I went to sleep really early tonight, and of course, I’m awake at 2 a.m. the only reason I woke up was that I was thirsty…and then of course I had to check the UPS site to see where my smartphone was and then there was an e-mail from an old friend that I was moved to reply to… and of course a whole bunch of downloads had finished. I’ve been talking with Adrian’s cousin this week and he has such impeccable taste in music (so does Adrian). He turned me onto a few bands that I’m in love with. Here are some of the new bands I’ve been listening to:
I just downloaded Beams by The Presets, which Adrian’s cousin recommended, and it’s so great!
The Knife (discovered mostly through other people on last.fm with similar tastes) – very, very odd synthpop
Shiny Toy Guns (discovered, oddly enough, through Katie) – very anthem-like songs, and of course the wonderfully danceable “Le Disko”
The Postal Service ( Adrian.) – jury is still out, I haven’t listened to the whole album yet
Lady Sovereign (my friend Mark) – She is so adorable! I’m hooked on her single “Love Me or Hate Me,” even though it’s rap (which I rarely listen to).
I Am X (the singer from the last Sneaker Pimps album’s solo thing…discovered from user kissandswallow on last.fm) – this album is an acquired taste and has a few good songs… it was like Splinter, the last Sneaker Pimps album, which was bad except for the first few songs.
CSS [Cansei De Ser Sexy] (last.fm and they played with Ladytron at the concert) – really addictive, simple songs with catchy lyrics.
Death From Above 1979 (from the CSS song ” Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death from Above”) – hard, metallic guitar songs with great lyrics
Röyksopp – (from last.fm users with similar tastes to mine) – slow, syrupy sweet synth-pop with oddly intelligent lyrics
Christmas didn’t turn out so bad after all. I got about $200 (the cost of my shiny new phone and then some), and a great present from Kelly and Chris. I was feeling really down until I played some Dance Dance Revolution on my computer, and it reminded me of all the fun times me and Joe had and it made me really happy. I’m going to kill two birds with one stone…I’m saving up for that hella expensive (but also super-high quality) $300 dance pad from Cobalt Flux.
One thing that really sucked about this Christmas was that I didn’t get to see Adrian at all. I miss him SO much…:( I’m hella taking the bus to go see him tomorrow.
Oh dear, it’s 12:30.
Should get to sleep.
I think my dad is leaving in the morning. Where the fuck does he have to go? He’s fucking retired. It’s just a copout so he can reneg on the car deal.
I can’t sleep. I tried, but couldn’t. I bought Adrian a Christmas present online…listened to some Crossover…my wrists hurt and I want tomorrow to be over. I feel oily and revolting. I’ve been endlessly reading about my Dash. I can’t wait…it’ll arrive Wednesday. It’s the only thing that can pull me out of this kind of depression.
I won’t be able to answer calls on the train or anything…wearing a Bluetooth headset just screams “mug me.”
I don’t think my dad is really going to help me get a car. I’m going to ask him to leave me a check and I’ll just work it all out. He probably won’t.
I had a long talk with my aunt Kathy tonight about how fucked up the family is…and I can’t sleep. I can’t do shit. I just want tomorrow to be over. I want everything to be over. I hate being poor and cold and rained on and endlessly waiting for shit and excluded from everything.
I’m sick of this shit.
And I fear that I’m going to flunk out this semester because I don’t have adequate transportation.
1) The prospect of getting a car seems more and more unlikely as my dad is unwilling to pay the market value of any car.
2) My stupid drunken family members won’t leave and there’s nowhere I can go to escape them since I have no car.
3) Kelly isn’t going to be over tonight because Grammie says we “don’t have enough food.” It’s such a copout. Fuck them all. She has more money than God. The least she could do would be to get another fucking turkey.
4) Today sucks because I’m probably not going to see Kelly or Kathy, the only family down here that I really give a flying shit about.
5) I can’t get presents for anyone because I have no money.
6) Did I mention I hate my family?
Can’t we just call the whole thing off?
Man, I’m so depressed I’m buying my smartphone. Now.
I finally went through the incredibly tedious process of making my voice-recognition software work again. Long story short, I had upgraded to version eight, but was not able to go back to seven when the trial ran out. I feel pretty sick this morning… and I’m not quite sure why. I guess I should have some breakfast.
My new Bluetooth headset came in the mail yesterday, and it is incredibly cool. When I pair it with my Mac, I’m able to get crystal-clear reception all over my room (meaning I can talk via Skype or iChat wirelessly), and I also am able to even get reception all the way the kitchen. When I walk too far away to get reception, as soon as I come back it is automatically reconnected, as opposed to other ones I’ve tried where you have to re-pair it if you lose connection for even a moment. It’s so great not have to hold the phone up to my face for hours… that really irritates my wrists.
It’s Christmas Eve and I somehow have to magically get everyone presents. I feel extremely selfish lately… I didn’t get my Christmas cards and in the mail in time, and I haven’t gotten a single person presents yet. For one, I’m broke, and for two, it takes two buses full of larcenous poor people to get to the mall. Eh, I can’t make excuses.
My other cousin Michael is here as well… and I feel hesitant to leave my room. There are just too many people here and Kelly is nowhere to be found. I remember every holiday I would come down and immediately disappear to Kelly’s house and we would all have crazy antics and drama and Crash Bandicoot… I feel like that part of my life is dead.
Oh yeah, yesterday we went to Matthew’s party… it wasn’t really a party, it was more of the gathering… one of the boys there seemed utterly surprised that no one was paying attention to him. I love that “I’m a pretty twink, everyone look at me” attitude. Also, I don’t have much respect for Matthew’s taste in music, and it’s really hard to get into a party with everyone rocking out to John Mayer *puke*. Bring on the Nails and Ladytron, bitches.
All in all, I would have to say was a pretty fun outing. I drank Sprite with coconut rum and we watched Lewis Black (my personal God) and a bunch of YouTube videos on Kevin‘s laptop. After everybody went home, me and Adrian stayed the night at Matt’s (as it was in advisable to drive home at like 3 a.m.). The next morning we surfed the Web for a while and tried to wake Matt up… then we all ate some pot roast that we had put on the crock pot in the night before, left the house, got Starbucks, and he dropped us off at our houses.
I spent most of last night playing with my Bluetooth headset. The family got pizza and we were all watching Entrapment… that retarded movie with Sean Connery and the T-Mobile chick. I ended up putting Babylon 5 on my iPod and watching it out there. I’m realizing how much I absolutely hate my drunk loser uncle John. He is SO like that scene in Family Guy where Peter starts the group for the advancement of fat people:
He makes those fat guy sounds ALL DAY LONG. They are so loud they drown out the TV.
Anyway, I woke up at like noon and I still haven’t really left my room… I guess I think that if I boycott Christmas it just won’t happen. I’m embarrassed that I don’t have presents for anybody. I should probably call Kelly and see what the hell is going on.
Oh, did I talk about the car shopping? We went to the Roseville auto mall like two days ago… those salespeople are SO shady. I think my dad and I made a great team though… we absolutely refused to sit down at the table where they wheel and deal you… at one of the dealerships the guy would not give us a quote unless we sat down, so we called his bluff and just walked out. He went from having all the power in the situation to having no power at all… it was masterful.
At the end of the day, we went to check out one of the cars we saw on Craigslist, a 2001 Hyundai Accent with 57,000 miles on it. It was a really nice car, but the guy wants 5,000 and my dad doesn’t want to pay 5,000. The Kelley blue book of the car is like $5,100… the guy is not going to take $4,000, like my dad wants.
Well, I should probably go out into the living room and socialize… I need that damn car.
Not a whole lot has been going on lately…our office Christmas party and gift exchange was yesterday, and it wasn’t too bad. I got one of my coworkers The Dilbert Principle and she loved it.
The reason I’m up at 9 a.m. is because me and my dad are going to go look for cars. He’s down for Christmas and we’ve been Craigslist-ing it up. It was really cool because last night he was actually on my side about it…I overheard him and my grandma talking and she was all “Well he takes the bus to work and everything and it goes right to the college, I don’t see why he needs a car” and my dad was all “Yeah, it’s fine until he gets mugged again..and he’s going to have to be running between downtown and the college all the time.” I was like, w00t. Finally one of my parents is on my side.
I really miss Adrian, we haven’t seen each other in days…but we should be going to Matthew’s party tonight and such. After my dad and I are done with the car thing, I’m going to ask if he can drop me off at Adrian’s.
I sort of wish that I had a little more time before getting the car, I just about have my credit card paid off (only like $100 left!) and I was going to get a smartphone with Web access and everything…but it’s going to be $60-$70 a month, with the phone costing about $250. The phone ends up being $150 after the mail-in rebate, but I have to have the $100 to loan to them.
I’m getting a T-mobile Dash. It has Bluetooth 2.0, wireless stereo support, wi-fi, microSD expansion up to 2GB, and extremely long battery life (more than a week), which is the main reason I’m switching. My current phone I have to recharge a few times a day and it is always dying, and it has no Internet access or QWERTY keyboard. I already got a brand-new Bluetooth headset for my phone so I can have truly wireless conversations…it’s the Nokia BH-900. The quality of the sound is even good enough to do voice-recognition with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, since it’s a Bluetooth 2.0 device.
My dad just popped in and asked if I was ready. These damn old people get up at the crack of dawn…he’s probably been awake since like 5 a.m….I’d better get ready.
Fresh from Garageband: The Peaches concert, 80s Cylon masks, DOWNTOWN!, a fight in the pit, Denny’s two times in a night, and a rendezvous with Matthew and Adrian.
> Paul Oakenfold – Faster Kill Pussycat (w/ Brittany Murphy)
After feeling really down for a few days, I’m oddly feeling better tonight. I watched Babylon 5 almost all night long, and now I’m watching music videos on iFilm. This is one of my favorite videos, it’s Vitalic’s “My Friend Dario.” And here is the ever-sexy “Faster Kill Pussycat” by Oakenfold. I wish it wasn’t 3 a.m., because I’m really in the mood for a dance party.
Me and Christen are going to fucking see PEACHES ON FRIDAY!!!! I don’t know if I’ve ever ranted about how much I love Peaches…well…goddamn, she is the sexiest bitch ever! I was only on iFilm because they had the full music video of her (incredibly catchy) new song “Downtown.” For those of you who don’t know, I’m all about downtown.
I feel like going to the mall tomorrow and getting a bunch of clothes even though I can’t afford it. I feel lost in this universe of sex and things. My lust for stuff is unquenchable. I swear, I think about a 23″ Apple Cinema Display and a shiny new MacBook more than anything. I feel like I need to escape from this world where all we can do is fuck each other and buy shit. What else is there?
It must be the rain that’s making me feel like this. Okay, I’m going to confess, in addition to re-reading Shirley Jackson’s masterful The Haunting of Hill House, I started reading the Sex and the City book. It was like the only thing in Christen’s room and I just got hooked on it. I feel like I’ve lived the loveless lives of a million blasé single women. It is the worst feeling in the world.
I only have a few more chapters though…and then…well, I don’t have anything new to read. I’ll steal something of Kelly’s ;)
I think me and Christen are going to hang out tomorrow. It should be hella fun. I see her more than I see Kelly. It’s so odd. I feel like all I do lately is complain that I don’t have a car and that I don’t have a MacBook or a Sidekick or a cool phone…mostly, I think my depression has to do with transportation. Whenever I used to feel depressed in Crescent City, I’d dress up all sexily and go into town to hang out with Joe or Kevin or Misty or Josh, or just go play DDR until something happened…but I can’t even do that. I did actually find some good car deals on Craigslist today. Then I’ll be able to go to the club again! (the trains stop running at midnight, and the buses much earlier)
I feel like I’m in limbo. And it’s not a good kind of limbo. I feel like I’m losing my grip on reality since the only places I see are work and my house. If it wasn’t for hanging out with Adrian and Christen, I would be totally crazy.
I really have no idea what life is about. I see these people that like, go and fuck random strangers on Craigslist and go to the club and fuck people…and that’s like, their life. I think that’s what I find so disturbing about Bret Easton Ellis. He doesn’t make excuses for people. Most of us are thinking about satisfying our monkeylike pleasures all the fucking time…like me and my cinema display fetish. I want to find a new way to live…but I don’t think there will be one. Not until I start school, at least. I hope that’s the catalyst that makes me feel better about my life.
I'm a twenty-something writer and web designer based in the New York City area. In my diary you'll find fiction, nonfiction, essays, diatribes, fantasies, harangues and polemics.
