> Mirwais - Miss You
> Mirwais - Disco Science
> M.I.A. - $10
> Beck - Ghettochip Malfunction (Hell Yes)
> Bond - Wintersun
> Bond - Shine

I haven’t really been doing much lately, aside from listening to some new music that my friend Keith gave me. It’s odd, Keith and I have been online friends for like three years. We did a video voice chat a few days ago and it was so weird to finally hear his voice. I knew we had talked on the phone ages ago, but talking him again was really cool. I think that we stayed in touch mostly because we both think the other is hella hot. I love this new band that I downloaded called Mirwais. I’ve been listening to his incredibly sexy song “Miss You” and having copious sexual fantasies about Taggart et al. I feel sort of guilty replaying our intimate moments in my mind endlessly, but I guess what was the point of having sex with a hot guy if I couldn’t mentally instant replay it later. Eh, who am I kidding. The sex wasn’t so great. But believing that he admired me for the person I am was cool.

I haven’t been writing much lately. I guess I feel like there’s nothing going on. I’m in this terrible purgatory until I buy another computer. I guess it isn’t so bad. I’ve been watching a lot of movies and such that I’ve been getting from Netflix on my expensive surroundsound system, and it sounds incredible. I just wish I had a giant high-definition screen to watch them from.

I feel really bored. Perhaps it’s because I finished almost all the novels I bought. But if I buy more than I won’t finish The Atrocity Exhibition.

I get paid on Tuesday, and it’s probably going to be my biggest paycheck ever. And I really don’t know what I want to spend it on. I sort of want to get a 300GB external drive so as to pack all my files and such with me when I go to see Kelly, but it seems like such a needless expense when I’m going to get a new computer as early as January (from the AppleInsider rumors). Darn, the external enclosure I wanted is now out of stock! How lame. I guess the rest of the Internet liked it as much as I did. Oh god, it’s 1 a.m. I didn’t even notice.

The Saturday’s work wasn’t really so bad. I actually got out in time enough to go over to Misty’s house afterwards. She had a grand total of eight martinis (that I saw) while she and her friend flirted. I got bored very quickly and went to the living room to listen to a podcast of Now. It was really interesting, much more interesting than Misty’s drunken chatter about hot girls. She’s turning her bisexuality into a religion. For me, sexuality is a bit more of a private thing. I mean, I may idly chatter about sex on my blog, but that’s way different from going on and on about how you’re going to screw a bunch of random chicks on this trip to Medford and how you so desperately want to go out with a hot girl. The whole tirade was very Ben in San Francisco. “Hot guys! Whoo!” *yawn*

Admittedly, I’m a bit more interested in a relationship than random sex. Flings are fun and all, but they aren’t emotionally satisfying. And that’s what I would like in this stage in my life. To me, an intimate evening discussing art and politics then cuddling and watching a sad, existential movie is a hundred times sexier than some random muscley guys posing in a shop window. I feel like I’ve never been in a real relationship and I’m going to be 20 this month. I guess it could be worse, but I really do want someone special to talk about technology and novels with, to read each others’ voluminous blog posts. But sadly, I don’t really think that perfect person exists. I just have to content myself with this cartoonish hell of my two-faced coworkers and vindictive boss.

Looking for an earlier link, I found Ben’s rant about how he hated me. What a fuck. I can’t believe I ever was bummed that he stopped hanging out with me. Especially ironic is “take all the photos of me off your blog” He uses one of the photos I took of him on that trip as his MySpace photo. And all the content on my blog is licensed under a Creative Commons license. Which means he has to credit me or it’s copyright infringement. I want to sue him for spite, but that would just mean he won. Fuck him.

I really wanted to do math tonight, but I just couldn’t get into it. I had this faint headache and this thirst that wouldn’t go away… I just couldn’t concentrate. I hope tomorrow my mind will be more malleable.

But then again, when I read about all the things that Amanda is going through I realize that I don’t really want a relationship. That would mean I would have deal with another person’s drama. And then there’s the whole thing about me being unable to trust people. After you get lied to enough, it just start to believe that everyone’s lying. What’s that quote?

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

I guess it always comes back to Shakespeare.

I was bored and started painting today (which is never a good idea because I never have any idea of what I want to do and it just fails because I have no plan and I get frustrated) when I realized that almost every single thing I was using to paint with had carcinogenic chemicals in it. I mean, I’m not an idiot. I knew that the colors were cadmium based, but I now found out that what I was diluting the colors with contains arsenic and all sorts of other fun stuff. I think tomorrow I’m going to head over to Ben Franklin and see if I can get some nontoxic paints. I’m sorry, but my art isn’t good enough to die for. That and the oils take forever to dry.

I just don’t know what else to say. My life will be over in the blink of an eye and I will have no idea what I did with it all. Sometimes I can’t resist the feeling that every night is going to be just like tonight. Watching TV shows that I’ve already seen instead of doing what should be important to me, painting (in effect attempting to slowly kill myself in a futile attempt to prove to the world that I have something unique to say about existence.

I remember this story that Molly told forever ago, and I keep thinking back to it. She was in this Shakespeare class and had to write a paper on Romeo and Juliet. She was trying to come up with some original idea of how to attack the topic that had never been done before, and had this epiphany that there had been thousands upon thousands of papers written on the subject and that she wasn’t going to come up with any way of viewing the play that hadn’t ever been come up with before. I just can’t reconcile myself with such a thing. That novel I read last month, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, made the claim that whatever happens but once is unimportant. It is supposedly a German proverb. And when one thinks about it, it’s really true. Would we value Shakespeare if Romeo and Juliet type stories didn’t happen all the time? So being original is never possible? Well, I guess discoveries happen all the time and new ideas happen all the time so I guess they wouldn’t fall into that category. I still feel like an obsolete product in this society. Well, not obsolete, like, the opposite. I guess I keep obsessively watching Star Trek to convince myself that there’s a world where people don’t strive with their last breath to kill or fuck up every other living thing in existence.

Perhaps I need to read more. I just don’t know where to direct my studies. I’ve absorbed the meat of the existential and absurdist movement, but what is after that? Maybe I should read more Sartre or Camus. Eh… after I read All Men Are Mortal I got stuck in this depression for like a week. It totally broke down all the doublethink on which I base my life. Maybe I should read Nietzsche. I’ve heard it’s tremendously difficult though. But I guess I can’t be a nihilist unless I read the works of the one who basically started the school.

I guess I should shut up with all this mindless babbling. Life means nothing, and I hate it. But I want to like it. To do that I must leave Crescent City. Enough said. Kelly wants to move to New York with me. I have only one response: Hell fucking yeah.

Ever have one of those days where around 11 p.m. you just want to go into a corner and cry?

Guess what: It’s 11:10.

Today I watched a zombie movie, then the daily show, then the Colbert report, then Jimmy Kimmel live. Marilyn Manson was on because it was the Halloween show, and there were all these 14-year-old girls from Ohio calling in saying how they were his biggest fan. I could tell he was enjoying it. They didn’t understand him. But I do. I got his reference to Perfume. Or at least I thought I did.

What else is there to say?

I wasted away my night surfing the Internet for low-cost ATA hard drives on eBay and reading technology blogs. What am I supposed to do now? I watched TV and did my algebra all night. I worked until 5 p.m. I feel really lonely, but I don’t want to hang out with Misty. She’s probably going to some party. One that I’m not invited to because I’m an antisocial malcontent.

I got really depressed and ended up calling Kelly, leaving this ridiculous message on her answering machine. I hope she never hears it. Everything I do this ridiculous. I keep mulling over every social faux pas I could have possibly made it work. Every error. I simply can’t shake anything. I’m bogged down by these feelings from ages ago. I can’t do anything to get free. And I can’t concentrate on my math. What a mess I am. Well, on the bright side, I’m alone so there’s no one to make this situation worse. And it’s 11:19, so Misty is sure to be off to her party by now.

But on the dark side, the company that commissions what I produce at my second job has now extended it till the end of the month. While I enjoy the extra money, it also means that I can’t go to Sacramento. In a way I’m glad. My car has been acting really funky and I really doubt it would last all the way there. The last bout of trips I did blew out my transmission. I don’t want to relive that.

I should write people e-mails. Go on MySpace and not just surf the profiles of the people I hate. But I can’t do anything. Maybe I’ll watch a movie. Maybe I’ll watch THX 1138. That’s what I’ll do. Nothing to cure the malaise of existence than a dystopian movie.

This Halloween makes me think of last year, which was the first time me and Joe really talked.

Last halloween: post one and post two (with pictures)

We stayed up incredibly late talking about how Samantha and Steve were controlling and evil and how we wanted to make the milieu good again. We succeeded. Or maybe we failed. It’s all over now. No more late-night discussions about the future of the world. No more politics. No more philosophy. Nothing. That’s what I am right now. Nothing. I better go watch THX 1138 before I get into an even worse mood.

> Chromeo - Me and My Man
> Daft Punk - Voyager
> Propellerheads - Winning Style

Whoa. I just finished reading Ender’s Game. Fucking incredible. And even though years ago I had been told the surprise ending, it didn’t dawn on me until the very last second. I started reading it yesterday night and continued after work to read it until like 4 a.m. Oh god, the work thing yesterday. I don’t even want to talk about that. But I must.

7:50: I drove up to my second job, and the building was empty and dark. I remembered that someone was telling me that the job was going to end sometime soon, but I thought there was still a few weeks left. Obviously, since there was no one there, the job was over. So I went home.

9:10: I hear my cell phone ringing in the other room, so I go in there and checked my messages. Sure enough, they were trying to get ahold of me. As I learned later, the guys at the factory are now getting there about 40 minutes later. It would be nice if someone had told me. In my haste I very nearly got into an accident on the drive back up there. I can’t believe it. I didn’t stop at a stop sign. I can’t understand why I would do such a thing. Stupid. Getting in an accident to go to a job I hate for people who don’t appreciate my work. That’s some cosmic irony for you.

9:30: I get there and start downloading my files to process, and everything seems to be running smoothly. Except for this one file. I couldn’t get it to do anything. I tried every trick I know, but that stubborn G3 that runs all the machines just wouldn’t take it. It took two hours to get that file to work. Two hours where all of the factory employees were standing around doing nothing while collecting overtime. I felt mildly culpable, because I had the page for 45 minutes or so while I was fiddling with it where I should have been on the phone with the people that sent it, but the blame is really with them because it was a problem on their end. I know it. All of the other files worked flawlessly, why the problem with this one? it’s all the same fonts and images. Anyway, I was very until around 2:45 in the morning, ravenously hungry because in my haste I’d forgotten to grab a snack. That was the night from hell.

Okay, back to the book: it was fucking incredible. The plausibility was perfect, even though I think it was written a while ago. The references to Russia made me seem like it was written in the middle of the Cold War, but that might have just been a coincidence. The narrative voice was impeccable, unlike the rampant clumsiness, unimaginative settings, and murky point of view of Neuromancer. The author did have a bit of a penchant for unnecessarily jumping into other point of view characters, but it seemed to flow well anyway. Wow. I can’t even think about how amazing that was. It totally blew my mind, I’ll need a few days to recover. I really don’t want to go to work tomorrow. To deal with my asshole boss. To pretend like I care. Fuck.

Some random guy from Klamath Falls wanted to be my friend on MySpace, and as I was looking over his profile I saw a “Which Queer as Folk Character Are You?” quiz.

You are Ted.

Which Queer As Folk Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

My first reaction was how depressing the result was, but now that I think about it, I’m not like any of the other characters. Perhaps that’s why I don’t really like that show much, I can’t associate with these flippant, superficial people. They remind me too much of the people I see every day.

I was sort of down in the dumps earlier this week, but now I’m wearing an expression of quiet optimism, which it is advisable to wear while facing the telescreen. That quote came back to me in the shower this morning, mild Darius points if you can identify it.

I just don’t know what I’m living for right now. I sort of want to throw caution to the wind and drive to Sacramento on the 19th to go see that Nine Inch Nails concert with Kelly, but it’s probably going to cost at least $200. And no matter how much it sickens me, I would rather have a 23″ Apple Cinema Display than be with the people I love most. How hideous have I become? I can’t even conceive of being with these people that I adore so much from so far away, that the only thing I can really count on is the comfort of technology. I feel like I won’t ever be able to move away from that until I leave this town. And that reminds me: the only way I can leave is by finishing my math. And I’m two chapters behind.

I must destroy the math before it kills me.

PS: this is the cutest/wierdest thing ever.

> Portishead - Only You
> String Tribute to Nine Inch Nails
> Lacquer - X
> Weezer - Island in the Sun
> Propellerheads - Winning Style
> Robots in Disguise - Boys, Diy

I can’t believe I’ve gone three days without writing. I’ve been in this really strange mood. I’ve been wondering if maybe Crescent City has won, and I’ve given in to the dark side. Maybe it’s just that I haven’t been getting enough sleep. I’m pleased with how today turned out though.

Last night me, Misty, and Katelyn watched Rosemary’s Baby. It wasn’t as scary as usual, probably because we were struggling to stay awake towards the end. And the lights were on. I got maybe five hours sleep, but it wasn’t so bad because I had gotten a lot earlier in the week. I was so exhausted today that I passed out as soon as I got home and just woke up maybe 30 minutes ago.

I checked my e-mail, and to my delight, Joe e-mailed me back! I had even been thinking to myself today about how depressing it was that he hadn’t gotten back to me, and he did! w00t. I will have to read it again because when I read it I was half asleep, but it was a very long one. I really love waking up in the middle of the night, it makes me feel like I’m recapturing some of my lost teenage years. I used to stay up all night all the time. I also watched some Daria as I made some oatmeal, which got me even more into nostalgia mode. Well, so much for that.

I restarted my Netflix membership because I was bored out of my mind with my existence. That and I want to rent and copy the entire Star Trek: the Next Generation series. I can’t really afford it, but I don’t care. I need some escape from this pathetic existence.

I’ve also been working on my chain mail. Even though was incredibly tedious, I was able to weave the 0.375 in. diameter rings. It’s the tightest weave I’ve ever done. I would post pictures, but I’m too tired.

Oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to post this for a while. Every time I listen to the song “X,” I love this one lyric and I always wanted to post it.

“I go spinning in circles in the nothingness of my heart”

I love that image. Anyway, it’s 1:50 AM and I have to do to sections of math today or I will get even more behind. But on the bright side, my boss is out until the end of the week so I shouldn’t have anyone chewing me out arbitrarily until Monday, at the earliest.

I just started downloading a bunch of new music (Mount Sims - Wild Light, Chromeo - She’s In Control, Cut Copy - Bright Like Neon Love). It’s 2:16 a.m. It should be done by the morning. I’m so tired. I should finish Neuromancer. For all of its now-hackneyed thematic elements, it’s actually very entertaining. I was always very disappointed at the ending of the Matrix trilogy since I loved the first one so much, so now I feel like I’m reading the real ending before those hacks (the Wachowski brothers) turned the novel into the movie.

I’ve been feeling really strange this week, like I’m a flat character in someone else’s novel. Perhaps I should get back to writing, but I can’t shake that feeling that I have nothing original to say. Well, that was like my feeling that I could never do better photography than Kelly’s. It’s not like I’m competing with her, and she obviously has the advantage in that she has an entire city full of people and things to take pictures of. So I have been trying to get back in the habit of taking photos and posting them to Flickr. Even if they’re stupid, I will eventually have some good ones. I just have to get thinking about what I really want to say with my photos. The first step towards creating something is doing something, so at least I’m halfway there.

Misty has been unintentionally getting me interested in starting painting again. It’s not like I think that she is a bad artist (she’s very good), I just feel that there are enough paintings of fairies and flowers to last us all until the end of time.

I had an idea today: I could paint the waveform of my favorite song. Wouldn’t that be postmodern? I’m sure it’s been done before, but the fact that I have to reconcile myself with is that I’m not original. I am a product in a consumer society controlled by corporations. I am not an individual. So I do not need to be embarrassed in the least about my crappy amateur art.

There was this really funny song on the self-titled Robots in Disguise album I downloaded this week called “Diy” about how they feel when somebody makes fun of their art. The lyrics are a bit tongue-in-cheek, “don’t make fun of my cut-and-paste art,” but I can see where they’re coming from, although no one really has said anything bad about my art. Misty loved my collage and the photos I took of her for her MySpace, Ben was all complements about my Photoshop abilities, and Josh had one of my photos as his desktop background for months.

Okay, precis: my banal art would excite me a hundred times more than Misty’s.

In Neuromancer, the characters tell their computers to compile precis on all sorts of things, and then the computer will give them a little presentation about whatever they need to be informed of. More than ever I’m realizing that without the classes I took from Molly, I would be helpless in the world of literature.

I really should go and finish that novel. My mom e-mailed me some pictures (she is so tech savvy now!) of her trip to South Jersey and of the christening of my new cousin Nicholas. I sort of wish I was there with her, but I don’t have any friends there (not that I have many here), and I would have to live with my grandparents who are the exact opposite of me in many ways. And I wouldn’t have the great teachers at SWOCC to help me with my math.

Well, I should probably get back to living. I have the nausea again. It’s not really the nausea though, it’s just boredom. Antoine Roquentin is revolted by existence, but I can’t reach that. I feel more like I’m watching the decisions and actions of my life through the eyes of someone else, like some sort of an incompetent, lazy homunculus. I look back through my memories on my blog and although I feel a very strong kinship with the person that wrote everything, the author isn’t me. Me six months ago isn’t me now. And I feel like the more books I read the more I’m distancing myself from people (including the old me). But that’s because I live here. If I was living in an area with intellectuals, I would feel like I could relate to people more when I had read more novels.

I find myself reevaluating everything: should I keep dyeing my hair and doing all this stuff to keep up the person that I was when I was a teenager? I hate my natural hair color, and it would really depress me to dress in colors, but I’m torn about one thing: painting my nails. I told myself that I would never stop painting my nails and that’s what would make me unique in this world. But nobody is unique. And I’m sure even though he wouldn’t say anything, my boss wouldn’t approve. So that’s how it ends. I compromise the person I am to make money. But I guess that’s not anything new. Everybody sells out. Everyone is homogenized. And the multinational corporations of the world win again. Eh, that’s that Liberty News show talking. I shouldn’t watch it.

Well, I should get going. I want to watch The Red Violin tonight in addition to the bunch of homework I have to do.

I wish I was dead.

Downloaded two good bands, Modjo and Robots in Disguise.

Listened to Portishead, Garbage, and the Cardigans all day. I always do that when I’m depressed. And now I’m eating chocolate, like a real nancy. My subconscious gave me a virus of the mind in the form of a dream earlier this week. Oh yeah, from now on I mean to call caffeine substance D. I hope I remember. That sounds so cool. Anyway, the dream virus was as follows:

I was in a beautiful part of San Francisco, and who should I happen upon but Andrew Taggart, my infamous ex. But in the dream I only remembered the good times. We hung out and did some shopping or something, then we started walking down this hill. I looked back to see if he was behind me, and he was now standing right in front of me, looking at me with this endearing smirk, and in that moment none of it mattered. He was just too beautiful. Too perfect. And in the dream, I kissed him. He told me he loved me. And I believed him. And he was mine. And happy fucking tra-la-la with that duplicitous heartbreaker. Then I wake up to the week full of people yelling at me for my mistakes and never praising me for my successes. And I want to go back to that dream and live in it forever, blissfully ignorant of the rest of the world.

Misty, for all my superciliousness towards her, made a very poignant observation of me last night. Wait…never mind. I was going to put it in quote marks, but now I remember I’m the one that said it, but she put the idea in my head.

“If I didn’t have computers, I would probably do drugs and just party all the time.”

Because when you really think about it, I don’t have very many passions. However, I was reading one of my old textbooks a few weeks ago, and it said that technology is the practical application of knowledge. And it just seemed to make sense that my two obsessions should be knowledge and technology. One is simply a consequence of the other. So I only have one passion. Knowledge in all its forms.

Now there’s no more chocolate. I seek knowledge and chocolate. PEZ will have to suffice. I think my dad went to sleep, I should see what’s on TV. Oh, guess what. Instant messaged Jon, to see if he had had a change of heart about wanting to be friends with me, and it turns out that either he’s just a taciturn person by nature or he still doesn’t want to talk to me. But anyway, I asked him about the club, and Club West is closed! They got sold or something and will open up in November as a straight-only sort of place. How fucking gay.

So that means I’m definitely going to be reading. All weekend long. I should get a car charger for my iPod before we leave or I’m going to be in a world of bored silence. I saw one at Rite Aid for 30 bucks, but I know I can get one cheaper. Oh, that reminds me. Must charge the pod for the long, long car trip. I’m going to turn off the backlighting and make Misty carry out all my music commands to strech out the battery life as long as possible. Or so I hope.

I’m really not in the mood to go anywhere. But I know once the doldrums of Friday set in, I’m going to be wanting to do something. I hope my car doesn’t break down, it’s been acting a bit strange lately.

Well, we’ll see. I hope I don’t end up hating Misty after this trip. She’s like my last friend that doesn’t piss me off (very much at all). And if the computer mistypes one more word of profanity I’m going to scream.

I think the realization is setting in with that dream that there isn’t a single gay guy in this world that’s going to understand me or love me. So I’d better be looking to settle.

De-fucking-pressing.

I need to watch some Daria.

PS: I started William Gibson’s Neuromancer, and it has fluctuated between being cliché, boring, and unimaginative… but I’m hoping that somewhere in the middle it will stop sucking so hard. I have a bit of faith. It couldn’t have won all those awards just for sloppy sex scenes with a cyborg. But hell, who knows?