Today was fun… it was a warm, sunny day. I drove to work, dealt with the stress that is press day, and left at 4:30.

I’ve been neglecting my exercise… I’m such a Scorpio and I view fat as something that has to be conquered. That day I jogged 2 miles was the death knell of my impetus to exercise. So I decided to walk after work every day.

I used to do that back when it was warm last year and I fell out of the habit during the winter. I’ve also been doing other stuff, but walking is a good first step.

After work I walked from True Love down to the Downtown Plaza and back, which is about 40 blocks.

Just as I was getting off work, I got a call from Andrew saying that he had crashed his bike and had these huge wounds. I only ran into two people on my walk… one was one of Adrian’s exes that thankfully didn’t recognize me, and as I came up to 20th, I spied with my little eye something that starts with A.

Smiling, he took off his shirt and showed me the huge bloody road rashes and he had a big bandage on his head…I smiled and gave him a hug (made awkward ’cause of the wounds). Drove home, I went to play DDR tonight but the place was closed for a public event.

Must find a better place to play…but the only other machine that’s close is in Rosemont…which a) is a shitty area and b) is 10 miles away, round trip. Hmm…there’s one at Scandia, but it closes at 10 p.m. Lame.

I’ve been reading Reddit all night… more doomsaying about our economy, lambasting our insane leaders… the dangers of carbon nanotubes… a really funny scanned-in version of Iggy Pop’s “rider list,” his list of things necessary for shows…endless laughs. He requires a Bob Hope impersonator and a copy of USA today with an article about morbidly obese people :P I <3 Iggy.

I read this great blog post where this girl totally said everything I feel about Boondock Saints:

Boondock Saints: Hey do you like Quentin Tarantino movies but wish he did more? You do, well you should watch this movie, it’s not as good as his films, nor as clever, nor as well shot, but you’ll feel like you’re watching a Traantino movie, sorta…kinda…ish.

Here’s the thing, when I first saw this movie, a friend was telling me for the longest time “Oh man, this movie kicks ass, have to see this movie, you’re a movie guy, you’ll love this.” Here’s a note for anyone out there, if you ever here “You’ll love this.” Or “Kick ass” be wary, because the movie will at most be okay. And this movie is, it’s okay. It’s a lot of swaggering around and cursing, dick talk, violence and sex. But no real plot, and that’s the problem. You can put all that stuff in a movie, but if you have no plot then you don’t really have anything at all.

I wasn’t surprised to find out that the writer and director of this film, was a short balding fat guy who had a drinking problem. Basically short man syndrome. For those of you who don’t know what Short Man syndrome is, it’s a short person often trying to pick fights or show off how badass they are, even though no body cares. That’s Boondock Saints. A movie that wants to be badass, show you it’s badass and tell you it’s badass. But really its just sort of there. Just like short people.

I could not agree more.

While the afternoon was awesome, I fell into my typical Milo mood after I found out Country Club was closed. Idling in the Tesoro parking lot, I desperately wanted to do something and to not do something…to hide away in my room and paint and to say fuck poverty and go out and drink with strangers, be fake, be the toast of the town.

Possibly I was feeling some existential angst thanks to the fact that my aunt that I never see (Kathleen) was at the house when I came home tonight. I hadn’t seen her in ages and canceled my dinner plans to hang out with the family, but her boyfriend (who would not take his sunglasses off the entire night…I couldn’t help but speculate he was high on something) apparently had a really bad toothache and they left early. I don’t know how to feel about Kathy. I mean, at one point I felt like she was my surrogate mother… and then four years later she tells me I’m lucky she didn’t take blackmail pictures of me with Andrew during our failed drug intervention.

You can lead a horse to water, right? I feel like one of the characters in A Scanner Darkly where everyone is giving them strange looks and wondering if they are on drugs. I mean, I can never really know anymore. I realized tonight that I couldn’t even remember her boyfriend’s name. She gave me her new number for the thousandth time… I should call her.

We had a private conversation in the kitchen and I forget how intelligent she is. Intelligent drug addicts are strange…they hide under this veneer of malaise and just go for the gold when you’re not expecting it. In a minute she nailed my feeling of being an impostor in someone else’s house, my vague unease about Grammie’s deteriorating mental state…I just wanted to hug her and cry.

It’s strange not having a best friend anymore. It’s strange and not knowing anyone that you can trust fully. Of course, I can trust Meursault (my MacBook), but those made from less durable materials are always suspect. Having secrets myself makes this all the more difficult. I need to go back in time and kidnap a Christen that I could love again.

My current defense mechanism has been to treat life as a strategy game… a kind of social Risk… but Risk was never practical… the supply chain demands of sustaining a worldwide army are never considered… and in the same vein I feel like I’ve overlooked variables essential to my happiness.

I want to experience the kind of simple, breezy pleasure that I enjoy while hanging out with Andrew or listening to The Bird and the Bee (which I heard wafting through the air in front of P.F. Chang’s today).

Also, I haven’t written anything of substance in my journal for ever. I felt like I couldn’t force it… but it just had to happen. And it’s all boiled up to something. I feel so shaky emotionally that I shouldn’t be in a relationship…but that is what the thing with Andrew could become if we do cross that Rubicon.

The day of the party at Zero’s house (where we drew on John Waters stashes and drove around the lawn on my scooter)

Click here for all of Zero’s pix from the party.

Andrew and I were going to hang out and bike around downtown. We took the bike trail down to old Sacramento, drank a pitcher of beer each, and walked around the train tracks near the river.

The train signal.

We climbed up on top of this platform for a train signal and it kept seeming like we were going to kiss… I don’t know why I didn’t… I guess I keep thinking of all the years where this was my ultimate fantasy and to make it real just seems like some kind of fold in the fabric of space-time. It was so beautiful out and romantic and I was just the right amount of tipsy to do it, but it just didn’t seem like the right time. I want it to be a natural thing, not a capital-E EVENT. But it will be an event. In retrospect, I should have bit the bullet and made the first move. I’m not a first move kind of guy, though.

This whole meeting in public thing is odd…I find it difficult to be intimate when I’m not in my own element…which I guess now is this godforsaken house that I’m trying to cover more and more of with paintings.

Taggart and I under the trestle.

I see people in relationships ignoring their friends, disappearing into some kind of internal world. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to become a Christen. But as I get older it seems inevitable.

It’s a lot of major life changes… by December I need to be enrolled in some kind of four-year school. And I need some way to pay for it. I guess instead of painting I should have been looking at schools. But, oddly enough, painting is really the only thing I can do now. Surfing anything but Engadget Mobile bores me… I’m angry at my friends for some reason. I’m angry my phone keeps dying… the new battery didn’t even last a year. Here’s what I’ve been working on:

This one is a 4×6″ canvas.

I’m still working on this one, my big canvas…it’s much closer to being done now that I did the first background coat. I need a larger brush to do the next coat of the background with, I wore out my medium-size brush…it’s shedding hairs, but I like the effect it gave.

I wanted to hang out with Sam tonight, but he didn’t answer and I didn’t feel like driving to Rancho Cordova.

I’m cheering myself up with fake motivational posters…they are so fucking funny. My favorite one EVAR:

It’s 1 a.m. and I need to try to get to sleep. Even though I will most certainly not be successful. I hate sleeping alone in a stranger’s house.

I was in such a shitty mood last night, but I went out to Country Club at around 10 p.m. and played DDR for a while.

I don’t care about the social stigma, it keeps my mind occupied while I exercise.

Got back, finished the painting I’d been working on this week, went to bed. I like how it came out, I need to work on the big canvas with the switch tomorrow…I have a better idea about what I want to do with it.

And then this morning I found out the Walter Meego album (the band that opened for the Presets), Voyager, finally came out. I downloaded it, and ZOMG. Friggin’ awesome! I am in love with the single “Forever” and the first song “Wanna Be a Star.” You can listen to most of the songs on last.fm.

There was this negative review that had said that the album was a pithy homage to Daft Punk, but it is actually fucking awesome. I don’t hear all the ripped-off synths they talked about.

It’s synthpop at its finest.

Thrill Kill Kult on Sunday! I can’t wait.

Today wasn’t so bad. I worked all day, met Andrew for coffee…drove to Sam’s place. We hung out and watched Salad Fingers.

I often forget that Sam gives good advice. Hm.

Considered calling Patrick today, but ultimately decided against it.

I feel like like everyone’s pulling me from every direction and I can’t decide who I want. I mean, the answer has always been Andrew, but I feel like it’s going to complicate things.

Zero is like totally in love with me and won’t understand that we will never date.

I feel like at this point in my life I don’t want to be in a relationship… but I do want to be with Andrew in some way. I feel like it’s this roulette wheel of who I am most annoyed with.

Waiting to be betrayed.

Friends aren’t really talking to you, they are just gathering dirt to use later. I really need to hang out with Annie more. I had no idea how right she was.

I think I just need to accept that dating Andrew might leave me friendless.

I just have so many problems saying no. I want to make everyone happy… not for other people’s sakes but my own. I don’t know.

I should just be like Terry and have a new best friend every month. Or be like Mario and have no actual friends.

The only friend that really give me any useful advice is far far away in 1971.

I wish she would come back.

Once trust is lost it can never be regained, I guess.

In lighter news, we are going to the My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult show on Sunday, which should be super-exciting.

I don’t want to be a Brian, jumping from sinking ship to sinking ship and never taking the time to think about my future. Unlike him, I won’t settle.

Speaking of the future, I have been looking at colleges and it turns out that Sacramento State doesn’t actually have a web design degree. They offer a graphic design degree but that’s it. So I went to the College Board website and did some searches and there are a lot of schools that offer a comma trouble is they all have tuition of like $20,000 a semester.

I called my dad today and talked with him for awhile and apparently he told me that he would pay $10,000 or so for my first semester at Sacramento State.

I’m really trepidatious about going to the damn school. I did some research and of the 100 people that applied for the graphic design program only 40 were accepted. And you have to take 30 credits before that. And I don’t even want to be a graphic designer. Bullshit. I don’t know what to do. Take out a huge loan and go to some school that costs $40,000 a year? I just don’t think I’d be able to do that. Who just hands out $80,000 loans?

Anyway, I’m supposed to be at the office super early tomorrow, so I’m going to try to sleep.

I did the most irresponsible thing that I’ve done a long time on Wednesday.

I rented a car and went to the presets concert in San Francisco and blew all my money. It was the best decision I’ve made in months… the concert was fucking amazing. I mean, the Dresden dolls concert was amazing, but this was incredible in a totally different way. At Dresden dolls, everyone was freaking out, but at the Presets show everyone was crazily dancing and jumping up and down…the crowd was just so INTO IT.

Their music has so much energy and I thought that that would translate well to a stage show, but I had no idea. I was expecting a DJ set, but they played an actual concert. They played like every song I ever wanted to hear…it was so fucking amazing.

The show was at the Mezzanine, which we found out is a really great venue. It’s the biggest nightclub looking thing I’ve ever been inside. It has DJ booths and a huge stage and an upstairs with a bar…the place was huge and totally filled up by the time the Presets started playing.

ero and I got there are rather early (doors opened at nine and they didn’t end up going on until about 11:40) so we went out to the large smoking area and were chatting when this girl came up to me. I looked over at her and realized that she was a friend of mine from my AP English class at my high school. We used to be friends on MySpace or Facebook but she was giving us the whole lecture about how she’s just beyond MySpace or whenever. I would’ve given her my card, but I’m used to living in the MySpace age where you can just look somebody up later since she had told me where she lived. I tried to find her after the show, but she had left.

We had a really great conversation about never going back to Crescent City and what had happened to a bunch of our old friends and her whole thing about not using MySpace anymore was that she had already reconnected with everyone she wanted to reconnect with (which I guess at the time should have set off alarm bells, but I guess I didn’t notice). I loved her in class though she had such a way about her… and she told me that she was a lesbian but just didn’t want to come out because everyone at the high school was really crazy and lame.

And now every time I listen to Apocalypto (their new album) I see him going crazy and belting out the lyrics and everyone around me screaming and dancing. It was like a mini-mosh pit… there was so much contact that it seemed like moshing was going to happen, but everyone was just so happy and on this high…so fucking incredible.

We were right in front, as usual:

In retrospect, all the pictures look really tame but I couldn’t exactly take out my camera when everyone was freaking out.

The highlight of the trip was that I totally HAD A CAR! I rented it from enterprise, and it was like a brand-new 2007 Hundai Elantra, with power locks and windows and a/c and everything…it was like being an adult for an entire day. It even had the wireless locks! lol

I was so exhausted after the concert… they kept up this level of energy that I never thought a band could keep up… I think it was because they moved seamlessly from one song to the next… and the singer’s belting out of the lyrics. They are so electro-punk.

So after the concert we went over to Zero’s friend Ashley’s house at San Francisco State… where we ended up staying until about 4 AM. I was totally exhausted when we got back onto the freeway (thank you Google maps or I would’ve been driving around for days).

It was about when we got to Fairfield that I noticed a strange blue tinge to the horizon and and that horrible sinking feeling where you realize you’ve stayed up all night.

We continued on, past Vacaville, past Davis… we stopped at the In-N-Out there, but it was closed since it was about 6 AM at this point. When we finally drove up to Zero’s house, it was 6:30 AM. I tried to stay awake until the car rental place opened at 7:30, but I was totally unsuccessful. Thank the gods I woke up at 11 and was able to get down there in time. I was expecting some kind of turmoil because I really didn’t have enough credit to rent it… she put a $200 hold on my card which really only had about $120 worth of credit on it, but it all worked out fine (the rental cost $70 or so including insurance). As of today (Saturday) it all went through and I have about $70 worth of credit left on my card.

I hopped on my scooter, went to work, worked for about three hours but couldn’t stop coughing, so I went home.

Reason that I haven’t been writing lately is because my voice was just completely destroyed by screaming at the concerts and being in the smoking room at the Powerhouse for like five hours the Saturday of the Dresden Dolls show.

I don’t remember much from the few days after that… I was away, then asleep, I remember waking up at like 3 AM and I guess going to work the next day or something. Today’s the first day that I woke up and I actually feel awake and not completely and totally exhausted.

This this was the week of shows, and I am not disappointed. Anyway, I should head out. It just stopped raining and I need to pick up a few things from the store.

Oh. My. Fucking. God.

The Dresden Dolls show at the Fillmore was the best show I’ve seen in my whole life.

I would write about it, but my voice is totally gone from screaming.

I had a moment with Amanda Palmer.

It was in-fucking-credible.

Watched The Doom Generation and Election tonight with Zero, talked to Andrew about sex…that was weird.

Probably going to go see the Presets on Wednesday after my final.

Totally going to see My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult on June 1st.

Having money fucking rocks.