearing me and thinking i was saying DAD was blowing a gasket. which is of course, the problem at hand. zach was acting like dad. he was acting like dad in a particular way that triggers me something awful. so then i acted like dad, and it triggered zach to feel like complete shit and think i hated him, and had always hated him, etc. so that's the mission. learn to deal with that kind of stimulus without hurting people. learn to deal with the vestiges and ghosts that dad's left in me, without the option of talking to dad about it. yeah, he took me back.

its raining now. because being cold isn't bad enough. i need to be wet as well. looks like someone's got a case of the poormes!!! and i laugh... mom just called. i love her. and she loves me. enough to call me because she knows i'm not doing well. apparently, i'm blogging because i wanted to wallow in my own loneliness. because that's really useful. no. i don't want to be angry at myself. i'm not very nice to myself (another thing to work on with therapist) and i want to change that. its just hard. and who said life would be easy? but then there's always that old sheryl crow lyric: "no one said it would be easy, but does it have to be this hard?" so much to do, so much to do...

its so funny how i can sit and stare at nothing, thinking nothing (or alot, i'm not sure which) not moving, for so long... i am like, the kind of attracting flies. if i could only get my pores to exude the scent of rotting meat... and for some reason, i keep hearing this line in my head from when i was a young, young child (early single digits) and there was a stand up comic on t.v., and he just says, "where does weight go when you lose it?" i laugh even as i type it... i find the stupidest shit funny... and why is that there? and yesterday, i started singing a bunch of muppet songs. i know i'm just reaching back in my brain, trying to find something that's pure and untainted to throw up as a defense against my current bleakness... i have that drowning feeling again. and i just can't make it go away... but i'll try. i have to much to do...

>musical interlude<

look at me,
here i am,
right where i belong...
i hear that voice
coming back to me
like an old, familiar song...
what better place could anything end,
than here with my friends,
they're all i've been looking for
and so much more and
now i'm here,
now you're here,
nothing can go wrong
cuz i am right where i belong!

>end musical interlude<

i miss jim henson really really terribly. and the muppet corporation is now owned by disney... i find that horribly horribly wrong. but i can't really do anything about it... puppeteering is dying out now. computer generated imaging is taking over completely. that stupid friggin' cgi yoda in the new star wars movies... its going to become a lost art before long, and that is extremely sad to me... its been around for millenia. ancient japanese puppet shows, punch and judy in medieval england, the muppets in the nineteen sixties and seventies. and now, hundreds of green screens and macs, manned by geeks. that's why i love tim burton and ardman studios (wallace and grommit). they forge on in a world against them, bringing humanity to bits of clay.

i'm going to be done wallowing for now. i need to get some shit together, and then get out of this god-forsaken house.

look at me,
here i am,
right where i belong...

My Head Hurts...

again. always. i am he of the never-ending head-achey... i am constantly so tired, i would willingly take eight cans of creamed corn and a can opener to bed with me and not leave until sometime in april... my head, is so full of stuff, i am only waiting for that last little thing to make it explode. like, they don't have funions at the gas station. or, i go to take a shit, and there's only gas. or something so completely insignificant, and BLAMMY!!! head-explody. so tired... i'm awake right now, at 3.47 in the afternoon my time. and somehow, that is amazing... sad...

i am listening to regan fox. she does podcasts. she is fucking, hilarious... i am trying to type right now, and i just keeeep getting distracted by her impression of jennifer lopez accepting an oscar for her lead role in "memoirs of a geisha". not for real, but damn, that would be sooo, fucking, funny... and now she's playing audio files of a dumbledore-sounding british man narrating harry potter porn. i'm going to scream...

anywhoo... therapy appointment today. won't miss it. six o-clock.

i don't even know what i want to say, oh right:

i, HATE, christmas. not that holiday where christians of all stripes celebrate the date-corrected birthday of the man they believe was the second messiah. no no no. that's just fine. but i HATE, FUCKING, CHRISTMAS!!! christmas in america. i hate christmas carols being piped directly into my brain meats for a month with me not being able to do a damn thing about it... i hate the sudden ass-loads of crap on every store shelf (santa teddy bear, penguin snow globes, snowflake earrings, icicle dildos...) i hate the crowds of crowds (crowds squared) of people every-frickin-where, shopping, spending money, willingly driving themselves ass-lancingly insane to secure the love of the important people in their lives... i hate fucking bill o'reilly and his continual headline "war on christmas"! like we jews and non-christians and liberal heathens are going to steal your precious fucking holiday, like we hate it, and you for celebrating it, and the cute little reindeer socks you wear... jesus!

yes, i have been drinking more than my fair share of haterade. i always do this time of year. i am the humbuggiest of the humbuggers. and i don't feel that bad about it. i always hate crowds. that's nothing new. i hate commercialism. i think people need a few more years in development before being marketed to earth. christmas just brings more of it all. and it seems so false to me, this manufactured "happy time" where you forget that dad is emotionally frigid and mom drinks to deal with it, and your brother is mixing with the wrong crowd, and your sister steals your money for crack, etc... i'm a firm believer in loving people all the time, not when its culturally mandated. and we all know i am a big softy. so lets not play the "josh is just being angry for the hell of it" card, even though that is a part of it. there's more to it than that.

and there should not be a christmas tree in washington d.c., the seat of our secular federal government. and if there is (there is...) they should have the grapes to call it a christmas tree, not a "holiday tree". duh, what other holiday is associated with a needled tree being relocated and strung with twinkle lights? actually, apparently, "christmas" trees are a bastardization of a pagan ritual rather than a christian one. but facts and history aside, fine, have a christmas tree, CALL it a christmas tree. its probably one of the cheaper things on the budget.

i'm all ranted out now. i'm discussing business with a co-conspiritor, so i'm out of rage-o-hol. there'll be more yet, i'm sure, but i have to accomplish some things. just wanted to keep the blog warm...

No YOU Have the Right to Remain Silent!

HA! no, i'm not in trouble with the law. i've just been having a rough-ish week, and am feeling contrary and angry. so woe betide me if any cops pull me over for some freakish reason, because i feel the above response will not endear me to them. i swear, i sometimes think that if i wasn't me, i wouldn't like me very much. except that i'd probably charm my pants right off... yes. sex with the self. a not uncommon practice in these parts...

i just ordered a christ-y day present for dad off of amazon, the uk version. unfortunately, amazon is a rather red company, and probably regardless of which country your goods originate in... but damnit! if borders isn't going to carry something as awesome as the complete box set of the bbc radio broadcasts of "the hitchicker's guide to the galaxy" (by douglas adams, god bless him...) then i have no alternative. of course, i shouldn't have lost his copies in the first place, because then i wouldn't have to buy him a replacement. i feel like it doesn't even count as a real present, since i'm only replacing something i lost in the first place... and how much does 44 pounds equal in us dollars? i'd kind of like to know...

side note: my goods originated here in the good ole u s of a

side note to side note: i crack me up

i need to finally, FINALLY finish my statement of purpose today. i rewrote it entirely this week, and it just needs a little smoothing out. this new one is much better than my first attempt. the first line is "i was raised by a pack of wild psychologists." it just gets better from there. so anyway, that's something to do. i need to do it so i have something to show for this god-awful week. it wasn't even so bad, except that i feel so lazy and unproductive, and have been stewing about my first therapy appointment in months, which i missed anyway because i thought it waas today and it was actually yesterday. i'm going to kick myself in the head...

i just read my first john grisham book. i hate to say it, but i enjoyed it. i made a silent vow some time ago never to read his stuff, just because he churns out like five novels a year and is so goddamned popular. unfortunately, he's also a pretty good writer, so i don't even have the satisfaction of being able to say, "yeah, i read john grisham, and for the record, HE SUCKED!" nope. humble pie over at table "blunt instruments". again.

anyway, i don't really want to bore anyone with more crap about my current affairs... i need to find a house and a job, but finishing applying to schools is now priority number one once again. gotta get movin'. after the statement of purpose, i just have to make my portfolio, which will be an unwieldy effort, but fun, in a way. i get to revisit all sorts of old art projects, savvily present them, etc. zach and i are no longer rowing. not like, rowing a boat... like, fighting, british-style... he has the sat tomorrow. i've been helping for the last week and a half as he's practiced the writing section. god knows, but he has improved by my calculations... now he just needs to get above a four hundred something on the verbal section, get another six or seven hundred something on the math, and he's set. i'm crossing my fingers, but luck's a paltry thing to depend on... he probably should have studied.

i am so terribly tired, it is disgusting. and i want a drink really badly. not good. but hey... um... at least i don't feel bitterly cold all the time regardless of the actual temperature! except that i do... hmm... i'm losing my protective layer of blubber (i use the term technically. i never looked like a fat happy seal. my body dismorphia isn't THAT bad. its pretty bad though...) and its wreaking havoc with my internal thermometer. not rectal, internal. there's a difference... those of you who remember how cold i got so easily sophomore year of college, well, its happening again, only this time i'm still in texas and i feel cold. that, really sucks.

and on that note, i leave you. i should go do something productive for a bit before i become bored with the day and wrap myself in a blanket.

side note: i am addicted to tiger balm.

side note to side note: because of that episode of "venture brothers".

side note to side note to side note: yes, i am that sad. and funny too!