> !!! - Pardon My Freedom
> Lacquer - X
> Air - La Femme d’Argent
> Modjo - Chillin’

I’m getting a bit of cabin fever. I need to make some cool friends. Except for that there is no one cool in Crescent City that I see on a regular basis. I was talking to my mom a few days ago about my future here, and it seems like I’m going to be here at least another year in order to graduate. I don’t think my dad is going to spring for that though. I don’t know… I’m going to college and getting good grades. What else does he want? He’s got one foot in the grave, the least he could do is help his only son complete his education.

In other news, I think I’m going to have to sell my keyboard. Every time I sit down to play after like five minutes my wrists hurt like hell. I’m glad I saved the box. Well, at least I know now that I can’t play any instruments. How depressing is that. My mom talks about playing her guitar in learning new songs. What am I going to do at that age? Probably just write about my endless ennui using voice-recognition, as I do now.

I still really tired. Of this life. Of everything.

They still never called me about my HIV test results. It’s probably some ridiculous thing with my insurance. I need to call them when I’m feeling this nihilistic. I wonder if they tell you results over the phone. How postmodern would that be? I read that in London this one hospital sends death notices via text messages to people’s cell phones. Hm. Maybe I should go back to sleep and then pretend to wake up a few hours later when the sun comes up. That would make me feel a smidgen less like a vampire.

I’m burning some tea light candles on my desk. They are from this huge bag of tea lights that I was going to give to Brian (he’s obsessed with them). Until they are all gone, they are going to serve as an endless reminder of that failed attempt to find warm squishy places. I find it sort of comical, as my mother would often go to the church to light a candle for a relative. What do these ones represent? I wish I knew.

While my computer was defragmenting I read a few more chapters in JG Ballard’s collection of loosely related stories, The Atrocity Exhibition. I absolutely love James Ballard. Who else but him could write the essay entitled “The Assassination of President Kennedy Considered As a Downhill Motor Race.” I also loved “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan.” A lot of his short stories take the form of these pseudo-scientific ramblings about fake experiments concerning test subjects who are provided with photos of car crashes and celebrities to devise their favorite mode of death. Even though The Atrocity Exhibition was written in the seventies, it is no less valid today. True, he does spend a lot of time indirectly talking about the implications of the Kennedy assassination and other dated societal quandaries, but the substance is still the same. His main character, Travers, (who has different names throughout different stories) can easily be understood in postmodern terms.

In many ways, I feel like we are repeating the sixties and seventies. We are starting a new Vietnam in Iraq, but for version 2.0, rich warmongers bought all the media companies so there would be no resistance. In some ways it depresses me that we are doomed to repeat the same history over and over, but in other ways it reaffirms my nihilism so much that I would be disappointed if humanity did it any other way.

Well, I think I’m going to start my backup software and take a nap until the sun comes up.

This is the funniest video ever!

Requiem fans, take note.

I just spent all night working on typing up my Biology field notes.

I decided to be a perfectionist and make this set of notes complete with photos on InDesign. It took hours.

On the bright side, the computer is up to $300. 4 days left!

I had better get my new one built quickly, because this big paper for psychology is due in the first few days of March.

Also, I asked my boss if I could take a week of my vacation on spring break, and he said that it was okay. KELLY AND I ARE GOING TO HAVE A SEXY PARTY TO END ALL SEXY PARTIES.

That’s what I’m talkin’ about.

> Daedelus - The Weather’s Secret Service

I feel like I’m in limbo today. I only spent about an hour and a half at work. There is absolutely nothing to do there. After work I remembered to buy blank CDs, but I forgot to tell my boss about the days off. I’m going to send myself an e-mail. The only thing I really did today was go to my psychology class. It turns out this one girl that I thought was a meth addict was actually quite smart. I got all dolled up, as usual. There is this one girl in my class who told me I did art at her house when I was in Cub Scouts. I don’t remember her at all, I just remember those people had giant mastiff dogs and the house stunk of them.

She seems pretty cool, and we were discussing all of these self-described “digital paintings” that were up all over the college. Maybe I’m missing the point here, but what exactly is a “digital painting?” Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I painting is just that. You use PAINT. Not Photoshop. The correct term here is digital print. If it’s digital, I just have to take your word for it that this is actually drawn in and isn’t just a photo run through two random filters in Photoshop. I’m sorry, but if I have no idea how you created something and it looks like I can create the same thing in two minutes, that’s not art. In real museums they have things like “oil on canvas, blah blah blah” the same should apply to digital works. “Painted in Photoshop, no images used” or something like that would make me have a lot more respect for the artist than simply the vague terminology of “digital painting.”

That’s beside the point though. Since my classes are now pretty much my only social outlet, I’m glad that I am sort of making a few “class” friends. You wouldn’t even say hello to them if you saw them on the street, you just sort of smile and halfway wave, but they are better than nothing when the teacher is being incomprehensible (which in this class is more often than not).

In other news, only a day has gone by and already I have received my first bid on my computer. It’s just the opening bid of $100, but in $100 is definitely something! I kept my e-mail client open all day (I always do that, but I was actively checking it today) waiting for eBay to send me an e-mail saying that someone had bid, and it wasn’t until I checked it on a whim on the actual site that I found out that someone bid and apparently they don’t send you an e-mail for that. I’m excited though! The first bid! Maybe I will have the wonderful dual core system of my dreams sooner than later. And if this auction makes a whole bunch of money, I might end up getting whatever Apple is coming out with on February 28. I really hope it’s the 12″ Intel-based PowerBook. That would rock my crotch because that’s what I’ve been waiting for this whole time. I will build a cheap Linux server in my cool new case I got, and rock the OS X wirelessly on my laptop, streaming my files from the server. Sweet.

So far, I have gotten at least “A”s on all of my assignments for my psychology class. I’m totally going to get an “A” in that class if I keep up on the reading and do the assignments. I think I got one question wrong on the quiz we had today, and it was some arbitrary number that I didn’t commit to memory because I had read too far ahead. Oh well. I’m not very tired, but I think I’m going to turn off the computer. Actually, I am pretty tired. I redesigned the template on the blog a little bit today in light of the possible 2,000 hits per month I might be getting. I sorta like it, but I need a new mugshot. Well, I’m off to dreamland.

Some random idiot just sent me a message on MySpace and George Bush was in their “heroes” list.

Here’s what I sent back:

“I hope you’re being sarcastic with that George Bush hero thing. Needlessly sending 2,000 Americans to the grave to provide kickbacks to defense contractors doesn’t really fit my definition of ‘heroic.’”

And now it’s time to sleep.