IF I could live however I wan-ted, I think I'd stop giving presents altogether, and stop responding to all these emails, and stop hanging out with all these people, and just do what I wanted (notice the capital "i"), and I'd take a moped and I'd travel all around the country, and I'd spend money on a whim, buying the coolest and most useless stuff for the laughs, and I'd perform with Holy Band of God at all sorts of clubs and revel in the attention, the spotlight, my own genius, and I'd do whatever I wanted at the moment, screw all these social customs, and I'd do the wildest things, pick my nose, eat stuff off the floor, have crazy sex, do drugs, hurt people (yeah, the thought's nice, but maybe not), and nobody would care, nobody!, and nobody would really care even what the hell I did, because I'm me, and they're them, and you know how I'd spend my time?, I'd play visual novels and hentai games and MMOs and I'd have a million musical instruments to mess around with and a new great movie every day to watch and books and manga and pretty much every other form of entertainment media and I'd immerse myself, and then I'd come out to break into places and sharpie stuff and travel, travel, travel some more, and it'd be all about what I felt like doing, and oh, presents?, well, if I happened to WANT to give a present, I'd just give it, none of this berthdae-chrissmass-boulshitte!, and really, I swear, it's stressing me out, all these rules and customs and schedules and tasks and friends and presents and moms and dads and sisters and sisters and schoolwork and homework and God and Satan and Radiohead, and my long nails, and how short to cut them, and all the other, the !s, the things, the stuff, the plans, the, and Waking up is a chore. Clipping my nails is a chore. Writing my blog is a chore, homework, everything. Life is a chore. and I WISH I could just be a New York ghost with a backpack and some 500 bucks (for food and gas and souvenirs), and headed towards Cali forever. All my friends and girlfriends, I'd meet them on the way, and I'd leave them as I pleased, and the music and the art, I'd draw them on the spot, on the street, on the walls, and when the cops came, I'd be like "I'm invisible, motherfuckers!" and then I'd turn invisible, and I'd run!, run!, run!, and the whole world and every one of my current friends would laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh at it all, and I'd laugh!, and that's how I'd live!, forever!,
Me!,
Myself!,
I!


(F
l
o
u
r
i
s
h
!)

[the title goes here]

"I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life."

It's quite cold today.
The sun is sleeping under several feet of cloud blankets, and you can finally see your breath in the air when you go outside. It's raining today, and if it's quiet enough, you can sort of hear each car swishing by, and then some people laughing these sort of muffled laughs.
We don't have indoor-hot-air-machines, so my feet are cold again, but I don't quite mind that. I'd much rather have cold feet than sweaty feet. It kind of reminds me of those nights back in the states when I would stay up all alone to type my blog, anyways.

I haven't typed up any serious posts in a while, stories, stuff, but I came up with a few ideas over at my grandparents' house as I mused over the whole idea of video games. I'm thinking perhaps I could write a short story sometime about a video game creator who creates such a beautiful world in his games, with these amazing people that you would just fall in love with at first sight. And people are concerned, because so many people love his games so much they don't ever want to come out into this horrible reality. In the end, he figures he'd make the game even more realistic, because our reality is whatever stimuli we perceive through our senses, and it wouldn't be any different from reality if it was as real as reality, would it? Our brains could be fed memories and hooked up to a machine without our knowing, but what difference would it make if this were the case?

It was a stupid idea, though, so I figured I'd give the programmer a sort of obsession with an object, which he plays with at the end, symbolizing something, but I couldn't quite figure out what. I thought perhaps I could give him a robot arm, his favorite thing in the world, something his parents hated, and....

Perhaps the story could be about a boy who had a sort of disease, a schizophrenic boy who wanted a sort of device attached to his brain to control his dopamine flow. His parents would be Christian Scientists who adamantly opposed that operation. At 18, he decided to get the operation anyway, but upon waking up, his personality had completely changed because of his change in brain chemistry, and his parents were convinced he had been possessed by some sort of ghost in the machine. For the rest of his life, he works on encoding his personality into a computer, until he finally creates a program that thinks it's him, with all his memories. Upon his death, the program finds its way into a robot who walks to his parents' house. There, he asks his parents what consciousness was. If the program thought it was conscious and thought it had feelings and behaved as if it did, did they have any right to say it wasn't conscious? If it was conscious, what need did anyone have for the concept of a "soul"? And then I would have the boy kill his parents in a manner somehow related to his childhood schizophrenia, involving some object he was obsessed with that could somehow symbolize the mechanical nature of life.
But at this point, the whole story reeked of the second episode of Stand Alone Complex.

So then, perhaps a story about time...

Perhaps I could have a story about a yokai who falls in love with a girl, and each chapter could be a day in his immortal life as the world and the girl grow older and older and older......

I like the Stand Alone Complex one, actually.

Thoughts on Ecclesiastes

Ah, I don't think I can put everything down on here...

I wrote a few pages worth of notes on this wonderful book,
which I read every day, literally!,
but....

Perhaps...


Hmm...

Oh, and then...


And...

Alright,
I guesssssss....
what I really wanted to say was:


I'm always hearing people say "the point of the book is to show how our sole purpose is to live for God."

Oh. Em. Eff. Gee.

Let's see...

"The wise man has eyes in his head, while the fool walks in the darkness;
but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both."

"No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all his efforts
to search it out, man cannot discover its meaning."

"What is twisted cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be
counted."

"As for men, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the
animals."

"He has set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God
has done from beginning to end."

"Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him
to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work--this is the gift of
God. He seldom reflects on the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied
with gladness of heart."

"Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart,
for it is now that God favors what you do. Always be clothed in white, and
always anoint your head with oil. Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all
the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun--all your
meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under
the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the
grave where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knwoledge
nor wisdom."

"For who knows what is good for a man in life, during the few and
meaningless days he passes through like a shadow?"

"There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: righteous men
who get what the wicked deserve, and wicked men who get what the righteous
deserve."

"The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food
come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time
and chance happen to them all."

"Give your portions to seven, yes to eight, for you do not know what
disaster may come upon the land... Whoever watches the wind will not plant;
whoever looks at the clouds will not reap."

"Since a king's word is supreme, who can say to him, "What are you doing?"
Whoever obeys his commands will come to no harm, and the wise heart will know
the proper time and procedure."

"Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the
animal goes down into the earth?"

See what it's saying?
It's saying we obey God because we have no idea what's gonna happen to us after we die, nor will we ever know.
It's saying we can't even know if everything he's saying is good and right and true.
It's saying we have no say in what happens to us. We obey a king because it would be stupid not to, and we obey God for the very same reason.
And aside from that,
It's saying there's not much to life, and we might as well do everything we can to make our lives amazing and not think about our meaninglessness.

"Living out our purpose as servants of God"?
Oh my god.
Get this: he never even uses the word "God" in the Hebrew manuscripts. He uses "ha-elohim." That's "the god."

If there was a single purpose the book serves, it's to make all these non-Christians realize how utterly pointless their lives all are, to give them a desire for transcendence above it all.
In fact, if I could rearrange the Bible, it would be the first book.
"Welcome! to the word of God! & Here's what God has to say about your life!"

Wonderful, right?

Angst is jizz in the pants of life.

It's funny how big of a dick I am. I'm not an ordinary dick, either. I'm an erect one, with the semen of my angst spewing out in a million directions.
I don't know.
Ah, I wish...
I wish I could mean something. I sound angsty and stupid, but I don't know how I could say it in any other way: I wish people could really like me for a good reason. I wish the whole world would pay attention to me. I wish I was something significant. But until then, I wish people would stop liking me and get out of my life.
And then I really wish I could express this in some way or another without sounding like an angsty teen blogger.
Really. I mean it. I really piss myself off.

War on Drugs, again

I think I'll have the old man live, by the way. The robot will just leave at the end to buy ice cream, but they're out, so he goes to McDonald's to get some.

An anniversary and a train ride back

Eight mosquito bites on your hand are quite painful, and sleep leaks out the holes by night. By tomorrow afternoon, it all becomes quite odd, and a small spider walking alone on a table could make you cry, and the trees so high above look so funny, and you forget the spider and begin laughing...
Twas my grandparents' anniversary yesterday, and I kept tearing up as they talked about growing up so long ago, and military service, and crushing crackers under your feet in rebellion...
I returned to my dorm that afternoon on a train, and it got darker and darker outside, and by night, the small towns our train passed by and the stops full of empty train cabins were all so grand! And a robotic arm, and a chip that could stop pain--grand! We people, we're all so very weak, but we're so very grand, and so we build these grand, grand, grand, grand, grand citiesm and these grand, grand, grand little towns, and these grand little trains between the cities and towns... what a nice word that is! Grand!
But by the time we arrived, it was all dark, and all the restaurants near the station were full, regardless of the yuckness of them all....
and then...

I'm still tired, and quite upset at all the homework they're making us do and all the expectations we're required to fulfill... Parents need to be accepting, by the way... and so much homework, and I wish everyone could see sex as the amazingly beautiful act it is, or I think it is... and I need a white tee to tie-dye.
Maybe I'll stop by after dinner to get those pictures of the boat burning festival I never got...

I wish I could just fall asleep right about now and wake up two years later...

Talking Heads,


Yeah Yeah Yeahs,

Man Man,
Shiny Toy Guns,
Butthole Surfers,
Neu,
Phish,
Craftwerk,
Jesus and Mary Chain,
Christian Death,
Franz Ferdinand,
Gogol Bordello,
experimental rock,

Another dream...

It was night, and they said something about a meteor that night, and so I went out, and a meteor was hurtling through the atmosphere... no, an asteroid, said Rayure...
and when it exploded on the ground, the lava singed me, but I was invincible, of course... I punched back. And we all began to laugh and celebrate, and the night fled away...
The next morning, I discovered my flash drive with my Journalism articles destroyed by the space-rock...
I was horribly mad.

But the story!, the story!
The story mustn't suffer!

A little more of the War on Drugs...

It'll begin on a winter day.

The old man enters a vegetative state soon after a failed operation on a brain tumor.
A robot stands by his side every morning of the winter of that year,
telling him the stories of their travels, conquests together,
and the boy had been so intent on fighting the world,
had wanted to die fighting, kicking, screaming,
in tears, was sure there was a meaning,
even in the search itself,
but now,

the IQ of a one-month-old infant, immobilized, catatonic...

So the robot hopes to wake him up, and near the end of their travels, the robot tells of this concert where the boy screamed, to the world, to everyone, and he was laughing for almost 3 minutes, nonstop afterwards, and the robot himself starts to scream, and he begins to scream-cry, because he didn't see any meaning in life, because all his emotions were built from the programmed simulation of neurochemicals, and they were every bit as real, or perhaps more real, than the boy's, and the boy was more of a machine than he, and the boy would die not-fighting, and he would be right in saying there was nothing at all in the end, and...!

Oh, I need an ending!
What should happen to the robot? I'd like something ironic, like the robot entering a vegetative state after an operation going wrong, or... in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the main character turns into a vegetable, but I wouldn't like to copy them, see...

How about fireworks? It's night, and the man's fallen asleep, and the robot realizes he'll die eventually anyway, and the robot pulls the plug on him, and it rains and it rains as he does so, and the lightnings light a million shadows around the boy, and his arms look like the arms of Shiva, spread around the robot, and the boy-god is staring at the robot intently now, peacefully, and the robot falls asleep at the foot of the dead god. The next day, it keeps raining, and the robot realizes he's lost the argument, and the boy fought in the end, and so he decides to leave for Seattle to work at a bookstore. As he leaves,

See, I suppose I'm pretty skilled at coming up with stories on the spot... What should come next?

As he leaves, he stops by a robot repair shop, because he never wants to die, and being human really sucks. The music playing there is some crazy punk band singing about killing people and themselves, and he laughs, because merely existing was amazing, and suicide was stupid, and he would never die, and he suddenly feels horribly guilty listening to the song, so he leaves for lunch.

The scene switches back to the band so long ago, and the boy is screaming wildly and cursing onstage and laughing himself silly with a childish grin, and everyone else is jumping up and around because they're pretty much high on E...

I think...
Tis almost as corny as PSKT,
and a whole lot worse than Ken...
and so I really must revise the story sometime....

I'm beginning to doubt my own writing skills, as are many, many teachers,
though I mustn't quit! I really do want to become a sort of text-heavy comic book writer...

ENFP again, naturally.

Big Empty.

If anyone likes me, as a friend or otherwise, it probably means they don't know me so well. I'm really quite an un-like-a-ble person. Get that? I'm: •unsympathetic: (of characters in literature or drama) tending to evoke antipathetic feelings. I'm proud (proud of it), narcissistic, elitist, blunt, unprincipled, uncaring, Outshined! and absolutely-brillovely!
I wonder why people like me. I hardly like them. It would be nice if they'd all go away sometimes and leave me to myself. It's the way I'd like to live--just me and the world and nothing between--
to i m p l odeli.keth i s s o r t o f.
Lovely in a dark, unholy kind of way.
Interstellar overdrive.
Quasarly.
Big, colossal slave of a world beholds the immortal child-king in a Jesus Christ pose!;
an empty, godless god of an eternity
and so now, get this, world:
LEAVEMEALONE. <--and see that period?
It's the largest size they have.
FIGht.

A story idea!

The future:
!Fluorescent paint and see-through clothing are in!
Parties are life! Pink is the new black!, Ecstasy is the new pot! Don't be caught dead without your scooter modded, and shinto has washed the masses with incense and mock-shrines. Hip-hop and electronica make love to reggae and industrial music in a godly, bizarre sort of somethingorother. Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails are the gods of today.

The story:
The travels and times of a band !THE WAR ON DRUGS!, as narrated by an immortal robot Bren who is quite glad he's not human...

The characters:

A boy,
with pink hair and a scooter doodled over in sharpie, eternally bubbling over with enthusiasm, rebellion, never-seriousness! Accepting, warm, softspoken, narcissistic, impulsive; decides to tour the country with a guitar and his best friend after he gets out of high school. ENFP.

His best friend,
a girl who wears fluorescent devil horns, rides a pink scooter with Marilyn Monroe's face on it, plays a red devil sort of guitar. The world is beautiful, everyone! And she secretly likes him, but, of course, he has a girlfriend... ISFP.

The girl's childhood friend,
whom the guy invites on the trip, despite never getting along with him. Bold, raucious, chill. He drums, with a kabuki mask. Rarely, if ever, serious. Just here for the good time. ESTP.

A robot they meet in a restaurant,
who has a passion for 7/4 and 5/4 timing and synthesizers. Plays the bass, wears a nail-studded Mickey Mouse hat and WAR glasses. Silent, blunt, chill. The band's music turns into something a bit odd under his direction. Smokes when upset. Thinks the band completely blows without his own ideas. Usually right. Fragile, INTP.

A pet street guitarist they adopt,
a sort of mother-figure, counselor, amazing cook to whom the ESTP gets quite attached... They leave him in Seattle with some money college for one night. He writes great lyrics, and he cringes at the band's love for vulgarity and shock theatre. Wishes he was a ghost sometimes. A saintly sort of INFJ.

An idea is born!,
Fight for air!
Don't die so soon!

And also my writing sucks these days.
I wonder....
Terminal Man.

Terminal Man

Perhaps we're all born into this world like a hard drive with these preinstalled somethingorothers that release certain chemicals so you don't feel much of a need for change in your environment, and you think "perhaps this is the right thing to do," and so you seek more of this thing to get more of this chemical to get more of this feeling, and then perhaps the adults all come along with their rules and to get a little more of it you'll have to do what they all tell you , and then in the end you're nothing more than preinstalled programs and postinstalled programs and cells and currents and chemicals... isn't it all so gross?
And your flesh! It bleeds when you poke little holes,
and it rips, and it burns, and it bruises!
And the vegetables and the fruits
and the animals and the insects...
But machines!
Machines are so nice, aren't they?
They're cold, silent, calm...
Wouldn't it be nice to be a machine,
or maybe a ghost?
I wonder...

Premature aging? Stress?

I'm half serious, too... Just the other day, I couldn't spell therefor or rythm and I wasn't sure whether to say "skeptical of" or "skeptical to." And then it takes me forever to remember what we're learning in history or stuff...

Anyway, I should really teach a class on how to be invincible, you know? "Today, we shall learn the glories of lying down!" or "The ethics of rock-throwing!" or... just kidding. :P
But wouldn't that be nice? I think the whole world should learn to chillax a bit.

I've got a girlfriend, and then I've got mom and dad, and then I've got the rest of the world all to myself... how wonderful...

Senile dementia.

Lying down!

The ultimate act of defiance to this beautiful, stupid, empty, infinity world!

"Come and get me, world!, like I'm all over your back and enjoying every moment of it, like you can't do a thing about it!"

Resistance is futile, Planet Earth!
The loudspeaker is twice your diameter!

And also a family is a wonderful thing--
Someday, I shall be a father!

"It'sthesameoldthemesincenineteensixteen
Inyourhead,inyourheadthey'restillfighting
Withtheirtanksandtheirbombs
Andtheirbombsandtheirbombsandtheirbombsandtheirgunsandtheir gunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirguns
gunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirguns
gunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirguns
gunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirgunsandtheirguns
zombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombie
zombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombie
zombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombie
zombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombie
zombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombie
zombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombie
zombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombie
zombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombiezombie

sometimes I hate my writing.

that's too bad, me. I'll still be an author.

FIGHT THE WORLD! THE WORLD IS THE ENEMY!

The haibane came into Glie without memories, and they lived for a few years, and they left to God knows where,
and Hamlet stood alone in the end, vanquished the world and all its little mice-men, but the wound on his side--twas all for naught!,
and Macbeth, from his castle, saw the forests of the world rising up, and "Life is but a walking shadow," he cried,
and Chiyoko stared up into the black void from her hospital room rocket ship, and,
and after all, it was nothing at all!,
and after all, they knew it wasn't ever anything, except for when they were so young, shone like the sun, but now their empty, black hole eyes,
and yet they stood, and they groped-swung-stabbed at the nothingatall, the empty world, the invincible, the infinity!,
And that's exactly what I'd like to tell every person to do,
every stupid victim of the stupid world:
"FUCKING FOREVER FIGHT INFINITY!"
Though you never find out what you're looking for, you looked harder than anything!,

And so when I get enough money, I'll make a giant FIGHT, hundreds of feet high,
So people can go next to it.
( . )<--And a person will be that tall, the size of one of these periods.

Jesus Christ Pose

And Alas! the entry on the dream has already taken up 2 hours worth of blogging!, and yet so much more remains to be said tonight...

A day in an empty field, and greeting the nice birds and the nice leaf and the nice Marilyn Monroe cat,
A waste of a day spent on an old Godzilla flick which glitched like all hell,
The grand pastime known by the name The Floor is Lava, and the rules thereof,
A night at a Jazz festival, a visit to a sealed construction site and an electrical room of sorts, a million couples making out, quite a few good biker guys
A junior carnival where I sold the drinks, a container of dry ice there, a tired horse on the field that night,
The boys who started a reggae band in the ministry room, a journalism article I've yet to begin writing,
Moi, playing Santeria on the roof, late at night, the city below me!,
A halo drawn by rock on concrete, "FIGHT THE WORLD," my wonderful Jesus Christ pose that afternoon,
My wonderful girlfriend and the (almost as) wonderful new necklaces she made,
And I think I'm allowed to call her that now...
I think that's all.

Tonight, I think I'll be making up for some lost sleep...

Existentialism!

I was at Wal-Mart, I think, and these people, they were all gathered in the room around these screens, and it was showing Spirited Away that day. It was near the end, and I could probably have recited everything they said in time with them. The store was really boring, though, and it had nothing except Star Wars toys, and so, "the movie it was!"

It was at the part where she walked down the side of the building and into the water below to wait for the train. It had been a few years, I think, since she first made the deal with the tall lady, and she thought maybe she could leave now. And there were these stairs, and she walked down, and the sun was all there was in the sky that day, shining amazingly bright and white and empty existentialism.

(And behind her, Haku and the lady stepped down, watched her from a distance.)

The sun was the only thing in the sky, bleak, existential emptiness, and it cut through everything, past the trees here, and the trees by the stairs, and made a million shadows everywhere...
And there was this house to her left, exactly as she had left it, the sun pushing through like an Edward Hopper. On the right was the house with the boat.

It was really cold, so she sighed steam into the air.

She felt like she had this, this thing, this feeling of…
She wasn’t quite sure what it was—
She wasn’t so upset at it all, but it wasn’t great. And she thought it would be great, would be amazing!, dreams!, eternity!, something worth all these years of wasn’t-greatness…

But then it started to rain a bit. And she realized it was quite cold here, anyhow, and she was very tired and a bit hungry,
And she wanted to go somewhere nice, To eat a lunch over this rain…

As she thought this, she teared up a bit.

Still not sad, she thought, but it was all very lame…

Haku and a lady stepped out now, and he was horribly upset now, at the lady, for promising all this stupid stuff, and it was all so unfulfilling!, absurd!, and now...

And then it started to rain harder.

And the boy screamed to the lady twas all really stupid, pointless!, and he begged her to let the girl, Chihiro, he wanted her to stay, please!
But The rain was getting harder, she said, and they would all get quite wet if they didn't run back now. And she was a wolf, and she ran back. The boy glanced back at the infinity sky, all drenched and heavy, and the girl, and she was crying, but still he ran for the building.

And then it was pouring like the infinity-sky over the parking lot.

And then it was morning, and then it was my alarm

The Senner.

The Senner

A poem, a true story,
a work dedicated to my brilliant math teacher,
and the wonderful video of the same name:

Once upon a math class dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a dull and useless problem done the night before,
While I nodded, nearly dozing, suddenly! some thought imposing,
A God of thoughts, a celestial thought, racing ‘round my languished mind:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2XCg3Gu-YA

(You see, dear reader, I was eager—being shown that site before
By our teacher, Mr. Senner, just a week and days before—
To show the world this Youtube gold, this song to which my soul was sold,
This band, whose namesake from him taking, had been making
Who, with some stick fights and foot-shaking, had been making
Godlike song with saintly chords!)

And distinctly I remember: it was in the crisp November,
As each boredom-stricken student gazed with yearning at the door.
My friend was sleeping, and I, keeping watch of time so quickly fleeting.
I leaned beside, and in aside, asked if he’d seen before,
—Perchance my friend had seen that video before—
He claimed he had, and nothing more.

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Ah!,' said I, `we should coerce him, pay him, bribe him, or else force him!
Make him show the class that video we were shown by him before!
And so quietly he went writing, writing on the board
“Search up Senner VII,” said the writing on the board

Quoth the Senner, ‘Nevermore.’


But this silent man beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance he wore,
`Though thee has said tis not the season, thou,' I said, `has not a reason.
Omnipotent and mighty teacher, why do you our pleads ignore?
Tell us why thee never gives a reason for our pleads ignored?'

Quoth the Senner, `Nevermore.'


Much I marvelled at this answer, not the one which I would chance for,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that few living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2XCg3Gu-YA on the net before -
A video with the name of www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2XCg3Gu-YA on the net before,
But twas his answer: ‘Nevermore.’


But the Senner, sitting lonely on the cluttered desk, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
No more words then did he utter – only numbers did he mutter-
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Not one friend has seen before -
In the end, I’ll make him show it, as he knows he can’t endure.'

Then the man said, `Nevermore.'


Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
`Doubtless,' said I, `what he utters is his only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy class which caused unmerciful disaster,
Which followed fast and followed faster, till his cries one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never-nevermore."'

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat now wondering, with my mind the video pondering,
Over swordfights, moving feet, and hair grown down to ‘neath their knees
But whose swordfights, moving feet, and hair grown down to ‘neath their knees
They shall see, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
`Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee
A name – a name like Senner, a name that www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2XCg3Gu-YA proudly bore!
Now show, oh show this www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2XCg3Gu-YA to us; give us joy and end this bore!'

Quoth the Senner, `Nevermore.'


`Senner!' said I, `name of evil! - Senner still, if man or devil! -
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Shall thee show www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2XCg3Gu-YA to us, ever? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'

Quoth the Senner, `Nevermore.'


`Senner!' shrieked I, `name of evil! - Senner still, if man or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall see a certain www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2XCg3Gu-YA whom the angels so adore -
Clasp a rare and radiant www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2XCg3Gu-YA, whom the angels so adore?'

Quoth the Senner, `Nevermore.'


`Be that word our sign of parting, precalc coach!' I shrieked upstarting -
`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no numbers as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the desk beside your door!
Take thy teeth from out my heart, and take thy form from out my door!'

Quoth the Senner, ‘Zeffy, I would like you to sit over here in the front.’


And so,
The Senner not permitting, I am sitting, still am sitting
On that lonely desk that lies before the Senner’s door.
The bell has rung, the kids depart, their heads held high, but oh! my heart!
Even now, the song’s unsung! The cause—is lost! Not yet! Not now!
Alas! the video, ah! the video, lies obscure now, disavowed now,
Shall be shown now—nevermore!

My faith.

When I was younger, God wasn’t so hard to believe. See, for most children, the Whats of religion don’t always require a Why; after all, life is just splendid, these matters are all so trivial, and the reason, if they ever discover it later, is probably very reasonable. And if ever any one of these questions gave me too much of a bother, I could delve into yet another book on my dad’s shelf explaining why evolution is a bunch of fairy tales and how God is so easy to believe. And it was splendid, after all, and they were trivial, and it would have been magnificent if things could have stayed like that.

But as kids grow up, they develop this skill—logic—until alas! there comes an age when doubts all grow too heavy,
when the Hammer of Empiricism smashes on through every one of their beliefs,
knocks them down,
sends away the ex-children scrambling for and clawing at whatever pieces are left huc illuc.

And I don’t think it was so bad that I was barely a teenager when I decided to let it reduce my religion to sweet neological nothings—
tis better to let it strike early, I think, when you don’t have too much to lose and still 5/6 of your life left to rediscover it.

But then, of course, I suppose many a Presbyterian preacher would have told me to neatly tuck these doubts away into the dark recesses of my mind and know that there is an answer,
but My goodness, what a horrible answer!

If God is God, what are they so afraid of? Wrestling with him, as Jacob had? And defeating him, perhaps? Some God they make him out to be!

Or maybe,
Or maybe those doubts which had the potential to sabotage our beliefs weren’t quite so important to these fundamentals, tenets, doctrines. Yet if this be the case, how seriously would I be taking faith, dismissing so lightly these doubts that undermine it so heavily!

Then, I would think the only proper response would be to let them run amok in your mind until they find themselves before the Divine Countenance, until God addresses them and you realize how completely unfounded they were.
Yet this is so hard for so many,
and for me Herculean.

Perhaps one reason for this is because God, for one reason or another, is given to frequent bouts of silence, often when you least expect them.
The late Job has experienced this, to which he cries out, “But God will answer in the end!”
But of course—a perfectly loving God would certainly not ever abandon anyone, ever!
But I wonder how much of that you can believe all at once when your head is so plagued by these worry-flies beating themselves to death against two layers of glass:

Perchance he’ll be silent for a little too long,
Perchance I’ll abandon him altogether!
and Perchance—
if I happen to die on some bleak, godless winter morning—
I’ll find myself the murderer Nietzsche before the face of that clandestine God (very much alive!) at death!

And so I hold on to my doubts,
not yet brave enough (and not exactly sure how) to hand them all over…

And…

I’m not sure what else to say.

After all the “hold ons” and the “never let gos” are all wasted, I suppose I don’t have much else useful to talk about…

I went on the roof!

and Hark--a map!
(right-click and click "view image," ye proletariat of the land!)
(And much HW tonight, so Perhaps!
I shall write about my wonderful recent days some other time...)

In love with the world today, and yet...

Dear God,

Can you hear me?
Mr. Nihilist, and my great-grandmother, and that little girl dying of cancer, they’re probably looking harder than anything tonight, harder than me and anything and fireworks, and you can’t let them die like that without knowing why they exist, God, and don’t you dare let them die empty if you’re able to convince them you exist, God, because if they die like that, you’re not a good God at all, and I won’t ever love you, and I’ll be angry with you forever, so don’t you ever dare, God, you clandestine, you old man, you show them or I’ll fight you with my last breath and scream and everything and nothing and the world

burning a boat.

It was Friday afternoon, and I, my pessimistic friend, and a guy in black had arranged the day before to meet in the great Hippie-van after school. Unfortunately, on the very day, One Hour was murdered at the library by Moi and we had forgotten to inform the schoolbodies of our absence, and so it was past 4 when we set off for the festival with a Mr. Missionary driving.
And so we drove, and the car trip lasted until dinner plus a bathroom break at this lovely food court, where we chose to eat at a certain 21^st Century Chicken because they were the only restaurant not yelling “Discount!” to these English-speaking customers. My chicken was lovely and spicy, but my nihilistic friend got a wrap consisting of coleslaw, shreds of old meat, a tortilla (and it shows why they weren’t so ambitious to sell themselves, I suppose).

Alas, not enough to feed the two of us; we bought two coffee rolls at a donut store before we left.

As we drove into the night now, my friend told me about his nihilistic self-loathing, world-loathing over the white static hum of the engine, but when we began to talk about suicide and the Hippie-van stopped its rumble for a stoplight, my friend got a little worried Mr. Missionary would overhear us, and so we moved to the very back.
During the whole talk, I was very much (valde, valde, valde) concerned I wasn’t so good a counselor after all, because I kept telling him how badly I wanted to punch him in the face every time he mentioned his lack of desire to find any more meaning in life. But I don’t regret it at all, because I do want to quite badly. You fucking douchebag, you’re a waste of a life if you don’t get up and search, you hear? If it makes you feel any better, I still love you, and I think I’ll like you no matter how screwed up you are, I assured him, and I’m sure God will as well, but quit obsessing over how sucky you, and you’re only as sucky as whatever you want.
See, he doesn’t agree with me there—the secret to happiness, he doesn’t get it. You’re defined by your intentions, I think, and if you think otherwise, you’ll never love you, destroy you, fuck you over completely. And he’s so blind to his amazing musical talent, and his appreciation for people, and his invincibility!, and fuck all his faults, and fuck that I might not think he’s too amazing all the time. See, I’ll lie if that’s what it takes for him to start that search again, to not be a waste of a life…
See, we’re both narcissistic and don’t always care so much about other people, both think the world is so screwed-up-ly and antagonistically shitty, but he’s so lacking in that Hope, that screw-it-all invincible spirit, that “Never say die until you know why you exist!” and I only wish he’d realize…

And then I suggested I wasn’t really such a good counselor, compared to my girlfriend or Mr. Oceanic Citrus, and he agreed with me, so I was quite hurt and I shut up, and I suppose he said my self-sabotaging and depression cheered him a bit for some time.

Fucking giver-upper.

And then as we drove along black highways, Mr. Missionary Man explained a bit about the festival.
It began in China, he said, in a bay town the old deity loved to visit. And I suppose this god was well-intentioned, but these annual visits were quite the source of chagrin among the residents, and so the Taoist priests there would beg of him to never come back to the city, and after prayers, would send him to sea on a cash-filled boat. Unfortunately, these jinxed junks often landed in the city of Kenting. In the very beginning, the horrified residents would drown the vessels in gifts of gold and money before sending them along again, but it wasn’t long before they had a whole fleet of these colorful ghost ships floating into harbor. And so in the end, they decided to burn the ships, money and all, as an offering to Mister Plague God.

When we reached the town, it was 8-9ish.
The otherworldly festival spirits had entered the realm of mortal men when we stepped off the hippie-van and into the great Kenting; incense wafted through lantern-lined streets and god-demons stood by every other other doorway, their stony smirks eternally fixated on every passerby. The Plague God looked sinister; his face was completely black and his beard came down in thick, black, tentacled strands.

And we stopped by Mr. Missionary’s house and made a prayer to the Christian God before we headed for the shrine, and I was given a pack of banana bread to protect until tomorrow morning. And sometime while we were there, we noticed an unpleasant smell near Mr. Nihilist, who figured it was coming from his unwashed crotch and kept trying to get us to smell it, and Mr. Black did. And after we got a bunch of cameras, we stopped for a bit at the hardware store to buy some film, and then headed for the shrine.

And the Shrine! It was loud, It was bright, It was spectacular! And I mean, of course it was demonic, and I really tried my hardest not to enjoy it all (honest), but oh! The everything!
The giant drums and clashing cymbals and ghosty chants, they were hypnotic! Dancing neon lights lined the edges of anything and everything!
The entrance to the shrine was gold, a chillion meters high, with magnificently carved dragons and phoenixes that watched from their high heavens the unearthly train of god-booths,
And periodically, red lanterns floated up into the air, a string of firecrackers in tow,
and they banged and powed, and then they would fly up and up and up for maybe a whole five minutes until you couldn’t see them at all.

And as we stood at the plaza, we promised to meet back here at maybe 10, but I was afraid with all the hundreds and hundreds of people, I would get lost, and I probably would, and so I followed Mr. Nihilistic Depression around while he was filming, trying my hardest not to appear in the actual film (though I did end up making 3 or 10 unintentional cameo appearances). And now we departed, made our way up the temple, and now Mr. Nihilist got dangerously close to all the forbidden places, and Mr. Always-wears-black and his camera had found their way on top of some statue, and sometime before 10, a Chinese man started speaking to us in English, but Mr. Nihilist found him annoying, so we quickly said bye.

By 10 or so, our legs were really hurting, and we decided to meet up at the plaza entrance, the four of us.
The fireworks had started at this time, and I really did want to see them, but the three other guys were all very tired, so I ran off by myself after a girl who had a shirt that said “SEX” to get a closer look. “Where can I get to sex?”

At 11, me and Mr. Nihilistic Depression exited the shrine via the golden gate with maybe 150 NT.
The concession stands outside the shrine sold prizes and foods of all sorts, and I really did want to buy some blue devil horns (looks great with pink hair) and perhaps a baby pig (yes! that’s right!) or two, but he was really against it for some reason and said something about never trusting me with money. In the end, we bought only stupid watermelon milk and stupid watermelon juice, both kind of gross, and had a little argument over who gets to drink the juice (the better one), because neither of us wanted to be selfish.

12 saw the beginning of the festival. Men with huge flags came to hit pots and swordfight with the flags, and it was all a little weird and boring and lasted for about an hour.

Afterwards, we went to the concessions and Mr. Missionary bought me some fried squid. After some walking, we sat down on the curb in front of a ghost money shop and ate quail eggs and peoplewatched. A misspelled marijuana shirt, a “Bitch” shirt, then some.

At 1, they began tying ropes to the boat. It took a really long time.

At maybe 2, they finished. We followed the men as they dragged the boat through the streets, I and Mr. Missionary. Mr. Nihilist and Black had gotten front-row seats (stands?) in the whole procession; we were pushed to the very back.
As we walked through the crowdy, mumbly-tumbly streets, the houses sinistra et dextra seemed to have their own little firepot for burning ghost-money, maybe their own little god-booth glowing incarnadine somewhere in the shadows, and hanging on the anti-threshold a each had a few lanterns, and the whole way was paved by colorful lanterns, and a spray of ash brought about by the fireworks every 100 meters or so seasoned our hair with ginormous artificial dandruffs, and somewhere along the way, I saw a 7-Eleven, cold, brightly-lit, almost empty, and I did want to forget about the whole crowd business and buy something cold, because in Taiwan, it’s quite hot at 2:30, even in the autumn.

But we did survive the trip, and at about 3, the boat beached on the shore of the bay. I and Mr. Missionary, we couldn’t see a thing amongst the crowds, so we climbed onto a hill of ghost-money (which I don’t suppose we were supposed to do, but other people started copying us, so we didn’t feel too awkward). Then, to our great dismay, they started moving all the ghost money under the ship.
We were forced to relocate yet again.

Trapped in a crowd beneath the ship again at 3:30; the whole world seemed to be filled with an ungodly incense-fog, and it was impossible to tell where the black ocean ended and the black infinity universe started, and the ship sat silent at the edge of this River Styx.

4:00 saw our tired visit to a drink stand to buy some oranges that were liquefied, rind and all, into a cup. It left sort of a bitter-spicy aftertaste, but my dry tongue didn’t mind so much. We sat down under some trees to rest for a bit. Quite a bunch of old people had stopped by those parts and fallen asleep. We called Mr. Black and he said something about being on a roof. We set off to try to find him.

5:00 found us under a crowded bamboo shed Mr. Black had somehow gotten onto the roof of. I do admire him for that. By this time, they were raising the sails. I left Mr. Missionary to get a better view, but halfway down the beach, I had to kneel down to rest, and I noticed Orion was in the sky. There were lights on the other side of the bay, like a sort of plutonian city on the far shore of the river Styx.

5:30 was spent under a beach wondering if I could fall asleep if I closed my eyes for just a bit, because everything was done anyway. The kids on the shore were all joking about “I kiss you” and “I fuck you.” A series of fireworks were shot from the boat at this time (by drunk men, I suppose), one landing on the ground and raining brightly-colored embers all over the panicked audience, though I assume they all survived. At this time, Mr. Nihilist reported seeing the possibly inebriated men trying out a blowtorch near the fireworks. And a few more firework launches ensued before the fire started in the front of the boat. Sometime later, a few firecrackers were launched near the back, setting that on fire as well. And now the skies weren’t so dark anymore, and the sun was almost up.

And we stood there for some time under the Autumn sky, all very quiet, and we watched the boat burn. Then we headed up the black sand beaches to meet up with Mr. Black. Later that morning, Mr. Nihilist was discovered (at long last!) amongst the exhausted crowd, and he told me about his wet socks and sandy feet and the rising tide and the heat of the fire.

And then crazy stuff happened.
An explosion, a collapsing chillion-foot mast, and a fire tornado all seem much less impressive when you’re tired.

After a few more pictures and Mr. N and B running dangerously close to the fire and laughing about the heat, we headed back to Mr. Missionary’s car on the far entrance of the shrine. On the way, we bought some Victory Ice Cream to commemorate our night, and I called a toast with Mr. Nihilist, but it was all really lame, and we were all too tired for enthusiasm. Then we said a few words to some Americans we had been seeing all night—one of the guys was a translator, the other a freelance writer. We didn’t get the earring guy’s job, or the ladies’.

And the streets suddenly quieted when we hit a corner, and a bird laughed “A-ha-ha-ha-ha” and another one did, “A-ha-ha-ha-ha” at another pitch, and I tried copying them and asked my friend what was so funny after all, but he said birds don’t have a sense of humor.
And then we drove home.

When we arrived back at Mr. Missionary’s house, it was maybe 6:30. We lay in bed for a while, Nihilist talking about how both I and Mr. Black were really just sines, and he was a cosine, and he needed to solve it. I said something about the smell between his legs and started laughing uncontrollably and Mr. Black joined me. After the peals of laughter came to an abrupt stop, we were all strangely quiet.
I don’t remember when we fell asleep.

We woke up at 11, and Mr. Nihilist took a bath. Afterwards, he had us smell his clothes, and they all smelled of smoke.

It wasn’t him, after all.

Larungan.

A reply

LISTEN UP! YOU ARE AMAZING!

YOU WILL ALWAYS BE AMAZING!

ANYONE WHO DISAGREES CAN BE SHOT IN THE HEAD!

I mean it, I've said it before, I hope you never forget it!

And I don't know what to say about not liking somebody
--i'm not sure how i can make myself like somebody, after all,

or if it's possible to make feelings stay with someone forever, and I'm sure if I was God, I would change that--
but no matter what I feel, I won't ever let go! ever! Remember that!

(this is where you listen up, world!)

We
are

invincible!
you, I, unbreakable,

our diamond middle fingers to the world in de-fi-ance!

And IF anything ever gets in our face,
we shall SCREAM! at the top of our jaded lungs
to this peabodied world (ten feet in diameter) and
its miniscule mental mechemicalism: feelings, falling-in-love shit, w/e
and the two (2) years and
thousands (approximately, of course) of miles separating us!

And really, i think it wouldn't stand a chance.
it's puny. it's scared.
it's Nietzsche before the divine countenance.
we
are

God!

(a diagram for easier comprehension)^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

"BUT INSIDE YOUR HEART IT IS BLACK AND IT'S HOLLOW AND IT'S COLD!"

I love that line. It feels like a Godamount of emptiness and angriness, all built up in a mess of tangled wires and confusion and screaming.

"But inside your heart it is BLACK AND IT'S HOLLOW AND IT'S COLD!" See, I can't even write it in lowercase letters. It's angry, and it wants something to fill it all up again. I want something amazing to appear.

It's dinnertime, or close, anyway.
A Nine Inch Nails cover band, a comic, and something else, I think... The Floor is Lava is a great game. Seesaws are godly. The people here are all so amazing, and sometimes I'm more amazing, and other times I'm just a little lower than them all, but they're all very amazing.

"BUT INSIDE YOUR HEART IT IS DARK AND IT'S HOLLOW AND IT'S COLD!"
"BUT INSIDE YOUR HEART IT IS DARK AND IT'S HOLLOW AND IT'S COLD!"
"BUT INSIDE YOUR HEART IT IS DARK AND IT'S HOLLOW AND IT'S COLD!"
"BUT INSIDE YOUR HEART IT IS DARK AND IT'S HOLLOW AND IT'S COLD!"
"BUT INSIDE YOUR HEART IT IS DARK AND IT'S HOLLOW AND IT'S COLD!"
Like, there's not much love.
It's like some sort of empty beehive, waxy and gross.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SPECIAL PERSON!

It's your 17th year on this planet! That officially makes you older and more experienced than me.
I really do wish I could go to your birthday, or at least give you a present, but unfortunately, all the stuff I would give you is still in Taiwan... I certainly hope it gets through soon enough...

Hmm... it's always harder to write something genuine and all without sounding horribly corny... harder when there's horrible R&B playing in the background...
Um...
Let's not ever leave each other, even after all the feelings are gone and it gets really hard, and two years and a thousand miles can't kill us! Let's prove all the skeptics and annoyingly-proby moms wrong!
Haha, that was quite horrible and corny...
Hmmm...
Well, I hope you have a nice 17th year on this earth! And I suppose I've told you this already somewhere else, but here's a secret: you are invincible, and you'll always be invincible! Don't listen to the critics!

And maybe my biggest question is what kind of cake you'll get. I'm sure nobody could bake a cake even half as good as you can, but making a cake for yourself is pretty redundant, isn't it? They have some pretty weird cake flavors, by the way. And ham isn't one of them, but ham is just the grossest thing ever. Who would want to eat meat drenched in salt water? Unless they're really deficient on sodium or something...

Well, it's hard to write well-ly with all that horrible pop music blasting, but happy 17th year on earth! I hope you find something amazing to live for and plenty of amazing people! And be sure to tell me when that something amazing shows up, because I'm looking harder than anything!

NEVER SAY DIE! Be invincible, awesome person! Defeat the world!

sincerely, you-know-who!

Essential definitions in the world of moi.

Life (sing, n.):
1. That horribly chaotic time between your birth and your death when you try to discover why everyone exists and how everyone can keep on existing while you simultaneously try to make yourself and everyone else better and happier.

Happiness (sing, n.)
1. Sex, drugs, and everywhere and everyone new and dangerous. (see “partiness”)
2. Surges of electricity that pass from someone you love to you when you come into physical contact with them. May also pass through telephone wires and emails, however weaker. (see “love”)
3. Ramen on a cold day. (see “satellitiness”)
4. When you will not and cannot die until you squeeze something amazing out of life.

Emotions (sing, n.)
1. Shallow, annoying, uncontrollable creatures that show up at all the wrong times and go missing when you need them most.

Art (sing, n.):
1. Lame, supermarket-frozen, concentrated juice of emotions.

Manchester United and famous last words

I am actually psychic. I called those last two shots.
And the latter would go something like this:
"If I could, I would totally be screaming right now."
And then something about invincibility.
I haven't worked that part out yet.

Trainsomnia

Sleeping on trains only happens in five-minute spasms. You're never sure where to put your hand or your head, and when you finally fall asleep, your head flops over to your left, or dangles down in front of you, and you're awake again.

More angriness.

At a shoe store, I saw these converses on the shelf and wanted them. My mom asked the lady who worked there, and she told me they were for girls.
I felt like screaming.

On forgetting to do homework

I was very angry today, so I decided to eat lots of candy.
After a while, it becomes hard to distinguish between stress and hunger.

Gnarls Barkley

I'm trying to learn how to lip-synch to Crazy. I always get tripped up at the "Hahaha, bless your soul! Do you really think you're in control?"

Nose

The more you rub your nose, the more you're convinced that there really is something hanging off in plain sight of all spectators to your Divine Play, so that by the time you leave the class, you feel the overwhelming urge to rush to the bathroom, hide in a stall and check to make sure there's really nothing there at all.

Food, books, Radiohead

All are excellent cures for stress, but I prefer the first.
A tub of grapes, devoured over two pages of math,

Home for the weekend!
The furniture arrived today, with my books:
Joyce, Hurston, Burgess, Fitzgerald.
I can't really enjoy such snobby, critic-level books,
but I suppose bringing them to campus could make me look the part of the refinedliterarytastegeoisie.

"Yes, some Updike with that would be nice..."

My envy-filled irises aim themselves at the OK Computer-loving, the Ulysses-reading.

Thunderstorms and dreams

What will the bakery be like? Will it have a blackboard by the door with neon lettering? Perhaps I could draw a picture-of-the-day, or perhaps I would be too lazy...

But...

I dreamed last night that I was late for my PE Finals all over again.

They were riding horses and playing football, and I had never ridden a horse in my life. I kept smothering my horse's face.
Finally, they let out a cow for the final project and it began to attack my horse. I led my horse out to a field to escape from the cow, but they all kept prompting me back.
"You have to do this!" they all screamed, "You'll fail, Zephy!"
But the moment the gate opened, the cow was there,
and it began goring my horse,
and she bled and bled, and then she died,
and I started to cry because it was all my fault and their fault and I was angrier than anything in the world because the horse was Moses before he found God, and the horse was empty, and she never even found why she existed.

That day, I spent until 5 at the Lab talking with my friend about education and gay rights and all sorts of stuff, and we need to start a band and get the whole world to turn her head! "Listen up!"

But when I went to dinner today, it was raining and thundering, and I didn't have an umbrella. Nature can be quite annoying at times. And I told nature "you know, if you think you can kill me, you can't! I happen to be invincible, and I shall not die until I find why I exist!"
but then it thundered very hard, so I lowered my voice a bit...
it's a bad idea to piss Thunder off...

I still think I shall not die.
I am invincible, in case you didn't know.

I don't even know what to write about these days.

All my friends are such awesome people!

I must be a magnet of awesome.

AIYEMAINGREE!

Someday! I want to look at life, death, and everything in between and say "this wasn't wasted!" and to feel invincible! unstoppable! significant! because I've done something that can never! be undone, and I know I can live forever through that, somehow! or somewhere! or someday!
I want something to define me! and to define the world! and to define everythingandeveryone!
Fulfillment! Not-emptiness! Death to satellites!
More than love, dreams, happiness, anything, everything-in-the-world!!!!!!!!!!
I! wish! for!

A defense of gay rights, or the first and last time the logically challenged ENFP will write about politics

The sole purpose of the US government is to uphold the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the individuals it governs, and its laws exist to prevent any individual from depriving any other individual of these rights. Some moral issues facing our country today, such as gay marriage, may strike many as reprehensible and morally wrong, and wrong they may be. However, I don’t believe the government should be taking a role in restricting it. The government does not serve as a moral agent. The government serves to protect rights.

Earlier, someone mentioned the issue of changes in morality as society progresses. Will society just change its morals to suit public opinion? In defense, I would say that while public opinion on morality may change, the purpose of the government as an upholder of rights should not.
But what of your example of pro-pedophilia groups in the United States? Might gay rights pave the way to pedophiles' rights? I don’t believe this is a relevant example. The problem with pedophilia mainly concerns the question of whether the child has the maturity to make the decision to lend his/her body to such an act with full knowledge of the physical and psychological consequences; if such an act is done without the child’s decision to do so and the child suffers psychological harm as a result (which may not always happen, but should never happen at all), his/her right to happiness has been denied. If, however, it can be proven that the child can and does consent to the act (and let it be known that I think such a notion exists only in the wishful thinking of the perpetrator), it would no longer be constitutional to make this act illegal.

Of course, I am not saying it is morally right to do so; whether it is ethically wrong is still a big problem. But remember: the government doesn’t serve to uphold ethical standards. As you have mentioned earlier, ethics and morals may—and will—change as society progresses. And as I have mentioned, the role of the government should not.

So if anyone has any more issues with the ethics of gay marriage, let him go ahead and protest the ethics—it is fully within his constitutional rights to do so. Perhaps he can even start organizations to condone it, or churches to offer aid. However, let him not force the government into a role it was not intended for.

Am done ranting now. See the work of my hands! It sounds all professional and braggy and falsely mature, like a teen blog should.

And abortion is like taking away someone’s potential to be amazing.

And this shall be the only and last time I write about a political issue.


I

think

I may regret this several years from now.

Lalalalawarondrugs.

From a facebook note:

But for now, let’s not give up, ever, because one day, we will be in Paris, I promise, and I’ll scream down to the world and Time and Fate, and everyone else in that conspiracy, “Take a look at us now! We’re invincible! You guys thought you could tear us down by sending us creepy voices through our phone lines? You guys are all pathetic!”

I love you, and I would totally love you more if I could!


Eternal optimism and never say die!

Neologisms

Neologisms are a sign of schizophrenia, said my Psych textbook.
It worries me.

On Monday, I stayed at the computer lab until 5 to finish my English, and as I wrote, it rained and rained and rained and rained, and the world melted in the rain, and even after I was done, it was raining torrentially, so I stepped outside under the portico, and the anti-island indentationaty-places of the plaza all became pools, and the soaked boys played and jumped and threw water at one another and the soaked birds flew, and I was just so happy I felt like laughing silently for an eternity,
and I walked under the portico until I reached the main office.

The tired granite floors there had little black footprints all over where they absorbed water, like shingles. It was still a forever-distance to the dorm from the main office, so I traced water all over the floor as I contemplated whether or not I should return to the dorm.
When the rain didn't stop, I wrote "LOVE" on the floor and ran for the dorms with my cellphone tucked into a plastic folder.

On the way, I met a bunch of soaked dragonflies dancing in the rain. I apologized for crashing into them so suddenly, and I must have looked hilarious with a flimsy folder held over my head. I really wanted to laugh for an eternity.

Love is when you're not sure where your feelings have gone, but then you realize you would gladly give up anything in your life if it made them happier,
and my English papers want to know if you can claim artistic license for English class.

Psychic spy satellites.

I don't have much time to write much anymore,
nor much to write much about, and I can't write as well as I used to,
in June.
I wish I was a girl, so I wouldn't be so angry all the time,

but the world seems like an awfully big place, and there are too many things to do,
and too mant things to believe in,
and to disbelieve,
and you're not quite sure which will lead you anywhere,
or which is true, if there is such a thing at all,
so you drift a bit toward any planet that you pass,
merry-go-around it,
and then you're off f f f f f .

I only wish they would give you a map.

Pisces, again.



Hey,
let's have bubbles at our wedding.

Here at school and dreams and things...

The Sunday before I left, I dreamed I was at a school.
As I talked to my friend about the sermon that morning, she passed by my class.
I followed her past a dark room of sleeping people watching an old French movie. She was standing in the hall with her friends. I ran up to her.
I was so happy I hardly noticed she was three heads taller.

Sunday seemed to pass ultra-super-fast:
Ate a sandwich, packed my stuff, a train ride, a taxi ride.
It was almost dark when I arrived.
The school is like a maze of labs and dorms and counseling centers, and then mom left me to die.
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

I drew a picture for her after dinner, watched some people play video games, and lights out came before I had time to shower.

Alas, waves of joy passing through my open mind, chasing away sleep,

and couldn't stop thinking about Paris, bakeries, bus stops,

millions and billions of dancing lights far in the distance...

Bats and cats, hoc illuc, at dawn and dusk.
Nox non dormit.
Do cats eat bats?

From my balcony on the 7th floor, I can see the city.

We passed a closed ferret shop on the way to our house.
I would have bought all the ferrets before it closed, if I had the money.
I wonder where they all went.

Taiwan is a fug, and my parents don't like dreamcatchers.

Right about now, I'm wondering how I'll finish so many pictures before school starts in 5 days.
I would like go to Paris with...
Darn, I still don't know what to call her.

Taiwan

So the plane ride here was pretty lame. I saw a movie about a schizophrenic guy and it made me cry, and my sister threw up more than once. The airport shops at LA were all too expensive, and only one water fountain worked. Then a 9 hour plane ride and Star Trek made the rest of the way there.

It was morning when I arrived.
It wasn't like "I can't believe I'm here! It's incredible!" Maybe I was too tired to care much at all.

The only thing that really stuck out to me there was the talking water fountains and foldable cups.

I have internet connection!

If
I
could
create
aholiday...

I would make it out of home-made masks and gloves and boots and silence!
As soon as the sun sets, you run silently into the silent streets with paper lanterns and cause trouble and spend money-money-money!, cuz if you're really silent, no-bo-dy will know who you are atall!
And then near midnight, you put paper wishes over your lanterns and the heat bloats them up like hot air balloons or lactose intolerant stomachs,
and when the clock strikes 12, you let them go into the forever sky,

and then you make as much noise as you can until your throat is hoarse!

Banano!



And I think I saw Haruhi Suzumiya at McDonald's yesterday, only she had fob glasses.
Mygodsomanythingstowriteabout! but I'm lazy so I won't.

Thunderstorms, talks about God over lunch, a moving sale, and a going-away party.

And then yesterday, at church, my first hug with her! Pulse: 200 MPH! I wanted to keep on hugging for an eternity! Forever!
but it was getting awkward, so let go.

We leave this afternoon.
My heart is a rock that's fallen to the bottom of my stomach. It's not sadness. It's as if I'm sitting in the cockpit of a spaceship on a winter's day.

I feel invincible!


"5, 4, 3, 2, 1..."

The last 24 hours.

The night before my friend left, he made me stay up.
We walked out to the bridge as the sun was rising, and we lay on our backs for a very long time before our youth minister called us to tell us his mom was coming. Then his parents took a while packing all his stuff and we talked about the road trip and our future.
As his car pulled out, he stuck his hand out the sun window of his car and we started waving to each other and we didn't stop waving until his car made a right turn at the street.
I was still waving for a few seconds until I was sure he was gone.

In the morning Bible study, I was falling asleep in the prayers.

We met up at Chipotle's afterwards.
As we waited for it to open at 11 AM, we found a bee. It was stuffing a hole in the brick with mulch, but every time it stuffed a large piece, three pieces of mulch would fall out. It was oblivious to this, apparently, because the ground was littered with mulch around his hole-in-the-brick. He would also get lost and confuse one of the many other identical holes around his nest to be his from time to time.
What a frustrating endeavor.

For lunch, me, my sisters, and a boy shared a burrito. I hate how have to make the steak so spicy.

We watched Up afterwards, and then I stayed at church watching my friends play Call of Duty until 4, when I went over to one of my friends' house and played Red Alert 2 until 10 that night.
"They hide behind their technology like skeerd cheeldrin."

I fell asleep as soon as I got in bed.

I wonder if maybe I'll get stressed out in Taiwan.
I wish I could grab a bunch of balloons one day and sail away from the strict boarding school and all that and land in America.

75% of girls and 100% of guys before their 18th birthday.

Some people I know are bothered by something that's completely normal.
I wish adults would educate us better about these things.

Life is awfully boring now.
I'm done with the letters for everyone,
Still waiting for someone to come back from China.

What else?

I'd like to be a ghost after I die. Like a human one, in a world with a lot more human ghosts. Maybe I could find some non-ghosts and we could talk about the differences between our lives.
"I wonder what it's like to live forever."
"The road trips are the best part."

I will miss America.

I think it's a mouse.

There's a strange scratching sound from the right wall of my basement. You can hear it from upstairs.

Sleepless nights and parasitic butterflies.

It's raining! The drought has ended! My tomatoes are saved! Rejoice!
Just before lunch, I opened up the windows and back door to hear the rain, but my sister closed them because she thought it was too humid.

Summer nights can be just as sleepless as school nights.

Some nights, I start thinking about every breath I take, and I wonder if my breathing is perhaps too shallow.
I try taking a few deep breaths, but I'm afraid I'll hyperventilate.
Is it my inhaler? Is 4 times a day too much? Is it not enough?
What if I stop breathing altogether after I fall asleep?
I hold my breath. 30 seconds? Why am I not panting?

I usually stay up until 2 or 3,
at which point I'm too tired to worry about dying anymore.

I've been breathing fine lately.
Last night, I stayed up until 2, trying to think of a story for the first mission of a gothic role-playing game I've just started running.
How about a man whose obsession with hands leads him to cut off the hands of everyone in his neighborhood and hide them in his refrigerator? Maybe a story about human-soul-butterflies that eat flesh and a pale girl without genitals would be better. Maybe it could be about a mute, feral girl who is trapped in a house of flesh-eating butterflies that like human hands. Maybe the party should save her from the house, only to have her burn to death in the rising sun. But how would they kill the hordes of butterflies?

This is all stupid.
I figured I'd do it tomorrow morning.

I dreamed about a lonely carnival at 4 AM and Sigur Ros.
My friend made my sister cry, and I screamed at him and started crying as well. All three of us were crying when my mom came to get us.
I headed to the bathroom, and it was like an airport, and nobody was there.
I looked in the mirror.
I thought my hair almost made me look like a schizophrenic.

Memories and love stuff

As I was packing, I found a bunch of stuff from 7th and 8th grade.

Two years isn't so much, you can't stay in love forever, and feelings aren't everything in a relationship.

Die, die, my darling!

While I've been gone:

Sleepovers, shooting fireworks in the street, shooting fireworks at people, sneaking out, water parks, Truth or Dare, Tetris, Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland, sleepless nights, the smell of nail polish in my sisters' room, skunks on the road, long car trips, visiting the Taiwanese embassy, bourgeoisie McDonalds in downtown DC, shopping at the mall, loud music, this, trashing stuff, closed-minded old people, gross fat people, annoying little kids, a lot more screaming at my annoying, closed-minded parents than usual,
all bouncing around inside my head.

Right about now, life is like one of those weird-looking bugs, stuck between the two layers of glass in your window,
beating itself to death,

Only there are a million of them, and they won't die.

Bags, bags, bags!

Our whole house is quite empty right now, except for big boxes and garbage bags around every corner.
People are making scrapbook pages for us.
I'm worrying my ass off trying to figure out what to give everyone before I leave.

Look at the counter on the bottom of the page. How many days is that? And I don't have a single present yet, except for... what do I call her? I can't get myself to say "girlfriend." Would she be fine with that?
Well, she's got a bag of presents in a color-changing Del Sol bag now, but she's only one of 7? 8?

Never mind! A bag for everyone, I say!
Bags, bags, bags!
A Forever XXI for her, a PacSun for him,
and what about Papaya or WetSeal or Urban Outfitters?
With that 500 dollars I just got from that nice lady, I'm not short on cash,
but 7 people?

God, can you hear me again? Could you lend me some of those God-powers right about now?The Verve is an alright band. Cat Power is great.
And no matter how hard I try, I can't stop loving My Chem.

Must buy gifts for my friends before I leave...

Tis my new store of choice, and I love pink!

I traded my seaweed bracelet in for a friendship bracelet with someone at the camp.
I don't like talking about camp.

Songs and stuff. Night is god.

I've been music-binging recently...

Santeria, by Sublime. I can play that on the guitar now.
Then Karma Chameleon, by Culture Club,
Snow, by the Chilis,
Bye Bye Blackbird, something from the 20s, was it?,
Rape Me , Nirvana,
7 Nation Army, by the Stripes...
All amazing songs! I mean it!

Between volunteering at a children's summer camp, learning new words via email, working an SAT practice book, stripping to 50% nudity and taking X-rays, obsessing over a ridiculous game called Restaurant City because your friend got you to start, moping in self-pity over a relative lack of concern for the feelings of others (among other flaws), and, of course, packing for Taiwan,
A high school student only has so much time to blog.

On a side note, I saw an adorable frog on the mulch at the entrance of our church on Tuesday, groundhogs have returned to our backyard along with an anorexickish rabbit, my tomatoes are thriving like greasy, fat people in Mississippi, and I saw two madly bats flying around madly in a mad rush of madness and madliness and the god-mad-insane freedom of nighttime.

And this kid is obsessed with me at the summer camp.
He shares a name with a kid I obsess over.
Fact: Fate loves irony.

Well.
Eternally busy, stressed, self-absorbed, and less than a month to go.

God,
Right now would be a cool time to appear and do awesomeness.
On second thought, our morals don't match too well,
So just the do awesomeness part, ok?


Olivia makes a nice mascot, I think.

Parental Guidance

It's harder to love someone when someone so close to you disapproves,
and guitar has become a waste of time.

What do Kurt Cobain and the 4th of July have in common?

Yesterday, we decided to return to the town where we lived before our move, to watch fireworks.
The whole thing was a little mediocre, and the show kinda passed before we knew it.

Near the end, though, every single one was rushing to join his brother or sister in the sky, and the sky was lit for an eternity.
Even as they started to run out, the fireworks shot themselves higher and brighter than the one before them, as if to say "the show will never end!", as if to claw at the sky in one last attempt to reach an audience...
"Listen! I exist! Don't forget me; I exist!" they scream;
After all, how pointless is it to live if they're forgotten after they die? Is it any different from never living at all?
I'll bet fireworks don't even get a shot at Heaven.

"Life is like a fireworks show," said my dad.

Black holes and Revelations

Tonight, felt strangely intensely guilty for not going to a dinner party,
Stayed home, cooked ramen, and then a phone call:
my friend was there, and he wanted to know why I wasn't.

Note-to-self: next time, trust psychic premonitions.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time,

about sweaty summer evenings, unrequited love, bicycle accidents, and time travel...
Watch it here

Tonight, tonight!

Like the Pumpkins song!

Summer nights,
and open doors,
and the whir of fans before bed...
I hear thunder in the distance.

Tonight at 6, I'm going to my best friend's house for a dinner with some really amazing people that I really like,
but I feel so inferior...

Pisces, perhaps.

Last night I dreamed someone came back from China early.

P.S.: Corgan=Way?

Hate.

Falling snow is one of the most beautiful things in the world,
but everything is always more beautiful in your mind.

Stupid, stupid, stupid expectations, idealism, desire.
Buddha and Nietzsche turn in their graves.

1. A hate (singular, n.): a wrinkled bundle of self-loathing,
like a prune,
only the wrinkles are finer, sharper,
the color like Amerindian leather,
the smell like putrid, sour, acrid,

Ex: I hit the glass on the cabinet today, out of hate.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Summer makes laziness.

3... 2... 1...
SEX PISTOLS!!!!!!!!!!!,
"F the Press, Michael's the best!",
Whattotalkabout?

God answers prayers.
I'm friends with the girl in my art class,
the girl I liked likes me back,
the girl who was upset with me is talking to me again,
and something amazing really did happen: Taiwan...

I'm not so sure what I should do now. Should I try talking to God again? Nothing amazing ever happens when I do, anyway. Maybe I'm expecting too much.

Blablablabla.

I've been dreaming about school and tests and that girl in art for four days straight now,
and this boredom is killing me and my writing abilities....
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa;lksjdflaksjdfaslkdjf;laskdjfa;lskdjfa;lskdjfa;slkdjf
I wish I could miss people and why can't I ever miss anyone and why don't I ever feel bad for people getting killed on TV? and trying to like someone can be so hard sometimes! and I'm selfish...........................................
The-heat-fries-your-brain-like-a-fried-banananananana...........