Creep

I don't like that word--creep. It's like how I don't like the word "awkward." Somehow it's a negative attribute to be different in matters of social convention. And creep is just one step further. It's someone who tries to approach others in their own weird manner. Someone who is socially ept, who approaches others, he's gregarious. But when someone is awkward, they become this very negative connotationed creep?

It's awful. Creep, or awkward--anytime I hear anyone talk about anyone in those ways I just want to punch them. It's not just jealously. It's a bit of jealousy, I guess, but it's also the whole "weird is bad" thing. By extension, it's the negative sanctioning of bad behavior by not being friends with these "creeps". Done en masse, it's spoiling anyone's happiness for not following social conventions. I don't like it.

In love with famous people who can't write music

I like Adam Young a lot. I can't stand his music, but after reading his blog, I bet I'd love to meet the guy. And Miley Cyrus--I feel the same way about her. I'd totally go out with her or something.

It's kind of odd. A lot of the real hipster blogs I read are talking trash about them and their pretentiousness and character flaws. Guys, really? Just because they can't make music, they suddenly become bad people? Radiohead's my favorite band and yet I swear Thom Yorke is much more of a dick than any of these teeny boppers will ever be.

(It's why I hope I'll never be famous. People might start liking my character.)

The day I get into college I will start an anime review blog!

Somebody shoot me before I write this blog!

Remember me as someone who at least tried to love (and succeeded in loving) the higher-tiered works, but alas never fell out of love with the romantic escapism which saved the life of a former friendless middle-schooler hooked on My Chemical Romance.

I've been thinking: almost all the songs I write on the guitar make use of the following:

• Constant change between the pentatonic scale and heptatonic scale
• Constant change between 4/4 rythms that go in groups of threes (like x--x--x--x--x-x-) and 3/4 rythms, and occasional arythmia
• Many major triad chords from many scales, which all blend to sound cool and discordant
• A constant low note (E is easiest) that sounds on off-beats to keep rythm

The songs usually have that classical Spanish guitar sound, something like Radiohead's Bodysnatcher-esque songs (that song is probably what I base everything I write on). The scale is all Tool and the Velvet Underground. I wonder why the latter two; I don't even love them amazingly much.

(Wow, analyzing my own music--am I pretentious?)

Annica!

Everything is passing by so fast.
At the end of the year I'll leave this country and most likely not see my friends here ever again.
I won't miss them, I don't think. I'll be caught up in the moments in college.
The past is never relevant. The past is but an aching pang in my stomach.
Life is the now-moments.

The thing about teenagers is most are at about the same place in life: struggling to find their own identities and beliefs and dreams amidst a sea of hormones, scared and pessimistic about the big corporate world and all its sharp corners ahead of them, but still mostly alive and making it through for those odd moments of bliss and friends and family. That’s where my own friends are, at least, and that’s where Holden Caulfield was, and that’s where I am. Now, the thing about this thing about teenagers is they are mostly conscious of this fact and resent it. I do, at the very least. I swear, if I ever become a writer, to never write a novel targeted at teenagers, because of the ridiculous ease of such a task. I say just add to your character angst and selfishness and self-loathing and we’ll be soft-hearted enough to sympathize, even me. Oh, sadly, me: reader of A Clockwork Orange and The Great Gatsby and Ulysses in my freshman year. Listen, every teen hipster has a soft underbelly. We’re all catchers in the rye, keen on keeping those of our kind from the cruel of the corporate nightmare, all hail the subculture. We’re all a soft-hearted, cynical, lost bunch. Exhibit A: me. My life. What can we make of it? At the moment, we have (1) my five family members fearfully grabbing at what is left of my descent into sinful bohemianism, fasting for me, pleading with me, inspiring in me a guilt which watches over every sentimental moment I can hope to have with them. And then we have (2) one of my closest friends constantly stealing the spotlight with his highly cultured tastes, his brilliant mind, his admirable morality—oh, I do worship him, but do I bore him with my vulgar and unintelligent chatter?
We have (3) another friend who has opened up to me recently. Another, because—get this: every year I have maybe half a dozen people opening up their deepest, darkest secrets to me and thinking of me as their best friend. Oh, of course, I love them opening up. I do. And I love him. But when this sort of thing isn’t reciprocated, I just feel awful and drained. Or at least I think that’s the problem. And then we have these three friends over here (4), all quite happy people, and my favorites of the bunch. Little do they suspect: I feel horribly inadequate around them. Why? Every attempt to express affection comes off as stiff and unnatural, especially around that one girl. Now I withdraw when I see them, for sake of self-respect. Ah, selfish me! Do they suspect I dislike them? Lastly we have (5) a long distance relationship devoid of all feeling, Along with (6) a possible online crush--a sad girl of 15 who looks for comfort--to compensate. In summary, then: this current life is one defined by: five family ties, five close friendships, one online friendship-on-the-brink-of-romance, one stale long distance romance— all pervaded by sinful sycophancy, self-consciousness, and a (not entirely unfounded) sense of inadequacy. And guilt over it, mind you: I realize in all of this that I am committing the horrible and heinous offense of forfeiting authenticity for acceptance, paving the first tiles on the way to a corporate hell of act and tact. Continuing the example, I add to this tangle of thorns a something called “school,” which attacks every already-stressful afternoon social encounter with reminders of unfinished work from the night before, or failed subjects, or unsatisfying SAT scores. I fight it, of course. I scorn this Tool of the Man and all its worldly values of wealth and power, I tell yourself you don’t care and your highest goal is to own a bookstore and maybe a cat. But my stomach tells the truth in aching pangs: I, simply incompetent and in denial. Finally, in my room alone there are my attempts to escape with naïve dreams of childhood—my goals of life on the road, of offering ear and shoulder for come-and-go friends, of living for the miraculous and mind-boggling people that populate every corner of this stark existence!, of dying a savior—now crumbling away at the edges—Dear reader, behold, Exhibit A, (proudly written in a silly sort of mock-pretentious style that may quite possibly have been stolen from a certain narrator in a certain favorite novel, and excuse my temporary lack of identity)—such is the life, I think, of the mess that is the teenager; caught between a drive for authenticity and identity and an endless love for friends and family, fighting the gears of the corporate machine, picking up the vestiges of values and dreams after their foundations have fallen away, and for the first time getting fleeting glances at the still ineffable face of empty, such is the life.

How to create your very own Jandek-style album:

The musical process:
1. Detune every string on your guitar. Strum an open chord.
If any two strings retain any semblence of concord, repeat.
2. Take an audio recorder and turn it on.
3. Press random frets and strum erratically.
4. Scream your thoughts on the first thing that comes to mind--
be it Jesus, drug trips, or days of the week coupled with the names of famous European cities.

The cover art:
You have a choice here.

You can take a poorly-lit picture of:
1. Yourself,
2. Buildings,
or 3. Furniture.

-

-

Bonus Indie Creds:
Send this guy a copy of your record, along with a genuine Jandek record.
Ask him which is which.

Hipster.

I came across the word in On the Road.
It turns out they like that book.
It turns out they like Warp Records, and Radiohead, and Eastern religions, and vegetarianism, and wearing thrift store tees with American Eagle sharpied on, and Vespas, and coffee shops.
I am 91% hipster according to a quiz on Hello Quizzy.
Go figure.

Hear me out, world. Hear me out, world. Hear me out, world. Hear me out, world. Hear me out, world. Hear me out, world. Hear me out, world. Hear me ou

wasted time, messy house, unwashed body in the morning, tasks! all piling on my shoulders,
my life is permeated by a feeling of aimlessness:
hear me out, world. Tell me where to go from here, then
give me a push. Daring dreams, with wings and things--
or if not, at least an eloquence to communicate my uncertainty--

tell me: is this eloquent enough?
Are you listening?

What is 1,900 pages long and reads like Nietzsche?

This man's suicide note.

P.S. Reading a life of Empedocles, I felt how old is this desire to make a god of oneself.

This letter, so far as I am conscious, never attempts this.

On the contrary, I consider myself one of the most common humans.

You may recall those days of twenty years ago when we discussed "Empedocles on Etna" - under the linden trees.

In those days I was one who wished to make a god of myself.

Shit happens

Are you, by any chance, looking to shove atheistic existentialism (hidden under the thin veneer of theism) down the throat of your 4-year-old child--while simultaneously giving them a newfound appreciation for canine fecal matter?
Wow, have I got the perfect movie for you!

That's right, folks! Doggy Poo has it all:
the meaninglessness dog shit that is you, the unchangeable consequences of all your past misdeeds, the inevitability of death (in the form of an ox-drawn carriage) from the moment of birth, the cruel winds of chance sweeping some forward and leaving others behind, the horrible monotony of each and every day, and the finding meaning (in your love for another) before your life is over.

No, really.

Anime and manga I like

I don't know how much I blog about it, but I'm a huge fan of these mediums.

For the record:
My favorite anime is Haibane Renmei and my favorite manga is Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou.
I also enjoyed Satoshi Kon's movies, Tatami Galaxy, Boogiepop, FLCL (more for the subdued romance than the action and humor.

Of course, realize that I've watched far less than I should have by now, mainly due to my lack of patience with long series. To keep myself interested, I tend to opt for films under half an hour. Among these, my favorites:
Cat Soup (for which Bo Ningen is doing a sexy live cover at the Branchage), Kakurenbo, Dimension Bomb, She and Her Cat (great mood, mind the sentimental narration), and the second (second (second)) episode of Twilight Q. I'm hesitant to recommend Aquatic Language. Its message is forced and its got clumsy dialogue, but I love the camera. And maybe try Mt. Head; mind the predictability, but super dig the Japanese banjo and opera.

Satoshi Kon's death

Schoolwork prevented me from finding out about the death of anime director Satoshi Kon until this week. This event has been covered by all our dear anchors in the aniblogosphere and I don't care much for redundancy, but I'll mention that I, too, was taken aback by his sudden death and the note he left behind.

Interesting! Interesting! Interesting!

The History of Jerry Lee Pynchon, His Invention of the First Postmodern Language, and another Event Which I Will Not Spoil

Before I go on with the story, let me introduce to you the protagonist. His name is Jerry Lee Pynchon. He is a postmodernist.
Now you have to understand that many people who say they are (or are labeled as) postmodernists are not really postmodernists. They still believe, deep down, that environmentalists and feminists are absolutely, universally good, and Adolf Hitler and George W. Bush are absolutely, universally evil. When these people say they are postmodernists, what they really mean is “all these religions open hospitals and change the lives of criminals, and they all teach really similar things, so why can’t they just get along?”
If you asked Jerry Lee Pynchon the same question, though, he would have told you it was because if he was a Christian, the Muslims in his reality were all going to go to hell, and if he was a Muslim, all the Christians in his reality were going to hell, except maybe those whose good deeds outweighed their bad deeds during their lifetime. He would have added that they should be aware that this was only his perception of Muslims’ and Christians’ perceptions. He would have then added that Muslims and Christians probably were teaching the same thing, for the person speaking to him, while simultaneously teaching different things for himself. And then he would have added that this, too, was his perception. Because how can he be sure people labeled Muslims and Christians even exist? What is existence? What is language? What is everything in the world? Relative! But only for a postmodernist!
The question askers would have left very frustrated and confused, and that would be because Jerry Lee Pynchon was a true postmodernist.
--
Now, Jerry Lee Pynchon is surfing the internet at the start of our history. Or rather, was surfing the internet, because I would had to narrate the rest of the story in present tense. And so Jerry Lee Pynchon was surfing the internet in an apartment in Chantilly, Virginia, when he came across an ad requesting a teacher for Reed College’s new course titled “Understanding Postmodernism.” He decided he would apply for the job.
The application form had two blanks. The first blank asked for his telephone number. He wrote “703-376-8923” in this blank. The second asked if he was a postmodernist. He thought: “I am a postmodernist, but only in my perception of reality. For other postmodernists, postmodernism can be defined as voting democratic and thinking all those religions should all get along—but only in those postmodernists’ realities.” So he wrote: “It depends.”
As legend has it, out of all 3.25904 billion applications for the job, his was the only truly postmodern answer.
--
Jerry Lee Pynchon’s class was stupid.
His first assignment had been to read the white text on a white sheet of paper. He asked if they could, in all honesty, see the white text on the paper. They all admitted they could not.
So he devised a plan. He created an alphabet of lines. A line one millimeter thick would be the “a” of his alphabet, and a line 26 millimeters thick would be the “z.” His second assignment, then, was for his class to memorize the line alphabet. Again, they could not.
So he devised another plan. He wrote a book titled Ulysses II. For many of his students, Ulysses II was the most beautiful thing in the world. It made them cry and it made them laugh and it made them understand life through new eyes. The best part about the book was it got better and better with every chapter. The second best part about the book was it started adding a few neologisms somewhere in the middle and increased its neologism count until by the second to last chapter the whole book was written in neologisms, so the readers absolutely could not spoil the almost-ending of the book for themselves.
And so the stupid students devoured the book until the second to last chapter, where they found a note which read “Alro mauley haogagi mai” which translates “I am very sorry, but the last chapter, which contains the answer to life itself, is written in my line alphabet.”
--
By the time Jerry Lee Pynchon had finished the last chapter (which was 900 pages long and didn’t really have the meaning of life in it), word of Ulysses II had spread around the United States of America. The New York Times critics had read it through and hailed it as the greatest piece of literature in the history of the universe. The Washington Post praised it for its good writing and great themes and predicted his style as the next great literary revolution. The best part, in his opinion, was that every literature buff in the States had picked up a version of his line alphabet and learned it for himself or herself so that when the chapter was released, everyone completely understood every part of it.
Jerry Lee Pynchon was just getting started, however. His next step was to write ten more books in his line alphabet, with each book having lines within words getting increasingly closer. Then, on the last chapter of his tenth book, words became lines (looking something line this: ------- ------------------------ ----------- ----------------- --------- -- ----------------- --------- ----------------------------). Most readers, however, understood that a line of a certain length placed in a certain place within a sentence was probably this word or that word. The Chicago Tribune praised his works for being “haifor sorli ales” which in his own neologistic language translates as “catchy and written in a fun language to write in.”
In the following ten years, Jerry Lee Pynchon released ten more books. These books started with simple line-words so the audience could easily infer what the story was about, but got increasingly more complex and ambiguous so that by the tenth book, the lines could mostly mean absolutely anything. The Christian Science Monitor praised his work for being “-- ----- -- ----- --” which translates as “lodke” which translates as “revolutionary!”
In the ten following years, he released ten books with nothing but lines in them. By this time, line-writing had become as commonplace as written English.
In the following ten years, he began to curve his lines. Lines ran all over the page in mad scribbles. By this time, many great works of literature were translated into the line alphabet, including the two best books ever Ulysses II and the Bible. With the Bible’s translation, a curious phenomenon began: some preachers began preaching that Jesus was actually several people. Some others, in reply to this teaching, preached that Satan and God were one, and everything was one, and so Jesus was actually only one—it says so in the Book of Lakos, after all.
While all of this happened, Jerry Lee Pynchon found all the members of his no-longer-stupid class and handed them diplomas.
--
When Jerry Lee Pynchon was 72 years old, he found a malignant tumor in his throat. The doctor who discovered it told him the cancer was very advanced and he had no chance of living. He tried to tell the doctor “it’s funny, because I always wondered what that lump in my throat was” but the lump was so big by now he could no longer move his vocal cords.
That night, as he lay in his hospital bed, something happened (and don’t ask me how I know this): Ahura Mazda, the Creator of the Universe, came to him in a vision.
“Jerry Lee Pynchon, you will die in a week,” he said. “How many good things have you done in life, and how many bad things have you done in life? Can you say for certain that you are going to heaven?”
Jerry found he could speak. So he said “I have done mostly what I thought was good, but what do you consider good, Ahura Mazda?”
“Jerry Lee Pynchon, goodness is converting other people to Zoroastrianism.”
“Is that how my reality operates? In that case, why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“Jerry Lee Pynchon, I thought you knew already. Creation testifies to my existence. But right now I am very lonely because nobody worships me any longer. If you bring back all my worshippers, I will not send you to hell.”
Jerry Lee Pynchon thought for a while.
“Why can’t you appear to these people yourself?”
“That is because I want to display my power through one of your students. I have appeared to her in a dream as a voice asking her to ask you for the meaning of life. All things work out for my plan.”
Jerry Lee Pynchon sighed. “So you’ve fated me to convert her?”
“No, Jerry Lee Pynchon. You might fail. I have chosen to turn a blind eye to what happens in the future and to only influence the present.”
“I can’t see why you don’t just appear to everyone like this. The people going to hell might have been saved if you would just have appeared before them.”
“Jerry Lee Pynchon, will you or won’t you do it?”
“Alright. I’m only doing this because my reality demands that evangelizing will get me to heaven. For other people, you may not exist.”
Ahura Mazda metaphorically scratched his head.
--
A week later, a voiceless Jerry Lee Pynchon was approached by one of his graduate students.
“Teacher,” she said. “I have been looking all my life. You never did tell us the meaning of life in Ulysses II, did you?”
He smiled and shook his head.
“Teacher, what is the meaning of life?” And with that, she gave him a piece of paper and a pencil.
Jerry Lee Pynchon began to write. He wrote for five hours, until every page on the notebook was filled with text. When he was finished, he handed the notebook back to the woman.
She studied it for a very long time. Then she nodded her head and left.
That night, he died.
On the channel ------- news, the lady told everyone that what he was trying to say with these 40 pages of squiggles was that you could make your meaning whatever you want it to be. Everyone thought this final work was insightful and deep. A few of his students could not hold back their tears at the beauty of it.

Wait a minute, Freud--I swear I'm not a siscon!

Last night, I dreamed my sister had a sandwich and she was licking it on all sides. I was afraid she would eat it for some reason, though, so I kept trying to shove a hot dog in it. I woke up with my hands in my pants.

The summer in review

First, and update: 2 weeks in Malaysia has produced 2 additional story ideas. I'm so excited right now I'm afraid I'll give them away if I write any more than a sentence's description for each. The first will be a story that must be told backwards because of a certain--ah, should I spoil it? I'd rather not. It shall begin with a man reading a note scribbled by a stranger before dropping dead. The second shall be about a man's life, told as the script of a... my, this is dangerous! I'll shut up for good!

On the by note, I've read 60 chapters of Death Note over the course of a few days (I lost interest around the 50th chapter--Mello and Near? Really, Ohba?) before moving on to Bokura no. I've bought DVDs for Durarara!!, Kaiba, and FLCL (for 3.00 USD each). I'll have finished eight books--A Wizard of Earthsea, Bridge to Terabithia, Animal Farm, Sophie's World, Franny and Zooey, Haruhi Suzumiya, Welcome to the NHK, and On the Road--and countless short stories by Bradbury and Asimov by the end of the summer. And if all goes according to plan, I'll also have written three of my own stories (the first three written on my own initiative!).
And lastly (I hate tedious lists, too, dear reader, but I love bragging even more) I plan on buying glow-in-the-dark paint to paint a piece of shrinky-dink paper to hang around my neck in replacement for broken Mr. Cobain--at the moment, I'm considering a LOVE statue with the LO stacked on top of the VE, with string threaded through the O.

And perhaps it's a bit early, but I'm feeling excited about my return to the States next year for college. Think: I'll get to see my girlfriend again!--excitement mixed up with a bit of anxiety? I'll save up for a Ducati motorcycle, however expensive it'll be; I'll paint it pink! I'll get addicted to White Wolf role-playing games all over again!

Mind the counter!

Deliberation!

3 A.M. summer nights, spent cold, curled behind a screen,

late afternoons spent typing retyping retyping in empty rooms,

brought forth a stream, a world

of fireworks and fireflies and disillusioned moths

and deliberation--a world

that, Alas!, grew stolid by its third hour--

I must publish while it is still hot!

"Spontaneous prose," Kerouac!:

oh, genuine! oh, a torrential thick mucus stream of feelings on the white!

In the past weeks, I fear I should reconsider cruel art and cold beauty and deliberating in favor of spontaneous prose (for I fear I've lost all half of my 2 readers as a result of my switch from,

and have I?) but, dear Everything!:

I cannot, cannot, cannot

and I shall not

forfeit

authenticity

.

Freddie Seigel Will Die Today.

Freddie Seigel is a male Homo sapiens sapiens who is 5 feet seven inches tall, 142 pounds, 32 years old, an enneagram type 7, a Myers Briggs ESTP, atheistic, dating Loraine Cagley from accounting, and struggling to come to terms with a catgirl fetish, which he fears may develop into bestiality if left unchecked.

Right now, in the second-floor bedroom of a two-story apartment building at 12256 Angel Wing Court in Richmond, Virginia, of the United States of America, on a rainy November 24, 2010, at exactly 7:44:57, Freddie Seigel is sleeping in a pair of Joe Boxer boxers.

In three seconds, at 7:45, the digital clock on the desk beside his bed will sound an alarm.

The sound of the alarm will rouse Freddie Seigel from a quite unpleasant dream and into his waking world.

Outside his window, he will see the skies drained of their color by the torrential downpour.

Freddie will then think about his job.

Freddie will feel intense hatred toward his job.

Freddie will feel at a lost because he cannot do something useful for humanity.

Freddie will want to blame organized religion and the Republican Party as he reaches to the far end of the bed for week-old khakis and a dress shirt he doesn’t remember wearing for the past three days.

Freddie will walk out of his bedroom and down the stairs, wondering if anybody will remember his clothes from the last time he wore them.

He will walk into his kitchen, wondering whether it is true that girls have better memories than boys.

And then, as he pours Honey Nut Cheerios into a glass bowl sitting on the table from last night’s dinner, he will wonder whether gay men, being more feminine, have better memories than straight men like himself.

And now, as he opens the refrigerator to reach for whole milk, he will wonder if someone as wonderfully ditzy as Loraine Cagley can remember better than his probably homosexual boss whether the shirt he had on was clean based simply on the fact that Loraine had two X chromosomes and his boss only had one.

And as he walks over to the dishwasher to grab a spoon, he will think about how hot Loraine Cagley would look on all fours, with cat ears, a cat tail, and possibly retractable claws and hair over her entire body.

As he grabs the spoon and turns to walk back, he will stop wondering, because I (Death) will be standing on his front porch in the rain and ringing his doorbell.

As he walks to the door, he will mutter to himself: he is just a cat person, that’s all.

He will then stop, wonder, bend over to look through the peephole, and behold: a skeleton in the rain, clad in a soaked T-shirt (“I hate myself and want to die”) soaked ripped jeans and soaked Doc Marten boots.

At this point, Freddie, slightly surprised, will hesitate, and mull (for seven seconds) over the nature of this morning guest. I will continue to press the doorbell.

Freddie will then decide that, since his guest is clad in something as harmless as a T-shirt and had the courtesy to ring the doorbell, his guest seems harmless enough, and he will proceed to open the door.

Then “Good morning,” I will begin. “Is this Freddie Seigel?”

“Well! Good morning, and who might you be?” And Freddie, slightly nervous, will glance down to read the sharpie on my tee shirt and grin.

“I’m Death. How do you feel right now?”

Freddie will drop his smile and turn very pale. Nevertheless, he will force a smile. “Wow. Sort of scared, I guess. Death, huh? Did you ever think about wearing a mask?” He will laugh nervously

I have, if you must know. I have a Jesus, a Buddha, and a certain goth girl in her early teens, but Freddie is an atheist.

“Hey, come right on in, though,” Freddie Seigel will say after a bit. “It’s an honor to be meeting someone like you—I mean, as scared as I am, this is exhilarating!—but you do have a moment to spare, I hope?”

“All day.”

“Great! Wow! I mean, meeting Death himself! I don’t even know where to begin!” (as we walk through his front door) “So how exactly do I die?” (as we gather around his dining room table and he picks up the spoon)

“Concussion.”

“Goddamn! How anticlimactic! And say, how exactly does this fate thing work? Let’s say the concussion happens as a result of a fall, right? Is that what it will be? And let’s say the fall happens as I slip walking out my front porch. If I don’t leave the house today, wouldn’t I be still alive? Or will I suddenly die?”

“You won’t suddenly die.”

“Exactly. But when you really think about it, every little move I make can result in so many changes in my environment, right? So what makes you think I’ll die today? At best, you can only say “Mr. Seigel, you have an unusually high chance of dying today because the floor is all wet outside,” right?”

“Freddie, what I find you trying to suggest is the notion that we each have the power to manipulate reality to our own choosing. You are lifting the cereal to your spoon to your mouth now because you have chosen to.”

“That’s right. And I can stop my spoon just as easily.” The cereal will drop back into his bowl with a splash. “There. I don’t see how you can deny any of this.”

“If a robot was built which could do exactly what the human brain did, would it have free will?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Every robotic action it takes, every robotic lesson it learns in every second of its life would be just a reaction it was programmed to have.”

“But that’s ridiculous. We’re not like that, see, Mr. Death. Now, look here: I feel conscious. I know I’m conscious."

"And suppose it did as well?"

"But I know I am. See, because I can control what I feel and what I think and what I believe. I program myself.”

“Freddie, why did you choose to be an atheist?”

“I looked around me and I saw tons of science and no God.”

“If God appeared, Freddie, would you believe?”

“Sure.”

“Could you still choose not to believe, though?”

“I… guess I could go into denial.”

“Look at your bowl of cereal, Freddie. Can you deny it exists?”

“I guess beliefs, then, aren't… but my thoughts are still, like…”

“When you do something, you believe it to be the best option at the time.”

“I usually do. But I can choose to think about it a bit more and come up with a better option, or I can screw the best option and have a bit of fun.”

“Your choice to think more is what you believe to be the most advantageous at the moment in time. Your desire to do what you want at the moment and disregard the consequences is what you believe to be the most advantageous at the time. They are still exactly what you’ve been programmed to do.
The word "personality", I think, could be used as a synonym to this programming code. One personality might value foresight while another values immediate gratification.
And if you argue that these personalities have been shaped, Freddie, even so: the way your personality reacts, adapts, changes to better suit its environment, is exactly as it’s been programmed to change.
Freddie, now imagine a chain of dominoes. Imagine billions and trillions and quadrillions of dominoes. Imagine a sea of dominoes, of microscopic dominoes, each pushing into the next. Imagine yourself in this—”

Freddie will shake his head now. “But don’t you get it, Death? I don’t feel like dominoes. I feel like a hand pushing the dominoes,” he will say. He will pause, because of the ridiculousness of what he just said.

I will feel a bit guilty. "Are you still scared, Freddie?"

He will glance at a clock: 8:01. “Hey. Stay here if you’d like to. I’ll have to get going.”

He will walk upstairs to brush his teeth. In minutes, he will be back, and headed for the door.

“I like you, Death. You’re a good guy. A good chatter. So long? See you when I get back? Let's talk more on this.”

“Are you scared, Freddie?” (he will turn) “I often think I'm wrong. Because--to think the universe happened to fall together with all these rules just right, and somewhere in the middle a blue planet appears where beings evolve to the degree that they eventually attain consciousness, or even an illusion of consciousness, Freddie--”

“You sound like a Creationist pamphlet. What’s all this, all now?”

“Honest: are you scared Freddie?”

“Still a bit.”

“Well." And now I will pause. "What if I said you win? You have free will. You have a soul. You’ll see Loraine one day.”

“Shut up.”

“There is a God.” I will unwittingly let out a chuckle.

He smirks. “You’re lying.”

I will begin to laugh hysterically.

“Freddie, I was only kidding,” I will manage to say between peals of laughter.

I will continue laughing until he closes the door on me.

Freddie will enter his grey Honda Civic and back it up into the rainy streets.

He will wonder if he should take some time off today to write a will as he makes his way through the rainy suburban neighborhood.

He will decide it is safest if he drives slowly today as his car turns up the ramp and onto the highway.

He will drive at 30 miles an hour across the highway, so that it will already be 8:25 by the time he arrives downtown, five minutes before his work begins.

He will worry now about whether he will make it there on time. At 8:27, however, he will decide that arriving late was just a little bit better than dying from a concussion.

Just then, he will notice the cat running across the road.

He will step on the brakes and turn sharply to the left.

His car will hydroplane, at only 20 miles an hour.

In the opposite lane, a Toyota Supra will be waiting.

In the seconds before the collision, he will think about the ridiculousness of the events surrounding his death.
He will think: the cat! Had I not stopped for the cat, and had I been a dog person from the start--!
He will think: had I taken the time to pick out my clothes this morning, or had I waited a little longer at the door for Death, or had I driven just a bit faster or slower, even just by a second--! But oh! Fatalism! Colliding dominoes! How I do wish for an afterlife!

Now pan the shot. Slow motion, gradually grinding down to still-frames:

Shot 1: The cars make contact

Shot 2: The side of his car and the front of the Toyota crumple. His head swings toward the collision.

Shot 3: The cars continue crumpling. His head swings away.

Resume at normal speed. The sound of glass breaking, tires squeaking, metal crunching.

Freddie will now be feeling dizzy from shock and fighting to stay conscious.

He will look around to find many cars stopping around him.

He will loook down, and his shirt is soaked in blood. He will not feel pain.

As he starts to pass out, he will look up for a few seconds to a light shining through the clouds. It will be getting steadily brighter. As everything else drops away, he will wonder if I was right and not kidding after all about God, and he will try to believe it is the light of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and maybe Loraine Cagley will see him again, oh, Loraine!

It will actually just be the sun, but fortunately, he will never find out.

At 8:31 on November 24, 2010, by a traffic light in sunny downtown Richmond, Virginia, Freddie Seigel will happily lose consciousness forever believing in Jesus Christ.

In the ten years following his death, his body will be eaten by all sorts of invertebrates.

Loraine Cagley will be horrified at first, but in another ten years she will marry a better man, a dog person, and they will live happily without Freddie.

In yet another ten years, almost all the matter from Freddie’s body will have been turned into all sorts of useful things, like grass and trees and animals.

Right now, however, none of this has happened yet.

Freddie Seigel is still a man who is 5 feet seven inches tall, 142 pounds, 32 years old, an enneagram type 7, a Myers Briggs ESTP, atheistic, dating Loraine Cagley from accounting, and struggling to come to terms with a catgirl fetish, which he fears may develop into bestiality if left unchecked.

Right now, in the second-floor bedroom of a two-story apartment building at 12256 Angel Wing Court in Richmond, Virginia, of the United States of America, on a rainy November 24, 2010, at exactly 7:44:57, Freddie Seigel is sleeping in a pair of Joe Boxer boxers.

In his dreams, he is falling at 100 miles an hour, with nothing to hold on to.

Excerpt: The Dada Manifesto

DADA EXCITES EVERYTHING

---

DADA knows everything. DADA spits everything out.

BUT . . . . . . . . .

HAS DADA EVER SPOKEN TO YOU:

about Italy
about accordions
about women's pants
about the fatherland
about sardines
about Fiume
about Art (you exaggerate my friend)
about gentleness
about D'Annunzio
what a horror
about heroism
about mustaches
about lewdness
about sleeping with Verlaine
about the ideal (it's nice)
about Massachusetts
about the past
about odors
about salads
about genius, about genius, about genius
about the eight-hour day
about the Parma violets

NEVER NEVER NEVER

DADA doesn't speak. DADA has no fixed idea. DADA doesn't catch flies.

THE MINISTRY IS OVERTURNED. BY WHOM?

BY DADA

The Futurist is dead. Of What? Of DADA

A Young girl commits suicide. Because of What? DADA
The spirits are telephoned. Who invented it? DADA
Someone walks on your feet. It's DADA
If you have serious ideas about life,
If you make artistic discoveries
and if all of a sudden your head begins to crackle with laughter,
If you find all your ideas useless and ridiculous, know that

IT IS DADA BEGINNING TO SPEAK TO YOU

cubism constructs a cathedral of artistic liver paste

WHAT DOES DADA DO?

expressionism poisons artistic sardines

WHAT DOES DADA DO?

simultaneism is still at its first artistic communion

WHAT DOES DADA DO?

futurism wants to mount in an artistic lyricism-elevator

WHAT DOES DADA DO?

unanism embraces allism and fishes with an artistic line

WHAT DOES DADA DO?

neo-classicism discovers the good deeds of artistic art

WHAT DOES DADA DO?

paroxysm makes a trust of all artistic cheeses

WHAT DOES DADA DO?

ultraism recommends the mixture of these seven artistic things

WHAT DOES DADA DO?

creationism vorticism imagism also propose some artistic recipes

WHAT DOES DADA DO?

WHAT DOES DADA DO?

50 francs reward to the person who finds the best
way to explain DADA to us

Dada passes everything through a new net.
Dada is the bitterness which opens its laugh on all that which has been made consecrated forgotten in our language in our brain in our habits.
It says to you: There is Humanity and the lovely idiocies which have made it happy to this advanced age

DADA HAS ALWAYS EXISTED
THE HOLY VIRGIN WAS ALREADY A DADAIST

DADA IS NEVER RIGHT

Citizens, comrades, ladies, gentlemen

Beware of forgeries!

Imitators of DADA want to present DADA in an artistic form which it has never had

CITIZENS,

You are presented today in a pornographic form, a vulgar and baroque spirit which is not the PURE IDIOCY claimed by DADA

BUT DOGMATISM AND PRETENTIOUS IMBECILITY

(etc)

(I first saw Maria again when she was alone at a McDonalds for a dinner of fries one night.

I bought myself an ice cream and I walked up to her, she sitting framed by the night window, and I asked her if she still wanted to go on the road trip we talked about. She turned and got real surprised, and laughed and punched air as she said my name. She was real glad to see me at a time like that, she said in short bursts, and she asked me what it was all like where I went to high school and college, and I told her I had really been fighting in Vietnam. She looked sort of upset that I didn’t tell her that.

We talked for an hour more. She told me all about how she had just recently joined this band after all this time, and about her starting high school, and about getting a part-time job at a bookstore, and I told her felt real happy for her.

I tried asking her about the road trip again.
Of course she still wanted to go, she said, but she wasn’t so sure if she could pull it off. And I told her it would be nice if it could all just work out like that, and then maybe we could go off after the trip and get married somewhere and we could live in an apartment in the middle of that city with all the cars and people rushing by every day, and we could get her beloved Mr. Dewinter then.
She just laughed, said maybe.

So I asked her if she still liked me.
She paused for a great deal, and she asked me if I’d be fine if she didn’t.
And I said yeah, I think so.
I said I wasn’t sure if I liked her a great deal anymore, anyway, but I was just curious.
And she said because it was just chemicals in your brain, right? And they all change. And I shrug, said yeah. And now she avoids my eyes. I asked her if she liked me after all this time, and she shook her head not really.
I wasn’t even sad then, but this odd feeling sort of like frustrated-from-skipping-breakfast hunger came over me, and I felt like screaming, bawling, honest to God.

So I tried to bring up another topic, and I told her the world outside looked pretty killer, but she shook her head stop it, was staring deep into the linoleum expanse with these watery eyes.

So then I told her she was still a pretty amazing person even now.

She looked pained for a moment.
And I asked her what time she had to be home. She glanced at the clock by the door, and rubbed her eyes, and told me eleven real quietly,
and she picked up her fries and got up, because it was already half past 10.
And when we both got to the door, I asked her if I could walk her home, and she nods.

Well, on the way home, we saw a sort of fat cat, and she wanted to give it some fries, but when she got real close, it ran down the street.
So we chased it all over before we lost it, and then we spent a bit trying to find it, until it was all past eleven.
And right then, we figured we’d better get home pretty fast.

And she turned to me right then, and she told me to not be sad, okay?
I told her I wasn’t sad, it was just I felt this feeling that was a lot like what you feel when you’ve skipped breakfast and you’re real angry at your hunger, you know? She said well that’s good, then—she was feeling a bit of that real strong back at McDonalds.

And then looking real frustrated, she said she wished she wanted to do something great with me real bad, she wasn’t sure what, paused.
I nodded real mock-sincerely, pretended I understood exactly what she was saying, and she laughed.
I told her I suppose I should leave you here now. She nodded.
So I started turning back for my own house.

When I got back, I really didn’t care much about the road trip anymore, or Mr. Dewinter, was all, though my stomach was telling me otherwise.)

"Hi, God. I'm sorry if I'm being a bit disrespectful--do you mind? Can I just say a few things? I just feel like talking right now, but at 1 in the morning, everyone's gone to sleep. On the Road is a marvelous book, God, and how I wish I had a motorcycle--I'd like to travel around the country on a motorcycle, "Si! Manana!", and are they allowed on highways?, and God, right now I wish you really were Pooh Bear, and the world was a softer shade of gray, where I could go on ghost tours and visit the Extraterrestrial Highway without having to worry about demons and angels and cosmic battles with heavy implications, where I could jack off to whatever sorts of girls of whatever ages and maybe someday have sex with whoever wherever without being so wracked with pangs of you-sent guilt, where there won't ever be such a thing as awkwardness, or such a thing as fear--But God, I'm sort of frightened; are there demons, God?, and is there a you?--God, I see cold; I dream of a you not so cold and a bit more cuddly Pooh; God, are you?: Only chuckling at my self-conscious melodrama and all my odd quirks? Thinking it silly that I should be so worried silly about offending you? Are you ever longing to give your kid a bit of On the Road warmth from this broken-cracked-polystyrene reality, but can't you reach?--Are you as close as Michelangelo thought?"

The aniblogosphere and TypoC

Well.

The Aniblog Tourney is ending this week (vote here, fellow readers), and I'm fairly confident Star Crossed will win. I'm quite glad for him. On flip side, I was very surprised (and rather disappointed) that Memories went out so early into the tournament.

What really strikes me now is how internet can bring like-minded people together and help so many of them find niches where they can make a name for themselves. The aniblogosphere has made underground celebrities of normal otaku. A few of the ENFPs and a certain ESTP over at Typology Central and few more INTPs over at INTP Central are all well-established figures among the internet's MBTI-geek community.

I haven't found anything of the sort yet. I doubt anyone except (maybe) my two subscribers read my blog. Of course, I've stated that readership wasn't a goal I was aiming for, but isn't it nice to think there are people interested in every mundane detail about your life?

I'm sure I will find one of some sort if I stay here in cyberspace for a few more years, though.

Just kidding.

I
am a
future
crash-helmeted ghost
looking down
on a now crash scene--
battered body and sirens scream and shining lights in the infinitynight
(all in technicolor)--
I
Easter Island stonefaced
grinning ghost
laugh-thinking:
"Is that me, maybe?"
It doesn't feel like me.

My Id's taste in music.

Hey, kids!--it's Sigmund Freud Week here at Psychic Spy Satellites: an entire week of blog posts examining the Id, Ego, and Superego behind all the little things I love about life.
First up under the operating table: my taste in music, or rather: my Id's taste in music--something of a complement to whatever somethingorothers I wrote just a few weeks back.



So here's the question: what sort of music do I really enjoy listening to--by which I mean the sort of stuff I'll love regardless of my ENTP friend's opinions, the stuff I might even heap one hot coal on myself over for every goosebump I get.

Here's the lineup (and I might regret posting this):

-Numb, by Linkin Park
-Love Lockdown, by Kanye West
-It's My Life, by Bon Jovi
-Drowning, by the Backstreet Boys
-It's Not a Fashion Statement, It's a Deathwish, by My Chemical Romance
(or that song which has retained its status as my favorite song for well over a year now)
-Invincible, by Muse
-Kiss the Rain, by Yiruma

I have more, but I feel I'm on the brink of losing my indie-music-snob-dom...

So what sort of music do I really enjoy listening to? And what is it I love in those songs?

1. Emotionality (or the reason I believe I'll never come to appreciate IDM):
I want to know about the musician.
I want feel whatever it was the musician was feeling when he or she wrote the song.
I care about the vocals and the words because I feel as if they have an ability to move listeners like no other part of the music. I'm not certain, but I think much of the feelings brought about by other instruments are heavily tied to the listener's culture and whatever associations it has made for the listener.
I've written a whole post about this a while back, and I'm not feeling a need to elaborate.

2. Melodiousness (Kill me, ENTP friend!):
Much to my own chagrin, I can only get into a song if it's harmonious enough.
As much as I'd love to love Joy Division, something about the melody in "Love Will Tear Us Apart" seems off. As much as I love Radiohead, I can't stand "Faust Arp" for the same reason. And the discordant music I pride myself on loving--Crystal Castles, Nine Inch Nails--is actually quite conventional (and sometimes surprisingly cheesy--"Untrust Us" and the entirety of Pretty Hate Machine) melodically.

3. Catchiness (or why "Grounds for Divorce" by Elbow makes me happier after a listen than anything by Jeff Mangum):
I have a short attention span. I like songs that propel themselves forward for me with simple beats--I like electronic body music and KMFDM dancefloor hits. I like Britney Spears' "Circus." I like "Let It Rock." I like the Backstreet Boys.
(Side note: I found myself distancing myself from the Pink Floyd and Dream Theatre crowd as soon as my ENTP friend called them "cheesy." Sadly, progressive anything, in my own observation, is usually antithetical to catchy. )



And there we have it: emotionality, melodiousness, catchiness--the very antithesis of the aristocratic "art" music I try to listen to these days, and also (sadly) the reason I enjoy music much less than I did before.

Wow, I'm glad I got all that out. Now let's talk about our weighty, intellectual topics and their implications again, while listening to "Oh, Comely."

But, Jesus Christ, what's this I'm feeling right now?



Fraudulence?




Alienation?

Three cheers for science. Or should we be scared?

The thing everyone's secretly wondering:

IS The Aeroplane Over the Sea about Jeff Mangum's sexual fantasies concerning Anne Frank?

(And then the other:

Does Jeff really love Jesus?)

(But excuse the following burst of enthusiasm:)

Three Things I Love at the Moment (!):

• Kappei Hiiragi, from Clannad,
• Translators at Baka-Tsuki (because any team which consistently translates high-quality works from two relatively unknown-to-the-West mediums via wiki has my respect),
• Hello Quizzy, or one of the few intelligent quiz sites on the internet (or rather, relatively intelligent).

Music-rambles.

(I don't think my ENTP friend will ever discover this blog, and I hope he doesn't. On the afternoon of the last day of school we were listening to music at his house and he asked me why lyrics mattered so much to me. I have been musing over this question for a while now. I am still not completely sure myself, but perhaps you can hear in somebody's voice and own words an honesty you don't find in a mix of electronic sounds and beats: Bright Eyes' songs resound with weariness and soft, teary-eyed naivete. Radiohead's songs are cold and alienated and supermarket-cans-empty. The Verve's "The Drugs Don't Work" has a heart-sinking, hospitalized limpness (and I almost know what my not-bald friend means when he thinks something is "so depressing that I can't listen to this"). Many of Pearl Jam's songs, like "Black," are bitter and anguished. My Chemical Romance is explosive and cathartic and flings themselves to the world. As to why I value emotional honesty more than everything else, I have no clue. Something something something.)

And another preview

(The books in Lie Bookstore, by the way, are The God Delusion, The Stranger, and Thus Spake Zarathustra.)

A preview of page 7

That's page 7, I think. It was one of my ENTP friend's favorites.

Most of the humor goes something like that, with a bit more antihumor, black humor, and mock sentimentality. All that makes up about three quarters of all the panels. The other quarter is made up of stuff about teen angst and good numbers and birds and stuff.

Yeah.

I don't know what else to say.

Here's my guess:
If you hate Garfield, you might like this comic.
If you also hate Peanuts, though, you might not--I do put a bit of sentimentality into my comics. Things like Radiohead and Nabokov and XKCD, for example, are a bit cold for my tastes.


Oh, about my other comics:
I edited this one on paint, and it does give it a nice indie feel, but it was a bit time-consuming. I've scanned 40 other ones by now, and I don't have the patience to do that for every single one.
My goal right now is to find some sort of software that could darken the midtones past 100% for me; I've tried GIMP, Microsoft Photo Editor, and then some.


(Wow, Comics About Cats is on the web. My fingers are crossed.
I can't express how much I want this comic to get somewhere.)

Comics about cats.

Summer is here.
With the extra time, I'm thinking I'll post my thoughts on this hellish life online.
All hail Comics About Cats. Let's hope I get somewhere with it.

http://comicsaboutcats.blogspot.com/

People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen in life that's unreal.

The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television – you don't feel anything.

Andy Warhol said that.

He is probably the funniest person I have come across.

I do not know what to think of him. Either he was amazingly shallow or he was an amazing satirist. If he was the latter, he kept this mask on even through his last interview.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Comics About Cats

I'm writing up a comic strip series. I'll publish it somewhere online, eventually.

The comic strip is quite funny, I think.
At first, I had a lot of pressure from my friend to make the strip funny.
But I think the most important thing is that it capture my thoughts and feelings--:

I want it to express the childlike curiosity with which I approach life, and the somewhat self-conscious sentimentality, and the cynicism, and the anger and the dissatisfaction with verything.

I don't want subtle.

I want it to clash.

Look out, world: Comics About Cats!

The last month has been one of the best in my life, but I don't have quite the motivation to spit it all out. At the moment, I just want the people scanlating ARIA to hurry up and finish with the last two chapters and someone to release a torrent of the series.

I'm annoyed by the fact that our school blocks Bittorrent so I'll have to wait an entire week before I can get my hands on a copy of Clannad.

Could not find any of my friends on Facebook.

It's disappointing how so many people can share a name on Facebook.

Total Killer Sexiness

Mind the vent: My visual novels are all downloaded, so I'm pretty excited.
Kanon was translated by two teenage girls (most likely teenage, by their excessive emoting and their numerous photoshopped fanart)--can't say I'm too excited about that. Otherwise, Tsukihime, Ever17, sexy to the nth.

Text analyzers, and Virgin Killer is impressive

They're a blast.

This one here analyzes the age and gender and mood of the sites you give it, but it only works for RSS feeds.

Quite sadly, it guessed me as a 13-17 year old male who is frequently upset.

This one tries to guess your MBTI type.

It guessed most of my stuff as either INFP or ISFP, oddly enough,

except for my wonderful June 09 entries, which it said were ESFP writing.

A gender analyzer here.

It guessed my blog front page as male, but most often guesses me as female.

It says my writing is rather gender-neutral, which is an enormous compliment.

And one for age.

My more technical stuff (most of my posts under "weird ideas") are listed as "18-20something."

Everything else is, quite sadly, "13-17."

And this is one of my favorites. It matches you up with a great writer.

My poems are ultra-Shakespearean, apparently, but everything else exemplifies Oscar-Wilde-writing.

I'm trying to get my hands on some other ones, but they're quite hard to find.

And Scorpions, Virgin Killer... really, guys, you try...

Perhaps I'll look them all up on Facebook at the next opportunity...

On the bus back to my dorm last night, I started thinking of all my grade school friends.
I was curious about how they were all doing today,
and whether the boy from third grade still believed in those silly conspiracy theories we formulated about the turtle rock at Recess,
and where that computer whiz boy had gotten himself with his impressive programming skills,
and I really wondered if we could still all get along today, seven or eight years after.

Friends and personality

It's funny, I think, how different friends bring out so many different parts of you.

Since moving here and spending time with this ENTP friend, I notice I've been gradually less concerned about my lack of adherence to social norms (a trait I was constantly trying to better around my former S friends)--stuff like "guys can't sit with their legs crossed at the knees."

Around Mr. ENTP, my focus is on being original and avoiding corniness at all costs.
As a result, I've lost a bit of my innocence: I can't remember the last time I pulled up that My Chemical Romance album on Lala--I'm opting for a bit of Radiohead and Velvet Underground these days. I'll avoid mahou shoujo shows if at all possible. And, quite unfortunately, my paper-star and friendship bracelet production has gone down drastically.

It's a small price to pay, I suppose.
Rarely do I find someone who loves humor, authenticity, and originality quite as much as I do.

Totally inane and narcissistic of me, but I'm quite happy with how far Psychic Spy Satellites has come

A

friend's

musique

--> !

I hate watching the news.

The world is beautiful--or at least every bit I've been to so far--this country!, passing every empty store lit by lamplight late at night with mosquitoes and moths and frenzied flies, every empty window beaming white into the black world all around, onto the below sordid bit of sidewalk and street every empty evening!, and the rainclouds that rain and ruin our beach sunsets and sun that shines through glass in the silent afternoons alone on the stationary stores, and the sharp-angled shade corners to which you flee, and the smells of openair streets of sewage and cigarettes and gasoline,

--this world is a good and beautiful place--don't let anybody tell you otherwise!

Sweet naivete! The tube is your demise!

Chinese New Year's Break

Not a whole lot to talk about.
I took the train home just last Friday.
Somebody stole my seat, and I didn't bother telling him it was my seat. Thankfully, he got off at the second station.
I spent the rest of the ride reading Francis Schaeffer's The God Who is There.

(Idea-pooping:

Dada is really amazing, isn't it? "Art is dead; long live Dada!"

Punk rock, as well--I don't believe many people quite understood the implications of punk. Punk wasn't about the music or the fashion. Punk was to people what Dada was to art. Punk was heroin needles and razor blades and anarchy. Punk wasn't stupid--and they knew perfectly well anarchy would never work and heroin would never heal. But they didn't care; if it existed, it could be destroyed--and it, the punk subculture, the ideology, was a fine catalyst.

And hippies, perhaps--they believed in a society in which rules and commitments and expectations are naught, believed in the goodness of human nature, believed in the benevolence of the world. And it was so stupid, so naive, and thank God I wasn't born then, because I sure as hell would have been the first to join it...
And I shall try making the boy from Rise and Fall a little more hotheaded--it's quite odd: when we grow to love a character with some of the same flaws we have, we love ourselves a little more.

Done! And alas!--not even a few ideas worthy of musetime in this post.)

Ah!, I should be finishing up on my late research paper, but I don't have quite the motivation to start...

Fitzgeraldian

I'll be writing down some story ideas sometime soon, about a girl who commits suicide in a tunnel somewhere on the Chuo Rapid Line in Japan.

Her world will be very beautiful when she wakes up from the dead, with irresponsible people and ghosts on motorcycles and robots at bookstores and satellites in the night,

quite like a world should be--
only nobody has an anchor in this world at all.

(on a side note: My style, I've noticed, is an odd mix between mock-aristocratic Nabokovian prose and Salingerian speech, with perhaps a dash of Fitzgerald's detached-and-descriptive.

Of course, my talent arrives nowhere near any of these men as of now, but I'll get somewhere someday, I swear...)

Farewell to Sancon.

I had a talk with Mr. Computer Monitor Guy today after lunch, over the whole Sancon incident.

See, I get the impression he got the impression I was accusing him for accusing me.
I apologized for that--I'm feeling quite sorry right now. He was really just telling me to be careful around that sort of site.
He asked me if I'd want that site linked to my name if I ever got famous and people started reading my blog for entertainment (which really leaves me wondering if he might have read my blog), and I told him I wouldn't.
That's a lie, of course. I wouldn't mind at all.
But I suppose he proved his point--I shouldn't have been so volatile in my response letter, and I shouldn't have had connections with that site in the first place (sheepish, at this point in our talk, because I had, in fact, gone to Sancon on numerous occassions).
So I guess it's all fine now. But Alas!, I'll be taking Sancon off my reader.
Sancon, you did your job just fine.
And now--Goodbye, forever!
I wonder how I'll get all my visual novel and doujinshi updates, anyhow...

I AM A PORNO ADDICT!

So apparently they think I'm going on Sancon for porn...
I've been accused twice of doing this already, both times being false accusations. This third time, I thought it was because I had searched up Sancon at school for my project. I told them it was for a project. They emailed me a list of 27 visits to the site within the last month.
It turns out my blogroll (see those links on the side of my blog?) is subscribed to Sancon. By now, though, I doubt they'd believe me.
My goodness, they must think I'm some porno addict.
It's making me nervous as hell to return to the dorms. I don't ever want to go back.
I want to sleep out at that playground like I said I would last night, and never go back.
I wish someone was here right now. I feel so filthy.
I wish someone was here.
Hey, God, you know,
and you friends out there,
you probably all know I'm innocent.
I'm sure my girlfriend knows I'm innocent.
How can I show I'm innocent?

Infidelity

I hate how it makes front page news these days.
Of course, I'd probably not do it out of my love for my wife, but I wouldn't make a huge deal out of it if she did it. I'm me, she's her.

That's all I wanted to say tonight. Pretty boring, right?

Oh, I hope you internet administrator guys are reading this, too.

You that anime blog that you got all worked up about for its "adult content"? I happened to be doing a paper on the necessity of abridging First Amendment rights and censoring stuff.
I'd like to say I respect your role in keeping our school internet school-appropriate, while still giving us the freedom to write letters and journals and shit. Props to you guys.

If you're reading this journal, though, it would be nice if you could stop.
See, when I get rich and famous one day, I'll be glad to show the whole world my amazing childhood.
But, see...
If you read everything I post about how I'm a lolicon, how I wanna try ecstasy, how I wanna be a nudist and shit now, as I post it, you might be upset--
Because by the time it comes out, this story about this spokesman for a generation was all spoiled to you several decades ago.
Now, you wouldn't want that to happen, would you?
I understand that I'm an interesting guy with an amazing life.
But if you're that interested in every single little detail of my hella awesome existence, please, for your own sakes: wait 20 years or so.

Thanks.

Yeah. Nothing more.
Oh, did you know Jonathan Swift had multiple affairs?

There's a bird with clipped wings and a missing toe, chained to his cage. Every time I pass, he bawks at me.
It pains me to see him like that, so I give him bellfruit.
If I could, I'd make his feathers grow back,
and then I'd set him free.

"What is the ultimate source of light?"

The answer my physics teacher was looking for was "God."

God is light. He's also infinitely large. Therefore, he is infinitely many photons. You see the logic there?

"And what are we, as Christians?"
The answer, said he, could either be "transparent" to his glory like glass, or "opaque" like a mirror.

I told him that was silly and he was totally wrong.
I think we should be phosphorescent, like phosphorescent balls.
Then we could absorb his photon glories and emit them in our hour of darkness.

Chain mail

Math class yesterday:
"Do you believe in magic? In a young girl's heart?
or
Do you believe in magic in a young girl's heart?"
wrote my friend.
"It sounds like the opening sentence to a sweet chainmail,"
said I.
He laughed.
"Scroll down,"
he wrote.
"It's funny how stupid these people are,"
I told him. "My dorm dad with that chainmail about the Muslim girl getting beaten by her parents--someone in the world must think he's really funny."
"I think I'll write a chain letter with 99 true facts and one ridiculous, outrageous fact that nobody will ever have heard of before."
I laughed.
"No. Nu-uh. What I want to do, I want to write a letter about some poor Christian boy getting ritually tortured by Satanists. I'll send it to my dorm dad."
"No. Don't do that. You'll feel super guilty when he reads it aloud to the dorm..."
"I guess so... Darnit..."
"My God, you know what I just realized? It's people like us. We're making fun of all the people who actually believe this crap, but it starts with people like us!"
Me and my friend--kings of the universe!

Pipe dreams

They stuff your heads with cotton-fluff-brainwash,
dreams of pens and ink and paper.
But why does it really matter at all?,
if I don't do my homework? or Why does it matter,
if I don't write my research paper?
Why does it matter if I haven't showered in three days,
if I'm not dressed "smart-casual", and all my clothes stink,
if I skip breakfasts, and
if I skip lunches?

A success (singular noun):
is to be able to read at a bookstore, or write a day away,
or laugh steam in the winter air, marching defiant, punching sky,
or lie down in the sordid, car-exhausted snow when you are tired of walking
when you are waiting for buses at bus stops on spring mornings,
and wish on contrails drifting, falling across in the empty blue afternoons,
and hear the whir of fans and dehumidifiers alone late, late at night,

to hang out with friends, and play music at clubs, for the rest of your life
And everyone and the world tries to make it so hard!,
and a bird with clipped wings and a missing toe!,
and I worry my day away
--how much really matters at all?

Escape stuff

I often lay in bed at night thinking about escape.

The school is surrounded by walls--barbed wire along the back and embedded glass shards along the right. I'm not too sure about the left side. The front, from where I'm, typing, is a safe way to go, but the iron fence, I presume, is protected by the man in the booth to the very far right. On the very far left, I could climb over a gate because a metal bar running across the middle would make a good foothold, but I suppose he would see me. There is an alarm light on top of a pole attached to this gate.
The doors to my dorm are rigged to trigger alarms after lights out, so if I were to escape, the best time would be during the day.
However, if I were just to escape for the sheer fun of it, that would be far too easy.
I would consider the barbed wire the greater (and more satisfying) challenge. The barbed wire is attached to poles that slant in, so if I were to have a ladder, I could easily make it over. Finding the ladder, of course, would prove far too difficult.
The glass shards present another opportunity. I suppose with rubber soles, I could climb on there. From there, I could climb on to the wall directly in front of it and jump over. Of course, this risks going past the front gate, where the security guard watches.

I believe that was about all I got last night before I began considering other things.

I know how to get past the wall dividing the dorm and the school by means of the food disposal containers. I could climb over there at night should I ever want to go ghost-hunting on this campus.

And the roofs of the high school are another possibility--I could climb on from the stairs leading to the ministry room...

Ah, I think it's about dinner time... perhaps I'll write a bit more when I return.

No kidding my clothes smell bad.

Shirts, both pairs of jeans, boxers--all has been contaminated by my socks that night.
Deodoranticized my pink Hollister shirt and jeans this morning, but the trail of stink persists.
Shall have to rewash them this afternoon.

The gig, the afterparty, and paradise engineering

cThat band with all the nice people held their first concert last night,
at this arts contest. They served dry-ice drinks.

The guys who ran the gig wanted us to dress "smart-casual." I really didn't like that, so I decided to walk in with my thinnest tee and tight jeans. Unfortunately, I left all my just-washed clothes on my bed the night before, and I put my feet on them as I slept, and in the morning, they were all stinky and sock-smelly, but I guess it was worth my sticking-it-to-the-man. My friend then arrived in shorts and a super-thin tee as well, and he said they had to let him in, because his I.Q. was quite a bit above average. He said he'd donate all 50 NT of change to Haiti. They let us in.

Then the performances that night were pretty good, I thought, especially the first band (they had to censor a line in their song where they mention suicide, but the awesome vocalist decided to sing it anyway, repeating it maybe 7 o 8 times).
But then my friend thought most of them were pretty horrible.
I sort of agreed with him to make him happy, but I always feel so bad about criticizing anything, especially good things that I like.

(My friend, he was there was because he and his friend had submitted a film about a rock who was hired to do cool stuff.

His friend also created one about a cube who falls into a hole which sets off a switch for a disco party.

Right up until the end, it looked like they would win, because most of the other films were pretty horrible. One was about some guys doing stupid stuff like snorting cinnamon and burning themselves with hot water and pulling their flesh with clips and stuff. But then that one guy with a dying, cancerous brother created an absolutely astounding music video where a guy on a chair travels all around the city, and he took around 200 shots for this. )

The cool band was last.
They played Marley's "Stir It Up," in honor of his birthday, but they hadn't prepared any other songs, so they did an improvised guitar solo for like five minutes.
As they walked off the stage, the audience wanted them to play a third song. They thought for a while and played "Blitzkrieg Bop," only they didn't know the words (except the "Hey, ho! Let's go!), so the guitarist pretended to sing really quietly, but really he was just singing nonsense.

Then the judges stepped up and unanimously decided the music video would be the best in its category.
That band, of course, was the best musical performance.
Some random video about a sleepover and a horror movie won first place and best overall.
Each got a cash prize of 1000 NT.

We left the gig at around 9 to go to McDonald's.
My friend complained to all the people leaving about how low the frame rate was for his video, but they all told him it wasn't that bad.
His friend, he told us how nobody in the audience really understood the artistic merit of his disco cube film.

On the way to McD's, we met up with the band again. They were also going to McDonald's.
When we got there, they spent their prize money all in a night, on several trays of fries and ice cream.

After we got back at 10, we wasted some time in the billiards room. One guy joked about stuff like how girls always think you're looking at their boobs, even when you're not. (Quite odd: I hadn't actually ever noticed them acting like that, even in the many instances where I am).
And then my friend got into an argument about economics with two other guys. One was really just upset at the unfairness of it all, but the other wouldn't admit defeat and said the reason those poor people were so poor was because they wanted to have so many fucking children. I joined in on my friend's side, but my logic wasn't nearly as good, so I didn't add a whole lot.
I don't like conflict, anyway.

At around 11, they all left and my friend and this other cool guy and I were left all alone in the pool room. The cool guy, I really like him.
He's an ISFP.
He's wonderful.

I told him if everyone were like us three guys in the room, I was sure we wouldn't need any rules. In a world of just us three guys, nobody would give a damn about stupid stuff like taxes and poor people and other people taking credit for your works and showing your boobs and best friends forever and stuff. We'd just do what we all wanted, and we all had good intentions, and nobody would hurt anybody else. I thought covering up your body with clothes, especially, was pretty pointless.

My friend said he wasn't so sure. He would sometimes push other people out of his way to get what he wanted.
So I told him then we could kill everyone like him, and it would just be people like me and that other guy.
My friend told me I sounded like a cult leader.