I am Paul's Self-Indulgent Wankery

Don't Call Me a Faggot, You Faggot

Sat, 23 Oct 2004 04:32:11 GMT

Since certain people are calling me out, I suppose I should update. Fortune smiles (!) as I actually have something to talk about. Mostly this.

Well, we'll start with my confusion. I can personally attest to the fact that Coke and Pepsi taste clearly different to anyone who drinks one or more regularly. Coke's rust-burningly acidic, Pepsi's sickly sweet. Coke is a drop of lemon in a bucket of paint thinner, Pepsi tastes like one of the Keebler elves just took a crap in your mouth. I'm not really telling you anything you don't already know, and that's my point. Anyone who knows Coke and Pepsi well enough to identify the brand labels should be able to tell one from another in a double blind taste test. And had to already know which one they preferred going in. Right? And would have all the "Coca Cola" associations triggered by the flavor instead of just the red and white. Right? So either:

A. The advertising is so powerful it overcame people's preconcieved notions as well as their natural tastebuds.
B. These people didn't drink enough cola to know the difference between Coke and Pepsi going in.

Neither of which seems right to me. I'd like to see the raw data.

But let's take the story at face value for a moment here. If correct, what we have here is actual scientific evidence that we, as a species are not biologically fit for civilization. And these fuckers are worried about fat kids. We are spitting in the eye of God (literally or figuratively) just by continuing to exist at this point. I was watching "The Waking Life" the other day, and they had some self-important old man in a bar claim that there is "more difference between Nietzsche and Aristotle as compared to the average man than there is between the average man and a chimp". I find myself unable to restrain eye-rolling even as I type that paraphrasal, but then I remember I got roped into watching "The Day After Tomorrow" which said that "Nietzsche was a chauvenist who was in love with his sister" so the plebs are out inaning the pats in this month's movie viewings.

Anyway, the point, if I even had one, is that we're clearly all fucking monkeys propping outrselves up on nothing out of spite for our creator and a desire to show up our peers. We've been scientifically proven incapable of trusting our own beverage choices, and we're supposed to manage a civilization? And these assholes who figured this completely overlook the implication to get their panties in a bunch about fat kids? I'm both proud and horrified that we managed to make it this far, fellow hominids.

ahkfccjllnknlknlkglu

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 02:18:48 GMT

Well, geeze, this place finally gets some drama and it's not even about me. Raf, if you're still reading this, hit me with an email or catch me online when you get a chance. I can't remember which email address you're currently using. Unless you're just not talking to me at all now, in which case best of luck with whatever you decide to do and thanks for everything.

Anyway, to the rest of you (i.e. Worm), I've got an internet connection that cuts in and out for extended periods for no determinable reason and a good mood that seems to consistantly do the same. It's the fucking winter that does it to me. I could spend summer watching infomercials in a pile of other people's feces and be relatively happy, but come October or so and I can barely deal with sobriety. This place is probably going to go from pink to black if I even bother updating again until New Years. I hate the cold and I hate the snow and I hate the pre-dawn dark.

My video card came back today, so that's a good thing. I went out to dinner with a bunch of people from work and had a pretty good time. Of course, the liquor's probably largely responsible for that, but I don't think I douched it up too much for anyone and similarly determined that I'm working with a group of people containing absolutely no one I want to skull fuck to death. So that's two good things.

I've been putting off making a decision on a car for a wide variety of reasons, which is bad. I've been sleeping more, which is technically good because I generally don't sleep enough but also indicative of the fact that I'm not doing anything I enjoy enough to stay up for. My birthday's Friday, which is whatever. That's how it goes, I guess.

Sorry if this is sounding like a huge unfunny whinefest, and doubly sorry that I haven't posted anything entertaining here in forever. You'll probably have to suck it up and deal with me like this for a while, but I'll try to put up the pretty clown face. I enjoy that so much more than this tired Morrisey crap.

Time Fucking Passes

Sat, 25 Sep 2004 02:48:44 GMT

What have I done this week? I don't even fucking remember. Here's an interesting story:

For nigh on twenty years now my liquid intake has entirely on coca cola and alchoholic drinks mixed with coca cola. I'd pour the rusteating shit over my cornflakes if I actually ate cornflakes. So yeah, that's not incredibly healthy and I'll spare you the details of this diet's occasional affect on my stool (hey ladies!). So I bought some juice and have been drinking that. It's one of those unholy mixed fruit union juices, this particular one made by V8, makers of the poor man's Bloody Mary.

So, anyway, I'm drinking this stuff all week and I know I've had it before, but I can't for the life of me figure out where. And the thing is that I know, empirically, that I've never drank this V8 concoction before. So all week I'm trying to figure out this mystery of the universe and then yesterday it hits me: I'm drinking Hawaiian fucking Punch. This tropical blend shit tastes precisely like Hawaiian Punch. Which, in and of itself isn't a big deal. The thing is I cannot ever remember drinking Hawaiian Punch. I mean, I must have had some as a little kid, but how do I remember what Hawaiian Punch tastes like without any memory of drinking it?

Wait, did I preface that with "here's an interesting story". Nevermind.

This Boy's Life Among the Electrical Lights

Sun, 19 Sep 2004 22:31:07 GMT

At this moment I'm drunk on red wine, listening to the greatest pop song we as a species has produced, and downloading absolutely useless shit off of bittorent (including, but not limited to, Bill Clinton's book). I'm feeling negative pain. Life is good when you're a pig in shit, and let no one, including me, tell you otherwise.

Consumerism

Fri, 17 Sep 2004 06:14:32 GMT

I have to buy a car. This sucks. I've been driving the car my parents gave me about seven years ago (93 Grand Marquis) and it's big, comfortable, accelerates well and most of all free. It's also constantly on the verge of collapse so I need to replace it.

My intial thought, being poor and generally uninterested in "car as status symbol" was to seek out the cheapest car I could own for the longest possible time. But the thing is, any car that's likely to last longer than the one I own is going to cost me at least... 8-something or so. Which means I'm taking out a loan and making payments. And having to shell out a check every month in exchange for the the priviledge of driving a car that is in all regards (except longevity) worse than the one I currently own is fucking depressing. Plus, even buying some tiny used Japmobile doesn't mean I'm not going to buy some tiny used Japmobile that's not going to break down for no apparent reason.

So I can get a used Prizm for 9k but... well. Tiny, ugly, no acceleration. I don't want to pay money every month for this car. That I even give a shit says nothing about me I like but I do give a shit and don't want this car.

A used Civic is a little better but still less car than I already have and still gonna run me about 14k. But I can buy a new car for like the same price, so what's the point?

But yeah I can get a new Scion xA (for example) for 14k until I throw in, you know, a CD player and floor mats and then like I'm hitting 16k and still driving a tiny little car.

But then there's the Scion tC (to stay in the same brand) for 16k base which is larger, newer, faster, more comfortable, sexier and a car I would actually rather own than the one I have. But then we throw in the CD player and seat covers and we're hitting nearly 18k which is about double what I was originally looking at spending and now I'm a consumer whore going into debt to buy a trendy new car for more than he can really afford. This, I suppose, is how they get you.

Oh, and since I know you read this Raf: Consensu opinion of everyone who doesn't have their mouth around Ferdinand Porsche's rotting knob is that shelling out for a used diesel VW is a poor choice. So, thanks for the input, but Amy's going to have to find another sucker.

It's Wankeriffic!!

Fri, 10 Sep 2004 07:27:53 GMT

None of this post is going to make any sense to anyone but me, so feel free to ignore it. But I need to get it out somewhere.

A thought process:

To define is to limit, to diminish from the realm of infinite possbilities to that of finite realities. In the process of creating an identity we define, and hence, diminish ourselves. But by refusing to create a distinct identity we fall into Buddhist nihilism and cease to exist at all. Individuality and collectivism thus, for better or worse, both seek to crush the persona into a manageable shape.

I don't want that which is "not me" to pollute that which is "me" but at the same time I don't want to impose clear limitations on what is "me". I don't want to be all things, but rather each individual thing specifically. Hence: indecisiveness, inactivity, and endless introspection. The path of least resistance then is also that which requires the least commitment of self. And so here I am, the ultimate pragmatist hamstrung by his stupid, ideopathic ideals.

I guess, even in my bouts of self-loathing I've always figured my bloated personality was a "pregnant sickness", that which by definition made me more that the 1/8 people who exist by denying the great mass of what they might be in favor of the tiny bit of what they are. But, while this still may turn out to be the truth, I also realize I only have my own less than objective instincts with which to judge the situation. A solution is not forthcoming.

Execution Day

Thu, 09 Sep 2004 02:30:01 GMT

So I've been hired full time by the company that's been promising to do so for forever. I think I screwed myself by not asking for more money, but se la vi. On the upside, if I sign up for accidental dismemberment insurance and then dismember myself... you know accidentally... I can make almost double my current salary in yearly insurance payouts for doing nothing but sitting around figuring out how to play video games with one hand.

I got my video card back from California because apparently I didn't fill out the neccessary online forms in advance, so now I have to wait for that shit to process, mail it out again, and then wait for them to actually fix it and send it back to me. I suppose in retrospect, stuffing it in a box with a return address and a letter describing the problem probably should have clearly been the wrong way to go, but on the other hand they could have, you know, included the instructions on the warranty page rather than on an unrelated and barely labled page three links into their "contacts" section. But... se la vi.

I was watching a commercial for... I think it was Zoloft or one of those last night. A social anxiety drug. And there's this party with all these little white blobs who are sort of bouncing up and down in the vicinity of eachother in a manner that I suppose little white blobs find pleasing. And shunted off in the corner is this anxious looking little red blob with social anxiety watching all the other little white blobs bounce around. But then he takes Zoloft and becomes a little pink blob with the courage to go up and bounce around somewhat near the little white blobs and then his color fades to white and they're all bouncing together. So I suppose he's happy now, but he's also just a little white blob which I think has to be a metaphor for something.

I'm sure that, sitting down here, I had more stuff to say but I can't think of any of it now. I've actually got a really bizarre and kind of stupid idea for a web comic (because I need another project I can never work on) based on some doodles at work. I remember geocities used to let you trick them into direct-linking images if you renamed them as text files. I'm not sure if that trick still works or if I'll have to find some other place to upload to or if I'll just forget about the whole thing in a day and a half, but whatever the eventuallity... WATCH THIS SPACE FOR FURTHER UPDATES.

Hello Internet!!

Sat, 28 Aug 2004 03:38:57 GMT

It's been an odd couple weeks. I built my own computer for the first time. Which was good!! But then it broke, which was bad. Then I got a snarky message on my web-browser at work informing me that the internet was company property, which was really bad and rather fucking infuriating. I'm finally starting to understand America's hate-affair with the corporocracy.

While I wait to find out whether the Celestials who built my faulty video card will honor the most honorable warranty I've finally sucked it up and dumped my old video card which overheats when trying to display anything in 3-dimensions inside what was otherwise supposed to be my kickass new gaming rig. And now, for some reason, my wifi seems to be cutting out frequently, so I can't even visit my beloved internet to update my livejournal causing, all across America, four people to maybe vaguely kind of wonder what's going on with me.

Meanwhile I'm kind of going stir crazy waiting for the middle-management to finish dithering around with my paperwork and get me away from the temp service and onto their direct payroll (with all the bare-bones health benefits and fabulous slightly-above-poverty-level salary that entails). It's getting rather ridiculous, especially now that I can't kill time on the internet and have to spend all the hours outside the two-and-a-half a day it requires me to do my actual work poking holes in things with thumbtacks, doodling poor representations of Juggernaut on my blotter and chewing on styrofoam cups. Amazingly, despite this atrocious work ethic, everyone keeps telling me what a good job I'm doing and how well I'm working out in the position. I guess this is what all my teachers meant about not living up to my potential.

The only thing that's kept me sane for the past couple weeks is the copy of Soul Caliber II for the PS2 I picked up for twenty bucks when I realized my computer didn't work right and I'd need some sort of nonconstructive way to waste my free time. Or more specifically, the hilarious throw known as heaven's arch performed by one of the female characters in the game. Basically, she bends her opponent over backwards straddles their face and then jumps into the air and uses her weight to drive them to the ground. When I perform this throw (preferably on on another female character; even more preferably on the character's sister) I like to shout out "SUUUUPAH MUFF DIVAAAHHH!!!!" in my best Engrish. I think the neighbors are beginning to worry. More so than usual, I mean.

It occurs to me that, despite all evidence to the contrary, I am not an adult. If my life were a shoddily made romantic comedy it would be at this point where I meet a drive career woman who, while we will loathe each other at first, it will all just be a mask for our incredible sexual tension and in the end we will fall in love. I'd teach her how to find joy in the simple things in life, while she'd inspire me to finally make something of myself and achieve my dreams. Since my life is not a romantic comedy, it's actually at this point that I begin to spend all night trying to find the video of the naked Romanian gymnasts that's floating around the web. Ah well.

Oh What a Night

Thu, 05 Aug 2004 06:10:25 GMT

I got drunk, sang Bullets With Butterfly Wings to an indifferent if not ihostile crowd. It occurs to me that I need something in my life though, as of right now I don't know what would help at this point, other than some steady and obligation-free poon. I suppose a couple months of unmitigated debauchery would cure what ails me. In lieu of that, I'm at a loss. Seriously, after hearing the college stories of my friends, I feel like I've slept and/or moped through all the genuinely fun bits of life and jumped right into the part where you work all day and are merely content all night. That sucksorz. Is all that's left for me the occasional drunken weekday? Even as my life coalesces into the order I've desperately craved for going on five years now, I wonder if I don't need tojust move to Mexico for a decade or so and avoid anything remotely resembling responsibility. I'm too young to be settled, but too old to be anything else I could reasonably be. I suppose this is just the price I pay for fucking up my early twenties. Hopefully, someday, I'll figure out a consequences-minimized way to make up for lost time.

Late Nite Hold Tite

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 06:52:21 GMT

Yeah, I have no idea what the title means or even what I'm about to say here. But I can't sleep because I'm mulling something entirely inconsequential over and over in my head like I always do and I don't want to talk about it because it really is too inconsequential even for this pit. But I figure it might help if I talk about something so, let's take this ride together eh?

A buddy of mine scored this weekend. Don't worry, that's not what I keep mulling over but it's the only news of note from my weekend so I might as well mention it. A hardy public congratulations then to a guy who knows who he is.

Otherwise, things have been uneventful. Work is full of people who seem nice but who I don't really know how to deal with. So I'm the "quiet guy" again. Oh well, probably my lot in life.

I found this on the internet and thought it might be a nice lark. Something where the standards are neither unreachably high nor unbearably low. Unfortunately, their update is two days late now and I don't know what I need to do for the next entry. Still, hopefully mentioning it here will remind me to keep it in mind.

I've been debating all sorts of ways to break back into (or perhaps it might be more apt to just say into) a creative mode of operating. But mostly it's just resulted in me spending even more time lurching about the internet. I should just unplug the damn thing for a week. Not like I'd be missing anything, especially since I can get to most every site I care to visit from work.

Actually that, right up there, covers I think three of the four primary areas of discontent in my life. Livejournal and the internet in general is just full of people who are miserable for reasons too existential or psychosomatic to articulate properly, so I suppose I'm up ahead at least knowing what keeps me up nights. Cheerist this is getting too fucking weepy. Let's try a different tack.

Mickey'd always kind of known her dad was crazy. It was just one of those little facts you sort of assimilate growing up. Yeah, sure, all kids think they're parents are crazy, and it's not like the old man was having long discussions with the furniture. But nonetheless, there was something in his eyes, in the way he'd talk to you without quite looking at you that struck discordantly within Mickey even before she was old enough to articulate such thoughts.

Now you see, that's a bad start right there. You don't open with exposition, it's poor form. And "struck discordantly within" yeesh. Well, I mean that sort of thing can be fixed with a little editing, but you don't want to open with exposition.

It hadn't been the best season. After the untimely arrival of a Magistrate detachment forced us to dump our load of Biolex gel into a nearby star, we no longer had enough salable cargo to afford the full twenty-six tons of isotopes Drais was expecting delivery on. The fact that we only showed up with eighteen tons was enough excuse for him to refuse payment, after relieving us of what isotopes we did have at gunpoint. That's why I hate dealing with Dusters. Of course, when Drais magnanimously offered us the opportunity to carry another load of cargo to another Duster cartel operating on some red planet out on the frontier, we took him up on it anyway. That's why I hate being broke.

That's a little better. I mean granted, you have no idea what any of that means, but that comes with the genre.

So, we wound up traveling five sectors out to one of those little ruddy rocks out on the middle of nowhere, and set down on the only colony of note on the entire world: a few corroded metal structures set up in some semblance of an urban grid. A handful of inhabitants in old environmental suits wandering from building to building, looking to siphon a bit of wealth off all the black market goods that passed through. All these cartel worlds were essentially the same, and I'd seen far too many of them since I'd began this career. Still, this latest disaster was enough to get the boss to swear off working for the cartels for a while and, once we'd made this delivery, we'd have enough capital to recover in short order. At least, that was the theory.

Nothing profound, but we've set the stage. Now let's see how I did on the dialogue.

"Ancestors, this place is a hole," Poutter announced as he ducked into the ship's small gathering room. Skeeth and I looked up from the game board. He hissed something in his native language that I didn't catch; I simply looked back down, and placed my piece. Gamok's Gambit; he'd never seen me try that before. Poutter picked some sort of insect off of his coat, and crushed it between his second digit and thumb, then proceeded to brush the sand off of his mangy arms. "All they have to drink all over town is that spicy Duster crap no one can stomach."

This time Skeeth deigned to speak human. "The sand should not be getting all over the floor." Poutter just made a rude gesture, and sat down to watch our game. If you'd seen Skeeth's quarters, you'd wonder why the krillis he would complain about a little grime, but then again I never could figure out the Slint. Of course, knowing these two, I'd be the one who had to clean it.

Skeeth eyed the board with that weird look of his, where his multi-hued eyes don't seem to be focusing on anything in particular, then moved his piece. I calculated 146 sensible stratagems the move could fit into, none of which seemed likely to win my opponent any long term gains. In any event, the move did nothing to counter my own gambit, so I simply continued along my present trajectory. I looked expectantly at Skeeth, and he simply hissed his desire to pass, and so I completed the sequence, capturing four Ranks, and putting me within six moves of surrounding his Home. At least, that was the theory.

With a pleased hiss, he placed his next piece deep into my seventh Rank. At first, the move didn't even look legal, but I quickly discerned how he'd arranged his supply lines. They'd been like that since near the beginning of the game, and he'd simply left them in place, benign looking, making meaningless moves until I'd buried my pieces too deep into his Ranks to properly defend myself. Cursing inwardly, I calculated 432 probable escape routes, but realized the game was lost. "Plundered," I said simply, in acknowledgement of my defeat. "That puts you up fifty-six games to thirty-four," I announced, disguising my frustration. Skeeth just licked his left eyeball dismissively, and began gathering up the pieces. While we could probably convince the boss to spring for a computerized Caverns table, Skeeth insisted he played better in this anachronistic fashion. As I said, I could never figure out the Slint.

"So, when's the boss supposed to get back?" Poutter asked, probably assuming that we'd be more open to idle chatter now that the game was through. Patience was not the Surfacer's greatest virtue.

"Forty-seven minutes and twelve seconds ago, give or take," I announced without missing a beat.

"In other words, he's late."

"Perspicacious." That earned me the rude gesture, this time, but I ignored it. "Probably tried to drink grisht again, in which case he'll probably return after he comes to."

Not horrible, if you like Space Opera. Gives you a decent view of a collection of various alien characters. I'm still overdoing the fake words a bit, but whatever. It goes on from there along the same tack for a few pages before we hit what I like to call the plot wall, which is to say the point where I have to structure a plot and realise I still don't know how to do it. I don't know.

Once again I had looked into the abyss; and the abyss, for its part, had found me utterly lacking. I awoke, not for the first time, in an unfamiliar location, too weak at first to even open my eyes. My other senses, though still dulled, were soon to register vague impressions. I could feel the discomfort of the hard seat upon which I lay, the soreness in my muscles that were not yet willing to obey my will. I could hear a faint pounding, an uneven rhythm that grew louder as my consciousness stirred. I could smell nothing, but the muted taste of my own blood filled my mouth: at first I didn't understand, but I quickly realized my nose had been broken.

As I said, this is not the first time this had happened, but I was beginning to suspect already that it would prove the worst in recent memory. I had forgotten not only my recent actions; I no longer remembered entering, or even deciding to enter into the types of activities that usually lead me to situations like this. There was no telling yet how much time had been lost. As my vision returned to me, it soon became apparent that this was the least of my problems.

The reason for my discomfort became apparent: I had somehow managed to pass out whilst sitting fully clothed upon a toilet seat. I was inside the dingy restroom of what was, judging by the poorly performed metal variant coming from outside the door, some sort of low-rent night club. The back of my mind registered the song's baseline as identical to the pounding I had sensed earlier as I took in my surroundings. It was a small pit of a room, illuminated by one of a pair of light fixtures on either side of the mirror over the dingy sink, the other one having burnt out. The mirror itself held a sharp fracture running unevenly from its lower right corner to the top of the glass, but I suspected that might be a recent occurrence. A small bulletin board whose notices I didn't bother to read and my former seat completed the furnishings. The tile floor was cracked, and now stained liberally with blood. Some of it mine, most of it hers. Oh yes, I hadn't mentioned the girl yet.

She had, I suspect, been pretty at one time. Her silver top and sleek black skirt were the height of teenage mall fashion and I quickly assessed her as a student out for a night of fun and underage drinking. Odd she'd end up in a dive like this one, and tragically unfortunate she'd end up in the state she was. My only consolation was that I was certain I'd not have had the strength to cause the violence to her skull that she suffered, and there were no obvious weapons about. Someone or something (one learns to consider all possibilities in my profession) had attempted to set me up and, all things considered, done a pretty fair job of it. No doubt my broken nose would provide a treasure trove of forensic evidence, if I stuck around to supply a comparison sample.

This is probably a bit more me, or at least a bit more the me I've been feeling like for the last few months. I eventually adapted the piece this leads into a piece of perpetually unfinished Interactive Fiction where I've kind of sort of just barely inched halfway up the plot wall.

Yeah, I don't know what I'm doing. What else do I have on this hardrive I'm gonna toss in a week? Okay, trust me when I say you don't want to read that. And let's admire my restraint in never even attempting the Buffy the Vampire Slayer-esque piece that was kicking around in my head whn I was watching that show last year and has never quite kicked its way out. See I'm a fucking dilletante. I can't stay inspired about any of these pieces long enough to get over even the first rough patch. I keep debating attempting to do a serial on my LJ with the thought that, if I only have to "finish" each day's or week's or month's bit, I could keep doing it a piece at a time. I don't know. Let me sleep on it, I guess. Catch you kids later.

HAHAHA

Sat, 31 Jul 2004 06:30:04 GMT

They're website registration doesn't seem to work. The best laid plans of mice andd men. Fuck it's hot in here.

The Rotting Corpse of God

Sat, 31 Jul 2004 04:20:04 GMT

I mean, it's been 120+ years. That shit's gonna start to reek, yo.

It's friday night, I ain't drunk but I's gettin' there (the kitty is prognostatic) and I've got the absolute rosiest of nihilistic tenors going on. I was playing Dark Cloud II then just suddenly, instantly, became sick of Dark Cloud II just in time to get out on a summer weekend. But to do what? I've gots to get together the pieces to assemble the new computer I'm going to assemble, but that's hardly my idea of summer fun in the sun. Fuck it's dull out here when you're actually feeling like going out and doing things.

Work's going... well-ish? I don't know. My two bosses are two of those all time great guys who instantly want to be your friend and have you like them which makes my life easier on the one hand, and more uncomfortable on the other because I'm well... you know, me. I also for the first time in years am working with women who aren't somebody's mother, which is... well, I don't know what it is. I need to learn how to chat with people. I don't know how to chat. At least not without a little social lubricant. But no too much because then I end up spewing forth vomit and embarrassing personal secrets all over the wrong people.

On the other hand, my livejournal quality is plummetting, and I want you to understand that I realize that and am trying to figure out how to fix it. I wanna be the guy you laugh both with and at, the guy who maybee kind of makes a little but you're inexplicably drawn to his roguish charms. I wanna be that guy. Always did. Unfortunately, I'm not. I'm me, which is... well, it is what it is. I'd rather be me than you certainly. Great Siva, anything but that, you fucking loser.

Yeah, I want to fucking write. Still do. You know what, I'm tracking down that fucking writing group I mentioned... what was it, a week ago now? I'm tracking them down tonight. It's on tonight, dawg. I've got people in my head wanting to get out and it's long past time I started to do right by them.

Mood: Incoherent!!!

I'm Too Tired For the Internet

Wed, 28 Jul 2004 02:18:01 GMT

So my good friend jbernoski has recent been involved in a shouting match with a bunch of would-be feminists over a bunch of other people saying a bunch of stuff over the internet to a bunch of underage girls who are all probably 42 year old truckdrivers posting pictures of their daughters anyway. I wanted to say something funny or insightful about the whole 18th birthday thing and maybe throw in an obligatory joke about the Japanese in there. I mean, hell, psychosexual disfunction has sort of become the theme of this place, anyway. I have/had a buddy who used to consistantly point out hot 14 year olds everywhere we went.

But the thing that wound up striking me the most, strangely enough, about the whole incident is how tiresome the act of debating a bunch of self-congratulatory faux-activists on the internet suddenly seemed. I mean, man, I remember the days when saying something nice about Star Trek: Voyager would throw me into fits of apocolyptic rage and pretentious arrogance, when I used to vigorously defend libertairianism to other half-educated would-be world leaders. When I used to care. Now I just don't have the stamina to read the chidings of a bunch of righteously indignant cuntpunches just for the priviledge of calling them cuntpunches.

I think it was George W. Bush who killed my enthusiasm for the internet. I remember finally reaching an age and education level where I could actually have a valid opinions on world government and the quality of various computer RPGs and suddenly everyone is having the same damn argument everywhere and all yelling at eachother with equal amounts of undeserved moral assurance and something inside me just died.

Or maybe I've just matured past it all. Maybe I've grown as a person.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go masturbate to Law and Order: Special Vicitms Unit.

Terrible Toad King

Mon, 26 Jul 2004 23:59:14 GMT

Since I'm about to run off and play video games some more, I'd like to leave you with some thoughts from last Wednesday when I was still a creative, vibrant individual and not a slave to some stat-crunching action RPG that I despise yet am drawn to. I was going through my hard-drive and dear lord do I have a lot of unfinished work. Most of it is obviously crap, some of it is probably crap but I can't tell, and some of it is probably good but I can't tell because I think everything I do is crap. A not insignifigant portion of it is porn.

I think it was about a year ago when I wrote this. I'm not really a "comic book" guy, though I do buy the occasional "graphic novel" edition of stuff that gets good enough reviews from friends and anonymous internet weirdos. I used to read X-Men a lot as a kid and, when someone pointed out Marvel's miserable failure "Monsoon" or "Typhoon" or whatever it was where they were basically holding an open mic night for anyone to submit scripts for new comics, I started but never finished the following first issue. Since Marvel's closed that line as far as I know and are no longer taking scripts and this was really a huge joke anyway, I figure it'll never get finished now. I really kind of liked writing in the "comic format" for the two days I was doing it because the medium compresses everything into "important moments", so you can sort of visualize each scene in your head. I don't think I was supposed totake seven pages to get to the opening title, thoug. Anyway, read it or don't, send me feedback or don't, I'm just going to take a big dump on the stage and go back to playing video games.

Page One

Layout: three panels, arranged vertically.

Page One, Panel One

We open with a large, one-third-page panel of a New York City street, in the rain. The angle should be from high up, looking down at the street at maybe 45 degrees, or whatever angle seems best. It would be dark out, but the whole street is lit up by a huge neon sign, located in the center of the panel. It reads, in jagged, aggressive lettering "The Danger Room", and is attached to a large, trendy looking black building. Near the building's base, we can see a long black canopy, but at our current angle we cannot make out who it conceals from the rain. We can, however, see more than one taxi idling in front of the building. We should be able to tell that it's a nightclub of some kind, and we should also be able to tell that it's quite popular.

Voice over: New York City. New York bloody City. I've been to outer space, I've headed an international terrorist organization, hell I've even helped save the damned world…

Page One, Panel Two

Another third of the page. Cut to a shot from street level. We can maybe see the bottom ¼ of the sign now, if that. But we can see underneath the canopy. There stands a long line of individuals vying for entrance. However, this isn't your standard collection of well dressed models and hipsters. No, each and every individual in line is a mutant, or is at least trying their damndest to look like one. There should be three types of characters in line:

1. Visible, inhuman looking mutants (think characters like the Beast).
2. Humans (or possibly mutants without visible mutations) in costume. One guy might have a pair of antenna glued to his head, another might be wearing a set of pixie wings. These are basically fakers.
3. Cameos of famous or semi-famous characters from X-books past and present.

The bouncer is himself a hulking simian mutant, dressed in an ill-fitting suit and wearing a pair of mirrored sunglasses that look like they're going to pop off of his oversized face at any moment. He's currently engaged in the pleas of two a pair of "normal" teens trying to fake their way in. The girl is wearing a bright yellow spandex jumpsuit and a pair of swimming goggles, and has died her hair pink, while her boyfriend is dressed in a rather exacting replica of Magneto's classic crimson armor. In fact, he might have been mistaken for the Master of Magnetism, except that he seems too short in comparison to his companion, and his helmet is currently under his right arm, revealing a mop of brown hair. Both are facing away from us and towards the door inside. Their posture should indicate pleading of some sort.

Voice Over: …and now I'm back in New York City. Some things around here never change. Professor X still has his school, Spider Man still swings through the skies…

Page One, Panel Three

Final third of the page. This time, it's a close up of the bouncer and the two fakers being turned away. They now both face towards us, occupying the focus of the panel, disappointment writ on both their faces. Behind them, the bouncer slouches menacingly, one arm outstretched, pointing towards us, the other knuckle-dragging on the ground next to his foot. Behind the bouncer, we can see into the large door (it should take up most of the background) of the club. It's mostly dark, but in the partial illumination we can see a tall, dark-haired woman in a backless red dress. She looks human except for the large pair of raven's wings jutting from between her shoulder blades. She carries some sort of pink drink in her right hand, and is walking across the panel from left to right. Behind her, much more in the shadows, we can see a silhouette of a shorter man with oddly shaped legs, making some sort of abbreviated hopping motion in her direction. Astute readers will likely discern that we are about to meet the Toad.

Voice Over: …and Mortimer bloody Toynbee still can't get a date.

Page Two

Same basic layout as the preceding page.

Page Two, Panel One

Basically we're zooming in on the background of the last shot. We've got two figures here: Standing just slight right of the center of the panel is Cynthia Silvan, a raven haired/winged beauty standing maybe 5'9". Gorgeous, and her posture indicates he knows it. She's got milky skin, and her eyes are startlingly green in those scenes we see them. We see her here in profile from about the waist up, facing right and not so much as glancing in the direction of the figure behind her. Hopping into the frame behind her is Mortimer Toynbee. He's obviously off the ground, his head about level with Cynthia's, but his body angled downward at something between a 45 and 60 degree angle. We should see his head, neck, and torso, but only the upper half of his legs.

We'll take a moment to sketch our protagonist out, here. As a character who's visually, changed quite a bit over the years, I figure there can be a little license taken with his look. A lot will, of course, depend on the artist, but I picture him for this book looking neither handsome nor quite as extensively malformed as he was in the early books. He stands, naturally, at about 5'8" but, because his body structure causes him to crouch somewhat most of the time, he seems much shorter. He's kind of squat, with a bit of a gut visible in those shots where it would be appropriate, but not truly overweight. His face should be very large and round, dominated by a bulbous nose. His mouth, too, should be rather on the large side. Being both English and generally a poor physical specimen, it would be appropriate to make his dental hygiene less than ideal, but I'd just as soon not go overboard with it. Make his teeth yellow, and maybe a little crooked, but not a visual gag in and of themselves, ala Austin Powers. Give him very straight, fine, sandy hair hanging in a flat mop top that reaches to about the upper part of his neck. For a good idea of Mortimer's "type", picture the characters from, say the Full Monty or similar English movies set in the poorer sections of the country.

He's dressed in a brown suit. Not comically ugly, but definitely both inexpensive and more appropriate for a sales meeting than a night club. Where as Cynthia is completely in profile, Toynbee is cheated a bit towards us, so we can see the cloying expression on his face.

In the background, we should see mutants dancing, possibly some sort of lighting effects or a DJ. But Toynbee and Cynthia should be visibly separated from the crowd.

Toynbee: Hey, c'mon baby, what? Tell me off if you've got to, but at least say something. Please!

Page Two, Panel Two

Same basic scene, only now Toynbee's significantly higher up in the air. Basically, he's at the same angle, but further forward, with his feet level with Cynthia's head, and the rest of his body clearing her wings. Cynthia's got her glass raised to her lips at the moment. The perspective will probably need to be raised to fit all of Toynbee into the scene, but we should at least be able to see Cynthia's head and shoulders here. Toynbee's expression in this case is one of pure rage, making him look even uglier than usual.

Toynbee: Talk to me, you frigid little wench! I'm the bloody Toad, damn it!

Page Two, Panel Three

Toad has done a 180 pivot now, and landed, in front of Cynthia, face to face and uncomfortably close. The shock has caused her to spill her drink down the front of her dress and, at the instant captured, the glass is halfway to the floor. Technically, we're still in a side-shot, but the characters are cheated towards us a bit so we can see their expressions, now. Cynthia expression mixes some combination of shock, outrage, and simply annoyance, while Toynbee can't seem to decide whether to continue with his outrage or try pleading again. The panel passes in silence as both try to sort out their next move.

Page Three

A full page panel, as we see Cynthia in a full frontal shot. A Toad's eye view, as it were. This shot should be intentionally unrealistic. Cynthia's facial expression should be inscrutable here, like she's not so much standing here talking to Mortimer as she is striking a pose for the camera. Her hair should be teased out, as if there's somehow a wind blowing inside the building. Embellish the breasts here, and highlight the rest of the curves. For this scene, think of the worst stereotypical excesses comic books have been known to take female characters and run in that general direction. Her wings should stretch out dramatically, and the wet spot on the front of her dress should cause it to cling a bit. The glass, in this shot, has just hit the ground and is suspended in mid-shatter.

On this page are five inset panels of various sizes, each featuring Toynbee's face with various expressions, speaking in a dialogue bubble that breaks into the main page. Cynthia's response to each line should occupy a floating bubble just below Toynbee's. The panel's are set right to left, and then down the page, but aren't spaced evenly.

Inset 1: Smallish panel, Toynbee's grimacing. He has no dialogue yet, but Cynthia should have a bubble nearby.

Cynthia: Jesus…

Inset 2: A bit smaller than the previous, Toynbee's looking down. Sheepish expression. Toynbee's words should be small, here, too.

Toynbee: Er… um…

Cynthia: I can't believe you just….

Inset 3: Even smaller than the previous, really as small as possible. Same with the Toynbee's line, here.

Toynbee: Sorry.

Cynthia: *sigh* Look, just forget about it, okay.

Inset 4: About the same size as the first inset. Toynbee's expression here is contemplative.

Toynbee: Um…

Inset 5: Largest panel, Toynbee has a somewhat comical expression. Some combination of awkward forced glibness and possibly a touch of self-depreciation. It shouldn't be immediately clear how much he's kidding, here.

Toynbee: Did you know that I have tremendous lower-body strength?

Page Four

Page is divided horizontally into thirds. The top and bottom thirds are subdivided vertically into thirds, again.

Page Four, Panel One

Cynthia still occupies center shot, only now she's back to "normal". Her facial expression is one of irritation, and maybe a bit of disgust. Her posture seems almost defeatist: hands hanging at her sides, shoulders slumped, and head staring at some indeterminate point above the camera. She didn't want to be nasty, but she's beginning to expect that this is precisely what he's waiting for. In a club full of mutants, he's picked out the least likely woman to pursue, and now he's just waiting for the ritual to be completed. Fine, if that's what it takes.

She's turned away from Toynbee again in this shot, and we can just barely see the top of his head through the space between her left wing and her head.

Cynthia: Get bent, sideshow.

Page Four, Panel Two

High angle shot, taken down on Toynbee from over Cynthia's head. He looks especially small and downtrodden here. He's crouched low to the ground, almost crawling, with his hands touching the floor in front of him. He's looking up at Cynthia (and, coincidentally, the camera), and the angle suggests he is addressing God in heaven. Like Cynthia, his expression is defeatist: this is essentially what the conversation had been building up to, after all. The lettering should be small again.

Toynbee: Right. Of course.

Page Four, Panel Three

This shot is taken from lower to the ground, implying a bit more posture in Toynbee, who is once again the only non-background character visible in the shot. He seems to be in the process of turning away, but is obviously having second thoughts. Some idea has occurred to him.

Toynbee: Except…

Page Four, Panel Four

Long shot, running horizontally across the page. Toynbee has raised himself up to be of almost equal height with Cynthia, and the shot takes them both from maybe chest up. Toynbee is reaching across the frame from the right to the left, touching Cynthia on the shoulder at about the point where it intersects with the wing. He is looking away from her, however, and glancing furtively over her shoulder. Cynthia is obviously surprised by his touch, and is in the process of turning back to face her pursuer.

Toynbee: Just… um… one more thing.

Cynthia: Jesus, what now…

Page Four, Panels Five, Six, and Seven

We've got a close up shot of Cynthia's face, three times, from the same camera position. In the first panel, she simply has an expression of annoyance and confusion as she looks to the right and slightly down at Toynbee (off screen). In the second panel, Toynbee's tongue projects from the right corner the frame to smack Cynthia square in the face. Her hair is played forward, suggesting her head is snapping back slightly at the impact. In The third frame, we just see Cynthia's face again. There are bits of saliva suggestively covering her nose and cheeks, and a distinctly glazed over look on her face.

Page Five

The first panel takes up what would be the first two panels of the first and second row on a six panel page. The second panel is tall and narrow, filling in the space to the right of panel one. Panels three through five take up the bottom row in a standard format.

Page Five, Panel One

The expression on Cynthia's face hasn't changed, but now we've panned out in a large frame. She is being lead away by Toynbee, who is striding determinatively forward, not so much as glancing at his victim. He has his left hand stretched behind him, lightly touching the fingers of Cynthia's left hand, which is stretched in front of her. There's barely contact, much less physical pressure, in the gesture, yet Cynthia follows obediently, thanks to the natural "mutant roofies" in Toynbee's saliva. The expression on Toynbee's face is not anticipative, or sinister, but rather simply determined. This is something he's considered for a long time, but he's never had the nerve to try it.

Framing the shot, are two mutant club patrons. On the right is male but slightly androgynous, has no visible mutant features, other a decidedly inhuman shape to his face and body. He's too tall, too thin, too angular. He's dressed in a shiny silver suit. On the left is a squat, hirsute female in a brown dress almost covered in her own coat. Both are walking away from the camera, but have turned at the waste to watch the unlikely pair go past, giving us a shot of their faces as they look on with shock.

Page Five, Panel Two

No movement on the part of the characters, who occupy the same relative positions they did in panel one. But this shot cuts in close and narrow on Toynbee. His face (the sides of it just slightly cut off) occupies the center of the panel. Below the face stretches his body, above the face stretches hers. Cynthia's head is cut off in this shot, but her torso should be placed at least slightly on display.

Toynbee: Alright, then, sweetness. Let's get out of here.
Page Five, Panel Three

Shot of an empty alley outside the Danger Room. In the foreground young looking reptilian man is holding the blond hair back of a woman with bulbous insectoid eyes as she hunches over. In the background a door is open and we see Toynbee leading Cynthia through it.

Page Five, Panel Four

Reverse of the last shot. This time Toynbee and Cynthia are in the foreground, the door swinging shut behind them. The expression on Mortimer's face has become a bit more predatory as he fiddles with the belt on his suit. Cynthia's posture, however, is less rigid, and we see her reaching up to hold her head, a confused expression on her face. The two mutants are still in the background, and insect girl has begun to empty her stomach on the asphalt.

Page Five, Panel Five

Same angle as last time. The young couple are walking away towards the street, not paying any heed to the new arrivals. Toynbee's expression has changed to one of frustration: He's having a bit of trouble with his belt. He still hasn't noticed that his victim has come out of her trance. Indeed, Cynthia's expression has changed from confusion to the first stirrings of terror. Her words are tiny, in a whisper so soft Toad has yet to hear them.

Cynthia: Oh my God…

Page Six

Page is divided horizontally into three panels, like the first two pages.

Page Six, Panel One

Low shot, angled upward. We have Toynbee in the foreground, slightly left of center and facing the camera (and still away from Cynthia), a look of somewhat comic glee on his face as he holds up his belt triumphantly. In contrast, Cynthia's face is above and slightly to the right center, panic clearly writ upon her features. Her words are larger this time.

Cynthia: What the hell did you do to me?

Page Six, Panel Two

Same camera angle as before, with the principles in the same basic locations. Toynbee has turned now, and we can't see his face. He reaches up for Cynthia with his right hand, while his left still holds his belt. Cynthia is leaning backwards, her wings now outstretched.

Toynbee: No, wait! I didn't mean to…

Cynthia: Get the hell away from me!

Page Six, Panel Three

Bird's eye view. Cynthia has taken flight (literally) and is soaring towards the camera, her face now less panicked and more disgusted. She has one arm stretched forward in an incidental mockery of a standard "superhero in flight" pose. Behind and to the left of her squats Toynbee, reaching up after her with his right hand, a pitiful look on his face. His left hand still holds his belt, completely forgotten at this point.

Page Seven

Full Page Panel: We see Toad, from the rear, standing, dejectedly in the rain. His hands have fallen to his sides, and his pants have fallen to his ankles. His right hand still holds his belt near the buckle, the opposite end dragging against the ground. Cynthia's silhouette is small but visible against the night sky. Large, stylized green letters grace the top of the page, announcing the title: TERRIBLE TOAD KING.

So far so good!

Mon, 26 Jul 2004 23:46:45 GMT

I can't believe I've managed to update daily all this time cause I generally never stick to anything!! To congratulate myself, I thought about taking the day off, but you guys and this journal are just way to valuable to me.

Let's talk about work. I'm finally settling into a real permanent job after three years of bouncing between temporary assingments after three years alternating between working as a bank teller and failing to pass college courses (sometimes both). I'm scared. The nice thing about temp work for me was that, no matter what my sundry faults were, I'm a ridiculously quick study at just about any task that doesn't require physical coordination. So you stick me in front of a computer running whatever goofy ideopathic database management frontend your company uses and give me whatever stupid, esoteric task you want and by day three I've convinced you I'm a hard worker because I've mastered your tasks and reduced them to a series of movements so efficient I can do double the expected workload and still have time to make paperclip necklaces and nap in the public bathroom. However, once I've been somewhere long enough for the novelty to wear off you realize I'm a quiet, sleepy-eyed weirdo who tends to come in late and unshaven, leave early, and take inexplicably long bathroom breaks. Plus, they've got me working the phones over there. As methods of communication go, here's a list of the top several in order of how much I come across as a competent, together individual:

1. Typewritten letters

2. Email and internet message boards

3. Formal Reports

4. Direct, face-to-face communication after 2PM

5. Instant Messaging Programs

6. Chat programs

7. Direct, face-to-face communication before 2PM

8. Smoke Signals

9. Interprative Dance

10. Beatnik Poetry

11-374. A bunch of other "jokey" entries.

375. The Telephone

376. Leaving messages on people's anserwing machine.

Of course, everyone sucks at that last one. I have never recieved a single message in my life where the speaker didn't come across as confused, frustrated, and probably high. Especially when they get to the part at the end where they stammer trying to remember if they've forgotten something, realize they've forgotten to leave a contact number, and then hurriedly deliver the number so fast that you have to listen to the message twelve more times to get it down on paper so you can call them back. The telephone is my second least favorite invention in history right after that stupid extending stop sign on the side of schoolbusses.

Still, I'm determined to hold on. The people are nice. The non-telephone portions of the job are easy enough and not too monotonous. Supposedly it's a nice "learning position". And the pay would allow me to get all those things I want like, say, a car that isn't contantly threatening to fall to pieces around you and a pair of contact lenses that aren't two years old. So I'm (see kitty) to stick with it! And with Livejournal!!

A Dark Cloud has Consumed my Soul!!!!

Mon, 26 Jul 2004 23:19:42 GMT

I haven't slept, I've barely ate, and my waking nightmares are fueled by a gay little anime boy, his hyperactive red-haired girlfriend, and a machinegun toting clown on tank treads. Send help.

Dark Cloud II, a Review in Brief

Mon, 26 Jul 2004 23:17:45 GMT

I'm enjoying it but not really enjoying it so far. The combat's better than in other Zeldalikes I've played, and there sure are a lot of stupid stats to keep track of. They sure do a good job of constantly convincing you that you'll get to do something really cool if you just play for another half hour. Like you're sitting there board with all the dungeon crawling and then they say, here's a giant robot made out of a barrel to play with! If you just level him up a bit, you can customize him into a machinegun toting clownbot on tank treads or whatever your little heart desires!! And then maybe you get sick of playing with that because it's going so slowly and then they say "Hey, look, here's a Sim City style minigame where you can build little villages and move people in!!" And so on and so forth. I guess I'll keep playing.

The League of Extraordinary Gentleman

Mon, 26 Jul 2004 23:12:08 GMT

It's a really good comic book! I especially like the invisible man and the visit the English girl's boarding school shaped like a spanked buttock. Schadenfreude! I also bought this game called Dark Cloud II. I think I'll try playing it.

The Legend of the Rent Was Way Hardcore

Mon, 26 Jul 2004 23:09:07 GMT

Since my term of indentured servitude to a temp agency is fast coming to a close (August 8! Never forget!), I thought I'd look back at some of the things I've learned:

Even some highly-paid white collar professional will consistently send you emails consisting of "plz fax teh report to my desk by 10am, OKAY THANKS HAVE A GOOODDAY".

Somewhere in America, there is a high ranking Walmart executive in the real estate department named Kandy Beaver.

Don't take naps in a public toilet.

You can impress anyone provided their initial expectations are low enough.

Health insurance is for pussies.

Oh man my shipment from Amazon comes in tomorrow!!

You're not hardcore unless you live hardcore.

Mon, 26 Jul 2004 23:02:16 GMT

Hehe. Took a nap at 8:30 woke up to the morning. I really should learn to manage my sleep better.

I Am Making Friends!!

Thu, 22 Jul 2004 01:00:00 GMT

Hello and a belated happy birthday to fellow Livejournal user and new friend Ankaerith!! I now have three confirmed visitors to my livejournal!! That's an infinite increase over my percieved audience of zero!!

Don't worry that I'm going to let my newfound net.fame go to my head; I'll still be the free-spirited, charming, earthy Midwestern kid you've grown to know and love over the past five days; though I am currently pitching an autobiographical Lifetime Original Movie about my rise to stardom. I'm played by Jonathan Taylor Thomas and at one point punch a thirty-five year old mother of two in the face. Not as a reflection of my misgynistic sense of humor, mind, it's just that violence against women is sort of the xyzzy of Lifetime Original Movies, and I'm hardly one to go against tradition.

Expect a more substantial update some time after the witching hour, which, by the way will probably wind up being my regular posting time. We're talking daily updates here, people. I'm hardcore.

Sock it to me.

Wed, 21 Jul 2004 07:55:44 GMT

This is classic. It's 2 hours past what should really be my bed time, I've just recently closed of a livejournal post with perhaps the gayest sentence in the history of what is, at heart, an extremely gay site, and I've go too much shit rolling around in my head to think about sleeping. Now that I've got a forum to spew forth my every brain-dropping, I can't help but SPEW SPEW SPEW, at least until the well dries up and I get bored with this long enough to forget this place ever existed.

A ferret hating net.pal of mine has recently begun his fifth or sixth journey of self-improvement, sel-discovery, and self-gratification. Which, don't get me wrong, he's already a way better person by most objective measures than a lot of people, like, say, me for instance; so I'm not trying to begrudge him anything, here. But he's been rambling on in various forae about issues of shame and self-respect and happiness and it got me thinking about my favorite subject: me.

Let's start with happiness. Back when I was still studying philosophy in a semi-formal environment, I got into a discussion on the nature of happiness and the other guy made the point that happiness is really sort of an extra step in the cycle of desire. Like you might say everyone wants to be happy, and this is sort of a truism. So then you ask what internal and external conditions will produce happiness, and then you say what you really want is for those conditions to be fulfilled and happiness is just sort of a linguistic shorthand. Saying you want to be happy, in other words, is kind of like saying you're hungry for food.

So, accepting the theory that external conditions are, to some degree, meaningless (this could be debated, naturally, but I won't bother for the sake of brevity), I have to ask what internal conditions I want. And I supose that's where self-respect comes in, because I really do think that's the single bit I want the most out of anything. But the thing that's kind of thorny about me and self-respect is that I find that the people who have self-respect tend to be the people who deserve it least. Herzog mentions on occasion what Saul Bellows likes to call "potato love" which isn't really love but just sort of a generic well-wishing of the human species directed at whichever members happen to fall under your gaze. This is the sort of thing Enlightenment thinkers and the more liberal sects of Christianity tend to go to great lengths to praise. On a similar note, we live in a world that's constantly telling us we're worthy of respect just for the sake of being born homo sapiens and no one should dare challenge that. And I've always just kind of rebelled against that line on sheer instinct. And I think most of life's better minds (or better souls, if you'll pardon the metaphysics) tend to feel the same way, at least when it comes to self-evaluation. People who are just sort of natually happy, content, cheerful and confident and accept that as their birthright are, while certainly objectively better off, but also just a little bit contemptible.

Which would all be well and good and I could run around looking down my nose at everyone, except that it's entirely clear that I've got a ridiculously long way to go before I've earned the right to respect myself. I'm smart and talented in a lot of different ways, but, ultimately, I have yet to accomplish even a lot of the basic, human stuff people should be accomplishing as they go through life; much less produce anything of any real value to anyone. Creative endeavor, as I see it, is the only really worthwhile function of the human animal. And there, especially, I find myself stifled by a dozen roadblocks whichever way I turn. Some of them are practical (I never learned to draw or program or play music or really even write better than a fairly talented ametuer), but a lot of them are psychological, and really even the practical ones could resolve themselves in time if I cut through the psychological ones. The Catch-22 is that, if I had enough real confidence in my own abilities, I'd probably be able to produce something at least decent enough to serve as a learning exercise on the path to something really worthwhile. But until I get that far, I don't really see a way to develop the neccessary confidence without indulging in dishonest "potato self-respect". The key, I guess, is probably just to put my shit out there even when I'm certain it's awful and just power through it. But shit's hard, y'know?

I remember there was some sort of online writing circle that looked decent enough that I was going to join it but I never did for whatever reason. Maybe I'll try to track that down again tomorrow after work. Maybe.

Lies and a Lieing Lier Who Tells Them

Wed, 21 Jul 2004 06:52:39 GMT

So, yeah, I actually have read something other than Herzog in the past week: I went back through the entire Hitchhiker's Guide series last weekend for reasons I won't go into because where they're not dull they're embarassing.

I mention this, in part, because I'm willfully fighting the urge to go on a long, dull, uninteresting tangent about Mostly Harmless and what went wrong with Mostly Harmless and also to explain a minor detail about me and how I relate to this journal: I am dishonest by nature. Sometimes I lie for practical reasons, like to get out of doing shit or whatever. Sometimes I lie out of simple shame or embarassment (which I might get more into in a bit), which are the lies that piss me off the most. But largely I think I'm just an existential lier.

Like, for instance, the opening sentence of this post. I could have, yesterday, appended a clause like "Well, I did read a bunch of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Books, but they don't really count because they're such light reading and I've already been through them so many times I can see the jokes comng two paragraphs away." But that would have just been more needless wordslinging. The essential truth, that I don't read nearly as much as I used to or should, was communicated without bring Douglas Adams into the mix.

Similarly, when I make a crack about murdering prostitutes (and the one from a couple days ago will likely not be the last joke of this nature) it's important to understand that I've never really even seen a working girl at less than thirty miles per hour as I passed by in my car; much less killed, stuffed, mounted, and mounted one in my basement. But the essential truth, that a combination of sexual frustration and social anxiety have combined to give me a slightly less than healthy attitude towards issues of dating and relationships. I can't effectively communicate how much without some bizarre combination of exagerrating for effect, tempering with humor, and then downplaying it all so as not to drive everyone screaming into the hills, because really the English language just isn't that effective a medium for conveying complex emotional/psychological states, really. So we all get by.

On the other hand, it's hard to ignore the fact that I am playing to an audience here. Even though I doubt even the handful of people who are aware of this place bother to visit, I've still gotta dance my garish pink and grey kitten dance, because I can't bring myself to bother writing without the illusion that someone might read it and I can't bring myself to write something people will read without the illusion that they might like it (and me). The counterpoint to that is that the one virtue I've always tried to force on myself is honesty, at least in my own internal monologues. While I tend not to moralize about much of anything else, I generally can't stand people who've convinced themselves that they're something they're not. So I always tend to "accentuate the negative" in my life as a sort of masochistic way of keepin' it real. I suppose one might say that the volatile mixture of these two memes produces the heady cocktail that is my persona (especially my online persona, given the written word's ability to let me wax verbose and self-indulgent) , were one given to extended metaphor.

I hope you find me tasty.

Da Bitchez

Tue, 20 Jul 2004 06:08:06 GMT

I'm supposed to be readin Herzog by Saul Bellows, right now. Not for anything, mind, but a friend recommended it to me and (not counting internet stuff) I haven't read anything without pictures in at least a year, so I really should be reading Herzog. What is Herzong, you ask? Like Saul Bellows himself, as I understand it, Herzog is just another old angsty Jew with women problems. Woody Allen before Woody Allen, narmean? Which, don't get me wrong, I like Woody Allen. Who else could get away with playing Princess Maker: The Home Game.

One wonders how impoverished the Western cultural tradition would be if the dudez could just keep theyz bitchez in line. I mean the entirety of the Ancient Greek tradition is just a fondue pot of rape fantasies and repressed homoeroticism, right? Whenever Zeus got to laying the divine hammer down, there was like a two out of three chance he had to trick or coerce his lady love into the act. Bonus points when he had to turn into a stag or a bull or a wooly fucking mammoth just to get the job done. When Pythagarus figured out that he couldn't turn into a wooly mammoth and the whole bit about dressing up like her husband and then chasing her for twenty miles across a field was just to much work, he sat down, founded a cult and started solving quadratic equations. Eventually the Romans discovered prostitutes and overt homosexuality, and then civilization collapsed for a while, so the Catholic Church had to outlaw sex just to make sure everyone got back to work again. I guess that's why the Religious Right gets so worked up about the sanctity of the family unit (and making sure the unit stays inside the family, HAW HAW).

As a culture, we've kind of moved away from these crude sex = power = civilization models of human behaviour. I mean, I'm sure Wendy the Wiccan would point out all these ancient dirt worshipping peoples where everyone sort of knows their place and hunts and gathers for the common good and the perpetuation of a static society and could talk about the need for tradition and community and affirmation and all other sorts of nauseatingly sweet principles. And that's fine. That's man as the social animal, I suppose. What we're biologically intended to be. So really, agrarian and post-agrarian societies are all outlaw scumfucks paying a karmic price in mental disorder for attempting to assume control of their surroundings. That seems to be the modern crisis as most folks envision it, and it's hard to naysay them. But it seems almost cowardly to go back to being just a slightly higher mammal just because you're unhappy. Nothing worthwhile was ever done by a happy person. Or maybe that's a bit harsh. Maybe by the time they're done or in the middle of doing it, they've found happiness. But it was misery what got them out the gate, mark my words.

Lord, I was born a rambling man. Sorry, but I just wanted to write something that wasn't more meta-humor, and pseudo-intellectual wankery is my other primary strong suit. So, there you go. Thank you and goodnight.

I'm Not Good at Livejournal :(

Mon, 19 Jul 2004 23:07:17 GMT

I just noticed that, after a half-hour of strenuous work on my illegal copy of photoshop, the damn underoos picture still didn't crop perfectly, leaving an embarassing white space beneath. An inauspicious start for what I hope to one day make the HAWTTEST ~~peice~~ ~~piece~~ ~~peace~~ parcel of real estate in the Kingdom of Livejournalia.

Also, despite doing nothing all day except think about me and talk to myself about me (well, I do other stuff, too, I guess, but I don't pay much attention to any of it) I find myself with precious little to SHARE with you, the valued (if, at this point, strictly theoretical) visitor to my little portion of communal self-indulgence. I think I'll generate a long article on sexual fetishes, because lord knows nothing drags in the viewers like flies to that pit in my basement where I dump the dead hookers quite like talk about fetishes. Don't miss it!!

Oh, and I know you don't know me, so I'll point out that the above bit was a joke. No way I'm gonna generate a long article about anything, and certainly not about anything as silly as fetishes.