Things I’ve learned tonight:

1. Mixing unsweetened chocolate and granulated sugar does not make chocolate. I already knew this, but I guess I had to prove it to myself once again. However, when you spread it on toast and dust it with powdered sugar, it makes a tart and delicious chocolatey treat.

2. Watching stupid sci-fi/monster movies until 2 a.m. does not prepare one for the next day.

3. I am totally unprepared for Halloween.

I guess I can throw costume together, but I don’t think there’s anything to do. I’m probably just going to go to work in my normal attire, endure a verbal beating from my boss from some random mistake, do math all day, and go to sleep just as bored and unfulfilled as tonight. If my boss was cool, I would wear a costume, but I can see exactly how it would go. I can see it now. He would call me into his office and tell me that this sort of behavior is was an appropriate. He’d tell me to go home and come back in some more respectable attire. What a fuck. Everyone should die at like, thirty. Correction: every vindictive prick should die at thirty.

In other news, I ordered this black anodized aluminum iPod case. It’s pretty cool.

It’s not tremendously ugly, there’s access to hold switch, and there’s a screen protector. That’s all I really want. And I can finally ditch that ridiculous improvised clear plastic and Scotch tape case I made.

I hate my job. Every few hours I find myself mentally poring over my work I did the previous day, wondering where I made mistakes. I can’t stand this crap. As soon as I finish my math, I’m SO leaving this place. Must keep telling myself that. It’s only a few more months. Only another year. Then I’m gone. My mom said that once I finish my math, we can go to Switzerland. I don’t know whether I’m going to be done by this summer though. I’m going to have to work my ass off. That needs to become my mantra. Finish the math. Get on the plane. Fuck hot Swiss guys. Lather, rinse, and repeat. lol. I need to learn to speak German. Perhaps I should start listening to Rammstein again. Eh, maybe not. Another problem is that I have trained myself to say the German “shite” instead of “shit.” I need to remap it to merde. That would be sexy. Nothing sexier than the French.

I must read a bit more of The Atrocity Exhibition and go to sleep. I didn’t really get into The Atrocity Exhibition. It really has no narrative structures, except similar characters, situations, and themes keep presenting themselves. It’s like he’s presenting 20 different permutations of the same hallucinogenic short story. In the footnotes he explains a lot of the obscure references that I would just have read over. He’s trying to be prophetic, but with all the footnotes he just unravels the whole mystery of everything. I don’t know. Perhaps I should have read a bit more of it before I put it down. And then there are all these disturbing illustrations: one is a cross-section of a woman reaching inside herself, ostensibly to remove her diaphragm. Another is an illustration of the torso of a human body, but in place of all the veins are highways filled with traffic. Words fail to describe them, they are–oddly prophetic. Which is I guess what Ballard was going for. Well, more later.

> Chromeo - Me and My Man
> Daft Punk - Voyager
> Propellerheads - Winning Style

Whoa. I just finished reading Ender’s Game. Fucking incredible. And even though years ago I had been told the surprise ending, it didn’t dawn on me until the very last second. I started reading it yesterday night and continued after work to read it until like 4 a.m. Oh god, the work thing yesterday. I don’t even want to talk about that. But I must.

7:50: I drove up to my second job, and the building was empty and dark. I remembered that someone was telling me that the job was going to end sometime soon, but I thought there was still a few weeks left. Obviously, since there was no one there, the job was over. So I went home.

9:10: I hear my cell phone ringing in the other room, so I go in there and checked my messages. Sure enough, they were trying to get ahold of me. As I learned later, the guys at the factory are now getting there about 40 minutes later. It would be nice if someone had told me. In my haste I very nearly got into an accident on the drive back up there. I can’t believe it. I didn’t stop at a stop sign. I can’t understand why I would do such a thing. Stupid. Getting in an accident to go to a job I hate for people who don’t appreciate my work. That’s some cosmic irony for you.

9:30: I get there and start downloading my files to process, and everything seems to be running smoothly. Except for this one file. I couldn’t get it to do anything. I tried every trick I know, but that stubborn G3 that runs all the machines just wouldn’t take it. It took two hours to get that file to work. Two hours where all of the factory employees were standing around doing nothing while collecting overtime. I felt mildly culpable, because I had the page for 45 minutes or so while I was fiddling with it where I should have been on the phone with the people that sent it, but the blame is really with them because it was a problem on their end. I know it. All of the other files worked flawlessly, why the problem with this one? it’s all the same fonts and images. Anyway, I was very until around 2:45 in the morning, ravenously hungry because in my haste I’d forgotten to grab a snack. That was the night from hell.

Okay, back to the book: it was fucking incredible. The plausibility was perfect, even though I think it was written a while ago. The references to Russia made me seem like it was written in the middle of the Cold War, but that might have just been a coincidence. The narrative voice was impeccable, unlike the rampant clumsiness, unimaginative settings, and murky point of view of Neuromancer. The author did have a bit of a penchant for unnecessarily jumping into other point of view characters, but it seemed to flow well anyway. Wow. I can’t even think about how amazing that was. It totally blew my mind, I’ll need a few days to recover. I really don’t want to go to work tomorrow. To deal with my asshole boss. To pretend like I care. Fuck.

Some random guy from Klamath Falls wanted to be my friend on MySpace, and as I was looking over his profile I saw a “Which Queer as Folk Character Are You?” quiz.

You are Ted.

Which Queer As Folk Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

My first reaction was how depressing the result was, but now that I think about it, I’m not like any of the other characters. Perhaps that’s why I don’t really like that show much, I can’t associate with these flippant, superficial people. They remind me too much of the people I see every day.

I was sort of down in the dumps earlier this week, but now I’m wearing an expression of quiet optimism, which it is advisable to wear while facing the telescreen. That quote came back to me in the shower this morning, mild Darius points if you can identify it.

I just don’t know what I’m living for right now. I sort of want to throw caution to the wind and drive to Sacramento on the 19th to go see that Nine Inch Nails concert with Kelly, but it’s probably going to cost at least $200. And no matter how much it sickens me, I would rather have a 23″ Apple Cinema Display than be with the people I love most. How hideous have I become? I can’t even conceive of being with these people that I adore so much from so far away, that the only thing I can really count on is the comfort of technology. I feel like I won’t ever be able to move away from that until I leave this town. And that reminds me: the only way I can leave is by finishing my math. And I’m two chapters behind.

I must destroy the math before it kills me.

PS: this is the cutest/wierdest thing ever.

> Chromeo - Ah Oui Comme Ça

I just checked out the web site of that band Chromeo and it’s really cool! Their music videos suck, but the band’s biography really made me crack up:

Crossing the Gaza Strip of Sexxx Jams Chromeo is Pee Thug and Dave 1: best friends since their Montreal adolescence, virtuoso musicians, walking hip hop encyclopedias, and the only successful Arab/Jew partnership since the dawn of human culture.

Aside from that, I’m bored and I’ve done nothing but watch TV shows I’d already seen because I didn’t want to do anything else and I felt lonely when I was on the Internet. I even went to gay.com and surfed profiles. Today is just one of those days where your feet are cold and nothing can assuage it. Maybe I’ll put on a second pair of socks. Is that weird? What if I passed out, lost my short-term memory and woke up with two socks on? It would be a near-Philip K. Dick-esque event that would haunt me for the rest of my existence. Lol. I should buy more books. Oh! I had sort of an idea for a short story yesterday, and it seemed sort of good. Maybe I’ll think of it tonight.

I was hungry and ended up eating this 1,200 calorie bag of trail mix before I thought to read the nutrition label. Now I feel vaguely sick and I wish I would’ve done homework instead of watch television. It’s not like I even like television, I don’t. It just doesn’t require any effort and I can sit on the comfortable couch while I’m watching it. If I had a comfortable couch in my room facing a blank wall, I’d be there all day long.

For some reason I feel like I have to stay up until 2 a.m. on Friday nights to somehow prove to myself that I have a social life even though I’m not doing anything. It’s a depressing thing to wake up at 11 a.m. on Saturday with nothing to do. If I wake up at 5 p.m., at least I have an excuse for wasting the day.

I don’t know what brought it on, but I’m having a severe bout of loneliness. I would drown my sorrows in MySpace, but every time I log on I now see Misty’s new pictures. Apparently mine weren’t good enough, she had to have someone take pictures of her sitting in a Wal-Mart chair in some random person’s living room and then sepia tone them to make them look “artsy.” Fuck this town.

I was sort of experimenting with making a painting that wasn’t completely black, but the more that I look at it the more I realize that I won’t be satisfied unless it’s black. I shouldn’t paint when I’m in this mood.

The more I think about what I’m creating, the more I like my art. I think back to Taggart’s jejune creations and I realize that I can do so much better. After all, judging art is all subjective anyway. I will always love my paintings more than anybody’s because I will know why I painted them and what they mean perfectly. We can never be sure looking at someone else’s art whether they meant a certain symbol to mean one thing, but with my own art it’s like I’m reflected on the canvas. I know every brush stroke, symbol, etc.

I don’t know what I want to say. I want to say that I’m lonely, on a deserted cultural island, and I can’t relate to other people. I can only hate them for their flaws. And I can’t seem to find excuses to hang out with the people that I think are incredibly cool. Perhaps I should take a shower. Hm. That sounds like a good idea.

This morning the power went off 10 minutes before I was supposed to get up. I woke up anyway and halfway through my morning routine, the power had come back on. So of course I got in my car and drove to work. Big mistake. The power was out all over Crescent City and there was absolutely nothing to be done at my job since everything is produced on our computers. I waited around for 20 minutes or so listening to the Insipid Coworker of Doom complain about how no one wanted to come to her Halloween party that she had planned. If I had a costume, I would’ve planned to make an appearance. Possibly. But of course just to mentally mock her. Anyway, I went home, caught up on my blogs, watched some Sean Cody, worked on my painting, etc. By now it’s around two o’clock and I woke up at eleven. I called the office at 2:30 to make sure they weren’t back up and nobody picked up, so with nothing else to do I watched an episode of Star Trek. Around 4 p.m. they called to say that the power was back on. Unfortunately, everything was working but the Internet. We use it for everything…it was such an infuriating day. It’s nice to work in an office where you can curse to your heart’s content. Well, I didn’t do any cursing, but my coworkers articulated my feelings very well. There’s something about being on hold for two hours that will make anyone snap.

Well, long story short, it was very hectic but I got everything done and ended up driving the pages on CD-ROM up to the factory in Smith River (due to the lack of Net). It was actually sort of fun and am glad it happened on a day where I didn’t have anything else to do. I’m really glad I have the Internet at my house though. I don’t know what I would do. Well, I would be writing this… but I wouldn’t be able to post it. And that would be a hollow blogging victory.

Ben was online when I got home, he instant messaged me and said that he had seen me driving the on my trip to Smith River. He didn’t have anything to talk about and from the incredibly long pauses between his responses, it was obvious that either he didn’t care about the convo or was talking to 20 different people. Probably both. I got angry when he gave me this bullshit four minutes into the convo about having to work on his halloween costume, and blocked him. However, I didn’t really block him; I just hit delete because I wasn’t really thinking straight. So I accomplished nothing. As usual.

So here I am back at my house with power, the Internet and television but nothing to do with any of them. I would go work on my painting again, but I already did stuff do it today and it would be a bit of overkill to work on it twice in one day. There’s really not much else I can tweak. I just have to let this layer dry before I can put the second part on it. Perhaps I should start Ender’s Game.

Oh yeah, I really wanted to talk a bit more about how that last novel I read and that movie I saw last night. *spoiler alert* so okay, in the end of the Neuromancer novel you have the protagonist Case (the Neo character), Molly (the Trinity character) and Malecum (the egregiously flat character that is the pilot of this their ship). They are on this giant orbital space station called Straylight which was made by this corporation called Tessier-Ashpool. This company made artificial intelligences to protect their data, and one of the members of the family that controlled the company created two artificial intelligences who she wanted to make sentient, Neuromancer and Wintermute. Wintermute has been behind the scenes the entire book, guiding the characters into this whole situation, but Neuromancer is like, the personality of the AI. They are both engineered so they can never know the other one’s name, except for if it is spoken into this crystalline head in the center of the Straylight station which Wintermute thought would erase his program.

So eventually Wintermute and Neuromancer get into some sort of fight in the Matrix while Case (Neo) is trying to steal something from the Tessier-Ashpool corporate network, and they mesh with this Chinese virus and Case’s (Neo’s) construct to become a whole sentient artificial being. In the end, Case (Neo) sees the new AI and talks to it, and it says that it isn’t in the matrix anymore, that it is the matrix. It’s an interesting ending, especially because you end up seeing that the AI looks exactly like Case. It also says that it has been communicating with another artificial intelligence in another galaxy, which would make an interesting (albeit totally lame) continuance for the matrix trilogy. I’m sure in 2032 they will remake all of them with new special effects a la Star Wars.

I have much less to say about that movie The Dreamers. It starts as a classic bildungsroman, with the hackneyed plot of the American student in France who ends up learning all sorts of things about life. But the thing I found so disappointing about this movie was that the characters don’t learn any lessons. They don’t really even get a chance to. They live in this apartment for a month and get all incredibly intimate and such, but right when it seems like something’s going to change and the characters are going to have to face all their problems, the movie just ends with this shot of policemen running in to fight this mob of Communist protesters. And that’s it. We never learn what happens. It seems like it was the beginning of a movie that was three times as long…and the characters never really changed. The beginning half (where it seemed like there might actually be some drama) was good though.

Well, I’d better go look for something to do. I hope Misty calls me. I’ve got her hooked on this delicous cherry brandy. Well, the discovery of the wonders of cherry brandy is actually quite a funny anecdote. I’m lying, but it’s an anecdote about me and Joe so I’m going to play it up as much as I want. We were hanging out at my house, desperately wanting some alcohol (we were such lushes) when we came upon this half empty bottle of cherry brandy that I had bought years ago to make a Black Forest cake. After much careful deliberation, we decided unanimously to make it into screwdrivers. It was SOOO delicous. Cherry and orange. Heavenly. So last time we were at Safeway, I told Misty about how good it was then of course she had to try it. And now she loves it. Do I have good taste or what?

I’ve been meaning to read the Wikipedia entry on the different types of alcohol and how they are all produced and what the differences are (sherry vs brandy vs cognac, etc.) I feel like a fool not knowing such things and being a guy. I think another part of it stems from me just not being a beer person. Beer bores me. Maybe I just haven’t had anything that was so good, but I don’t see what all the fuss is about. When I want to get drunk, I don’t want to have to go through a bunch of beers. Just take a few shots of hard alcohol and you’re buzzed. It’s all about saving time. And then you can get back to the glory that is moments like these.

It turns out it wasn’t the original DVD that was scratched, it was the one I copied it to. Burned another one and it worked fine. The movie was great, but it seemed like it ended 3/4 of the way through. Weird.