In a battle to the death

I wonder which would win:

Peter Lorre’s forhead

or Peter Boyle’s chin.

Aside from that little tidbit which meandered its way through my thoughts last night, I have nothing. No job. No money. Nothing but fear, worry, depression, disenchantment, self-loathing, failure, worthlessness, unreliable friends, um … yes, I’m bitching and moaning and whining.

But it’s my fucking blog.

I can do that.

I really can’t wait for classes to start up again. I remember having the same feelings ten to fourteen years ago, while I was in high school. I could never wait for summer to be over. School always gave me something to do with my time, something beyond working shitty, pointless jobs and pacing around my bedroom, talking to myself. Now I have a whole apartment through which to aimlessly shamble, always staring at the floor, muttering. How about that! See how far we’ve come, John?

School also afforded the possibility to socialise with others, which it still does, especially since my bar was shut down. Now, this doesn’t mean I actually did or do successfully socialise with others, but the chances of it happening at some point are greatly increased. Somehow, through my dense for of pessimism, this generally seems to be good enough, close enough to others. I am a small, pathetic man.

I am a small, pathetic man.

Just showing my support, is all.

Good times.

Anyway, was there anything else I had to say? Uhmmm … yes! I have to write this little essay. I really, really don’t feel like it. Like, really. I don’t. But it’s the final for one of my courses. Blah. I’m sober, too. It’s so much easier to write while drunk, but I really, really need to stop drinking.

I wish I was stoned.

Anyway, y’all have a good night! And remember:

09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0

So. Stuff.

I need to eat something and buy a pack of cigarettes. Unfortunately, my ATM card sits in my other coat, alone, at home. Tonight will find me hanging out with Molly … maybe I’ll take her to see Zodiac.

Of all the US serial killers, I’d have to say the Zodiac killer was the second most interesting. Sure, they were never solved, and the whole cat-and-mouse game with law enforcement is classic, however Herbert Mullin is at the top of my list. At least he had a good reason for killing people: earthquake prevention.

That’s all I’ve got right now. I’m going to do something else.

… however, I seem to have forgotten it.  I have, in fact, forgotten what it was I wanted to type about, as well.  I’m hungry, I know that much, but I don’t want to succomb to the pressure of taking cash out of the ATM, though I may have to at some point.  I would elsewise have to wait until I got home to eat.  This is not without its own difficulties, as all I have left is pasta, and my roommate continues to neglect to wash the dishes that she’s used.  Goddammit.

Someday, I hope I have her to the point at which she’s able to flush the toilet after using it.

Anyway, there’s not much on my mind, as of yet.  I’m merely sitting here, forcing myself to type, spitting out these words as they come to me.  I hope I don’t lose this speeding freight train of a style, else I’ll have to start typing random words which, while enjoyable, would not make for a very readible post, now, would it?  Nope.  Objection sustained.

I have that song stuck in my head.  You know the one.  “Living rooms.  Bedrooms.  Dinettes.  Oh yeah!”

And the Nintendo DS, laden with the adventures of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attourney, calls to me from the bowels of my black bag.  The cigarettes call to me from my pocket.  The dining hall calls to me from my stomach.  Shit!  I’ve got to send a check to Manton, CT, that I might right the wrongs of the past, paying off an old ticket.  And, then, I can begin the process, foot beyond foot upon the treacherous, twisting trails toward new driver’s-licensedom.

They gave me a ticket eight years ago.

For a crime I didn’t commit.

Nah, not really.  See, I fell asleep at the wheel careening down I-95 at 75 miles per house.  I mean, 75 miles per hour.  As eyelids drooped, into the back of a white van I flew, utterly fucking up the front, passenger’s side corner of my car.  I awoke immediately, gaining instantaneous control of the vehicle.  We pulled off the highway into the parking lot of a small office building, which was closed at the time.

The van escaped unscathed, yet, it being a company vehicle, the driver had to report the accident.  After speaking with everyone, the officer decided to give me a ticket for some sort of negligence or something.  And I never bothered paying it off.  Thus, my license was suspended.

It was only a year later that I moved to Brooklyn, so the need to pay off and unsuspend my license was not terribly strong.  My license withered into expiration.

Now, it’s payback time!

… something like that.

Well, I cannot ignore the beast any longer.  Time to head out, secure in the knowledge that I have, today, successfully made a blog post.  Hoo-ah, as they say.  Let me leave you with an old song:

I’ve seen a lot of faces and I’ve been a lot of places
so I know I must be going somewhere.
The world keeps spinning and I’m always just beginning to begin
but I never really get there.
The times and the seasons go on,
but all the rhymes and the reasons are gone.
I know I’ll discover after it’s all over and done:
I should’ve been a nun.

For some reason, I seem to recall, at this very moment, the mildly clever mid-90’s advert for Animaniacs stating that it would show daily from Mondak to Fridak in response to the growing worries about Y2K.  Those were the days.  The end was nigh, and the tornado shelter chock full of canned goods and bottled water.  Everyone had battery-powered radios.  Shortwave, even.  Just in case.

In my writing class this morning, we briefly discussed 9-11, many of the students commenting that they were freshmen and sophomores in high school.  Man, that made me feel old.  I was 22, standing on the roof of my apartment building in Brooklyn, where I had a perfect view.  Everyone in the building was up there, save those at work that morning, and none of us knew how to react.  There was a lot of laughter.  There was a lot of crying.  There was a lot of confusion.

But that’s not what I wanted to write about this morning.  In fact, I didn’t really have anything to write about this morning.  I just kinda wanted to force myself to maintain this blog.  I mean, last week, I didn’t write a damned thing, what with spring break and all.  I find it so much easier to do this in the computer labs at school, here, than on trusty old Juniper at home.

Yes, my computer’s name is “Juniper”.  Before her was “Zanzibar”.  Preceeding Zanzibar, “Josephine”.  And, further, “Jennifer”, the 486sx 33.  Man, was she awesome, with her 40mb hard drive.  “Star Trek: Judgement Rites” would take up some 36mb of it when installed.  And that installation would take all fucking day.  I’m sure it must have attained some notoriety for that, coming on some 16 floppies.  Floppys?  I dunno.

Anyway, I should be off, desirous of another cigarette or two before my next, and most pointless class.  My mind is stuck on Phoenix Wright: Ace Attourney.  I am a small, sad man.

At any rate …

So, last month I started going back to school. It’s been ten years since my previous attempt at college, which lasted half a semester or so. Don’t worry, I’m doing much better, this time. Though college and lousy roommates seem to coincide once again. But that’s another story.

I’m finding it all pretty easy, thusfar. I mean, math homework is quite a bit of fun while stoned. And my notetaking skills are, if I may say so myself, rather awesome. But this whole writing papers thing … man, that’s difficult …

See, I’m terrible at making a point, and having a decent command of the English language only exacerbates this problem. My adoration of verbosity and ability to construct Hawthorne-esque paragraphs leads to endless strings of complex sentences which say virtually nothing whatsoever. And I don’t know how to get beyond this.

Maybe this is just another thing with which I have to deal, at this point in my life. I am changing so many aspects of myself right now, should I just tack this onto the ever-growing list? One more thing to tackle in my getting an education, dealing with childhood related PTSD, learning to feel and express emotions, working towards being motivated, trying to become organised nexus of personal development?

Oh, and drinking. I need to stop drinking. I mean, I need to stop drinking heavily on a daily basis. I can no longer afford to, both mentally and monitarily. And I’m sure my body is less than pleased with my alcohol consumption, too.

I realised last night, lying in bed, wasted, that the majority of days for the past eight years have found me intoxicated at some point, be it baking before work, pitcher of beer lunch breaks, evenings in bars, or hallucinogenic weekends. I had never believed I was self-medicating before, but the reality of the whole … thing … is that I have been. I have been self-medicating. I hate sobriety. I hate being lost in my head. I hate thinking. I hate being so self-aware that I’m afraid to ask the clerk down at the corner store for a pack of cigarettes. I hate the anxiety that locks me in my bedroom when I don’t have band practice or classes.

These things I have to conquer, no longer merely suspending them in altered states and forgotten nights.

I’m afraid of all this change. I’m afraid of breaking myself down and rebuilding. I’m afraid of seeking out twenty-year-old traumatic events which have been blocked from my memory. I’m afraid of discovering my deep, hidden self — what if I don’t like me? I’m afraid of losing this victim complex, for it is all I have known.

Well, that’s kinda personal, I guess.

I should get to this paper, at any rate. He wants a rough draft on Monday. Which we will discuss.

Maybe I’ll take a shower, first.

Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll take a shower, then onto this paper.

Don’t worry, it’ll come out alright.

See, it didn’t work.

I’m having a bit of trouble posting a video, here, see. So, I’ll just link to it.

Everyone should watch this commercial. I’m in a crappy mood, today. And this thing always cheers me up.

A few other things that cheer me up:

The Algorithm March (with Ninjas)

Amateur (by Lasse Gjertsen)

ninja movie (based on Real Ultimate Power)

Aside from that, it appears that the Swiss have acceidentally invaded Liechtenstein.

This campus is froth with beige brick buildings, and I am thankful that I commute. The beige brick gnomes would have a field day, here, finding these constructions a veritable treasure trove of off-white, rectangular blocks. They would rejoice, dancing their little gnome dances across the quadrangle connecting the beige brick student center with the beige brick psychology building and the beige brick english building etc, pummelling passers-by with beige brick battleaxes.

Big Beige Brick must have made a fortune here.

Let me tell you, now, that I hate Internet Explorer. I mean, I always hate it and have for quite some time, but today in particular for its lack of tabbed indentations in text fields. I don’t want to switch to another field, dammit, I just want to indent. I’ll indent YOU, Internet Explorer. More like Internet ExPOOPer. Am I right? Damn straight! Yeah. That’ll show it.

The black “x” on the back of my right hand has nearly vanished, drawn there in Sharpie for a show to which I went on Sunday. Ahhh, the music was lovely, especially the What Cheer? Brigade, a lovely, local resurgence of the marching band. Mobile + good music = superly awesome. As we discussed in precalculus this morning.

The professor stutters quite a bit, and frequently repeats his own little witticisms. “Dividing by zero is a mortal sin, not a venial sin,” and such. He’s also quite fond of regurgitating rather mundane procedures, such as reminding us, twice weekly, of the purpose of the arrows placed on the number lines of his poorly-drawn, not-to-scale, non-euclidean cartesian planes. Somebody get that man a yardstick!

Speaking of non-euclidean space, last week found much of the campus covered in ice, thus making the shoveled and sanded labirynth of walkways the shortest route between points.

There’s no spellcheck funtion, here.

Normally I wouldn’t worry, but I’ve noticed my spelling has been on the decline, lately. Carelessness? I dunno. But I do know this: I need more coffee and some food. Or something. Something revolving around the sun.

A song my other other band came up with on Tuesday is stuck in my head. It’s got a nice punkish sound, and the lyrics evolved no further than “Junkies are a goldmine!”

End.

I shouldn’t even be typing this, really.  I should be sleeping, horizontal, arms clutched around a pillow listening to some streaming online sort of lecture … about … things.  Look.  My sentences are collapsing.  Fingers grow heavy upon the keyboard.  Misspelling may soon begin!

I am mesmerised by the blink of the cursor.  White.  Black.  White.  Black.  On.  Off.  A nice, regular sort of pattern.  Huh.  Man, I really hope no one’s reading this.

Suddenly, a voice from deep within the sleepy mists cries out.  A shock akin to nearly being almost awake surges up my spine.  “Just one more cigarette.  Then we’ll go to bed.”

I nod in agreement, thank the sleepy mist voice for the suggestion, and saunter forth, wholly devoted to the task of completing this … this … this post.  Yes, that’s what it is.  Post post post.

“Posts around which the very web of online communication are perpetuated!” shouted Gerald.  The tow truck driver shot him a baffled glance.

“Look, you shouldn’t've parked your car here.”

But it was too late.  The car had already disappeared.  You see, dawn was approaching, and the Midnight Mooonbeam Carmobile cannot exist when the moon sleeps.

And the moon sleeps.  And the cigarette butt sleeps.  And my cat sleeps.

My turn.

Goodnight!

Tonight, this Tuesday night, I want my old family back. Now, I don’t mean blood relations, there, but I mean those around when I felt most comfortable, most at home. I want to be sitting around with Dann and Van and Maurice and Amy and Tashika, smoking weed and drifting along the vast oceans of conversation. This was my family and still seems a comfortable home to a great part of myself.

See, Dann, Van, Maurice, Amy and I were the Five of Fortitude. None of us had to work on Thursdays, so we’d meet up in the early afternoon, all picking up our paychecks at Pearl Paint on Canal St. From there, we’d head to Prospect Park, where copious amounts of marijuana and get-rich-quick scheme predominated our time. Then, we would all return to either Amy’s or Dann’s apartment, picking up at least one 40 apiece on the way. Thursday evening would be spent on philosophical debates, and the next morning would find 75% of us back at work.

We developed many personal phrases, in-jokes, and philosophies, and, in the Five of Fortitude, anyone was interchangeable for Tashika. And if only four of us were present, we became the Four of Fivitude. Three became the Terrible Triumverate. Two was generally little more than a lunch break.

I loved them, loved them all. And I miss our times together. Though it is only four years later, I long for those days, for a group of friends, not just a few scattered here and there. I long for that social solidarity; I had never experienced it before. The feeling of having a family away from home.

And, so, I sigh, wishing for old friends and circumstances, and looking forward to the future, when I will, most assuredly, have these again.

Wow.

That last sentence is just … optimistic bullshit, isn’t it?