My Meteoric Rise To Mediocrity...

Young Dunk?

2009-07-12T13:20:00.000-07:00

I had forgotten about these and I can't remember if I ever posted them, so, I'm posting them...

Re-cor-d-in-g R-ec-ord-ing-s...

2009-06-09T22:21:00.000-07:00

Digitizing vinyl turned out to be an abject failure. Apparently, my turntable suffered a stylus injury in my move up to Rogers Park and no amount of bending it back into place is going to get it to sound as wonderful as it used to in all of it's audiophilic Grado glory. The stylus alone (just the needle and the plastic piece that holds it in) would cost me $60 to replace...and as far as Grado parts go, it's on the low end. So, if you happen to have the complete discography of Talking Heads and an extensive collection of 1970's prog rock, you are my new best friend...

And I just downloaded a pirated copy of Heart's Little Queen and it turned out to be one full song and twelve five second intros, so I'm just pissed off enough to give up for the night...

Recording recordings...

2009-06-08T18:47:00.000-07:00

I'm letting go of my most precious records in exchange for money, but before I do, I must digitize them. I'm going to do this tomorrow. Who wants to come listen to records all day?

I'm keeping a couple signed ones, but other than that, let me know if you want any of these...

I'm naked once again...

2009-05-29T20:00:00.000-07:00

Walking down what seems to be an old abandoned access road, you round a grove of trees and see a hill, shining in the morning sun. First, you notice the small plume of smoke rising from a pipe protruding from the grassy awning over a large pair of sliding wooden doors. Then, there are the large convex lenses higher up on the hill and about half a dozen barrels spinning on top of small towers. The lenses are connected to a system of heavy fiber optic cables trailing through the earth to little colonies of smaller lenses, piping the collected sunlight to the lower rooms of an underground dwelling. The turbines, made of old steel barrels cut in half, offset to catch the wind and welded to shafts that disappear into the ground, generating a modest amount of electricity. After a moment, you notice that the road you've been following ends at the doors, so you keep walking. Startled, you watch one of the doors creak open, curving around an unseen corner and folding neatly back into the hill. A young man in a dorky brown fedora walks over to the other door and pushes it back into the ground, just as he did to the first. The space behind him coming into view, you realize that it fills most of the hill and is surprisingly well lit, sunlight pouring from small circles in the ceiling and walls. Toward the back of the cavern is the source of the smoke; a large open pit brick oven surrounded by bits of junk and tools. He notices you and smiles.

"It was getting a bit hot in here! I've got some breakfast cooking, if you're interested!"

I'm the young man and this hill is my home. Welcome, stranger...

absorbent material> Castle Oldchair - Sad Pants

Chad VanGaalen - Molten Light

2009-05-18T08:11:00.000-07:00

Infamous Last Words

2009-02-25T21:33:00.000-08:00

Under the gallows, just before they kick the stool out from under me...
"Look ma! No hands!"

Operation Pingu!

2009-01-26T01:46:00.000-08:00

Even when it's in a backyard in the middle of winter, the point of camping is still learning to adapt yourself to nature rather than the other way around. It may be getting harder and harder to find a camp site in the American wilderness that doesn't have power hookups and a lick of tarmac for your trailer, but that doesn't mean we can't get out there and rough it. We just need to be a little creative! Possibly a little crazy. Sometimes even slightly criminal, though hopefully not this time. However, that isn't my point. Without even leaving the big bustling city, we can spend a night outside and learn things! Not to mention that sleeping out in the Chicago winter transforms you into an undeniable badass. See you there!

Laser Experiment

2009-01-25T02:07:00.000-08:00

Just when I was getting these rusty gears spinning, my camera battery died. Eh.

That's how he got caught, Mr. Quincampoix!

2008-07-26T19:28:00.000-07:00

I find the physics of the universe very intriguing because mechanical representations of it are amazing. What if we are the bacteria living on the gravitationally motivated bit of rock kneeded out and rounded by the fists of some allergic grad student...oh...oh god...quantum hierarchy...no...fractal universe...where does it END?!

absorbent material> DVDS! Finally a dvd player that works! Most of the time! The pitfalls of thifting...even us Thrift Magi fall prey. I've learned more about modern technology by buying broken shit than you'll ever dream...

Self-portraiture

2008-07-11T21:48:00.000-07:00

absorbent material> Gentle Giant - Acquiring the Taste

They're here now!

2008-06-24T21:03:00.000-07:00

Is there anything that we humans do that is not worth at least a second glance? I mean, people are always trying to convey stories...books, music and movies define our culture...but think of all of those little quirks that you have that you may not even realize that you have and think of their origins. Now think of everyone's quirks all compounded into this huge societal secret that nobody really hides, but we'd all be kind of embarrassed if confronted about them, none-the-less.

When I'm really tired, sometimes I'll absent-mindedly say "Sleepytime Tyler Museum" just as a simple statement that I'm tired. Of course, I think the triad has spun and bounced so many times over the years that we all speak in much more complicated word onions than the rest of the general population, but, I mean, my friends at work didn't balk when I labeled one of our Christmas boxes Architeuthis. It sounds vaguely like Christmas, right?

There are some similar syllables and the concepts are analogous. What's even sillier is that Portia say "Sleepytime Portia Museum", too. I'm not sure she's ever even heard Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and if she did, I doubt she would like it very much.

Somewhere out there, there's something that you once said that stuck in someone's head for the long haul being reiterated and evolved cycle after cycle in their mind and they don't even realize it.

absorbent material> muted Star Wars on laser disc and the new Sleepytime Gorilla Museum album...if you don't have In Glorious Times, you should get it...or let me know and I'll make sure you get it...

For video?!

2008-06-07T20:51:00.000-07:00

absorbent material> Dark Star

I haven't made one in a while...

2007-06-01T07:25:00.000-07:00

I guess I need to take more photographs...

Can't wait to find one in a thrift store...

2007-01-12T22:04:00.000-08:00

I'm really excited about the new Mac phone thingies. Not so much for the phones themselves, what nifty little distractions, but for the impact they'll have. Not because they'll be so great, but because they are Mac. The Cult of Mac is a very intriguing thing in that they will reverse engineer anything and everything simply because it's made by Apple. I'm excited to see these Mac phones start popping up in the lower classes, the unhip, the poor...several years from now, of course, when the plastic is cloudy and the screen edges beveled inwards with grime...simply because of their functionality. I want to see one with an aftermarket USB port surrounded by hot-glue. I want to see them hardwired into remote control airplanes and running homebrew voice recognition software so you can tell your RC plane where to go by calling it on the phone. I want to see lo-tech people become hi-tech gadgets. The '92 Geo Metro with the virtually obsolete Mac phone velcroed to the dash as emergency service, GPS navigation system, and music machine, roaring into the future. Fifteen years ago, car phones were still attached to those obnoxious springy cords. Now, cell phones. Ten years ago, guys were fitting their cars with modified linux machines to play their MP3s on the run. Now, iPod. Five years ago, cell phones and iPods were seperate things. In five years' time, people and cellPods will no longer be seperate things. In ten years' time, no one will ever stop listening anywhere they go, even while sleeping. In fifteen years' time, cell phone numbers will be assigned at birth in replacement of social security numbers, you will live a transient lifestyle where the only material property that you will carry with you from day to day is your IDCellPodDebitGPSJetPackTent. It will look like a smooth flat stone that you carry in your pocket and you will interact with it telepathically. You will have to give it a name, so start thinking...

absorbent material> Bink Winkelman...

The day will get bigger...

2006-05-27T22:41:00.000-07:00

I am not ashamed. It was actually a truly interesting experience...not to mention surreal. I don't regret it in the least...

absorbent material> Ministry - Filth Pig

As she's going into the unknown...

2006-04-12T09:05:00.000-07:00

Monopoly! At Friend Caleb's place...one player was taken over by the mafia, who can't actually own property, but can own other players...though they don't actually buy them, they offer services such as rent doubling and whatever else your devious little mind can come up with to generate more profit, as long as they get a cut...but once you enter into this deal, you're stuck with the mob's grubby mits in your every deal until some other player is in need of some family business. We basically just made all of that up on the spot. It fit...we didn't have any chance cards and had to use little Homie dolls as player pieces...and ended up conducting transactions for real world items with Monopoly money. The game ended when the bouncing molecules made it too hard to concentrate. Then there was just the carpet and Dracula and Crop Circle. I look forward to Monopolizing with Hunter S. Thompson again...

Ended up crashing at Friend Caleb's as well...and had a wonderful dream about a befreckled girl with some long, unkempt sandy and a love for giant sweatshirts. I just kept running into her in the dream...but there wasn't anything else going on. A constant circuit of hellos and goodbyes in a colorless void. No, it wasn't colorless. It was every color, so it was no color. Like when you get a migraine and parts of your vision kind of go blank? That sort of restless rainbow of undefinable color that shifts around and you can never quite put your finger on it. She always had her friend with her, as well...dark hair, but that's all I remember. Hello. Goodbye. Hello. It seems strange that something so surreal could be accepted by my sleeping self as reality, but, nonetheless, I was sad when my eyes opened and she was gone. I didn't even get to say goodbye...

absorbent material> The Flaming Lips - At War With The Mystics

Or get five thousand disco lights...

2006-04-06T08:20:00.000-07:00

Eating Out With Us...

2006-03-28T06:54:00.000-08:00

"Now turn and face the door..."

2006-03-28T06:52:00.000-08:00

Robots, by Merle Grimes...

2006-03-24T21:47:00.000-08:00

Paint on the train...

2006-01-18T09:09:00.000-08:00

Did you know that "honorable sepuku" is not really all that honorable at all? Well, it is to people who hold the samurai and their ways in high regards, but the whole thing was made up by the samurai after they became obsolete. It was a way for them to die ceremoniously because there were no wars for them to fight. In fact, most of the warrior code was created under those circumstances. In the height of the samurai, during the wars, they were just a bunch of dudes in floppy clothes flailing swords about to kill the other floppy dudes surrounding them. If they could no longer fight, but could escape, they would. To fight another day. Kind of makes me like the samurai better, actually...

HUMAN: So, wait, when you look at me, what do you see?
ALIEN: Excuse me?
HUMAN: Umm...
ALIEN: Excuse me?
HUMAN: God, that's unnerving. Those linguists taught you to be so polite in your language usage. I can never tell if you're offended or if you don't understand.
ALIEN: I have no offense.
HUMAN: That's an interesting way to put it. OK, let me rephrase my question...
ALIEN: You are allowed.
HUMAN: ...when you focus on me, what do you see?
ALIEN: Which sensory input are you referring to?
HUMAN: Visual. Whichever one, umm...reacts to light?
ALIEN: Light being energy, correct?
HUMAN: Light being electro-magnetic waves.
ALIEN: A form of energy?
HUMAN: Yes.
ALIEN: I think you are referring to my [eyes]. I feel you energy.
HUMAN: Could you explain that?
ALIEN: My [eyes] detect the excitement of your particles.
HUMAN: ...the excitement of my particles?
ALIEN: The energy that your particles dispell.
HUMAN: I'm trying to think of what you could possibly mean.
ALIEN: I am non-violent now.
HUMAN: Excuse me?
ALIEN: I am not mean.
HUMAN: No, uhh...I'm trying to say that I don't understand. Another use for the word "mean". Umm...it's uhh, the purpose of your words.
ALIEN: This is inefficient.
HUMAN: What is?
ALIEN: One word with two purposes.
HUMAN: Yeah, you're uhh, correct, it is inefficient. If the United States wasn't such a big bag of know-it-alls, we probably could have tought you a different language. One with a less confusing structure.
ALIEN: Excuse me?
HUMAN: Nevermind.
ALIEN: Excuse me?
HUMAN: Forget it.
ALIEN: It is forgotten.
HUMAN: ...so, you feel the energy that my particles dispell. You mean, like, heat? Warmth? Temperature difference?
ALIEN: I do not understand.
HUMAN: Which part of my body is the most excited?
ALIEN: Your life pump.
HUMAN: My heart?
ALIEN: Yes.
HUMAN: What color is it?
ALIEN: Excuse me?
HUMAN: Umm...what makes it visibly different from the less excited parts of my body?
ALIEN: It is more excited.
HUMAN: I have an idea.
ALIEN: Only one?
HUMAN: Very funny.
ALIEN: I am surprised, I think. Previously unaware?
HUMAN: Oh, you're serious. Uh, I...have one of many ideas that we're going to try.
ALIEN: How many?
HUMAN: I don't know, I can't count the ideas in my head!
ALIEN: How many are we going to try?
HUMAN: Only one.
ALIEN: Very funny.
HUMAN: ...
ALIEN: I have confused you? I repeated your response.
HUMAN: Oh! Umm, yeah, OK, I'll let someone else explain humor.
ALIEN: You had an idea. Do you still have it?
HUMAN: Yes. Wait here. Ralph! Get in here!
RALPH: Yeah?
HUMAN: Nothing, just stand there.
RALPH: Uhh...
HUMAN: Now, what differences do you see between Ralph and myself?
ALIEN: Ralph is higher, wider, and his particles are more excited at the ends of his appendages.
RALPH: Are you getting at what I think you're getting at?
HUMAN: Maybe.
RALPH: You're using the alien's strange grammatical structure to call me fat.
HUMAN: No, Ralph, he can't see that your skin is a different color.
RALPH: Oh...wow, you're right.
ALIEN: Explain color.
HUMAN: Well, our eyes, umm...detect the difference in frequency of light waves. We can only see something when there are electro-magnetic waves bouncing off of it within a certain range of frequencies. Within that range of frequencies, our eyes can detect difference in frequency to a relatively high degree. To us, the frequency at which light bounces off of an object is that object's color. We give them names.
ALIEN: I understand.

Explaining Color To Aliens...it's something we might have to do...

Explain other things to aliens in a comment. The aliens are hungry for knowledge. And please don't feed them Finnish history, it makes their farts smell like diesel fuel...

absorbent material> moldy tomes and noisy homes...

Holy Shit, Batman!

2005-12-10T11:31:00.000-08:00

Humans, you fool! That's what we are! Bone structured skin boxes with thoughts and feelings and sharp bits at the end of our appendages. That's why we make paintings and donuts and blankets and things. Chuck! Chuck, it's me, Marvin! Your cousin, Marvin Berry?! If given the chance to skips rocks with the guy who invented poodles, I so, totally would. A man lives on the tenth floor, takes the elevator to ground every day, but when he returns, rides up to the seventh floor, gets off the elevator, and walks up the stairs. He hates walking, so why does he do it? So many possibilities. The smell of cooking spices coming from apartment 716? The cute girl who lives in 704? The door to the stairs is closer to his apartment so he doesn't have to walk past the crazy lady's door that is, of course, always open? To karmically make up for the fact that he often steals keychains from convenience stores? Something that makes even less sense? A flying DeLorean?

absorbent material> Jizz Mopper Helicopter...hot damn, we make wierd music...

...nottub roolf htneves eht hcaer ylno nac dna tegdim a si nam eht :rewsnA

A thousand smiles from a thousand miles away...

2005-12-01T01:13:00.000-08:00

OK, yeah, fast forward button. Now.

ONE: Fuck.
TWO: What?
ONE: I lost my scarf.
TWO: You had a scarf?
ONE: It was my favorite one, too.
TWO: You had multiple scarves?
ONE: Sort of.
TWO: Why?
ONE: Girls like scarves.
TWO: But, you can't use them. In fact, where do you keep them? How do you lose a scarf that you can't touch?
ONE: I don't keep them. Girls do.
TWO: So, you give them scarves.
ONE: No.
TWO: Then, where do they get them?
ONE: They just have them.
TWO: So, they're not your scarves at all.
ONE: Oh, no, not at all.
TWO: Then...how do you lose one?
ONE: Think about it.
TWO: ...
ONE: And comfort.

When Thomas Edison died, Henry Ford caught his last breath in a bottle. When the love of my life dies, I'll remember her in the rain with a nice urn of tea made from ash...

absorbent material> Joydrop - Metasexual

All in love with Di and they were doin' it in Texas...

2005-11-14T18:33:00.000-08:00

"I'll have a look at it and come back with an estimate."

"Thanks."

Troy watched the mechanic walk through the door beside the counter. The door that leads to somewhere else. The shop, Troy presumes, but he's never been through that door. It could lead to a pub or a room filled with multicolored plastic balls, for all he knows. He amuses himself for the better part of an hour imagining doors that usually go unnoticed leading to completely inexplicable and inappropriate places. Coming out of his reverie, he notices the girl across the waiting room. She had walked in while Troy had been imagining the door next to the elevator in his apartment building leading to Chucky Cheese. She caught his eye easily. She easily caught a lot of eyes. Half of the collar on her shirt was flipped up. Troy had a neurotic urge to walk over and straighten it for her, but it was more likely that he'd find out there really was a Chucky Cheese in his apartment building. Instead, he picked up the six month old copy of Outside magazine on the table next to him and flipped through ads for energy bars and titanium bicycle parts.

"Well, Mr. Williams, it looks like it's just a plug wire. I can have it fixed in an hour or so, if you don't mind waiting." Troy hadn't even noticed the mechanic come back. He'd been trying to covertly watch the girl dig through her satchel from behind the magazine. Looking down, he noticed he'd stopped on an article about ski bindings. Open mouthed, he turned to the mechanic.

"Yeah. That's fine."

"With labor, it'll be around forty-six fifty."

"OK, thanks." Around? That sounds pretty exact to me, Troy thinks. The mechanic walks over to the girl and they have a short conversation. Afterwards, she nods and walks out of the front door. Troy is a little disappointed to watch her go, but the days are filled with tiny, meaningless disappointments. He looks back down at the ski binding article and puts the magazine on the table. An hour. How to pass an hour. Hmmm.

Troy is staring at the ceiling when the girl walks back in, this time through the door next to the counter. He immediately notices that she fixed her collar while she was gone. She sees his startled look and smiles at him as she walks past, back to the chair she'd been sitting in earlier. She must have had to pull her car into the shop, he assumes. Troy grabs another magazine at random, trying to look occupied, but frowns as he pulls his eyes away from the girl to see Redbook in his hands. He puts it back on the table and hears a short laugh from across the waiting room. The girl is looking at him, still smiling. OK, Troy, say something clever.

"Always keeping an eye out for a new recipe for pie." Idiot! Pie? The girl laughs again and goes back to reading the book she'd been searching her bag for. Troy tries to make out the cover, but it's too far away. He goes back to staring at the ceiling and finds himself running through imaginary conversations he'd like to have with the girl while they're waiting, all of them ending with them leaving together and going to Perkins for coffee and an ironic slice of pie.

"Mr. Williams, can I talk to you?" Troy is startled once again by the entrance of the mechanic.

"Uhh, yeah, sure." Troy stands up and follows the mechanic through the door that, disappointingly, leads to the shop, just as he suspected.

"Dude, you should ask her out."

"What?"

"That girl in the waiting room. You should go talk to her."

"You think so?"

"Yeah, totally. She has, like, all of the same CDs in her car that you do. And she's reading a William Gibson book. Dude, you have to, you guys have common taste."

"Ummm...how did you know I like William Gibson?"

"You have a copy of the book she's reading in your back seat. C'mon, man, I'm nine for nine on setting customers up with eachother. You can tell a lot about people by what's in their car."

"Well, I mean, uhhh, if you think so, yeah, sure."

"I'm talkin' home run, dude. It's a sure thing!"

"OK...well, thanks."

"Go git'em, tiger!" Troy steps back through the door into the waiting room. He sits down in the same chair and ponders how to strike up a conversation. He stares at the ceiling for a bit longer, building up his courage. For some reason, Troy can't even consider disappointing the auto mechanic. He has to do this.

"So, uhh, what are you reading?" The girl looks up, initially looking as though she's trying to figure out where the sound came from, but then focuses on Troy.

"Oh, it's called Idoru."

"William Gibson! Very nice. I love William Gibson. Have you read his newest book?"

"No, not yet."

"Do you mind if I..." Troy starts, pointing towards the chair next to her.

"Oh, no, not at all," she says, gesturing towards the chair with her book. She moves her purse over to the opposite side and turns slightly, anticipating as he walks across the room. "So," she smiles at him, "do you read a lot of Gibson?"

"I haven't for a while. I read Neuromancer in high school. I have most of his books, but it's been a of couple years since I've read them. I read every new one that comes out." As Troy finishes his sentence the mechanic comes out again and smiles.

"Well, Mr. Williams, you're good to go," then, to the girl, "Britta, Mike's just finishing up with your oil change, he'll be out in a minute."

"Thanks," she replies, politely.

"I'll just go get your bill, Mr. Williams." The mechanic walks over into the glassed-in office. A little unnerved by the mechanic's use of the girl's first name and suddenly paranoid that Mike might be her boyfriend or something, Troy wonders if this is all a prank. Unwilling to let the swell of confidence he worked so hard on break and wash him onto the proverbial beach, he just goes with it.

"So, I was just wondering. Would you like to go for coffee and pie or something?"

"Is the pie homemade?" She's teasing him. It's not helping, but Troy is flying a kite made of nerves.

"Sadly, no. I've...never made a pie in my life."

The girl laughs. She looks him in the eye and smiles before replying, "Yeah. Let's."

Can you hear us?

2005-11-09T18:24:00.000-08:00

Tyler is abso-fucking-lutely not taking vacuums with the selling price of a pet fucking hippo and cramming them down the throats of impressionable senior citizens. Tyler doesn't care if he gets a free 27" television on top of his paycheck. Tyler cannot be bought with Zenith...

ONE: Is it better to suck the blood of the old or the young?
TWO: Well, I imagine the young would taste better.
ONE: No, I mean morally.
TWO: What the fuck do vampires care about morals?
ONE: It's a hypothetical question...
TWO: Hypothetical questions generally begin with "if".
ONE: Fine. If you were a vampire, would it be of a higher morality standard to suck the blood of the old or the blood of the young?
TWO: It depends on the person.
ONE: Why are you always so difficult?!
TWO: See, like, you. I would suck your blood before I'd suck the blood of my Nana.
ONE: I'd be offended, but she does make some bitchin' cookies.
TWO: OK, how about this? If you became a vampire, would you suck only enough to live from a willing person who would survive the bite, or would you take people in the night and drink as much as you wanted?
ONE: That's basically the question I originally intended to ask, but I didn't word it very well.
TWO: Well, I'd go with the willing participant, obviously.
ONE: I'm not sure I would.
TWO: Wait. Are you telling me that, of the two of us, the corrupt five year old would accept the suffering as his own and the fastidious neurotic would force it off on others?!
ONE: I thought you were the...
TWO: But, I'm the...
ONE: No, now that I think about it, having to do that would make me lose my appetite, thus making the entire venture futile. I prefer innocence.
TWO: And comfort.

Tyler doesn't even care if they'll send him to Vegas. What's in Vegas? Tyler doesn't gamble. Tyler wouldn't touch a hooker with a muddy branch. Tyler doesn't give two hoots and a flying toot about Tom Jones. Well, I guess there's CSI...

Tyler needs to stop talking about Tyler like this or Tyler is going to forget he is not actually a Tyleroid robot remotely controlled from the moon...such as Tyler has been pretending for the last couple days...

absorbent material> Supergrass - Supergrass

EDIT: Achewood was spying on me while I lived in Mason! I actually didn't mind doing the dishes, though...

I wanna show you where the feeling sparks...

2005-11-03T16:22:00.000-08:00

I finished my book. They found salt and learned to fish properly and survived the cataclysm. Yay! I got honked at and danced at and waved at...it was nice. I had kind of missed the bench reading...

ONE: Do you think we ever switch places?
TWO: Of course we switch places. It doesn't matter which of us is saying what, whoever speaks first is always One.
ONE: So, then, there's no differentiation. We're basically the same entity.
TWO: Yeah, we're both Him.
ONE: Hmmm. The two-sided conversations of one boy.
TWO: The one conversation of a two-headed boy.
ONE: So, then, one of us is fastidious, neurotic, and organized and the other is?
TWO: A corrupt and deranged five year old.
ONE: That's fucked up.
TWO: I think I'm the corrupt one.
ONE: I think I'm the anally retentive one.
TWO: You can't be anally retentive if you don't have an anus.
ONE: Thief! You stole that retort!
TWO: Corrupt! Remember?
ONE: Fastidious and neurotic. Of course I remember.
TWO: Let's steal a bunch of road signs!
ONE: And then sort them by color and size...
TWO: And comfort!

See...yeah...pretentious. I keep telling you guys...though, I guess no one has really disagreed with me yet...

absorbent material> Martina Topley-Bird - Anything...but I've been singing/humming/whistling Neutral Milk Hotel since I sat down on my bench this afternoon...

Hey, kids, rock and roll...

2005-10-18T20:01:00.000-07:00

Do you ever feel your life releasing it's tentacles and slowly contracting into a little focused ball of potential energy, so as to explode into something new and better? I hadn't for a long time. I thought I felt a tendril slide off last March, but something was still off-kilter. I thought I felt another one relenquish it's grasp about a month ago, but it didn't seem to make the future look any brighter. Suddenly, all I hear is this pop-pop-popping of tiny suction cups...

HIM: Does advice really require familiarity?
THEM: Yes. No. Definitely.
HIM: What? Why?
THEM: Because.
HER: I don't think it does.
HIM: Nor do I.
THEM: Our advice. Make the good things happen.
HIM: What are the good things?
THEM: The things that are good.
HIM: For me? For Them? For Her?
THEM: Both.
HIM: There are three choices.
HER: For you.
HIM: But, perhaps I can kill two birds with one stone.
THEM: That's not good. Killing birds.
HIM: Why do I even listen to Them?
THEM: Familiarity.
HER: They take too many stones to kill.
HIM: And I only have the one.

...and this time, as the tentacles fall away, one by one, I don't feel all slimy...

absorbent material> R.E.M. - Automatic For The People

We're in a little over our heads, but we'll keep on swimmin'...

2005-10-16T18:22:00.000-07:00

Been feeling a strong pull to pry my ass out of this place...

ONE: This isn't the first time.
TWO: Nor the last, mind you.
ONE: It had better be. I'm tired of "having your back".
TWO: Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that really constitutes "having my back".
ONE: Doesn't it?
TWO: What do you think?
ONE: Are there crackers on the moon?
TWO: What does that have to do with anything?
ONE: What do you think I think?
TWO: How should I know?
ONE: I just told you what I think!
TWO: Ha! Statement! Fifteen, love.
ONE: We're playing Questions?
TWO: Hadn't you noticed?
ONE: Why didn't you tell me?
TWO: How stupid do you think I am?
ONE: Why do you torment me so?
TWO: Do you really have to ask that?
ONE: Yes!
TWO: Woo! Thirty, love.
ONE: Damnit!
TWO: Forty, love!
ONE: That doesn't count!
TWO: Game!
ONE: Set?
TWO: Fuck that...
ONE: And comfort...

Chicago...Portland...Ames...I'm thinking Ames. The whole big city thing doesn't really appeal to me in the way that it used to. And it'll be nice and cheap for me to further nerdify myself at ISU...I just spent an hour checking it all out. I'm letting myself be influenced by outside entities, aren't I? Oh well...Ames will be a good place to end up. I've been missing that rain soaked walk through the ISU campus for quite a while. Which is strange...all of the time I spent in Iowa City and I don't miss those sidewalks at all...

absorbent material> The Plastic Constellations - Let's War!

I don't need to show that I know how this goes...

2005-10-12T22:17:00.000-07:00

I am a pupil of significance. Meaning that I like to know things. I like to know what things mean. To have enough knowledge to figure things out without any outside help. Say you're loaded onto an airplane in the middle of the night by a bunch of thugs...wouldn't you want to know where you're going? You could figure it out, if you knew enough about constellations and geography...or, you could at least make some educated guesses...unless they put a blindfold on you, in which case, you might still be able to figure it out if you're the star of a spy film. But, no, seriously...that's why I'm fascinated with information...

Here's a project...electric drums. Not electric drums. Electric drums. Metal sticks, foil heads. A resulting electric pop and squeal. I wish I knew more about electrical engineering so I could know more about the circuitry that would be involved and more about what kinds of sounds could be made. You could even run audio through it and interject the pops and feedback with samples...or even live input from other instruments. I guess I'll just have to build it and experiment (fuck around with it) to realize it's true potential...and then find a drummer to play it...for Breaker, Breaker, Undertaker! If I design, build, and customize instruments for my band, along with writing most of the lyrics, does that make up for the fact that I'm just the lead singer? How about if I do all of the lighting and set design for our shows as well? Jesus F. Christ, I am not entrusting that stuff to someone else, that's for sure. I mean, yeah, it's about the music, if the music sucks, nothing else matters...but I won't be satisfied until we make fan-fucking-tastic music and have an absurdly over-the-top image. I can't just stand by and be an indie rock nerd, I can only be a rock star. Y'know, the three hundred foot tall variety covered in leather and fake blood who never let themselves be seen in anything as mortal as white light or supermarkets. Of course, I'd still go to supermarkets...and, well, white light is kind of hard to avoid. That'd be the whole thing...I've never been able to take myself seriously, so, how can I take my band seriously? I can take other people seriously, I just can't understand how they can take themselves seriously. Everything in life is just so...I don't know...what's that amalgamated emotion that I feel almost all of the time that is never clearly one thing but just sort of shifts around like a bowling ball rolling around on a waterbed? Alive? Everything in life is just so alive...

absorbent material> Broadcast - Haha Sound...again...I love Broadcast so much...they write a lot of my post titles...

EDIT: Oh. My. God. Family Guy. Quantum Leap reference. Can't...contain...mirth...

When I think way back when, I can't go back again...

2005-10-07T23:49:00.000-07:00

I am happy, at long last.

ONE: Don't ever underestimate the power of Chaos.
TWO: Why would I do a thing like that?
ONE: Because you have so much to live for.
TWO: Where are we going with this?
ONE: Don't you think you have a lot to live for?
TWO: Yes, but, what the hell are you talking about?
ONE: Chaos.
TWO: Mmm, yeah, I got that much...
ONE: It's a very powerful thing.
TWO: I would assume so.
ONE: You're not taking me seriously.
TWO: As serious as an anagram.
ONE: ...
TWO: As serious as a workbench?
ONE: Now you're just patronizing me.
TWO: I don't know what the fuck you're talking about!
ONE: You have this complete disrespect for the powers of the universe!
TWO: How so?
ONE: Have you ever just sat back and let something happen?
TWO: I watched my little cousin walk into an electric fence once...I could've stopped him...
ONE: That's not what I mean. Well, no, that is what I mean.
TWO: See? You don't even know what the hell you're talking about!
ONE: No, you hit it right on the head, just on a, a really small scale.
TWO: What? So, you want me to sit back and let the people around me ruin their lives? What the hell do you mean, small scale?
ONE: No...no, I mean...you make things happen.
TWO: Umm, yeah, cause and effect. I interact with my environment, then it changes.
ONE: OK, so, wait. Yes, your environment, it changes...but it changes without your interaction as well, doesn't it?
TWO: Yeah...every day...other people's influence.
ONE: Exactly...other people's influence. Maybe some guy in Japan gets dumped by his girlfriend, so he's not really concentrating at his job the next day and, as a result, some other guy buys a faulty product. He tries to return it, but he can't, so he gets mad at the customer service rep, who, after he gets off work, is still thinking about the argument and gets in a car accident which is witnessed by a girl walking down the street and, after seeing the crash, she realizes just how fragile and short life really is and decides that she's finally going to throw caution to the wind and ask you out for drinks. Eb and flow. One guy's sadness becomes another guy's happiness. Your happiness.
TWO: So I should...hope some guy in Japan gets dumped? Start picking up eye-witnesses at crime scenes?
ONE: You should have some patience. You never know...it could happen tomorrow.
TWO: For once, I see where you're going...but you're trying to predict Chaos...I mean, it could also happen ten years from now...or a hundred.
ONE: Yes, but, if it's the right one, wouldn't it be worth the wait?
TWO: Worth the wait? In a hundred years, I'll be dead. It won't be worth the food in my teeth. And, anyway, you're confusing Chaos with Fate. Just because I let it happen without an undue amount of effort doesn't mean it's meant to be.
ONE: But Chaos is Fate.
TWO: And comfort?

For the first time that I can ever remember, I can't wait for Sunday night. Man, that feels weird...

absorbent material> Martina Topley-Bird - Anything

Ghost, ghost, I know you live within me...

2005-10-05T20:20:00.000-07:00

So, yeah, pretend for a moment that you just found out that instead of being born, you just woke up one day and everything that you remember before that never actually happened. That feeling you get...trying to figure out where the line is...trying to figure out how long you've been awake/alive. Was it that night you woke in a cold sweat? Was it this morning? Has it even happened yet? Imagine living in that moment. The separation between reality and dreams always being now. But, that can't be, I've been sitting here playing internet for a couple hours now...or have I? Is that just what I remember? I remember seeing an insect yesterday...it was huge, it's body alone easily the size of my thumb. The only way I can describe it is as a silent hummingbird with antennae. Yellow and black. Some kind of moth, I think, but, boy was it big. Was it real? Of course it was, I mean, it's just amusing to think about. When did I wake to this life that I live? Well, if you can call it a life. And comfort? Yeah, I do need to go back...gots'ta git outta FC first...and I'll be damned if I'm going to move back here a fifth time...

Oh, yeah, the counter, Laura...the little bar of numbers along the side...Big Brother is Watching! I never should have added that damn thing...without it, my vain curiosity wouldn't be able to consume me so...

absorbent material> Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea

EDIT: I almost forgot. Warren Ellis, you make my eyes bleed...it's pretty rad...

EDIT II: I promised whining aimed towards females...how's this? In my book today, I found a sappy little love note from Mindy. She borrowed the book about four years ago and must have left it in there for me to find. God, that was depressing...I just sat there and let it blow away...

I took a book and went into the forest...

2005-10-03T19:02:00.000-07:00

So, jury duty. Starts on Wednesday. Heavily mixed feelings. I'll get paid...a small compromise with the futility of getting a job because I have to be on a jury for three months. It'll be something to do, but it couldn't have come at a worse time. Now...when I'm working on something far bigger and more complicated than anything I've written before and have to keep going, full steam, before I lose interest. So many times have I started something without ever giving it another thought.

Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps it will help.

I want to write something that I can live in. I guess that's my motivation. Creating worlds to play in. Books are good, but I'm picky. I have to read several books before I find one that I feel truly comfortable in. The best was a section of A Key For The Nonesuch...a world with oceans of gigantic flowers, a race of beings who sail ships made from the flower stalks on the surface of the flowers...and, the hook...one thing that I can't get enough of...a gigantic abandoned city with vast underground caverns and pathways. Think about it...even just a day in a small, boring town like Forest City, sans people...wandering around, exploring the hidden places...just enjoying the place...without the people, it would become something of a wonderland. Just you...well, and probably somebody else if you think anything like I do...no other people to concern you, no other people to create obligations, no other people to keep you out...

Mmm...now my head is stuck in the clouds...it'll be hours before I get it out again...

absorbent material> Belle & Sebastian - Dear Catastrophe Waitress

Got a crush on a pretty pistol...

2005-10-01T18:41:00.000-07:00

Muahahaha! Make it count, vermin!

Ting-a-ling. Ting-a-ling.
"Fuck. How did this happen?" El Conquistador can't see a thing. He's on his back in a very claustrophobic enclosure. There's a string tied to his wrist.
Ting-a-ling. Ting-a-ling.

-

"Whew...'spose I could bum one'a those?" Red lips pouting, waiting for the answer.
"Of course," a whisper. Travis passes the cigarette that he just lit to the woman next to him before rolling over to get another from the bed table.
"Kind of a cliché, don't you think? Smoking after sex?" Clever red lips.
"I don't know. I just always have. I suppose so, yeah."
"I always think about things like that. Clichés." Here comes the smoke, Travis thinks. Inhaling is the part that interests him. Exhaling is just blowing smoke. Clever red lips blowing smoke.
Spacing off, Travis uses the mental clarity of post-ejaculation to work over some problems with his baby. Not the bimbo next to him, but his current oh-so-fucking-important project at the lab. Three years ago, he started on a journey that required a near constant amount of concentration and problem solving. It didn't take him long to learn that sex was essential. Now it's part of his regime. Setting aside one or two nights a week for finding, wooing and then humping, he's progressed to the top of his field. The name of Dr. Travis Kyzlasov is synonymous with artificial intelligence research worldwide.
"Sorry, kiddo, I just remembered that there's somewhere I have to be."
"What?! Oh, well, OK. Promise you'll call me sometime? There's this great little..."
"I really have to go. I'll call you sometime. Probably next weekend," cutting her off. The ability to concentrate has been well worth the coldness he's developed.
"Next weekend?" Door slams, car starts, smoke hangs.

-

Travis Kyzlasov Jr. floats in virtual reality; has for four years, thought he would for two more. "High School" is what they call it. As though the term had always been used for something that wasn't real life. True enough. Sector Manic High School, to be specific. His father always said it sounded like a discotheque, but everything did, it was the trend.
Luckily for Trav, in a world that isn't, the internet cannot get any less or more real. It's reality really connects him to every nook and cranny of the outside world. For a seventeen year old, Trav is inordinately fascinated with information theory. That's why the internet is his rabbit's foot. Gathering, stealing, sorting, cross-referencing, and occasionally even selling the stuff all the live-long day. That was, of course, until six months ago when he stumbled across a server owned by a very well-known tobacco company.
"Nice, dad. Very chivalrous. First your pole, now your cigarette."
Apparently, someone had fingered one of the servers of Trav's high school, so he traced the route back to the corporate web presence of Mercer Tobacco. It seemed odd, a tobacco company having an interest in a school full of people eating through tubes, but Trav guessed it was just an employee who's kid went to the school. It became pure curiosity when he decided he wanted to see what a tobacco company kept on it's hard drives. Surprise, surprise.
"That's two this week. It must be nose-to-the-grindstone at work."
Nothing of major interest on the webserver, obviously, other than the heavy ice he had to break to get there. Workstations, same story, nothing but accounting spreadsheets and advertising campaigns. As soon as Trav had access to the network, he'd noticed the database server. It didn't fit into the naming scheme because of the extra "db" in the middle. Databases are boring, but they're what Trav does. They are the information that he can most often sell. This one, however, was beyond anything he'd ever seen before and it seemed as though even Mercer Tobacco didn't know what they had. At first, it all just seemed like a huge database of personal profiles, which, oddly enough, is exactly what it was, but while copying the files to the private sector of his SMHS account, he noticed something. Kyzlasov, Travis Gilbert. Not his name, but his father's, on a profile. Of course, he opened it that night.
"Jeez, dad, and another one in the car?"
Each profile was frequently updated. They contained the usual info, birthdate, age, citizen key, etc, but then they had DNA imprints and a list of timestamped entries. Currently, six months after his discovery, Trav is browsing this one:

10.23.2074.23.05 - 342.5.341254296.976746846.7 - Kyzlasov, Travis Gilbert - 0.853

The one he'd just run through was this:

10.23.2074.22.46 - 342.5.376453296.966743843.3 - Kyzlasov, Travis Gilbert/Fredderick, Julia Vaughn - 0.942

If he cross-checked this Julia Fredderick lady, he'd find the same entry at the bottom of her profile.
As soon as he first found his father's profile in the database, he stopped copying the files. If someone was going to steal and sell this information, it wasn't going to be him. However, he was going to use this info to his advantage. The date and time at the beginning of each entry was simple to decipher, so his first task was to figure out what the rest of it meant. It wasn't until three days later that he worked his way back through the ice to the Mercer Tobacco network. Mission: research. Nothing for another week, but then he found some interesting schematics on one of the R&D servers. It was a cigarette. Schematics for a cigarette.

-

Ting-a-ling. Ting-a-thunk.
It hadn't taken El Conquistador very long to figure out that he was buried alive. What had once been panic swiftly became boredom after he started hearing the scraping sounds of what he assumed was shovels digging him out. It felt odd to be bored in a coffin, six feet under the ground. Perhaps not boredom, he decided, but impatience. He simply couldn't wait to find out who had made this immense blunder. He hadn't even been sick. Had he? Suddenly, El Conquistador couldn't remember. Anything.
"Bag'o'de'li!" Muffled. What in the fuck are they saying? Then, thump, thump. El Conquistador thumped back and heard nothing but scraping until he felt his world move. Light, a crack, then the sky.
"OK, just, uhh, just let me collect my thoughts for a second." El Conquistador is fuming. The man with the shovel can tell that this undead fellow is just a little too calm. "Just what in the fuck is going on here? Who are you? Where am I? What happened? And who in the fuck buried me alive?!"
"Mmm. I don't rightly know. I heard yer bell ringin'."
"My bell?"
"Safety coffin. Made 'em back in the eighteen hun'erds. Never used 'em, don't think. Whoever buried you must'a known you were still alive."

And there's more...so much more! It's all up here...*tink*tink*tink*...

absorbent material> Marilyn Manson - Holywood

EDIT: So, yeah, this little teaser...it'll have to do for now...I have more written but won't post it until it's finished. It was supposed to just be a short story, but it's turning out to be a long short story. And the laptop is on the fritz again, so I have to use the ancient, hateful machine. I'm just glad I'm getting this story out of my head...it's been bouncing around in there for the past month while I waited for it to solidify...and now, the more I write, the more solid it becomes...I'm finally writing again!

I want to live in Magic America with all the magic people...

2005-09-30T00:04:00.000-07:00

The things bouncing around in my head...safety coffins...the economics of online games...Victorian London...green eyes...dark, abandoned passages...the moments between the now and the then...random words: "markers", "chardonnay", "narcolepsy", etc...robotics...the difference between science fiction and future fiction...virtual reality...the aesthetics of World War II...giant squids...prosthetic limbs...overcomplicated random number generators for encryption algorithms...and fire, of course, but that one never goes away...

It's like an ongoing game of Tetris, but the blocks keep coming slower and slower and I never get the one that I need to make them all perfect...

Oh, yeah, several months ago, I spent the entire three hour drive down to Iowa City ranting to my friend, Justin, about taking over the world and then driving it into anarchy and now I can't remember any of it...it was compelling stuff...locked up in my head somewhere...oh, silly emotional trauma, you've made me too sane and it's taking me longer than I thought it would to whip myself back into shape...

absorbent material> Blur - Parklife...it makes my brain all shiny!

If they get near it, kill them...mm, politely...

2005-09-27T09:53:00.000-07:00

OK, here's the deal...I need synth equipment, a thereminist, a couple more auxpercussionists/backup singers/stage candy, and a lot of black leather. We'll call ourselves Breaker, Breaker, Undertaker, cover ourselves with zippered strips of leather and fake blood, and we'll make indie-techno-prog metal about clouds and World War II and existentialism...and, y'know, unicorns...

absorbent material> Firefly...I'm beginning to like this show...and the movie comes out on Friday...perhaps I'll go...

EDIT: So, entering the seventh hour of watching this show, I'm beginning to wonder how I could ever dislike it...it's pirates and cowboys in space!

EDIT II: OK, that's it...I LOVE this show! "We oughta go to the crappy town where I'm a hero!"

What's new, pussycat, can you dig the satisfaction?

2005-09-26T20:58:00.000-07:00

So, yeah, I started working on a denim jacket today...this sort of button down denim straight jacket sort of thing that hangs down more on one side...it was from a dream. In the dream, there was a girl wearing this denim jacket, a knee length, wrinkled tan skirt, and white motocross boots. These, basically...

...but, yeah, so I started making this denim jacket and the f'ing sewing machine gave me the threaded, needly finger. Piece of crap...

By the way, that dream was awesome...if I were ever to actually meet a girl who wore motocross boots all the time, my brain would probably melt simply from associative superstition...

absorbent material> White Zombie - La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Vol. I

Dark...riders!

2005-09-25T18:56:00.000-07:00

I have such a love/hate relationship with this age/place. Love/hate being an all-inclusive adjective and age/place being an all-inclusive noun. A different age and I wouldn't hate this place...and different place and I wouldn't hate this age. It's just that I'm twenty-one freakin' years old...with an acreage all to myself...I should be trashed and getting really laid. However, I'm not such a big fan of drinking to the point of stupidity and, as much as I enjoy sex, I enjoy backrubs and cuddling so much more. Of course, I'm not really getting any of that, either...except for the drinking (Oh, Chardonnay, where is your female personification?!)...which is what makes me hate this place at this age. Or maybe I'm just too picky...close to my age, smart, crazy, deviant, and, quite importantly, cute (where are you?!)...oh, man, last year I at least knew people close to my age that I could fantasize about to keep the loneliness in check. What I wouldn't give for a backrub right now...not only the fact that my back has been killing me, but the thought of female finger tips belonging to some adorable bit of amalgamism pushing the pain of out of skin...oh...what greater joy is there?

absorbent material> Orbital - In Sides...again...really loud...with the animated Lord of the Rings for visuals...sometimes it syncs up and gets really trippy...

Like a stone cold feeling inside...

2005-09-21T21:57:00.000-07:00

Call me egomaniacal if you will, you'd be telling the truth, but I know what I'm capable of and the spark is just gone. My memory plays tricks on me. I often find myself wondering if certain events actually happened or if they were part of a dream I had. Last night I dreamt rain...this morning I wondered why the ground was dry. The night before, I dreamt of a life I remembered having always lived, until I woke...then they meshed and for several hours, I wasn't sure what had been real and what hadn't. I fall in love every night, wake up lovesick and wonder if she's real...

absorbent material> Supergrass - Supergrass

Freelands VIII

2005-09-19T13:42:00.000-07:00

I lost the text for this one somehow...

'Cause it's colored with a thought...

2005-09-18T23:08:00.000-07:00

A persistant headache has been hounding at me for the last couple days. And my back is killing me. Oh what I wouldn't give for...bah, nevermind...I may as well be asking for a pet sphinx. Human beings are odd creatures. Filling up this planet with so much uselessness. I just want to fit into my nooks and crannies and pull the strings of society from there. Err...I mean, uhh...control the minds of...I mean take my place as the ruler of the...uhh, no...use my superior wisdom to...damnit! Fuck it. Yes, I aspire to take over the world. Who doesn't? I wonder when I'll start talking to myself again. I miss me...but not as much as all of you other fun people...of course, I give me better ideas...because they're my ideas...

ME: But they're my ideas!
ME(again): No, yeah, we got it...

Age? Decay? Regret? Time sucks. And comfort?

absorbent material> Cranes - Loved

Freelands VII

2005-09-18T15:02:00.000-07:00

TWO: Ice cream!
ONE: It is another form of happiness.
TWO: Good point. Hmmm...what about animals? Is the meaning of life the same for every living creature?
ONE: Yes.
TWO: I guess that makes sense. Oh, yeah! Are there other...oh, I guess I already know the answer to that.
ONE: Yes, you do. There are other civilizations in the universe. I am from one of them.
TWO: Yeah. Can you read my mind?
ONE: Yes. I am surprised that you haven't noticed yet. All of our communication is telepathic.
TWO: I guess that makes sense, if this is a dream.
ONE: A dream state.
TWO: Right, whatever. What about food?
ONE: You don't need it here.
TWO: Yeah, I don't need cigarettes or sex, either...
ONE: Correct.
TWO: ...I think you're missing the point.
ONE: Sarcasm?
TWO: Yeah.
ONE: Meaning that you do need cigarettes and sex?
TWO: And you're teaching me about existence?

And then swallowed it...

2005-09-18T11:33:00.000-07:00

Dreams are starting to piss me off. They're always about the same thing. They cause me to become obsessed with that one thing, which is ultimately frustrating.

"Nine-one-one, state the nature of your emergency."
"There's been a wreck...a car wreck, two cars."
"And where are you?"
"Out on Highway fifteen, just a couple miles from town...just a second...a hundred and ninetieth avenue. Highway fifteen and a hundred and ninetieth avenue."
"I'll send a response unit right away."
"OK...thank you."
"So, what did they say?"
"They're sending someone."
"Good, it looks pretty bad."

-

"Are you the one who made the call?"
"Yes."
"Did you see the accident happen?"
"No."
"OK, We're going to need you to give a statement anyway. Go over and talk to that officer over there, tell him you need to give a statement, he'll walk you through it. Tom! C'mere!"
"Yeah?"
"How does it look?"
"The two guys in the truck are rattled, but they'll be OK. The tall one's got a nasty cut on his head, but the EMTs took care of him. They're both giving statements over with Janet."
"And the other car?"
"The kid in the other car never had a chance. The first-responders told me that he was whispering something when they got here, instructions for someone named Nick or Nikki or something. He knew he was dying...he had part of the steering wheel through his neck. He'd finished bleeding to death before they could even get his name."
"Rough night. OK. Route traffic around the section, I'll see if I can find his next-of-kin."
"Already did it, Simon. The car is registered to Vail McGowan, the EMTs found his ID in his back pocket, it's him. His parents live just a few miles away. Janet has the address."
"OK, I'll go over and tell them in person."

-

The lingering dream in Nicole's mind was unlike any she'd had before. It was so vivid, she thought, almost cinematic. Not dream-like at all. A little upset by it, she didn't want to go back to sleep. Instead, late night television numbed the dream away. Enough for her to fall asleep on the sofa, anyway, a tipped over soda can spilling over the floor. The rest of her dreams that night were directly influenced by that first, as dreams often are. Over and over, morphing and changing until it was a perverse version of the original. Upon waking, Nicole only vaguely remembered the night's dreams. She cleaned the spilled soda while wondering why she'd slept on the sofa. Routine kicked in and she went off to class without a thought.

-

"Nikki! Hey!" called a voice from the distance. "Wait! Nikki!"
"Hey." Nicole Hauer was of the persuasion to never fake sentiment or enthusiasm. To some people she seemed cold, though this was not the case.
"Are you working tonight?"
"Nope."
"Could you take my shift? I have this huge paper to finish tonight."
"In what?"
"Intro to Film Theory."
"You're not in that class."
"What?"
"I'm in that class. You're not in that class. Though, we do, actually, have a paper due. Oh, hey." These last words words were spoken to Nicole's friend Matt, who had just approached. He nodded and looked back and forth between the two girls.
"OK, fine, I'm not in that class and I don't really have a paper due, but I really need the night off! Please?"
"I just said, I have a paper due."
"Oh. Well. Thanks, anyway. I'll find someone, I'm sure."
"I hope so." With that, the other girl trotted away, her heeled shoes clacking on the pavement.
"What was that all about?"
"She wanted me to take her shift tonight. She tried to tell me she was in my Film Theory class and that she had a paper due for it. Not quite her day."
"Too bad you have a paper due, I was hoping to hit a couple pubs."
"I don't have a paper due."
"But you just told her that you did."
"Right. She tries to fool me, I'm going to fool her right back."
"Ahh. Well, what do you say to The Dublin Underground...say, nine o'clock?"
"Sure. Dress up, though, cause this one's a date."
"I was going to see if Mel and her friend wanted to come."
"So there's three girls and you? How industrious. That's fine...I'm just trying to trick you into paying for my drinks."
"Give Mel the proper nudges to get her into my bed and you've got a deal."
"So, you hit on Mel, I tell her you're hung like a firehose, and then you buy me a drink. She'll never see through that."
"Leave it up to me."
"Whatever you say. Nine o'clock. Pick me up?"
"Sure. Later."

-

"Matt, I think you should give it up. Mel's not that interested in you."
"She just needs more plying. Booze is a great aphrodesiac."
"OK, Matt, listen to me. What I mean to say is that I think Mel is more interested in her friend than in you."
"What? No way. No, no, I think you're wrong."
"Hmmm. Where did they go, Matt? Where did your little future-fuck-buddy and her friend go?"
"To the bathroom."
"Really? I think the Department of Health might like to have a word with the owner of this fine establishment. Isn't that them over there? Those two girls in the corner. The ones who are making out? I certainly hope that's not really the bathroom."
"Oh. Wow. I see what you mean."
"Don't even think about it."
"About what?"
"Both of them. I'd rather you came home and had sex with me than have to hear all about the night you had two girls at the same time."
"But it's a once in a lifetime chance!"
"Fine, whatever, enter at your own risk. However, if I hear about it, I will beat you senseless."
"No, you won't. I think they just left."
"Oh. That's kind of rude of them. I hope they didn't think they were 'letting us be alone'."
"I doubt it. On the way to your apartment I told them that you were a member of the Young Republicans Club...and that you were a Baptist...and that your father was a police officer."
"What the hell for?"
"It seemed funny at the time...but I think they believed me. Now that I think about it, there was more gasping than giggling."
"You idiot! They don't think we're together! They think I hate them!"
"Oh."
"They think I'm some kind of ultra-conservative home-schooled psychopath who sews dresses and sells them to the Amish!"
"Whoa. Settle."
"You jackass."
"I'm surprised you care so much. You thought it was funny when I told my parents that you were pregnant and I was the father."
"Damnit. I forgot about that. I was trying to guilt you into keeping the free drinks rollin' my way."
"Not to worry, we may have failed, but you did your part. Did you ever read that thing I gave you?"
"Thing you gave me?"
"Yeah, that manifesto thing that I found. Or, wait. No, here it is, I never gave it to you."
"Here, I'll read it when I'm a bit more sober."
"There are a bunch more. I found them online. Some guy named Vail McGowan. He's pretty good."
"...I think I'm a bit more sober."

I suppose I should work on The Freelands of Elsewhere so it isn't retarded on Windows machines. Well, so it's less retarded, anyway...

absorbent material> Super Furry Animals - Fuzzy Logic

Freelands VI

2005-09-17T15:17:00.000-07:00

ONE: I'm trying to make the conversation more comfortable.
TWO: Whatever. So, honestly, shits and giggles? Just for fun?
ONE: Yes. To see what would happen. You are a form of entertainment.
TWO: I'm not sure whether I'm mad or glad. On the one hand, if you hadn't, I wouldn't exist, and on the other hand, because you did it just for kicks, there is no real point to living.
ONE: Happiness.
TWO: Happiness?
ONE: Happiness is the underlying answer to life.
TWO: Happiness.
ONE: Yes.
TWO: How so?
ONE: Decisions are made to make an entity happy.
TWO: Run that by me again.
ONE: The goal of every decision you've ever made in your life was the happiness of an entity. Whether it was yourself or someone else.
TWO: Ummm...
ONE: Have you ever done anything with your own sadness as the primary goal?
TWO: I'm the one asking the questions.
ONE: Oh. I'm sorry to have upset you.
TWO: I'm joking.
ONE: I see.
TWO: But, actually, yeah, I have.
ONE: Why did you make yourself sad?
TWO: I don't know, I like being sad.
ONE: So, in making yourself sad, you created an amount of enjoyment.
TWO: Yeah, I guess.
ONE: So, you made yourself sad in an effort to be happy.
TWO: You're losing me.
ONE: Atomic weapons, a subject that most of your race fears above most others, were created to make some entity happy.
TWO: Umm, no. They were created to kill people.
ONE: Exactly. They were created to kill the enemy of whoever used them. Why would someone want his enemies to die?
TWO: Because they're his enemies...duh...
ONE: The death of his enemies would bring him happiness.
TWO: I don't think anyone is all that happy about the use of nuclear weapons.
ONE: Because the happiness they create is outweighed by the tragedy of so much death. However, the original goal was happiness.
TWO: OK. I'm starting to get the picture. So, the meaning of life is happiness.
ONE: Correct.
TWO: That's it?
ONE: What more could you want?

Freelands V

2005-09-15T23:58:00.000-07:00

ONE: There will still be problems. They are still unforeseeable.
TWO: Like the fact that I'll have been missing for two weeks? That sort of thing?
ONE: Correct.
TWO: OK, so, how much time has passed so far?
ONE: If you were to return now, you will have been gone for ten seconds.
TWO: That's it?!
ONE: You are in a dream state. Time passes much differently.
TWO: This is a dream? This isn't even real?
ONE: I assure you, this is just as real as your waking life.
TWO: If I go back, will I ever be able to come back?
ONE: I may bring you back, but you won't know when.
TWO: Can I make an appointment before I leave?
ONE: Do you wish to leave already?
TWO: No, I'm just curious. I like all of this, but I'll probably get homesick after a while and I want to be able to come back here.
ONE: You may.
TWO: OK, so, where were we?
ONE: The others.
TWO: Oh, yeah. Nevermind. Umm...so, tell me about existence.
ONE: There is so much. You must be more specific.
TWO: Fine...uhh...why did you seed our planet.
ONE: To give it life.
TWO: ...why did you want to give it life?
ONE: Shits and giggles.
TWO: You are a laugh riot.

Freelands IV

2005-09-15T22:13:00.000-07:00

TWO: Then why am I here? With you?
ONE: So that I may instruct you.
TWO: How long will I be here?
ONE: As long as you wish.
TWO: And then I can go back to my life, right?
ONE: Correct.
TWO: So, I could stay here and ask you questions for thousands of years and then just go back to my normal life?
ONE: No.
TWO: Why not?
ONE: Thousands of years from now, your sphere will have changed beyond your recognition.
TWO: But, that's the only problem? I'll just have been gone for thousands of years?
ONE: There are many problems.
TWO: Like what?
ONE: They are unforeseeable.
TWO: How about if I'm just here for a couple weeks?
ONE: Then I'll fold out the sleeper sofa.
TWO: Har har.

Freelands III

2005-09-15T10:31:00.000-07:00

ONE: You underestimate me. I am capable of humor.
TWO: Well, if you created us, like you said, then your sense of humor is fairly obvious.
ONE: Did you appreciate my humor?
TWO: Oh yeah...male nipples are hilarious.
ONE: They were not our intention. I said that I created you, but merely meant that I seeded your sphere with life. Nature, as you call it, took over after that.
TWO: Our intention?
ONE: There are others.
TWO: Like you?
ONE: Not exactly. They differ.
TWO: Will I ever get to meet any of them?
ONE: You have eternity.
TWO: You keep saying that and now I'm beginning to wonder...why? Am I dead?
ONE: No. You are not dead. You have eternity because it is there.
TWO: What? What the hell does that mean?
ONE: You have eternity because it exists. You were never without it.
TWO: Wait, so you're saying that I'm still going to die some day and this will all be over? I won't actually be alive for eternity?
ONE: Correct.

Heaven or Hell, sometimes, you just can't tell...

2005-09-14T21:14:00.000-07:00

So, First International Church of Techno. More like a discoteque than a church. Blaring techno all across town at noon and six. Not really my idea, but so brilliant that I must share it.
Let's talk about this two thousand year old game of Telephone. I hate party games, so leave me out of it. Also, I'd like to remind everyone that it is only a game. And comfort? Has nothing to do with it.

My name is your name is his name is her name. It's just too damn confusing because I say hey and you say hey and I don't know who you're talking to because your eyes don't look the same direction and I can never remember which one is the good one. It's just so realistic. More than enough of that, already. Dream the dream that makes you dream about dreaming and makes the good things happen because I can only say so much at one time before you turn my light out. Currently, I really have no idea, but tomorrow I might know. It all depends on the things that happen between now and then. I may have things happen to me that are completely unforseeable, so I won't know, will I? They're unforseeable. Un-For-See-Able! And you can take that to the bank. No one gets the last one because I keep it for myself because it's the last one. Or, you know, I could just take it back and demand a refund, but that takes all of that time stuff and I only have so much of it today. I think I get more tomorrow. Please, sir, may I have some more? Time. I need it. It's the stuff that dreams are made of. I can't do that, it'll make me angry at myself. If I get angry at myself, I'll lose my seat to that guy standing back there with the nachos and I won't like that much at all and I'll get even angrier at myself. It's an endless cycle. Try it out, it's the new model. It comes with a pen and pencil set engraved with a name. Not my name...and not your name or his name or her name...but someone else's name. It's cool. I don't mind.

There. It worked. I typed nonsense with my eyes closed until my hands because disoriented. It's fun, try it. Just type and type everything that comes to mind until if feels like you're typing with your arms crossed...your left hand feels like your right and vice versa...it's a really strange sensation...suddenly, it becomes really hard to type. Both of your hands feel really awkward, like you're writing with the wrong hand. Or maybe I'm just weird...

absorbent material> Stranglers - In The Night

EDIT: See! Disoriented! "Because" instead of "became"!

Freelands II

2005-09-14T10:16:00.000-07:00

ONE: I will try to be lucid.
TWO: OK. I appreciate it. I think. Hmm. Are you God?
ONE: No. I am your creator.
TWO: But, that would make you God.
ONE: I am not omnipotent, omniscient, or magical in any way.
TWO: Magical? God isn't magical. He's just...God.
ONE: I'm afraid you are mistaken. The concept of God defines that he is able to perform acts beyond that of physical possibility. In other words, magic.
TWO: You know, I never thought of it that way.
ONE: That's why I am here.
TWO: OK, so, who are you?
ONE: I do not have a name. I am simply your instructor.
TWO: Instructor of what?
ONE: Existence.
TWO: So, this is going to take a while.
ONE: You have eternity.
TWO: I know, you mentioned it. Can we listen to some music or something?
ONE: I forgot to bring my iPod.
TWO: ...did you just make a joke?

Feel the power of your breath moving in and out and you will find yourself in trance...

2005-09-13T20:38:00.000-07:00

Let's get one thing perfectly clear. Yeah, I don't know where I was going with that. And comfort? Maybe what I need to do is go back to watching the same thing over and over and over and over again so that I have no need to pay any attention to it. I've been trying to recreate the conditions I was in back in February. No luck thus far. Some marginal success, but nothing promising. I was well into that sweet, sweet lunacy, but the bounds had not even been seen, let alone breeched. Now I have all of that ground to make up again. Perhaps I'm reading too much. Or, like, actually interacting with other humans. I know what I need. New music. Not new music that I get from other people...new music that I find in a bargain bin and love more than life itself. Because that's what I do. I surround myself with things that I love more than my own life. Kind of makes you wonder, though. I watch a lot of shitty movies...

absorbent material> Professor Trance and the Energizers - Shaman's Breath

Freelands I

2005-09-13T00:50:00.000-07:00

ONE: How's this?
TWO: Umm, better, sure.
ONE: So, what questions do you have for me?
TWO: Well, uhh...I mean, this is all very sudden, I'll have to think about it for a bit.
ONE: You have eternity.
TWO: Mmm...thanks. OK, here's one. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
ONE: The amoeba. Both.
TWO: Do I have a limited number of questions, because that one feels kind of wasted.
ONE: You have eternity.
TWO: OK, I should have asked this one right away. Do I have to spend eternity with you?
ONE: No. You cannot. It is eternity.
TWO: How satisfyingly cryptic.

If you were me and I were you...

2005-09-12T18:08:00.000-07:00

Continuing my game of Cat and Also Cat...

I fell through the void for days before chancing across anyone. His name was Kent. He fell into a tree. Who knew?
Kent eventually told me about a place that he'd fallen past. He said that there were people there who weren't falling. They were standing on the place. I don't really know if I believe him, but what reason would he have to lie?
I asked Kent what this place looked like so I could recognize it if I ever fall past it. He said it looked like a brick building with windows and a roof. I told him that it was a brick building with windows and a roof. He asked me how I knew, I hadn't seen it, he had. Kent got mad and pushed me, hard. He watched my face as his trajectory of falling angled away from mine. I watched his face as he gave me the finger. The nerve of some people!
Of course, I did, eventually, fall past the place that Kent had seen. I had been right, it was a brick building with windows and a roof. Kent was right, too, for it certainly looked exactly like what it was. He had also said that the people standing on the brick building with windows and a roof were not falling. Kent was wrong. The people were falling, they were just falling a lot faster than the brick building with windows and a roof, and the brick building with windows and a roof was catching them. Perspective!
I never saw Kent again. I never saw the brick building with windows and a roof again, either. I don't know if Kent ever saw the brick building with windows and a roof again. He may have.

absorbent material> The Human Machine - The Human Machine

You never, ever believed in me, I am your tourniquet...

2005-09-11T00:05:00.000-07:00

All day I've had this strong impulse to lock myself in a room, smoke cigars, drink whiskey, and pretend to be an insane military commander bent on putting the world out of it's misery. Of course, then I'd have to talk someone into being Peter Sellers and whatnot. I want things to change, but as soon as they do, I don't like it. I think I'm just picky. So, I've been wondering, lately, how much it really takes to fire a rocket out of the atmosphere. I feel like shooting something inexplicable into space. Fuck this, I'm not in the mood...

absorbent material> Marilyn Manson - Antichrist Superstar

Not really real, but really, really, really, real...

2005-09-08T19:44:00.000-07:00

SOPRANO(operatic): Nope nope nopenopenope nope NO!
BASS: Chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga...
SOLO: I refuse!
BARITONE(echo): He refuse.
SOLO: I refuse!
BARITONE(echo): He refuse.
- cue metal riff
ALL: *scream*
SOLO: I say fuck it!
CHOIR(echo): Fuck it. Fuck it.
SOLO: Don't wanna do it!
CHOIR(echo): Fuck it. Fuck it.
SOLO: Whatever it is that I'm DOOO'IN'!
CHOIR(echo): Fuck it. Fuck it.
BASS(building): Chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga...
SOLO(sustained): I quit!
CHOIR(echo): Fuck it. Fuck it.
- cue screeching feedback/crashing noises

I don't want this. I don't even know what it is that I don't want...but I really feel like the square block in the round hole. Something simply is not right. Like something just over the horizon is waddling about, waiting for me. I don't know what the fuck it is...Spidey sense or ESP or mental instability or what...but I don't like it. Bottling up the insanity? Have I been doing that? Pushing the genie back into the lamp? Perhaps. Ignoring the impulses. Or have the impulses even been present. I don't remember. The lunacy is who I am. That's it. Something must be done...

absorbent material> The Suicidekicks - Hubschrauber! Hubschrauber!

Tokyo...someday...

2005-09-07T21:50:00.000-07:00

Oh, Ty, you ol' softie. I went into town today in hopes of seeing someone, but no luck. Instead, I was subject to an annoying friend from high school and an invitation to a youth group meeting from a complete stranger. I told her I was waiting for someone. True enough. I even went looking for this someone in the place I saw her last...after beating the shyness down with half a dozen cigarettes...but no one was there. Perhaps tomorrow. I barely know her...and she'll probably read this eventually...she's already embarassed me enough, I'm beginning to not mind so much...

absorbent material> Budweiser Select...I don't know why my father got it...but it's better than the stuff he usually buys...

You're gonna carry that weight...

2005-09-05T22:18:00.000-07:00

So, the universe...infinite...if you're into that sort of thing. The Big Bang? If you're into that sort of thing? I'm snapping my fingers and it's all happening an infinite number of times between snaps. An infinite number of times, an infinite number of times. And an infinite number of times in between each of those infinite number of times. Everything that has ever happened or will ever happen is happening right now, an infinite number of times. In an infinite universe, nothing is truly finite. I love infinity...

Fate, if you're into that sort of thing. Chaos? That sort of thing? In an infinite universe, you know it's happening. Somewhere. You just can't predict where. It's already happened and it will happen again. You can't change it. Fate, predetermined. Chaos, unpredictability. Infinity? Predetermined unpredictability? It's happening in an infinite number of places and not happening in an infinite more. A universal fifty-fifty chance. I love infinity...

absorbent material> Cowboy Bebop...the final episode...depressing. Spike is not supposed to die...

A screaming comes across the sky...

2005-09-04T20:57:00.000-07:00

(To the tune of "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands")
HER: I like boys.
HIM: I am a boy.
HER: That is nice.
HIM: I like weird things.
HER: I am weird.
HIM: Awesome.
HER: I like muscles.
HIM: Uhh...OK. Why?
HER: They indicate success.
HIM: Oh. Umm...I like books.
HER: I read The Notebook.
HIM: Mmm. Neat.
HER: I like my boyfriend.
HIM: Good.
HER: He is going to beat you up with his big muscles.
HIM: Oh. Why?
HER: He can.
HIM: Ahh.

All-egor-y! FAST FORWARD BUTTON!

absorbent material> Lazlo Jamf and the White Visitation - Schwartzgerat

Fourth time's the charm...

2005-09-04T00:16:00.000-07:00

I don't want to do this again. A small part of me hopes that I don't make it. I was out...I was away from here...and, crash. Back I go. They say that you're crazy if you talk to yourself. I've found that you're even crazier if you used to, but stopped. Last night I heard voices just before falling asleep. I'm not joking. I hallucinated voices...voices of my friends, but saying completely inexplicable things. Both sides taunting...sanity beckoning with it's comfort and happiness...insanity scratching the surface with it's carelessness and adventure...but they're playing keep away. I just teeter between, watching my life sail through the air over my head as they toss it back and forth. I quit smoking today. I'm not sure they care. Anyone cares. I don't even care...

Panhandling for Encouragement...

2005-09-03T15:20:00.000-07:00

A string of moments...

2005-09-03T15:17:00.000-07:00

When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all...

2005-09-03T00:49:00.000-07:00

Three hours from now, the world will explode, but no one knows it. It'll start with an earthquake, but that won't last long. The Earth's core will expand quickly enough to launch each tectonic plate into space, nearly intact, trailing atmosphere and cooling magma, while most earthlings will still be wondering what the shaking is all about.
Ursula, for instance, will be walking home when the shaking starts, but right now she's standing in her friend's yard. People are talking, but Ursula isn't really listening. She's too busy watching the stars and shuffling away from Tom, who is inching closer. A comical scene. Nearly syncronized, every few minutes they shift weight from one foot to the other, casually bringing their feet together, then shifting back and extending the other foot for balance. Shown in time-lapse, they would be sidestepping across the yard while their arms and friends blurred around them. Of course, Tom is an asshole. It's pretty much unanimous.
Craig will be in his basement, talking on his cell phone. The air pressure will make his house pop off the ground and Craig will catch a brief glimpse of the ground falling away before his body is flash-frozen. Currently, he's debating whether or not to call her. His friend, that is. Brooding in his basement all day long while waiting for the right time to call, gathering the courage. She'll answer, ask if she can call back in a few minutes, and hang up. When she calls back a half hour later, Craig's confidence has wilted. They'll talk right up to cataclysm, but he won't mention how much he enjoys her smile.
Franz dies masturbating. He'll be asleep before the world ends, but the quake will wake him. He's paranoid enough to realize that his life is soon to end. Looking over at his computer, he'll swear loudly and start masturbating again. His annoying neighbor doesn't hear him swear because of the rattling windows, but Franz will still worry that Jim is going to waddle over to his apartment and complain.
Mona won't see the world end, but Kim will. She's at a movie with her brother. A corny science fiction movie based on a popular novel from the seventies. Kim's brother spends the entire two hours complaining about the actor selected to play the main character. Apparently, he doesn't jive with the character he imagined while reading the book. In the moments between earthquake and death, Kim will find God. In the moments between the movie and the earthquake, Kim will find Mona, bleeding on the bathroom floor. Kim once wondered why people always go in the bathroom to commit messy suicides, but now she knows.
Sneaking away from the fire, Ursula wants to go home, but no one is sober enough to drive. She could've driven someone else's car, but no one is ready to leave, so she starts walking. It's only about three miles. Not too bad, but her feet already hurt from standing all night. She's relieved as her phone rings. A pleasant distraction. "Hey Craig! What's up? Wait, just a second, a cop just drove by, flipped on his lights and turned around. Can I call you back?"

absorbent material> that demon, television...

You ever read any Vonnegut?

2005-09-01T20:44:00.000-07:00

An actual diary-esque post. I know, I'm sorry. So, the iBook is back on the fritz. As though I didn't see that coming. And I met a girl tonight...very cute with a delicious accent...but I didn't quite catch her name. Anna May or something like that. I hate that...I am so bad at picking up on names during introduction...I'm too busy being shy. So, yeah, I passed her and her friend on the street, she said "Hi." I reciprocated, but, as usual, in my shy little subvocalization. Yeah, she called me on it. "Hey! I said hi. You didn't say it back." I explained myself and apologized. We talked about books. She said that, next we meet, we'll have to sit and talk about sci-fi novels. Go figure. Always with the books. Of course, what can I expect when I spend all of my time reading on a bench. Her friend's name was Gyuri...or something similar...I have no idea how to spell it. I went back to my bench and tried to read my Pynchon but ended up fantasizing conversations with said cutie and couldn't concentrate. Her hand felt so small and graceful in mine when we shook...I love that. I hope I see her again some time. And speaking of Pynchon...it's beautiful, the prose is gorgeous...but, for cryin' out loud, Tom, yeah, I get it, everywhere smells like ass and everyone is gettin' freaky with everyone else...get to the point! Though, I do have to say, some of the passages that I read today were of a level of depravity and carelessness that I can only dream of. I mean, seriously, passing through Russian blockades in WWII Germany wearing a velvet cape and a viking helmet looted from a costume shop by a leggy Belgian girl and calling yourself Rocketman? However, the other hand sounds even more delightful...waking up to onion soup and wine in a dusty room of a deserted building in Europe with the morning sun streaming in, an owl perched on top of your canopy bed, and someone to share it with. Sign me up...

absorbent material> imagined conversations...

Windswept with starving neglect...

2005-08-31T22:45:00.000-07:00

Sudden compulsion to be sad.

ONE: You ever seen Fiddler on the Roof?
TWO: Yeah. It's OK.
ONE: I love that movie. I just...I can't even explain it.
TWO: That's a, uhh...glowing review.
ONE: No, seriously, the movie version is great.
TWO: As great as Ernest Scared Stupid?
ONE: Sometimes I wish we could switch places.
TWO: With Ernest?
ONE: What the fuck are you talking about?
TWO: With Topol!
ONE: What?
TWO: Thunderbolts and lightning, very, very frightning me...
ONE: ...
TWO: Galileo! Galileo! Galileo Figaro!
ONE: Are you done?
TWO: I was switching places with Topol!
ONE: That was Queen!
TWO: Oh! That's a good one! Personally, my favorite was always "wizard".
ONE: No, no, those lyrics are from a Queen song.
TWO: Yeah, I know, it is a good song! That Joseph Stein!
ONE: And comfort?

The human thing to do would be to go out and meet people. The Tyler thing to do is apparently to hide from it all and push the responsibility off on chaos/fate (since they're both the same thing...to me...I should really come up with some catchy name...because I hate slash forms). I...I miss love. That's all there is to it...

absorbent material> The Legendary Pink Dots - Dissonance

EDIT: Umm, you're not going to believe this, but my laptop has apparently regained some of it's functionality...I'm using it right now...such a fucking roller coaster...

Wehrner...fucking owl...

2005-08-30T22:40:00.000-07:00

Can we just be real for a moment? I haven't been real in so long and I miss it. The nylon and gingerbread of reality. My tastes keep the stimulation going, but I can't make my thoughts do it. A carload of kids asked me if I was homeless today. I'm not really sure what I told them. And my book is falling apart. The sleep that I get doesn't really nourish me...it's more like being on a plane...a few hours of frustrating uselessness. And comfort? Don't get me started. What the fuck is it anyway? Forgetfulness. Forgetting that you have a physical being. An impossibility. Always some angle I must correct, some movement I'm compelled to make. Restless. The voices and faces and colors. I can never quite make them out until they're close. I need my glasses. Sleeveless shirts and ill-fitting jeanshorts...striped polos and bicycles. Dogs and movies. Cars. The right make or the right color, but never both. I'm trying to live in this world, but I can't stand the constant dry heaving. A place to be. And comfort? We humans...we just live in our own filth. The space creatures are going to come down and laugh at us. It's all such a perspective. A table. It, like, holds things. Off the ground. A broken table. Doesn't. It does something else entirely that we can't even comprehend. I mean, OK, the walking. We need to simultaneously do more and less of it. And no, I'm not just trying to sound nuts. The people who do walk need to stop...I don't like them. The people who don't walk should think about it...I might like to meet some of you. On my bench. Where I read my smut. So happy in their lives. It is perverse. And comfort? FUCKING yuletide and ho, ho, ho, I fucking hate it all! But, I love it because I hate it. I don't love the things themselves, I just love hating them. I don't like nuclear weapons, but I love the fact that they exist. Or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb. I am going to be so pissed when I die before anything truly heinous happens in my lifetime. Like, really. Like, something really dreadful. Too much civilization. Too fucking civilized! Grow me some fucking human beans, already. And comfort? I'm going to make a million space dollars selling broken shit to the aliens...

absorbent material> Make it count, Vermin!

Morning found me laughing, up and down, down...

2005-08-28T20:10:00.000-07:00

Supermarket. First-person. Glass doors face the street, wall to wall. A triangular room of shelves, shelves of ancient boxes. Counters follow the walls. Walls funnel to a dim hallway. Everything dusty, moldy, rusty. Reflections of fluorescents hide the transition of water and cement. Sloping first, the cement; the water reciprocal leveling the surface. An illusion. Chest deep and stable five feet down the hall. Water bugs and critters swimming in the crystal clear. Antique food out of reach on each wall. Intersecting passages at twenty. A room left of thirty. People. Dead. Rotting in a corner, piled higher than the water. Underwater, corpses fill the room. Underfoot, they stretch to the entry. Return to the origin; cashiers. Blonde girl, left, right, brunette; aprons. Everything becomes cinematic. Close up on water. Movement, ripples, then ten-inch men. One cloak red, one cloak black, both bearded. White follows in numbers, five inches high. Amphibious, dwelling in the corpses, infinitely deep. A dream fact. White cloaks troop past, covering the floor. Shift; sky and dirt, tufts of prairie. No more white. Two inches tall, red and black remain. Cloaked men start to fight; kung-fu. A grass stalk bends under their weight, precarious. Red flings black, tumbling into liquid. Death comes swift with contact. One more corpse sinks. Watching after, red dives off gracefully, cloak flapping. Instant end and another for the pile.

Four years since I had it, but a fucked up dream, none-the-less. I just found where I'd written it down, half rotten, in a soggy notebook downstairs. And, yeah, so I stylized it a bit...it's my fucking blog...

absorbent material> R.E.M. - Out of Time

I want someone to cherish because I can't cherish myself...

2005-08-27T23:34:00.000-07:00

ONE: I want to build a snowman.
TWO: But, it's August.
ONE: I know...I just got a sudden urge to build a snowman and fall in the snow.
TWO: Hold that thought. For the next four months.
ONE: Something about winter jackets. You know, when you hug someone in a winter jacket...
TWO: Well, we could put on winter jackets...
ONE: No, it wouldn't be the same...the cold is part of it. It's hard to explain...it's such a vague feeling, but I love it.
TWO: How about August things?
ONE: Movies. Movies and bowling and rollerskating. August things.
TWO: So, inside things?
ONE: Kind of. Inside things that you have to leave home for. Goodwilling.
TWO: Bar shows!
ONE: September.
TWO: September?
ONE: Bar shows. September. Midnight walks...August.
TWO: Playgrounds...
ONE: Yes! All summer, really...
TWO: Costuming. Ratty clothes and silly hats.
ONE: Ripped jeans...stained skirts...unraveling sweaters...fingerless gloves...
TWO: Let's go build a snowman.
ONE: My jacket's inside...

A chain of strange dreams last night. The first obviously derived from Scurbs...it was my first day as a hospital intern along with a couple people from high school and a bunch of people I didn't know. The one completely inexplicably fabricated detail? A flier for a dentistry seminar that required seven hundred hours of dentistry experience to attend. Then, same dream, next morning I'm frantically trying to get ready and every time I find something, I lose something else...and my ride to work...a cute Mexican girl in a T-top Firebird (huge hood decal and all)...is in the driveway honking at me. Then a dream that I don't remember...followed by sitting in a hot tub in my yard, but the water isn't hot and there's blood in it...and my entire yard is flooded with invisible water up to the rim on the tub. I jumped out of the tub and swam in what appeared to be thin air, but scraped my chest on the ground and bled rust colored blood into the water when I stood up. There were people with me...people I know. I had to leave, but they wanted me to stay.

absorbent material> no one else...

Moments with Ty...

2005-08-24T19:58:00.000-07:00

Walking back to my car tonight, I had a sudden premonition that my last words would be, "Well, jesus, you stabbed me, what the fuck did you expect?"

EDIT: p.s. As soon as you stop learning, your life is over.

Wake up to your future under a bright...night...sky...

2005-08-23T20:41:00.000-07:00

So, yeah, of the several hours that I spent sitting downtown, I spent at least a couple fleshing out a story idea that I dreamt up last night. Literally. It's based on the dream I had. OK, book jacket time:

Smoking a cigarette, Dr. Kyzlasov watches a dragonfly giving ants a lift. Trapped in Virtual Reality, Travis Kyzlasov, Jr. tracks his father's sexual conquests. A world away, the captain of an inhuman crew flies his ship to it's doom. Inexplicably, Mother Earth is soon to drown. If they only knew that none of this really matters.

Hehe...so, how's that for intrigingly vague? Eric, there may be things you know that would give you insight...KEEP YOUR FUCKING ORIFICE SHUT, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. However, while I was working on it, I picked out a way to start the story, but now I can't fucking remember what it was...and I'm pissed. Now that I'm home and I want to get going on it, I can't write a satisfying beginning.

Oh, yeah, and Thomas Pynchon's incomprehensible lunacy is bending my mind...I dig it...when I can muster the attention span...

absorbent material> Ted Leo! Woo!

Blow back, derelict man...

2005-08-16T00:58:00.000-07:00

This old house...this house I've known my whole life...it squeaks too much. Understandably so...it is 145 years old. I would think that after twenty-one years, the squeaking and creaking would be comforting, but no...it's simply unavoidable noise that, properly interpreted, is simply a primitive form of tracking. From nearly anywhere in this house, I can tell who is where and approximately what they're doing. Of course, this also means that the other people who live here, the people who have had an extra decade of familiarity, know where I am and approximately what I'm doing. They're more familiar with the house...which makes sense...familiarity is family. I wouldn't mind so much, but I'm stuck here for another year. The only place that I can evade the sensors is in the basement...cement does not creak. I need to work my way back into control of the underground. That's where I belong...underground. It's comfortable...familiar...anonymous. Always has been. Not only here...anywhere below the surface of the Earth. Maybe because I'm a guilty person...underground, out of sight, under cover of night, where no one will see me. Guilty of what? Living my life...

absorbent material> I need to find a way to start listening to music again...I have my car, and that's about it...which limits me to my tapes...Beck, Soundgarden, and Stone Temple Pilots. Not bad in any way, shape, or form...but very limiting. There's so much more on my plate...and I can't leave the table until I've finished the meal I've been given...

Like wet ashes with X's in my eyes...

2005-08-11T00:37:00.000-07:00

I've bounced...which is good. In the absence of the triumvirate, I always become fairly reclusive. Depressed at first as a member is picked off...then more depressed as I realize that I'll be stuck here for yet another year once the other leaves the midwest...but solitude brings that ever so comfortable insanity and all of it's wild schemes, which was today. Got out of the house today as well...wandered the recesses of that town we all love to hate to love. Ran into Cyndee in Walmart...quite welcome...and Danielle...yeah, that one...unwelcome. And both again as I wandered. A somewhat philosophical experience in this time of loneliness...one so out of my league that it had never even crossed my mind...the other so...plain? No...being plain has potential...benign...that's the word I'm looking for...the other so benign that, well...why bother? It's philosophical because I may as well be praying to a higher power as hoping that I meet their mean. Ying yang? A girl who wears frilly skirts with tennis shoes and eats beef jerky in an attempt to quit smoking? No, unbalanced...she would need to love soap operas or have diabetes or something. Something along those lines. I finished my book tonight...in it, the main character bent the laws of physics, briefly exposed herself to hard vacuum twice, travelled at a quarter of light speed in nothing but a space suit, and vomitted all over herself to save the man she loved. Fucking novels. Anyway, tonight, vodka, tomorrow, the world...

absorbent material> everybody out of the pool...

Hump the grime! Kneel to it's supreme bewilderment!

2005-07-15T00:25:00.000-07:00

So, some brainstorming for you to do:

I) How do you light many sparklers all at once...i.e. enough to spell out "Motown"?

II) Construction methods for a dead animal fetus that appears real when you pick it up...y'know, jiggles and whatnot...it just has to look real, feeling is unimportant...

III) What do you suppose happens when a full can of silly string explodes?

IV) ROCKETRY! Fish flying straight out of the water? No, no, forget rocketry...many balloons being popped underwater all at once...

That is all. For now.

But, no, I'm serious, I actually do want feedback on this...these are real conundrums that I need to sort out...

absorbent material> Pornography...duh...

Clutching her gun, wearing a bikini...

2005-07-01T22:45:00.000-07:00

To travel through time is to temporarily break the law of conservation of mass...possible...to travel through time is to discover the plane of existence that records the movement of every molecule in the universe...possible...to travel through time is to decode that plane of existence...possible. Conclusion: time travel is possible, though HIGHLY improbable. If humanity discovers this fabled plane of existence where history is stored, it would be far more likely and economical to simply read it and reenact it perceptually...pump the information directly into a single person's perceptual organs...making it not true time travel, but simply historical entertainment...and thus unchangable. Of course, it could be "hacked" to see what would happen if certain parts of it were to change, but the predictablility of the outcome would deteriorate exponentially. If, however, the movement of every molecule in the universe could be interpretted to the point where the decisions and actions of specific individuals could be mapped...if, in fact, it were a record of the movement of every molecule, the individual's mind and neural pathways could be plotted and their decisions would become simple trails to follow and their decisions would become something like a flowchart...it would become possible to predict the outcome of historical changes to a fairly high accuracy. With this ability, the mission of successfully changing the past for the betterment of humanity would become a possibility. To actually follow through with historical alteration, this plane of existence would have to be writeable...the CD-RW of existence. At this point, re-writing history would either spawn an ultimate universe or would alter our universe. I need to read more about string theory and alternate universes before I can feel very confident in speculating upon this...either that or I need more booze...

absorbent material> Michelob Lager...warm...sitting on the trunk of my car at the end of my driveway...talking to the stars...

EDIT: So, when drunk, instead of slurring my typing, I apparently type completely different words that sound similar. Ultimate universe...hehe...

FUCK!!!

2005-06-15T20:21:00.000-07:00

I'm so angry with the populace that every time I try to write it out, it sounds like the afternoon musings of a moron. Basically, the internet...OK, no...I was going to try again, but there is some Christian talk show playing in the background and it's wholesomeness and ignorance is infuriating. GAH!

Except for that whole hooker thing...

2005-06-04T01:03:00.000-07:00

Why do I like crappy movies? Hackers. Hackers is a crappy movie. Between the techno, the cheesy computer sequences, and the cast of future almost-someone's, it's fantastic...I don't understand. Angelina Jolie is nice and all, but at that point in her career, she was not nearly enough to make a movie like that as delightful as it is. The movie I'm currently watching is exactly the opposite. The movie sucks. Hard. The one thing that makes it watchable, I'd go so far as to say moderately enjoyable, is Laney Boggs. I don't know the actress' real name...and it doesn't matter...it's the character. Swap the whale saving for a dash of alcoholism and you'd have my dream girl. Of course, that's assuming that she swears like a trucker and climbs out of moving vehicles off-screen. A safe assumption.

Let's make ourselves a promise. Let's promise ourselves that we'll never do anything as wholesome and corny as making promises to ourselves. Instead, let's all yell at traffic and rub our nipples on inanimate objects in public. Let's tell people that we get boners the size of baseball caps when we hear a good song on the radio. Let's get foghorns to blow at bums who ask for our change. I am a jackass and this is my manifesto. You can stop me, but you can't stop us all. Asshat...

absorbent material> strangely enough, She's All That...

Say you miss me...

2005-05-11T23:54:00.000-07:00

So, ummm, the laptop is up and running again...for the time being. We'll see how long this lasts. Oh, yeah, and I live in Iowa City now. We have a bitchin' apartment...I'm in it right now...and someone has broadband wifi that I can steal from home! With any luck, My Meteoric Rise To Mediocrity will be back on schedule...with the added interest of new and exciting stories of Iowa City. I might also be tending bar at the local American Legion soon. Cross your fingers. 'Aight foo's, it's bed time...

absorbent material> The Dresden Dolls - The Dresden Dolls

Is it getting in the way of this lovely song?

2005-03-30T00:26:00.000-08:00

The man stumbles, as much as one can stumble under the aid of exodermals, drunkenly, away from the campfire and his friends. His torch had been giving him trouble for the last two days, ever since he'd slipped while crossing a stream and dropped it into the water. The water itself shouldn't have done any damage, the torch was fully waterproof and encased in a transparent rubber sleeve, but it had hit a rock before plunging beneath the current. From what he'd been able to see of it's holographic flames under the water, it had immediately grown dimmer and started flickering more than it should, it's internal level going off kilter so that the projection of flames leaped sideways. Currently, it was flaming downwards in his hand, as though he were walking up an upside-down staircase out of an M.C. Escher print, giving the man a feeling of uneasiness. Though, it was still sufficient to use for finding a makeshift privy.
After relieving himself next to a large oak tree, the man looks back towards the fire and their triangle of tents. Simon had insisted that they use these ancient nylon bubbles that had to be set up by hand. He claimed it was part of the experience. The man didn't care one way or the other, but never felt in much of a mood to set up a tent after hiking every day. He saw the two couples making out, seemingly unaware of eachother, back around the fire. The real fire. Gathering firewood was a pain in the ass. The man wondered why Simon was so adamant about their use of these ancient camping techniques, yet he didn't say a word about all of them carrying holographic torches and using power-assist exodermals. Disgusted with his fifth-wheel status, he walks past the tree and towards the small creek that they crossed earlier, his exodermals turning every drunken step into a comical bound, as though the man is walking on the moon.
At the creek, he pulls out a cigarette. One part of this reversion to antiquity that Simon didn't have to confront him about. Delicious, cancer-causing tobacco wrapped in paper, just as they've made them for centuries. He clicks off his torch and watches the animated smoke flow down towards the water, directly against the real smoke from his cigarette, as the hologram shuts down. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees movement up the stream a little. There's just enough light to make out a small set of antlers against the reflective surface of the water. He starts, the exodermals nearly catapulting him into the creek from the tensing of his knees. Catching his balance, he holds his breath and flicks his cigarette downstream. He hears small splashing noises, like water dripping back into the creek. As the man watches, the antlers disappear from the stirred reflection and retreat into the darkness of the opposite bank.
Lighting another cigarette, he turns back towards the camp, trying to keep his muscles under control, trying to walk normally. Failing this, he switches the exodermals off, feeling his weight relax into his own power. Flicking the torch back on, the man steps carefully, uncaring of noise, on the patches of leaves, trying to keep his boots out of the mud. His stomach lurches wildly as he hears a deep, guttural voice behind him, back by the stream. Feeling his entire body crawl with fear, he tries to decipher the words that were spoken. Unable to breathe or think, he stands in motionless horror, unwilling to find out what was behind him. Gathering his thoughts, he realized that the voice had uttered nonsense, some other language unfamiliar to him. He willed himself to turn, inch by inch. Behind him, just outside of the aura of holographic firelight, the man sensed a...presence. Holding the torch above his head, the unnatural flames leaping around his fist, he starts to get a glimpse of a large man standing in the darkness, his arms across his chest, wearing some sort of mask or headdress. The man soils himself and drops the torch to the ground. As the flickering hologram falls, the masked man rushes forward grunting and cooing harshly in his deep, inhuman voice. Just before feeling the blow to his chest, the man sees flashes of legs and torso in the flicker.
As he is slammed into the ground, the man's mind tears wildly around in circles. Fur. The thing that was attacking him had fur. Instincts kicking in, he fights back against the pummeling. Unable to force the creature off of him, he pounds on it's sides and chest with his fists, each time feeling thick, soft fur. He tries for a blow to the face, his fist encountering something hard and sharp, slicing his knuckle badly, from what he feels. He's hopeful in that he seemingly punched it in the mouth, but whatever it is that's attacking him is unfazed. The man yelps as he feels and hears one of his ribs crack under the creature's fist. He desperately tries to roll away, and succeeds, fleetingly. Trying to stop their roll in an upper position, the man puts his arm out, his hand encountering the holotorch. Feeling the roll continue despite his efforts, he grasps the handle of his light and tucks his arms in. Dizzy and in excruciating pain, the man feels himself come to a rest, the full weight of the creature still on top of him. The torch in his hand casts a fire glow on his attacker's face. The man feels himself scream, but cannot hear it. Most of the head is covered in fur, except for the face. There are no ears to speak of, but a pair of antlers are visible in the flickering shadows. The man sees where his fist struck the creature's face. Blood is smeared across one of the monster's sharp cheekbones, uncovered by skin of any sort. The skin stops just below the eyes, a border of thick, dried skin like the cuticle of a fingernail, creating a wide grin of exposed bone and teeth. The nose is a flat protrusion, a caricature of human skull structure. The teeth aren't pointed, exactly, they are also disturbingly human, a row of yellowing chisels, quite large when permanently bared in this skinless face. None of this caused the man to scream, he didn't see any of it. All he saw were eyes. Eyes that belonged to something completely inhuman. Deep, black pits. Five of them. The man could see himself in the haunted depths of the creature's large, black eyes. The menacing hollowness terrified him. There was no sentience or emotion in this perversion of a face. All that he could do while he died was watch himself scream in the reflections.

absorbent material> Mellowdrone - A Demonstration of Intellectual Property

Untitled - Installment I

2005-03-16T19:22:00.000-08:00

In the distance of the room, Muriel could see a large, dark figure running. It was one of the one-armed creatures that hid in the dark places. She had never seen one out in the light, but recognized it by it's movements and the pattern of it's gallop. While playing in the dark places, she'd felt the sensation that the Eyes' were large, but was still surprised to see just how big. That's what she called them, Eyes. That's all she could see of them, down in the dark. She also noticed that they only had one arm. Muriel's sister, Princess, had told her that they only had one arm, but Muriel had been confused. Princess then had to explain what arms were. That was long ago. Muriel and her sister were twins and Princess had taught Muriel almost everything she knew. Except for the things that Muriel learned on her own while exploring. There was much to explore. Every time the sisters saw eachother, they would talk for a long time, teaching eachother what they'd learned. The Eyes was growing smaller in the distance. Muriel knew that this meant it was going away from her because she'd watched Princess do the same thing many times. Princess and the myriad of other people and creatures that she'd met. Muriel decided that she should go find Princess and tell her about the Eyes out in the light.
Princess often spoke of her mother, but Muriel didn't know what that word meant. Even after explaining, Muriel was confused. She'd never known a mother. She didn't think she had one. Many of their conversations ended this way. Muriel was skeptical of what Princess said because of the speaking lessons she'd given her.
When they first met, Muriel was just a sort of voice in Princess's head, but she could only hear it when she went to a certain point in the house. She was less than a voice, even, because she never spoke, she simply cried. Princess had been very confused, but spent a lot of time sitting in that corner of the house trying to hush the crying. The voice of Muriel was something she didn't understand, but it sounded like a baby crying. Much like the doll that Princess had when she lived with her mother and father, and Princess missed her doll, so she continued coming back every so often to try and hush the invisible baby. After quite a lot of time, she came to that room of the house to find a girl. The girl was about her age and looked much like her, but had the voice of the baby and cried, just like always. This was when Princess decided to name the girl Muriel. She continued talking to Muriel, just as she'd talked to the disembodied crying before. Over time, the girl looked more and more like Princess. Eventually, after so much time that Princess could hardly remember some of her adventures in the house, the girl spoke to Princess. She said "stop." Princess was very confused by this and ran off, not to return for quite a while, but eventually she went back. The girl was still there, still crying in the same spot she'd always been. Princess decided to continue as she had, talking to the girl, telling her stories of the house and songs that she remembered from before the house. Every once in a while, Muriel would say that same word, "stop," but Princess wouldn't heed, she'd keep on just as she had. It wasn't until once, after many, many adventures, when Muriel said "stop cryin' babe," that Princess understood. She was repeating what Princess had told her an uncountable number of times, "stop crying, baby." The girl didn't know how to speak, but she was beginning to learn. So, from then on, Princess stayed with the girl and taught her everything she could. Over time, Muriel learned more and more and became more and more aware of herself. She also started to look like an exact duplicate of Princess. As Muriel learned more about words and their meanings, she also learned more about Princess' adventures and the rest of the house. Much later, Princess asked the question that had been nagging at her for a long time. She asked Muriel why she never left that room. Muriel didn't know. Shortly after, Muriel and Princess left that part of the house. Muriel, seeing other parts of the house for the first time, started to realize that much of what Princess had told her wasn't true. That is why Muriel was often skeptical about the things that Princess said.
The Eyes was out of sight. Muriel walked back towards the door that she'd come through so she could look for Princess. The room that she'd come from, on the other side of the door, was different than when she'd left it. This happened often. There had been a large group of people pulling parts off of their bodies and building a statue out of them. She'd seen people doing this many times. Now the room was bright, like the one that the Eyes had been in. There was a man sitting on the grass covering the floor. Muriel recognized him. She remembered once when the man told her that he was Kim's father, but she'd learned that it didn't mean he was the same now. The only person who was always the same was Princess.
"Boy? Why de pipple gone?"
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Pipple befo', now pipple gone."
"Look, retard, what the fuck are you saying?"
"Nevimine."
"Fuck off."
Muriel walked away from the man and away from the door, hoping that she'd find a door when she came to the wall on the other side of the grass. Before she'd gotten more than five steps away, Muriel was plunged into absolute darkness.
The next thing that Muriel saw was a new room, five people on beds, strings connected to all of them with little round pads on their faces. She heard voices.
"Oh, shit, she's awake! Parker, did you bump something?"
"No. I mean, I don't think so."
"You don't think so?!"
"Call security."
"I already did." Then the voice got really loud. "Kim! You're in a hospital! Stay where you are, security is on it's way!"
Then, Muriel heard another voice, a woman's, but it was so loud that she thought the voice was in her head. "Fuck you! Where the fuck am I? Get me out of here!" Her head turned and she saw two men. One of them was pushing a button in front of him frantically. The other reached out for a button in front of him and bent towards it to talk to it.
"Dr. Walken, we've got a problem. Kim is awake and she's pissed." Then, Muriel saw an arm, her arm, reach up towards her face and she fell back into darkness.
"Princess! Princess!" she yelled, hoping that her sister could hear her. Muriel wanted an explanation, she wanted to understand, but no one answered.

- -

"Wait, rewind the tape a little. Did you see that?"
"The girl?"
"Yeah, and she said something. There. Stop. OK, play it back."
"Oh my god."
"She woke up. Joanna woke up."
"Is she saying what I think she's saying?"
"Yeah. Princess. She's saying princess. She came out of a coma that she's been in her entire life and spoke, immediately, in English. She said fucking princess."
"Who's up there taking care of the subjects? Is Joanna still awake?"
"No, I don't think so. Paula's up there, I think."
"You think? After ten years of sedation, this murderous bitch suddenly wakes up, kills Parker with a glass shard, she's still unaccounted for, and you think Paula is up there taking care of things?!"
"Yes, OK, I'll check on them. Security is up there with her."
"Good. I'm holding you responsible for this. Parker was new, his mistake was forgivable, especially now that he's more than paid the price. You, on the other hand, should know better. You should've double checked and logged every time one of you entered that room."
"Yes. I know, doctor."
"What about the other patients, are they OK?"
"Jim and Ronnie are fully awake, I'm going up to talk to them in a minute. The other girl died of shock when Kim pulled the connection."
"I want to know what Jim and Ronnie experienced as soon as possible. Their experiences may be the only results we get from this project."
"OK, I'll check on them in a while. Do you think Joanna will wake up again?"
"Who knows? I sure as fucking hell hope she does. A girl in a coma from birth wakes up after ten years of being neurally connected to another human and speaks English? By all rights, she should be a ten year old baby. Looking at her readouts from the past few years, I've been hopeful, but still never expected anything more than the incoherent gibberish they got with the tabula rasa experiments of the sixties. We may be looking at an incredible success, but we'll just have to wait with Joanna. Our number one concern right now is the well-being of Jim and Ronnie. If Joanna learned to speak English in there, who knows what they experienced."
"Gotcha."

There will almost definitely be another installment. If I get around to more than that, I may move this over to a blog of it's own. The concept is there, most of the storyline as well, I just have to write it. To be honest, I'm pretty excited about this one...

absorbent material> Supergrass - Supergrass

Hello, I'm neurotic...

2005-03-13T23:59:00.000-08:00

As a contestant for Mr. Existence, I wish for the following:

- A Time Machine
- A Scientist
- Every Book Ever Written
- Fuzzy Black Handcuffs
- A Laugh-track
- A Lifetime Supply of Booze
- A Cat That Doesn't Try To Lick Me All The Time

I'd rather create world peace with these as my assets than just wish for it. You can wish in one bucket and shit in the other and we'll see which gets full first. Ha. As I wish for a time machine...

absorbent material> Pretty Girls Make Graves - The New Romance

I don't need them to decide...

2005-03-06T00:30:00.000-08:00

Life is so beautiful/grotesque. I love/hate it so much. It's fantastic/horrid. I just can't help but want to live forever/no longer. Right now, though, I simply need sleep. I can no longer handle the overpowering wonder/putrescence of it all...

absorbent material> Marilyn Manson - Antichrist Superstar

If I say "I'm happy for you," it means that I'm lying...

2005-02-22T00:57:00.000-08:00

No, Bentley, please don't lick the computer.

Her: You've gone off the deep end. You're completely off. You know that, right?
Him: If I know it, it won't be true! Reality is based on my ignorance, didn't you know that?
Her: ...
Him: As soon as I learn or know something, it becomes fiction. See? By saying that, I've acknowledged it as fact and now it's not true. Reality has returned to reality.
Her: You're the one who needs to return to reality.
Him: You've solved the conundrum. You've righted the fabric of existence.
Her: You're deranged.
Him: I'm as sane as I've ever been.
Her: Exactly.
Him: In that one fell swipe, you've corrected the wrongs! You've stolen my heart and used it to mop up the mess! It's yours and I'd like nothing better than for you to keep it.
Her: I'm telling you, you've gone funny.
Him: And I'm telling you, with my heart in your grips, I am yours!
Her: That's so absurdly romantic, I can't help but accept. You're a nutter.
Him: Will you marry me?
Her: All three of you?

This conversation is not fantasy or fiction, it is future-fact. It will happen. They all do. My fiction is your reality. My reality is your fiction. It's a symbiotic relationship that we share. If it were to break, I would vanish from existence. I am him. Chaos and Gaia help she who chooses to be her...

absorbent material> The Music of the Spheres

Can I still be vague when I understand?

2005-02-18T15:50:00.000-08:00

I was going to write a short story about the universe, as we know it, splatting against a solid plane of matter, as though we were nothing more than flying debris from some heavenly firecracker set off in a jar. However, I suddenly realized that the timeline would have to be immense and I don't feel like doing the math required to make it plausible. Well, no, I don't feel like doing the research so that I can do the math to make it plausible. I just liked the idea that, if there were some higher power, that higher power was just a little boy playing with fireworks in the yard and he no more "created" us than I would create microbes that evolved in the time it took for your guts to hit the wall were I to stuff a grenade down your throat. Maybe another time...

absorbent material> The Secret Stars - The Secret Stars

We're not the same, we're different, tonight...

2005-02-18T14:52:00.000-08:00

Now that I have this memorized, I shall post it. Epic poetry of the cheesiest kind...I couldn't stop giggling after I wrote it...

Far from the trenches and bunkers there fought,
A knight of the queen, but his name, he knew not,
Though fight on he must for the galant and true,
And search for his name, which he hadn't a clue,
We find our dumb hero, his sword in the air,
Clanging down against steel, which hadn't a care,
For this foe that he fought was not a true knight,
But a tank with a gun and our man in the sight,
Feebly beating the steel bellied beast,
The knight couldn't hurt it, not in the least,
He parried and stabbed at it's thick iron skin,
Deluding himself into thinking he'd win,
For hours and hours he tried to defeat it,
Not thinking of fate, or how he would meet it,
The gunners got frustrated, trying and trying,
To shoot at the knight out the hole they were spying,
They shouted "Sir Knight, we will tell you your name!"
But he would be damned before playing their game,
He stuck to his guns, and that's no pun intended,
He swore that he'd win before his life was ended,
With a tad bit of daring and a little remorse,
He jumped on the tank 'fore it squashed his poor horse,
But his galantry wouldn't allow him to cry,
Or he would be next on the list up to die,
His sword, he did take, to pry open the hatch,
And out came six soldiers, the knight met his match,
For all of his training, against them, he needed,
Without a clear head, by their guns, he's defeated!
Swinging his sword o'er his head like a drunk,
Five soldiers jumped back, but the sixth, he was sunk,
Improving his odds, trying not to get shot,
He wrangled his courage, of which there was naught,
The knight felt his fear taking over his mind,
And soon panicked and bled, he'd been shot from behind!
Light-headed, he knelt and said, loud as he could,
"It's a good day to die!" and then the knight stood,
Though they couldn't decide between stupid or brave,
They knew this knight was something, if not soon for the grave,
Picking up folded steel and throwing it hard,
His sword he swore never to break or discard,
The soldier it hit, he gurgled and screamed,
Striking fear in his comrades, or so it had seemed,
For the next one in line, at the knight, shot his gun,
But the breastplate it struck was too thick, "That was fun!"
Said the knight as he looked at the dent in his suit,
"Shoot me some more, boys, that was a hoot!"
Convinced that the knight was clear out of his head,
The soldiers, they shot, but the knight wasn't dead!
After two or three rounds and then four and then five,
The guns were all empty, the knight was alive!
"I've come to ask you lot if you know my name!"
But the soldiers just gaped at him, feeling their shame,
"If you all won't tell me, then be on your way,"
"I'll just go ask your driver and see what he'll say."
And on down the hatch of the tank, he did go,
Feeling he'd put on a rather good show,
So our nameless knight, the tank's driver, did find,
"I'm trying to drive this damn tank, do you mind?!"
But the knight wouldn't falter or be put aside,
"Either tell me my name, or I'll have your hide!"
The driver pulled back on the lever to stop,
"I've been in here all day, so I'll tell you up top,"
"I need some fresh air, and my sir, you do stink,"
"You knights need to shower more often, I think."
So up to the roof the of the tank went the bloke,
Took a swig from his flask and tapped out a smoke,
He pulled out a match and lit up with a flick,
And as he exhaled he said "You're name's Nick."

Edit: This poem was also originally written for a friend of mine...I should write stories to her more often, they always turn out beyond my expectations...

absorbent material> The Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

He got wasted, but it's alright, everything is finite...

2005-02-10T20:08:00.000-08:00

Y'know, the problem with trying to selectively breed animals to get the creatures of ancient myth isn't having to endure that cross between an elephant and a rhino joke ('Elephino!) or the fact that I spend all day trying to get lions to have sex with falcons, the problem is the competition. You would think that those assholes down at Fantastic Genetics would have enough of an advantage that they wouldn't need to come down here and spike the water troughs with LSD or spraypaint their IRC handles on my car (splicenator04, gattaca4eva, unicorns_r_uber, etc.) I swear, next time I catch those jerks trying to bleach my sloth, I'm going to crack some skulls. I should go down there and fill all of their incubators with packing peanuts. We'll see who's laughing then. Bring the pain!

absorbent material> David Byrne - Feelings

You take me to a high of just no other kind...

2005-02-08T01:04:00.000-08:00

OK, so I fibbed about the verbal abuse and whatnot...instead you get a couple slightly dated beginnings. This one was written at an especially cynical time in my life...only a couple days before my suicide attempt, I believe. At least something good came of it! I should really continue this one:

1) Life is all a joke. The kind of joke that is funny on one level and painful to listen to on another.

2) People suck. Try not to take offense, you don't suck, just everyone else around you.

3) Love is real and if you fall in it, you can't ever scrub it out, no matter how hard you try.

Of course, there's no such thing as a perfect world for all, but that doesn't mean that it can't be perfect for me (and only me). Life can be sculpted, of course, but no one truly knows what they want, which means that a perfect world may only be achieved through free flow and sheer dumb luck.

"Save Seats!" I yell exuberantly as I jump up from my game of Oregon Trail 1.0 so as to procure my daily treat of orange juice and a graham cracker from the table. Mrs. Blame-The-Kids-For-My-Forgetfulness had arranged the cartons of O.J. into a nice rectangle, except the last row was one short. This bothered me deeply, even then, for if she had only arranged the cartons into four rows of five instead of three rows of seven, the twenty sticky, wax coated, cardboard orange juice boxes would've been perfect. Instead, she had to make each one of them feel like less of an O.J. carton by turning their short lives into a painful streak of imperfection. Given the proper direction, anything can assume formation. However, I never hesitated to snatch my juice and cracker as soon as they were made available. I couldn't exactly complain. I was eight years old. Mrs. Blame-The-Kids-For-My-Forgetfulness was three hundred and seventy-four. No matter what I said, she could just pull rank. I rushed back to the Apple IIG over in the corner with my snack, only to find it stolen by another child.

"I did Save Game for you, Tyler," said the insolent little brat.

"But I called Save Seats!"

"Well, I'm here now."

I couldn't believe the nerve of this guy. Doesn't he know what Save Seats means? I watched him go hunting, the only worthwhile thing to do in any of the Oregon Trail games, for approximately one point three seconds before my anger transformed me into a remorseless monster of a manchild. My hand grasped the right ear of the unfortunate young lad in front of me and my wrist twisted it until the desired effect had been achieved.

"What's going on over here? Boys?" This last question seemed more directed towards us than it should have, as though she were asking us to confirm our gender for her. She seemed a tad confused. She was still trying to figure out which one of us had been hurt by the other when I responded.

"He stole my seat! I called Save Seats!"

"Save Seats doesn't apply to this room, remember... ...uh..."

"Tyler," I offered. I'm one of the twenty children that you spend seven hours a day with five days out of the week. I'm the one with curly blond hair and freckles. The one who sleeps behind your desk because you think it's a reasonable punishment for not napping during naptime.

"Tyler. Now, Dustin, what happened?" Oh, sure, she knows his name.

"He punched my nose!"

"Then why is your ear all red?" At least she's observant.

"He did that too!"

"Did what? What did Tyler do to you?" As though I'm some sort of hideous creature that the other children need to be protected from. I had suspicions that this woman had a previous career with "Rescue: 911!" Perhaps it was the way she dealt with everyone as though they were childish white trash and perhaps it was her fixation with William Shatner.

"He hurt my ear!"

"Tyler, did you hurt his ear?"

"Yes." Lying to a three hundred and seventy-four year old woman is like taking a leak on an electric fence. Everyone says they've done it before, but no one is brave enough to do it in front of other people, for obvious reasons.

"Did you hit him in the nose too?"

"No."

"Is this true Dustin?"

"Yes."

"So, Tyler just hit you in the ear?"

"Twisted, actually. I didn't hit him." I did speak like this as a child. Ask my family.

"Well, I'm going to send you both to Satan's Mother-In-Law." This is more of a conceptual thing than a true belief. Of course, the woman wasn't ever referred to as Satan's Mother-In-Law until a few seconds ago when I wrote it. Also, I don't truly believe in Satan, because I don't truly believe in God, but that's my problem, not yours. You still see what I'm getting at. The woman was mean, nasty, and ugly, and that's all that was meant by it.

"I'm sorry, Dustin!" It was a desperate measure. Apologizing to one another at this stage in life is about as degrading as having someone spit in your milk carton while you go up to get a margarine sandwich. Margarine sandwiches. Who ever thought it would be a good idea to serve margarine sandwiches as a supplement for children who weren't full after eating their normal lunch? White bread smeared with bright white butter substitute, cut in half, and passed out to hungry children. Maybe the kids who went to get these sandwiches needed to go hungry more often. Perhaps these butter sandwiches would be better shipped off to some foreign country. However, if we tried to do this, some official somewhere would probably tell us that it wasn't worth it, there isn't enough nutrition in a margarine sandwich to do anyone any good. Gee, kind of makes you wonder, eh?

"Yeah, I'm sorry too!" Good, he was playing along. He wanted to stay out of the principal's dungeon just as much as I did. Sadly, we were both too late, Mrs. Blame-The-Kids-For-My-Forgetfulness was already on the intercom telling the secretary in the main office to be expecting us down there in a few minutes.

"Now, off you go," she said, shooing us out the door. Our classmates had all given up their playing and were standing around looking horrified. They knew what we were in for. Most of them had never experienced it themselves, but things like this are known by all through a type of osmosis only known to school children and factory workers. In retrospect, they looked like a room full of the living dead, as though they were haunting their room years after their teacher had gotten fed up with their insolence and slaughtered the lot of them by lacing their graham crackers with a few drops of LSD, leading them all to the little boys room, and gutting them all alive with a ruler made of brushed steel. I owned such a ruler at one time, it's a pretty wicked piece of office equipment.

Dustin and I trudged out of the room and out into the hall. It was about ten seconds later that we both realized that we were in the hall unsupervised and started shoving eachother and laughing. When we reached the end of the hallway, the fact that we were on our way to the principals office was far from our conscious minds. As soon as the main office door was in sight, the thought hit us both once more, like a splinter of glass underneath every one of our fingernails. The kind of pain that causes a sudden intake of breath through clenched teeth, followed by soft whimpering. We were back to trudging as we passed the tree in the lobby and opened the huge metal door that led to the main office.

I always wondered if the secretary felt as huge as she looked. She wasn't obese, not even fat. In fact, she looked like a skeleton wrapped in skin-colored tin-foil, all wrinkles and crevices. I would estimate her age to have been somewhere in the range of seven hundred and twenty and nine hundred and sixty-three. The reason that I wonder if she felt huge was because the office was proportionally smaller than the real world so that children would be able to see over the counter and not get lost in the waiting chairs. She looked like a giant to us, although, so did everyone else.

"Hello Dustin, Tyler, how are you two doing today?" It always amazed me how she knew everyone's name. Some seven to eight hundred students and she remembered all of their names without the slightest bit of effort. She needed to have a talk with Mrs. Blame-The-Kids-For-My-Forgetfulness.

"Fine," we said, in perfect chorus.

"Well, Satan's Mother-In-Law is talking with another student right now, but she'll be out to speak with the two of you in a few minutes. You may sit down, if you like." This is how the woman always spoke. No blame placed on anyone, always sweet and caring, never a hint of dislike for anyone or anything. It was kind of creepy at times, but I doubt that she would've been the head secretary for five hundred odd years had she made the children feel bad about themselves.

Waiting for a few minutes in the main office is like watching a tornado weave and twist through the sky, slowly making progress towards your house. You know what's going to happen, but you're grateful that it hasn't happened yet and you think, maybe if I just sit here and wait long enough, the whole thing will pass me by. Tornados change direction spontaneously; principals, however, do not.

The door opened, a small child in Kool-Aid stained sweatpants and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt emerged, tears streaming down his face, hiccuping madly. It was a sad sight to see.

"Hi, Drew," I said, in awe. "What happened?"

"Some kids were going to beat me up, so I threw snowballs at them and got caught by The Albino Bitch from Hell." He was still sobbing. Usually when someone emerges from the dungeon and continues to cry, it means that there are notes to be sent to parents who will punish accordingly. "What'd you guys do?"

"I twisted Dustin's ear. I called Save Seats, but he took the computer anyway." Drew glared at Dustin. Neither of us particularly liked him to begin with, and he'd violated a major code of ethics.

"Dustin, Tyler, I understand I need to speak with you two about an incident on the computer. If you'll join me in my office." She was particularly emotionless today.

Kind of like my own long lost episode of Muppet Babies...I'll try to continue this snippet in the near future, but I can't promise anything...I was in prime form when I wrote this and I don't know if I could live up to the standard I've set...

absorbent material> Martina Topley-Bird - Anything

It was accidentally on purpose...

2005-02-08T00:17:00.000-08:00

A real treat tonight...a bit of undercooked time-capsule. Digging through old discs, I found this, as yet untitled and obviously unfinished:

“Shit, not again,” Clyde moans as the machine stares at him blankly. He said the proper things, used the proper mental images. He did everything that Snippet had said to do, but he had yet to provoke a response. “Damned piece of trash,” he mumbles as he turns to go try the procedure on the machine a couple of sectors away, but as he does, a plasma screen flickers to life in the corner of his eye.

“The commands you have entered are that of an illegal procedure. Authorities have been reported and will arrive shortly,” comes the soft feminine voice. Much to Clyde’s delight, the plasma screen displays significantly different information. He giggles softly to himself as he examines the screen.

“Plainview, Arkansas,” chants Clyde. “Engorged hippo nation,” he continues, not a hint of emotion in his voice.

“Confirmed, sir. Debug mode running,” is the warm reply.

“Dracula subsides within my mind, the mantra of life within his death, my death, my mind’s life.”

“Just a moment.”

Clyde relaxes a bit. Everything seems to be going as his friend said it would. He spent so long memorizing the meaningless phrases that unlock the administrative functions of the subway security system. Only two more incantations and it would allow him access to the old tube systems. This would normally not be somewhere worth going, but that was a special night. A once in a lifetime chance for a person such a Clyde.

“Security level two.” A male voice now, probably meant to be intimidating or perhaps startle anyone trying to gain unlawful access.

“Alpha, gamma, upsilon, sigma, rho.”

“Security level five.”

“Here I am, J. H.”

“Access Confirmed. Security reset in five minutes and counting.”

Clyde’s grin broadens as the bullet proof plastic door slides out of sight, leaving only an oval opening to a corridor of brick and fluorescence. He steps through and waits just beyond the entrance to assure himself that no one enters behind him before the door reseals itself. To pass the time, he taps out a cigarette.

“Security reset. Security level one,” says the authoritative male voice from the panel outside just as the door silently slides shut. Clyde hums softly to himself as he walks toward the distant exit of the tunnel. He somehow expected this little self-declared mission to be a tad easier and is quite pleased with his performance as of yet. There is a measure of elegance to be found in the way the shadows lengthen as he walks away from the well lit entrance into the dark expanse of underground tunnels. Clyde notices it casually and makes a mental note of the image.

Perhaps, he thinks, I do this because I truly notice things, I actually see the beauty in everything around me, and perhaps I only do it to be odd. Truth be told, Clyde is a little special. Unbeknownst to him, he was not born as was usual to his generation. He was truly born, in the classic sense of the term, brought into the world by his mother’s push and the doctor’s pull. He was, of course, chosen from a list of possible genetic combinations of his mother and father, or, more honestly, his father and his other father, for they didn’t want to leave the child’s entire life up to chance. As soon as his birth had been deemed successful, Clyde was fitted with various neural implants, not exactly common among newborns, but common enough to be cheap and secret.

Clyde continues down until he reaches the first platform. Hopping down onto the tracks, he continues on, watching the shadows and small furry things with too many appendages as he passes service doors and other openings in the walls.

“Is it you that they sent to me? Here you are to take me back to them? Or are you here to see me for yourself?” Clyde’s skin crawls with fear as the voice lunges out to him from a point not too distant from his right elbow. Turning, he sees the man sitting within a small recess in the wall.

“Christ, old man. If you were any creepier, I’d be dead on the cement from sheer terror!” Clyde laughs as he says this, partly because he knows it to be true. The man is grotesque, to say the least. Between the crow’s feet around his eyes and the white hair coming out of his head, he looks to Clyde like the gruesome picture books that his father used to show him. This man reeks with age. To people of Clyde’s generation, however, age is something unheard of. He lives in a time when geneticists have taken over the practice for everything from pharmacists to members of the clergy. The end of disease and physical ailment was the end of the entire pharmaceutical field. As for religion? It had been strangling itself for centuries and was kind enough to do away with itself once and for all after the project to map the human genome was a thing of the past. Evolution became accepted theory worldwide (and it was still merely theory, mind, just because genetic structure had been conquered did not mean that it had proven evolution, that was still to be seen over time). And so it was that age had been defeated. The Methuselah Gene, the gene that controlled aging and decay of the body’s cells, could not be removed, it turned out, but it could be switched off, or more correctly, turned fully off. Therefor, a person who has aged as far as the craggy old monster staring defiantly back at Clyde, is S.O.L. They are doomed to age forever until they die the true death.

“And you are my favorite cousin, friend. Now, the trouble it requires to pass this way usually keeps out all but the best. The elite. As I know you could be in search of no other, here I am. Before you begin, is it the life that you want, or the knowledge?” The old man speaks with peculiar undertones that tug at Clyde’s memory. It seems to him that he’s spoken with someone who uses the same strange voicing, the same odd undertones, but the connection is like fishing line snagged on the lake bed, you can follow it down, but try too hard to pull it up and it snaps, lost forever without so much as an idea as to what was on the other end.

Life, Clyde thinks to himself, or knowledge? What the hell is this old freak jabbering about? All that Clyde is really after is a black market auction of a particularly rare piece of soon-to-be-stolen sculpture. Perhaps he’ll just play along.

“Knowledge. Life is something I already possess.”

“Wisdom is borne of knowledge, but knowledge comes from teaching.” Before the old man had finishes his sentence, he’s flying through the air towards Clyde. His hands wrap around Clyde’s neck with a ferocity bordering on desperation. Clyde is confused, to say the least, but doesn’t really have time to be so.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Clyde croaks, barely enough breath escaping from the geezer’s grip to do so. Clyde digs both of his thumbs into the man’s unprotected armpits and unleashes ten thousand volts of electricity through the gold studs mounted on top of his thumbnails. This, of course, is far more than enough to K.O. the man. In fact, as the old man stays on the ground in an unmoving, ungroaning pile, Clyde begins to wonder if he overdid the charge. Ten thousand volts of electricity flowing from one armpit to the other would only be able to flow for a tiny fraction of a second before it was lethal. He kicked the man and wondered whether the object his boot contacted was more of a corpse before or after he killed it. In some parts of the world, the aged are considered a treasure. “Shit. He’s dead,” Clyde informs himself. A sickening sound somewhere in the range between coughing and laughing reaches Clyde’s ears. To his horror, or possibly his relief, it’s coming from the boney bastard at his feet.

“You initially chose wrong,” says the old man as he rolls over to glare up at Clyde’s unbelieving face. “But you apparently changed your mind.” He lifts himself to his feet with the help of a gnarled cane that he hadn’t possessed a few moments prior. “So, it’s life that we want, is it? Don’t have as much as we thought we did, do we?” Clyde is, yet again, confused.

“Shouldn’t you be dead?” Clyde had so convinced himself that he’d killed the poor old bugger that he’s unwilling to return to his original thinking. He wonders whether he’d rather have killed him or not.

“Should I? Shouldn’t you? I was strangling you, afterall,” smiles the man. To Clyde, it all made good sense in a bad way. “Shall we?” the old man asks, sweeping his arm to indicate that they should continue down the corridor.

“Sure, whatever.”

“My name is Hugh, if you’re interested,” the old man offers. Clyde really isn’t. He’s still trying to figure out how and why this old man, Hugh, is suddenly his traveling buddy. Instead of introducing himself, Clyde walks on. Hugh’s hobbling is surprisingly silent, especially considering the excessive use of his cane. “Clear something up for me, if you will. I’m a little perplexed by the fact that you came seeking me without knowing what you wanted,” sighs the old man.

“To be honest, I didn’t come seeking you. I’m on my way to an auction.”

“Must be some auction to traverse these pathways.”

“That it surely is.”

“I didn’t catch your name, stranger,” Hugh says with a hint of a grin.

“Clyde.” The old man’s grip is quite weak as they shake hands, which is a bit of a surprise to Clyde as he thought back to a few minutes ago when that grip was locked around his throat.

“And what, my new friend Clyde, do you do?”

“Nothing. I don’t do anything. I’m sort of a bum.”

“One of my brethren or merely the lazy variety?”

“Brethren? Oh, uhh, yeah, one of your brethren, I guess. I’m a street person, if that’s what you mean.” Clyde finds the “brethren” comment a little disturbing, but he doesn’t really want to do anything that will cause the old man to encumber his breathing once more.

“You’ll have to meet some of my friends.” Neither of them speak until they reach the next station.

When they get there, a car is wating. A lone electric subway car lit brightly on the inside. Clyde helps the old man up onto the platform and then scrambles up himself. There are around twenty people in and around the car, all of which seem to be dirty, mangy, and quite homeless. No one seems to recognize either of them and no one approaches to speak.

“Well, if you’re all fine and dandy, I’ll be on my way, Hugh.” With the Brethren comment still in mind, Clyde is highly in favor of finishing his walk alone.

“Dandy, perhaps, fine, yes, but on your way, I’m think no. If you’re going where I think you’re going, it would be wise to come with us.”

“Does this sub car even work? I’ll just walk, I need the exercise.” With this, Clyde turns and takes a step away from the tracks. Planning on forgetting the whole endeavor rather than spend a night with this man, he heads back the way that they had come from.

Hehe...written two or three years ago...before "plasma screen" was a household term, apparently. My clichéd attempt at cyberpunk. It's kind of like the back of some shitty cereal box..."Can you spot all ten logic errors?" No, don't look for them, I just picked a number...

absorbent material> The Dresden Dolls - The Dresden Dolls

You and I are idly gathering moss...

2005-02-05T14:01:00.000-08:00

Long ago, when there were wolves and whales, there sailed a fierce pirate by the name of Xiang Cho Nelson, The Red. He was, obviously, no ordinary pirate. He was the pirate of pirates and the most important man in human history. Xiang...or Cho-dog, as his first mate called him...stood eight feet tall and wore customized Romanesque battle dress designed by the famous twenty-sixth century fashion designer, Paper Doll. Distinguishable from the common Centurion only by the blue jean cutoffs he wore under his skirt of mail, his inertially powered prosthetic legs, and the large Hello Kitty logo emblazoned on the back of his metal body armor, he commanded a ship of murderers, thieves, and politicians from across the stretches of time. His mission was a simple one...to shape the course of human history and ensure the safety of the universe.

You may never have heard of Xiang Cho Nelson, The Red, but he has heard of you and every murmured prayer of every child dying in it's brother's arms for all eternity. He is the thing of legend and the basis for many a tall tale. You may know him as Santa Clause or Paul Bunyan or even Jesus H. Christ, for he is all of these and so much more.

His ship, The Atlantis, was a massive, floating city of masts and parapets, flags and sails, silver and gold. Powered by a dying star and invisible to the naked eye, it was a gift from the Eternal Gods and the knife with which he rented time and saved us all from a cold, dark end. We find it now on it's last task; to assassinate the last of the Siberian shamans, Sarlaska Kyzlasov.

Floating thousands of feet over the barrens of Siberia, Xiang was devising a plan. It was early in the cold morning of the day that Sarlaska must be put to death. The very fabric of space-time depended on his terminal breath taking place at twelve seconds after six thirty-four the night of September 19th, 1930 AD, this night, but Xiang was wholly unconcerned. He knew that no matter what happened, the final shaman would perish right on schedule...this was how things worked...nature found a way, and Xiang and his crew were simply one of the multitude of scythes by which it operated.

The day drew on, the zero hour approaching rapidly, but still, Xiang and his first mate, Sean "Puffy" Combs were relaxed, enjoying a hot tub in celebration of their final grisly task before the Eternal Gods would give them free reign over time itself. Everything was going as planned...a troupe of traveling acrobats, under Xiang's employ, was on it's way, by carriage, to the small village of Khakass, where Sarlaska Kyzlasov lay peaceful in his bed, unaware of the tumbling murderers on their way to end his life for the benefit of mankind. As a backup plan, Xiang had his contingency squad of fourteenth century knights, instructed by Xiang himself in the use of early twentieth century musketry and improvisational kung fu, waiting in the belly of a circling bomber plane to parachute onto the scene and clean up any mistakes.

What was not planned was what happened next, approximately five minutes before the death of the world's last shaman. Without warning, as Sarlaska watched the acrobats perform, they all vanished into nothingness. Being a spiritual man, the shaman gaped in disbelief. In the exact moment of the acrobats disappearance, the circling bomber also vanished, without a trace, from existence. All unexplainable occurences come in threes, and this was without exception, for a second ship appeared in the sky, simply materializing within and around the better half of Xiang's ship. Where the hulls appeared fused for several nanoseconds, a void formed. A nothingness that left both ships torn in half.

Xiang, himself, was saved from the swift destruction of matter by the fact that he was enjoying a glass of milk from the crow's nest, but he saw it all go down. His ship's cannons, linked directly to his thoughts, started firing at the offending vessel at his first whim. Several seconds after firing, as he watched his cannon balls reach the moment of impact, his own ship was torn asunder by cannon fire. As he frantically tried to think his ship into a limping retreat, he squinted at the other, a perfect twin to his own, save the gaping cross section...his opened to port, the other to starboard. As he felt the flight engines roaring to life, skewing him and his remaining crew across the clouds, he caught of a glimpse of a figure in the crow's nest of the twin ship, as though looking in a mirror. A nightmare, to be sure, he saw what looked to be a Centurion of the Roman army. His mind reeling, all he could do was rev his engines and hope for a soft landing.

A pair of kilometers below this carnage, sat Sarlaska, still in shock of the acrobat's sudden nonexistence. Unable to move, he became subconsciously aware of a whistling noise coming from above. Without due warning, other than the whistling of aerodynamics, a stray cannon ball crashed through the roof of his wooden shack. Pain shooting up his arm, he collapsed. The shock multiplying itself, his simple intellect unable to cope, Sarlaska Kyzlasov, the last of the Siberian shamanic tradition, died of a massive coronary at exactly twelve seconds after six thirty-four on the night of September 19th, 1930 AD. To this day, the troupe of acrobats being collectively forgotten, for no trace was found, the stray cannon ball remains unexplained.

Due to Xiang's panic, his ship was careening through space and time, hurtling through a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and carbon dioxide. He and his crew put their hands together in hopes that the Eternal Gods had not forsaken them. In hopes that nature had, indeed, found a way and space-time would not cease to be. The sound that Xiang heard as his ship met the waves of the Mediterranean is indescribable in any human language. His last thoughts were of a satisfying life and a job well done. Thus, Atlantis sank.

This was originally written for a friend of mine, but I could no longer restrain myself from posting it...

absorbent material> Super Furry Animals - Fuzzy Logic

Unicorns and death...

2005-02-03T23:34:00.000-08:00

Surfing on a rocket...

2005-02-03T21:17:00.000-08:00

The sound of her knuckles striking my door is the most important sound I can possibly imagine. Looking up from my book, my finger on the word "suddenly", my involuntary life-signs stopping for briefest of moments, I can almost feel the strain as my eyes dilate. My perception kicks into slow motion and I can't seem to lift myself onto my feet fast enough. The sound resonates in my mind again, impatiently, making my breath quicken, assuring me that I didn't imagine the first three knocks. The door is parallel to my panicking and time returns to normal, though quickening with each moment as I stare ahead, unsure what to do. Reaching for the knob with my left hand, undoing the locks with my right, I chance a small crack in the door. I feel as though the purpose of my existence is to swing this wooden obstacle out of her way. A battle of will, afraid of the inevitable disappointment, I pull the door open. Not too quickly, but not too slowly. Every muscle in my arm tensed and quarreling to keep the door opening and maintain the appearance of nonchalant normalcy, I give the slightest of shudders, as though on the brink of sobbing. A lurch in reality of indeterminate length, I see her. Her head declined, towards my feet, the slick of fresh tears on her cheeks, the seemingly impossible happens and she moves without shattering. Eyes meet, hers still welling up and mine wide in disbelief. Mouths opening gently, the words, though silent, are spoken without motion. Frightened of waking up, I struggle to move and nearly collapse in relief when she, instead, steps forward. A look in her eyes like nothing I've witnessed, her hand moves, delicately, to my face and with a touch I forget that I am still alive. Bent to her will, I step backward, her palm fast at my cheek, fingers at my temple. Without closing the door, she smiles. Face to face, breath mingling, she moves closer. Lost in thoughtlessness, as though watching from outside, I feel her, soft, warm. Senses distant, drowning in her. A final tear rolls down her skin onto mine just before she speaks.

"You have ten minutes. Take only what you need. We must not be seen."

My first reaction is that she is all I need. Reality rushes in and I immediately become aware of the sounds around me. Numb with shock, my life has begun.

Jesus Fucking Christ, I'm lonely...

absorbent material> Air - Talkie Walkie

The only girl I've ever loved was born with roses in her eyes...

2005-01-13T00:53:00.000-08:00

My name isn't fucking Chet, you ass. Don't think for a second that just because your dad is my dad's boss you can treat me like your employee. I'll help you with your writing because I'm your friend and I won't tell anyone that you write romance novels in your spare time because you asked me not to, but, fuck. No, yes, no, I swear I've never mentioned it to anyone. Well, yeah, I suppose I've told people that I've done some editing for you...but...oh, god no...I'd be just as ridiculed as you if I told anyone...especially about acting out some of the scenes to get the dialog right. Stop calling me fucking Chet. I like Charles. It may be a kind of awkward syllable, but it is still only one syllable. Now, c'mon, are we going to do this or not? OK..."Your breath excites me, Rhonda. I can't stay away your wiles, you know that." No...no, Nikki, this just doesn't work. I mean, who says this shit? Your breath excites me? Really, what the hell...OK, Nik...no, wait...Nikki...c'mon, no, it's not that bad, it just needs a little work. Yes, yes, I understand that this...jeez...no, don't, c'mon. Nikki. Listen to me. You're a great writer. That libretto your wrote last month...yeah, the one about the life of Galileo where you rewrote the words to all of those Pavement songs...that was brilliant. I'm not questioning your genius. I just...GOD FUCKING DAMNIT, MY NAME ISN'T CHET! MY NAME HAS NEVER BEEN CHET AND WILL NEVER BE FUCKING CHET, YOU COLD BITCH! Yeah, OK, I deserved that. Anyway, I'm just not sure about some of this. I just think that some of this dialog needs to be either smoothed out or made even more bizarre. Right now it's in some sort of limbo where it's all just kind of absurd. How about..."Breathe on me, Rhonda, roll your hot exhalations down my flesh." Jesus, Nikki, it's supposed to be dirty, it's a fucking romance novel. OK, yeah, you're the artist, it's whatever you say it is. Sure, yeah, it's great...fantastically awkward and unrealistic...I love it...

absorbent material> Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea...only three of the thirty some albums I've accumulated over winter break do I find myself going back to...this is one of them...of course, I still have half of them left to listen to...

Oh, Foot Foot, why can't I find you?

2005-01-11T21:22:00.000-08:00

Overtones of soft and stoic. So much for my resolutions. Self indulgent, I may always be, childish as well, but responsible...I may not be now, perhaps that will change. No, no, I am responsible, I simply have nothing to be responsible for, right now. Find responsibilities, that's what I need to do. Find responsibilities so that I don't feel the need to be irresponsible. There is a fairly extensive list of fictional characters that I try to be a combination of. In vain, of course, because I don't even really want to be them...they're simply influence. Music is such a fantastic medium. One that I've tried to use for my own creation many a time, but always ultimately failed. The Killer Snowgoons never got around to being as serious as we had hoped, Moe Lepo shut me out, and Bonus Track, by a conscious decision on my part, never included me as much more than a producer. I need cohorts. Colleagues? Collaborators. There are certain musicians that should never give in, simply because it would be a travesty commited upon all of us who try (time and time again...) and flop. Morrissey, Robert Smith, John Frusciante, Maynard Keenan, Thurston Moore, Carla Kihlstedt, David Byrne, Wayne Coyne, and the list continues. OK, I'm kind of tired of writing...I'd say right now that I'll continue on the 23rd or so when I get back from Chicago, but I'll probably change my mind tomorrow or something...

absorbent material> The Shaggs - Philosophy of the World...holy fucking shit, this is hideous...

Hide the fact you're dead again...

2005-01-06T00:02:00.000-08:00

GIRL: Your friend called, he wants his skateboard back.

BOY: I don't have a brother...

GIRL: No, not brother, friend.

BOY: Yeah, that's what I said, I don't have a friend.

GIRL: What? Then who are those bozos who come over to play Yu-Gi-Oh! cards every weekend?

BOY: My cousins.

GIRL: Your cousins.

BOY: My cousins...distant...like, fourth twice removed or something...

GIRL: Your fourth cousins twice removed come to our house to play Yu-Gi-Oh?

BOY: My great aunt is married to their great uncle.

GIRL: You seriously don't have any friends?

BOY: I went out for a drink with Steve once.

GIRL: Steve? Who's Steve?

BOY: The mailman.

GIRL: Yeah, I'm not counting that...I thought you were friends with Troy...

BOY: Troy was my boss.

GIRL: Your boss. Your boss set you up on a blind date?

BOY: Yeah, well, I mean, your sister was in on it, too, remember? I've always kinda suspected that he did it so I'd be distracted when he fired me the next week. Of course, I doubt he ever thought we'd end up as in-laws...

GIRL: You had to have friends in college, right?

BOY: Well, no, actually, no, I didn't. I read a lot.

GIRL: So, wait, OK, if you have no friends, who was just on the phone?

BOY: I have no idea.

GIRL: He says you have his skateboard. Do you even have a skateboard?

BOY: No. I haven't had a skateboard since I was...oh...shit...no way...

GIRL: What?

BOY: Jimmy!

GIRL: Jimmy?

BOY: ...but, I sold that skateboard at a pawn shop to pay for breaking Mrs. Jensen's window...

GIRL: What the hell are you talking about?

BOY: When I was ten, I borrowed my friend Jimmy's skateboard...one of those old plastic torpedo shaped things...he moved away and I forgot to give it back to him.

GIRL: You're so full of shit...

BOY: No, seriously...I mean, what else could it possibly be? I haven't had a single friend since then. Excepting you, of course...

GIRL: So, you think some kid you knew eighteen years ago is calling you up because he wants his plastic skateboard back?

BOY: Wow, yeah, that sounds really stupid. Fuck him, I sold it anyway, if he calls back, pretend it's a wrong number...

GIRL: That's pretty cold, don't you think? This is the last friend you've had your whole life...

BOY: Only...yet again, excepting you...that use a telephone, anyway...

GIRL: Only? You had no friends before and no friends after?

BOY: Well...no...except you...no, no friends but you and Jimmy.

GIRL: And just "fuck him"? That's it?

BOY: Well...we weren't good friends, really...he'd always leave the seat up when he'd spend the night at my house and my mom would blame it on me...

GIRL: That's kind of petty. I mean, couldn't you just, like, pick up a five dollar skateboard and send it to him as sort of a goodwill gag gesture?

BOY: No...

GIRL: Why not? Oh...nevermind...what were you saying about your friends using the telephone?

BOY: I have no friends, that's what we've been talking about...

GIRL: Yeah, but you said something about telephones, what was that?

BOY: ...it was...nothing...

GIRL: No, really, tell me.

BOY: ...I was...I was just saying that you and Jimmy are the only friends who use telephones...

GIRL: So...who are all of these friends of yours who don't use phones?

BOY: Not "all of these friends"...there are only two, really...and I'm kind of friendly with some of their friends, I guess...

GIRL: What the fuck? What the hell are you talking about?

BOY: Y'know, yeah, nevermind...forget it...

GIRL: No, seriously, what the hell are you talking about? Some kind of crazy internet friends or something? Imaginary friends? Do you still have your imaginary friends? I'm sorry, I'll bet I sit on them all of the time...

BOY: Yeah, funny...you're hilarious...

GIRL: Hahaha...oops! Was that one of your friends or just a friend of a friend?

BOY: You used to...you're getting better, though.

GIRL: What?

BOY: You used to sit on them a lot. I think you're all starting to get more comfortable with eachother...better at predicting eachothers moves.

GIRL: Your imaginary friends? Haha...do they have names?

BOY: I've already told you too much...you're just going to make fun of me some more.

GIRL: No, c'mon, I won't make fun of you, what are their names?

BOY: Well...hmmm...well, the one next to you is Blake...and the one...the one behind you making the bunny ears is El Gato Negro De Ajo.

GIRL: You're serious. Perfectly fucking serious. Blake and El Quato Negro Ojos?

BOY: El Gato Negro De Ajo.

GIRL: Whatever...I mean, how long have you had these imaginary friends.

BOY: What does it matter? They're imaginary...they keep me happy and you never have to see them or talk to them.

GIRL: Well, that's a good point...but I still think you need to see a shrink.

BOY: Why? So we can spend a fuckton of money to make me confused and depressed? You didn't even know until I told you.

GIRL: I don't know. I...this is just kind of overwhelming, you know? I mean, you meet someone, hit it off fantastically, six months later you're married, and a year after that you find out that they still talk to their imaginary friends. It's just going to take a bit to deal with it.

BOY: I don't talk to them.

GIRL: What do you mean you don't talk to them?

BOY: I don't talk to them...they talk to me...

GIRL: And what do they say?

BOY: Well...oh man...I didn't want to bring this up...they say that you shouldn't lie...

GIRL: Lie? About what?

BOY: El Gato Negro De Ajo says that he saw you...that he saw you with Steve...the mailman...the one you pretended not to know...

absorbent material> The Shins - Oh, Inverted World

Exploding candlelight...

2005-01-01T17:25:00.000-08:00

2005 has brought me to a surprising level of contentedness. The last night of the year was probably also the best. I can't really explain it. Today, driving around in the slush and ice that's been coming down...smoking shitty cigarettes that I hate, but ironically keep smoking for cinematic value, I'm not really sure why...I had a deep rooted urge to write something lasting. Something more accomplished than the occasional blog post. I've started planning for a script...a script that will most likely turn out pretentious and unentertaining, but I'm hoping for a strange sort of morose beauty to emerge. See, it's pretentious already. Maybe I'll even finish it someday...

absorbent material> Deerhoof - Apple O'

The scoops are coming!

2004-12-23T02:36:00.000-08:00

I don't know what I'm doing anymore, I don't know what I'm waiting for. Something big, I can only hope, but most likely, merely a change. You know what I want for Christmas? A nice girl that I can spoil rotten. C'mon...let's go to crappy movies and be obnoxious...anyone? No one wants to climb trees or make snow angels with me? Oh, yeah, that's right, I forgot...that's kind of a silly question...I still live in Forest City...I guess I'll just have to settle for books and music and socks...

absorbent material> Soylent Green!

Who's scruffy lookin'?

2004-12-20T01:29:00.000-08:00

She's going to change the world, but she can't change me...

2004-12-12T23:35:00.000-08:00

I saw a shooting star tonight. Sadly, my neural image node isn't calibrated very well...this was the best frame I could get...

absorbent material> Chris Cornell - Euphoria Morning

And your computer is Mary Magdalene...

2004-12-08T05:10:00.000-08:00

Born again American, let's pretend that it's the end...

2004-12-04T18:02:00.000-08:00

This time next year, you'll find me riding my unicorn to Vegas...because aliens should preside over my wedding and funeral, all in one day...for now, I'm off to the recesses of space...

absorbent material> Legs On Earth...

Hey there, honey pie...

2004-12-03T04:03:00.000-08:00

Your shoulder's in my pocket...

2004-12-02T04:30:00.000-08:00

Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to sell your granola to the tribe. And perhaps we would have faired better without our little friend Ignuatha tagging along...or whatever the hell your name is. I'll even admit that I may have been crossing the line when I told that family that you were pregnant with my child. I'm sorry, my bad, but if we hadn't, we'd still be chained up in that treehouse churning butter. I didn't see you offering any brilliant schemes. If you were so against my plan, why didn't you just stay behind? The shaman's son seemed to have quite an eye for you, maybe you could have made a life for yourself there. But if you're staying, goddamnit, you're just going to have learn to pick pockets like Ignuatha and I have. I want to go home just as much as you do, but we don't exactly have passports, now do we? That means we have no valid ID, so we can't get jobs, at least, not legitimate ones, anyway, and until you can think of a better way to pull your weight, I want at least a wallet a day. We can't keep sleeping in that car...eventually someone is going to come for it...and, no offense, Ignuatha, but I'm getting tired of waking up with your foot in my armpit. Think of this as a dream come true...you've always wanted to live in a foreign country...yeah, I know, it's not Paris, but, maybe when we get some money, we can make our way there. Now, for today, let's get back to it, the afternoon tour groups will be coming through here any minute and we're pretty much guaranteed at least a couple traveller's checks...yes, maybe even enough for a room tonight. I'm sorry, Ignuatha, I didn't mean to make fun of your name...yeah, I know you can't control your feet while you sleep. Jesus, yes, I suppose I could have sold them my dehydrated astronaut ice cream instead, but...but they were a lot more interested in that fruit and nut crap you always carry around...I was just trying to save our lives...now, c'mon, can we talk about this tonight...after we put some money in our pockets? I'd like us all to eat, you know...thank you...

absorbent material> Zero 7 - When It Falls

Swingsets!

2004-11-30T18:45:00.000-08:00

This country has tough bones...

2004-11-23T23:39:00.000-08:00

I have done it! I have mastered time. For me, it has succumbed to its knees, stood still in my path for me to examine. The formula is simple...Cigarettes(or in my case, a pipe and cloves...pick a place that you have to get up off your ass and go to for the purpose of smoking them) + The same movie played over and over again back to back(any movie will do...I suggest one that doesn't retain your attention, something more or less unstimulating that can run in the background to generate deja vous...for me, the animated Lord of the Rings) + Unemployment/Lack of motivation/Irresponsibility(a quote comes to mind in this case: "The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide" and also "It's not that I'm lazy, it's just that I don't care") = The breaking of time! I am nearing the 100th time I've lived through this single day. However, beware...once time has ceased to pass, jumpstarting it once again is difficult. Changing movies doesn't seem to be nearly enough and running out of smokes only compounds the effect...I believe that breaking the cycle of unemployment would be powerful enough to push time along its path, but I have further study to do on this theory. It would also be prudent to prepare oneself for a sudden leap in time to make up for the stall once you have reached the outside world. Although you are now a time master, you can't teach an old dog new tricks...once the leash is removed, it will run for its life. Your friends will seem older and things will have happened without your knowledge...even you, you will seem all the older as well (and even older still from the smokes). This being the case, it seems that this ability is all but useless. It may come in handy if you have some immense grindstone to press your nose against or if you are waiting for something and have no wish to accomplish anything in the meantime. I must warn you, get your affairs in order before stopping time...because of the mechanism, manipulating the outside world while age itself is standing still becomes all but impossible...crampack your bank accounts, wish your friends a nice semester at university, maybe buy some videogames and books...and enough soda to drown in...make a comfortable throne from which to command time itself and enjoy...

absorbent material> The Lord of the Rings...and I'm getting sick of it ending after the battle for Helm's Deep...again and again and again...or is this still the first time?