the diary of antoine roquentin

I’m so exhausted. I just wasted most of my time tonight writing an e-mail to a relative who seems to care 10 times more about converting me to young-earth creationism than anything else.

Got back from Burlingame today at about three o’clock in the afternoon. I was so unprepared for the last trip that I ended up having to leave my computer home. However, that will not happen again. I got a duffel bag at Target to put my clothes in while I ride my Vespa. My other suitcase is completely impossible to transport on my Vespa.

I had a bunch of stuff to catch up on at work, but it was a good kind of work… unexpected and challenging. I designed this house ad that just fucking rocked. have you ever made something really awesome for work and you just want to go up to the boss and go “Look at this! This is the kind of attention to detail that I get paid the big bucks for!”

Well, that was short-lived… I went to my work site and the ads aren’t loading at all. Hrm. I find it inconceivable that things can be working when I leave and then break all by themselves. I guess I’m just used to writing static webpages instead of using Web applications.

I have read so much of Future Shock. I know people talk about books that you are a different person after reading… this one definitely falls under that category. Let the quotes begin!

If consumers can no longer distinguish clearly between the real and the simulated, if whole stretches of one’s life may be commercially programmed, we enter into a set of psycho-economic problems of breathtaking complexity. These problems challenge our most fundamental beliefs, not merely about democracy or economics, but about the very nature of rationality and sanity.

In the end, we shall pass beyond the service economy, beyond the imagination of today’s economists; we shall become the first culture in history to employ high technology to manufacture that most transient, yet lasting of products: the human experience.

It is obstinate nonsense to insist, in the face of all this, that the machines of tomorrow will turn us into robots, steal our individuality, limiting cultural variety, etc. etc. Because primitive mass production imposed certain uniformities, does not mean that super-industrial machines will do the same. The fact is that the entire thrust of the future carries away from standardization—away from uniform goods, away from homogenized art, mass-produced education and “mass” culture. We have reached a dialectical turning point in the technological development of society. And technology, far from restricting or an eventuality, will multiply her choices—and our freedom—exponentially.

Tonight I hung out with Christen, we had dinner with her dad and his wife. We talked about learning, art for the people, and blaxploitation movies. And then we took super-fucking-cute pictures of Sota!

Oh, also, my mom got me a cake for graduating:

It’s late and I need to get to sleep, as always.

Categories: Ennui

I’ve been experimenting with some interesting javascript libraries tonight, including one called MooWheel, with which I’ve created something interesting.

You’ll need Firefox 3 or the latest version of Opera to see it. I haven’t tested IE, but I’d suggest version 8.

Still in Burlingame, been here since Friday. I had a nice visit with Taylor on Thursday, which now seems like the calm before the storm.

My uncle Jim is so. fucking. weird.

I can’t write about it in much detail because there’s no privacy in this condo for audioblogging, but this guy is whack.

1) He has lived in this condo for four years.

2) there are no pots or pans in the house that weren’t packed away in sealed boxes.

3) there are no kitchen utensils (save for ONE teaspoon)

4) he does have these things such as toasters, fine china, good plates, etc. but it’s all in boxes.

5) all he talks about is how he goes to this classy restaurant down the street and eats the heels of the free bread and the free hors d’oeuvres there.

6) the condo building is run-down in weird ways (there are anti-fire sprinklers in every room, the hallways are dark and dreary, the pool looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in months, the elevator creaks and rattles like crazy)

7) The condo itself is decorated like someone just moved in. There are the tags on all his furniture from when he bought it, the closets are all filled with boxes. His clothes are on the floor…he doesn’t even own a laundry basket.

8) Which brings me to my final point: MY UNCLE IS A SERIAL KILLER. I’m going to make a video tour of the killer’s lair tomorrow. Until then, I give you a random interlude from our visit.

Categories: Ennui

I had a pretty good night. Stopped by Christen’s for a little bit after work, we’re at a similar point in our lives considering what it means to be free of many of the problems we had as teenagers.

Listened to Eon, this record by Grafton Primary, all day. It’s apologetically electro.

So…the situation with my grandma.

Kathleen and I have been talking over this situation…well…ever since it began. The cancer, the decision to put her on chemo, her continuing mental degeneration. And, in summation, all I can say is that I don’t care.

She loves to complain about things. And to complain that people aren’t treating her well. Because unless everyone is paying attention to her, she is a bitch. She was raised by alcoholic parents, so it’s not her fault. But still, she wants bad things to happen so she can bitch about them.

She has pushed away every attempt my aunt and I have made to help her. Every nice thing we’ve done is met with derision and insults. That’s always the way it’s been, and at this point, I don’t care if she’s put in a home. I continue to get groceries for the house, chat with her at breakfast, fix her TV, etc.

But fuck it.

She has been going with her martyrdom complex for as long as I can remember, just get it over with.

Nail the bitch to the cross.

Let my dad put her in a home. That way she can be all alone and think all day long about how mean everyone is to her and how nobody loves her. It’s sad in a way…the only way she knows to interact with people is by treating them like shit. Orrin is here practically every day now…I don’t think she can be left alone, after that time she wandered away. Or the time she mistook bottles of bleach for milk.

She walks around the house all day moving things around, locking and unlocking her doors, losing the keys, making secret stashes of stuff to protect from the “robbers.” She never calls “them” by name, just in sentences like “They came and they took EVERYTHING!”

Senility really gives you an insight into the way people’s minds work. If I were senile, I think I would lament that my family wasn’t around, not that my things were gone. I don’t know what made her like this, but she will never be happy. Kathleen and I have tried and tried, and all she says is that she won’t go in a home, she won’t let Kathy live there, and she doesn’t want to have anyone watch her. So intentionally or not, she’s sentencing herself to death in this house.

I’m really ambivalent about moving…not just financially. On one hand, I really don’t want to come home and find her…unconscious. But on the other hand, I would feel terrible if I lived downtown thinking of her wasting away in this house. I don’t know why…maybe because I’m not in school any more, but the annoyances of living here have kind of melted away. I’m at work nearly all day, she’s asleep when I get home.

At work I’m making a site for the other magazine my company publishes…it looks good, but could use about another day of work. I didn’t really ask my boss about it…my company is oddly communist even though it’s run by right-wing nut jobs.

I don’t know why (well, I have some idea) but this last week or two has felt like a vacation…work is intellectually engaging and stimulating, I have time for all my projects like reading and painting. With the exception of my daily commute, I feel like I’m living at Club Med. Getting paid for doing web design (which I always work on anyway) seems like the biggest scam ever, but my sites kick ass.

Walking into my room tonight seemed like I was coming over to a bohemian friend-of-a-friend’s apartment. The dresser and desk was full of sketches of web designs, my new paintings half-finished and woven in with a bunch of brushes, tubes of paint, and unopened mail. It was one of those “yeah…being me is fucking awesome” moments.

God, MacSpeech Dictate is so fucking temperamental. It was working fine last night and now it won’t recognize a phrase. It’s probably because I’m trying to keep my voice down so as to not be overheard.

I had a really odd experience tonight with a can of salmon. I was used to getting those plastic packs of deboned cooked and seasoned salmon, so I thought I’d change it up and get a can of it. I don’t know what I was thinking…I opened the can and staring right at me was the spine of the fish. The spine was right in the center of the can…like they’d snapped the fish in half and shoved it in a can. I looked all over the can to see if it said “cooked” or “uncooked”…but there was nothing of the sort. I tried to remove the spine but there were the little tiny fish bones everywhere in the meat…it was so incredibly disgusting to me I put all the meat back inside the can and threw it out. All I could think about was that the fish had been alive and swimming through the ocean at one point…it just revolted me to see it cut in half in a can.

That was the most disturbing and revolting thing I’ve been involved in all week. And it’s only Monday!

Speaking of vegan shit, what the fuck, Taggart? You must be busy hanging out with that fat girl from the okcupid meme. Aww, she deleted her profile…that was a fun one while it lasted…the drama is preserved though.

Categories: Ennui

Oddly enough, I had a pretty good Friday. I made these little bio boxes that collapsed with JavaScript for my work website, then met Terry at Crepeville. Walked over to The Beat and picked up an awesome LP:

Yes. With the leatherette case.

We got some coffee and ended up smoking hookah at Cobblestone until late in the night.

I feel like I almost have writers block. I was supposed to go to San Francisco this weekend to hang out with Taylor, but it isn’t happening. I have to spend about a week and a half there next week, so the train ticket would just be a waste.

I wanted to go down and get a canvas, but I realize I haven’t done sketches for this new painting so it’s probably a bit premature.

I’m probably not going to accomplish anything today… but that’s better than buying something. I have my credit card paid off, so the urge to spend is at its height. But really, after hours of Internet surfing, there’s nothing I really need. And especially nothing that would be cool enough to justify its price.

I am, however, getting my mom an iPod for Christmas. I know it’s about two weeks late, but I was really poor during Christmas. She’s very excited about it.

I forgot to mention the thing with San Francisco. Okay, so I have an uncle that lives in Burlingame. They discovered this week that he had a golf ball sized tumor in his brain, so they will be operating on Monday. If all goes well, he should be getting discharged from the hospital sometime late next week. I will be meeting my mom and my New York grandma at the airport and probably staying most of that next week.I think they will be staying for about two weeks.

It’s horrible about my uncle, but it’s not like he’s ever wanted for anything… he’s made more than $100,000 a year for most of his life, so it’s not like he doesn’t have access to the best doctors and such. Monday I will be waiting for the phone call. I don’t know how long the surgery takes, but we will definitely know the outcome a week before my East Coast relatives arrive.

Today my mom was talking about taking a road trip up to Crescent City… which I have mixed feelings about. I don’t think anyone still works at the newspaper that I know… and it’s not as if I kept in touch with the office people. I don’t think I was really close to any of my teachers at College of the Redwoods other than Molly. I think Sarah is the only person that I know that still lives there.

I was going to work more on my college applications today, but I wasn’t feeling very motivated. I’m about 20 pages from finishing Hello, America, that campy out of print Ballard novel I picked up awhile ago. its major flaw and it’s biggest coup is that it’s all about his style and not a whole lot about the actual storyline. However, he still kills me with those incredibly inventive metaphors and near-masturbatory obsessions with late-twentieth-century pop culture.

Thanks to a friend of mine, I was able to get the Mac OS dictation program working. It created about 90% of this post, with an acceptable margin of error. They are really pumping out the updates… people must be buying it in droves, the recognition accuracy is astounding (since it uses the same recognition engine as the industry standard Dragon).

I’ve been downloading a ton of music…and wanting to redesign my portfolio site. I had this cool idea…I need to do sketches. So I should probably do that.

Categories: Ennui

On Friday, Christen and I took our trip to San Francisco. I was sick of the people I knew and wanted a beautiful, surreal journey. I wasn’t disappointed.

Ocean Beach.

Adelaide Hostel.

Off to the Haight.

Who builds seagull ponds?

It was a beautiful trip. I can’t find my voice recognition headset, so this is going to be short and sweet.

Christen and I shopped for vintage clothes at the Haight, got some pizza, went to the Botanical Gardens, then she went home. I met Mario and we went to the Museum of Modern Art, which had some really inspiring exhibits. We went to a few bookstores; I picked up The Myth of Sisyphus, and a copy of some of Sartre’s plays in French.

We ended up meeting this really cool friend of Mario’s who took us to this cliche bar in the Castro, where I got drunk and watched naked guys dance lasciviously on stage. I don’t remember much from that night, other than this guy’s well-toned ass illuminated in ruddy spotlights.

An overcooked waffle at 2 a.m. at the Bagdad Cafe, then back to Mario’s friend’s apartment. I slept on the friend’s couch, then Mario and I went back to Sacramento (this was Sunday).

I saw Vicky Cristina Barcelona at the Crest with Taggart, then we went to this fashion show Megan and Steve were involved with (which was actually pretty cool). All of the no-name Sacramento “artists” were there: Amy Hemmons, Joey Vasquez, Shaun Slaughter, et al.

Went to Lipstick on Tuesday with Taggart and Mario, got fucked up and rocked out.

Spent new year’s with my aunt Kathy and her boyfriend, we had a Law & Order marathon watching it on Netflix Instant View.

My credit card is paid down to $170. I’ll have money to move by the end of this month, if everything goes well. I probably won’t move out, I’ll probably just spend every weekend in San Francisco.

I was feeling a lot of anxiety about my new post-community-college life, but I realize it now. I need to die and be reborn into my new life of the city.

I know I’m going to repeat this same script in a new city, but that’s okay. Future Shock is giving me a very interesting perspective on the universe of the future. I think I’m going to go over to Christen’s and read it some more (I loaned it to her).

I’ve been listening to a lot of Catherine Wheel…their first album came out in 1991. I can’t believe that’s 18 years ago.

I wish Ghostland Observatory or New Young Pony Club would tour. Turns out I missed the Ulrich Schauss tour by about three months, and he probably won’t come back for a long time. And of course, when I have money, there are never any good shows. But that’s okay, most of that credit card I’m paying off are great shows that happened when I was poor.

Categories: Ennui