rolling down the hills

Ennui — A. @ 3:54 am

Tonight I feel kind of…unfulfilled.

I didn’t do much today. Woke up at Zero’s after this very fun dinner party the night before. Went home, watched Storytelling again. It was totally awesome.

Went over and hung out at Brian’s with Mario. We watched Kathy Griffin and then watched Shortbus. We also saw the new Goldfrapp video for A&E…it really sucked.

For some reason, we made spreadsheets of everyone we’d ever fucked, and it turned out Mario and I were nearly tied. For the record, “sex” is defined as anything more than mutual masturbation and/or making out. I’m at 19 or so. Which is a lot less than I thought.

  1. Richard
  2. Charley
  3. Justin
  4. Jon
  5. Royce
  6. Peng
  7. Andrew
  8. Jordan
  9. Kevin
  10. Josh
  11. Martyn
  12. Brian (from Arcata)
  13. Thomas
  14. Adrian
  15. Mark
  16. Drew
  17. Terry
  18. Mario
  19. Zero

I went to Fry’s on Friday and got one of those $100 hard foam Dance Dance Revolution pads. It’s actually really great…I can do songs at the same level as at the arcade. I very rarely play, but I need to change that. I’m trying to become more active, so that’s a step.

I guess I feel kind of lost and split between coasts. My mom was talking about if one of my grandparents were to die that I might be able to live over there in the top of the two-family house there. But like…I don’t even know what I want to do with school. Sac State’s graphic design program seems…well…subpar.

Lately I feel I have no ties to this place. My grandma is slipping deeper and deeper into dementia…and there is nothing I can do. Zero relationship-requested me on Fbook…I wanted this to be some kind of awesome new relationship where we wouldn’t need labels or expectations or anything, we could just fly through space and bang Barbarella…but it’s becoming conventional really fast.

I’m lonely in my big bed with my fluffy comforter.

It’s 4 a.m.

And I have to work tomorrow.

God damn it.

My goal this week is to write at least a blurb on my wiki for everyone I’ve fucked.

Oh, and also, best album EVER (this week) is Glass Candy’s B/E/A/T/B/O/X. It’s hellza on iTunes…best song is “Glass Castle”.

bright lights, TV screen, feels like looking in a magazine

Ennui — A. @ 11:40 pm

The power was off for three damn days. And the most annoying part of it was that it wasn’t completely off, it was a brownout, so we got like half lighting and appliances would make noises but not actually work. It would take like 45 minutes to boil water, but somehow miraculously my computer would charge. I’m sure I’ve completely destroyed the battery by running it for three days on brownout power.

I’ve actually been having a lot of fun, the weekend before the storm I went over to Mari (Zero’s roomate)’s birthday party. And I as you may know, I’m not really a party person… but I had a whole bunch of fun. Whenever I’m a party I go into that “how will I write about this” mode, but the party wasn’t compelling enough to write out scene by scene.

The part that was totally awesome was when Mari got out this bottle of absinthe that one of her friends had given her. So basically, that shit is awesome. One glass and everything is AMAZINGLY GREAT. It’s that unshakably certain feeling that no matter what happens, you are going to be in a great mood.

The wormwood is supposed to make you hallucinate, but I read online that that’s a myth. And with first-hand evidence, it is definitely a myth unless you drink a whole bunch of it. And it’s 120-150 proof, so ‘d like to know what kind of alcohol that strong won’t make you think you’re hallucinating.

Anyway, Zero and I had a wonderful time. Unfortunately, the morning after, he ended up accidentally taking my keys so I spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out with Mari watching Doctor Who, which I had never seen before. It was pretty awesome. She got a pizza and some breadsticks and we lounged around until Zero dropped off my keys later.

Zero has been helping his mom move for weeks. And she is so rude to him!

So I’ve been getting up ridiculously early… this morning I got up at like 7:40 or something like that. My coworker gave me a ride home today ’cause it was raining, and she’s going to pick me up at like 7:30 tomorrow. Needless to say, web development at the job is going at breakneck speed with all these hours.

If I keep up these hours, I should be ready for a launch by the end of the week.

But yeah…no social life until then.

The house still reeks of smoke from the fire that’s been burning in the fireplace for like three days. The dishwasher won’t work for some reason… I’m going to flip the breakers tomorrow morning and see if that fixes anything.

One of my coworkers lent me this really interesting novel called Griffin and Sabine…it’s this book that has all these letters that you take out of their envelopes inside the novel and read them…it’s half plot, half art…really awesome.

I’ve been talking to Aaron and Mario on AIM…I swear, all my friends are gay guys. Aaron is actually a round character instead of Brian’s cardboard representations of him. We talk about how much we love Star Trek and Sci-Fi. I hella got him into Firefly :). It’s strange how people can completely surprise you. Mario, however, continues his old cycle. He is going on a date with somebody in Davis… someone that goes to the university there. He has already dated five people in the graduate program there… I don’t know how I resisted making some kind of dark joke about it. Maybe I didn’t resist… I don’t even remember.

WAFFLE TIME

But zomg! I totally went out for breakfast with Christen last weekend… it was really awesome, we were kind of on this retro theme and were talking a lot about Kelly, which rarely came up, even when it was happening. And as much as Kelly thinks that we sit around and “talk shit” about her, I have to say this: “Bitch, GET OVER YOURSELF.” I told my dad the whole saga on our way back from Placerville. After the story, he was silent for a few minutes, then said “Kelly was always a spoiled brat.” So yeah. Even my dad agrees.

I like to think that I don’t know why Kelly and I stopped talking. But I do know why. I’m willing to apologize for everything I’ve said…she takes everything way too seriously…but the thing that I can’t do is keep putting in effort when she doesn’t.

Yes, I didn’t call her for ages. After trying to get ahold of her for about eight months, I just stopped. She kept standing Christen and I up. We’d call, and Jesse (the boyfriend) would answer the phone and say she was in the shower or something and didn’t know we were hanging out. Of course, since Christen and I were already hanging out, Kelly would never feel like showing up. Because obviously all we did was “talk shit” about her. It’s not like we’d lost one of our best friends. Nah, nothing like that.

Christen was living with her, and couldn’t take the daily bullshit, so she decided to officially end the friendship that had already been over for a while.

I, of course, was stuck in the middle. I tried to be friends with both of them… and it was really awkward… but I rarely saw Kelly unless I was over at the house. She kept telling me to break up with Adrian… I remember on our trips to see Massive Attack and Ladytron pretty much all I could talk about was how much of a douchebag he was.

But I had to let that relationship play out to the bitter end, or I knew I’d be calling him up again. And trust me, it’s over. Have you seen his Facebook pictures lately? He needs teeth, hair, and a 24 Hour Fitness membership. *shudder*

Anyway, I don’t know whether that was really the wedged in between us. I think the Jesse served as a wedge just as much as Adrian did.

This one day Kelly called me out of the blue, I was so surprised and glad to hear from her. 10 minutes into the conversation, she tells me that her Power Mac is broken, and could I come fix it? So, like a fucking idiot, I hopped on the bus. I didn’t have a drive to back up her stuff on, so I couldn’t fix it. It took a while to diagnose though, so I thought she’d come in the room and talk to me. Nope. Watched TV in the other room with Jesse. She actually left for work 30 minutes after I got there. So I got to sit in her room alone and do shit for her. This is the kind of feeling that typifies being Kelly’s friend.

So basically, we hung out a few times over that year… going out for coffee and having nothing to talk about. I would just babble on endlessly like an idiot, afraid to ask her the tough questions.

Because with Kelly, you must understand that you are either with her or against her. You can say things like “you know, I don’t think going to L.A. and fucking some forty-year-old guy that has fucked a million girls is a good idea.” Becky, Lacey, everyone was totally into that. “Yeah, do it, that’s so hot! Fuck your rock star! Get AIDS! We are such great friends!”

Kelly keeps friends around that will never say no to her. Becky, the penultimate fair weather friend, goes along with whatever kelly wants. Lacey is too into herself to really care about anything or anyone, but keeps Kelly around for some reason, after fucking both Christen and Kelly over for hundreds of dollars in utiliities that she accepted their shares of but never paid (she really spent all the money on clothes and alcohol). But wait…

BEST FRIENDS
OMG BEST FRIENDS FOREVER! PS: I TOTALLY SPENT ALL MY RENT MONEY ON VODKA!!

I mean, the kind of soul-searching that’s required when your best friend doesn’t want to talk to you again is a little beyond Lacey’s abilities at this point.

You know, even after all of this I would probably forgive her and say that I was at fault (just like everyone always does) except for this one thing that Christen told me.

It was Christmas of some year… the year that they were living together. Kelly was supposed to come over and we were supposed to do our normal Christmas thing. Hang around and make fun of everybody, shake our presents, chill in the hammock.

But it was about 2 p.m. and she hadn’t shown up yet. I had been calling her wondering what was up.

Christen was at the house while I was calling. She told me I’m that Chris who was visiting from Denver asked Kelly why she wasn’t going over. “Is it a long way?” He asked. ( I’m maybe two miles from her old place.) She just kind of grimaced, and said something to the effect that she doesn’t know why I kept calling her all the time.

So yeah.

Kind of bitter.

Nah, I think we need another classic shot:

BEST FRIENDS FOREVER
ZOMG KELLY I LOVE YOU ALMOST AS MUCH AS I LOVE POT!

I should try to sleep, it’s 10:30 and I have to try to wake up at six. The only way I’m getting through this is to think of it as some kind of sleep triathalon. Which it damn well is going to be. I’m finishing the website this week, and nothing’s going to stop me.

brownout

Ennui — A. @ 11:00 am
YouTube Preview Image

I was supposed to telecommute today, but there’s a brownout, Regional Transit isn’t running today, and there are big pile-ups on all the major highways. The airport is shut down too, there are “hurricaine-strength winds,” according to the Bee.

So here I sit, watching YouTube videos as my battery slowly depletes. I would do work, but I wouldn’t be able to actually work on it because I can’t turn on my external hard drives. Or turn on the light. And I’m afraid to connect my computer to the browned-out power. When it gets to 50% I guess I’ll shut it down and try to read some Ballard in the dark.

I wish I would have gotten some candles, but I would have surely burned the house down with them by now :)

Well, nobody’s on AIM, so back to YouTube.

A life of leisure is no life you know

Ennui — A. @ 10:00 pm

I woke up exhausted at eight o’clock a.m.

Doing this full-time work thing is so exhausting. I have no time for a social life. I barely had time today to go to IKEA and pick up two more of those lamps that I love. I put some superefficient compact fluorescent bulbs in them and they only draw like 7 W each, which isn’t bad.

So basically, I was totally cranky all day. I got off work, called everyone I knew, and nobody picked up. To be fair, my mom later told me she was sleeping, Brian was at work, and Christen is in cell phone hell for another two weeks or something until her service switches over (not like her old phone ever worked). Or mine for that matter. I remember when we were so excited about our smartphones, now I want to throw mine in the river.

Patrick finally called me back though. We talked for a while on AV, he talked a lot about how he works out and how he’s going to Germany apparently on some kind of thing through his school.

I tried to get to sleep early last night. I was totally exhausted. Lying in bed at around one Brian calls me. Earlier in the night, he had sort of dared me to call Aaron and ask why he wasn’t talking to Brian anymore. So I did.

We ended up talking for a few hours… and the person that was on the other line ended up being totally different from all of my preconceptions about Aaron (that I had formed through the lens of Brian’s observations). Turns out he’s read The Myth of Sisyphus, the only Albert Camus novel that I haven’t read. We also talked about our favorite Star Trek characters, the sad state of the world economy, China’s role as an emerging power… but I did end up asking what Brian wanted me to.

It was as I suspected. Brian just wouldn’t give Aaron any space after the breakup. According to Aaron, he doesn’t really talk to his friends a whole lot (the polar opposite of Brian, who I’m always on the phone with). I don’t know… I have certain friends I talked to on the phone a lot, and I have others I barely ever talk to on the phone. And also, the sad fact is as much as we would’ve liked to stay as close to people that don’t live in the same city as us, it’s inevitable that you are not going to put as much effort into long-distance friendships than real-life ones.

Also, there is the unsaid truth that you should never talk to your exes unless the breakup was mutual. According to Aaron, the day after he broke up with Brian, there Brian was calling him and instant messaging him just like it had never ended.

And then the whole fact that Brian is totally not over Aaron at all… he was reenacting this scene in “Cup of Coffee” when he found some clothes that he hadn’t seen since he went down to San Diego.

I read a few more stories in that JG Ballard anthology. The last one I read was classic Ballard, the death of the soul in the guise of relaxation on the Côte d’Azur… I loved it.

Zero is back from the Midwest… but we haven’t seen each other yet. This working full-time thing has got me so totally exhausted all the time… I have to go to sleep before midnight or I have a day like today where I got barely anything done and spent most of the day fighting to stay awake. I’ve noticed that it helps to open up the blinds on the window in my office, after about an hour of soaking in the sun my body realizes that it’s time to be awake.

I was so cranky today and my internal sarcastic monologue was taking it all out on my coworkers. Don’t get me wrong, I love my coworkers. But they are married, heterosexual zombies. And they just don’t get it.

I can ignore it most of the time, since they are generally affable and we have a lot of lunchtime YouTube bonding, but today I was just not taking it.

So Mario got me a Flying Spaghetti Monster decal for my car. It’s like one of those Christian ones with the fish or the one with the fish that says Darwin, mine is the spaghetti monster with little squiggles of spaghetti coming off of the shape. I will say a lot of things about Mario, but I have to admit he has good taste. So I put it on my scooter about a week ago and they just noticed it today. I was explaining about the Flying Spaghetti Monster and about how it’s all about ridiculing the idiots that want to mandate intelligent design in science curriculums.

I don’t care what religion you are, but science is science. Religion is religion. And intelligent design is not science. I was talking about how the FSM people (Pastafarians) will shame a school board into abandoning projects for world intelligent design domination by mandating that the theory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster be thought along with intelligent design. Because they are both NOT SCIENCE.

I looked up at their faces, and they were giving me that kind of like nervous laughter look. And I just wanted to totally blow up.

OKAY GUYS, I KNOW THAT I DON’T HAVE MY CUSHY HOUSE IN A GATED COMMUNITY AND A HUSBAND AND KIDS AND ALL OF YOUR SOCIETALLY-APPROVED BULLSHIT.

I AM A FAGGOT. I DON’T GET ANY VOICE IN THIS FUCKED UP SOCIETY. YOU KNOW WHAT VOICE I GET? YOUR DOMESTIC BLISS. YOU ARE THE ONLY GROUP PC ENOUGH TO MATTER. AND I FUCKING HATE YOU.

YOU THINK THIS IS ALL SUCH A FUCKING JOKE? THIS IS ALL I HAVE. THIS IS THE ONLY VOICE OF REASON IN AN INSANE COUNTRY THAT BELIEVES THAT SADDAM AND OSAMA WERE BEST BUDS. PEOPLE WHO CAN’T FIND IRAQ ON A MAP, PEOPLE WHO DON’T “BELIEVE” IN EVOLUTION.

THIS IS MINE. THIS IS THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER. THIS IS THE SYMBOL OF HOW STUPID AND RIDICULOUS ALL OF YOU PEOPLE ARE.

So yeah. Kind of pissed. I really like my coworkers. It’s one of the things that Chris from Davis has been teaching me…if people need lies to keep their lives going, just let them. We all have our foma.

It’s nearly 10… I really want to see Zero tonight but there is no hope of me waking up in time and I don’t go to sleep right now.

I have been doing stuff that I don’t want to at work, and now I’m on my extra hours so tomorrow I’m telling everyone to fuck off, and I’m going to work on the website.

I’m gonna get this shit DONE.

Oh, one more thing. Brian and I got a little tipsy on lemon drops during New Year’s Eve and we called our exes. Now Terry keeps trying to contact me. *yawn* I don’t need a lecture on how immature I am. If he is well-adjusted, I’m thanking my lucky electrons that I’m not.

I felt really bad after I left it, but not as bad in the morning. I could have said some MUCH worse shit. So yes, Terry, you can stop refreshing the page frantically.

Sleep time.

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