Monthly Archives: September 2004

CDs 0

I just got the idea tonight to take all my millions of backup CDs, copy them all onto my hard drive, figure out what has to be saved and what should be deleted, and burn an uber-backup data DVD. I’m halfway through…I don’t think I’m going to finish tonight:

eh crap 0

> Depeche Mode – Enjoy The Silence
> New Order – Blue Monday

I’d been putting off installing all my illegal software, but you know..it’s just necessary. I don’t have $300 to blow on Adobe Creative Suite or $200 to blow on Office 2003. I installed:

Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Photoshop CS
Adobe InDesign CS
Dragon NaturallySpeaking (installed it yesterday)
Macromedia Studio MX (Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, et al)
Microsoft Office (Word, Outlook, et al)

I should restart, but I don’t feel like it. I’ve been loving Depeche Mode lately, their song “Enjoy the Silence” is so beautiful:

Words like violence
Break the silence
Come crashing in
Into my little world
Painful to me
Pierce right through me
Can’t you understand
Oh my little girl

All I ever wanted
All I ever needed
Is here in my arms
Words are very unnecessary
They can only harm

Vows are spoken
To be broken
Feelings are intense
Words are trivial
Pleasures remain
So does the pain

Words are meaningless
And forgettable
All I ever wanted
Enjoy the silence

It reminds me of cuddling with Taggart. *nostalgia* I’m trying to sell Steve on the idea of using my computer to edit his pieces for film (hence the installation of Premiere). I don’t know why…probably it will be an excuse to buy more RAM and such. I’m wondering if he could just import it via a firewire cable…I mean, isn’t the digital video camera digital? We’ll have to talk about such things.

Drama was fun, we’re reading A School for Scandal, I love it. It’s filled with innuendo, wit, and sarcasm…(needless to say I’m in love). Omg! We totally might be going to Ashland to see a play! That would be so sweet. I brought the cake to school today, and it was gone before I left. Amanda ate the last piece. I went to Wal-Mart and printed out those pictures for Becky…there were around seventy-five pics. It cost around $20 (waaay more expensive than I thought) but I saved the receipt, Becky promised to reimburse me. Omg I’ve been really getting back into photography using the Drift’s digital camera. I took this really cool one today:

And I really liked this one:

They look better in person. Well, I’m really hungry. I bought my mom this uber-mushy card for her b-day and sent it to her. Whatever, if she wants the contrived emotional experience of reading a card, then let her cry her theatrical tears of joy. Whatever.

I have to write my English essay by Friday. I don’t know how I’ll have time. The issue is stagnating. Amanda isn’t getting the copy-editing done. Oh well. I think I bounced a charge when I paid for those pictures, but I put it as credit instead of debit and it takes a week or so for the credit money to be taken out of my account. I wonder if I have enough gas to last until Wednesday. I have around 1/4 of a tank left. I’ll steal some change or something and put a few gallons in it tomorrow. I’m afraid to check my bank balance.

Everybody totally agrees with me that Daniel Burrell is gay. I mean, it’s obvious. We all went to Wal-Mart today, Sammie got some stuff for her room and I printed out the art auction pics. I printed out around sixty of them, but considering that I took 300, that was a good scaling-down job. I only got like four hours of sleep last night…I’m hoping to get more tonight. Oh, I told Tawna that I would blog a picture of Justin to jog her memory about him. Oh yeah, I never wrote the gigantic Justin post that I promised to write. I guess I’m just not in angst enough to do it. If he was in Crescent City I’m pretty sure I’d be writing post after post about him, but I just don’t care. Let’s be concise: I wanted to fuck him, we fucked, he didn’t love me. I guess that’s as concise as I can get it. While brevity may be the soul of wit, it’s not so much the soul of depressing emotional anecdotes. Well, I guess I don’t want to bore you guys. It would bore and pain me more to write out all the depressing details than it would bore and pain you to read about it. Hence, no Justin rant. OMG I totally have a vintage rant that I wrote about him. I’ll have to dig it out of my myriad backups and post it.

In black and white too…he thinks he’s so cool. Grr. I’m bitter. Maybe I will end up writing that post. No, I’d be here until two in the morning. Amanda said she’d have the Internet at two in the morning…I’m not sure why. Hmm. There must have been something else interesting to blog about…hmm. Oh, we hung out in Sammie’s room talking about our childhoods, it was so fun.

I talked to Tom today about getting the futon for Sammie, and it turns out they’d need a pickup truck to like, move it. So I’m going to tell Tom tomorrow that Matt can have it. Hm, Tawna just signed on. Oh, I wore my new shirt today. I looked sexy.

God, I typed up this letter to the editor from this IMBECILE who was blabbing all this bullshit about how the Muslims tried to take over the world in the past and that the Christians did nothing. In mostly all of these situations, I just want to call the person up and ask, “Are you high?” Did your history teacher rip the pages out of the book about the Crusades? Or did you just go through the book with a black marker and mark out everything that didn’t fit into your worldview? Fucking idiots. It’s people like him that are going to lead this country to its impending doom.

huh. 0

Turns out Mike is gone until Wednesday…I didn’t even know. So I’m stuck doing his job and not getting any of my work done. At least ten more of those veterans things came in today, the pile is now at least three inches high. There are (I would imagine) around forty of them. I simply can’t get them done. I was hired for three hours a day, it would take me at least a day of uninterrupted computer time (which is impossible, because Tom comes in around twelve. I really need to talk to Mike about this. Oh, he wanted me to do some kind of graphic for this one Dave Gray story. I should work on that. God damn, must get to work. I’m loving that Depeche Mode song “Personal Jesus.” It’s so dope.

It’s just me and Susan here today. I should get to work.

guilt 0

I need to work on layout…but I also need to work on that essay. Class just got over, I should go to work soon. I wish Molly hadn’t said it was hard to write on “The Masque of the Red Death,” I love that story. Oh well. Martha sent in this sizzling guest editorial about the “girlie man” stuff. I just had to post it. Yes, it has quotes within quotes, but I’m too lazy to go back and fix it. You people are smart enough to know what it’s supposed to look like:

““Don’t be a Girlie Man.” Why do the words on a T-shirt push my hot button? It’s a joke, a spin-off from an old Saturday Night Live skit. I watched a lot of SNL in the seventies. I laughed. But I’m not laughing at this.

What do the words mean? It’s apparent that the T-shirt wearer wants to encourage people to not be girlie men because it’s be bad to be a girlie man. Is girlie man synonymous for gay man? Is it wrong to be a gay man? No. It’s right to be what you are.

Girlie man. A man is a man. He’s a man whether he’s a towering muscle builder or a scrawny bookworm. He’s a man if he loves women and he’s a man if he loves men.

Does a girlie man display traits that we consider feminine? Then bring on the girlie men. We need more men to be sensitive. We need more men to be nurturing, to be peacemakers–that is, if women are sensitive, nurturing and peaceful.

Or is a girlie man weak, cowardly? Are those the feminine traits implied by this slogan? Look around the campus. Your classrooms are filled with women who had the guts to change their lives and the lives of their children by taking the risk of attending college. Many have endured abusive relationships, have fought physical pain and mental agony for years and are still standing. There’s nothing weak or cowardly about the women I see.

One student brought a T-shirt to me and said, “Martha, this is dangerous. This can lead to violence.” None of the people I know who bought these shirts would knowingly participate in gay bashing. But if mainstream society says that it’s okay to make fun of an entire class of people or view them as weak, we’re giving others the permission to treat them as lesser beings. That can lead to violence.

I can’t find a definition of girlie man that is acceptable to me. All the definitions I’ve thought of are offensive. Vote for the candidate you believe would do the best job. But if you choose to wear your opinion, choose a shirt that doesn’t use words that hurt people.”

–Martha Roy

reach out and touch faith 0

> Depeche Mode – Personal Jesus [music video]
> The Cure – Just Like Heaven [music video]
> The Cure – Friday I’m In Love [music video]
> The Killers – Somebody Told Me
> Nine Inch Nails – I Do Not Want This

OMG omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg guess who I’m IMing. Justin Kohler, from high school. Don’t worry everyone, I’ll write a gargantuan post about Justin later. God, you know when you spend so much time locking away emotions in the cellar and shoving more furniture in front of the door, you pile on the sofa, you pipe in cement, you cover it with gravel…and just one picture can just blast it all to pieces. I hate how I can’t control how I love guys who just treat me like shit. It’s some form of emotional masochism. I love the lead singer of The Cure, he’s so cute. You just want to go up to him and go “how cute!” and pinch his cheeks. I hate myself. I’m going to throw myself like an idiot at Justin I just know it. I hope he’s in Brazil…I didn’t ask where he was. Oh yeah, he’s going to Shasta College. Thank fucking god.

“What’s the point…of anything?” That question just kept popping into my head as me and Sammie talked about literature and such. I hate myself. I hate myself. I hate myself. I can’t control what I do. I can’t control who I want to fuck. I can’t control anything. Depressing. I hate myself. I’m going to sleep.

Great. Justin is in a “long-term relationship.” How depressing. I guess my lot in life is to be alone. It doesn’t really surprise me too much. Alone facing the Baudrillardian apocalypse. Depressing. Maybe he was just talking out his ass. What, exactly, is the “implosion of meaning.” Well, MTV is a good example of this. It’s sad that MTV is the harbinger of the apocalypse.

Well, everyone came over and we made the black forest cherry cake, it was really nummy. Then we watched Adult Swim. It was really fun. We watched UCB episodes while the cherries soaked in the liqeur. I have English in the morning and I’m just all tied up in knots about this Justin thing. Depressing.

I just proofread this post. It doesn’t make too much sense. Self-hate is the most vile of hatreds. I hate myself so much. Why can’t I just control how I feel? Why can’t I just control who I want to be with? Why do I keep having these fantasies of fidelity about guys who fucking left me even before the night was over? God damn it. I hate me I hate me I hate me I hate me.

Talking to Jon…he’s boring as ever. He’s just taking German this semester. How pathetic. But I mean, what’s the difference? Him working his stupid jobs and me getting a master’s degree? Well, I’ll make ten times more money. Hmm, I guess that’s reason enough. God I’m in such a shitty mood. Must go to sleep. Jon signed off. That’s a good enough reason to go to sleep. I’m going to be SO tired tomorrow.

c’est stupide! 0

My mother is trying to tell me that I shouldn’t spend money on my computer because I’m going to end up living in a dorm and somebody will steal it. She is so dumb, I can just get a really old case and then put the innards of my computer into it. People would be too dumb to know how much my computer rocks.

OMG Peng just IMed me…for the first time in like a year. He says his boyfriend just bought a computer so now he can get online. Whatever. He’s living in Las Vegas. How insipid. My mom and I are talking about cakes, she says Black Forest Cherry Cake is the shiznite. Hm, Tawna just signed on. Maybe we will end up making that cake. Oh cool, Sammie and Steve are totally into making the cake.

hmm… 0

I’ve spent the last hour or so trying to decide if I should do my next order on www.xioxide.com or www.tigerdirect.com. I’ve decided on Xioxide. They have an illuminated keyboard for around thirty bucks (instead of the eighty for the one on Thinkgeek), they have the fan controller, and they have UV blue fan extender cables. Well, I think I’m going to open up my PC. I’m going to take out the old drive and move the new drive higher in the case. And if I get inspired I’ll move the floppy drive so it’s easier to get disks out of it (currently you have to hold the case and push real hard on the button). Okay, must turn off computer.

eek! the hydrogen! It burns! 0

> The Killers – Somebody Told Me [uber-orgasmic!]
> Connie Francis – Fallin’
> Lords of Acid – Pussy
> Placebo – Blue American
> Daft Punk – Digital Love

I’m dyeing my hair right now, and the hydrogen peroxide and ammonia burn my scalp! I have about ten minutes of processing time left. I guess it doesn’t burn too bad, but it’s not a fun sensation. Oh, I forgot to blog some witty things I thought up to say to people:

about Becky: “All the Botox in the world couldn’t make her beautiful.”

about Daniel Burrell: “He stands around as if looking for a cock to suck.”

to Steve: (Becky had just forced me to take a picture with him in it.) “I liked your ‘the things I do for free food’ smile.”

Daniel Burrell is totally gay. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it. Molly was telling me that attractive Keyoko girl that he hangs out with wants to be a journalist. I really like her, but we don’t really see much of each other. We don’t say hi in the halls any more. Well, it was more like a classroom friendship anyway. Oh well.

Ah, done dyeing my hair, I shampooed and washed and conditioned and rinsed and repeated it. It looks sexy, but I have that damn dye birthmark thing on my forehead. And I even put lotion on my forehead so it wouldn’t be there. Hmm…maybe my mom said to use vaseline, I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask her tomorrow. She is a licensed cosmetologist, I’m not sure if I mentioned that. She has renewed her license for years and years because she knows she couldn’t pass the exam now. When I was little she got it, and she worked as a hairdresser for a while. She has some funny anecdotes about that.

My mother gave this one lady a perm one time and the lady’s hair turned into “bubble gum” as my mom puts it. It turned out that this lady would put ammonia in her hair and go out and bake it in the sun. Why would you do such a thing? Crazy old woman. It sounds like something Sue (Steve’s daft mom) will start doing in her old age.

Random Sue quote: “Eating a cup of rice is just like eating a cup of sugar!”

I’m not sure whether I’ve blogged about Sue yet. She’s so INCREDIBLY STUPID…she’s one of those people on the low-carb diets just because they’re new. She eats the most unhealthy food imaginable and is getting fatter and fatter. She has the most underdeveloped views about everything. She’s in the Autumn category: just when I think she can’t get any dumber, she does. We all delight in her stupidity.

Gosh, Amanda said something totally tactless a few days ago that I just must blog. She was all “Do you consider me a friend?” Okay, for one, you don’t ask such questions. It’s just not something that you talk about. What did she want me to do? Sign a paper or something? She doesn’t grasp the myriad subtleties of human relationships and behavior.

Oh, I talked to Becky today, she said that she showed my story to a bunch of people and they liked it! I love Becky, she is just so damn cool. Too damn cool to ever fool around with Taggart. I totally wish I had self-control. He’s so damn hot. Inevitability is right, I guess. De-fucking-pressing.

Man, this Lords of Acid song just made me think of this thing that happened this morning. Stephanie (the kind of large one that goes to the college) woke me up with a phone call, her grandma had had a stroke and she wanted to know if I would drive her down to Eureka (where her grandma lives) to see her in the hospital. She said she would have gas money and everything. I said that I had to cover the art auction. It was such a depressing and sad answer…but I’m not really friends with her. She probably thought that it was really shitty of me to do that (which it was), but what was I going to do? I had to carry out my responsibilities. I mean, if it was Sammie, Steve, or Tawna I totally would…but Stephanie did something on our first (and last) trip to Humboldt for Humboldt Pride. I won’t say what it is, Danielle and Christine stopped talking to me when I mentioned their drug problems on my blog. I just hate how you can never tell the truth. Ever.

I was so catty tonight, saying things behind everybody’s back…but I know everyone else was doing it too. I just hate it and love it at the same time. I felt the abyss bearing heavily down on the me at the auction. All these rich people getting drunk and bidding outrageous sums of money just to pretend there is some reason for living. It was a very theatrical experience, but then again isn’t everything? All our little catty things that we say about each other would transcribe perfectly into a mundane politically correct version of Shakespeare.

I’m IMing Tawna, she says that she does not try to be “weird.” I really don’t remember who told me that. I should take notes whilst gossiping. I feel like taking the moral high ground and refusing to gossip, but then what point would there be for having friends?

Tawna : oh cool
Tawna : sam told me that she predicted what I would wear
Tawna : part of that is because I asked her what I should wear
Tawna : yeah I know I am predictable
Tawna : everyone is to a point
dariusofthedarkness: yeah…it’s really depressing when you think about it
Tawna : I know but we can’t completely predict what everyone will do
dariusofthedarkness: we’re as responsible for our actions about as much as a computer disk is responsible for what’s on it
Tawna : I can predict what certain people that I have known for quite awhile will do but they always seem to surprise me

I’m never surprised by anything anybody ever does. I’m only surprised if people get stupider and I didn’t think it was humanly possible for them to be that dumb and still remember to breathe. Maybe they’ve invented the pocket respirator or something. Actually, that’s the reptile part of our brain, so that’s the last to go after the higher functions shut down. For people like Megan, life is just a downhill slide to being a vegetable. But I guess that’s better than life for the rest of us, a downhill slide to death.

I’m in a very foreboding mood tonight. I really should work on my English essay…but I don’t feel like it. Tomorrow. I dyed my hair and cleaned up my bathroom, that’s enough of an accomplishment. And I took out the earring that’s not been healing up and put a straight one in. I think it’s called a stud. I don’t remember. It looks kind of lame, but I’m hoping that it’ll heal up so I can put in the old earring. It’s been bleeding and swelled up for weeks, I finally took the initiative to change the earring tonight.

Molly told me that Matt reads my blog now, she says he reads over her shoulder. I feel so famous, like a television star, but instead of being beamed via satellite into millions of homes I’m beamed via the Internet to one home. Well, more than one…let’s see. Who else reads this? Let me think:

My cousin Kelly
Becky
maybe Taggart, whenever we IM and he wants to know what I’m thinking
Tawna
Sammie and Steve…but I don’t think they really read it too much, but maybe they do read it religiously like I read their blogs, I dunno.
Amanda

and of course there’s the random people from the Net. I haven’t gotten a comment in ages. I guess if I was totally concerned about the people reading it I would get offended about the lack of comments, but I would still write in this even if nobody read it. However, having readers makes me feel guilty if I don’t post in a while. I’m going to have to reread the last few days, I totally forgot what I’ve been doing this week. Molly said she read something about me ranting about how bad Diane Keane’s lectures are and that it was so hard for her to read, I should find that post. Man, it’s almost three. I’m going to sleep.

Voice recognition. 0

> Placebo – Second Sight
> Placebo – Pure Morning
> Eurythmics – Sweet Dreams
> A-Ha – Take On Me
> No Doubt – Bathwater [how depressing...but so true]

I just installed Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and am using it to dictate this post. The art auction was today, it got really crazy towards the end… those rich people were so drunk. The college actually looked really beautiful, I got some really good shots (Becky recruited me as a photographer, if you didn’t know). I really need to get a headset. Holding this antiquated microphone up is just not cutting it. It depresses me that I’m listening to Placebo. Oh well. Everybody got so drunk at that event, Molly was pretty buzzed, Matt seemed trashed, and Amanda… well, were not even going to go there. She was actually jealous that a woman was talking to Lapp. She was complaining to Molly that we ditched her. We went to sit down and eat. How did we ditch her? I got pictures of all the art, and a good one of the one that won the most money. God, I just can’t get over how drunk they all were. I got about 300 pictures… that sounds like a lot, but I wasn’t there is much as I should’ve been. I think Becky will be pleased. She does have all the ones she took with the disposable cameras. I’ll go print them out Monday… well, I do have to sort through them and see which ones are the best ones, that will be very time-consuming.

Molly said some really cool things tonight, however I can’t remember what they were. I wish I would have found some way of getting that 300MB of pictures home with me. I would blog the group shot of me, Tawna, and Amanda… and the group shot of Samantha, Steve, Tawna, and me. It was kind of dark, but I gave it a cool foreboding feel. The food was really good… I should have eaten more. I saved room for a second helping, but nothing really cried out “eat me!” after my first helping. I guess that sounds a little wrong… oh well. You guys know what I mean. OMG, Matt told me this weird anecdote about Sharon Dyer, the former campus vice president at College of the Redwoods Del Norte. He said that the first time she talked to her was at the first art auction that they’d gone to. She was drinking out of a bottle of champagne, and something happened… I guess it fizzed up too much in her mouth and she spit it out everywhere. Very strange.

Gabe was there serving hors d’oeuvres, she looked really nice dressed up. It surprises me that she is a Republican, she really seems to have a brain. Megan was there, looking more unattractive than usual. LOL, she was drinking champagne and Becky went over to her, took her glass, and said “Aren’t you supposed to be doing something?” (she was supposed to be a volunteer) Somebody told me that happened.

I’m talking to Kelly online, she’s wowed that I’m using voice recognition. I should find how to do italics. I also need to find out how the back up my user files. God, Tawna was all offended last week that Samantha called her predictable… Samantha predicted perfectly what Tawna was going to wear. I can pretty much predict what Tawna will do, but Samantha can do it perfectly because she’s known Tawna so long. I heard that Tawna like…tries to be “weird.” I’m not sure if that’s true, but she’s not weird. OMG Ashley Gomez showed up at the college. I’m so glad I didn’t have to talk to her, Sammie and Tawna distracted her whenever I walked by…THANK YOU GUYS!!! Ashley is SO evil. OMG, it’s like twelve. I really should get to sleep. Or see what’s on TV. I think if I shut down my computer I will be much more motivated to go to sleep. I think I’m going to have a glass of soy milk or ice water and then hit the hay.

I should open up my computer and take out the old drive. I’m just afraid I’ll fuck something up. Oh well, that’s tomorrow’s task. Tomorrow we might bake that Black Forest Cherry Cake that we’d wanted to bake forever! We couldn’t make it because we needed this cherry liquor stuff, but Steve agreed to buy it! So it’s yummilicious cake here we come! God I’m tired. Must go to sleep. I don’t know why, but after that art auction I just felt like I needed to nap for a week. I was SO tired, and it was only like nine-thirty. Weird. Okay, going to sleep…I really mean it this time…

always stays the same, nothing ever changes 0

> Placebo – English Summer Rain
> Depeche Mode – Personal Jesus

I was going to title this post “damn and non-damn,” but good and bad things happen all the time. As many of you know, I made my 200GB SATA drive work this morning (by biting the bullet and erasing the old drive). I accidentally made the Windows partition too small,however, and had to keep re-sizing it. However, on my last sizing escapade PartitionMagic froze and I lost my “My Documents” partition, containing all my music, music videos, and other videos. I was really bummed, but I realized that I could have lost my “Desktop” partition, containing my e-mail and other things that can’t be just re-downloaded. I have now made the “My Documents” partition the last one on the drive (as I should have done from the beginning) so that any moving around of partitions will leave it alone. Well, I’m busily re-downloading stuff and IMing Tawna and Charley. He showed me the beginning of this show called Jem from the 80s. I love the 80s.

I redid my partitions and everything, I’m posting them for Steve’s edification:

Me and Tawna are talking. Not much is happening. The art auction is tomorrow and I’ve been recruited to take photos. It’s kind of depressing, I don’t really have a good outfit. I need some new pants. I don’t know what to wear. I’ll just pile it all in my car and leave. Maybe I’ll decide on what I’ll wear. I dunno. It all depends on when I get up tomorrow. I had planned to go to sleep at 10:00, but I mean…I just got my computer working and everything and I just wanted to play with it.

I got a little bit done on layout today, I’ve been doing all the time-consuming smaller tasks that Robin should be doing…but she is taking some initiative and trying to get layout done. She “finished” the campus page (we’re working with dummy stories) and I need to sit down with her to explain subtle details like COLUMN GUIDES. I’m trying to train Amanda, but I have that Amy-esque thing where I’m just “let me do it!” But I have to learn to let go and let others make the mistakes I have made so that they can learn the programs. I need someone to do all the tedious crap that I don’t have time for. Oh well, like that’s going to happen. Today’s layout session was just me working and some other people hanging out. But OMG the girl that wrote the clothing connection article totally brought cookies and snacks to the Drift office! I was all “sweet!” it totally motivated me to do all the stuff I did today. Well, here’s the list:

1) made one of the graphics for Martha’s financial aid story
2) made Steve find the higher-resolution game screenshot
3) attempted to teach Robin and Amanda InDesign/Illustrator
4) caught up with the stuff I had to do at work (except for this GIGANTIC veterans folder that I’m not touching with a ten foot pole).

That’s all I can think of, and I need to rant about the veterans thing. Okay, they drop this folder of about thirty to forty veterans things. Every one has to be painstakingly scanned in and typed up. Needless to say that I’m not going to get it done. I can barely finish my normal tasks. God this typing crap is so tedious. I need to restart so I can install Dragon NaturallySpeaking.