the diary of antoine roquentin

We woke up in the motel room to the phone ringing. It was housekeeping saying that check out time was 11:00. Samantha took a shower while we gathered up our stuff. We all snuck out and then Samantha went back and returned the key and such. We put our stuff back into the car. It was drizzly and kind of gross, I lent Sammie my sweater because she was cold. We decided to leave Eureka and eat breakfast in Arcata. Samantha wanted a little bistro, but after walking around the plaza (there was some sort of harvest festival going on) we decided to go to this cool pizza place (the same place that Daniela and I went on our trip). We also stayed in the same motel that Daniela and I had stayed in. Through the whole trip, we would kind of get off the right path and then get back to where we started after a big detour. Last English class Molly was talking about the symbolic nature of journeys, and I couldn’t help feeling that it was symbolic that all we could seem to do was to get back to where we started.

Well, we got cheese sticks and a Mediterranean pizza, it was de-freaking-licious. We couldn’t finish it all, so we went back to the car and dropped off the three pieces that we couldn’t finish. That pizza was SO filling, it was weird. But anyway, it was raining, so we donned our rain gear. I got into my trenchcoat and I got out my umbrella for Sammie and Steve. We made our way back to my heaven, aka Tin Can Mailman, this titanic used bookstore. We stayed there for like an hour and a half, we found all these cool books. Here’s what I found:

The Divine Comedy by Dante. It was a much more readable translation, has bigger print, and has big illustrations. The book is 8.5×11″

Erewhon by Samuel Butler: I got this because it’s Samantha’s favorite book.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll: I’ve always wanted to read these, mostly because of how many ways they’ve been interpreted and the allusions to this book in The Matrix.

Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud: I’ve always wanted to read this, I’m into Freud.

Totem and Taboo by Sigmund Freud: I’ve always wanted to read this, it’s Freud’s theories about how man developed from a tribal society into modern society.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: A classic. Enough said.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley: Anus Face lost my pristine new copy of this book so I had to get another. This copy, although used, looks new and has no marks in it.

Beowulf, a verse translation by Michael Alexander: I’m going to be forced to read this sometime in my education, so why not get it over with.

The Medium is the Massage by Marhsall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore: My old mentor / history teacher Mike Muldoon recommended this book to me so when I saw it on the shelf I had to pick it up.

The Outsider (The Stranger) by Albert Camus: This is a different translation of Camus’ “L’Etranger” (The Stranger). The sentence structure is completely different. In the translation I’ve read, the first paragraph is:

“Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: ‘Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.’ That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.”

In this translation it’s:

“Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday: I can’t be sure. The telegram from the Home says: Your mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Deep sympathy. Which leaves the matter doubtful;it could have been yesterday.

Very strange. So I’m going to have to read the other translation.

I also got a different edition of The Stranger, so on this trip I bought three copies of it total. I like collecting other editions of my favorite books, that way I can lend them out and not feel like I’ll never get them back and have to buy them again.

$50 or so later, we all went back to the car and dropped off our books. We decided to check out the bead shop, so we walked around the plaza to it. They had some really cool beads (as always) but didn’t have any cool skull beads. Sammie got a platypus bead and a panda bead. After that we were meandering back to the car when this incident took place.

Steve: “I think that this is the weirdest town I’ve ever been in.”
Me: “You know, you’re really sheltered.”
Steve (in this really angry tone): “You know, why don’t you suck my cock.”

Samantha tried to pacify him with a “Steve…” We walked back to the car in silence.

I didn’t mean it to be rude at all, I just can’t help but to be blasé about Arcata. After you go to New York or any big city like that, Arcata is more of a maintenance level of weirdness. Well anyway, we got back to the car and I asked where we decided on going. We’d been talking earlier about going to this fabric shop or maybe this role playing game shop that we’d passed the day before but it’d been closed. We kind of decided on the fabric shop, but more as an ostensible destination. As we neared the highway on-ramp (it was harder to find than I thought and we drove around for a while before we found it), Steve apologized for his outburst. I really didn’t mind, I joked in all truthfulness that an outburst was better (to my taste) than little things that grate on my nerves all day. On the way towards Eureka we saw for about the third time this sign for a corn maze and we decided to go to it after we were done in Eureka. We decided to go to Eureka’s Old Town. I’d never been there and wanted to check it out. It was pretty cool, I wish we’d had the camera, but I put it in my suitcase in the morning and I’d forgotten to take it out all day. It was really beautiful, there were little plazas and such. Sammie said that it reminded her of Rochester, N.Y. There are myriad towns in the East that look like that. The town around where my cousin Patty lives is like that. Well anyway, we went to the waterfront and found a little map to discover where the bathrooms were. On the way there we found this little chocolate shop. After using the bathrooms we went into this gallery that was before the chocolate shop, there were some kind of hackneyed square abstract paintings. They were very bland and lacked a lot of lines or color…they were mostly all one color. The next part of the gallery was occupied with these paintings by this lady who had a vast repertoire of subject matter: flowers, volcanoes, and waterfalls. I was really tempted to leave a mean message in the guest book, but instead I wrote: “I like your use of color, but some variation in subject matter would be refreshing.” We were quite done with the gallery, so we meandered to the chocolate store next door. Sammie and Steve loaded up on the delicious chocolates, I got a dark chocolate bar with almonds. It was de-freaking-licious, as were all the chocolate creations. We meandered down towards the waterfront. It was really beautiful, but very cold and windy. Eventually we got too cold to enjoy the place and walked back to the car. We were kind of famished and the car smelled of that delicious pizza leftovers, so we all had some but got filled up too fast to finish our pieces. I think it was all the chocolate we’d eaten. We put our half-eaten pieces back into the tin foil, I started the car, and we drove off towards the corn maze. It was just above Arcata, and we followed signs on orange paper plates through this maze of streets bordered by giant fields west of 101. We were joking that once we had successfully followed the plates, someone would just come up and say “You finished our maze! Now give us $5.” Lol.

We arrived at the place and I dug out the camera, because we had to preserve our experience on film. None of us had ever done a corn maze before, so we were all “I hope it’s cool!” We went into this barn and bought our tickets ($3 a piece), and continued to the maze. Here’s the beginning of it:

This is the inside of the maze:

It would have been cool had it been bigger. It wasn’t really a labyrinth (as it should have been), there were just animal shapes cut into it that all fit together. They even gave us a map. It was really run down and everything was dead, but the paths of the maze were still recognizable. We ended up spending about a half hour in it (not lost, but just kind of walking around looking at things). We agreed that it would have been cooler had it been dark.

We decided that we were done, and walked towards the exit. We came into this one area with this guy and two girls sitting on these dilapidated lawn chairs. “You guys lost?” they asked us playfully? “Yeah, we’ve been in here for days…” I believe we responded. Talking to those people was pretty much the highlight of the whole maze experience, but it was fun anyways. We were all really tired. Steve was the least tired because he was the first to doze off, I was the second most tired because I’d drifted in and out of sleep, and Sammie was the most tired because she didn’t really sleep at all.

Steve had had a craving for ice cream all day, so we decided to try to find this ice cream store that we all had vague memories of eating at. We surmised that it was in Arcata. I’d eaten at it on one of the Drift field trips and Sammie had been there on this one field trip with Letko. The sun was setting and I stopped to take a picture of this house:

The sunset was so incredibly beautiful I had to pull off to the side of the road and take some pictures of it. Steve took some too. I took this one:

We got back onto the freeway and reached the Arcata plaza in record time since it was so close to the maze. Deciding that the ice cream place of our memories was in the Jacoby’s Storehouse building, we walked in and got some yummy ice cream. I got a waffle cone of “Monster Mash,” Steve got strawberry sherbert, and I don’t remember what Samantha got. We went outside and I took some pics of the square. It was early evening then, but since I took them without the flash it looks much earlier.

I don’t know why the colors came out so funky in this one:

We walked into the center of the plaza to finish our ice cream. I couldn’t finish mine, I had to throw half of it away. I’d eaten waaay too much stuff that day. We were really cold so we go into the car and blasted the heat once we were done with our ice cream. With that, we began the drive back to Crescent City. We got onto the freeway, I turned on my cruise control and we were set.

I was a bit concerned about only having a quarter of a tank of gas, but we were going and I didn’t want to stop. I started to feel a bit sick, but just tried to concentrate on the music. Somewhere below Klamath, Samantha began to feel queasy. We stopped for a while and sat in the darkness. We were all so tired. After about fifteen minutes we started going again. At the top of this one hill I had everyone get out and stand on the median on the top of the hill. It’s like the most beautiful place ever. But anyway, we kept going and got to Klamath. I was pretty low on gas so we stopped at this little café and asked if there was a gas station open. There wasn’t. Sammie used the bathroom, and we continued on. Whatever happened, it couldn’t be too bad. We had water, coats, and a flashlight. We finally reached Crescent City. I couldn’t believe it was over. It was such an ordeal, we had so much fun, did so much stuff…it was unbelievable. I dropped Sammie and Steve off and continued on to my house. I was so tired. My stuff from Xoxide.com had arrived, my light-up keyboard, my cold cathode lights for my case, and my voice recognition headset. I got everything out of my car and watched Y Tu Mama Tambien as I installed my cold cathode lights like a somnambulist. I blogged about the first day of the trip, worked on my website, and got to sleep around two. I woke up the next morning and started this post after I showered. I watched Run Lola Run and now I’m watching eXistenZ. I have to write my English essay today and wash my clothes. I think I’m going to get started on washing my clothes. If there are mistakes in this post, I apologize. I’m hungry and I need to get stuff done, and writing this post was a gigantic effort. Proofreading it is just too much for today.

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> Placebo – English Summer Rain, Narcoleptic, Blue American
> Daft Punk – Voyager
> Nine Inch Nails – La Mer, Into the Void
> Kylie Minogue – More, More, More
> The Chemical Brothers – Come With Us

Well, I really didn’t think that this trip would ever happen. And here I sit using my cool computer with its blue cold cathode lights and my blue light up keyboard. I got off work around two yesterday. As soon as I got off I immediately went over to Samantha and Steve’s house. Their checks had arrived and they were pretty much all ready to go. They had to drop off Sue’s car at Four Square Church, and then we continued to Tawna’s house. Up until this sentence, I was using voice recognition, but it was being all slow (I need another stick of RAM) so I decided to crap can that idea. The headphone part of my headset has great sound quality, I’m in love. And the cold cathode lights give my case this cool ethereal glow. Well, we picked up Tawna, went to Washington Mutual for Steve to cash his check, then we went to CFCU for Tawna and Sammie to cash their checks. I got water at the store (CFCU is inside a grocery store) and then we all piled into the car and went to RayJen to get sandwiches. I didn’t get anything since I’d already eaten lunch, but they got sandwiches and I got some liquid molten lava (I mean Earl Grey tea). It didn’t get drinkable for hours. But anyway, we got our sandwiches and all piled into the car for the last time and then we drove to Eureka!

I almost got into a fender bender because there was this bicyclist and I had to slow down really fast to avoid like hitting him and the huge truck behind me was approximately six inches off my bumper to begin with. Anyway, it was a nice drive. I took the Drift camera to take pics. It was a pretty uneventful drive, we didn’t start taking pics until we were near Trinidad. We saw this hickmobile carrying this gigantic plastic hot tub, it was so crazy, we had to take a pic.

I took this pic of the McKinleyville sign:

It sure was a beautiful day. It was around six, so we decided to go to the mall first. We meandered into GameStop, and then decided to split up and go shop then meet at 8 p.m. to eat. Sammie and Steve stayed together and me and Tawna stayed together. We meandered all over the mall, first going into Hot Topic and (as always) realizing that there was nothing we would ever buy. Eventually we wandered into Borders. That was a mistake. Well, at least my wallet says that it was a mistake. But OMG OMG OMG OMG I found a hardcover copy of Camus’ The Stranger!!!! It was so uber swank. Then I meandered into the DVD section and they had this HUGE foreign section. Tawna found Cube (I was sad, they only had one copy) and I found Run Lola Run, eXistenZ, Y Tu Mama Tambien, and Amelie. I was watching Y Tu Mama Tambien as I put the cold cathodes into my case. But anyway, I was SO happy that I’d found such cool movies. $75 later, me and Tawna decided to go find Sammie and Steve. It took us a while, but we ended up finding them. It was around 7:45 when we met them. Me, Tawna, and Sammie ate at Sbarro, Steve had Chinese at Fortune Wok.

That’s my pizza. It was mouthtastic. That’s my new word. I’m LOVING this keyboard and headphone combo, the keyboard has “next track” “previous track” and volume controls, and the headphones have amazing quality. I think that if I ever find a boyfriend here we’ll get those really high-quality Dolby Digital headphones that go around your whole ears and go with our mp3 players to the club and listen to our own music and be the coolest people there. But anyway, after our meal we decided to all go clothes shopping. First we went to Ross and Samantha got this cute little pajama set with stars and moons and stuff on it, and she helped Tawna try to find some stuff. Me and Steve started talking about the lameness of clothes shopping and talked about some of our dream outfits. He wants a long coat made with scales, and I want a long black coat made of black silk brocade lined with velvet.

We then voyaged to Sears. On the way, we found these DISTURBING sexual children’s rides. Here’s a pic Steve took of me riding “The Penetrator.” Seriously. Read under where it says BS4.

But anyway, we went to Sears. Tawna was having some issues or something with me and Steve knowing what size she wears, so we walked over to the miniscule men’s clothing section, which was basically divided into the jeans section, the flannel section, and the button-down shirt section. It was sad. I did see this one cool shirt, but it was $40. I kind of regret not getting it now, but I would have run out of money, and that wouldn’t have been good. I have $50 in my bank account, and that’s got to get me to the 15th. Well, I do have a big pile o’ cash on my table, I should count it. I know I have a $20 bill, maybe a ten and a few fives. I’ll deposit all my cash on Monday. I’m going to have to start bringing sack lunches to work. Actually, all that cash will go to gas, I’m totally empty. I was going to drive up to Smith River to fill up, but I was just incredibly exhasted. Oh, I got off track. Well me and Steve walked around Sears for a while, drooling over camcorders, digital cameras and flat panel TVs.

When we got back, I think Tawna had a pair of pants and a shirt. Tawna’s insecurities really make no sense…why would me and Steve care what size she wears? We were talking about it, and we really have no clue what chick sizes are all about. And like, even if we did, why would we say something mean? That’s just loony. But anyway, Sammie and Tawna went to this store called The Avenue while me and Steve walked around. I think we might have had a destination. I think I wanted to go to Wilson’s (the leather store) but it was like nine and all the stores were closing. We tried to find them everywhere, then decided to check that one store that they went to. We eventually made our way to The Avenue. There was this really disturbing thing on the register. I had to preserve it on film:

Tawna got this cool shirt that she let me and Steve see, and I guess she got other clothes too. Originally we had planned to drop Tawna off before we went to the mall, but I’d had to go to the bathroom really bad so we went to the mall first. I almost got into an accident right before we’d gotten to the mall (either I wasn’t paying attention or this person slowed down really fast in front of me) and I was really wary of driving, but I had to so we went to go find Nicole’s house (the chick that Tanwa is staying with). LOL, on the way Tawna commented on a restaurant that we passed, and all that we heard was “Oh, they have a vagina buffet?” Me and Steve instantly burst into laughter. It was INCREDIBLY funny. Apparently she meant “China Buffet,” but she failed to enunciate. LOL. But anyway, we found her friend’s house without a hitch, then me, Sammie, and Steve continued our voyage to find a hotel room. We drove down the main drag twice, and decided on the Town House Motel. It said that there was in-room jacuzzis (we had been talking about wanting to stay at a motel with a jacuzzi all day) so we sent Samantha in to get a room for “herself” (we didn’t want to all pay), we parked the car down the street and then snuck into the room. The “jacuzzi” was a small bathtub with about two jets in it. I of course had to take out all the stuff I’d bought (especially my hardbound The Stranger) and give it love. I took a pic of my glorious The Stranger, and then Steve took a few pics of me reading the introduction.

I don’t know why the colors are so funky in this one:

Me and Steve hung out while Sammie got into her new PJs, then we all talked for a while. After it got later we turned out the lights and Steve dozed off while me and Sammie talked for hours about philosophy and literature and such. I think we got to sleep around 3 a.m. We didn’t sleep well at all, I kept waking up because I was cold and used to sleeping under covers but I didn’t dare get under the motel’s sperm comforter, or “cumforter” as I lovingly referred to it. In the middle of the night I got up and put my sweater over me as an ersatz blanket, and finally got a little bit of sleep. I had this dream that Shaina (from my English 1B class had told me that I was a stupid loser. I’d seen her with Pat (this cool cute guy, I’d post his pic if I had a scanner) the other day. And like she got all the cool people to not like me and to ostracize me. It was a really sad dream.

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I’m feeling like the trip we’re planning for tomorrow will either not happen or suck. I’m in a very pessimistic mood. I feel like this is going to be a Sammie and Steve date and I will just be tagging along akwardly. But I guess I don’t really mind too much. I think that the drive will be uber-fun and once we get to Eureka we’ll all split up and go do our own thing so there really won’t be much room for social weirdness. I’m just very wary about groups of three, I have had VERY bad experiences with social groups that were trios. I’m just in a shitty mood. Tomorrow will brighten my day, I get paid and I’m supposed to get my stuff. So no matter what happens I won’t have a shitty day. I doubt that everybody’s checks will come all on the same day. I should stop ranting, I’m just bitter that I couldn’t find two stories to compare for my comparison/contrast essay. I read about four of them, which took me a freaking long time and I still couldn’t find any ones with some sort of link. I hate writing essays on a time frame. It should just be “Do it by whatever date” not “You have to write a plan, then a rough draft, then a final draft”…enough with the pansy bullshit. It takes me a while to think about what I’m going to write on. This whole assignment is just pissing me off because I’ll be too busy this weekend to write it. I guess in my heart of hearts I’m hoping that the checks don’t come so I can write my rough draft on my cool new keyboard (or via voice recognition) and get my cool video card. I’m really tired. I need to go to sleep.

Oh, the weirdest thing happened but I’ll wait to blog about it until I can post the pics. Oh, Sammie and Steve and I went down to Pebble Beach and totally climbed up on that rock thing, it was really fun. We ended up spending like two hours down there. It was really fun, I took pics. Then I bought a Papa Murphy’s take and bake vegitarian and we went to my house and ate it. I was still hungry. It infuriates me when I buy pizza and am still hungry after it’s gone. I think I had like toast and some peanuts and some orange juice and stuff. We all had orange juice. I wish my dad was gone so I wouldn’t have to put up with him. I really dislike him. Well, I guess that’s a little freakin’ obvious. We played the Star Trek board game (circa 1993) that was in my closet and we began to play monopoly but Samantha always wins and Steve will do this stupid thing where he’ll pretend to buy properties and then be like “suck my cock.” I mean, it’s amusing…the first two or three times he does it. Then it’s just incredibly annoying. But Samantha always wins anyway so it was pointless. It was like an Ashley phone call. I hate getting into pointless situations, especially when I’m the one who did it, like when I call someone and then after three sentences realize “Oh god I’m going to have to talk to this person for the next thirty minutes.” Depressing. I’m not going to have my plan tomorrow. I’m chronically late. I hate my life. I hate Crescent City. But I’ll be loving life tomorrow when I’m rollin’ in the CASH!!!! MOUHAHAHAHAHA. CASH. MOUHAHAHAHAHA. CASH CASH CASH CASH GLORIOUS CASH *rolls around in my cash* Mouhahahahahaha. *rolls around in my hypothetical cash some more* mouha…..okay I’m done. I’m going to sleep. Ah, Taggart’s on. Let’s see if he’ll serve as a walking, talking definition of the words vacuous and libertine. Nope. I guess he’s off duty today. I’m going to sleep.

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I was kind of not sure about getting this video card, but after reading this review, it’s totally worth the $230. Whoa, I Froogled it and found it for $199.99. Sweet.

OVERWHELMING gaming performance
The Xtasy 9600 XT, featuring ATI’s RADEONª 9600 XT VPU with 128MB or 256MB DDR memory, prosecutes your more demanding applications with awe-inspiring impunity. With 4 rendering pipelines, the 9600 XT powers through 1.9 BILLION pixels per second and more than 11.4 AA Gpixels per second.

Compatible with 128-bit, 64-bit and 32-bit floating-point color formats, the 9600 XT gives HI-RES 32-bit, 3D gaming up to 2048×1536!

SICK Visual Effects
Processing more than 11.4 BILLION anti-aliased samples per second, the 9600 XT provides head-splitting performance up to 16 trilinear filtered texture samples per pixel. SMOOTHVISION 2.1 serves up awesome full scene anti-aliasing. Lighting and Texture effects, enabled by ATI’S programmable SMARTSHADER 2.0, make head-wounds and ripped flesh look real.

Ever have TWO MONITORS at one time?
ATI’s HYDRAVISION supports CRT monitors, digital flat panels and TVs while VIDEOSHADER enables integration of unbelievable digital video stuff, including advanced adaptive de-interlacing for awesome video quality. You just connect to a digital flat panel and dig clearer, crisper images.

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What an idiot. Every day after English 1B I go into the lounge and Patricia says someting stupid. It’s like clockwork. Last time she was all “I love your outfits, every day I wait to see what you’ll be wearing. I just want you to know that I approve, it has my seal of approval.” She was trying to be funny, I suppose, but it didn’t work. But anyway, today was the greatest one yet. Someone was going to throw out some of those six-pack can holder things and she had them give them to her so she could cut them up so birds wouldn’t get caught in them. Then she started to rant about how so many birds die from them and all this crap. “All the animals are going to die anyway,” I said. And then she said the stupid thing. I would imagine that stupid people must think for hours to come up with things this dumb.

Imbecile: “Yeah, the polar ice caps are melting. That’s why it’s been getting colder here.”
Me: “Um, global warming is what’s melting them so if anything it’s getting warmer.”
Imbecile: “No, it’s the other way around!”

Yeah, honey. That’s right. There are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Saddam was responsible for 9/11. Saudi Arabia does not fund terrorism. And global warming is making the globe cooler. Either she’s really dumb or really high. Either way, people that dumb shouldn’t be allowed to leave their houses.

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