It's Not Failure

Things I Ate Today

2010-06-01T00:31:00.000-07:00

3 large mugs of coffee (with fresh'n'easy brand powdered creamer)
1 Delphine Burger (with Heineken batter onion rings, cheddar, lettuce, tomato)
One slice (each slice extremely tiny) of the new Delphine Pepperoni Pizza, Goat Cheese & Savoya pizza, and Pizza Blanca (with spinach and béchamel)
One bite Salmon & Lentil entree
One small bowl strawberry jelly & fresh strawberries & one scoop vanilla ice cream

Waiting for the 222

2010-05-21T13:01:00.000-07:00

I'm going to see A. tonight in Burbank. Because I don't have a car, I have to take the bus. I tried quitting smoking but I just bought a pack of cigarettes and am now happily smoking my 2nd cigarette. I'm a weak, weak, person. But, anyways, I'm in Hollywood tonight, I'm chilling and about to do something I kinda want to do, actually, I twisted and manipulated and schemed and fretted my way via text-message to secure A.'s invite. But I'm not in the mood to be by myself now: besides, even if things don't go well, at least the night will be cheap and interesting.

Waiting for the bus on the corner of Cahuenga and Yucca, by the 7-11. This is a busy intersection, with cars heading to the 101, a few pedestrians crossing the street and talking to themselves, “If I was twenty years younger,” a man walking by himself announces to the air, “I'd kick my dad's fucking ass.” Dusky cars pull in to the parking lot, drunks emerge, getting cigarettes and slices of pizza, and then off again, back to the traffic and the parking and the clubs and the rest of their night. A few teenage girls in party clothes tread water on the edge of the parking lot, waiting for their fat Mexican friend to buy them beer. Waiting to buy beer? I ask. No, they say, paranoid. They immediately walk across the street and huddle underneath a lighted awning, mysteriously terrified. A girl with some shopping bags jay-runs across the street, laughing, deeply pleased, carrying bags of shopping. She looks to me to conform her bad-ass status: yes, you're bad-ass, my smile confirms. She waits on the corner, rocking back and forth seductively, waiting for her friends who are crossing legally. Twenty dollars, she says, as they approach, a latin accent, aping the prostitute she thinks she might appear to be. A man walks by with, dad jeans and floppy black tee. “Shrek comes out this weekend,” he says into his phone. In my frame of vision, to the left is the famous round Capital Records tower; a mini-mall (featuring Yucca Market, Asparagus Pizza” “Magnific Hair Salon” and a check-cashing place. From the building across the street (what I thought was the Thai center) the sound of Litle Jon blasts: “Shots, shots shots shots shots”—some famous rap song. Girls, again, walking across the street: a mock scream, a spilled drink scream, a flirting scream. There is nothing worth doing up this way, so the only partiers I'll see will be fringe. An old man in beige pants and a white-green jacket, long white hair and long white beard, wearing clunky headphones walks with deliberate steps across the street.

But mostly the night is quiet, and I am left beginning to end with myself. I don't want to think about myself, though. I don't want to think about anything.

An interesting thing about writing: writing is a performance. Ideally, for some body of ideal readers, and, at the same time, for yourself. The problem is that all the stories that I might tell I've already wrestled with, thought through, considered and (more or less) resolved (if by resolved I mean: I've sapped them of their emotional intensity). In any case, what difference does it make? None.

A girl walks by. She announces, to jesus, or the revenant of the last person she talked to, “My name is Will Smith.”
She stops on the corner and waits for the light. “Your name is Will Smith?” I ask.
“It is,” she says. “Why are you waiting there on that ledge with your laptop?”
“I'm waiting for the bus to Burbank.”
“...because you live there,” she says.
“No,” I say.
“Do you go to school here?” She asks.
“No,” I say, “I work here, I live here.”
“Okay,” she says, “I'll stop bothering you.”
“Have a nice night,” I say. I would have tried but I wasn't attracted to her. Almost, but, not quite.

A man with a cigarette, camo pants, holding two big pillows under his arm, singing faintly to himself, strolls arm-swingingly by.

I stand up, stretch, crack my neck, light a cigarette, and look down the street for the bus. Of course, it is nowhere to be seen. According to the bus schedule, which I have here on my laptop, it comes once every hour. I've been here about half-an-hour and have at least 15 minutes more to wait, though you never know, that's the motherfucker of it, it could come at any time.

Now satiated with smoking, I feel a strong urge to throw away my cigarettes. I viciously stab out my cigarette and consider my options. I will not throw away the cigarettes, though I may skip the patch altogether. It is good to blunt the cravings, but maybe I need to face my cravings head on and dominate them. I need to not stop, not stop with the quitting, this is the important thing. I have a patch in my wallet and can put it on right now. I don't put the patch on. I think about it, I debate it, but, I do not put it on. My body already knows what it will do; I will let it do what it wants.

A couple, I saw them awhile ago, walks by again. The man, fat, wearing a shirt that says “invisible” in block letters (I've seen this shirt before: a homeless man was wearing it, I think). “Glitter,” he says, making a gesture that takes in his face and his upper chest, “Glitter all over the place.” The girl laughs. The 7-11 is doing good business right now: I turn to look at the store and I see a big mash of people: standing by the redbox, smoking, getting in to cars, walking across the parking lot hand in hand, the whole varied interpersonal accoutrements of the beginning of the night. Film students walk by debating something about Adrien Brody. Snub nosed cars. Buses waiting at the layover point. Bmw's. Cars making illegal turns. A black limousine parks at the 7-11. Another black limousine makes a wide turn through the Yucca/Cahuenga intersection, going down to Hollywood Boulevard. Old Toyota Corollas. Old Mercedes Benzes. An old Nissan, with semi-fancy rims, driving without its lights. A taxi idling in front of the “Thai Center.” I wonder, how are these people making it? What do they do? Naturally, I don't really wonder, because I know the response if I were to ask: they are on the wheel, they are going up, they are going around, they are hitched to it. A Subaru playing Bob Marley quite loudly waits in the turning lane.

The bus comes. I run, catch it, and then one minute later I'm moving up Cahuenga into the night. A man talks on his phone to his son. A man talks with another man about drinking and drugs. “I've never drank,” the man says, “I just moved here from Missouri. I have Jesus, that's enough.” The other man says that he tries to stay clean, but he went to the dentist, and they put a fucking shot, up there, back up in there, and bam. He has 4 of seven, he says. “I don't know what that means,” the man from Missouri says. The pro-drug man tries to answer, but fails to respond cogently. He says, “Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't, that's how people are. It's how people are raised.”

The man on the phone says, “But he is real?” He waits and listens as his cellphone gives the inevitable answer: of course he is real.

“It was pure crack, and we were smoking and shit, and I'd just taken my pills and shit, and my girlfriend comes and shit, and she was streetwalking in the park and shit, and the cop comes and shit, as a kid, you get a lot of shit, pills to concentrate and shit, and then pot and shit, just party man, I don't care, party, I don't care. Then that aerosol and shit, you get a three hour high and shit.”

He goes on about LSD, five years in rehab, how your brain is gone and shit. He is a big fat man with a dirty black hat (worn backwards), a pair of brown leather slip-on shoes, a bracelet I associate with guidos or Abercrombie jocks. For some reason, a man (semi-mexican), with a shirt that reads “Heaven & Hell”, tattoos on his hands, headphones tucked beneath his shirt, sits and smiles enthusiastically at this entire obscure monologue. What are you writing about, the man from Missouri asks me. I do a small circling hand-gesture encompassing the entire bus and smile. “Well, you'll never be bored,” he says. I smile to confirm and continue typing. I type and type, til I see the Warner Brothers Studio and pull the stop-chain and a minute later I'm walking into the quiet, empty, night.

Alone in Hollywood

2010-05-14T13:42:00.000-07:00

Went out tonight with Pamela and Barbara, two Brazilian girls who are staying in my building. We went to the Silent Movie Theater and watched “Black Moon,” an experimentalish Alice-in-Wonderland themed piece of surrealism. The film is set in a sinister scrub forest, featuring a brutal gas-mask and machine-gun battle of the sexes; a fat talking unicorn, an extended Tristan & Isolde duet sung by children, lots of blandly sexual/snake/insect overtones, with a few art-becoming-life, technology-becoming-life intellectual tropes. The gradual sexualization of the main character was the only thing that kept my attention (I'll admit I fell in love a little bit with the “mind of a child and body of a woman” vision of the actress who played the lead, Lily). In the theater, the less attractive Brazillian, named Pamela, sat in the middle, the center of our little group, blocking me from making any moves on the relatively cute Barbara, which I might have made, you never know, you get a feel for this kind of thing and go from there. This blocking was probably strategic. After the movie, we stood under the awning by the freezing street, smoking cigarettes, looking at the art-student film-student shrinking violet, intellectual, nerdy, pretentious, overweight, pale, miserable crowd. People, in other words, not unlike you or me. Pamela began talking about how she loved the movie and so on, raving vaguely about her enjoyment. I thought it was indulgent and intellectual in the solipsistic sense, though I'd grant that there were some beautiful frames. I didn't articulate any of this: I said “Hmmm.” and “Interesting.” I was struck by the stupidity of some artsy people, and noted that we are really truly fucked, more than we thought, cause you could have great taste and the appearance of intelligence, all the while laughing too loudly at inept jokes. Demons to pigs to the sea, I guess: In my totalitarian intellectual regime, you have to like the right things for the right reasons. Anyways, since she had such a great time, Pamela wanted to stay for the second feature. I didn't want to do that, but, I had made the decision to acquiesce unilaterally to the will of the group, as I began to understand that my night was fucked anyways. Finally, Barbara scraped up the courage to say that she wanted to leave. Someone asked me what I thought and I announced that I would rather take the bus back to where we live in Hollywood so as to go to a bar and get some drinks. This tipped the scale. While we were waiting in the cold on the corner of Fairfax & Melrose for the bus, Barbara asked me what I wanted to do professionally. I said “Writer. You know. Writing.” (Barbara's English is not great, and she is extremely self-conscious about it, which she handles by remaining silent unless intoxicated.) Out of nowhere, with a quiet determination, she articulated to her friend in Portuguese that she wanted to talk to her boyfriend, back in Brazil, right now. This was the first I heard of any boyfriend. I was extremely glad at that instant that we were going home. Barbara insisted on executing this loneliness-borne plan as soon as possible, discounting Pamela's observation that it was already 3 AM in Brazil. We waited for a long time and finally got on the 217, and within ten minutes were back to downtown Hollywood. Barbara ran off immediately to buy a phone card so she could call her boyfriend. I retired to my place promising to meet up with the girls in 20 minutes to go out drinking someplace. Somehow, this didn't happen: I sat in my apartment trying to gain access the internet, and was relieved that they didn't come by and knock, because when we had been together, we had begun to curl silently into our own little selves, unable to decide what we were there for, with each other, unable or unwilling to draw each other out. This happens with people sometimes, and always ruins the night when it sets in. The conversation slows to a crawl, I get socially conservative, and wait for the others to set the tone, which of course they never do, so, I sit, obviously bored, pretending I'm a “gentleman,” pretending I'm “brooding,” occasionally speaking disconnectedly about the things happening right in front of us, and, like I say, when this silence hits, it automatically ruins the night. So, I was glad to be through with them. At home, by myself, I drank a few Tecates, fought with the infuriating wi-fi connection, then, ruing about the lateness of the hour, anticipating running out of cigarettes, got up, shoes on, walked down to CVS, then down and over to the Bowery. I stepped over a snuggied-up bum who was sitting on the sidewalk cramming plastic bottles into a bag, who completed her life with a pet cat in a sweater on a leash. A surprisingly young feminine voice emerged from the bum saying, “Can you spare any change, thank you anyways” as I walked silently on down the street. I continued this conversation with myself in my mind: “No, bitch, I need this money, I need this money to pay six dollars plus tip for each fucking beer I drink, I'm a selfish fuckface, I'm a hideous person, fuck you for making me feel guilty, fuck you, fuck me, fuck everything.” At the Bowery were Dory and her friend (don't remember her name, though I've hung out with her several times) with Rob. They got up and left almost as soon as I arrived (probably a calculated decision by someone): Rob was driving them back to the Valley. (I'm still not exactly sure what this means, “The Valley,” though I hear it all the time and have been informed that I'm there every now and then.) I got a Hop Rod Ale from Mac, the Bowery's manager/bartender, and sat down outside to smoke, watch the semi-professional human animals at play. Before she departed, Dory said that she was leaving LA tomorrow, so, the fact is that I am not going to fuck her, which I was prepared to do yesterday/now, but which would in any case be regrettable on the level of judgment and desire, if I actually succumbed to my loneliness and went ahead with the drunken, smashed, indifferent, frantic, jail-break penetration. Anyways, Rob and the girls left; I perched on the windowseat and smoked cigarettes. Ethan was talking with three strangers about skateboarding, the W, the bartenders at The Well, and other non-crucial things. I drank my beer and left the Bowery in short order. Walking toward home: up Vine, west on Selma, up Cahuenga, I decided to stop at the Beauty Bar, my occasional watering hole for dissociation, loneliness, loathing, and hopeless isolation: for reasons I can't describe, I'm drawn to this place when I'm at my lowest point, when I'm actively thinking about Kurt Cobain and envying the picayune problems in the lives of the socially powerful (though, of course, there are billions who would trade places with me). I bought an Amstel and stood there, watching the dancers. A guy at the bar started talking to me, for some reason: maybe he thought we could be wingmen for each other. A girl (fat; good dancer though) asked if I was Justin Bieber. A minute later, she asked if I could pretend to be famous so we could do something about the music (which was banal pop pablum), articulating as an afterthought/cultural touchstone/power play that if something by the Smiths came on, that was because of her meager influence. I was glad to learn this, but, it was obvious that the DJ was not going to play anything by The Smiths: he was going to play upbeat contemporary R&B about popping bottles and being “up” in various “clubs.” I was in a darkly aggressive state at this point, articulating to my new buddy at the bar that “this place smells like desperation,” while conceding that I was desperate, too. I noted with clinical detachment the departure into the sparkling night of each chick who might be conceivably construed as cute, watching the night descend into lower and lower stages of social oblivion, wretchedness, the approach of two AM and slurring drunken hopelessness. His response to these remarks was to ask where I'm from, what do I do, blah blah. I replied that I wasn't going to answer any of those questions, that I “don't give a fuck about any of that nonsense.” At that point, I was ready to leave, but decided that I wanted to figure out how these “normal people” “converse.” I ran around the bar then, interviewing people about what they were talking about. I'm capable of excavating an enormous amount of charm when in the grips of an asinine project of this sort, and I dialogued very successfully with dozens of people, revealing to them, after a moment, immediately after they laid bare the paltry contents of their minds and the corresponding blather issuing from their mouths, that I was just a fuck-faced asshole who had no actual interest in them, I was simply following some idiotic abstraction to its actualized conclusion. The conversations I discovered were uniformly banal: an ornithologist was hitting on some girl by talking about ornithology. Two separate couples were discussing the music favorably. One couple was discussing the fact that the guy owed the girl a massage. “A sexual massage, or a deep-tissue massage?” I asked. The girl said no, a platonic massage, a normal massage. I fell into conversation with a girl who was visiting from San Diego, with her friends, and an English teacher, and this is a guy to whom she taught English, and so on and so forth with ludicrously typical fact-exchange. Finally, I left. On the street, I ran into a gaggle of Koreans and started talking to them about Korea. I really wanted to fuck the one attractive Korean, who chose for herself the Americanized name “Lisa,” but, after a fun conversation, an impromptu show from Dr. Geek, (the infamous Hollywood street-rapper), the uncomprehending Koreans left, dragged away by their stiff black-shirted chaperones/drivers. I walked home and tried to get on the internet. The internet was being a little bitch, as always, so I grabbed my laptop and walked over to Yucca, by Whitley, to steal the internet. No one had fb'd me or emailed me or texted me, so, I muted my computer and opened up tabs of various pornographic videos, sitting on a ledge above the sidewalk, smoking cigarettes, watching the street, watching as mysteriously hot girls were dropped off from long black Mercedes sedans, lurching into their buildings, staggering drunkenly into farewell hugs. Hollywood can be very alive, sometimes, especially in the neighborhoods after two AM, after the bars close, while everyone collapses into each other on the way home, up the stairs, laughing, still filled with being in the world...., or, the glittering reflected light of being in the world of people. Waiting for my porn to load, in thrall to the night's still unclosed possibilities, I sat and shared a cigarette with a tattoo artist named “Mixi” who lost the keys to her Mini Cooper. Mixi dumped the contents of her purse by the curb and we looked through the detritus for the keys. Along with the keys, her purse featured two tins of “snus,” a pornographic pencil drawing, cherry Chapstick brand chapstick, seventy-six cents, a black bikini top and bottom, fliers to various clubs, and a wallet designed like an original Nintendo video-game controller. She game me one of her business cards (her name & number printed on a guitar pick) and informed me apropros of sitting on the street drunk that she made bad rock and roll music, had spent her night at Kung Pao Kitty, and her producer lived in this disgusting building and would be trying to get with her cause he was newly single. He came out so I left, hoping my porn was finished loading. I went home, took my laptop to bed and jerked off: on the screen an attractive girl being vaginally fucked and mouth-fucked by two dudes who were talking and talking, you like that bitch, you like that whore, take that dick, take that dick, urhgm, put those balls, in your mouth. I don't enjoy that kind of thing: it reminds me of how horrible we all are. Anyways, after jerking off, I was going to go downstairs to smoke when I saw a huge gray and white cat in the hallway. It came in to my apartment and tried to hide under the bed. I had a suspicion that it belonged to someone one floor up and across the hall, since I could vaguely hear their voices and the creaking of their floorboards, so, I went up and knocked on the door. It was the right place, amazingly. The kid, (Kyle or Josh, can't remember which), was ecstatic that I'd found the erstwhile cat—in a fit of relief, he poured Bacardi in my mouth and all over my sweater as reward. I passed the cat to its owner, went downstairs to the courtyard, smoked one-half a cigarette in the watery mercury-colored streetlight, and went back upstairs, listening to the new The Tallest Man album. Finally, then, to sleep, into thoughtlessness, as always ready, ready for the bad things, and the good things, the things, to come.

2009-11-19T03:32:00.000-08:00

After cutting my hair, I slept all day. At seven o'clock, I took a shower and put on a smoke-saturated shirt and smoke-saturated jacket, borrowed Grace's coat, scarf, and bike, grabbed the flask of spiced rum, and took off for Doug Fir, site of the Girls show. On the way, I stopped at an Ethopian-themed convenience store to buy cigarettes. I stood in a stoop, smoking, talking on the phone to my sister then my mother. I felt a very powerful urge to buy a Mountain Dew, so I bought one. I drank it there, outside the Ethopian shop, huddled from the rain and cold. A barista was closing up his coffeeshop near where I was standing, stacking chairs one on top of another. I'll admit I wished, actively and with all of my mind, that I had his job. Not working is depressing, and manages to undermine, if not actually ruin, everything. After awhile, I got back on Grace's bike, and rode to the show.

At the show, I pulled up just as some people were also arriving on bikes. I asked them if I could lock my bike up with theirs, as I couldn't find Grace's bike lock when I left. Inside, there were red lights along the sides of the ceiling and blue lights lighting up the stage. People sat along the edges of the venue in wide, deep, sunken booths alongside their friends. I didn't have any friends, and felt awkward. My haircut looked like an imitation of a hard-core lesbian from the 80's, which actively annoyed me. I thought about how I should act, but, moment by moment, decided not to talk to anyone. I went into the bathroom to drink from the flask, but it felt like poison, so I couldn't drink very much. Despite the misery of this ritual, I did this several times, mechanically taking off Grace's coat and scarf and hanging it up on the door, removing the flask from my pocket, and miserably taking a swig. Once, in the cramped toilet cell, I somehow knocked a bottle of water that had been left on the back of the toilet directly into the toilet boil. It splashed. I looked at it. The graffiti scratched into the dark brown paint of the bathroom stall read "pray" and "vermn." For some reason, I made a concerted effort to remember these two words and their skewed arrangement, at eye-level.

The first set was easily the worst set of any concert I've ever seen. An attractive girl stood in front of a keyboard and played perhaps twenty singly plunked notes over the course of the set. She also sang, doubling the melody most of the time, and flat half of the time. During the last song, she played a tambourine. The other member of the group was a short man with long hair and girl jeans and what looked like a short-sleeved tropical shirt with rolled-up sleeves. Three songs in the eight song set consisted of the two band-members singing the double melodies over ipod accompaniment and weakly turning their backs to the stage and sipping tiny drinks of water. The ipod sat on the stage and the guitarist leaned over hit play. Then they sang, one octave apart. I don't remember if he hit stop when the song was over or what.

The Girls set was excellent. The bass didn't work at the beginning; one of the cymbals kept becoming detached from the drum kit, and there was, for a little while, squalling feedback from the singer's microphone when he got too close to it. The singer repeatedly put his hands on the microphone, sending up a squall, repeatedly, until the sound guy fixed the problem. He seemed self-interested and haughty and indifferent to the audience, but very into the music. No one was dancing. A couple elbowed their way up to where I was standing and began to dance. A man harangued them for having poor concert etiquette. Then he pushed past and stood in front of them. I commiserated and announced that he was a "lunatic douche fuck" and we danced and had a good time.

After the show, I rode Grace's bike to Erica's. We talked for awhile. I took a picture of a stylized painting of Oprah that she has hung above her kitchen range. Finally, I suggested that we make out. She said no. I tried to sleep on the couch but I couldn't sleep. For a long time, I had thoughts which I articulated silently to myself, counting off on my fingers in the silence. Things were strange. I had a strange sensation of airy thickness and a suffocating silence. I sat in the silence and the darkness for a very long time, thinking about my life.

2009-11-19T03:08:00.000-08:00

I arrived in Portland and went to the Neon Indian show at Mississippi Studios with Grace. We drank 16 oz cans of PBR and witnessed a crashing, blasting, heaving scene. The venue is narrow and deep, like a shotgun house, with a three-sided bar in the center, crowding everyone toward the stage. Upstairs, a narrow balcony overlooks the stage, and crowds of people line the plexiglass bannister. Grace and I walked a long ways to get to the show. Once there, I had a really good time; Tigercity was finishing their set and rocking straight to beat all fuck beneath incandescent white lights; seen from above, dancing bodies were flying in a sharp-contrast super-hi-lit boil. I was happy to be in Portland. It was one of those brilliant moments when the fantasy is actualized, movieesque: everyone looked the part of studious 50% counter-culture conscious, the gender distribution was almost even, this platonic form of Hipster Concert Crowd: thick-glasses, white tights, the combination of mod-and classic thrift and elegance, ironic slouchiness and understated dressed-up. Neon Indian's set was most forgettable, somewhat muddier than their album, but, energetic and well-recieved; I danced the whole time and, when it was over, felt that I could say that I had had a good time. I talked to a few people, with a only a small degree of success, but, enough success to feel I had avoided fuck-up status. After the show, Grace and I walked home, talking the entire time in the wind and the cold and the dark.

2009-11-07T17:31:00.000-08:00

Today, Darla brought her friend Cindy over, waking me up. It was 2:30 in the afternoon. She said she wanted to go to Taco Bell. I agreed to go.

Darla drove. Cindy was laughing inappropriately at a conversation she seemed to be having with her self. I didn't like that. Also, Cindy stood outside the car texting while Darla and I were sitting in the car, waiting. I didn't like that either. When she got in the car, after another earsplitting cackle, I told her that she was a lunatic. She disagreed vehemently, and articulated that I was the lunatic. I tried to explain what I meant by "lunatic," hoping to open a dialogue about the nature of "lunacy" and the challenges present in arranging social personae with the expectations of social interaction and the pressures of interpersonal need. She did not want to discuss these nuances.

When we arrived at Taco Bell, I did not want to go inside as I was wearing a pair of ratty sweatpants that I'd borrowed from Darla and I prefer to eat fast food while driving or at home, not in the greasy, soapy, weirdly dirty and clean spaces of fast food restaurant dining rooms. We continued a discussion of Cindy's lunacy. She said that I was not interested in anyone's emotions but my own. She was becoming hysterical. Darla told me that I should not have my claws out. I whispered for Darla's benefit a few of the brutal claws-&-fangs insults I had chosen to keep unarticulated. We agreed that I am not wholly evil. I said that if someone called me a lunatic, I would like to know what it was my interlocutor meant by this. Cindy showed no such interest in such things, which was decided by me to be yet another aspect of her lunacy.

2009-09-29T20:25:00.001-07:00

I want to leave Calypso's Island

2009-09-22T18:02:00.000-07:00

Today I sat on the phone talking at length to a man with an indistinguishable accent as he dutifully led me through a script of attempted fixes for Ward's outmoded HP laptop which has a series of problems caused by a defective motherboard. After two hours of conversation, starting and restarting the computer dozens of times, after I'd removed the memory, the hard-drive, and the wireless adapter, he decided that I should ship the computer back to Hewlett-Packard where they could replace the defective motherboard.

About twenty pounds of whole peppers floating in the metal sink. Black habaneros shot through with veins of tan; banana peppers of yellow, small chili peppers in red and green and black. I dry them off and scoop them into gallon ziploc bags. My hand tingles for awhile afterwards.

2009-09-20T18:14:00.000-07:00

Jordan and Jordan's girlfriend (Taylor or Tay) and Jordan's friend (Zach or Kyle or Jake) sat around at the pool today. Taylor's mom appeared and cut Jordan's hair. I gave her a glass of wine. Soon other people were here.

I was drinking wine and beer. I was drunk at this point. Suddenly I was talking to some people I didn't know in the parking lot. They were showing me their new car. It was like a sports car, they said, like a muscle car: fast, but light. It was some kind of Cooper Mini with suicide doors. They invited me to look at the interior. It was interesting. I said enthusiastic things about the car. I invited them in to join the party. Some of them joined the party, and the rest got in the new car and left.

Derek came. We went to the dock and went "shark fishing." Code for standing around and doing nothing and drinking beer. Drinking Miller Lite and Bud Light and Natural Light. Wine also. I did chicken fights in the pool with Jordan's gf and Jake and Jordan's little brother, who suddenly showed up at the party with his dad, the latter of which was drinking shitloads of beer with me and having a good time. Later I dove into the pool with all my clothes on and lost my cigarettes. I was blasting the White Album over the outside speakers but you couldn't hear the Beatles from within the boat. You could hear country music playing softly from within the boat.

I found Jordan and Taylor on their patio and stood there with them in the dark above the street telling them the secrets of life. Helicopters and jet-planes were passing through the darkness of the sky.

2009-09-16T22:39:00.000-07:00

Eating, standing up in the kitchen at the range, dipping a spoon into a heavy cast-iron saucepan. The "Bold Flavor" of Bush's Baked Beans.

Watching 500 Days of Summer. So far it seems enjoyable. I can describe my coffeetable and watch at the same time without missing anything.

On the tall round table on my covered patio sits an empty Pepsi 0 and empty Bud Light can which both serve as my ashtray. An empty champagne glass. A half-full coffeemug with a grandmotherly line of fake gold plating around the rim and dead moth floating in the evaporating pool of coffee. Three plastic water cups cast in deep shades of colored plastic. A novelty highball glass shaped like the leaning tower of Piza half-full of cheap still-cold carbonated white wine.

Spent the night reading blogs and editorials, watching formerly viral youtube videos and thinking about intellectual things. Took a shower and thought about aesthetics. After I emerged, dried off and got dressed, I sat down at the patio table and wrote some sententious "preliminary" "thoughts." (All thought is preliminary). (I am the king of sententiousness.)

2009-09-16T02:26:00.000-07:00

Alicia:i was thinking about going to europe..if i could save money
but now i don't have a job so..yea

me: i see

for me, all traveling is equally terrible/meaningful, so, it doesn't really matter where i go

actually, the worse the place, the better time i have, in a way

Alicia: why is that?

me: for the simple reason that i don't care about people or fun, and am interested in unique internal experiences.

which emerge when you have no expectations and do nothing

Alicia: makes some sense

me: by "unique internal experiences" i mean.........something to do with..... being alone and thinking about things and looking at uninteresting stuff for hours on end.

it's meditative in a way

2009-09-16T01:53:00.000-07:00

I get out of bed and step down directly on Snowie the dog, who has curled up on my comforter on the floor at the foot of my bed. She leaps and squirms and yips. I apologize and step to the kitchen to get her a piece of old ham by way of apology.

Drank all day today. Derek's friends came over and we shotgunned beers on the deck and on Mark's boat.

Consumed vanilla ice-cream topped with chunks of microwaved muffin and Auto-Tune-the-News youtube videos.

Started a philosophy blog about a philosophy blog about hipster runoff.

2009-09-15T02:00:00.000-07:00

me: you don't have to say anything

it's far beyond words.

it's just,,,,

2:48 AM the slow slide of nothing.

i feel nothing.

it's only a vague intellectual awareness that i used to be happy, or maybe used to believe in happiness in an immediate way that bothers me.

2:49 AM Grace: what's changed?

2:50 AM me: it's gradual and long-time

this is basically why i left LA

Grace: why?

2:51 AM me: not feeling and not caring and not doing anything worth doing

Grace: why did you leave la because of that though?

2:52 AM me: yeah

i remember making the same articulations

but my life then was a fucking party compared to my life now.

2:53 AM the thing is, i'm not even depressed about it.

i just don't feel anything.

real depression, in other words.

Grace: are you having thoughts about suicide?

2:54 AM

me: no.

i couldn't be bothered.

no thoughts of any kind.

motionless.

2:55 AM Grace: hmm

2009-09-14T08:31:00.000-07:00

It's raining in South Florida. I go outside to smoke. Rain drops bury themselves in the light blue of the pool. Black clouds over the mainland; a few billows of white over the ocean, cheetah spot clouds directly above me. The cars passing in the street blast through standing water, sending up double-looped waves.

I left a half-empty can of Miller Lite and a half-empty 16-oz beerglass of coffee out on the deck, and overnight the rain filled them up with rain water. I went out at noon when I woke up and wanted to drink the half-full left-over beer but it was watery and I spit it out of my mouth onto the ground twenty feet below. The rain was falling on me so I went inside.

The light in the day beams into every thing on earth and the rain falling on the ground is beautiful. Someday I may find out exactly why the rain makes everything so particularly beautiful. Now the light is beginning to fade over the water, the light no longer carries across the sky.

2009-09-04T10:49:00.000-07:00

Brandon Buck and I decided that, if you're ignorant, your ignorance doesn't even allow you to get a sense of the possibility of not-ignorance. The strange pleasures of complexity and distance at the end of a pursuit of awareness.

"The secret of life is decisiveness / and to describe something."

--Tao Lin, Today is tuesday; email me on saturday

2009-09-04T10:24:00.000-07:00

Listening to LA Woman by The Doors. Endless refresh on sports, news, commentary websites.

Getting drunk in Lori's house by myself. Moved the couch directly in front of the television. I have the time but not the will. I open a page and look at it, intending to write about the things I'm doing except with a gender inversion for the sake of fictionalization and the wonders that rest, dormant, in explorations of possible things. Somehow, I don't have a voice. I write one sentence and delete the sentence I've written.

I make a to-do list and am satisfied with it. I don't feel the need to do any of the things on the list.

Snowie, the dog, follows me around and stares at me with that particular animal combination of dependency, horror, fascination and loathing. I catch the dog looking at me askance. It watches me, awaiting further antics, outbursts, shouted statements of self-denunciation, suburban horror, post-loneliness stagnation. "Dickless bitch," I mutter. Dickless bitch! I shout.

If I wasn't writing this blog-post this day would be worse than it is. I'm going to walk to the beach even though I'm out of shape and will feel humiliated by my slide into constant-disaster.

2009-09-03T23:58:00.000-07:00

In Florida. Tried to get myself to do some writing but the sight of a blank page terrified/disgusted/annoyed me. I'm glad that I'm too tired to stay awake.

2009-08-13T23:59:00.000-07:00

Took my final trip with Darla today. To the ATM, Walmart (to return a tent), and a Taco Bell, then back to Woodfolk House.

Suffered from some not unsubstantial nostalgia. Our final round of rock-paper-scissors, played without sentiment or ceremony, was nonetheless almost enough to evoke tears, though I successfully managed to quash the any display of upwelling emotions.

We discussed Chris and Darla's other new roommates. We considered Darla's plan of action regarding her upcoming interactions with the Woodfolk. I admonished her to remain conscious, to remember her goals and her understanding of the function of the exercise of power in interpersonal relations.

At 10:30 PM, I left Charlottesville en route to Baton Rouge.

2009-08-12T02:54:00.000-07:00

Hung out with Chris at the Woodfolk House (Darla's new home).

Sat in the fruit-tree and vineyard garden at a table drinking coffee watching the Perseid meteor shower after a punk rock show. Mosquitos feasted.

We had the kind of conversation one would expect between two passionate and intelligent diametrically opposed theorists/social critics/aesthetic-self-constructors. My heartfelt and cynical avowal of post-postmodernist intentional-emotivistic power-oriented desert-of-the-real social-constructivism contrasted nicely with his passionate idealistic conspiracy-theorist mystical memetics/emergentism good-energy municipally-mobile good boy styles. He said that he wanted to be offended and challenged. I said he didn't really want that. He said that my most particular skill is a grasp of rhetoric. I claimed to have an instinct to philosophy. We compared our respective information addictions and traded forgettable insights into the human condition.

Noteworthy aside: over the course of the day, I got into two full-speed bicycle accidents. In the latter, I t-boned Chris' bike as he turned in front of me. The former, I crashed into a curb and tumbled into a lawn while attempting to ride no-hands style.

2009-08-11T23:43:00.000-07:00

Sent a semi-famous blogger in NYC a facebook message asking if she wanted to hang out in NYC. She said yes but traffic and getting lost and the typical inanity of life got in the way and we didn't end up hanging out.

2009-08-11T21:23:00.000-07:00

Driving through New Haven CT into a massive thunderstorm.

The raindrops strike the windshield in ragged little parabolas of hyper-focused prisimatic clarity.

Stuck my head our the window a few times, each time met with a porcupine to the face, exploded rain drops moving at high speed. In an excellent mood. Arguing with Darla about the merit of jj's n° 2 album.

2009-08-11T19:57:00.000-07:00

Things I didn't like about being in Boston:

not writing anything substantial
not getting a job
not successfully procuring a new copy of my driver's license
eating low-quality processed foods
not meeting anyone in the spirit of human equality
wasting hundreds of hours watching internet-tv
fighting with darla
having the world's most insane jet-lag vampire narcoleptic schedule
stooping to embarrassing lows in order to smoke cigarettes
living in a house full of cats and getting cathair on my clothes
living in a house without scissors and not being able to trim my bangs

Things I liked about being in Boston:

the weather (I always like the weather no matter where I go)
the crowds of hot girls on Newbury Street
learning the subway
watching all of House and Star Trek: Voyager
sitting on the patio
writing my droll post-hopelessness blog
starting to play the piano again
the makeshift coffeepot
walking in the street late at night
the Boston Public Library
the pleasure of smoking em when you got em
the top 100 song list
staying up until you pass out from exhaustion
walking down the block and around the corner to sit on the sidewalk in the dark orange light to steal wi-fi

2009-08-11T13:34:00.000-07:00

Planned on spending all day today writing and/or thinking about writing an essay about any subject to be entered in a two-person essay-writing contest with Brandon Buck, but instead Darla came home and informed me that today, not tomorrow, will be the day we leave Elena's house and Boston at large.

We packed, cleaned, argued, chased cats, shoehorned the keyboard into the car. Finally we left.

2009-08-09T19:13:00.000-07:00

Where: Elena's house, Somerville MA, front porch

Alone at Elena's house in Somerville.

Continued incessant Star Trek: Voyager marathon.

The internet, as usual, infuriatingly, inevitably, intermittent.

As is the pattern:

1. with grim smile, accept the schiziophrenia of "our" internet connection.
2. get up, step into shoes, exit house, w/ lit cigarette and disheveled hair, laptop in hand, headphones in ears.
3. down the street and around the corner to 21 Sartwell.
4. perch curbside by the school.
5. begin to stream an episode (Star Trek: Voyager, House, Futurama, Seinfeld, etc)
6. endure/initiate the gawk/reverse gawk of various pedestrians, shoppers, workers, gym-goers
7. load relevant websites for future purview in case of future internet outage.
8. leave, relieved, ashamed, walking back home, quickly, to watch the now-treasured episode or episodes of whatever show.

2009-08-06T07:10:00.000-07:00

Took a nap from 6 PM to 8:30 PM. When I woke, I was alone in the apartment.

I called Darla and agreed to meet her at a party on Beacon Hill. In the subway, I talked to a girl about Mark Everett, the man behind the band the Eels, and then had a strange interaction with a very attractive girl who wore expensive clothes.

When I arrived at the building in which the party was apparently taking place, Darla suddenly stopped answering her phone. I was stuck on the street, waiting. I called Darla fifty or perhaps one-hundred times in a row; she did not answer. After awhile, Darla came down and let me in. She had been doing sexual things with Justine and complained of "smelling like pussy." When I entered the party itself, I was disappointed: the party consisted of Justine and Darla displaying blacked-out-drunk exhibitionistic sexual shenanigans while four meat-headed Boston-flavor rednecks watched and made comments. Listening to a Phish concert on blown speakers in the dark of the rooftop.

At Darla's invitation, Ari the Zen Buddhist showed up. I said hello to him, drank two shots of Jamison and stole a full pack of cigarettes off the table and left. Justine was on her knees in front of Darla's chair, lifting up her shirt and kissing her neck.

2009-08-02T20:24:00.000-07:00

Darla and Elena and I stayed up late talking tonight. Most of the conversation was a rehashing of our dialogue with Ari, the peaceful Zen Buddhist collectivist. We touched on the anti-postmodern argument, dissing the multivalent theories of truth, reaffirming the “Deep Background” of external reality and sense-making, the value of living insofar as it is possible in the “desert of the real,” despite the various failures of knowing and the ultimate meaninglessness of any edifice built to support a life.

I praised Elena's steadiness, her mostly un-idealized approach to living in the world: work, school, friends, consistent romance, pets, steadiness. We drank coffee and smoked cigarettes. The cat at the screened-in window paced the sill and mewed insistently, conveying its impotent feline irritation at our incomprehension of its demands.

Finally, after talking for several hours in the close dark of the patio, we took a walk in the street. The night was pure velvet, warm, with layers of moving air passing through the branches and up the asphalt. Barefoot, carrying my laptop as a portable boombox, chasing and being followed by one of Elena's escaped cats. I stepped on a slug and screamed in an undignified manner. We listened to sentimental music, hoping to experience the always-unexpected profoundity of emergent nostalgia, the thrill of specific iterations of beauty, that rising of directionless happiness, washed by submerged waves of deep feeling. Following along with the music, Darla and I occasionally lapsed into meandering accompanying harmonies. Passing the houses, the grainy dull of orange mercury lights and black dapples from heavy trees.

At the end of our walk, we stopped in the street and played an ad hoc game in which we picked up broken crabapples with our toes and tried to fling them down the street. It was fun, and we weren't even drunk.

2009-08-02T04:31:00.000-07:00

Seven AM at a four-floor "intentional" townhouse in downtown Boston.

After everyone went to bed, I stayed up watching episodes of Star Trek: Voyager on a desktop computer situated by an opened window. As the sun came up with heavy lavender skies, I was moved by the subtle beauty of the frame to a deep feeling of nascent poetry, and felt the urge to write and sit contemplating the sky with coffee and cigarettes, but, I didn't have my laptop or any coffee, so, I sat and continued watching Voyager, occasionally looking to the window to check on the progress of the dawn.

I caught the last train to the intentional townhouse to meet up with Darla and Sheena, only because I'd run out of cigarettes and knew there'd be cigarettes waiting for me when I arrived.

We sat on a deck that smelled of old barbeque, burnt meat and coals, sitting beneath a patio umbrella laced with little while christmas lights. Eating a feta-topped salad and watermelon and drinking water.

Our host, (Ari), an ex-seminarian Zen Buddhist soup kitchen "Intentional community Luke Skywalker" willingly answered my questions about his life in the house and his religious beliefs. I sat back with smug and world-weary disinterest, tilted back in my chair. I explained that I despise idealists of the "intentional community" vein though I have no real understanding of the dynamics of this judgment.

Ari described me as "snide and skeptical" while quickly couching this denunciation in a brief peaen to the virtues of "giving people a second chance."

We talked about things for awhile. It was agreed by us that fanaticism is ridiculous. We disagreed upon pretty much everything else. He said that he had stared into "abyss of alcoholism" but staggered back. Darla commented that I wasn't really "bringing it" and that she was "so far convinced" by his perspectives, especially given my "misery" and what that must imply about my worldview. I suggested that I am "miserable" because of "social failings" on my part. Ari suggested that I no doubt blame others for these failings. I said I didn't think so.

2009-08-01T18:00:00.000-07:00

We went out with Darla and Justine and Eve. Friday night.

We drank beer on the streets in Cambridge. My left contact lens was hurting very badly and had hurt badly all day, so I spat it into the gutter. I couldn't get into any bars because I still don't have any ID.

Justine talked at length about desire, sex, and love. She ate three bowls of stale white noodles before vomiting all over the couch and then passing out. Darla fell asleep on a couch. We woke up at 7 AM and walked through the streets of Cambridge. In my visually impaired state, the morning light and the long shadows were particularly beautiful.

2009-07-31T00:19:00.000-07:00

Darla has decided to leave the city of Boston for life in a “commune,” planning to soon take up residence in a house built of bales of straw, populated with young idealists and planted in Charlottesville or Charlotte, I can't remember which. I helped edit her “Application Letter,” which was appropriately full of the tropes of sincere freedom; opposition to the convenient, invisible, apparently ubiquitous masses of thoughtless media drones; a vitiation of appropriately semi-radical 21^st century environmental political activism; and a description of her ironic but cute relationship with forms of low-to-middlebrow-art.

We had an argument about her commitment to the environment and her social goals. She said the people in the commune were “her kind of people.” This is apparently the case because these neo-hippies share Darla's commitment to recycling, turning off the lights, and public transportation. I said that environmental awareness isn't bad in itself but is bad if it is pursued fanatically, and fanatic political action in my experience tends to be a substitute for the construction of an authentic identity, and besides, to me, communes are nothing more than escape pods for selectively ignorant idealists, psychically tattered refugees from the world of power and failure and judgment. She said it's nothing so high-flown. It is merely a house with roommates who happen to share a body of common interests. She said that she simply must live there for awhile, she's always wanted to and now she can, she may not be sincere, but, she wants to do it so she can look back with satisfaction about the exercise of her freedom. To buttress her argument, she closed my laptop lid and turned off the lights in the kitchen. I said I hoped she wasn't losing her goddamn mind or her perspective. She responded by insisting that I ride the bike in my upcoming trip to the grocery store, even though during the return trip I would be uncomfortably saddled with three canvas bags of heavy foodstuffs. I said I was not opposed unilaterally to riding the bike to the store, but I would prefer to drive. She said she was 100% opposed to anyone driving the car to the store. As I was the person making the trip, I didn't think her objection was legitimate, but, she insisted that I ride so I submitted and rode, labeling her a lunatic fanatic. (Besides, the car was blocked in the shotgun parking-lot and the neighbors weren't answering their doorbell).

I'm feeling very anxious about her departure, if only because I won't have a place to live and no job and no money.

Darla asked if I had come to some kind of final negative judgment of her. I said I hadn't and told her that her fear was ridiculous and paranoid.

She said that we bring each other down in social settings, when we're together at parties we're often angry and snide and spend the night standing in the corner with the raised noses of haughty fear. I said that it might be a good idea to spend some time apart.

She said that my post-motion absolute negativity puts a damper on her preferred avenues of social performance, her delivery of optimistic monologues on enlightened existential freedom, the intellectual fun-frenzies she attempts to provoke. I said I was “just beyond all that” and she said that that was the problem; she can't talk about the joy of life when I'm there cause she's afraid of seeming stupid or superseded or naively concrete.

When I came back from the store, she said that she doesn't like the way I've been sitting around with headphones in my ears all the time, lost in a world of youtubed tv shows and bloggy entertainment, closed to the world, limp and sprawled and dead-eyed, a spiritual Keep Out sign hung from my neck. I said I didn't like that we don't talk much anymore and she agreed and we resolved to hang out and have a good time in the time we have left together.

We drank coffee and smoked cigarettes and talked about the people we know in Boston. She discoursed at length about all the things she wants to do in the last two weeks she has in Boston. I didn't understand what would motivate her to do anything, if it was just going to end, and there were no potentially meaningful relationships to pursue.

We played songs on the keyboard for awhile, messing around with the automatic beat-making program. We listened to Chet Baker and watched Frost / Nixon.

At 2 AM, I suggested we take a meandering walk. At each intersection we would choose at random a new direction, tracing an arbitrary maze on the night. Walked for awhile in the dark, talking about how it was when we were growing up, pointing out to each other the things we liked about the neighborhoods through which we were passing.

2009-07-30T00:27:00.000-07:00

Where: Elena's house, back porch, Somerville MA.
When: 7/30/09, 6:23 AM.

A light rain fell intermittently all night.

Stayed up all night consuming episodes of Star Trek: Voyager. The internet was down, so I walked to the local free wi-fi spot (a sidewalk outside a mansion-cum-triplex), where I would download an episode or two and then retire to the couch in Elena's living room to watch these low-quality videos in the cocoon of dark and warm while the cats lounged on the floor.

Also consumed: one can of refried pinto beans, four cups of black coffee, and five pieces of bologna on toasted whole-wheat pita bread.

Crappy realization about myself: my urge to listen to new music is directly correlated to the existence of other people to whom I can play this music. When there's no one in my life who I wish to impress or educate, when there's no one with whom I wish to share special things, I don't actually seek out new, socially useful stimuli. When in absence of people-I-wish-to-cultivate, I don't feel the artistic impulse to self-expansion.

2009-07-22T22:56:00.001-07:00

All the lights off in the house. The cats get up and out the way, scattering silently as I float through the cluttery living room; I duck the low-hanging tendrils from the plastic-prism chandelier, carrying laptop on one hand like a waiter with a tray, the corners of the house lit a faint blue from the flat palm of washed-out electronic light.

Two bicycles are leaned against the hallway wall; I crash through them on my way to the bathroom.

Darla and I have three conversations in short order.

Darla says, "I'm feeling so isolated, it's driving me crazy."

I acknowledge this remark.

Then: "It's such a beautiful night. I like the temperature of the air."

I say that it's not such a beautiful night in my opinion.

Then: "We should throw a party."

I say that that's good idea.

"Except that we don't have anywhere to throw it," she says.

And we don't have anyone we could invite.

"Justine, Veronica, Mike, Steve, Kelsey, Kay."

Then I remark that I wish she could read minds and she tells me that I'm being pissy. I say that she doesn't understand and that I wish she would try to start an actual conversation but she doesn't seem to want to do that. She says that she's not really up for some profound extended pseudo-meaningful conversation that would make it seem like anything is salvaged from the larger waste, she's tired, and I shouldn't be such a piss-pot. I explain, half to myself, that the night isn't beautiful at all: it's too dark to enjoy the sky and too damp to enjoy wearing clothes.

I've kept watching House, but I no longer care about the characters, and I've never been in it for the medicinal drama. That doesn't stop me from watching it as much as I can. I'm 3/4ths through the final season.

2009-07-19T03:38:00.001-07:00

Last night, Darla and I went to a party on top of a rooftop. We drank vodka and cranberry juice concentrate and had a semi-brilliant conversation about the function of alcohol in our social lives. After a fashion, our conclusions tended to the thesis that we are stilted and insecure, and we use alcohol to access recklessness.

At the party, I spent the night talking to a girl I found attractive in the dark of the rooftop building. (Kay). After several house of talk both alone and in groups, I went to her apartment, where we stayed up talking to her roommates. In a state of extreme inebriation, I began to pontificate about power and insecurity. She told me that she thought that I thought that I was irresistable. I said she was wrong and set about ignoring her, smoking cigarettes and talking about music. After everyone else went to bed, Kay and I messed around on her couch but she didn't seem motivated by sexual desire, a state which always annoys me in potential sexual partners. She went to her bedroom and passed out. I stayed up for another three hours, reading Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, eating cream cheese on spicy croutons, smoking cigarettes and drinking water.

I went home at 8 AM on the subway, with the inflections of a painful hangover pressing on my forehead and eyes. I watched the people in the subway and thought about introversion. I stared rudely at the people in the crammed car. I went home and fell asleep at about noon, missing out on my opportunity to apply for jobs for the day.

2009-07-19T03:38:00.000-07:00

Darla and I went to Maine today.

We "hung" with her "friends" and talked. The "conversation" was unremarkable and the weather cold. I drank a Guinness and listened to their witticisms and fond reminiscences of people & places I don't know.

After awhile, everyone went their separate ways; we drove home. At home, I made several sandwiches with honey mustard & sliced beef.

Darla and I discussed my "problem" at some length. I hoped our conversation would be marked by the emergence of profound feelings or decisions, anything to pave the way out of my irresolute hopelessness, but, despite my greatest efforts at “manufacturing” “joy,” no epiphanic or purposeful feelings appeared. Instead, I made a few muddled remarks about the "implications" of "meaninglessness" before surrendering to the inexorable logic of contemporary life, the avoidance of pain, the necessity of building relationships, working hard, and planning for the continuance of the passage of time in light of the continuity of the formation of emotional memory. This "surrender" doesn't contain any plan for rebuilding, and I knew I would continue doing the non-things I'd been doing.

I stayed up all night watching episodes of House.

2009-07-14T00:43:00.000-07:00

Mom writes me an email: "Evidently you've trashed or lost your phone. Darla says you're not even trying to get your life on track. Are you trying to find a job? People aren't going to put up with free-loading forever. "

Spent the night watching episodes of House and reading about politics & sports & economics.

No one is home. I found some hookah tobacco, reddish, damp, "mint flavour," and have tried to smoke it out of a marijuana pipe.

It is not satisfying.

2009-07-13T11:47:00.000-07:00

I have before me a copy of Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited. Elena presented it as a “fucking beautiful movie” before she disappeared for the night, leaving it to rest on the coffeetable. I look at the DVD case, check to see which actor received top billing (Owen Wilson, it turns out), read the cover, noting the effusive blurbs and the prestige of the newspapers & magazines from which the blurbs were excerpted, the one-paragraph pitch, enticing to the indie-inclined netflix subscriber, analyzing the effectiveness of the cover art on myself and making an approximate estimation of its effectiveness on others, what our respective reaction might mean about both myself and others in turn. I consider the film as it is presented. I've seen the movie twice, once distractedly, once attentively. Not consciously, somehow inevitably given the amazing amount of time in life, the accessibility of knowledge and my penchant for gathering information, it so happens that as time has passed, I've accrued an enormous body of knowledge about this particular piece of pop-art. At some point in my life, I've read the summary of The Darjeeling Limited's reviews on metacritic, condensations and complete expositions, pithy evaluations of astonished joy and manufactured disgust. Further, I am aware of the place of the movie in the socius at large; without effort, I am aware of a spectrum of assessments; the people with whom I've discussed this movie, their opinions and my opinions of their aesthetic acuity. I've browsed blog-borne ironic takedowns of clichéd Wes Anderson fans, brutal dismissals of twee-art & the easy pseudo-profundity of silence & ambiguity; friends have quoted epigraphs from the film to me and then discussed what it might indicate that we have the reaction we have, considerations of this movie as it exists in a continuum of Wes Anderson films and other films by similar filmmakers, this exploration of the privileged disaffected—less a consideration of the upper-bounds of high functioning autuers and more a bathetic evocation of the failure of constructing a continuous life, the bankruptcy of any contemporary spiritual paradigm, with class-conscious cues designed to evoke simultaneously the ecstasies of envy & superiority. These thoughts take place inside my mind within the space of only a few moments: I drink the rest of my coffee, open the refrigerator, remove a beer, thinking thoughts all the while, pop top, walk to the porch. A cat escapes and scampers to the basement, a fleeting feline glance over its shoulder holding the anxiety of its limited freedom, ears perked, a dank basement to explore. Stay down there if you want, I tell the animal.

2009-07-10T01:22:00.001-07:00

Where: Elena's
When: 4:25 AM

Note the time. It's late.

I have fifty-four minutes before I can watch another 72-minute block of House and I may as well use it (rather than switch to China Mieville, Swann's Way, or youtubed Star Trek, Matt Yglesias' blog, Talkingpointsmemo, fivethirtyeight.com, Crooked Timber, The Valve, Acephalous, Spencer Ackerman, Digby, Krugman, Delong, Andrew Sullivan, etc.

The cats are running around the apartment, a frantic expression of feline athleticism & happiness. They bite each other, rise on backlegs and shrink down within themselves, moving slowly, bat at each other's faces, squinting at each other, wanting to spar but at the same time afraid of getting hit. They dash across the apartment and hide under the bed. A moment later, they're lounging in the center of the kitchen floor, spread completely.

I like cats, in a certain sense. I like them for their affectations, their psychological simplicity. The feigned complexity, indifference. Like children. Realization-I-had-years-ago-and-also-now: everyone is more or less childlike in their essential psychological simplicity; even apparently powerful "individuals" are powerless

Listening to Serge Gainsbourg's Historie De Melodie Nelson, track one and track seven, which sound more-or-less exactly the same. I don't speak French and the only reason I have the album is because of its canonical status. I don't need the canonmakers to tell me it's canonical: one listen, even lost in translation, damn, you know it's doing something meaningful.

Listening to loud music at four AM. No one is home. Fun stuff.

2009-07-06T16:31:00.000-07:00

A feast of information:

A Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Kant's response to Hume's attack of inductive causality.

Re-reading O'Neil's The Iceman Cometh:

Of course, I was only kidding Cora with that stuff about saving you. (then seriously) No, I wasn't either. But I didn't mean booze. I meant save you from pipe dreams. I know now, from my experience, they're the things that really poison and ruin a guy's life and keep him from finding any peace. If you knew how free and contented I feel now. I'm like a new man. And the cure for them is so damned simple, once you have the nerve. Just the old dope of honesty is the best policy--honesty with yourself, I mean. Just stop lying about yourself and kidding yourself about tomorrows.

More Proust.

Watched Herbert Gintis's lecture on the "Unification of the Behavior Sciences" twice.

Crucifying quite literally one half of my day in a youtube marathon of Star Trek: The Next Generation. A thrall of nostalgia; a trance of the peace of regression. So bad, so lame, but, mysteriously, as with drives on deserted roads, sports, and Christmas Eve candlelit services, better than good: I watched with the eyes of my ten year old self. I'll admit I enjoy sublimating my identity, even if only for the length of an episode of my once favorite show, losing myself in a narrative I don't have to consider.

In keeping with my recent tennis fixation, spent an inordinate amount of time staring blankly at a chronological list of men's grand slam champions, clicking on one or another name, skimming a biographical wikipedia entry.

Watched 5/6ths of Into the Wild. Since I know how it ends, I don't see the need to finish.

Started watching pirated episodes of House.

I like House, even if it is stultifying, the epitome of formulaic super-Sherlock-shlock. Vasculitis in one or another instantiation is mentioned in nearly every episode as a possible diagnosis for whatever bizarre set of symptoms. I like the dialogue. I can't be bothered with the medical aspect of the show; I tune in for the unpeeling of the characters' psychological weaknesses, the delayed exposition of the fucked-up and the regret-riddled, the exultation of high-functioning unhappiness.

Unfortunately, I can only watch House for 72 minutes consecutively before the internet video host on which these episodes are illegally hosted decides to truncate my viewing, in an attempt at coercing me into paying for a "premium" video-viewing package.

When the magical 72 minute limit is reached (which averages out to 1 and 2/3rds episodes of House), I have to wait for an arbitrary period of time, anywhere between 20 - 56 minutes.

I get myself through this wait by putting on some Futurama. I discovered a treasure-trove of high-bandwidth DVD-quality 2nd-generation Futurama movies, and watch these til House is un-blocked. Hours pass in this manner.

I don't believe any comment on this behavior is necessary.

2009-07-05T22:48:00.001-07:00

1:48 PM, Monday, 7/6/2009

me: i scrounged four cigarette butts from a dead flower pot and am trying to smoke them

Grace: haha

me: these are NOT long butts.

all the long butts were smoked hours, days ago,

these are just nubs.

i don't have a lighter or matches, so i stick them in the flame from the gas stove til they're on fire and then i try to smoke them.

Grace: that doesn't sound good

2009-07-05T22:22:00.000-07:00

When and where: Elena's house: 1:23 AM, Monday, 7/6/09

Out of cigarettes.

My pants want to fall down around my ankles and I don't have a belt, which would be fine except that I'm withdrawing from nicotine and am possessed of a craving-driven urge to pace the house. I walk into the kitchen, hitch up my pants, walk to the bathroom, hitch up my pants, walk to the patio, hitch up my pants.

There's no one here but me and the cats.

2009-07-05T17:44:00.000-07:00

Where & When: 8:51 PM, Sunday, July 5th, Elena's House

What I did today:

Slept in late. Smoked the rest of last night's cigarettes.

Wimbledon final.

Scathing online schoolmarm.

Scott Eric Kaufmann's "The Rhetoric of Heroism" teaching blog (including a scan of his hectoring student-blogger commentariat).

wiki'd: Bertolt Brecht, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Disinhibited Attachment Disorder, O'Neil's The Hairy Ape (one of the most quotable works ever, alongside Conrad's The Return).

Watched all of Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast on youtube, plus selected clips of and Toy Story 2 and Cinderella. Bippity Boppity Boo, indeed.

2009-07-03T00:33:00.000-07:00

Where: Greg's house, Tewksbury, MA

When: 2:33 AM, Saturday, July 4

What I did today:

My usual salad of blog-browsing, reading, media, pseudo-intellectualizing.
Consumed “Glass Castle,” a leading light in the bizarro abused/starved/inexplicably-mistreated trainwreck-childhood-memoir genre. The last page reads:

The author now resides with her husband, also an author, in New York and Virginia.

Started “Swann's Way.” When I'm old, there will be at that time nothing to exculpate or justify being an-old-person-who-has-not-read-Proust. Are the bones of a categorical imperative in there? I feel the fear of being an ill-informed elder. I still plan on holding fast to the “life is too short for Finnegan's Wake” line.

Watched tennis on the internet and read about famous historical tennis players on wikipedia. Have, in the half-day that has passed between then and now, forgotten all of these tennis great's names.
Played six games of pool. Four games played against myself, two games played against Darla.
Read through a glossy pop-deep “Post-Secret” art book. Analyzed and discussed each piece at length with Darla & Elena. (gender orientation of artist, artistic intention, authenticity/honesty, aesthetic merit at large, philosophical heft, classifications by intellectual complexity and style, social commentary, &c).
Suffered through a self-inflicted sitting of “What the Bleep Do We Know,” a Novaish-700club-selfhelp-docudrama, a punishment I endured for the sole purpose of rhetorical preparedness, the formation of succinct and brutal future arguments, on the off chance it ever comes up. To protect myself from hyperfocused spastic impotent amateur-intellectual outrage, I played pool (see above).

When I started writing this page, I was feeling emotional and profound despite the fact that I did nothing today. The thought of writing itself was enough to provoke these emotional and profound feelings. Additionally, I also felt sentimental and memorious; this because of the arrival of the fourth of July and the fact that I've lived a full life, if it is to be measured by a surfeit of Fourth-of-July memories. Now I don't feel at all. I feel like changing the song on my media player but I lack volition.

Alone in the living room

2009-07-02T20:34:00.001-07:00

After playing "King's Cup" (the epitome of the college house-party drinking-game, though we're all post-college at this point, dipping into the game's enforced convolutions, the booze-fueled pandemonium/hilarity with a healthy/pathetic ladeling of dignity-protecting irony), the girls go out back to sit on the porch and talk.

I sit alone in the scalding light of the living room. For reasons I don't comprehend, I start reading about MMA (Mixed Martial Arts). Attempting, in my feeble way, to access the purity of war, the pared-down immediacy of winning-losing, rules, absolute judges. Perhaps. I read sportswriter's editorial speculations about individual MMA fighters and the MMA business model.

Listening to The Magnetic Fields - "Epitaph For My Heart."

Perhaps I once came to this song because "Cupid put too much poison in the dart" but at this point the only lines that ring true are:

and life goes on and on
and death goes on
world without end
and you're not my friend

One of the girls came in and lifted the cigarettes from the coffeetable. She lit one on the gas stove without hesitation and stepped wordlessly outside again. In the same room, we didn't say anything to each other, and then she was gone.

Suddenly, pressing, minor but immediate, I felt the urge to go outside, "see what's up," "participate," "socialize." A gathering of not-unwelcoming "friends" calls steadily when you're sitting by yourself, reading nonsense.

Why and how? The salient question.

I felt this urge despite the fact that I don't care a whit about whatever they might be discussing, as I have been assured by tedious experience that, if I'm not prompting the conversation, they don't have anything remotely interesting to say.

How many times in my life have I done this? Sacrificed my dignity, my intelligence, the possibility of real interaction (or, at least, the closest thing to "real interaction" imaginable, whatever it might be, which, admittedly, is in any case awfully thin porridge in the absence of a pre-existing body of desire and/or fear) at the alter of "talking to idiots" because of the inexorable draw of the existence of others? Answer: daily. Every party I've ever attended requires a systematic mental neutering in the name of comity, the slight chance of back-slapping in-group world-champion mutual-masturbation. I'm beyond terror-driven self-inflicted party-driven dulling/numbing/hypnosis, though that used to be a staple of my mass-social approach. Now I'm always at a high level, agonizingly aware of the insipity. A traitor to giving a fuck.

I need to meet people I like.

I get up and walk through the kitchen, open the back door, light a cigarette. They're talking enthusiastically about their acid trips.

2009-07-02T18:03:00.000-07:00

A typical conversation:

Elena: Canned corn. Dinner of champions.
Darla: Good shit man.
E: It's so good.
D: There's lots of ramen, too. There's chicken, beef, perhaps, some cajun shit, if you want to get fancy. I love the fancy flavors of ramen.
E: That shrimp-thing i really want to try.
D: It kinda tastes like dick-hole.

[a few moments later]

D: I should work out. I don't feel like working out, but I feel like I should. Does anyone want to go work out?
Me: I don't have any work out clothes here.
D: I don't either, come to think of it. Elena, do you have any work-out clothes that I can borrow?
E: Yeah, of course. What's mine is yours.
D: Okay. Try on a sports-bra.
[gets up and leaves]

E: Are you writing?
Me: No, I'm just typing.
E: [garbled] What are you typing?
Me: Did you ask what I was typing?
E: I almost did, then I gave up.
Me: I don't know what that means.
E: Well. What are you typing.
Me: Um.

[time passes]

E: I ate that corn too fast.
Me: That's too bad.
E: It kinda made me sick. I don't want to throw up corn-kernels all over the place.

[time passes]

Me: The sky gets red about now. And now it's red.
E: Yeah, it does.

2009-07-02T03:53:00.000-07:00

where & when: Elena's house, 6:53 AM, Thursday, July 2, 2009

what I'm up to:

Up all night watching Freaks & Geeks on DVD and google-chatting with Grace.

Grace was debating texting her boyfriend and the question of if he would care if she didn't. 831 lines of text. I said a lot of arrogant things about myself and disparaging things about everyone else. I told her that she should get a blog.

Grace: about what?

me: your life. write little stories about your life.

Grace: ok
me: it makes your life more meaningful, mysteriously, even if no one reads it. Grace: that's true

Things I'm thankful for

A fast computer with a battery that lasts a long time. White teeth. Not having allergies.

I don't actually feel thankful, though.

2009-07-01T17:28:00.000-07:00

When: 8:29 PM, July 1st 2009, Wednesday
Where: Elena's house

What I did today:

Went to bed drunk. Slept for some hours.

Hiding from the motion of the sun and broken-blind windows suddenly spangled with gray light, moved from Elena's bed to Maria's bed to Joanna's bed. No one was home.

Morning thunderstorms of life-affirming size and gravity passed over Boston, rattling the windows, loosing a cinematically steady rain on the streets and rooftops and grass. The usual poetry of water on landscapes applies here, the moods all shaded gray, infused with heightened (albeit directionless, artificial) profoundity. I woke intermittently. Marveling at the progress of my hangover and soaking in the somnolent unreality of dreamworlds: the hollowed-out, uncluttered particularless nature of dreaming. My dreams all seem to be shot in brown rooms with tall ceilings and pure sunlight, full of open spaces and minimalist architecture. I buried myself deep in bed throughout the entire morning, trying to stay in these beautiful spaces, hoping to follow the narratives of my dreams to their natural ends. This is inevitably a failed enterprise. In dreams as in everything, meaning is always deferred endlessly.

Watched Wimbledon on the internet. Read about tennis champions of yore.

Ate toast w/ Country Crock & a generous layer of can-crumbled parmesan cheese. Two pots of coffee.

Something I like:

I like the way the evening light is constant through the slats of the railing with the evening light stilled in the sky above.

2009-06-30T14:51:00.000-07:00

where: the Tewksbury library
when: 5.51 PM, Tuesday, June 30

What I did today

Sheena disturbed my sleep last night, waking me up and asking if our erstwhile make-out session was going to be continued or if it was a "one-time thing." I said I thought it would be a good idea to abort our nascent sexual relationship. I had my reasons. I don't desire her with any intensity. I realize now that she's one of those girls whose breasts look stupendous when ensconsed in bra-and-shirt, but, have no "center that holds," so to speak, or whatever, and apparently I prefer centers that appear to hold.

Darla directed me to help her clean the car. This we did. Otherwise, I played with Legos (putting together some abstract Lego art on a cratered Lego moonscape), watched Jarmusch's Cigarettes and Coffee (infuriating waste of time), played two games of pool (I won both games), smoked cigarettes, drank coffee, etc.

Things I realized today

I realized today that the way I am now is the way I'll always be. This was not the first time I'd had this realization. Now as before, it didn't impact me in the slightest, and I continued along blithely doing the horrible things I'd been doing the whole time.

I want to party tonight.

2009-06-29T18:15:00.000-07:00

When: 9:22 PM, Monday, 9/29/09
Where: Elena's House

What I did today

Watched Wimbledon streaming on the internet, sitting on the back porch. (This despite the fact that, by nature, I prefer front porches).

Smoked and drank coffee all morning.

At three PM, muttering vague threats to myself, cajoling, reminding myself of my future regret, my general destitution, I lifted myself into action, down the street.

Applied for a job. Perhaps problematically, I can't remember the name of the place I went. As a rule, I never think I'm going to get the job. Perhaps tomorrow, if I get around to printing them off, I'll drop resumes at some other places.

I rifled through a Boston Herald and found their soduku, completing 95% of it in just four subway stops. I feel sure somehow that the NY Times Soduku is more challenging.

2009-06-28T16:06:00.000-07:00

Where: Elana's Apartment in Porter Square
When: 10:26 PM, Sunday, 6/28/2009

What I did today

Sat on a brown couch watching Futurama excerpts on the internet.

6PM, started in with smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. Lighting cigarettes on the gas stove, inevitably singeing off a few loose strands of hair. I gave up quitting smoking again.

Don't want to let the cats get outside (and they really want to get outside).

2009-06-27T00:40:00.000-07:00

Nobody likes to admit that they are a bad person. Somehow, even as one's failings are being described with a tedious Socratic inexorability, in the absence of mysteriously-appearing self-condemnation, it's easy to think: I can't be all that bad, and in fact, I'm not that bad. There are two reasons for this: first, and most obvious, you simply can't give up on yourself, even suicide is an expression of a perverse self-interest. And beyond that, the whole concept of “bad” and its corollary implied framework is nothing more than vague nonsense. On some intuitive level, we comprehend the flexibility of moral concepts. As for me, I shake my head, tell myself that I'm an idiot, tell myself in the future, when things change, I won't make the same mistakes, that's all, they're just mistakes, not an expression of a deeper and more inevitable problem, moral hideousness. It's just a few lapses in judgment here and there, bad habits, forgetfulness, non-problematic humanity, even at its worst, nothing more than the pitiful eruption of stupidity at the junction of desire and frailty, perspectivelessness and headlong motion.

My usual “badness” does not manifest in out-sized socially destructive ways, thank god. Basically, throughout the vast majority of my hours, I don't do anything and have no interest in anything, I have no interesting feelings or interesting thoughts, or, when I do have apparently profound thoughts, I forget them immediately, and all I can do is remember a time when I wasn't totally psychologically isolated, bored out of my mind by myself.